H48.1058 / 2058 Lecture 4 Credits
Instructor(s): Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell
Cultural Institutions, Communities And The Politics Of Change
Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell
H48.1058.001 (Undergraduate)
H48.2058.001 (Graduate)
Fridays, 10am-12:45pm
With permission of the Instructor – to obtain permission please submit a brief description of why you would like to take this course to barrie.gelles@nyu.edu
4 points
The course will examine the relationship between the instituional perogatives of cultural organizations and the urban communities in which they reside. Particular attention will be given to those communities which have undergone cataclysmic change. The course will make use of a case study approach to public policy decision making. Each case will present a specific cultural institution within the five boroughs of New York City, analyze its community and investigate the public policy options available to the institution and the community as the institution sets forth its cultural development plans and the community seeks to re-invent itself. Conflicts between communities and insitutions, the imposition of the will of public policy makers, the influence of politics on decision making, will be examined. The course will weigh the impact of the decision making on the long term health of the Cultural institution, urban community and individual artists. The course requires students to consider a variety of perspectives from disparate actors with diverse interests and diverse approaches. Students will be asked to develop their own case studies and to present them at the end of the semester. The premise of the course is that arts institutions are not only important in their own right as specialized venues for particular artists and scholars, but that they are also players in the reinvention and reinvestment of urban life. How these organizations engage and transform their environment becomes a bellweather for gauging the vitality of the city.
Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell will draw from her own experience as a leader of a range of institutions including the Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC Dept of Cultural Affairs, TSOA, and now chair of the New York State Council on the Arts. In addition, a series of guest lecturers including leaders of major NYC cultural institutions and scholars specializing in urban culture will be part of the course. Dean Campbell will be co-teaching this course with Tom Finkelpearl, Executive Director of the Queens Museum of Art and the author of “Dialogues in Public Art.”
