Final class notes

Are here.

And for those who missed class, a new assignment. Write a page or so on what you did on the exhibition, and what you learned from it.

Steve

Why museums have become our home from home – Times Online

Why are museums so popular? And is that a good thing? Seems to me that it is…

Rescheduling photo workshop

We are going to reschedule the photo workshop. Everyone seems to be consumed with Fox Point or has a scheduling conflict, although I have heard from at least five of you who would be interested otherwise. Here are the alternative dates. Please let me know which one works best. Monday, May 11 (10 am or 3 pm) Tuesday, May 12 (10 am) Wednesday (10, 1, or 3). Contact: ronald_potvin@brown.edu

Crowdsourcing the curator

There’s a trend developing here… no need for curators, or grant administrators, or referees: just let the public vote. So here one Death of the Curator exercise, in London, at the Saatchi Gallery, and another, in historic preservation, in Boston: Vote to help determine which Boston area landmark receives NTHP funding.
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Museums as Political Pawns

“As long as that panel remains in the museum,” Father Peter Gumpel said, “Benedict XVI cannot go to Israel because it would be a scandal for Catholics. The Catholic Church is doing everything possible to have good relations with Israel, but friendly relations can only be built if there is reciprocity.”

Museums as Political Pawns | new curator.

Join us on a trip to Lowell

You’re welcome to join Pat Malone’s museums class on their April 26 trip to the Lowell National Historic Park. RSVP to chelsea_shriver (at) brown.edu.

Webcast: “Forces Shaping the Future of Museums: Visitors”

Colleagues are invited to the next George Brown Goode Smithsonian Education Lecture: 

“Forces Shaping the Future of Museums: Visitors”
Tuesday, April 22, 2009, 2:00 to 4:00 pm EST
McEvoy Auditorium at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture (8th and F Streets, NW, Washington, DC)

The program will also be webcast live at http://museumstudies.si.edu  and archived there for later viewing. 

Our speakers are Colette Dufresne-Tassé, Ph.D., codirector of the master’s in museology program at the University of Montréal and chair of ICOM-CECA, and Sue Allen, Ph.D., director of visitor research and evaluation at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and currently a program officer in the Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings at the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Dufresne-Tassé’s topic is: “Let’s Revisit Learning:  Establishing Better Dialogues between Adult Visitors and Curators in Exhibition Spaces.”  Dr. Dufresne-Tassé argues that learning has been over-emphasized in analyses of adult visitors’ experience in exhibitions when it actually represents only a small portion of their experience.  She will discuss the process of meaning making and how it can provide a better understanding of what visitors think, imagine, and feel. Using recent visitor research, Dr. Dufresne-Tassé will show how meaning making can help museums establish better dialogues between the visitor and the curator.

Dr. Sue Allen’s topic is: “Video-Based Evidence of Learning as a Process.” How can we identify learning when it happens on the exhibition floor? In this interactive presentation, Dr. Allen will show videotapes of visitors using interactive exhibits at the Exploratorium and discuss different principles of learning.  During the screening, audience members will use these principles to look for evidence of learning and how the exhibition environment supports or limits it.

The program will be webcast live at http://museumstudies.si.edu and archived for later viewing.  (Note that portions of Dr. Allen’s presentation will not be webcast.)  There is no charge or registration required for attending the program or viewing the webcast.

The G. Brown Goode Smithsonian Education Lecture series, named after the Smithsonian’s earliest proponent of museums as educational institutions, helps Smithsonian and other museum staffs keep abreast of emerging developments pertaining to many aspects of their work. The series features programs that bring together academic researchers and museum practitioners to examine the roles museums play in developing the skills necessary for success in the 21st century. All Goode lectures are web cast and archived for viewing at http://museumstudies.si.edu

NCPH 2009 Conference Blog

Some interesting reports about the recent National COuncil for Public History meeting in Providence, here. Particularly of interest for the class, I think, are the discussions of presentism – to what extent should history respond to the present day – and the nature of relationships in public history work.

ExhibiTricks

An interesting blog on exhibit ideas… Worth thinking about the March 19th entry – are storefront exhibit spaces an idea for Providence’s empty storefronts?

Museum techniques workshops

You might be interested in these workshops at the JNBC next week:

The second session in the Collections Workshop Series is on Monday, April 6, from 3:00 – 4:30 at the JNBC (room TBD). This session will cover the basics of cataloging and record-keeping. Do you ever wonder about those arcane numbers that you sometimes see on museum objects? These are actually the end result of a process of record-keeping that begins the moment an object “walks” through the door. The workshop will conclude with a brief overview of PastPerfect, a popular museum record-keeping software program. Please respond to ronald_potvin@brown.edu by Friday if you’re interested in attending.

And due to popular demand, I am repeating the first session in the series, about basic object handling, on Friday, April 10, from 3 – 4:30. This will be a hands-on program, learning how to examine and prepare for moving furniture, taking down and examining the condition of paintings, pulling out drawers, even looking for signs of insect infestation. Again, let Ron know if you’re interested.

Please let me know if you are planning to attend by next Thursday.

Ron