Museums+ transforms gallery space into an extension of the classroom
When Issa Lampe arrived as executive director of University Museums in June 2023, she and her team set a clear priority: Expand access to the University’s permanent art collection in support of curriculum across campus. Martha Wright, curator of academic initiatives, shared that goal and saw an opportunity to deepen collaboration with faculty — exploring how artwork might supplement teaching and learning in disciplines well beyond the visual arts.
“I wanted an intentional gallery dedicated to using art from the collection to support pedagogical objectives of courses being taught each semester,” Wright said.
That vision became reality in spring 2024 with the launch of Museums+ in the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art. Since then, the initiative has engaged faculty across disciplines in sustained and meaningful ways.
Museums+ in Practice
Museums+ is built around collaboration and access. Wright invites faculty to participate, supporting courses with four to five artworks to be co-curated around the goals of the syllabus. Up to eight courses can be supported in the gallery at a time. Selected works remain on display for the semester, allowing ongoing engagement rather than a single cursory viewing.
Faculty may propose a specific idea or begin with a broader question about how museum resources might aid a class. Together, Wright and the instructor identify works from the collection and determine how they reinforce key themes and learning objectives.
“Museums+ is a curricular gallery,” Wright explained. “I co-curate exhibitions with faculty, driven by the goals of the course and using the collection to support what students are learning in the classroom.”
The artworks supporting these courses are organized in clusters that suggest visual transitions — often structured to mirror conceptual progressions or thematic relationships. With these groupings on display for the full semester, students return as their understanding evolves. Faculty build group visits, independent returns, written assignments, and class discussions around the installation.
“It’s not just about which artworks are selected,” Wright said. “It’s also about how those pieces are in conversation with each other — and how that conversation supports what’s happening in the classroom.”
While visual arts courses have been included, Museums+ primarily supports classes outside of those fields. Faculty from sociology and English to law and leadership studies have participated.
From Foundational to Capstone
Museums+ has proven adaptable across all levels of the undergraduate experience, supporting both early and advanced inquiry. In her senior capstone course The Art of Friendship, Julietta Singh, professor of English and gender and sexuality studies, partnered with Wright to curate an exhibition that functioned as a semester-long touchstone. The course examined friendship across minoritized communities and liberation movements, drawing on theory, literature, film, and visual art.
“Martha assembled an expansive deck of images that explored friendship either directly or more abstractly,” Singh said. “We reviewed them together, identifying works that resonated with the questions and texts we were studying.” Students began with a guided visit and returned throughout the semester as their frameworks deepened. “As our ideas of friendship shifted over the course of the term, students were able to see those shifts reflected in how they engaged the images.”
For Stephen Brauer’s first-year seminar Seeing, Believing, Knowing, the gallery served a different but equally intentional purpose. Early in the semester, Brauer, visiting associate professor of English, brought students to Museums+ to examine not only what they saw, but how they saw it.
“I wanted students to value the multisensory experience of seeing an artwork as something as compelling as ‘understanding’ or ‘getting the point,’” Brauer said. Students centered major essays on their museum visit, and many returned independently. As the semester progressed, Brauer observed their interpretations become “less rigid, less linked to a particular ‘meaning,’ and more inquisitive about the nature of art and of engaging with art.”
For Wright, that continued engagement is a measure of success.
“What’s really rewarding,” she said, “is hearing that discussion about the art keeps coming up in class.”
When students return on their own and reference specific works weeks later, the museum shifts from a one-time visit to an ongoing academic resource. By keeping exhibitions on view for the semester and shaping them around course objectives, Museums+ moves beyond enrichment to sustained academic engagement.