Museum Studies Standard Course List

CMST 6101 – Museum Management (Fall)
Whatever your role in a museum, strong management skills are essential. Whether you're leading a project, supervising staff or volunteers, developing policies, or directing an institution, effective management helps you make the most of limited resources, build strong teams, and expand your museum’s impact on visitors and the community.

This interactive course introduces the core functions of museum management, with a focus on real-world application and strategic thinking. Key topics include mission, vision, and values; governance and working with boards; financial management; talent management; audience development; and planning and strategy. Through a mix of discussions, case studies, workshops, guest speakers, and online activities, you will build a deeper understanding of how museums operate and gain the confidence to contribute as a manager and leader throughout your career.

CMST 6102 – Museum Financial Management (Varies)
Overall financial management of the museum including financial planning and analysis, internal controls, accounting, budgeting and financial reporting, presentation and leadership. Theory applied to practical situations. Alternative: PPPA 6053 Financial Management for Public & Nonprofit Organizations

CMST 6104 – Managing People and Projects (Spring) prerequisite: 12 credits in CMST courses.
Dealing with people is an area consistently mentioned as a major challenge for museum managers. Students study organizational behavior theory, the methods of building a motivated and skilled staff, and focus on the team process. Project management systems are taught including developing scope, schedule and budget, team dynamics, resource leveling, and working within a matrix environment. The role of the project manager is emphasized along with tools for managing change and negotiating conflict. Case studies are presented by practitioners working in museums today.

CMST 6105 – Museum Fundraising (Fall, alternating years)
Fundraising is an increasingly important skill of today’s museum professional. From the director to the curator, to the educator, to the development specialist, everyone may be called in from time to time to participate in the development effort. This course will cover the basics in fundraising today including sources of funds, best practices and approaches, annual funds and capital campaigns, and the internal management of the fundraising effort. Student work will include donor research, grant writing and a museum project. Alternative: PPPA 6032 Managing Fundraising and Philanthropy.

CMST 6106 – Museum Marketing (Varies)
Marketing may be one of the most misunderstood terms in the museum field. Sometimes it’s dismissed as a manipulative sales technique bordering on hucksterism, other times it’s the missing secret ingredient that promises to transform the organization. In this course, we’ll view marketing as an intentional approach to create mutually beneficial relationships between museums and their audiences. The theories and skills you’ll develop in this marketing course will help you improve exhibitions, school programs, collections access, fundraising appeals, and strategic plans.

This course relies heavily on large and small group discussions, research and readings, workshops and exercises, writing and peer review, and online activities and resources. These varied experiences will help you think critically about marketing in museums throughout your professional career. As a result of completing this course, students will recognize the advantages of mutually beneficial relationships between museums and their audiences and develop strategies for recognizing and enhancing these relationships.

CMST 6107 – Museum Ethics and Values (Fall, Spring)
Ethical questions museums face in practical, political, and institutional contexts, including governance and funding, collecting and preservation, exhibiting culture, and education and public programs. Students will analyze and evaluate current professional standards for museum ethics; research and analyze current and emerging ethical issues in museums; trace major movements in the development of museum ethics and values in the United States; evaluate important museum theorists in the area of ethics; think and write critically about museum ethics; and discuss and analyze theoretical critique that might inform – and improve -- future practice.

CMST 6109 – Museum Governance (Fall, alternating years)
Leadership is essential to a museum’s success, shaping strategy, decision-making, and institutional sustainability. This course explores leadership as a role, not just a position, emphasizing how museum professionals at all levels can exert influence, build consensus, and drive change. Students will examine governance structures, strategic planning, and ethical leadership, learning to navigate complex dilemmas while promoting integrity and transparency in museum operations. They will explore how ethical principles apply to decision-making, board-staff relationships, and stakeholder engagement. Through case studies and guest speakers, the course will highlight leadership models, ethical challenges, and real-world governance issues. Whether as directors, curators, educators, or collections managers, museum professionals must understand how to lead with vision, uphold ethical standards, and foster institutional success.

