The mission of the McDonough Museum of Art reinforces the mission of the College of Creative Arts and Communication and Youngstown State University in recognizing the need to support both cultural values and academic excellence.

Consistent with Youngstown’s efforts toward redefinition and relevance together with YSU’s newly formed strategic plan, the McDonough, the University’s Center for Contemporary Art, has established four key objectives:

To function as a partner in all aspects of its programming by strengthening existing partnerships and developing new ones. We intend to promote heuristic processes vital to collaboration creating an environment for greater transparency.

To serve as a unique center for public engagement the McDonough is the logical locus for a campus and community-wide open forum for ongoing collaborative efforts. Within this working lab for shared investigations we will explore the potential for unknown possibilities redefining the role of the artist/designer in the re-imagining and re-inventing process of the city.

To further articulate the public value of aesthetic experiences as important opportunities for knowing the complex and often ambiguous world we live in. To measure the public value of aesthetic experience by looking at creative capital, entrepreneurship, civic belonging, and urban identity.

It is ultimately our goal as a university museum dedicated to the display and commission of contemporary art to function as a catalyst for new knowledge, to play a central role in the exploration of the aesthetic dimension of human intelligence, and to substantially affect the way the arts contribute to education and public life.