Program Overview

Curate Now is a seven-week summer intensive designed to introduce Baltimore City high school students to the practice of curating while exposing them to the broad range of careers and skills found within the GLAM fields—Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Through site visits, conversations with arts professionals, archival research, creative workshops, collaborative projects, and hands-on exhibition development, students move from learning about curatorial practice to actually producing and presenting a public exhibition.

The program emphasizes that curatorial work extends well beyond selecting artwork. Students explore research, storytelling, archives, exhibition design, conservation, collections management, writing, audience engagement, marketing, documentation, arts administration, and presentation skills. Over the course of the summer, students increasingly take ownership of an exhibition, working in specialized teams while collaborating around a shared curatorial vision.

The program grew out of Arts Every Day’s existing curatorial programming and was expanded through a Maryland State Department of Education Public Schools Opportunities Enhancement Professional Learning Program grant, with additional support from The Thomas Wilson Foundation.

Week 1 — Introduction to Curatorial Practice & GLAM

Program foundation and orientation

Week 1 served as the foundational introduction to the Curate Now experience. The cohort entered the program as a group of students curious about what it means to be a curator and what kinds of professional pathways exist within the GLAM fields.

The program introduced students to the idea that curatorial work is a form of visual storytelling and that museums, galleries, libraries, and archives provide multiple ways for people to research, preserve, interpret, and share stories. Students were also introduced to the intersection of art and activism, establishing a foundation for the program’s emphasis on using art, research, and archives to engage with issues affecting communities.

Key concepts introduced:

• What is a curator?
• Visual storytelling
• GLAM careers and pathways
• Art and activism
• Research as a component of curatorial practice
• The relationship between objects, stories, and audiences
• Curiosity and inquiry as tools for cultural research

Hands-on learning:
Students began exploring individual research interests through projects, presentations, and creative activities. One early project was the creation of zines, giving students an accessible way to experiment with research, storytelling, image-making, and publication.

Week 2 — Archives, Community History & Research

Understanding archives as places where stories are preserved—and questioning whose stories are represented

Week 2 moved students from a general introduction to curatorial practice into a deeper exploration of archives and archival research.

Site Visit: Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts

Students visited the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts (BHCLA) at Johns Hopkins University, where they explored Black cultural heritage and community archiving practices. The visit gave students direct access to primary-source materials, including:

• Flyers
• Vinyl records
• Oral histories
• Photographs
• Archival prints

Students examined these materials in the Hodson Reading Room and used them to investigate the stories behind individual objects. Rather than simply viewing archival materials, students were encouraged to think like researchers—asking questions about what objects reveal about Baltimore and the people and communities represented within them.

Archives, Environmental Justice & Activism

The visit also connected archival research to Baltimore’s history, particularly the lasting impacts of environmental racism and the ways communities have organized, resisted, and advocated for change. This helped students understand archives not simply as repositories of old materials, but as tools for understanding social history and amplifying community voices.

Community Archives & Exhibition-Making

Students viewed Community Legacies, Humanity Remains; Intersections, Crosswalks and Pathways, a culminating installation by Community Archives Fellow Jeneanne Collins. The exhibition reflected on the community art and archival impact of BHCLA from 2019 to the present.

Students also encountered the John Clark Mayden: Baltimore Lives photographs, made accessible through BHCLA’s Black Africana Archives Initiative. Viewing Mayden’s photographs prompted students to connect archival images with their own lived experiences.

Mini Research Projects

Back in the classroom, students developed their own research questions and practiced navigating archival and informational resources. Importantly, they discovered that some of their topics were not easily represented in existing archives.

This led to critical conversations about:

• How archives are organized
• Who determines what is preserved
• Whose stories are represented
• Which perspectives may be missing
• How archival gaps affect the stories we tell

Major learning outcome:
Students began to understand that curatorial practice involves both finding information and recognizing what information is absent. This became an important foundation for their later exhibition work.

Week 3 — Exhibition Planning, Conservation & Audience

Moving from research toward curatorial storytelling

Week 3 marked a shift from exploration and research toward applying curatorial skills to exhibition development.

Site Visit: The Walters Art Museum

Students spent a day at The Walters Art Museum, where they explored the museum from multiple perspectives.

The day began with a teen-led discussion connected to the Walters’ Teen Takeover. Students reflected on previous Teen Takeover events and provided feedback that will help shape the theme, activities, and overall experience for Baltimore-area teens. This gave students an authentic experience of audience engagement and youth voice within a museum setting.

