As part of the total thirty-one credit-hour course of study for the MA in Art History and Museum Studies, the following courses are required:
ARTH 490A: Visual Arts and the Museum (3 hours). This course examines the idea of the art museum in both its historical and contemporary manifestations, focusing on the context of Western Europe and the United States. The art museum is a rich topic; this sequence is mainly concerned with the collecting and exhibiting institution.
ARTH 490B: Visual Arts and the Museum (3 hours). The second sequence of the museum studies core focuses on the museum as a physical institution, governance, management and as a site of learning.
Students must successfully complete ARTH 490 A&B before enrolling in ARTH 491 A&B.
ARTH 491A (1 hour) & ARTH 491B Internship (3 hours)
Through ARTH 491A, students will complete an internship that introduces them to the major activities, duties and responsibilities of a designated division of the museum (including curatorial, education, collections management, conservation, and library). During this period students will also scope out a major project, to be completed during the tenure of ARTH491B. This project should be intellectually challenging, equivalent academically to the MA paper, and would ideally allow the student to interact with other divisions of the museum. During this second semester of the internship sequence, the student may elect to have a faculty supervisor other than the museum studies instructor.
The following institutions routinely offer internships for course credit, although internship opportunities vary by semester:
Artists’ Archives of the Western Reserve
Cleveland Clinic Art Collection
Cleveland Institute of Art, Reinberger Galleries
Intermuseum Conservation Association
Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland
University Hospitals Art Collection
Internships may also be completed outside of Cleveland (past examples include internships awarded to CWRU students at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation in Houston.)
For further information contact Debby Tenenbaum at dxt6@case.edu.