Davis Museum And Cultural Center- Wellesley College  
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Mission Statement

The Davis Museum and Cultural Center is a vital force in the intellectual, pedagogical, and social life of Wellesley College. It seeks to create a challenging environment that fosters visual literacy; supports interdisciplinary study; and inspires new ideas, research, discourse, and critical thinking. The Museum is a dynamic venue where cultural pluralism forms a basis for an involvement with the arts in the academy and in life.

As an art museum the Davis collects, preserves, exhibits, and interprets works of art for the benefit of all: students, faculty, alumnae, and staff of the college; visitors from the greater Boston area; and museum and scholarly communities globally. Its collections are a key educational resource for the College and for the surrounding community. As a cultural center the Davis offers opportunities to explore and pursue an understanding of the arts, broadly defined, and their place in and impact on the world today.

To fulfill its mission, the Davis:

• Presents its permanent collections and organizes temporary exhibitions in a thoughtful, intellectually stimulating, and creative way;
• Seeks to strategically expand and develop its collections;
• Encourages the staff of the Museum staff, and Wellesley faculty and students to experiment, take risks, and test boundaries in creating and interpreting the arts;
• Explores new ways to present narrative and content within the Museum in interdisciplinary contexts and, as appropriate, employs new technologies to do so;
• Sponsors and publishes original scholarly research on the Museum’s collections, on topics in the history of the arts, and on the place of the arts in culture;
• Fosters collaborations amongst faculty/disciplines/departments/programs of the College that lead to greater use of the Museum’s collections and exhibitions and the arts in teaching;
• Organizes and presents thematic programming in multiple formats including performances, conversations, lectures, symposia, films, concerts, conversations, electronic media, etc.;
• Seeks to engage all of the arts at Wellesley and to take a position of leadership in organizing their programming and communicating to audiences on and off campus;
• Offers cross-disciplinary courses that explore the arts as well and the place of the museum in culture;
• Fosters innovative relationships in the arts, culture, humanities, and sciences; and
• Offers students opportunities to explore and engage the arts in their full variety and complexity through on- and off-campus work and study experiences.

Click here if you would like to read Documents on the HIstory, Governance, and Mission of the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College

 

© 2004 - Davis Museum and Cultural Center
Provider Name: Jim Olson - jolson@wellesley.edu
Created: January 14, 2003
Last Modified: December 21, 2005
Expires: January 14, 2007
above: Dabney Hailey, Associate Curator of Collections, with students in the Harold and Estelle Newman Tanner Gallery. above: Maureen McMahon, Class of 2005, sketching in the Elizabeth Rickey Bevington and Leila Hammond Duncan Gallery. above: Hendrick Goltzius, Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan (detail), 1585. Engraving, 18 ¼ x 13 ¼ in. Museum purchase, The Class of 1947 Acquisition Fund, 2002.20.