Exhibit prepared by faculty & students
In 1951, Rochester’s Royals were NBA champions. Six years later, the team was gone. When Rochester Was Royal: Professional Basketball in Rochester 1945-1957, chronicles the Royals’ entrance to and exit from Rochester’s sporting landscape. Curated by a team of museum studies faculty at RIT—Rebecca Edwards, Juilee Decker, and Michael Brown—this exhibition explores the team, its town, and its time at the pinnacle of professional basketball.
In keeping with the desire of the Museum Studies Program at RIT to provide opportunities for further learning and connection with other disciplines, the exhibition will be supported by the creation of digital ancillaries by museum studies students. As Juilee Decker, associate professor of museum studies noted, “a cornerstone of our museum studies program is working at the intersection of theory and praxis. Students in my courses are reading about visitor engagement and coming to understand how the space of the museum can be a platform for content as well as conversation. They apply what they are reading to their design and execution of exhibition content and ancillaries.” Kelli Spampinato, a third-year museum studies major who is part of the team developing this exhibition added, “Working on this project has helped me to understand all of the steps of creating and executing an exhibition. Projects like this help take the theory we have learned in this class and others and make it practical. Doing work in class that will actually be put to use for the public has made me feel as though my education has come full circle.”
Photographs from the installation and exhibition preparation, including layouts of cases designed and curated by students in the Spring 2016 course, are included below.
A reception will be held on Thursday, April 21, 2016—65 years to the day of when the Royals captured the NBA crown. Visit the exhibition website for more information: https://royalsexhibit.wordpress.com/
This exhibition is the fourth in the series of Exhibitions Across the Curriculum, following Mobilizing America: Fighting WWI on the Homefront and the Battlefront (spring 2014), Resistance, Rebellion, and Renewal in Rochester: Narratives of Progress & Poverty (spring 2015); and Kate Gleason, Visionary: A Tribute on Her 150th Birthday (fall 2015).
