Museum of Possibilities

The 2025 Practicum will consider the history and possibilities of the museum with the artist Dayanita Singh, a renowned photographer, book- and museum-maker. The course will refract from a simple question: what is a museum? Often a museum contains four qualities: a space defined by architecture, a valuable collection, a mechanism for display, and a reserve or storehouse for objects. From this framework, we will consider value, permanence, scale, curation, memory, archives, form, and intimacy, among other topics. Over the term, we will imagine what museums are and can be through a series of projects, including writing essays, making shoe-box museums, and developing a two-week syllabus on the museum. Our final project will culminate in an exhibition on the possibilities of museums, scheduled for the Cohen Gallery in Fall 2026.