Presenting Cultural Artifacts in the Art Museum: A University-Museum Collaboration

With increasing emphasis on multicultural art education and integrative pedagogy, educators have incorporated community resources, such as cultural artifacts exhibited in art museums, to enrich their programs. Cultural artifacts are human-made objects which generally reveal historic information about cultural values, beliefs, and traditions. Cultural artifacts are accessible to school children because they are concrete manifestations of artistic expression, cultural heritage, scientific discovery, and sociopolitical development; therefore, they can be effectively used to explain complex concepts, values, traditions, and ideas from various cultures to enhance learning experiences. A contextual exploration using a variety of cultural artifacts thus can foster historical thinking and multicultural literacy/understanding while helping students understand the diverse visual world around them. Nonetheless, several art educators/scholars identify issues and problems associated with multicultural art appreciation, and particularly ways in which art museums display cultural artifacts as fine art objects. This article reports on a multifaceted, collaborative project consisting of artifacts research, museum exhibition, and curriculum development that involved university faculty, graduate students, and museum staff. This university-museum collaboration addresses ways to change how cultural artifacts are presented to museum audiences and illuminates the significance of such collaboration for art education. (Contains 6 figures and 4 endnotes.)