Museum Studies Certificate

The Museum Studies Program is aimed at educating, training, and exposing students to diverse careers within museums o fall types, and to creating career pipelines through academic study,skills-based learning, job training, through internships and guided pathways,supporting students as they move onto universities, and into other internship and job opportunities, as well as providing long-term career guidance

One section of the core courses will be offered annually. Approximately 15 students are expected to be enrolled in each section. We are expecting approximately 5 -10 program completers per year at the end of the second year of the program operation. We are hoping for approximately 15 program completers per year at the end of the fifth year of program operation.

The Museum Studies Program at East Los Angeles College and the Vincent Price Art Museum is a new program of study is aimed at educating, training, and exposing students to diverse careers within museums of all types, and to creating career pipelines through academic study, skill-based learning, job training through internships, and guided pathway supporting students as they move from a two-year college into a four-year university and into other internship and job opportunities, as well as providing long-term career guidance.

With courses offered cross the disciplines of the Arts and Humanities (Art History,Archaeology, Library Sciences, Studio Art, etc.), the Museum Studies program will offer interdisciplinary courses and opportunities that mirror the broad range of job opportunities within the scope of the museum field to its diverse student population, which in turn primes the program to make a significant impact as a pipeline program for diversifying the future workforce of museum nationally.

Launched in 2018, the Smithsonian Undergraduate Internship at ELAC and VPAM embarked on a joint partnership between the Smithsonian Latino Center, Smithsonian Office of Fellowship and Internships, East Los Angeles College and ELAC’s Vincent Price Art Museum. The objective of this program is to create and foster career pathways for students from ELAC into the museum field, exposing participants to diverse positions in institutions such as curatorial, educational, archivist,conservation, and registrar jobs. An advisory board was created to discuss the possibility of offering a Museum Studies AA degree at ELAC. An AA degree was not advisable, however, because there are no 4 year universities in the Greater Los Angeles offering this major. It was then decided that a Certificate in Museum Studies designed to accompany the Associate of Arts Transfer (AAT)program in Art History, enabling students to focus on history, theory, and art praxis would give students an entry into the museum field and make more sense. The advisory board met several times to discuss what would be needed to create a viable Certificate. The advisory board decided on the best courses to offer while still keeping the units at 21 enabling students to complete the certificate in 2 years. The one recommendation that we did not follow was the incorporation of a chemistry course to prepare one for the field of art conservation. Their commendation was not followed because we learned that the current chemistry course that we originally decided on, could not be rewritten to best benefit the certificate. Instead, faculty decided to include an archeology course since this field is closely related to museums work.This program will consist of 21 units, including courses in museum studies and gallery practices, art history courses, museum internship independent study courses, interdisciplinary coursework, and lab components. The cornerstone of this program is a partnership between ELAC, VPAM and the Smithsonian in Washington DC. 

Suggested Sequence

 

Fall                                 Spring                                      Summer

ArtHist 200                     ArtHist 171                               ArtHist 201(Prereq ArtHist 200)

ArtHist 100                     Anthro 103

Art 501                           Library Science 200

Course	Title	Units	Year/Semester (Y1 or S1)
Art History 200 AND Art History 201 AND	Intro to Museum Studies and Gallery Practices Museum Studies Internship	3 3	S1 S2
Art 100 AND	Intro to Visual Culture and Cultural Studies	3	S3
Art 171  AND Art 504 AND	Intro to Global Contemporary Art Materials and Techniques	3 3	S4 S5
Library Science 200 AND	Digital Assets: Tools and Methodologies	3	S6
Anthropology 103	Archaeology: Reconstructing the Human Past	4	S7

East Los Angeles College does not offer any other programs related to Museum Studies other that the existing Art History program of which two courses, currently offered, are part of this proposed certificate. We expect this program to enhance enrollment numbers as this will be the only Museum Studies Certificate of its kind in Los Angeles. Students may wish to move between Art History and Museum Studies programs. The Museum Studies program will share resources with Vincent Price Art Museum, the Art Department, Anthropology Department, and Library

LA Mission College offers an Associate in Arts degree in Art, Gallery and Museum Studies. Our program will differ from theirs in that we have access to a full museum, Vincent Price Art Vincent Price Art Museum, on our Campus which houses a permanent collection of more than 9,000 objects, is housed in a climate controlled, 40,000 square foot facility with 9 galleries and exhibition spaces, a 100-person lecture hall, a 40- person meeting room, and a subterranean, state of the art storage facility with conservation capabilities which will be available to student in the program. Additionally, the cornerstone of this program is a partnership between ELAC, VPAM, and the Smithsonian in Washington DC. Our proposed Certificate differs from LA Mission College’s in that it is for Museum Studies only as opposed to LA Mission’s Art, Gallery and Museum Studies. The courses required for this certificate includes, in addition to a materials and techniques course in the Art Department and a designated Internship course, courses from other disciplines such as Library Science, and Archeology—both of which are essential to the study. In April 2019 the Director of Vincent Price Art Museum and the Chairwoman at East Los Angeles College met with the Head of the Museum Studies program along with the Art History undergraduate counselor at UCSB to discuss our proposed program and to learn what they thought was needed for our students to successfully transfer to their program. They were very encouraging, and were envious of our relationship with the Smithsonian Institutions and with Vincent Price Museum.

We are expecting approximately 5 -10 program completers per year at the end of the second year of the program operation. We are hoping for approximately 15 program completers per year at the end of the fifth year of program operation