The Place of the Museum Today: Exploring Two Local Museums

Cameron Crawford

Advisor: Dr. Eddie Chambers

Abstract

How might the happenings of museums today reflect, or respond to, events that are occurring on a broader, more geopolitical scale? The museum is a space that writes, tells, and retells stories of culture, and more specifically, those of visual culture. In other words, museum spaces play a significant role in the defining of cultures and writing of narratives of the various places, movements, or peoples they seek to represent. While culturally-specific museum spaces dedicated to the arts began to emerge in the mid-twentieth century as a matter of necessity, today, the coexistence and collaboration of both culturally-specific and culturally-expansive museums is essential. An exploration of both the George Washington Carver Museum and Genealogy Center and the Blanton Museum of Art’s subsequent relationships to the larger institutions that hold them, their connections to the sociopolitical history of Austin, and their responsibilities to their respective audiences will inform a discussion on these two distinct types of arts institutions and their respective places in the United States today.