tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44694232782440966772024-03-04T23:04:59.036-05:00Museum TalkThis blog is dedicated to all museum goers. You can be a museum professional or simply a member of the public who loves to frequent science, art, and history museums, historical houses, historical societies, archives, zoos, aquariums, and the like. This blog is for the curious and for those who are critical and like to share their experiences.Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-67931185847467256672013-04-20T08:57:00.002-04:002013-04-20T08:57:25.888-04:00A Series of Approaches To A Children's Museum, Part 1The Children's Museum in Small Town, New York will soon realize its current capital raising campaign goal of 1.5 million dollars. It will be moving to a newly acquired building, currently under renovation, with 12,000 square feet of space planned for eight galleries and/or interactive learning studios, a gift shop, and second-floor administrative offices in August, 2008. Given these long awaited milestones in its growth, it would be prudent that it consider some new marketing strategies, development plans, and proactive steps for a future campaign to re-brand its identity to complement its new physical plant. The necessitated "breadth of" any branding campaign will involve years to implement, and it is likely that a number of marketing schemes and development plans will come and go during that time, but, for present and practical purposes of identifying and targeting new audiences, implementing a website re-design, and furthering educational outreach through additional programming funded through visitor subscription and grants may be a place to begin (Richardson 2007).<br />
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Development of these specific areas have the potential to only assist this institution in meeting the demands of its increased future operating costs but are a logical step towards bringing this museum in line with the more frequently visited museums in its proximity. Certainly, proximity to other museums warrants nurturing, at least, initially, the potential residual effects of its student and family visitation. The Museum should network the stories it tells and the experiences it can provide in order to have greater impact and relevancy to its visitors' experience, and this can be achieved by promoting a combined admission for both museums in addition to linking some of their exhibitions with each other. This could provide a greater experiential impact on visitors. </div>
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Providing a two-for-one admission fee might serve as a hook to get people into the Museum for the first time , "once you get them in then you can get them back" as Carl Nold, President and CEO of Historic New England and Vice-Chair of the American Association of Museums believes is true for all institutions. The Children's Museum's already anticipates that its new facilities will allow it to expand its functions through permanent exhibition, greater accommodations for onsite programs for educational outreach, and an increased attention to merchandising, which, in many ways, signifies its commitment to continued growth beyond its current "small museum" status and previously limited functions.</div>
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A re-branding strategy can potentially assist the Children's Museum in its second institutional life phase of "growth" by presenting a more compelling identity for both its current "key stakeholders," "staff members, trustees, general members," and "donors, " as well as its past, present, and potential future visitors by making the answers to the questions: why should I visit, join, partner with, work for, volunteer for, or make a donation to the Children's Museum more readily known. an initial step in re-branding is to determine how its current goals and strategies are perceived by both its staff and audience through an inquiry process. Diane L. Viera, Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer for Historic New England, calls this the "discovery phase" of re-branding, and Historic New England has found a discussion approach with current staff and audiences capable of producing more valuable information than more conventional written surveys in identifying details of the current perception of their institutions brand (Viera 2). </div>
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Such inquiry often reveals the mistaken belief that someone in an organization has total understanding of how their institution is perceived by others. After examining its findings a resulting prognosis for re-branding will not only entail having greater control and uniformity in the perception of your institution but greater insight into the needs of your current and future constituencies for the purpose of targeted marketing; there is much to be gained by everyone being more in the know uniformly about an institution.</div>
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Sampling individuals of varying levels of involvement, interest, and association with the Children's Museum might similarly reveal disparate multiple levels of understanding about it as was the case with Historic New England's own findings. Surely, the Children's Museum's greater physical presence and the publicity that has resulted from its capital raising campaign have brought it to the attention of many who have never heard of it before. It is also likely this publicity has challenged much misinformation about the museum among those seemingly familiar with it, but were never quite sure what its mission or function was. This arose from its negligible exposure and physical limitations during its start-up phase.</div>
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The museum had occupied a rented second-floor storefront apace since opening to the public, and this physical circumstance more than anything else had largely stifled the opportunity for growth. exhibitions have been limited to a space of less than 1000 square feet in size, so it has limited itself to two exhibitions per year not only out of consideration of space but funds, staff, and its limited collections. Its collections of musical instruments, costumes, jewelry, games, figures and dolls, among other cultural artifacts, have been purposely limited due to lack of storage. Much of the museum's space has been devoted to a repository of children's art work; this includes original original art work and reproductions of international exchange as well as exhibition lending and merchandising.</div>
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Even without the benefit of the findings of the "discovery phase" of any re-branding campaign, a new and expanded marketing strategy as well as an outline for a plan of action for establishing a revised brand that expands its mission to inspire more than merely children in the upstate region [ of New York State] toward creativity and education in the arts might be considered for the Children's Museum. Its contact seemingly already extends beyond this area with its online offering of art exchange, and a new and vigorous campaign to attract greater participation in this program could be accomplished through a re-design of its website. This could more completely extend its reach serving in a limited capacity a community that is additionally national and international in breadth. As Carl Nold once stated in a lecture, "building a wider base is the secret to sustainability."</div>
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The sale of art resulting from international exchange via snail mail is a thing of the past,and the prospect of reproducing and packaging these valuable educational resources is labor intensive hence costly. An online PayPal account and making all materials available through a download would not only satisfy those who wish to be immediately satiated with their wants and needs of these offered resources, but would justify a reduced cost for the product as color ink and paper for reproduction would be accomplished by the customer rather than a limited museum staff.Certainly, a cost under fifty dollars for a version of these resources would attract far greater numbers than the current price tag of several hundred dollars. In addition, educators are the likely market for such resources yet no curriculum resources are available with the art to contextualize it and more importantly connect it with new core standards. Numerous teachers have emphasized that they would not pay for or advocate for with administrators an educational resource that requires much time on their part to connect with learning standards and develop learning activities on top of everything else they do; such resources have to be both unique, which they are, and ready-made for the teacher, which they are currently not.</div>
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Developing the necessary teacher materials to accompany this art work would not be difficult. A number of museums like Bangor, Maine's own children's museum----the Discovery Museum--- has met the needs of exhibition development by soliciting the assistance of local educators. The impetus is that teachers get free admission for their own classes, for their families, and themselves. In exchange teachers meet once a week and develop connections between what they are teaching in their classroom and what could be realized in the museum setting to assist them. This is the embodiment of community partnership; museums working directly with teachers to bring them what they need. This allows the museum to avoid stagnation, for how many of us have belonged to a museum initially thinking its the cat's meow only not to renew our membership because we're tired of the same old exhibitions and activities. </div>
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Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-12235564575359402502013-04-20T08:20:00.000-04:002013-04-20T08:43:19.595-04:00Making Bread Old School: Hands-on Learning <b>The following was the first installment, January 22, 2012, of a project begun last year. The project progressed until August, 2012, and, recently, with the impending Spring here in Maine, and in conjunction with the The Curran Homestead Living History Farm and Museum in Orrington, ME, the plan is to put in a crop of grain or grains on my shy-of-an-acre property with the intention of processing it and producing a loaf of bread.</b><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; line-height: 1.4; text-align: justify;">The project has already moved forward from just an idea in September when I spoke with Jeff and Adina Bialas of J @ A Farm in Goshen, NY at the time of this writing. The Bialases and I had discussed the possibility of turning over some sod at Museum Village in Monroe, NY and planting some crops that would connect with the 19th century living history component of the museum, make use of a working collection of real agricultural tools and equipment from the past, and offer visitors to the museum an opportunity to experience early farming techniques first hand.</span><br />
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The conversation with the Bialas family actually occurred shortly after Hurricane Irene had destroyed much of their crop on their modest black dirt farm. Many local farmers had been devastated by the storm. The fact that Jeff and Adina were at the museum with the family during the museum's annual Civil War Re-enactment when we first spoke of the potential enterprise was because the work that they would otherwise have been engaged in at this time of year had they a crop was basically cancelled until preparations for the next growing season would resume.<br />
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During that conversation we talked about opportunities to present to the public demonstrations that would over the course of Spring, Summer, and Fall offer the public insight into crop cycles----planting, growing, harvesting, processing, and eating. Not only would we prepare the soil, plant, and harvest, but we ultimately wanted to process our crop and offer a final product. One of the crops we spoke of was broom corn. The museum had always had a broom making scenario, but the broom corn had always been purchased from an out-of-state supplier. Growing broom corn, harvesting it, drying it, and making brooms from it was pretty straight forward in theory.<br />
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The other crop we spoke of was wheat or some type of grain. We actually spoke at that time about looking into heritage strains of wheat. Orange County, NY had during its earliest chapter of agriculture been the site of small farm wheat production. Even after this waned there were always farmers who grew grains for their work horses well into the 20th century.<br />
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In addition to growing wheat we thought that the processing of wheat would be a wonderful activity to present at the museum. Harvesting wheat with scythes and scythes fitted with cradles would get a lot attention. Threshing the wheat could also be an activity that we would present, as the museum had hand threshing tools as well as the machinery to present the story of the beginnings of mechanized agriculture and wheat processing.<br />
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So the thought arose that if we could harvest and thresh, we would need to grind the wheat into flour. The question of how to grind the wheat into flour would be answered by what historical period we would choose to present. This answer was seemingly answered by the fact that the site of this enterprise was to be a museum that presented the time period 1860-1910, but during this half century there were monumental changes in how agricultural products were planted, cultivated, harvested and processed. We saved some thoughts for the next time we would meet.</div>
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Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-68586395330369457472013-04-20T08:04:00.004-04:002013-04-20T08:06:06.506-04:00Trip to the Narrow Gauge Railroad & Museum, Portland, ME<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One of my favorite things at the Narrow Gauge Railroad and Museum was this 1926 Model T Rail Inspection Car. This track vehicle was built by the railroad shops of the Sandy River Rail in Phillips, Maine. Used by Superintendent Orris Vose ( any relation to Dr. Leonard Vose of Eddington, ME of yore?).<br />