CMST 6201 – Introduction to Collections Management (Fall)
This class will serve as an introduction to creating, controlling, and protecting collections. We will look at the fundamentals of collections care (collections plans and policies, accessions, deaccessioning, loans, access, and the physical protection of museum objects) as well as legal and ethical issues related to collecting and collections management. Because guidelines to best practices run up against contingencies ‘on the ground,’ case studies will introduce students to challenges encountered in museum practice.

CMST 6202 – Collections Management: Practical Applications (Spring) prerequisite: CMST 6201
This class focuses on the implementation of collections policies and procedures: establishing and managing collections, management procedures and systems, documentation of collections, records preservation, collections access and storage, handling, packing and shipping, and inventory control. This is the second- semester, applied class for 6201. CMST 6201 Introduction to Collections Management is required for this class.

CMST 6203 – Preventive Conservation Concepts (Fall, Spring)
Examines the role of preventive conservation in museums by introducing materials commonly found in collections, the causes of their deterioration and the resources available to identify and mitigate collection risks. Students will learn how to handle objects, how to record object conditions in written and photographic formats, how to choose a conservator, how to test materials for use with museum collections, how to perform a qualitative assessment, and to understand the ethics that govern conservation. (Cross-listed with Anthropology).

CMST 6204 – Preventive Conservation Techniques (Spring) prerequisite: CMST 6203
Builds upon topics introduced in the Preventive Conservation Concepts course with emphasis placed on practical exercises and ethical issues. Students will learn how to evaluate and monitor collections, how to prepare a grant for collections care, and how to develop and implement policies and procedures to facilitate collections care. CMST 6203 (or its cross-listed equivalent in Anthropology) is required for this class.

CMST 6205 – Archival Practice (Fall)
This course introduces museum professionals to the core ideas and practices of archivists and archival institutions. It establishes a foundation of knowledge about archival materials (their nature and uses); professional principles and practices in the management of archival materials (archival theory and functions); archival institutions (purposes, placement, operations); and the archives profession (values, organizations). It will illuminate differences and commonalities in professional values and methods of archives and museums. Students will become familiar with doing research in archives.

CMST 6206 – Digitization & Digital Asset Management (Spring)
This course is designed for museum professionals who expect to manage digital assets, projects, or programs involving digitization and access. It examines current methods in the creation and dissemination of digital surrogates, associated metadata, and digital descriptive records of museum collections. By exploring the workflows and guidelines necessary to implement a successful digitization project, this course examines the aspects of maintaining and managing digital assets. Aspects of technical creation and guidelines will be addressed; digital asset management, metadata creation and use, as well as long-term preservation and access of those assets will be discussed.

CMST 6301 – Museum Exhibitions, Curatorial Practice and Planning (Fall)
The class focuses on the work of curators in the selection, display and interpretation of objects for collections and in exhibitions. Sessions emphasize ethics and collecting, exhibit conceptualization and development, working with the community, the production of meaning, and the politics of exhibiting.

CMST6302 – Museum Exhibition Design (Varies)
An overview of the practices and principles of exhibition design for a museum setting. Students consider the exhibition from the perspective of the cultural institution and curator, the exhibition designer, the authors of works on display, and the public. They work through the design project management sequence—focusing on roles, methods, tools, and techniques. And, they explore spatial storytelling and the fundamentals of three-dimensional design (drawing and modeling, digitally and manually) by developing a simple design proposal. Each student will redesign and produce a drawing package for an edited version of a pre-existing exhibition; the scope of work will include one graphic panel, one wall-mounted work, one display case, one interactive, and three text descriptions. To produce the drawing package, students will rely on the Adobe Creative Suite and a CAD/3D-modeling platform.

Class will take place in a mixture of seminar, studio, and field formats. No prior design coursework or experience is required.

