The Rubin Museum is delighted to have formed institutional partnerships with six CUNY (City University of New York) colleges: four senior colleges, including Hunter, Baruch, John Jay, and Queens; and two community colleges, including Queensborough Community College and Borough of Manhattan Community College.
We, as partners, are continually exploring ways to strengthen our relationships. Hunter College instituted a new academic initiative that aligns beautifully with the museum’s educational mission. The Arts Across the Curriculum initiative, funded by a $100,000 planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, was launched in the Fall of 2011 to boost interdisciplinary collaboration among Hunter’s arts departments, introduce the arts into non-arts related disciplines, and build partnerships with New York cultural institutions to broaden students’ access to the arts.
Dara Meyers-Kingsley, the Arts Across the Curriculum Program Director, invited the Rubin Museum to participate in an AAC event in late March. Teaching Tuesdays: Making Museum Visits Work, co-sponsored with the Academic Center for Excellence in Research & Teaching, brought together museum educators from the Rubin Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to explore ways that Hunter faculty can work with museum collections as an extension of the classroom through innovative museum visits and online resources.
Denise Murphy was a familiar face in the audience. Dr. Murphy, or Denise, as we fondly call her, has been a dedicated docent and lecturer for many years at the Rubin Museum. Her lecture, Tibetan Art and Medicine: An Integration, is offered the first Monday of every month at 11:30 am as part of our Free Seniors Day program.
Along with her volunteer duties at the museum, Denise is the Graduate Recruiter in Hunter College’s Nursing School and works in the Office of Recruitment, Retention & Progression where she assists professors in placing undergraduate and graduate students in clinical rotations throughout the academic year.
The Rubin Museum was invited back to Hunter College to participate in the Arts Across Curriculum Summit one month later. The Summit (April 25-26) consisted of two days of panel discussions, lectures, and workshops with Hunter faculty and cultural partners to review AAC programs and to plan for future projects. Along with the Rubin Museum, the other attendees included Melissa Chiu, Museum Director and Senior Vice-President for Global Arts and Cultural Programs at Asia Society, JoAnn Gall, CUNY Project Coordinator at the Theatre Development Fund (TDF), and Anelle Miller, Executive Director at the Society of Illustrators.
With Hunter in mind, Christian Luczanits, Senior Curator at the Rubin Museum, will teach a course, Exhibiting Tibetan Art, for their Graduate Art History Department in the Fall of 2011. The course will take place at the museum where students will participate in the planning of two upcoming museum exhibition projects with a special focus on installation strategies and thematic communication. Given the unique opportunity for students to experience hands-on training in our galleries, it’s no surprise that the course is already fully enrolled. We look forward to welcoming the Hunter students to the museum this Fall.