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The standard four cylinder Model T engine.</div>
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Front View, notice the cow-catcher constructed from riveted and forge welded metal bar.</div>
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<br />Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-16362364274183021292008-12-27T12:47:00.005-05:002010-07-30T18:50:12.587-04:00The Museum's Continued Service to the Public in the 21st CenturyWith the recent rally to reduce carbon emissions and reduce global warming, few have been willing to give it to the public straight. The only real solution is for all of us to eat less, buy less, produce less, and, for our purposes as museum professions, preserve, conserve, and restore less to combat carbon emissions run amuck. I am greatly concerned with a nonprofit museum culture that is committed to an unerring need to grow, and this includes, on the high end of that growth, the construction and maintenance of grandiose exhibition buildings, travelling mega-shows, and unbridled merchandizing. Much of this need for growth is a product of human ego, for board members and administrators alike see growth as a reflection of their own industry, their ability to accomplish. I am as guilty of this as the next person. I love museums as much or more than the next guy, but I also see that growth may be contributing to eventually making life as we know it a bit more difficult than it already is. <br />Growth at the museum is also necessitated by the public’s own need to preserve all that they consider of historical or aesthetic value, and there is a certain amount of self aggrandizement with the act of donating an object that is somehow linked to our own history for long-term preservation and public display. Immortality seemingly comes to the donor or benefactor to a collection much like the published story keeps the name of the author within our conscientiousness long after he or she has put down their pen for the last time. Although rarely verbalized, much of the business of museums is simply rooted in a need for us to preserve something of ourselves beyond our own mortality. <br />It is the ever-growing number of small nonprofit museums more often than not that become repositories for everyone’s treasured “artifacts,” without fully exploring the consequences of taking on that long-term responsibility. With each press release and the inevitable exposure of my own museum’s mission and function to the reading public, that the challenge of numerous offers of objects large and small for donation is met. Many of these objects are of value, and many more are not. The museum professional has a responsibility at this point in time to simply say “no” to these potential bequests. For with each bequest an obligation for further growth is seemingly necessitated. The donated object will need not only a roof over it but often more costly responses in order to preserve and restore it. <br />The reason my modest history museum says “yes” to such donations is that we are trying to build up a unique collection with a small budget. Many of the donations are all or nothing scenarios; you either take the valuable and rare items along with the more common and less valuable, or, often, donors don’t want to bother with you. An additional motivation for taking the latter road is that by accepting these donations a publically perceived precedence is set whereby objects of superior condition become available somewhere down the road by others which will eventually replace similar objects in the collection of poorer condition. This ongoing process is mistakenly perceived as unfettered growth by some, but it is more accurately a growth process whereby the museum achieves a collection of objects of superior quality through a process of accessioning and de-accessioning, and for the purposes of full disclosure, we haven’t reached the stage of de-accessioning yet. <br />A recent example of this at my modest living history farm and museum involves what is commonly known as a “dump rake.” This horse drawn implement was used to rake up cut hay in the field. The farmer would gather cut hay in its curved tines as he advanced by horse power. Eventually these tines would become full and a foot and hand pedal would be depressed to release the hay gathered “dumping” it. The resulting pile would then be pitched into a hay wagon. Our organization started out with a rake from our benefactors, but this International Harvester example had sat through many seasons outdoors; some of its tines and the original wooden tongue that was harnessed between a team of work animals were long gone. Another equally weathered rake was donated, but this had been adapted to tractor usage and the wooden tongue had been replaced with a galvanized steel pipe at some point. Recently, we have been offered many high quality objects from eastern Maine family farms in the process of dissolution; this has come with our increased exposure. An International Harvester dump rake with original paint and stenciling from its original journey by Maine Central Rail, probably to the farm of Thomas and Mildred Flagg in Lincolnville Beach from which it was donated, was accepted into our collection. Such an acquisition necessitates the need, for the first time in the history of our 20 year old institution, to de-accession one of these dump rakes from our collection simply because we have an example of superior quality making the others unnecessary and redundant. <br />On the other hand, growth at many museums goes unchecked, and the decision to shed objects from a collection remain taboo, and this is arguably linked to a general cultural propensity to consume more than we need. The museum is a stage for the drinking, eating, buying, and producing that goes on in our culture, and additionally both art and history in commodified at museums in the US so that it too is responsible for the excess that plagues our times and threatens our future. Collections are housed, kept warm and dry in storage in some cases for perpetuity. Collections are packaged and shipped at great expense by larger museums, and results in the greater expenditure of materials, both renewable and non-renewable. De-accessioning a lot of what we have may be part of trimming the fat that is required in a world of growing populations and decreasing resources; we have to do our part just like everyone else. Before any serious consideration of a large scale cut back in collecting practices can take place those who make museums possible have to be first convinced that less may be more, and that new technologies may offer an alternative to how we experience what we experience in the museum. <br />At the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts steps have been taken in recent years to re-evaluate the collecting practices of earlier times in life of their institution and measure them against the necessity to meet the present public’s taste and needs. In de-accessioning many objects from its seed collection, some critics have voiced concern for a perceived obligation to preserve the memory of the museum’s original benefactor and namesake DeCordova. The debate on whether to save or de-accession in this case is largely one of propriety, for how long can a public institution honor the last wishes of a long ago deceased benefactor especially when doing so may jeopardize the relevancy of the museum itself to its potential 21st century audience? Most museums have that important decision of how to best use the space that they have to fulfill their mission, and this might mean that some of the collection takes precedence over other parts. <br />I am not sure whether I agree with the idea that a curiosity cabinet belonging to DeCordova himself, containing what some may more irreverently call Victorian-era junk, is irrelevant to 21st century museum goers, or that de-accessioning all this stuff is a prudent course of action. I do agree that some museums need to prioritize what is essential to their missions, and consider de-accessioning some objects that may be better utilized by other institutions and also allow these institutions breathing room for future acquisitions. It is obvious that many things in museum collections lose their appeal to many, but it can be argued that these objects embody the particular collecting habits of a time and place offering a valuable narrative worth preserving and sharing to an audience both now and in the future. If, at least, some objects must be de-accessioned, fully documenting an account of DeCordova’s original collection through new digital media is essential and without this there would be great loss to our social and intellectual history. <br />Any museum which started out with one man’s aesthetic at its heart will inevitably change as aesthetic taste itself has changed. It is simply unrealistic that museums will continue to collect without ever shedding earlier and less valuable objects for new acquisitions. Nonprofit, and consequently museums with tax-exempt status have, at least, an unofficial obligation to satisfy public taste and needs rather than that of their original benefactors. The survival of these museums depends on not only the attendance of the public but on public funding via grants and allowances made to institutions with a non-profit status.<br />Although nonprofit institutions seemingly have an obligation to satisfy public interest, it is the duly appointed stewards, board members, directors, and the like, that make the decisions about how the institution can best serve the public. These decisions often affect a change in the status of specific art or artifacts once valued for private reasons rather than public. The stewards of any collection have to first take into account the survival of the institution over the wishes of an original benefactor. Survival of the institution ultimately insures the survival of their memory. In order for the DeCordova to survive it had to become more than a mere repository of one man’s bibelot and kitsch by the late 20th century. <br />In regard to more recent realizations regarding the understanding that society itself must trim back, change age-old behaviors towards consumption in order that future generations may survive, museums too may have to consider more than merely what specifically fits into its walls to satisfy the public but how a consideration and realization of less may effectively serve similar purposes. Certainly the increased use of new digital media to disseminate the knowledge that up until recently was the exclusive domain of the tangible object in the physical museum will play a major role in transforming how a museum does what it does.<br />In the case of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the needs of our own times can similarly affect changes to long established guidelines to the physicality of a particular museum structure. A recently proposed addition to the Gardner Museum that was once a private residence as well as a museum open to the public has been necessitated out of the need to accommodate an ever greater number of visitors. Such a alteration conflicts with Gardner’s own stipulation that her home and museum remain as it was during her lifetime. Unlike the original DeCordova collection, this museum was from its inception a collection of unique quality and size making further additions to it, in the opinion of many to this date, unnecessary. Change, in this case, has been affected by the often welcome and rare occasion for many museums of ever increasing popularity. <br />Instead of the 2000 annual visitors of Gardner’s own time, there are 175,000 annual visitors and more anticipated for the future. The structure simply can’t handle this many people for another one hundred years, so its stewards have to act accordingly. Public access to the structure is being scaled back. New additions will simply help to relieve the demands on the overtaxed structure, so that those who wish to see its treasures can.<br />The response to the similar circumstances of increased demand for access to the Albert Barnes’ Collection in Marion, PA perpetuated a similar remedy whereby the benefactor’s original demands could no longer be met. Given that this once private institution chose to stand under the aegis of non-profit and tax exempt status it had to shed its long standing elitist pre-requisites, including a onsite tutorial on how to view art on view before getting access to the galleries. Characterized as both products of “aesthetic fanaticism’ and “egomania” these very specific rules kept much of the public out. The Barnes Foundation’s location in a quiet suburban neighborhood contributed further to its exclusivity. <br />Public criticism of the museum’s location more than anything else threatened its survival, so in complete defiance of Barnes’ will his collection went on tour. The unmatched Picassos, Modiglianis, Cezannes, Soutines, Matisses, and others came down from the benefactor’s own bizarre displays that included examples of hand forged door hardware and other oddities. Regarding much art criticism as “philistine aestheticism,” Barnes had published his own aesthetic ideas regarding how art should be displayed and used for educational purposes. Unlike DeCordova, Barnes had a collecting frenzy informed by an eye that was in every sense avant garde, collecting Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modernist paintings before all others thought to do so. He purchased few fakes because he met the artists in their studios. No one wants to de-accession his collection but they do want it temporarily out of the suburbs and into the National Gallery and other world class exhibition venues so that ever greater numbers can appreciate it (Higonnet, 1994). Defying Barnes was necessitated by the need to preserve the collection as a collection, as well as make it available to the entirety of the public once and for all. Barnes himself like it or not is even more securely immortalized as a result of this decision, and his museum become a more efficient entity for educating the public.