CMST 6304 – Exhibition Development and Scriptwriting (Spring) prerequisite: CMST 6301
Class emphasizes exhibition content and includes sessions on evaluation, team work, audience engagement, learning styles, budgeting, exhibition layering, language and best practices. Students follow an idea from conceptualization through organization to scripting---with extensive peer review. Class includes guest speakers.

CMST 6305 – Visitor Perspectives – Museum Evaluation in Exhibitions (Spring)
In this introductory course, we will examine the theory and practice of museum evaluation as it relates to crafting exhibitions, programs, and other museum offerings. Evaluation is a core component of ensuring that visitors can meaningfully engage with museum experiences and that museums are relevant, accessible, and have broader societal impact. We'll examine how evaluation can inform projects at various stages of development, including concept generation, design, interpretation, and implementation. Students will build basic evaluation skills through class activities and assignments, exploring topics such as research design, ethics (including IRBs), sampling, data collection methods, data analysis, interpretation and reporting, and using evaluation results to make decisions. The goal of the course is to equip museum professionals with the skills to think critically about the value evaluation brings to developing museum experiences and become savvy consumers of evaluation, no matter where their museum career takes them.

CMST 6306 – Race, Gender, Sexuality and Museums (Varies)
Will explore the role that museums have played in the construction and reification of the categories of race (including whiteness) and gender, and the representation of the lives of women, African Americans, Native Americans, and other cultural minorities. The class will focus on museums in the United States but will include some non-US examples. We will also look at how these represented –and often unrepresented –groups have created opportunities to tell their own stories and exhibit their own cultural productions in museums such as the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Class readings and discussion will cover issues such as identity politics, feminism, essentialism, and the performance of identity in the museum setting.

CMST 6307 – Interpreting Historic Sites and House Museum (Fall)
House museums and historic sites are among the most common—and most visited—museums in the U.S., yet they often have limited resources for creating meaningful visitor experiences. This course explores interpretation through the lens of women’s and African American history, emphasizing inclusive and equitable storytelling. Students will apply professional standards and learning theories, analyze traditional and non-traditional sources (e.g., documents, maps, architecture), and explore creative interpretive formats. Using selected historic sites as case studies, students will examine interpretation at multiple scales—from objects to period rooms to neighborhoods. Learning takes place through discussions, readings, field trips, and practical exercises. By the end of the course, students will be able to develop thoughtful, accurate, and

engaging interpretations of house museums and historic sites.

CMST 6308 – Critical Visitor Experience (Varies)
As museums become increasingly visitor-focused, it is critical to understand the multiple factors that affect the whole visitor experience. What is the impact of museum architecture on the museum visit? How does the museum’s shop, café, and other non-exhibit spaces inform the visitor experience? In this field-trip based course, students will utilize multiple frameworks through which to explore, observe and critique visitor-facing aspects of museum work. Note: This course will be based at institutions around the DC area. Students will need to travel to different locations depending on the week.

CMST 6403 – Museums and Digital Technology (Fall)
In many museums, digital technologies are now a naturalized and expected presence–core to the institutional approaches to problem solving. In the post-digital museum, technology and digital media are not considered as ends in themselves, but rather, as the means that helps the museum meet its mission and goals. Technology is not neutral, however. It has its own histories, both within and outside museums that impact its adoption within the museum. Museums began using digital technologies in the 1960s, and this has affected how museums work and how they define themselves. This course will explore the relationship between museums and digital technology, considering how and why it has been incorporated into practice.

CMST 6404 – Museums and Social Media (Spring)
The introduction of Web2.0 or the ‘social web’ in the mid-2000s led to an influx of new participants in the consumption and creation of digital information. Typified by platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and blogs, the social web focused on user participation as critical in the creation of value. By lowering the technical barriers to entry, the social web made it easier for people outside formal institutions such as the press to create and publish their own work, changing the ways that people communicate and interact with one another, and with organizations and institutions. Museums continue to experiment with how best to engage in this environment to serve their missions and their audiences.

