I attended Dr. Daniel Weiss’ discussion on his new book “Why The Museum Matters,” where he was joined by Carlos Museum director Henry S. Kim, senior fellow emerita at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Caryl McFarlane, and curator at the Museum of Modern Art, Ugochukwu Smooth-Nzewi. The discussion entailed an introduction by Dr. Walter Melion, followed by presentations and a roundtable discussion by the aforementioned guests.
The discussion was a 2-hour long lesson on the integral role of museums in the public humanities and how they are forums of presentation, discussion, and education of arts. Dr. Weiss gave examples from the MET and its evolution and framed the discussion toward the representation of culture in museums, which was picked up by presentations by Dr. Smooth-Nzewi and Dr. McFarlane. This discussion continued to African and African-American representations in the public humanities.
The discussion made me reevaluate my views towards museums being only a forum for the presentation of art for a nominal fee in affluent communities. Museums are the most direct form of public humanities because of their explicit function to present art to the public, and they continuously evolve to broaden their appeal to various audiences. Dr. Smooth’s discussion of how his exhibitions at the MoMa transformed the museum’s African art collection shows that museums are dynamic and opinions in the higher arts are constantly changing. With modern museums incorporating diverse artists and curators, we can look to continual improvements in how the public experiences museums. I still believe that museums are a niche space for the artisticly inclined; however, they hold immense latent power which can be harnessed over time.