<br />There is a distinction between unfettered museum growth and the natural progression of a museum whereby donations are sought and received to secure a collection that is both unique and important. De-accessioning may be a necessary stage of that growth whereby a museum ultimately chooses over time, and given the opportunity, the best examples for its collection to preserve long term. It may be just as important to provide greater accessibility to a finite collection as it is to scale back an institution’s unfettered collecting habits in the interest of public good. Providing greater accessibility to a collection maximizes its educational impact on ever greater numbers. It provides more efficient use of a commodity that would otherwise be seen by few yet incur great cost for continued preservation. We not only have to insist on more fuel efficient cars in the wake of the challenges surrounding the availability of energy and resources in the 21st century but also more efficient collecting and display methods at our public museums to insure the survival of these institutions that serve to disseminate both our history and culture.<br /><br />References<br />Higonnet, Anne, “Whither the Barnes?— Controversy Surrounding the Barnes Foundation’s Touring Exhibition of French Paintings,” Art in America, March, 1994 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n3_v82/ai_15244458/pg_10 Accessed 10.3.08Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-5237535548327618622008-12-17T14:59:00.000-05:002008-12-17T15:00:27.072-05:00When Is It Time To Leave?At what point does the museum professional decide that their career, sanity, and valued time outweigh their commitment to the success of a single institution? The time to leave may be simply when the battle has been long and hard fought, and there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel for this particular institution. Your life and talents might be better spent some place else.<br /><br />In the past year I have witnessed, albeit on the outside looking in, some of the skirmishes and full-fledged wars between directors and their boards. At last year’s NEMA conference I attended a “seminar,” that may have been more appropriately named museum melodrama, that seemingly brought one museum professional’s ongoing twenty plus year battle with the powers that be at an historic state building, which includes art and objects dating back to the 17th century, to the level of tragedy ( Names have been avoided so as not to exasperate an already volatile situation). The presenter nearly broke down several times while imparting the details of her battle, as its official caretaker, with her “board” and state officials seemingly apathetic and unresponsive to her pleadings for added funds. She has worn many hats in her capacity as director and has bounced back and forth between full and part-time status over the course of two decades in her devotion to this cause. I have to ask myself whether her seeming martyrdom for this collection is justified?<br /><br />She, like so many museum professions, will never receive the recognition they deserve. Such sacrifices are a given of the profession, but when the fun, enthusiasm, and reasonable financial compensation are gone its time to leave and find a place where you are once-again reminded of how much you love working in a museum. This professionals own seemingly hopeless plight was further evidenced by the fact that one of her board members had chosen to come to the conference, attend this particular seminar, and sit directly in front of her, as she proceeded to air the institution’s dirty laundry. The “board” member introduced herself as having a “different” purpose in attending this seminar and conference than other attendees in the room, including myself, in that she was here “to hear the complaints” of this director.<br /><br />I had to ask myself had this particular director done all that she could do, if one of her board had to come all this way to hear her complaints? To be fair, this particular board member seemed empathetic to the museum director’s challenges on some points, and this was indicated when she directed her to elaborate on the issue of a leaking roof, its threat to an important mural in the collection, and that this was merely one of many impending threats this director faced on a regular basis.<br /><br />Given the obvious tension in the room between these two women, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to deal with this for decades? What had been a seminar entitled “College & University Museums: Professional Affinity Group Museums within Larger Institutions” turned out to be, in this particular case, a venue to cry on the shoulders of fellow museum professions, and future professionals, who experience problems in various degrees at their own institutions. This is par for the course. Signs of the attending audience’s irritation were obvious; several skulked out of the room while others stood their ground and rolled their eyes periodically or sighed aloud so that everyone could hear. There were also some whose sympathy extended to some great suggestions in the Q & A portion of the “presentation.” Someone suggested that it was futile to remind the powers that be that this collection is part of every citizen’s cultural heritage and worthy of greater financial attention.<br /><br /> This insightful audience member reminded us that this director’s superiors were elected officials who were given the responsibility of finding funds for this state collection’s preservation during their term of office and who also appointed board members to oversee its maintenance on a more immediate level. She further clarified that politicians only respond to larger constituencies that jeopardize votes and hence their political survival, so this particular director’s pleadings alone are and would always be futile. She suggested turning the situation against her unsupportive board and, ultimately, a political administration responsible as its caretaker by both surveying a public and making the fact that this collection, which has long served to educate school children on field trips and outreach programs, is in jeopardy of deteriorating through financial neglect. This might incite parents to contact these politicians and voice concern. An exhibition about this collection’s positive influences on succeeding generations of citizens, through testimonies, oral histories, etc., might serve the cause.<br /><br />If this director has reached a point where she is consumed by her own complaints and the futility of her own actions in accomplishing what she needs to accomplish, then it’s time to pack it in and move on. The institution itself might benefit from someone new at the helm. The resigning director might find a new cause, a new museum, and invigorate her own career. Of course, someone who has been entrenched in one institution in a community for more than twenty years has much of their life invested to simply walk away. Advocating such a response is rooted in the believe that the future of the only life we have and finding greatest happiness we can in it supercedes all and hustifies taking risks, periodic change, and life reassessments. People are living longer and healthier lives than ever, and that has inevitably meant that we can reinvent ourselves, have more than one career, learn more in a lifetime, accomplish more than we ever thought, if we allow ourselves to do so. “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.” In this case, after twenty years, for this particular director, it’s time to run.Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-991919467202997912008-12-16T10:16:00.000-05:002008-12-16T10:18:12.631-05:00Museums Can't Satisfy Everyone, or Can They?Museums can’t satisfy everyone, but they can seek to serve more of the public than they have in the past. Recently, Claudine Brown, Program Director for Arts and Culture at the Nathan Cummings Foundation, remembered a "Town Meeting" that she attended in Detroit where community members argued over a future plan for a museum that would serve to educate the public about American slavery was especially poignant. Some are ignorant to believe that all African Americans feel the same about how that episode in history should be portrayed, displayed, and conveyed to succeeding generations of all Americans. The presumption is that everyone in a community, in which there is a shared heritage, religion, etc., are on the same page about anything could be seriously damaging to a museum’s public relations.<br /><br />There is a responsibility on the part of the museum to hear more voices and consider the views and interests of ever greater numbers of the public. One respondent at the "town meeting," according to Brown, wished that her children not be exposed to the graphic portrayal of slavery. Another opposed that view arguing that it was necessary that this part of his heritage be remembered by this and future generations. Both of these public respondents had valid arguments. The two clashed, and their respective views were eventually overshadowed by personal insults. The important thing is that they were given a forum to voice their opinions and were heard by museum planners.<br /><br />This anecdote made me think about new mediums of communicating in and outside the museum, like Internet blogging. Such mediums might serve the task of reconciling such arguments and others in response to new museums, their missions, and their exhibitions. In fact, blogs promise a more effective public forum for both present and future exhibitions. In such a scenario, a mediator, the museum’s voice in a blog created by the museum itself, can more effectively bring opposing views to a common ground. They can use such a tool to sell their ideas as well as meld them with some of the community’s. The condition of writing one’s response and sending it allows for greater consideration and less impassioned reaction. One can write and revise one’s thoughts before sharing them. What has proven so effective in emailing is true for blogging too.<br /><br />Of course, blogging can be expensive in that it is a time glutton for paid museum staff, but isn’t this important if the museum is committed to knowing the views of the public and if it is interested in "new audiences"? The respondents to such a blog about an upcoming event or one presently underway will be limited, but it is important that the museum has been responsible for such a public forum. It is important that they have been responsible for a dialogue with their visitors or potential visitors. Such dialogues don’t often happen. This venue has allowed visitors to communicate among themselves about art and history that they feel impassioned enough about to respond to.<br /><br />Blogs can be used in the actual museum’s exhibition labeling, as I have seen done recently. Such a venue allows the possibility of the museum reconsidering their choices and gaining further insight into the views and interests of their community. We must be reminded that these considerations are the antithesis of the museum in the past when an elite considered their own interests and values and used the museum to impose these on the public en masse. The blog is one more communication tool in a new era which promises a shared forum for those with long-held influence in assuring their imprint on what museums do and can do with those previously alienated and anticipatory of a shared stake in the future message of museums.<br /><br /><strong>References<br /></strong><br />Brown, Claudine, Program Director, Arts and Culture, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Guest Lecture, Tufts University, Medford, MA, 22 Oct. 2007.Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-73012771619467674802008-12-12T12:50:00.005-05:002008-12-12T19:33:54.461-05:00Is Disney-ification a Good or Bad Thing For Museums?I remember watching Ken Burn’s The War on PBS last year. What I found most fascinating were the interviews with not only soldiers from the time but the civilians. It was the story of the home front that was the unique contribution of this documentary. The fact that much of what these civilians understood about the war at the time so radically differed from what soldiers in the field were experiencing reveals something profound about the nature of truth even in a time when photography and other modern means of documentation could seemingly serve as indisputable evidence of what was going on. These individuals' later realization of their own ignorance about the involvement of other US civilians, their capture, and imprisonment by the Japanese in places like the Philippines, was especially poignant.<br /><br />These wartime realities were both underplayed in the contemporaneous press or simply unreported as these wartime civilians were to learn, and this not only exemplifies once again that the first casualty of war is always the truth but something even more revealing about American cultural identity itself. The fact that the truth was kept from the US civilian population during the Second World War is pertinent to a discussion of Disneyification, and how this phenomena is symptomatic of a long standing cultural complacency with both half-truths and inaccuracies regarding our nation’s past and present.<br /><br />Many may argue that not knowing the truth has had its advantages over being in the know during the critical period of a war, but much of what happens in our own time, the history of yesterday, is also kept from the public or sanitized by those responsible for telling us “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…”. The movie industry has been just as guilty for providing us with an alternative and often more palatable truth than the real. There is no denying the fact that the film medium sadly serves as a significant source for Americans’ understanding of themselves as well as the worlds’ understanding of Americans. I believe that recognizing this fact initiates a responsibility on the part of the industry to be held more accountable for the historical accuracy of their product, or should we simply anticipate greater accountability on the part of the public for finding out the truth?<br /><br />The film industry’s portrayal of history has been from its beginning selective. Consider for one how many Black cowboys we have seen on the big screen or on TV, when scholars tell us that a third or more were. There is a long standing public complacency with not only movies “Based on a True Story” but many “living” history museums as well; the public simply accepts what is told to them. All of this is better defined as the Disneyification of our history. Disneyification of US history has also been embodied in museum blockbusters. These have the packaging of pop culture and a substance consisting of little scholarship in some cases. They have been the subject of repeated debate among supporters and opponents.