Sasha Doytcheva

My proposal for an independent Unlearning Center, situated on the southwest corner of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Central Park lawn, is aimed at restoring meaning and cultural value to art and artifacts displayed at the museum. The Unlearning Center enables Met visitors to immerse themselves in the history of artifacts on display and learn about them in holistic, sensory, and participatory ways. These include employing alternative methods to consider history, participating in community building and storytelling, studying objects in context, and taking in information through touch and hearing. Met visitors will be attracted to the Unlearning Center by an installation in the Petrie Sculpture Court that gives them a taste of what the Unlearning Center has to offer. The smaller-scale installation uses the same strategies as those employed in the Unlearning Center to highlight specific artifacts. The Unlearning Center challenges museums that display objects without empathy or context to present them in a new way, one that conveys their relation and value to the humans who used them.