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.
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American Selfie
Students in Jennifer Kingsley’s Spring 2017 course “Collections Remix” mined archival, literary and cultural collections of the Johns Hopkins University for materials that reflect the experiences of African-Americans. One student team, Monika Borkovic and Lorna Henson, worked with Sheridan Libraries’…
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To Colour Well
Why do we catalogue collections? What goes into writing a catalogue? In the Fall of 2016, students in Virginia Anderson’s seminar on collecting (AS.389.358) responded to these questions. Each student wrote a catalogue essay on a group of eight…
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Book Arts Baltimore
Book Arts Baltimore (BAB) is an informal partnership among several Baltimore-area institutions supporting a common goal: celebrating artists’ books and book arts. Launched by M&S and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in 2013 in anticipation of a related exhibition…
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What is Happening?
“What is Happening?” was an interactive three-part performance art series sponsored by an Andrew W. Mellon Arts Innovation Grant and produced by Museums and Society students Sarah Braver and Helena Arose for 2016-17. Part one, on December 8, 2016, located outdoors in front of…
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BMA Off the Shelf
Stemming from Spring 2016 course, AS.389.354 Paper Museums: Exhibiting Artists’ Books at the Baltimore Museum of Art, students from JHU, Loyola, and MICA, alongside BMA staff, worked with the BMA collection of artists’ books to develop an exhibition of more than…
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Homewood Stories & Archaeology of Knowledge Audio Tours
Drawing from oral histories and archival materials, Homewood Histories builds on the Sense of Place project to expand and diversify the stories of the people who have lived and worked on the site of today’s Homewood campus from the days it was a farm up to the present.…