Installation image from The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century
Nine undergraduate students from Harris-Stowe State University have joined the SLAM team as gallery guides during the run of The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century. As members of the gallery engagement guide program, the students act as wayfinders stationed throughout the exhibition, donning “Ask Me” buttons and sparking conversation with visitors to answer questions about certain works in the exhibition.
Gallery engagement guide Joshua Harvey admiring a work in The Culture.
Though similar in function to the volunteer docents, the engagement guides are Museum employees hired for the exhibition. Academic majors differ among the bunch, ranging from business to communications; it was not mandatory for the students to be studying a major related to the museum field.
“The students have certain cultural references,” said Simone Williams, SLAM’s gallery engagement guide supervisor. “They know who Nipsey Hustle is, they know who Notorious B.I.G. is. They know almost all the rappers that are heavily featured in the exhibition. People will ask them where a specific artist is on A Great Day in Hip Hop, and they can point out that artist.”
The gallery engagement guide training process was organic, Williams said. They learned about the exhibition through guided research and tours with Andréa Purnell, one of the co-curators of The Culture. They also each received a copy of the exhibition catalogue to study.
Harris-Stowe has also been involved in SLAM’s Five Pillars Community Engagement Initiative, which invited five local organizations to respond to one of the five pillars of hip hop: emceeing (or rapping), DJ-ing, breakdancing, graffiti, and knowledge. DJ Afrika Bambaataa, one of the three “godfathers” of hip hop, which traces its origins to a 1973 party in the Bronx, is credited with creating the classification system meant to capture the original essence of hip hop.
As part of SLAM’s Five Pillars Community Engagement Initiative, Harris-Stowe State University held an on-campus discussion with an art therapist focused on mental health, art-making, and hip hop.
Harris-Stowe represented the knowledge pillar and held a mental health and art-making event on campus earlier this year. Dedicated to their role in this pillar, gallery guides are strongly encouraged to expand their total knowledge of the museum world, in addition to learning about The Culture.
“This is for them not only to learn about the artwork but also to experience other facets of the Museum. I send them the calendar of events, and I tell them, if you want to learn more about the Museum, you have to attend programs, notice how the space is designed, and things like that,” Williams said. “Because of this, some of the students are becoming interested in positions they had never thought about before.”
