Introduction and Forethoughts

Hello everyone!

I hope this blog post finds you well. My name is Claire Gallucci, and like many of you, I am in my final year at RIT. My primary area of focus is in Modern art history, particularly the feminist, installation, and performance art disciplines. As an emerging museum professional, I have thought deeply about the public-facing side of art collecting institutions. 

Of all types of museums, art museums have the most foreboding reputation as inaccessible cultural heritage sites, grounded in elitism and their content curated for visitors from exclusive demographics. Often, galleries are curated to encourage passive viewership, forcing a sense of value or institutional importance onto audiences. As a result, these institutions end up alienated from the broader communities in which they reside. Conversely, living history museums have been successful in connecting with visitors who have varying levels of competency in the era the museum aims to interpret. They have taken controversial, complex, and even painful subject matter and made it approachable for the masses. They accomplish this through immersion, intentional use of material culture, and cultivating an ethos of active participation and co-authorship. The museum guest is empowered to be in charge of the experience they come away with. I would like to investigate the interpretive framework that allows for living history institutions to succeed and see how it may apply to contemporary/modern art museums. I intend to prove that the concept of active viewership is not estranged from art institutions from a historical standpoint, even as it has not been at the forefront of art exhibition development; movements like feminist performance art and installation art have succeeded in activating gallery viewers in the creation and perception of art; therefore, it is feasible to implement concepts founded in living history into the traditional art museum framework, creating something that is in part new and in part old. 

Research is an intimate practice that is often executed in an extremely public setting. It is a difficult feat to approach developing a research topic, and even more of a challenge to defend its rigor as academia often prompts. As of late, I have found myself reflecting on how my research topic has evolved from my very first semester as a museum studies major. I'm looking forward to continuing to develop this project over the next seven months alongside my peers.