Ever wanted to curate an exhibition?  Work side-by-side with a museum professional to develop a program or educational resource? Dig deep into a collection of art and artifacts? Or just have fun participating in the local cultural scene? Museums and society students have many opportunities like these, both in the classroom and outside of it.

In 2011, a $500,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation recognized the Program in Museums and Society for its unique offerings with a grant that to support museum-based projects with our campus museums and with partner institutions in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. This grant was renewed in 2013 as part of a larger program in support of the arts and humanities at Hopkins and funded more than a dozen collaborative projects between 2013 and 2017 at institutions as diverse as the Baltimore Museum of Art, Jewish Museum of Maryland, Maryland Zoo, Baltimore Museum of Industry, JHU Archaeology Museum and others. Many smaller grants in pedagogy, the arts, and practical ethics continue to launch innovative digital projects, art installations and archives.

Since 2017 the program has offered an annual course in partnership with the Baltimore Museum of Art as part of their ongoing collaboration with that museum. In 2021 a collaboration with JHU’s Inheritance Baltimore project launched ongoing community-based work with stewards of Baltimore’s Black cemeteries.

See below for a list of recent projects, or check this list of pre-2015 projects.

  • SP24 Class Photo for AS.389.265

    A Sense of Place

    Students enrolled in Monica Kristin Blair’s spring 2024 course, AS.389.265 Hopkins History Through the Archives, updated three of the Sense of Place campus history signs that were originally created by Museums & Society students in 2013. The students updated three signs that…

  • Two students sit at an event sign-in table and face a standing student. Postcards appear on the table.

    College Night: Making Her Mark

    In November 2023, over 130 local students from campuses across the region enjoyed the first ever College Night at the BMA, focused on Making her Mark. The event was designed, promoted, and hosted by students in Jennifer P. Kingsley’s course Museum…

  • An ancient mosaic featuring birds in rows hangs on a museum wall. The museum's introductory label appears to the right of the image.

    Rethinking Antioch Mosaics

    Museums and Society Director Jennifer Kingsley and Curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art Kevin Tervala collaborated in summer 2022 to reinterpret the museum’s so-called Antioch mosaics. These mosaics date from the first through the sixth century. Archaeologists excavated and…

  • Romancing the Comic exhibit

    Romancing the Comic

    Students enrolled in Heidi Herr’s 2022 Intersession course took a deep dive into a new university collection of romance comic books. Popular from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, romance comic books introduced teenagers to the joys and heartache of…

  • BMA American Modern Galleries re-open

    Reinstalling American Art

    Working in collaboration with BMA Curator Virginia Anderson students in Kingsley’s Spring 2020 course Encountering American Art developed new curatorial strategies for more inclusive permanent collection displays at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Their research and ideas informed the reinstallation…

  • Out in the Open group photo

    Out in the Open

    Out In The Open is a collective oral histories project developed by Johns Hopkins University students through Joseph Plaster’s spring 2022 course Queer Oral History (AS.389.348). Johns Hopkins University students learned how to conduct oral history interviews under the instruction…

  • Students examine art at the Baltimore Museum of Art

    A Perfect Power: Motherhood and African Art

    Students in Jennifer Kingsley’s Spring 2019 Curatorial Seminar partnered with Kevin Tervala, Associate Curator of African Art at the BMA to develop a feminist approach to curating African Art for the BMA’s 2020 Vision, a year focused on women-identifying persons…

  • Catoctin Furnace image

    Museum of the Ironworker Exhibits in Catoctin Furnace

    In August of 2017, EAC Archaeology, Inc. entered into a sub-award agreement with Johns Hopkins University (JHU) under the project entitled “Scholarly Inquiry, Public Outreach: The Program in Museums and Society at JHU” funded under a grant from the Andrew…

  • 1939: Exhibiting Black Art at the BMA

    1939: Exhibiting Black Art at the BMA

    In 1939, the BMA presented one of the first major exhibitions in the U.S. to feature African American artists. Contemporary Negro Art (CNA), served “as a declaration of principles as to what art should be in a democracy and as…