<br /><br />Having pointed out that a product of these blockbusters is sometimes a flawed and exaggerated historical record out of regard for greater marketability, I, nevertheless, see the blockbuster itself as serving a useful role. They draw in ever greater numbers of the public into the museum that might otherwise never come. They are an addition to everything else that the museum does to preserve and educate, and as long as scholarship is maintained by the institution for its many other exhibits and offerings their existence is justified. There is also no reason that the more accepted historical truth couldn't be just as marketable if exhibit planners and developers put their heads together. <br /><br />Public opinion can be the only means by which the movie industry can be held accountable for what dramatized history it chooses to present. The same goes for the living history museum and other similar institutions. To be fair there has been an increased attention to historical accuracy in recent years by both industry and institutions that peddle the past. My problem with the film industry is that there is often no effort to reveal fact or urge the public to research the real and un-dramatized truth because a film is the product of artistic license. Meanwhile the impressionable are misinformed about history, and this can have avoidable corrupting effects on segments of society.<br /><br />It seems that it has more often been easier to accept the status quo rather than demand that we all be enlightened about the unsavory side or less interesting side of history that both movie makers and living history museums sometimes make ever more palatable. This sanitization of history in places like Colonial Williamsburg has been and continues to be deliberate and in its extreme potentially destructive, for it avoids rather than addresses for the purpose of educating issues like “slavery, disease, and class oppression.” If historical integrity can’t be maintained graphically in the setting of a living history museum, then it is seemingly that institution’s obligation to clarify this daily for the visiting public in big bold print or by some other means.<br /><br />According to Richard Handler and Eric Gable’s The New History in an Old Museum (1997), Ada Louise Huxtable, the famous architecture critic, said in response to Colonial Williamsburg’s opening that it was “preparing the way for the new world order of Disney Enterprises,” a condition that would “systematically” foster “the replacement of reality with fantasy.” Huxtable believed that such ventures would teach Americans “to prefer---and believe in---a sanitized and selective version of the past.” I think that’s true, for that institution and many others like it continue to thrive. It thrives because they succeeded at finding the right packaging and the right amount of verve to sell history as a commodity just like bread with the “Wonder” label added.<br /><br />Many have gone further in their condemnation of Colonial Williamsburg characterizing it as metaphorically too clean and a sell out to the obligation of historical integrity for the dollar, or more recently, some eighteen dollars per person or more. Huxtable herself liked the word “sanitized, ” for in addition to the colonial costumes, carriages, and houses that have been so splendidly reproduced or restored on an original colonial site, there were many other realities for the religiously oppressed, the slave, and the indentured (44). Where are the slaves, who numbered more than the whites, and the poor whites in rags, the Catholics hiding and practicing their religion in dark corners, the shanties, the all pervasive smell of sewage and animal manure, the slave auctions, and those bound in chains and dragged through the streets like livestock? These are some of the exclusions from the streets of this colonial capitol.<br /><br />Colonial Williamsburg staged a re-creation of a slave auction some ten years ago, but the public simply couldn’t handle it. There was much protest, and this reenactment was removed from the schedule. On any given day 200 plus year old reproductions of Colonial Williamsburg’s daily paper are printed and made available to visitors. Prominent in the classified section are advertisements for slave auctions and missing slaves, yet seeing that in the flesh was too much for audiences. The decision to abridge history at places like Colonial Williamsburg perhaps is justified for Americans may simply like their mix of entertainment and history with ice rather than straight up.<br /><br />Do we want to be reminded of all the inhumanities to our fellow man that underscore the building of this nation by portraying history as it was in the living history museum? Or do we spend the day walking across its pristine village green surrounded by pristine period homes to the sound of horse hooves, ringing anvils, and re-enactors in well- laundered costumes? The visiting public, that has become even more inclusive in recent years, hasn’t demanded much more “history” than they have been getting for the last 60 years at Colonial Williamsburg, so what makes us think that our history of history telling will change at institutions like this? With greater public cognizance of the many embarrassment of our nation’s history , it might be that much of the public simply prefers Disneyification?Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-27105460250155438392008-12-05T12:13:00.004-05:002008-12-07T20:17:18.136-05:00On Displaying Human Remains In the MuseumMuseums sometimes cross the boundaries of tastefulness when opting to display human remains over some more acceptable substitute, like a molded plaster body or a fiberglass mannequin.<br /><br />This is not surprising. Such decisions are motivated by the financial rewards that such exhibits promise. A display of human remains produces the requisite amount of thrills, shock, and any number of other expletives that crowds have long come to expect from the museum. Many are offended, but there are just as many or more who expect such sensations from museums. P.T. Barnum, one-time proprietor of the American Museum in antebellum New York, was among pioneers of what would become the modern museum and he tested the limits of propriety on every occassion he could.<br /><br />Realizing the public’s taste for nature’s superlatives: the tallest, the smallest, and bizaare, he sought to put all under one big roof and, later, under a even bigger tent. These attractions seem every bit as inappropriate as displaying the mummified dead in a natural history or fine art museum , if we consider that Barnum's "attractions" were both exploited and humiliated by their "display," even though they were compensated financially. These people were defined as freaks and likened to, among other things, animals and otherworldly creatures all day and daily, for, as Barnum would coin, "a sucker is born every minute." That condition alone tested the limits of morality. There were Figian mermaids floating in alcohol, the likes of the living and breathing Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins, and an odd mummy or two. Barnum's "displays," although arguably in a museum of a different sort than the scholarly institutions of today, fed an insatiable public appetite for something out of the ordinary, the sensation, the shocker. The public's insatiable appetite for the shocking remains to this day, although technology has allowed for the greater dissemination of each new example and the number of those who can exploit it.<br /><br />Some older museums have more recently been getting on the bandwagonclearly realizing the potential of their own collections to shock and draw in greater numbers of the public. Consider Philadelphia’s own College of Physicians Mutter Museum. Who would have thought that such a museum would have interested anyone outside the medical community, and for the longest time no one did. Now its an extremely popular destination for whole new audiences. Here one can see the human body in every imaginable position and from every imaginable viewpoint, including inside out (and there is a plaster mold of Barnum's one-time attraction Chang and Eng here too).<br /><br />The major draw to its doors are human bodies preserved through a process known as plasticization. Although these bodies were indeed real, I often had to remind myself, for they often defied my experience and imagination. What makes these displays of human bodies acceptable and other displays of human remains unacceptable or tasteless, like that of the 500 year old Incan teenagers or the long displayed remains of Pharoahs that have raised objections in recent years? Weren’t these bodies once intended for education of physicians alone? Weren’t these bodies donated by their onetime living owners for the purposes of medical enlightenment? Maybe many never had the choice of what would become of their remain, and they were simply taken from the morgue? Regardless of how these bodies came to be in this museum, they have taken on a role beyond their original intention.<br /><br />These plasticized bodies don’t serve merely as tools for instruction anymore, but as cheap thrills for many who seek an afternoon of entertainment without ever considering that some might consider this somehow degrading to humanity itself. This makes this museum as guilty as any other museum of not only tastelessness but of maligning humanity itself. But even realizing that, and rebuking ourselves for it, we might still line up and see what there is to see; I, for one,<br />Financial rewards far outweigh consideration of the far fewer number of people that will voice their objections to such practices.<br /><br />Consider the objections of Rudy Guiliani, then mayor of New York, to the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition of Chris Ofili’s depiction of The Holy Virgin Mary in the Damien Hirst's sensational exhibition <em>Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection</em> / <em>Sensation </em>some ten years ago? I can understand a comparable lack of sensitivity to the sanctity of one religious group’s belief when a museum chooses to exhibit a work that seemingly maligns it with a depiction that includes both elephant dung and pornographic cut-outs. I don’t think that Catholics should be any less accepting of such a decision on the part of a museum to objectify a heritage that might include 500 year old Incan teenagers sacrificed and placed on an Andean mountain or ancient Egyptians whose intent was to be sealed in their tombs for all eternity.<br /><br />No matter how you slice it you come out with museums defiling something that is sacrosanct to a whole group of people. If we stand by the opinion that any one of these scenarios is a defilement on the part of a museum then we can't really excuse any display of the dead regardless of how long they ahve been dead or from what culture they originate. Mummies seem to be an exception for many because their place in the museum orginates with the concept of the modern museum itself. Their age and seemingly lacking connection with a living group ( The modern Egyptian minority known as Coptics certainly claim a greater connection than those who distinguish themselves as Arab Egyptians).<br /><br />It shouldn't be overlooked that there is a long tradition of defiling the bodies of ancient Egyptians, not only have they been unwrapped and put on display now for centuries ( and this happens to this day—Ramses II had to be treated for mold in recent years, so he was unwrapped temporarily to treat the problem at the Egyptian Museum ). Mummies were also once pulverized and sold for medicinal purposes to Europeans in the nineteenth century. They have been carted around the world and most obviously detached from their intended eternal resting place. That seems pretty tasteless and base, if you think about it.<br /><br />Europeans were in large introduced to the mummy through the ministrations of Napoleon in military campaigns that also succeeded at both documenting and plundering Egypt for its antiquities long before most other nations thought to do so. The foundation of the Louvre’s own collections is thew product of Napoleon’s own love for history and his propensity for bringing back whatever he could in his attempts at world conquest. But the Napoleonic French weren't the first to desecrate the graves of dead Egyptians, which was and is a largely a byproduct of accessing the priceless treasures that accompanied them in their eternal rest. These remains had been desecrated a thousand years earlier by the Byzantines first and then the Arabs, and while there surely those who saw the opportunity to make a quick buck by doing so the greater number saw it as a religious obligation.<br /><br />Should we accept the practice of displaying the remains of ancient Egyptians because there is a tradition of doing so within our own culture of some two hundred years? Should the age or cultural origins of human remains determine whether they should be exhibited in a museum, or should all human remains be treated equally and not exhibited?Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-28411385577564171032008-11-16T09:57:00.000-05:002010-08-01T10:09:46.853-04:00Museum Remix; Further Consideration of 3D Virtual Surrogates for Real Museum ObjectsThe term "remix" has come to identify the phenomenon whereby a body of knowledge is understood through technology that rearranges and re-contextualizes it "in order to construct an original narrative," as would any multimedia emboldened web-based version of a museum object. Adopting such tools undoubtedly re-emphasizes the role of collections for public use and interest, while making their ability to inspire learning more participatory (Fisher 2007). Perhaps the most exciting innovation regarding the creation of surrogate virtual objects, and exhibitions to contextualize them within, is 3D imaging and modeling. Jim Forrest, Web Creative Director of the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts, sees the three-dimensional as the "next big phase" of web-development for online museum resources. His own recent projects include work on the virtual exhibition Joseph Cornell; Navigating the imagination (2007), which allows for interactive play and study with some of the artist's shadow boxes in simulated three-dimensions through the use of Flash animation and video, specifically Macromedia Flash Player 8.