Central European - 6 month ago

Last September, the first cohort of CEU and the Wien Museum’s two-year Museum Studies master’s program began their intensive training. During the first term, the eight students from seven different countries spent one day a week onsite at the Wien Museum for practice-based classes taught by the museum’s leaders in curation, education and communication, while participating in rigorous interdisciplinary coursework at CEU grounded in historical studies.  Partway through the program’s first year, CEU spoke with some of the MA students to discuss what it’s like to take classes at the Wien Museum and how CEU’s courses work in tandem for training spanning theory and practice. The students have also been honing their plans regarding what they will explore during their internships, which are also part of the program’s hands-on approach. 
Museum Studies Program Co-Director Nathaniel Prottas with students at the Wien Museum. Photo by Sotiris Bekas. Designing an Exhibition Concept From Start to Finish  Prior to joining the Museum Studies program, Klara Maass studied history and archaeology in Innsbruck. In joining CEU’s MA program, she pursued a pathway that she said combined an interest in history, research, and working with the public. Maass found that her initial term in the program affirmed how these interests could be developed together, having witnessed firsthand the significant public outreach conducted by a museum.   Reflecting on these months, Maass discussed the three practice-based courses her cohort took together at the Wien Museum during the fall term. They studied curation with Wien Museum Director, Matti B museum education with the Head of Department of Education, Nathaniel P and museum communication with the Head of Communication and Development, Florian Pollack. The students were tasked with designing an exhibition proposal, from selecting objects in the collection and drafting interpretive texts, to designing public outreach activities and a communications campaign related to their exhibition concept.   “We decided very early on to make coffee the topic for our exhibition project–not only the coffee house as it relates to Vienna’s history, but also the history of the drink itself,” said Maass. “Coffee is important in Vienna, and most people identify with an idea of the traditional coffee house. However, we wanted to expand on the topic and take our own spin to explore how it gets here, as well as other influences and approaches to drinking coffee.”   Maass said that the group’s research and exhibition concept included aspects of cultural history, tracing the origins and circulation of Turkish coffee, Ethiopian coffee ceremonies, and the revolution of the espresso machine, as well as natural history including coffee plant species and how the chemistry of the plant affects the human body. The students considered the history of coffee trade from early European ventures East to colonialism and slave labor, and the resulting opportunities and challenges of ethical production and fair trade. They explored the different ways in which these aspects can be presented in a museum exhibition.  In preparation for weekly Wednesday classes at the museum, Maass gathered with fellow students on Tuesday afternoons at CEU to work on their exhibition concept. “I enjoyed the group energy even when things were challenging. It was great to have dedicated time and space with colleagues in the program. We really went from start to finish through most of the steps you need to make an exhibition,” said Maass. She explained that the group had to determine not only what would be exhibited, but also ideas for tours, hands-on stations, topics for children and adults, posters, press text, and related events. In December, the students presented the concept and related exhibition elements to museum leadership and invited program faculty from CEU.  Being onsite at the museum, Maass said, enhanced her learning experience in several ways. She recalled lectures during which students were taken into an exhibition to see examples and cases of the discussion topics. Homework also periodically entailed visiting the physical space of the museum to interpret displays and consider objects housed in the collection.  Maass said she also valued selecting electives at CEU according to her individual focus, which included topics across history and visual studies. In addition to the MA in Museum Studies, Maass is simultaneously working toward an Advanced Certificate in Visual Theory and Practice.   This spring the students are conducting internships at regionally based institutions. Looking ahead to that experience, Maass said she is interested in working at a museum that is in the process of changing their permanent collection to learn about how professionals approach the rationale for such a transition of objects. 
(L-R) Students Matt Dreher, Gandhar Pandit, Astghik Aslanyan with Museum Studies Program Co-Director Jan Hennings at the Wien Museum. Photo by Sotiris Bekas. Strengthening Cultural Connections and Historical Memory  MA student Astghik Aslanyan has also found great value in the opportunity to learn inside the Wien Museum. “Having the opportunity to take class onsite and from the people who work there was an immersive, learning-by-doing type of education, alongside with the classical academic training we re getting at CEU.” She added: “We received input regarding our exhibition project from the museum director, and we also visited the permanent and temporary exhibitions at the Wien Museum, analyzing them together. I think it was special in every possible way.”  After studying law, Aslanyan, who is from Armenia, worked in the NGO sector on issues including women s rights and education, occasionally conducting projects with museums. She also contributed to a public broadcast on an educational television channel in Armenia. Aslanyan said that her main motivation for pursuing museum studies emerged from a desire to better understand how memory is represented in museums and how institutions can address difficult and complex histories critically. “I realized that, unfortunately, we rarely do that in Armenian museums, and there are certain taboo topics that are rarely touched upon,” she said. “The Wien Museum is one of the best in Vienna, especially in their approach to exhibiting history. They seem to be very open to re-evaluating their collection, texts and practices.”  In Aslanyan’s case, taking class at the Wien Museum led to an unexpected cultural project with a group from Vienna’s Armenian community. She has been attending meetings at the Wien Museum for the planning of a small exhibition in the community gallery which incorporates various visual components, such as videos and interviews, as well as workshops. “We are thinking about including workshops related to the Armenian culture in Vienna, as well as finding traces of its history in the Wien Museum permanent exhibition,” she said. Aslanyan attributed the coincidental involvement to simply being present at the museum and being looped into the activity and the animation that s happening there.   Finally, Aslanyan considers CEU’s program to be unique in the sense that it joins museum studies with strong history training to examine museums through that lens. During the fall term, her coursework included “20th-Century History of Authoritarianism, Violence, Social Change, and Revolutions” taught by CEU Visiting Professor Julian Cassanova. She also took a course on paleography, a field focused on deciphering historical texts. Like Maass, Aslanyan is pursuing the Advanced Certificate in Visual Theory and Practice. She said she enjoyed becoming more acquainted with visual art forms ranging from collage and photography to film through the course: “Foundations of Visual Practice”. Regarding her internship, she seeks to deepen her learning about the relationship between archives and museums at an organization that houses film or visual archives.   Learn about CEU’s degree programs from the Department of Historical Studies.  Unit: Department of Historical StudiesResearch Area: History and Medieval StudiesCategory: NewsImage: Content Priority: High

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