Welcome to Intro to Museum Work, JMU Students!

This blog is an extension of our classroom discussions, a way for you to continue to engage the issues and ideas that come up during our time together.

Your input here is important, as museums are crazy animals, institutions where what the audience experiences often is very different from what happens behind-the-scenes.

And as you will discover during the course of the class, which will combine readings and history with "real world" case studies, museums are more than institutions. They are formed by hundreds of hardworking people who daily face cultural expectations, social assumptions, budget realities—organic places where ideal "best practices" at times take a back seat to "the opening is in 10 minutes!"

This IS part of your grade, but more important, it is a chance to rethink what you thought you knew about museums, and with this more expansive "eyes-wide-open" approach, perhaps see working in a museum (and "museum studies") in a whole new light.

Thanks for participating, and I look forward to seeing where our discussions take us!

Prof Stoddard