“Museums, Activism and Social Change” (University of Toronto, 2021; 2022) / “Museum Activism” (New York University, 2023; 2024): This graduate seminar takes as an entry point the rise of activist interventions in and around museums and the growing scholarly interest in the concept of museum activism (Janes and Sandell, 2019). The course explores the relation between museums and activism by positioning cultural institutions as sites of constant change, negotiation, and struggle. Recognizing that museum practice emerges out of distinct social and political contexts, students follow critical social movements – such as labor and racial and climate justice – as they relate to museums and ultimately shape museum practice. Focusing on various case studies of protests and resistance throughout museum history, such as “Slasher Mary” and the Rokeby Venus (1914), the Lubicon Nation’s boycott of The Spirit Sings (1988), or more recent interventions by anti-oil collectives, this course demonstrates that the merging of social activism and museums is not new; rather, that it has accompanied and affected the work of museum professionals since the early twentieth century (Robertson, 2019).
This course was inspired by, and builds on:
- Janes, R. R. and Sandell, R. (eds.). (2019). Museum Activism. Routledge.
- Robertson, K. (2019). Tear Gas Epiphanies: Protest, Culture, Museums. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Camille-Mary Sharp 