<br /><br />One choice within this ongoing exhibit is to visit Cornell's "Little Dream Gum Machine," where the viewer can drag and drop a virtual penny into a slot to activate it. The penny cascades down the machine's revealed innards activating a link to other 2D digital versions of shadow boxes. this interactive play allows you to navigate through the collection and learn by seeing. Online web pages also serve adults and young learners at onsite computer kiosks like PEM's Art and Nature Center. Instruction on how to fold paper animals is among the hands on activities offered through Flash video in the <em>Origami Now Folding Station 2007</em> web page for the exhibit <em>Origami Now!</em> (2007). Viewers learn by seeing and doing.<br /><br />In addition to the digital images of origami works of art in <em>Origami Now!</em> , the computer-based interactive experience of this exhibit puts art in the context of not only something that is made by the artist, but something that you can make. Children and adults are enabled to learn what one can in the museum seemingly independent of educators, and this too may lend itself to unique experiences with objects and the hows and whys of their creation. The code of behavior required wthat barred the visitor from fully exploring the intricacies and the suggestive play of the real objects of Joseph Cornell's shadow boxes in the PEM exhibition are abandoned through the interactive play and study provided by these offerings in 3D animation and video. 3D virtual experiences with these objects are experientially more real than the more conventional single, frontal digital stills of objects contained in a digital collections database or the real object itself maintained within glass vitrines and motion detecting security fields whih put them out of reach of the visitor.<br /><br />A collections database comprised totally of 3D images is for the time being unrealized at any museum, but there have been some, like PEM, that have taken the lead in creating examples of objects and environments that make use of a number of technologies which maked interactivity and simulated multi-dimensional study possible. The evolution of simple virtual representation of objects as exemplified by 360 degree rotational views and magnification options of detail have already been superseded by "modeled reconstruction and deconstruction" of virtual objects as exemplified in IBM's <em>Digital Pieta</em> project as well as by "virtual replacement of artifacts <em>in situ</em><br />at their point of creation or discovery as experienced in the <em>Eternal Egypt</em> website (Tolva 2005). Although identified as 3D , such images are in reality 2D, but through various techniques like graphic modeling, digital video, and synching multiple digital stills of a real object using multimedia software like Flash (action software) and QuickTime to run it, three-dimensionality can essentially be simulated.<br /><br />Any sampling of some of the most innovative uses of 3D imaging and modeling would include the Webby award-winning design of Second Story Interactive, the Monticello Explorer website, which includes the design and home of Thomas Jefferson. Visitors can navigate through a black and white 3D model of this famous home. Entering, one pans each room's contents clicking on architectural details or furnishings to reveal their detailed construction. Among other details, a parquet floor panel reveals the full schematics of its intricate weave of multiple pieces of wood though animation offered by Flash software. Clicking a camera icon reveals a photographic image of specific details. IBM Research's State Hermitage Museum website is another that includes numerous "virtual viewings" of objects. A virtual model of a "mechanical orchestra," an elaborate clock, rotates 360 degrees to reveal side panel doors and the mechanisms within. IBM's Visual Technological Department has developed "graphics, visualization, and image technologies for extracting, conveying, and visually communicating information" about art and historical objects (IBM Research).<br /><br />Another IBM project was the aforementioned , detailed 3D model of Michelangelo's <em>Pieta</em> which made use of a scanner that measured the shape and appearance of every portion of the original sculpture. This scanned information was merged together to create an amazing virtual object that can be manipulated and examined unlike the real. Moreover, this website allows the viewer to imbed the <em>Pieta </em>in a number of virtual environments that virtually re-create it in its <em>in situ</em> circumstances. Other applications might include an object's point of creation or discovery. This evidences possibilities for new and interesting ways to re-contextualize objects and "help audiences see them and experience them differently" for possibly greater educational impact (Tolva 2005; Freedman 2003). The interactive viewer cannot peruse the whole but virtually dissect it and isolate each of its two figures for study. The more interactive features of this site, and others, only provide simplified virtual versions of the object whereas elements of lmited interaction are of higher resolution. This is also true of magnifying tools extant. Greater magnification of details results in decreased resolution. In the website <em>Eternal Egypt </em>, four directional arrows allow easy 360 degree rotational views of objects included, but virtual objects like the "Throne and Footrest of Tutankhamen" become increasingly fuzzy with use of the "zoom."<br /><br />Simulated 3D has been around for quite some time. The National Research Council of Canada (NRC) experimented early with what 3D models could contribute to virtual display in Canadian museums (1995). Seven figurines were among the first objects scanned at high resolution in color for the purpose of interactive 3D virtual display. The intention was to allow visitors both a "microscopic" and "stereoscopic" view of the figurines using "active shutter glasses." This technique, intended for in-house computer kiosks, allowed enhancement of details, which were difficult to see on the real object. This use of 3D technology emphasized a potential use as a complementary element to traditional exhibitions and not as a substitute. In addition, the NRC has "designed and tested...3D laser imaging systems and processing algorithms with the aim of improving high-resolution modeling of complex objects and environments" for use in museum environments (NRC).<br /><br />Earlier than any applications to museums, CAD (Computer-Aided Design) software assisted in the 3D digital rendering of structures and objects. CAT scanners and MRI machines provided 3D modeling of the human body and are well known for the purposes of medical diagnosis. Computer modeling is characterized by a digital wire frame or "mesh" that can be manipulated or allow one to render images, diagrams, or animations. One can "add, subtract [from], and sketch on this mesh. The models can be viewed from a variety of angles, simultaneously, as well as be rotated and viewed from different magnifications. More complicated modeling software, with the desired goal of close virtual reproduction of the real, requires the entering of mathematical coordinates in order to achieve exactitude. The relevancy of such multimedia tools to public interest is evidenced by Google's own purchase of the rights to and offering of the free downloadable software Sketch-Up, an "easy-to-learn" program that allows one to achieve the "conceptual stages of design" through 3D modeling. One of the popular, purchasable programs also available is 3DS MAX 2009 offering a menu of basic forms that can be pulled, prodded, stretched, among other possibilities, to achieve a desired form. The templates are all based on a polygon mesh that once shaped serves as a type of armature for additional characteristics, including texturing. Such a modeling program allows for full motion video, i.e. animation, of the rendered object or environment (Autodesk 2008). <br /><br />For research, modeling may focus on the "shape and curvature" of real objects like "ceramic vessels, bones, and lithic [tools]." By plotting the measurements of height, width, surface area, and the like of the real on a malleable digital mesh, spatial definitions can be achieved. Such measurements can include even the smallest irregularities of curvature that succeed in creating an exact virtual rendering. This geometric type of modeling can be achieved through scanning the real object, with hardware like Cyberware Scanners, M15 & 3030. Multiple images of the scanned object are superimposed upon each other creating an on-screen three dimensional mesh version of it. Accuracy varies from one scanner to the next, and there is always another better model on the horizon (Rowe 2003;Voltoni 2007). Such accuracy could include "high resolution digital images" not unlike analog photos from the same vantage point," but interactivity is usually only possible at "20 frames per second." The limitation is due to the human brain's ability to detect "latency or jitter" with a greater number of frames as well as "loss of interactivity." Photorealism and smooth navigation are still not plausible "without some compromises" (Voltoni 2007). Not yet anyway.<br /><br />These developments promise greater safety and preservation of real objects because they offer an alternative to the repeated handling necessitated by conventional exhibition and educational purposes. There is the possibility of effecting reduced labor in the composition of detailed condition reports and descriptions with the existence of 360 degree rotational views of objects through mouse clicks. Such a record would detail more about the object than is usually included in the several paragraphs of written description and the requisite one or two digital stills that comprise many digital collections databases. For the researcher, connoisseur, and the curious alike the visual totality of this virtual version could be made available for examination online. The museum space itself has from its conception made views of objects in their totality prohibitive, if not impossible.<br /><br />There is urgency for greater consideration of developing technologies like 3D imaging and modeling objects in museum collections. Realizing virtual surrogates for real museum objects is a remedy for the prohibitions necessitated by the need to preserve and protect. Preserving and protecting has indirectly inhibited the learning styles of many in the museum and limited contexts by which objects can be enjoyed and appreciated. 3D imaging and modeling offers not only the best virtual surrogate to the real for the purpose of protecting and preserving it, but it allows a greater offering to the "seven ways of learning," specifically allowing tactile, kinesthetic, spatial experiences not usually options at most museums (Millicent Rogers). In addition, there are endless connections to be made by learners through the tools of multimedia interactivity that would allow greater possibilities for thematic programming and addressing every learning style.<br /><br />One afternoon not long ago a student viewing the exhibit <em>The Artist's Book as Volume of Knowledge </em>by artist Angela Lorenz at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, MA asked whether it was possible for a "board game" entitled <em>South American Trading Game</em> depicting a world map and the lasting effects of colonialism as its theme, could be removed from the glass case so he could play it. The museum educator leading this student's class held back a snicker and asked his peers why that wasn't possible. One dutifully answered that this was art and that it had been placed in the glass case so that people couldn't handle it, soil it, damage it. The fact you couldn't play it seemed the most obvious restriction, but that, strangely, wasn't verbalized. The fact is that this work was designed as a game with an important lesson to be learned from it. Games by their very definition involve play, but this particular one and others in the exhibit allowed no such interaction. It occurred to me that beyond merely looking at, hearing about, and verbally responding to this art and other works within a traditional museum experience, there are tactile and kinesthetic cues embodied that remain unanswered and are essentially stifled by the need to preserve and protect.<br /><br />A consolation might be that these works by Lorenz are being seen and are inspiring discussion whereas many museum holdings and artist's creations are rarely, if ever, seeing the light of day, for they are packed away in archival boxes or stored on shelving in undisclosed storage facilities. A case in point is the Boston Children's Museum (BCM)'s greatest kept secret, its own teeming collection of cultural artifacts which largely dates from a time when museums for young visitors sought to create holdings identical to the ones for adults. This museum, and others like it, have dramatically changed their attitude about using museum objects for hands-on learning experiences off-site in area schools as they once did in the 1930s-1950s; subsequently, collections policies have changed regarding the acquisition of new objects because they are still wresting with what to do with what they have. One solution has been to de-accession allowing other institutions the opportunity to use these objections to serve their missions. Much remains though at the Children's Museum with no forseeable plans to get objects out of storage and exhibit them. <br /><br />Not only has museum practice changed regarding these sometimes extremely valuable objects in some cases, but a revitalized emphasis on hands-on activities and interactive play with expendable and safe facsimiles may keep the sometimes dangerous and precious real McCoys once similarly used for education behind closed doors forever (Schwarzer 2001). Object cataloging, never of high priority, is frustratingly incomplete and sometimes nonexistent, and an effort to create a digital representation of each object is slowly underway, and this labor intensive and time consuming process may offer hope for bringing these objects, at least as a digital image, back into public view again. <br /><br />What can be done? When asked this question, BCM Collections Manager Lindsay Richardson confided that the resources are not available for creating a complete web-based digital collections database any time soon. She dreams that one day, possibly during her tenure, this large eclectic treasure trove of samurai armor, cigar store Indians, doll houses, stuffed birds, and the like will benefit children through some type of digital interactive play. Collections that contain such artifacts may rarely if ever exhibit much of it. Their care and preservation come at great cost. Their fragility and value make public handling of them again out of the question. Exhibiting and loaning objects, no matter what preventative measures are taken, result in deterioration as well. Given this fact, many museums have become paralyzed by their obligation to preserve falling short of their one-time professed role of educating the public through these objects, but new purpose and function may correct this through the continued development and adoption of digital imaging and multimedia interactive software.