The Michigan State University Museum has selected Douglas McFalls, a Ph.D. student in the educational policy program with a specialization in culture based education and museum studies, as the 2015 Nelson Mandela Museum-Michigan State University Museum Curatorial Fellowship recipient.
Established in 2008, the Nelson Mandela Museum-MSU Museum Curatorial Fellowship places an MSU graduate student at the Mandela Museum each year for research, exhibition development and educational programs.
McFalls is interested in combining his passion for justice and commitment to education with his design skills.
He earned a master’s degree in architecture and interior design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995. He has worked as an architect, interior designer and product designer in some capacity ever since. In 2003, McFalls co-founded and continues to direct the Center for African Development through Economics and the Arts in Tanzania.
McFalls will spend part of his fellowship based at the Nelson Mandela National Museum in Mthatha, located in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. There, he will assist the director and the coordinator of educational programs on special initiatives. When he returns to the MSU Museum he will work on cataloguing and expanding documentation on a collection of South African art related to AIDS education and economic development.
“The MSU Museum has been especially honored to have an ongoing partnership with the Nelson Mandela Museum, as we have been able to collaborate on a variety of educational programs and exhibitions since the creation of the partnership in 2000 when the Mandela Museum opened,” said C. Kurt Dewhurst, MSU Museum curator of folklife and cultural heritage and coordinator of the Nelson Mandela Museum-MSU Museum Graduate Curatorial Fellowship Program. “The graduate curatorial fellowship program has enabled both museums to sustain and enhance this rich partnership.”
The fellowship program builds on a long-term partnership to promote museum-based research and higher education, along with stimulating cultural economic development and tourism in Nelson Mandela’s home village of Qunu, near Mthatha, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. The fellows’ projects are designed to embody the spirit of ubuntu, the traditional South African humanist philosophy focusing on people’s allegiances and relations with each other.
Thanks to an initial grant from the American Association of Museums, the MSU Museum helped develop a special exhibit in 2008 that was installed in time for Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday, “Dear Mr. Mandela, Dear Mrs. Parks: Children’s Letters, Global Lessons,” and was later adapted at the MSU Museum. Versions of the exhibit are now touring, one in South Africa and one in the United States. As a world leader in international outreach, MSU dedicated $150,000 throughout seven years for the fellowship program.
The Mandela Museum-MSU Museum fellowship is one of many MSU programs that help meet post-apartheid South Africa’s challenge to document and preserve history and expressive culture. The MSU Museum, MATRIX: Center for Humane Arts, Letters and Social Science On-Line and African Studies Center have expertise in working with South African partners to collect, steward and create access to the country’s cultural heritage. Past projects have focused on preserving and providing access to cultural materials, gathering oral histories and developing training for cultural heritage professionals and educators.