Students at Claremont Graduate University and Bath Spa University celebrated their first day in Bath at No. 1 Royal Crescent in the second arm of their jointly taught, dual campus class that examines heritage management of historical sites and museums in both Los Angeles and the Bath region.

While in Los Angeles, students from Bath and from CGU explored important cultural heritage sites, including the Getty Villa, the Autry Museum of the American West, the Huntington Library, Watts Towers, the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, among other sites to be determined.

In Bath, the students will use the university as home base to explore the city, named a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1987, and its many museums and historical sites, including its complete Roman baths, One Royal Crescent House Museum, and the Jane Austen Center. Outside Bath, we will explore Oxford and London to talk with museum leaders and heritage management experts. Stonehenge and the Victoria and Albert Museum are already planned as part of the itinerary outside of Bath.

The differences between the two locations, the Los Angeles region and Bath, will pose in very clear relief the different kinds of issues that face heritage management experts in both contexts. How do we protect and manage historical sites and collections? Where do we find funding for the arts and cultural patrimony in a complicated setting of public and increasingly private fund-raising? How do we convey and maintain the cultural significance of these sites to contemporary and future audiences? Particular focus will be placed on the structural and economic differences between the regions that define how the arts and heritage efforts are funded, and how broader, more globalized forces will define civic and national commemoration and historical education efforts in the future. Profs. Joshua Goode, CGU and Alison Hems, Bath Spa University [Museum Studies]