Museums and Society is an exciting interdisciplinary program that introduces Johns Hopkins undergraduates to the institutions that preserve, interpret, and present our material heritage. Students work with a diverse array of faculty, curators, and other specialists; take museum-based courses focused on both collections and outreach; participate in local and regional fieldtrips; and explore career opportunities in culture and the arts.
The Program in Museums and Society is concerned with the institutions that shape knowledge and understanding through the collection, preservation, interpretation, and presentation of objects, artifacts, materials, monuments, and historic sites. Through classroom teaching, research, and real encounters with museums, broadly defined, the program promotes the study of material culture and its place in a wide range of scholarly disciplines. The role of such institutions and their contents in societies both past and present, including but not limited to their political, legal, ethical, and economic significance, is central to the program. In addition to curricular and scholarly activities within the University, the program promotes meaningful connections with local and regional museums.
Students can earn a minor that will complement any major. Course requirements are designed to introduce students to a broad set of historical, theoretical, and practical museum issues and to give them the opportunity to explore museums first-hand.