References to alternate or mainstream forms of communication led me to research the News Museum, recently mentioned by a friend. The museum was opened in 2008 in Washington DC, and states that it is dedicated “to free expression and the five freedoms of the First Amendment: religion, speech, press, assembly and petition.”
Highlights of the museum include galleries dedicated to the Berlin Wall, 9/11 and Pullitzer Prize winning photography. The Museum is also attached to the Newseum Institue, which undertakes research initiatives and study that focus on freedom of expression around the world. The Religious Freedom Center would undoubtedly prove a great resource for further discussion of the question of the role of the church in the creation of social practice art that is brought up in Module 3.
The education program, NewseumED, is of particular relevance given that it offers online classes and workshops that millions of students can participate in, like MOOCs.
The Newseum poses some interesting questions in relation to how we have defined social practice or socially engaged art. Is journalism a form of socially engaged art? From one side, we could argue that the close linking between social engagement and social justice renders social justice focused journalism a form of social practice art. However we have also defined social practice as transforming the centrality of the object, and this becomes significantly less clear with journalism where there may not be an ‘object’. If we consider the central object to be the communication of news in itself, the factual and objective nature of news journalism means that the centrality of the object is not transformed but rather strictly adhered to in order to deliver updates as accurately or factually correct as possible. Therefore news journalism could communicate social practice, but it is not social practice in and of itself.
The statement of the museum suggests that their emphasis on assembly and petition encompasses documentation of social practice projects and art in other forms, with the Pulitzer photo gallery being one example.
For more information on the museum: http://www.newseum.org/