MuSES’ ‘Night at the Museum’ promotes engagement with Academy Awards theme
The Museum Student Engagement Society hosted its debut “Night at the Museum” exhibit in order to interest more students with art and the museum. The museum has a collection of over 45,000 objects spanning 4,000 years of art. Courtesy of The Museum Student Engagement Society
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Masterworks from across history adorn the corners of Syracuse University Art Museum walls. Students dressed regally in dark suits and deep-colored dresses, roam the pale white museum halls. They peruse art pieces and ponder questions like: Does “Joan of Arc” or “Judith with the Head of Holofernes” exude the more “main character energy?”
“Coming into an event like this, where it is kind of a different setting, you’re being asked to go around and look at the art in a different way,” Em Spencer, a collections assistant at the SU Art Museum, said. “It’s making me take more time with works that sometimes I just walk right past when I’m working.”
On Thursday, The Museum Student Engagement Society hosted its debut “Night at the Museum” event.
Attendees moved between bombastic surrealist collages, vividly colored landscapes and entrancing character portraits as playful jazz danced overhead. Students looked at the SU Art Museum’s works and voted on their favorites.
MuSES was started this semester by Taylor Westerlund, SU Art Museum’s communications and outreach specialist, and eight students in the museum studies minor. “Night at the Museum” was their debut event, featuring works from across history, curated by MuSES and the SU Art Museum, to demonstrate the breadth and quality of SU’s art collection.
The SU Art Museum has a collection of over 45,000 objects spanning 4,000 years of art, making it one of the top 10 largest academic art collections in the United States, Westerlund said. Avi Berzofsky, the communications and engagement officer at MuSES, said the organization is aiming to bring more students into the museum.
“All the time I’ll be chatting with random people, either in class or friends,” Berzofsky said. “And they go ‘oh, I had no idea about the art museum’ or ‘I’ve always wanted to go.’”
The event was Academy Awards-themed, with ballots handed out to attendees, allowing them to nominate their favorite paintings for categories ranging from “Best Wardrobe” to “Most Comedic.” Results will be posted Friday on MuSES’ Instagram.
Paper ballots kept attendees engaged in the art and off their phones, Berzofsky said. The awards theme and ballots made museumgoers think critically as they moved around.
“It made me actually consider what I was looking at and kind of figure out what was my actual favorite,” attendee Carmela Garcia said.
Framing art in a context that streamlines engagement to cultivate interest is the value MuSES provides, Westerlund said.
The more the organization expands, the more it’ll be able to get people going to the SU Art Museum, Berzofsky said. MuSES plans on connecting with other organizations and professors to put on more events.
“Lots of folks have this preconceived notion that a museum is an ivory tower and inaccessible,” Westerlund said. “But art is for everyone.”