In this course, students will utilize multiple online platforms to discern the affordances and complexities of social media for museums. Together, we will consider strategies, tactics, and benchmarks for measuring social media, as well as risk, privacy and publicness, and online identities (professional, personal, and institutional). Students should be prepared to be active participants in an online, multi-platform peer discourse throughout the semester.

CMST 6501 – Museum Internship (Fall, Spring, Summer)
Supervised practical training in Washington area museums (or elsewhere). Internships are supervised by one or more members of the sponsoring museum staff and focus on a variety of areas including museum management, conservation, collections management, exhibition design and development. Prior approval required.

CMST 6502 – Directed Research (Fall, Spring, Summer)
Individual research on special topics in the museum field working with a CMST professor or outside museum experts. Proposals must be approved in advance by CMST.

CMST 6601 – Special Topics: Collections Practicum (Varies)
Course description coming soon

CMST 6601 – Special Topics: Creating Sustainable Museums (Spring)
“Creating Sustainable Museums” introduces the principles and practices of sustainability in museums, focusing on financial stability, social equity and access, and environmental responsibility. Designed for students new to the topic, the course combines theoretical frameworks with practical strategies to address real-world challenges. Through case studies, field trips, interactive discussions, and hands-on projects, students will learn how sustainability can enhance museum operations and community life. The course culminates in crafting an abridged IMLS grant application for a museum, enabling students to apply their learning to real-world scenarios and advance their professional expertise.

CMST 6601 – Special Topics: Introduction to Curatorial Practice (Fall)
This course offers an introduction to the intellectual, ethical, and civic dimensions of curatorial practice. We will explore what it means to research and represent collections in ways that are rigorous, inclusive, and resonant. Curators are knowledge workers and community builders. Through readings, site visits, workshops, and dialogue with working curators, students will learn how curatorial work emerges from deep research, collaboration, and the peer-reviewed exchange of ideas. The course will emphasize the critical responsibilities curators hold—as interpreters, stewards, and connectors—to create experiences that invite reflection, provoke inquiry, and build bridges across communities. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to begin shaping their own curatorial approaches with both care and critical consciousness.

CMST 6601 – Special Topics: Issues Related to Collections Policy (Varies)
This class will look in depth at five issues related to collections in which there is currently some debate or question as to “best practice”: deaccessioning; repatriation and restitution; provenance research; storage for culturally sensitive collections; and collections access. Each week will be devoted to one topic, with one class spent discussing readings on the issue, and one class in conversation with a professional in the field. Students will be required to write 4 short papers (one per week) reviewing the assigned readings, and one longer paper on the issue of her choice based on a case study.

CMST 6601 – Special Topics: Museums and Social Justice (Varies)
In 2020, museum activists and organized publics are challenging museums to confront their colonial and racist pasts, to acknowledge the continuing effects of those origins in their exhibitions and programming, and to engage programmatically in urgent matters of racial, economic, social, and climate justice. These calls have been made before, but now, emboldened by the resurgence of and broad support for the Black Lives Matter movement, they are stronger, perhaps more integrated (or at least visible), and are meeting with more success. In addition, critics and museum employees are pushing for a reckoning with institutional labor practices and biases regarding hiring, compensation, and protections at the institutional level and in the field as a whole.

In this course, we will engage critically with museum content -- past and present -- designed to challenge the status quo, support social change, reveal and wrestle with past injustices, and attempt reconciliation and reform beyond the walls of the museum. We will look backward and to the present political moment at exhibitions, programming, engagement efforts, commissioned art installations, and other projects to contextualize the demands for a new kind of museum that eschews the pretext of neutrality to act in creative and conscious ways in the pursuit of equity and inclusion, in terms of staff, audiences, and content. For the last five weeks of the semester, we will apply the theoretical critique and historical knowledge we have gained toward the creation of projects that creatively employ the institutional history of GWU to increase awareness, spur dialogue, and perhaps even enact change.

