Student-Led Acquisitions Project

Hannah Ryan – Assistant Professor, Art and Art History

Jane Becker Nelson – Director of Flaten Art Museum

Cris Hernandez, Jessenia Prado, Lauren Schilling, Emma Haren, Han Timm, Charlotte Smith, and Martha Slaven – Student Participants

Thanks to generous funding from donors and a grant from a foundation, we have implemented student-led acquisitions projects in my Art Now class in 2021 and 2022. In collaboration with the Flaten Art Museum, students become attuned to issues of representation pertaining to the visual culture of our campus. They are enriched by visits from gallerists and artists whose work will fill notable gaps in the collection. They conduct independent research and create proposals that they pitch to their peers, suggesting the acquisition of works of art, with a total budget of $14,000.The students vote to select the works, with the goal of diversifying the collection and increasing the representation of marginalized people on our campus. (In terms of technology, we used Zoom to host virtual visits of eight gallerists and artists; otherwise, the experience is fairly low-tech.)

	Class Project: Art 280: Art Now
	Zoom
	Student-Led Acquisition Project Diversifies College’s Art Collection article

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