ARTZ Founder and Executive Director Susan Shifrin has published a new collection of essays entitled “The Museum as Experience: Learning, Connection, and Shared Space.” This book brings together an interdisciplinary collection of essays examining the kinds of human experiences and interactions that have converted the once-sterile museum into a space of enlivenment and enrichment, as well as physical and emotional well-being. The essays focus for the first time on the uniquely human and humanizing experiences to be found in the collections, programs, exhibitions, and spaces of today’s museums.
Hot off the press, published 11/1/2023! Available in hard cover and for free, via open access!
This volume includes essays from contributors all over the world who are in their own ways contributing to the unique value of the museum space (inside and outside of museum walls, as well as online) as a site of experiential engagement: for elementary school and college students, for current and future healthcare professionals, for people living with dementia and their care partners, for artists, for community members who have historically been disenfranchised by museums, for equity and inclusion activists, and much, much more. If you work in museum spaces, if you work in healthcare spaces, if you work in academic spaces, if you work in historically underserved community spaces; if you are affected in your own life by dementia, if you have experienced alienation and exclusion because of your status, your disability, your culture, your race, please read our volume. There is a new day coming — there MUST be a new day — in the framing and delivery of interactions around arts and culture. Conversations like those included in this book are a first step. Please JOIN the conversation and bring that new day closer.
To learn more about the book: Click here