Museum Exploration

Students then participated in self-guided exploration of the Walters’ collections, encountering artwork from different cultures, time periods, and artistic traditions. Featured experiences included work by Kehinde Wiley and the museum’s Latin American exhibition.

Conservation & Collections Care

A major component of the visit was an introduction to art conservation. Students participated in a behind-the-scenes experience and heard from a conservator and registrar while viewing objects from the Douriean Fletcher exhibition.

The experience gave students an understanding of the work that happens behind the scenes to care for and preserve museum collections.

The Douriean Fletcher: Jewelry of the Afro Future exhibition also introduced students to the ways jewelry can function as a form of storytelling and personal expression.

Exhibition Planning

Back in the classroom, students began learning the practical foundations of exhibition development. They:

• Continued their research projects
• Explored how curators create exhibition outlines
• Considered how exhibitions organize information
• Practiced writing for different audiences
• Thought about how text can engage different kinds of visitors

Students also participated in collaborative team-building activities designed to strengthen critical thinking and communication.

Exposure to Arts Administration

Students also met Arts Every Day staff to learn about the variety of careers that exist within an arts nonprofit. These conversations demonstrated that arts organizations require many different types of expertise and that collaboration and teamwork are central to producing arts programming.

Major learning outcome:
Students began connecting their research to the practical question: How do you turn information and ideas into an exhibition that communicates effectively with an audience?

Week 4 — GLAM Teams, Collections & Exhibition Development

Students take on professional roles and begin building their exhibition

Week 4 represented a major transition in the program. Students moved from primarily learning about curatorial work to assuming professional-style roles within their own exhibition project.

Site Visit: Goucher College

Students visited Goucher College for an immersive exploration of museum, gallery, archive, and collections work.

They met curator Liz Faust, who challenged students to think like curators by examining: Gallery design, Exhibition layout, Accessibility, Visitor experience

Students explored two galleries and the outdoor sculpture gardens while also learning about art handling, an important but often overlooked GLAM career.

Conservation Lab & Collections Vault

The visit continued with a behind-the-scenes tour of Goucher’s Conservation Lab and Collections Vault.

Students encountered a wide variety of archival materials and objects, including:

• Political memorabilia
• Metal objects
• A historic protest T-shirt
• Books and other unexpected materials

These examples demonstrated that archival collections can contain objects that may initially seem ordinary or unusual but can nevertheless provide meaningful evidence about the past.

Students also toured the collections vault beneath the Silber Art Gallery, where they saw movable storage walls containing historical documents, paintings, and artifacts. They were even able to carefully handle historic metal coins.

Baltimore History & Community Stories

The Goucher visit expanded students’ understanding of Baltimore history, including the city’s early free Black neighborhoods and Goucher’s origins as a women’s college. This reinforced the idea that archives can connect historical materials to contemporary communities and experiences.

Students Become Exhibition Teams

Back in the classroom, students were divided into three GLAM-inspired exhibition teams:

Administrative Team: Promotion, Documentation
Design Team: Sourcing images, Selecting visual materials
Writing Team: Exhibition vision statement, Object labels

Together, students decided that their exhibition would explore Baltimore through their eyes, using archival materials to reveal parallels between the past and present and demonstrate how history continues to shape contemporary life.

Major learning outcome:
Students moved from learning about GLAM careers to simulating the collaborative professional structure of a GLAM institution, with each student contributing to a specific aspect of a shared exhibition.

Week 5 — Exhibition Design, Audience & Professional Presentation

Refining the exhibition and learning how design shapes interpretation

Week 5 focused heavily on the students’ transition from developing an exhibition concept to making concrete curatorial and design decisions.

Exhibition Development

Students began finalizing the images that would appear in the exhibition. Working collaboratively, they made decisions about:

• Image size
• Image placement
• Visual relationships between works
• How individual pieces contribute to the overall exhibition theme

They also submitted final versions of their vision statements.

This represented a significant step toward transforming research into a cohesive public-facing exhibition.

Site Visit: Glenstone Museum

Students had an immersive experience at Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland, including two visits.

During the first visit, students experienced the exhibition Ties of our common kindred privately while the museum was closed to the public. This provided an unusually quiet and intimate opportunity to experience the exhibition.

During the second visit, students divided into groups to explore the museum’s Pavilions and outdoor sculpture collection.

