The Exemplary Museum
The Exemplary Museum is the product of an extensive, year-long study into campus art museums in the USA commissioned by the Samuel H Kress Foundation. The resulting findings and methodology are of international significance for both university museums and art museums generally.
Although visitors to America's 700-plus campus art museums have almost quadrupled in the last 50 years, until now little was known about the visitor experience within them - a situation reflected internationally. This pioneering book changes all that.
Focusing on "exemplary" museums - those which are models of best practice - the book explores the challenges and conditions for success for university art museums. Among the fundamental issues explored are:
* how are these museums integrated into the lives of their users?
* how do users interact with these museums beyond the academic curriculum?
* what organisational cultures and systems best support these museums?
"Few can rival the Samuel H Kress Foundation's ongoing commitment to academic art museums. Fewer have developed a deeper understanding of the central pedagogical importance of our nation's academic art museums, particularly their vital contributions to interdisciplinary learning and visual literacy. The Exemplary Museum encapsulates the Foundation's understanding and is a must-read for university and college trustees presidents, provosts, deans, and museum leaders.
David Alan Robertson, Executive Director, Association of Academic Museums and Galleries.
"This perceptive, carefully researched book documents some of the best practices at leading academic art museums across the nation. Examining an array of institutions - large and small, urban and rural, public and private - it seeks to understand how success is being defined and how it is being achieved today. Campus-based art museums make enormous contributions to scholarship, education, and training; anyone with an interest in the role museums can play at academic institutions should read this book."
Anthony Hirschel, Director, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago.
"Campus art museums are amongst the most innovative and dynamic of museums, and vital partners in realizing the mission of the school. This landmark book is an essential and inspirational text for anyone seeking to understand, expand, or enhance the rich teaching role of a campus art museum."
Stefanie S Jandl, Co-editor, A Handbook for Academic Museums: Exhibitions and Education and A Handbook for Academic Museums: Beyond Exhibitions and Education.
"What a triumph! The vision, precision and outright care in this book is unsurpassed. It is useful and extremely well-crafted. Corrine Glesne's ability to listen and to also hear what went unsaid is the most amazing gift. I thank her for the excellent job and the steady direction her report provides."
Saralyn Reece Hardy, Director, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas.
"I plan to make The Exemplary Museum a centerpiece for staff discussions associated with updating our strategic plan. This is an important study for university and college art museums that will very likely have a profound effect on the evolving role of campus art museums."
Charles R. Loving, Director and Curator, George Rickey Sculpture Archive, Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
