After the Oxford College Library and the Michael C. Carlos Museum were brought together as part of organizational realignment at Emory University, library and museum staff began to build a formalized partnership for the first time. The goal of this endeavor was to bring museum collections, resources, and personnel to a new audience at a new campus. Collaboration started with small meetings and building internal teams with relevant stakeholders. This created a foundation for lending artwork, planning and constructing a dedicated exhibition space, and guest speaking during library instruction. The process has required a commitment to cooperation, resource sharing, flexibility, and patience, but has already achieved exciting results. Museum resources enabled the library to bring more diverse voices onto the Oxford College campus, including works by contemporary African and contemporary Indigenous artists, as well as displaying an exhibit of works on paper that was co-curated with an Oxford College faculty member. As an act of resistance, this collaboration stands against the dominant view that undergraduate education should prioritize job training and narrow pathways over humanistic inquiry and digressions into the arts. Instead, this project encourages students to resist the pressure of productivity, look at something unexpected in the library, and ask questions about the relationship between art, information, and society. Additionally, the project resists the idea that museum collections must always remain in the museum, giving them new context and new viewers in a new place. Established pieces from the collection can be reinterpreted by taking up residence amidst busy students, student artwork, and book stacks.
Jacob Lackner (Tue,) studied this question.