<br /><br />Museums may have their cake and eat it too, for those that have created a sampling of their holdings for the public with virtual objects and exhibitions have consequently limited future handling of the real thing. Digital versions can be viewed, researched, and be part of interactive play through the click of a mouse. Implementation of a variety of 3D imaging and modeling techniques have made these virtual objects publically accessible via website and in-house computer kiosks and an even more appealing surrogate for those who need to touch and manipulate to learn, to appreciate.<br /><br />While some institutions have embraced the latest 3D imaging and modeling techniques in their offerings, many others have been slow to realize even digital collections databases which provide conventional two dimensional frontal views of each object. Creating 3D is possible with little expertise. It involves mounting a digital camera on a tripod for a series of stills. An object is placed in front of the camera and rotated at regular intervals between exposures. These stills could later be synched together and manipulated using Flash software to achieve the desired effect (Kumar 2007). Creating a virtual tour entails digitally photographing a 360 degree panoramic view of a museum space. A camera is positioned on a tripod in the center of the space and camera stills are taken at 30 degree intervals. This is repeated for "negative and positive pitch angles of 45 degrees" which can be synched together and manipulated relatively easily with satisfactory results. A scenario involving objects and an environment is achieved through a layering of elements.<br /><br />Cost is often touted as the major obstacle to fully embracing new digital technologies. It is also pointed out that adopting such technology will mean that it will have to be replaced once the next innovation comes along. Given this limitation money could be better spent on something else. There is no denying that online software products and the hiring independent designers for implementing them with state of the art interactives is expensive proposition, but museums with little financial resources could seek sponsorship, pro-bono designers, and programmers who could be compensated through promotional and advertizing benefits. The process of developing and researching a virtual exhibition is equivalent to that of a physical exhibition, but "digital information is cheaper, faster, and more flexible" in the long run. Once the appropriate software has been secured and an expertise with the software has been gained, actual production of the virtual is relatively low in cost and expenditure of <br />man hours by comparison. It seems the "ideal medium for small museums, allowing them to diversify outreach efforts, experiment with innovative display, and develop a variety of advertizing campaigns." Christian Schickelgruber, Museum fur Volkerkunde, Vienna, claims he was able to develop a virtual exhibit for "approximately a seventh of the cost" of a physical one (Muller 2002).<br /><br />Some institutions have made agreements with institutions of higher education whereby the digital images of their collection are licensed for educational use and made available through these institution's own databases. This has been a means by which smaller institutions have offset the cost of creating and maintaining digital assets. Such arrangements would likely also fall under the aegis of "fair use."<br /><br />3D virtual objects and exhibition scenarios would necessitate the maintenance required of any asset, digital or real. Data entry and upkeep are an expense. Ensuring that your system is maintaining your digital assets and their functionality would be of especial concern with 3D interactive offerings. Without functionality and easy navigation such sources are useless. Specialized knowledge of these issues and the ability to diagnose existing problems would be important to collections management staff. When licensing multimedia software for the purpose of creating 3D images and/or offering interactivity, technical support would be a necessity. Depending on how technically savvy or willing your staff is to take on the responsibility of learning to create these assets and maintain them, would determine what portion of such a project would be realized by independent designers.<br /><br />PEM, for example, contracts designers to help them realize their ideas by telling them what they can do and can't do with the particular content for a planned future virtual exhibition, usually to accompany one in the museum. Much of the construction process of writing code and testing functionality is left to PEM's own staff. This arrangement has evolved over the course of realizing many projects (Forrest 2007).<br /><br />Some larger institutions have taken the lead in forming partnerships with other institutions to realize such projects, not to mention the sponsorship that often accompanies exhibitions themselves and provides funding for accompanying digital offerings. A partnership between London's Tate and New York's MET is among those that have realized the potential revenues generated by sites which include offerings from their collections virtually realized through cutting-edge technology. Museum websites often have twice the number of visitors as the physical museum, so "retail sales of museum merchandise on these sites is likely to "generate income, possibly substantial shared revenues." Such partnerships have reportedly reaped 6 billion dollars in earnings in recent years (Muller 2002:Reilly 2001).<br /><br />A digital collections database augmented with 3D images promises quicker retrieval of collections information that would otherwise involve manually locating and removing objects from archival storage materials and subsequent hands-on physical examination. In addition, real objects need to be returned to their previous circumstances after answering inquiries, doing condition reports, or providing details to another institution that wishes to borrow the object for their future exhibition. Limiting handling of the real might be possible in many situations with accessibility to 3D images of them (Buck 18). <br /><br />Virtual exhibitions place less strain on museum staffs because they are "restricted by time." They usually don't have the urgencies associated with real exhibitions. The virtual exhibition can remain online for extended periods with little maintenance. It can be archived online as well for public access seemingly in perpetuity, and, ideally, "such accessibility could lead to a density of information that might change people's ways of seeing, interpreting, and researching" (Muller 2002). Given the "cardinal rule of a good database" to not enter information more than once, if avoidable, adopting 3D images would ideally entail adding this information to already existing fields within your current database. The labor involved in adopting such a technology would therefore be minimized. This would be dependent on whether your current database can handle such large amounts of digital information.<br /><br />In this age of heightened concern over carbon emissions and the consumption that fuels it, collections managers can take a leadership role in reducing their museum's environmental impact. Greater emphasis on virtual objects and exhibition may result in a reduction in the number of physical exhibitions which would subsequently result in the use of less packing materials for object exhibition, loans, and travel. It would also reduce the fuel use that comes with such transport (Loiko 2008).<br /><br />With any type of digital or analog photographic reproduction of a work there may be issues of copyright. Knowing what your institution can and can't do with the objects in your collection is integral to any plan for either creating an online collections database or virtual exhibition. Given that educational purpose is often a museum's chief incentive for both virtual object development and interactvity, it is likely that the obstacles that for-profit institutions regularly face may be avoided through allowances for "fair use" for educational purpose granted to the non-profit museum. Researching the existence of copyright restrictions for your specific objects is always prudent.<br /><br />Copyright may effect the digital assets themselves. Virtual objects may be considered original creative work, although it is derivative of something real within the collection. These would likely fall under separate copyright. This is evidenced by the precedence of distinctions between rights to real objects within the public domain and a museum's exclusive right to digital reproductions that they make publically available (Malaro 180). Museums should seek copyrights to all its digital assets as well as insure various safeguards, like watermarking, restricted downloading, and an inability to print such assets without license. These safeguards would be more applicable to specifically 3D images because reducing pixilation to insure low resolution images as a deterrent to theft would defeat the quality and therefore desirability of virtual surrogacy ultimately achieved through high resolution and interactivity (183).<br /><br />The fear by some that museum visitors will eventually forgo the real for the virtual is unfounded. Evidence shows that "virtual versions of works of art increase people's desires to see the real thing" (Muller 2002). There is also no denying the existence of many who are still in denial about the role of digital media to extend amd enrich "the total museum experience." High resolution imagery has its flaws just like the physical museum. One can only concede that one won't replace the other but rather serve to complement each other (Cooper 2006). Some argue virtual objects, or what they call "digital-originals," have "the maximum possible likelihood of retaining all meaningful and relevant aspects of the original"; therefore, they will function "in just the same way as the original" (Smith 2000). The virtual does allow interaction that is prohibitive with the original , but the virtual also has a dependency on functioning, hardware, a network, and expertise that becomes an additional responsibility of collections management. The virtual isn't simply better than the real. A collection of appealing real objects is always needed to serve as the basis for any type of virtual reality a museum hopes to offer.<br /><br /><strong>References</strong><br /><strong></strong><br />Autodesk 3ds Max. 9 April 2008.<br /><a href="http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/sevlet/item?siteID=123112&id=11007364">http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/sevlet/item?siteID=123112&id=11007364</a> Accessed 4.11.08<br /><br />Buck, Rebecca A. and jean Allman Gilmore. <em>The New Museum Registration Methods</em>. Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 1998.<br /><br />Cooper, Jonathan. Archives & Museum Informatics. Museums and the Web 2006 Papers: Beyond the Online Museum: Participatory Virtual Exhibitions. March 22-25, 2006, Albuquerque, NM. <a href="http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/">http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/</a> Accessed 3.28.08<br /><br />Eternal Egypt. <a href="http://www.eternalegypt.org/">http://www.eternalegypt.org/</a> Accessed 3.28.08<br /><br />Forrest, Jim, Web Creative Director, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, Guest Class Lecturer, Museums and New Media, Tufts University, 18 September 2007.<br /><br />Free Library of Philadelphia. "Medieval Manuscripts." Digital Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts. <a href="http://libww.library.phila.gov/medievalman/index.cfm">http://libww.library.phila.gov/medievalman/index.cfm</a> Accessed 3.28.08<br /><br />Freedman, Michael. Archives & Museum Informatics. Papers: Museums and the Web 2003. "Think Different: Combining Online Exhibitions and Offline Components to Gain New Understanding of Museum Permanent Collections." <a href="http://www.archimuse.com/mw2003/papers/feedman/freedman.html">http://www.archimuse.com/mw2003/papers/feedman/freedman.html</a> Accessed 3.28.08<br /><br />IBM Research. "Visual Technologies Department." 2004. <a href="http://www.research.ibm.com/visualtechnologies/">http://www.research.ibm.com/visualtechnologies/</a> Accessed 3.22.08<br /><br />IBM Research. "Pieta." 2004 <a href="http://www.research.ibm.com/pieta/">http://www.research.ibm.com/pieta/</a> Accessed 3.22.08<br /><br />Image Dtabases. Medieval Studies Program Library Resources. "Digital Scriptorium." <a href="http://www.library.u/uc.edu/mdx.medstud/imageddtbs.html">http://www.library.u/uc.edu/mdx.medstud/imageddtbs.html</a><br /><br />Johnson, Brad. Archives & Museum Informatics. Papers: Museums and the Web 2003. "Disintegration and the Museum Web experience: Database or Documentary-Which Way Should We Go? <a href="http://www.archimuse.com/mw2003papers/Johnson/Johnson.html">http://www.archimuse.com/mw2003papers/Johnson/Johnson.html</a> Accessed 3.20.08<br /><br />Kumar, Vipan. "Making of a Virtualized Museum." (May 2007) Available at SSRN: <a href="http://ssrn.com/abstract+982782">http://ssrn.com/abstract+982782</a> Accessed 3.30.08<br /><br />Lahanier, Christian, Genevieve Aitken, and Ruven Pillay. "Two dimensional multi-spectral digitization and three-dimensional modeling of easel paintings, pp. 30-42. ICOM-CC Triennial Preprints Documentation, ICOM-CC International Council of Museums/Committee of Conservation. <a href="http://icom-cc.museum/wg/Documentation/Newsletters/">http://icom-cc.museum/wg/Documentation/Newsletters/</a> Accessed 3.20.08<br /><br />Lahanier, Christian, Denis Pitzalis, Oliver Feihl, Micheline Jeanlin, Francis Schmit. "Three-Dimensional Modeling for Archeological Objects for Conservation, Visualization, Color and Shape Characterization; Comparison of Details," pp. 43-51. ICOM-CC Triennial Preprints Documentation, ICOM-CC International Council of Museums/Committee of Conservation. <a href="http://icom-cc.museum/wg/Documentation/Newsletters/">http://icom-cc.museum/wg/Documentation/Newsletters/</a> Accessed 4.8.08<br /><br />Loiko, Pat, Head Registrar, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, Guest Lecturer, Tufts University, 21 February 2008.