SessIon:  New Thoughts on Teaching Museum Ethics

Proposals Due May 9

College Art Association Annual Conference, Los Angeles, February  
25-28, 2009

for details, see http://conference.collegeart.org/2009/


Janet Marstine, MA Program in Museum Professions, Seton Hall  
University, 400 S. Orange Avenue, S. Orange NJ 07079  [log in to unmask]

It is essential for emerging museum professionals to have a sound  
education in museum ethics. As museums struggle to develop greater  
transparency, accountability and sensitivity to diverse  
constituencies, engaging a new generation of leaders with expertise  
in museum ethics would enhance problem solving, engender public  
trust, and promote human rights. Yet museum theorists, museum  
practitioners, artists and art historians who discuss museum ethics  
with their students are often torn as to how to define the topic and  
how best to teach it. Is museum ethics a code of conduct or is it the  
analysis and revision of the principles upon which this conduct is  
based?  What is the relationship between museum ethics and advocacy?   
What are the advantages of creating specific courses in museum  
ethics? How does a faculty infuse museum ethics across the art  
history or museum studies curriculum? What resources are available  
online? How can we work with ethicists from across the curriculum,  
for example business ethicists, environmental ethicists and legal  
ethicists, to create new conversations? How might studying artists’  
critiques of the museum be part of a museum ethics education? What  
new ways can we collaborate with our university or community museums  
and galleries to help our students understand how these institutions  
deal with ethical issues? Proposals are welcome from art historians,  
museum studies faculty, museum professionals, ethicists, and artists  
interested in teaching museum ethics.
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