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American museums: Museums and Communities in a Time of Crisis, with Stephanie Stebich
Museums and Communities in a Time of Crisis
Stephanie Stebich,
This year marks the
175th anniversary of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex. It is also a solemn occasion to ponder how the pandemics one novel and the other as old as our country have impacted American museums. With doors closed and digital windows open, how have museums pivoted to stay connected to their audiences during the COVID-19 lockdown? How has the social justice movement and economic upheaval pressured museums to reconsider their operating models to better serve their communities? Lastly, what are the attitudes and expectations of museum audiences for their future museum experiences?
The Cathedral of Art (1942–1944, unfinished). Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
When Florine Stettheimer died in 1944, at the age of 72, the New York artist, poet, and salonnière, was still putting the final touches on
The Cathedrals of Art, the last in a series of four monumental paintings devoted to New York’s cultural, social, and economic temples. Identical in scale, each painting measures five feet tall by just over four feet wide.
The series, which includes
The Cathedrals of Fifth Avenue (1931)
, and
The Cathedrals of Wall Street (1939), was a winkingly aware homage to places of worship in the city she’d called home for all her adult life. For the deeply private artist,
Dana Farouki
Dana Farouki is a curator and patron, specializing in Middle East contemporary art. Farouki was the first member of the Guggenheim Museum Abu Dhabi curatorial staff, serving as Assistant Curator until June 2010. She received her bachelor’s degree in History of Art and Architecture from Brown University in 2003, and completed her master’s degree in the History and Theory of the Art Museum at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 2005. She also held a one-year fellowship at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. She is currently a Trustee of MoMA PS1, the leading New York museum committed to emerging art and artists. Farouki also serves on the Board of Trustees for Creative Time, New York’s foremost public arts projects organization. She is the founding Chair of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s Middle East Circle and sits on the board of Bidoun Projects. A great advocate of regional cultural initiatives, she oversaw the largest commissioning based prize i