The Museum Study class at Wooster is a new elective class this Fall, where students use local museums like the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield and the Katonah Museum as both curriculum and classroom, to examine the purpose and function of museums and the role they play in our community. The students also experience different roles every time they visit, including visitors, educators, curators, and public relations, to understand how museums work in a comprehensive way.

We mainly partnered with two local museums this trimester which are the Katonah Museum of Art and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Both museums have exhibitions with the theme "site-specific." The Tate Museum defines site-specific art as "a work of art designed specifically for a particular location and that has an interrelationship with the location." The form of site-specific art varies depending on the artist, for example, it can be drawings on the walls of the gallery, or it can made of materials from the museum site.

The process of setting up a show with site-specific artworks is very different than a traditional exhibition. It was great experience that as a class, we talked with the curators of both the Katonah Museum and the Aldrich Museum, to learn about how the exhibition is created through the curator's lense. I found that museums not only host the show, but also act like an artist in making the work happen. The curator of the Katonah Museum talked to us about how she connected with emerging artists from New York, and asked them to create proposals to fit the theme of the show. Through constant communication with the artists, many changes were made to the proposals so that they fit the theme. This gave me another perspective of looking at exhibitions. The artists made the artwork, but the curator is responsible to form the identity of the museum through diverse shows and artworks.