View “Museum for Dancers” by Molly McGehee ‘21.

Museums are sources of inspiration. They inspire visitors to question, explore, and create. Throughout the history of collecting institutions, studio artists have often been invited into museums to study the works of those before them. Today, many museums offer young artists the opportunity to paint, draw, or sculpt inside the museum so they can observe their predecessors’ work firsthand as they craft their own art. This relationship between museums and young artists has fostered growth in many artists’ careers and is extremely important to maintain for this reason.

Imagine if this relationship were extended to young dancers. Often, dancers source their movement from music, emotions, and images. Digital images of art are brought into the dance studio to spark movement in choreographers and improvisational dancers. Dance revolves around the exploration of the sensory. If given access to the variety of media inside art museums, dancers might be able to explore within their own movement practices in a way they’ve never before.

Museums for Dancers: A Case Study for Public Programming in Museums explores practice-based dance in art museums. Three dancers from around the United States have participated in this project and provided their personal perspectives regarding practice-based dance within the museum. Through video documentation of the dancers working in the galleries of three major collecting institutions and interviews with these movement artists, this project provides inspiration for museums to create their own vision of what it might look like for them to include movement artists within their museum’s public programming.