Look at it This Way

A digital exhibition curated by students in Museum & Exhibition Studies, in collaboration with the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

Look at it This Way is an experiment in rethinking museum collections.

In a MUSE course called "Collecting at the Margins," students challenged traditional notions of expertise by inviting non-museum professionals to look closely at Hull-House artifacts and offer responses from their own perspectives. Look at it This Way, the resultant online archive and digital exhibition, documents the community's responses, which took the form of artwork, creative essays, interviews, and more.  

Browse the exhibition here: www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/look/index

About Museum and Exhibition Studies 

The Museum and Exhibition Studies program at UIC is an interdisciplinary program with a social justice focus. It emphasizes the evolving social and political contexts of today’s cultural institutions and provides students with the intellectual and professional background necessary to thrive in a multitude of positions, including as curators, gallery directors, museum educators, exhibition developers, and professionals within the emerging spheres of digital information-sharing. Learn more here.

About the Jane Addams Hull-House Collection

 The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum collection includes dishes handmade by young immigrant children in Hull-House ceramics classes, important paintings by turn-of-the-century-artists, and signs rescued from Maxwell Street just before it closed as an outdoor street market in the 1990s. All of these artifacts relate to the history of Chicago’s first settlement house and the surrounding neighborhood. They are lovingly saved and carefully preserved in the alcoves of our storage spaces, waiting to become part of an exhibit and incorporated into a narrative that helps to make meaning of the world. Learn more here.