My Current Thesis Topic Ideas

Originally, I was going to tackle the question of how museums and cultural institutions interact with contemporary social movements such as Black Lives Matter, Free the Nipple, and issues involving the hijab as well as the representation of Muslim Americans in popular media (juxtaposed with the museological representation(s) of these people currently being exhibited or having been exhibited in the past). I wanted to focus upon the Rochester area, due to its history of tumultuous race relations, revolt, and large African American population as well as the international and interracial student population at RIT providing a wide breadth of demographics for surveys/interviews. In other words, I initially wanted to explore both how museums and cultural institutions in Rochester, NY (and the surrounding suburbs) meaningfully interact with contemporary social movements, what it means to interact meaningfully with these social movements (both from the museum professional perspective and that of those personally involved with the social movements being examined), and how museums may foster more intimate and powerful connections with local communities via interacting with relevant social movements.

However, after looking at myself and my interests I have decided to move my tentative topic in a more environmentally conscious direction: how are museums and cultural institutions interpreting and educating the public in regards to climate change? Are museums and cultural institutions able to leave visitors with valuable knowledge about their climate, environment, and the preservation of not only museum objects but objects that they use in their daily lives? Do museums meaningfully convey the importance of developing new modes of energy generation, an awareness of the drastic effects that humans have on their surroundings, or are visitor made aware that climate change affects their lives (and their futures) every second of every day? These questions, along with analyzing and critically examining how museums directly devoted to environmental issues such as proposed The Climate Museum of New York City have impacted both their local and global communities. Namely, how does The Climate Museum intend to encourage discussion as well as engagement with the topics at hand? Is that discussion meaningful enough to spur actual changes in people's lives? Have visitors outside of New York City (residents of other large New York cities such as Rochester) heard of the The Climate Museum or engaged with topics concerning climate change through local institutions' exhibitions, objects, or community outreach programming? How do local Rochesterian museum professionals attempt to engage the public with discussion involving climate change? Does the public find these engagements successful and do these museum professionals find their methods of engaging with said public successful?

I hope to answer these questions or at least suggest methods of best practices following interviews and surveys with both the staff/leading figures of The Climate Museum, the Rochester Museum and Science Center (RMSC), The George Eastman Museum (GEM), and other relevant local institutions (such as colleges/universities like RIT and the University of Rochester). Climate change and environmental degradation are ongoing, unstoppable issues that directly effect both the present and future of humanity: I hope to ascertain that this reality is both understood by and guides museum programming in a way which promotes active thinking and lifestyle changes within their local and global audiences.

Thesis Topic

My thesis topic will be examining how museums handle displaying culturally sensitive objects. My thesis will focus specifically on the Rochester Museum and Science Center and will be a case study of how they go through the process of handling and exhibiting the Charlotte carousel panel. I do not yet have a working title title for my thesis, but have been attempting to throw some ideas around about that and should have one worked up by next week. The research question my thesis will address is "What are the best practices museums should abide by when exhibiting culturally sensitive objects?" I will attempt to answer it by doing the case study of the RMSC and by doing research on other institutions that have experienced similar issues. I will also be looking at the new National Museum of African American History and Culture to see how they have attempted to handle this problem. This is still a working question, and may be a bit broad, but for the moment, I think broad is good because it will encompass more research, and I can always narrow it down at a later point if necessary. As for research, I have found a number or journal articles that deal with this subject matter, and have compiled many newspaper articles and online commentary dealing with the carousel panel directly. I have attempted to make contact with some staff members at the NMAAHC and am currently waiting for their replies.