Museum Studies Program University of Michigan

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Museum Studies Program University of Michigan University of Michigan Museum Studies Program

At Michigan, students engage with museums in their seemingly infinite variety and from an interdisciplinary perspective that draws upon a rich body of museum-focused scholarship and cultural theory derived from multiple academic disciplines. Course work for the Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies and the Undergraduate Minor in Museum Studies emphasizes both theory and application and includes campus-based proseminars/lecture courses, cognates/electives from a variety of fields, and practica/internships, where the museum itself becomes the site of learning. The Museum Studies Program provides outstanding opportunities to engage intellectually, professionally, and interpersonally with the world of museums.

America at 250: History, Memory, and TruthThis December, Lonnie G. Bunch III will step down after seven years as Secreta...
10/26/2026

America at 250: History, Memory, and Truth

This December, Lonnie G. Bunch III will step down after seven years as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Join us for one of his last public conversations in the role, a dynamic exchange with Lynette Clemetson, Director of Wallace House Center for Journalists, on the significance of the 250th anniversary of the United States.

October 28 at 6:00 pm (doors open at 5:15), Rackham Graduate School auditorium. Free & open to the public.

https://ummsp.rackham.umich.edu/tribe-event/america-at-250-history-memory-and-truth-a-conversation-with-lonnie-g-bunch-iii-secretary-of-the-smithsonian-institution/

Oct 23 at 4:00 pm - In the Shadow of Empire: Calcutta’s Victoria Memorial and its Cast of Moving Statuary presentation ...
10/23/2026

Oct 23 at 4:00 pm - In the Shadow of Empire: Calcutta’s Victoria Memorial and its Cast of Moving Statuary presentation by Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Honorary Professor of History, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.
With a focus on Calcutta’s landmark monument – the most grandiose of the memorials to the Queen of all the ones built across the British imperial territories – this lecture addresses the theme of the end of empire through the persistence and proliferation of the genre of civic public statuary, its shifting cast of characters, and its movements across time and space. It is on the grounds of the Victoria Memorial – in the lingering shadows of a bygone empire – that a brood of imperial statues have found a safe haven, quietly living out their post-imperial lives of oblivion in a time and place where the empire is long gone but its hauntings remain.

In the recent past, we have seen how such hauntings of the past can suddenly return to a body of long-standing statues of American Confederate leaders, slave owners and imperialists, bringing on them the wrath of anti-white supremacist protests that began to rage across Western cities and universities during 2020. What the Black Lives Matter movement did was to return attention in India to the long-forgotten specimens of colonial statuary, mostly hidden away in remote locations of our cities - raising the issue again, after over 75 years of Independence, of their rights to remain in the spaces where they still stand. The afterlives of these relics of empire is a central theme of this lecture, as it explores various moments in the travels, dislocations and relocations of Calcutta’s imperial statues, while charting a small parallel history of Indian statue-making over these transitional decades of the last years of British rule and the coming of Independence.
https://myumi.ch/11pPb

Oct 23 at 4:00 pm - In the Shadow of Empire: Calcutta’s Victoria Memorial and its Cast of Moving Statuary presentation ...
10/21/2026

Oct 23 at 4:00 pm - In the Shadow of Empire: Calcutta’s Victoria Memorial and its Cast of Moving Statuary presentation by Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Honorary Professor of History, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.
With a focus on Calcutta’s landmark monument – the most grandiose of the memorials to the Queen of all the ones built across the British imperial territories – this lecture addresses the theme of the end of empire through the persistence and proliferation of the genre of civic public statuary, its shifting cast of characters, and its movements across time and space. It is on the grounds of the Victoria Memorial – in the lingering shadows of a bygone empire – that a brood of imperial statues have found a safe haven, quietly living out their post-imperial lives of oblivion in a time and place where the empire is long gone but its hauntings remain.