Audience & Exhibition Design

One of the most significant lessons from Glenstone was the museum’s distinctive approach to exhibition interpretation. Students observed that Glenstone uses few, if any, labels or wall texts.

This prompted discussion about how museums can encourage visitors to:

• Engage directly with artwork
• Develop their own interpretations
• Experience exhibitions without relying heavily on explanatory text
• Navigate exhibitions in different ways

Students then considered how these ideas might influence the way audiences experience their own exhibition.

Professional Presentation

Students also presented their exhibition vision and research to Glenstone partners, including exhibition designer Sophia. This was the students’ first presentation of their work outside the classroom.

Sophia provided insight into the creativity, collaboration, and decision-making involved in professional exhibition design and offered feedback as students prepared for installation. The experience gave students practice in articulating and defending curatorial decisions to professionals—an important professional skill.

Major learning outcome

Week 5 demonstrated that an exhibition is not simply a collection of objects. Students were learning that space, scale, placement, design, interpretation, and audience behavior all influence the meaning and experience of an exhibition.

Week 6 — Professional Practice, Personal Voice & Final Exhibition Preparation

Students become presenters, curators, and cultural leaders

Week 6 was focused on preparing students for the public presentation of their work while reinforcing the professional and personal dimensions of their curatorial practice.

Artist & Professional Panel

Students began the week by meeting with three artists and MICA MFA graduates: Giovanni Stanley, Shaun Stevenson, and Taro Cantu who each shared their professional journeys, discussed their creative practices, and provided feedback on the students’ curatorial statement.

This conversation reinforced a central theme of the program: careers in the GLAM and broader arts fields are not necessarily linear. Students were able to hear directly from artists about their experiences building creative careers and navigating ideas and issues that shape their work.

Student Presentation to Arts Every Day Supporters

Students then presented their work to Arts Every Day donors and board members, giving them another opportunity to practice communicating their ideas to an audience outside the classroom.

By this point, students had: written personal statements, printed their photographs, continued developing exhibition layout, created memorial and timeline components, and refined their curatorial ideas.

The presentation was followed by lunch and conversation with Arts Every Day supporters, giving students an opportunity to exchange ideas and explain the issues explored through their work.

Site Visit: Maryland Institute College of Art

The final site visit of the summer took students to MICA, where they explored the campus, facilities, and resources available to artists and emerging arts professionals.

Students visited:

• The MICA Grad Lab
• Library Special Collections
• JHU–MICA Film Centre
• Soundstage
• Equipment cage
• Game design classroom
• Graduate Center
• Curatorial Practice MFA department
• Photography + Media & Society program

They also met current graduate students and learned about graduate-level creative practice. The Grad Lab visit provided a particularly strong connection between the students’ current work and potential future opportunities, as they saw the professional printing process being used for photographs that would appear in their exhibition.

Personal Statements & Reflection

Students also worked on personal statements, incorporating reflection into the creative process. A writing session with Ms. Madison from CHARM included time outdoors for students to pause, stretch, clear their minds, and create space for thoughtful reflection and authentic storytelling.

Youth Voice & Professional Identity

The professional panel reinforced the importance of maintaining an individual voice while also recognizing collaboration as an essential professional skill. Students were encouraged to recognize the value of their own perspectives while understanding that successful creative work often depends on collaboration.

Major learning outcome:
By Week 6, students were no longer simply learning about curators, artists, museums, and archives. They were functioning as emerging cultural workers, presenting their ideas, receiving professional feedback, collaborating with peers, and preparing a public exhibition.

Week 7 — Exhibition Installation, Opening & Student Presentations

Putting seven weeks of learning into practice

Students were expected to move into the final stage of the exhibition process: installation and public presentation. Week 5 notes that, following feedback from Glenstone’s exhibition designer, students would be ready to begin installation during Week 7.

The culminating exhibition occurred on August 11 from 6:00–8:00 p.m., followed by an evening of student presentations on August 12 from 6:00–8:00 p.m. Students presented their creative process, reflected on what they learned throughout the summer, and discussed the impact of their work.

The students chose Webs of Oppression: Youth Threading New Futures as their title, describing it as an exhibition that explores themes of identity, resilience, justice, and hope through youth art and storytelling.

Culminating skills

Week 7 represented the culmination of students’ work in:

• Exhibition installation
• Spatial design
• Object/image placement
• Exhibition interpretation
• Public speaking
• Storytelling
• Audience engagement
• Collaborative production
• Professional presentation
• Reflection
• Youth cultural leadership