CMST 6601 – Special Topics: Museums as Learning Institutions (Varies)
 Taking a broad, interdisciplinary view, this course will explore the role of learning in museums. We will investigate a variety of ways that museums approach and plan for learning; why learning matters; and how museum departments can work together to support learning. Current research in neuroscience, generational characteristics, and business will be included. The course will be practical and experiential, integrating and modeling best practices in museum education throughout.

CMST 6601 – Special Topics: Museum Programming (Varies)
This course will focus on museum programming in theory and practice. Using case studies from the Smithsonian Institution, museums across the country and around the globe, we will study and discuss the role programs play in museums and how programs can connect with a museum’s communities and audiences. This class is designed to engage with current and historical trends in museum programming and how programs can serve as vehicles for community engagement, outreach, and relationship-building. This class will also provide opportunities to gain a “behind the scenes” look at the production of museum programming so that students can gain tangible next steps for creating and implementing programs in various museum contexts. Students in this course will engage with the topic through select readings, regular discussion, writing and reflection projects, hands-on experiences, and meeting museum practitioners throughout the field.

CMST 6601 – Special Topics: Preventive Conservation Practicum (Fall) prerequisite: CMST 6203
Application of foundational concepts gained from CMST 6203 applied to real-world collections. Students will create an in-depth documentation report on an object or grouping of similar objects (object is broadly defined so could be sculpture, photographs, paper, etc.) Students will research the manufacture and history of the object as well as document conditions in writing and photographs before and after basic cleaning. Students will design a custom housing for their object(s) including any instructions for access. In addition to object level care, students will monitor and evaluate the broader environment and make recommendations for temperature, light, relative humidity, handling, and pest concerns.

CMST 6601 – Special Topics: Provenance Research (Varies)
 This class will cover the basics of Provenance Research including an introduction to relevant
 research archives. The instructor’s research interests focus on the history of art and archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean world. From 2015 to 2017, she was a CLIR/Mellon postdoctoral fellow in data curation at the University of Toronto. Most recently, she was a research and metadata assistant in collecting and provenance at the Getty Research Institute, working on digital projects pertaining to the history of collecting and the art market.

CMST 6701 – Museum History and Theory (Varies)
 More often than not, museum practitioners and theorists speak at cross purposes. This course will take steps to bridge that gap. We will first explore the origins of the modern museum and the history of (mainly) American museums. Then, using U.S. and non-U.S. examples, we will engage with theorists whose ideas have been accessed to inform our understanding of museums as places of meaning-making, power, empowerment, and cultural authority, and as “contact zones” (James Clifford, 1997). As the theory informs our understanding of how museums have functioned – both in the past and in more contemporary examples –we will be better prepared to engage critically with our own work as museum practitioners.

CMST 6703 – Museums and Community Engagement (Fall)
 This course explores the evolving theories, models, and practices of community engagement in museums through critical readings, case studies, and applied learning. Students will examine how museums define and fulfill their missions in collaboration with their communities, and how to build authentic, inclusive, and sustainable relationships.

Through research, discussion, workshops, and reflective exercises, students will assess a museum’s current engagement efforts, investigate the assets and needs of a surrounding community, and develop strategic recommendations to deepen engagement. The course emphasizes both internal and external factors—such as institutional capacity, community priorities, and professional standards—to prepare students to design relevant, mission-aligned engagement initiatives.

A mix of large and small group discussions, hands-on activities, and online resources fosters critical thinking and supports students in developing a lifelong, values-driven approach to community engagement in their museum careers.

CMST 6704 – Museum and Cultural Property (Spring)
 This seminar will examine the legal and ethical principles involved with ownership and restitution of stolen art and other cultural property wrongfully removed from their owners or countries of origin. Through the use of case studies of claims brought against museums, the course will critically analyze current museum policies and procedures for acquisition, exhibition, retention and restitution of their collections.