University of Michigan

Offers undergraduates a Minor in Museum Studies and graduates a certificate in Museum Studies. Majors include art history, studio art, anthropology, communication arts, history and urban studies, zoology, fisheries and wildlife, geography, recreation, and tourism and resource studies

The primary goal of the undergraduate minor in museum studies is to teach students how museums work, both in historical and contemporary contexts. Doing so involves learning to critically engage the historical, social, cultural, artistic and scientific dimensions of heritage, both tangible and intangible, within the museum. The museum studies minor seeks to foster “museum literacy” by introducing students to the processes by which meaning is inscribed upon objects within the context of museums and to the roles museums, broadly defined, play in society. Objects and Collections, Institutions, and Society thus form the curriculum’s conceptual foci.

The Graduate Certificate Program in Museum Studies situated in the Rackham Graduate School. Students who have been admitted to or who are currently enrolled in a graduate degree program at the University of Michigan, or who have received a graduate degree from an accredited institution within the last five years, are eligible to apply for admission to the Program. The Program requires 18 credit hours of coursework for award of the Certificate in Museum Studies, a portion of which may be double-counted with coursework undertaken in the student's primary field of study. The Program offers some financial assistance, primarily for the spring and summer. The purpose of this funding is to promote internships, research assistantships, field work at museums, independent study related to students' programs, participation at professional meetings and conferences, and dissertation research for those MSP students who are writing dissertations that deal explicitly with museums.