<br /><br />Malaro, Marie C. <em>A Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections</em>. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1998.<br /><br />Millicent Rogers Museum of Northern New Mexico. "Seven Ways of Learning." Squash Blossom & Stars. <a href="http://www.milicentrogers.org/seven_ways_of_learning.htm">http://www.milicentrogers.org/seven_ways_of_learning.htm</a> Accessed 4.20.08<br /><br />Explorer Monticello. <a href="http://www.explorer.monticello.org/">http://www.explorer.monticello.org/</a> Accessed 4.10.08<br /><br />Muller, Klaus. "Going Global: Reaching Out for the Online Visitor." <em>Museum News</em>, Sept./Oct. 2002, Vol.81, No.5.<br /><br />Museum of Fine Arts. <a href="http://www.mfa.org/dynamic/sub/ctr_link_url_1341.pdf">http://www.mfa.org/dynamic/sub/ctr_link_url_1341.pdf</a> Accessed 4.8.08<br /><br />National Research Council/Canada. "3D Virtual Museum Display and Applications." <a href="http://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/vit-tiv/display-exhibit_e.html">http://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/vit-tiv/display-exhibit_e.html</a> Accessed 3.28.08<br /><br />Peabody Essex Museum. <em>Joseph Cornell; Navigating the Imagination</em>. <a href="http://www.pem.org/Cornell/">http://www.pem.org/Cornell/</a> Accessed 4.2.08<br /><br />Peabody Essex Museum. Art and Culture Center. <em>Origami Now!</em> <a href="http://www.pem.org/visit/art-nature.php">http://www.pem.org/visit/art-nature.php</a> Accessed 4.2.08<br /><br />Reilly Jr., Bernard F. "Merging and Diverging: New International Business Models from the Web." <em>Museum News</em>, Jan./Feb. 2001, Vol.80, No.1.<br /><br />Rowe, Jeremy, and Anshuman Razdan. Archives & Museum Informatics. Papers/Museums and the Web 2003; A Prototype Digital Library for 3D Collections: Tools to capture, Model, Analyze, Query Complex 3D Data. <a href="http://www.archimuse.com/mw2003/papers/rowe/rowe.html">http://www.archimuse.com/mw2003/papers/rowe/rowe.html</a> Accessed 4.13.08<br /><br />Schwarzer. Marjorie. "Art & Gadgetry: the Future of the Museum." <em>Museum News</em>, July/Aug. 2001, Vol. 80, No.4.<br /><br />Smith, Abby. "Authenticity in Perspective." Council on Library & Information resources (CLIR). 25 May 2000. <a href="http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub92/Smith.html">http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub92/Smith.html</a> Accessed 4.13.08<br /><br />van Dijk, Dick. Archives & Museum Informatics. Papers/Museums and the Web 2007: Operation Sigismund; Bringing An Archive Into Play. <a href="http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/vanDijk/vanDijk.html">http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/vanDijk/vanDijk.html</a><br /><br />Voltoni, F., and A. Beraldin, S. El-Hakim, and L.Gonzo. "Photorealistic 3D Modeling Applied to Cultural Heritage." Stock, Oliver, and Massimo Zancanaro, Eds. PEACH-Intelligent interfaces for Museum Visits, NY: Springer, 2007. http://mariovittone.com/2010/05/154/http://mariovittone.com/2010/05/154/Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-23101818869578046942008-09-03T11:50:00.000-04:002008-12-06T10:26:05.409-05:00Museum Marketing 21st Century StyleHaving visited numerous small to medium size museums, historical societies, and historical houses in the past six months, I have become acutely aware of some of the challenges that especially smaller institutions face in the wake of an ever increasing competition for the time of American audiences. Not only has "television, mass media, and electronic media ...changed the public’s recreational activities," but "for-profit corporations" have taken on an increasing role in developing "exhibitions, cultural programming, and ‘edutainment’" that continues to overshadow and threaten especially small institutions with small budgets. This competition has made the necessity for such small institutions as the local historical society to focus more directly than ever before on marketing strategies (Genoways and Ireland 258, 260).<br /><br />"Marketing," with its traditions of competition, and sometimes cut-throat at that, has often been seen by the museum community as something for them to resist. What hasn't been stressed enough among board members, administrators, and staffs, is that marketing strategies can make such institutions greater at serving their audiences, for successful marketing strategies are founded on an understanding of the public and their needs, or perceived needs. Small institutions, like the local historical society, need to step up to the plate and deliver new and attractive ways of "presenting themselves." They must drive the point home that they are the "‘the real thing,’" a place where "meaningful objects and trustworthy information" reside.<br /><br />The best strategy for this may simply be to have a greater role in the lives of the public. In doing this they negate all their fears about taking on the agenda of marketing, for greater involvement in the community through education offerings like storytime hours for children, after school programs, and school visits may alone boost exposure and ultimately greater patronage without going the road of the hard sell. These institutions also need to embrace the history of more than merely the elite of the past, present other periods in history other than the distant past, and, finally, take on the untraditional role of documenting and presenting their community’s more recent past through the mediums of our own time—digital photography and audio in order to meet market needs.<br /><br />So "taking on the point of view of visitors," or potential visitors, is a key to greater success, and it may mean that some institutions must transcend merely narratives about the 17th-19th centuries and market to the current demand for late twentieth century nostalgia by baby boomers and Gen-Xers. This may be a way to both preserve their missions, draw people in for their long existing collections, remain relevant, and grow. In saying this, I am reminded of institutions in which very dedicated individuals scratch their heads and wonder why the public isn’t coming; they and their institutions have remained static while the rest of the world have passed them by.<br /><br />What might be some of the specific marketing strategies that might make such institutions more obviously relevant in the public’s eye? The Andover Historical Society in Massachusetts has sought to reinvent how their community members come to know about their offerings. They have struck upon the idea of organizing a farmer’s market where one no longer existed. Small farms are all over its surrounding community. A high school student at the nearby Phillip’s Academy actually initiated the idea when she contacted the Society and inquired about whether a farmer's market presently existed for her to sell produce from. The Society sent out feelers about the possibility of one being created by them, and many local farmers jumped at the opportunity.<br /><br />The Historical Society provided rental space for these farmers on their property next to their historical house headquarters thus taking an active role in the making of history in their community rather than merely preserving and sharing it. This scheme not only brings in revenues from the rental spaces but also succeeds at bringing a significant number of people on the society’s grounds whereby they could be invited in and be provided with outdoor as well as indoor programming. There was significant free press coverage as a result of the success of this venture, and this has brought even more people in contact with the Society’s offerings. In sum, this was a public relations coup. Many locals admitted that they never knew anything about the Historical Society, although they passed it daily.<br /><br />There is the promise of bringing in a whole new demographic with such types of ventures, for the attendance previous to this was almost exclusively senior citizens seeking genealogical information from the Society’s research facilities. The market could also serve thematically with the extant 19th century offerings of this site. Workshops offering instruction in crafts are offered and could be further developed in conjunction with this active agricultural endeavor. Historical societies have other opportunities of making that greater connect with the public. Other opportunities might include providing "edutainment" like summer film festivals that include foreign and art titles not served by national cinema chains and additional discussion forums. Viewing could be offered outdoors.<br /><br />With the number of local cable channels available today small museums might present some of their holdings in televised exhibits, which may be as simple as having a curator or scholar talk about a piece that stands in front of him or her. Video tours of historical houses and sites and re-enactments could be the stuff of such cable programming created by volunteers and initiated by the historical society. Digital videotaping has made such a possibility affordable. Programming could also be assisted with cooperative partnerships with local schools and colleges of budding historians and media production professionals.<br /><br />It seems logical that a local historical society could market itself by taking a more active role in the technologies that pose a threat to their survival. They could establish greater relevancy by actively participating in the current documentation of a community for future posterity. What about all the information the living have about their own lives? Oral histories that involve both video and audio should be integral to a evolving mission for local historical societies. How about sponsoring reunions of local garage bands from the 60s, 70s, and 80s? Have them play for the community. Record this for posterity, for it is unlikely that this part of a communities history will be ignored, lost, and supplanted by traditional collecting practices. Do historical societies have an obligation to preserve more recent history of a community? I think they do. Adapting a society’s collecting focus goes hand-in-hand with marketing the institution to a younger public; these, after all, will inherit the institution and will be responsible for its future survival.<br /><br /><strong>References</strong><br /><br />Genoways, Hugh H. and Lynne M. Ireland. <em>Museum Administration: An Introduction</em>. Rowman Altamira, 2003.<br /><br /><strong></strong>Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-16710269198607740342008-04-28T16:22:00.000-04:002008-12-06T10:27:40.861-05:00Considering 3D Virtual Surrogates for Real Museum ObjectsWith the undeniable presence of digital technology in our lives and Web 2.0 use among an ever increasing demographic not limited to the under 30, museums cannot escape the inevitability of becoming either cultural learning organizations "that continue their traditional functions alongside new functions" or simply become obsolete (Moraga 2007). Perhaps, more correctly, museums might be more effectively meeting the responsibility of educating the public through the "science-like access to information" and the "documentary film-like storytelling qualities" that characterize online virtual objects and interactivity than tthrough traditional exhibitions. Many museums are making that shift from being "information interpreters to information providers" (Johnson 2003;Muller 2002).<br /><br />The physical museum may become more of a repository for objects safely stored away and rarely physically exhibited while "virtual surrogates that can withstand manipulation" are presented instead, taking on the function of educating greater numbers of the public than ever before (Chittenden 2007).This scenario is not limited to one replacing the other but rather virtual surrogates functioning simultaneously or on a more regular basis with the realin sometimes multiple ands differeing contexts and narratives by authors from different cultures and distant museums on other websites in addition to allowing interactive play and study.<br /><br />The museum has always been a place for learning , but learning in the age of Web 2.0 enables contact with more and different types of learners. It allows different kinds of exposure to art and artifacts which consequently make it more contributive to "innovation and growth." Although "the technological migration from material to virtual artifact is at present gradual," it is immediately worth considering that real objects may become more removed from the "the arena of public display." More museums will need to understand the underlying interpretive strategies used in and educational gains received from the virtual by a new generation of computer-savvy visitors in order for them to remain relevant to their needs and desires (Chittenden 2007).Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-67050290931882696812008-03-30T20:17:00.000-04:002008-12-06T10:28:51.068-05:00Should Museums Aim to Produce Emotional Responses From Visitors?In considering whether museums should aim to produce emotional responses from visitors, it might be prudent to consider some historical particulars of American art and exhibition that I believe are very pertinent to answering this question in an American context. America’s "Hudson River School" contributed to an early commodification of art in America. Its wilderness imagery served emotively to develop a national identity among citizens of a new nation. So there is this early pairing of art’s ability to emote a particular response from a public, to serve in developing a national identity, and to serve as a commodity, a product. Public exhibiting venues also evolved around this time too, and one phenomena that I see especially pertinent to the above question is that some early American art exhibitions exemplified a perceived need to accentuate the emotive power of representations of sublime wilderness depicted in those early American canvases.