A New Agora for New York: Museums as Spaces for Democracy

FAIN: GG-290742-23

Museum Association of New York (Troy, NY 12180-3215)
Megan Eves (Project Director: August 2022 to present)

Implementation of a discussion and public program series exploring democracy in America to be conducted at twelve museums across New York.

"A New Agora for New York: Museums as Spaces for Democracy” is a humanities discussion program series produced in partnership with Humanities New York. The series will use the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum on Main Street Exhibition, "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America" as a launching point to support the work of twelve museums and their communities to explore, reflect on, and tell the story of their role in the evolution of American Democracy and envision the future of our nation as we approach the semiquincentennial. Programs will include two planning symposia, development and installation of an exhibition from the museum’s collection that tells the story of their community’s relationship with democracy, a lecture by a project scholar, an oral history gathering project, a Virtual Agora, Community Conversation discussion programs, and workshops for local teachers. The project will produce 36 public programs and reach 50,000 people.