In the recent past, we have seen how such hauntings of the past can suddenly return to a body of long-standing statues of American Confederate leaders, slave owners and imperialists, bringing on them the wrath of anti-white supremacist protests that began to rage across Western cities and universities during 2020. What the Black Lives Matter movement did was to return attention in India to the long-forgotten specimens of colonial statuary, mostly hidden away in remote locations of our cities - raising the issue again, after over 75 years of Independence, of their rights to remain in the spaces where they still stand. The afterlives of these relics of empire is a central theme of this lecture, as it explores various moments in the travels, dislocations and relocations of Calcutta’s imperial statues, while charting a small parallel history of Indian statue-making over these transitional decades of the last years of British rule and the coming of Independence.

This presentation is co-sponsored by Asian Languages & Cultures, Comparative Literature, English Language & Literature, and History of Art Departments and the Center for South Asian Studies.

https://myumi.ch/11pPb

Oct 23 - In the Shadow of Empire: Calcutta’s Victoria Memorial and its Cast of Moving Statuary presentation by Tapati G...
10/16/2026

Oct 23 - In the Shadow of Empire: Calcutta’s Victoria Memorial and its Cast of Moving Statuary presentation by Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Honorary Professor of History, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.

With a focus on Calcutta’s landmark monument – the most grandiose of the memorials to the Queen of all the ones built across the British imperial territories – this lecture addresses the theme of the end of empire through the persistence and proliferation of the genre of civic public statuary, its shifting cast of characters, and its movements across time and space. It is on the grounds of the Victoria Memorial – in the lingering shadows of a bygone empire – that a brood of imperial statues have found a safe haven, quietly living out their post-imperial lives of oblivion in a time and place where the empire is long gone but its hauntings remain.

In the recent past, we have seen how such hauntings of the past can suddenly return to a body of long-standing statues of American Confederate leaders, slave owners and imperialists, bringing on them the wrath of anti-white supremacist protests that began to rage across Western cities and universities during 2020. What the Black Lives Matter movement did was to return attention in India to the long-forgotten specimens of colonial statuary, mostly hidden away in remote locations of our cities - raising the issue again, after over 75 years of Independence, of their rights to remain in the spaces where they still stand. The afterlives of these relics of empire is a central theme of this lecture, as it explores various moments in the travels, dislocations and relocations of Calcutta’s imperial statues, while charting a small parallel history of Indian statue-making over these transitional decades of the last years of British rule and the coming of Independence.

This presentation is co-sponsored by Asian Languages & Cultures, Comparative Literature, English Language & Literature, and History of Art Departments and the Center for South Asian Studies.
https://myumi.ch/11pPb

Kudos to… Alison Rivett (MSP06) who was recently promoted to the Director of Operations at the University of Michigan’s ...
10/16/2026

Kudos to… Alison Rivett (MSP06) who was recently promoted to the Director of Operations at the University of Michigan’s Arts Initiative. https://arts.umich.edu/

October 12: Penny Stamps Speaker Series - "Aanikoobijigan" film screening and discussion. 5:30 pm at the Michigan Theat...
10/05/2026

October 12: Penny Stamps Speaker Series - "Aanikoobijigan" film screening and discussion. 5:30 pm at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. The film Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild] documents the emotional and vital work of MACPRA (Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation and Repatriation Alliance). This alliance, made up of repatriation specialists representing all Michigan tribes, fights to bring their Ancestors and funerary objects home from settler colonial institutions like museums, libraries, and archives. https://stamps.umich.edu/events/aanikoobijigan

Sept 25 Museums@Noon presentation: Uncovering the Legacy of the Hominin Cast Collection at the Field Museum. Presented...
09/25/2026

Sept 25 Museums@Noon presentation: Uncovering the Legacy of the Hominin Cast Collection at the Field Museum. Presented by Georgia Oppenheim (MSP24; PhD candidate, Biological Anthropology). 12:00 pm, Hatcher Library Gallery Lab, Room 100H.

Welcome to our new director at Museum Studies!
07/10/2026

Welcome to our new director at Museum Studies!

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