I am working to expand the practice of public scholarship in art history.
What is public scholarship?
There are many models for public scholarship. One common approach involves sharing academic knowledge outside of university settings – for example, though exhibitions, public programs, and publications aimed at readers who aren’t just professors and their students. Public scholarship can also refer to collaborations in which academics and people outside of the university work together in ways that share authority and resources in order to create knowledge that benefits everyone involved in the partnership. In my own work, collaboration plays an important ethical and methodological role – it’s important to the why and the how of what I do.
Depending on the contributors, their methods, and their audience, public scholarship might be described using other terms, such as engaged, participatory, or community-based. Whatever name we use, public scholarship encompasses a set of actions and a philosophy that can make academic work more just, equitable, and meaningful beyond the halls of the university.
Practices of public scholarship are highly developed in some academic fields. While it is common for art museums to connect audiences with art and its history, engaged art history is an underdeveloped area. But it is growing!
Many of the projects, publications, and teaching activities featured elsewhere on this site are examples of my public scholarship.
Expanding Engaged Art History
In addition to collaborating with students, arts administrators, neighborhood groups, and other community members to do engaged art history, I produce scholarship about engaged art history that is aimed at professionals in academic and museum settings. The goal of this work is to make it easier and more effective for other art historians to embrace engaged methods in their own practices.
As part of this effort, in April 2021 Erin Benay and I convened an international virtual symposium called “Building an Engaged Art History.” Approximately 40 scholars, teachers, culture workers, and students came together to share their experiences with engaged practices and consider what the future of the field might look like. Several of us are now working together to create a stronger community of practice around engaged art history. Learn more at EngagedArtHistory.org. As co-founder of this international initiative, I am always happy to answer questions about our work!
Resources for Engaged Art History
Many organizations and publications are shaping the theory and practice of public scholarship. Here are links to a few of those resources:
- Humanities for All
- Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life
- IUPUI Center for Service and Learning
- The Kettering Foundation
- Material Collective
- National Council on Public History
Connect
If you are an active or aspiring engaged art historian, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can also follow (and use!) #ArtHistoryEngaged on social media.*
*Hat tip to Jennifer Borland, Amy Hamlin, Karen Leader, and Louise Siddons for initiating #ArtHistoryEngaged in 2015.