<br /><br />Leading artist Albert Bierstadt orchestrated an Indian settlement in NYC to promote his paintings of America’s primordial past and disappearing far western frontier for urbanites. Paintings by Frederick Church, like <em>Cotopaxi </em>and <em>The Heart of the Andes</em>, were not simply displayed in a frame on the wall of a white cube. They were more effectively exhibited surrounded by plants from the South American destinations they depicted and lit by gas lighting in ways that sought to recreate the real. Additionally, the simulated view of landscape sought the illusion of height and distance for audiences which would ideally emote the special fear mixed with pleasure, the sublime, that the real subject matter was said to summon. Church and others had a product to sell, and they knew how to package it. Summoning awe, disturbance, and excitement was the goal of these nineteenth century artists before the development of art museums, and thus it came to inform the development of public art exhibition itself. Given the choice of simply placing art in a frame in the white cube or orchestrating some spectacle or narrative that can evoke emotions from many, the choice is an obvious one. Successful exhibitions are often defined as much for the good business sense that made them possible as the art work in them. This has predicated the need for the more specular, the more shocking, as one upmanship is played out in the museum world year after year.<br /><br />Exhibitions, like the Brooklyn Museum’s more infamous showing of Damien Hurst’s <em>Sensations</em> is a more recent example of this phenomena. If this exhibition didn’t summon all kinds of emotions then nothing will. People knew that this was its intent and flocked to it in record numbers. Whether you want to debate whether this was art or not is another question, but I can remember that people I knew who never talked about such questions of aesthetics talked about them and even more rarely went to see what all the brouhaha was about. That makes me believe that such an "aim" is a good thing for both art and museums for it gets the public to the museum; furthermore, it may be necessitated when museums are forced like any other business for the attentions of the public in this brutally competitive market economy. Effecting emotion has obviously worked to keep many museums competitive in a race for the attention of a culture increasingly bombarded by diversions and choices.<br /><br />More obviously this "aim" has been affirmed by an ever increasing number of museums that create new narratives and present them through new mediums of exhibition. Consider the use of web sites with digital audio, video, and interactive technology that convey ideas and imagery like never before, and summon our emotions like never before. Some recent examples of the use of these new tools to convey the powerful narratives that museums are capable of include the heart wrenching tragedy of genocide in the Congo ( Ripples of Genocide: Journey through Eastern Congo <a href="http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/congojournal/">http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/congojournal/</a> ) as well as a revisitation of the Holocaust ( Life After the Holocaust <a href="http://www.ushmmorg/museum/exhibit/online/life_after_holocaust">http://www.ushmmorg/museum/exhibit/online/life_after_holocaust</a> ), among others.<br /><br />These presentations, exhibitions, and productions have been tailored to evoke emotions garnering empathy, sympathy, understanding, and, ultimately, enlightening us the seeds of such inhumanity and, ultimately, stifling it. The museum’s ability to use new technologies to produce a positive emotion in response to these particular injustices and for the good of all alone makes a very convincing argument in favor of their use.Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-10151303106751696162008-03-01T14:45:00.001-05:002010-08-01T10:53:41.494-04:00A Gallery Under The Sun: The Origins of the Sculpture Park and GardensOn a visit to antebellum America, Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley of England was struck by the lack of sculpture. The sculpture she did see in the rural cemeteries consusted largely of grave markers and memorials in the ancient geometry of the Romans, Greeks, and the Egyptians, but there were occasional sculptures in the round and bas-reliefs exemplifying the budding skills of the nation's artists to capture the human form, foliage, and flower. The circumstances for the public's appreciation for these was largely ancillary, for the focus of the cemetery was more importantly the memorialization of the dead as well as the appreciation of the natural beauty surrounding these blocks of stone. The sculpture was more specifically funerary art in forms that almost exclusively included variations on the ancient Egyptian stele, obelisks, and the repetitive classical pedestal and shaft form.<br /><br />There were also on rare occasions fully articulated three dimensional organic forms imitative of tree trunks and sawn logs in marble, yet these were historically linked with the practice of engraving two dimensional likenesses of trees, flowers, vines, and plant life that had characterized much funerary art from the early colonial period until the nineteenth century. These funerary pieces seemed to almost take root in their natural surroundings to the point of sometimes being mistaken for real trees and real logs as they weathered with time. These contrasted with the seemingly incongruent intrusions of the classically inspired square and rectangular monuments. Three-dimensional sculpture imitative of the characteristics of the surrounding landscape was almost non-existent in the antebellum era.<br /><br />The public park was the natural progression of rural cemetery design, and the early cemetery ( the word "cemetery" not coming into common use until the second decade of the 19th century in America) similarly intended as a place for public leisure in addition to being a final resting place for the dead. There was flora and foliage in an arrangement that at times attempted to mimic the randomness of wilderness growth. There were also similar arrangements of stone and an attempt to accentuate topographies with inclines for the purpose of vigorous walks and vistas requisite for quiet contemplation. These were in reality only an approximation of the real wilderness; they were more accurately a sanitized version oif the real that served to supplant everything deemed undesirable about the wilderness which ever greater numbers fantisized about experiencing in America's far western frontier by the mid 19th century. For an intelligensia, the rural cemetery, and later the public park, had a proscribed civic role. Through its offering of greenery and solitude act as balm to cure the ills of urban life. It was the sheer lack of greenery and recreational space in the wake of massive immigration and subsequent overcrowding and joblessness in the burgeoning cities of antebellum America that made such places a necessity. Some likened such projects as a release valve to an imminent collapse of all that they valued. While the early cemetery and park did serve as a temporary release for many urban Americans, it was the opportunities that lay to the West, in America's last wilderness destination, that was a more permanent release from the contraints of urban life.<br /><br />Frederick Law Olmstead was largely responsible for developing the model of the public park in America's urban centers; the prohibition of burials in these new public sites was the major deviation from the earlier rural cemetery design. Like the cemetery, memorials in stone were a characteristic of the public park too and continue to be. This sculpture similarly reflected the era’s taste for the classical. Sculpture continued to be incongruent with the then sought-after naturalness of random growth that Olmstead accomplished through engineered plantings, constructed rock formations, and graded swells. No sculpture was expressly created for the purpose of a wilderness space exuding any type of harmony with its setting. No sculpture from this time expressed a particularly environmental relationship whereby it both accentuated and became an extension of its intended natural surroundings.<br /><br />The outdoor sculpture garden, as we know it, was realized much later with Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina in the early 1930s, but it too chose sculpture that was both classical, figurative, and seemingly incongruent. The sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) was among the first to depart from the tradition of using only classical designs of sculpture in the outdoors; during the same decade works by twentieth-century modern artists would offer a radical departure from how sculpture and what sculpture would inhabit outdoor space (McCarthy 4). But MOMA, as an inner city site, lacked both the size and character of the rural setting realized in both earlier cemeteries and public parks. These sculptures were never site-specific, and this "garden" merely served as an enclave to see and appreciate these sculptures. They were not intended to be interactive or serve any purpose connected to a specifically natural setting. This concept would take longer to evolve.<br /><br />So when was sculpture expressly created with an interactive and complementary function to a specific natural setting? What were its specific characteristics? And how did it hope to realize this function in an environmental surrounding? Do sculptures from the twentieth and twenty-first century share anything in common with the goals of antebellum rural cemetery design? In order to answer these questions it will be necessary to both identify a selection of twentieth and twenty-first century artists and their works that are both site-specific and consider their planning, realization, and installation. Among the artists that might be considered is Isamu Noguchi, whose work suggests strong ties with both western and eastern aesthetic traditions. These aesthetic identities might also be considered influential to other works of the period given the cultural exchanges of the twentieth century.<br /><br />In particular, Noguchi’s installation entitled Momo Taro (1977) at Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York is of particular interest because it has been intentionally embedded by the artist into the site’s soil becoming literally one with the landscape (McCarthy 83). More recent artists like Maya Lin have achieved similar results in work that appears to naturally emerge from the landscape. Lin's skating rink park in Grand Rapids, Michigan as well as her more famous Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC provide seemingly a symbiosis of sculpture and an extant topography (Sollins).<br /><br />The work of artist Robert Smithson offers other examples of site-specific sculpture, but, unlike the work of Noguchi and others, his compositions consist of altered landscapes through either an addition or subtraction of natural materials. These he identified as "Earthworks." What makes Earthworks like Spiral Jetty (1970) particularly unique is that it is a work planned to never be finished, for the artist created an altered state of a landscape that continues to be redefined through nature’s effects on it. The rocks and gravel of its spiral shaped form continue to be salinized as a result of its situation within Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Over the past decades salt crystals have produced a layered residue on the jetty which is dramatically illuminated by the desert sun. <br /><br />Smithson also, through what he defined as "nonsites," also separated raw material from their natural setting and reconfigured them with the addition of other materials like glass and mirror shards. These works could be likened to landscape vignettes within the ubiquitous white cube known as the indoor gallery space. These works suggest further connection with the American art tradition of transmuting wilderness imagery if we consider that the rural cemetery of antebellum America was literally a reconfiguration of wild nature for public consumption (Tsai 29-31).<br /><br />While the rural cemetery ideally served the didactic purpose of exempifying how greenery and natural setting served antebellum society in positive ways. Building upon this earlier concept of making the preservation of the last vestiges of wild America beyond the city limits implicit in both rural cemetery design and public parks, contemporary artists like Mel Chin have created site-specific installations that draw attention to the chronological progression of the American landscape including the later threat of environmental pollution in order to draw attention to this condition. In his Minneapolis, Minnesota work Revival Field (1990), with agronomist R.L Chaney, his medium for three-dimensional outdoor sculpture has become the soil and plants of a specific ecology itself. This ecology is one tainted by heavy metal pollutants from area industrialization. Through cultivation of specific plants known as "hyperacumulators" within this defined area of fallow industrially tainted land, heavy metals are being drawn out through a process of engineered botanical cleansing. The plants have subsequently been harvested and processed whereby the heavy metals have been reclaimed for either disposed for further use (Sollins).<br /><br />Further exploration of these more recent artists and their work promises further understanding of a continued concern for versions of nature and wilderness in American art, their transmutation, and their transmittance. Unique to this particular time, these works exemplify not only the realization of sculptures that include landscape itself but the use of nature’s forces to realize continuously altered states of appearance. Like the material culture of nineteenth century rural cemeteries and public parks, these more recent works promise a continued dialogue about nature; its aesthetic value, its didactic function, its civic function, and the necessity for its preservation.<br /><br /><strong>References<br /></strong><br />Sollins, Susan and Susan Dowling, Art:21— Art in the Twenty-First Century, Season One, PBS Home Video, 2003.<br /><br />Tsai, Eugene. "Robert Smithson: Plotting a Line from Passaic, New Jersey to Amarillo, Texas." Robert Smithson, Ed. Eugene Tsai with Cornelia Butler, The Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004.Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-81566417030871760492007-12-20T12:47:00.001-05:002008-12-12T12:49:30.517-05:00The Creation Museum: Is It a Museum or a Church?---In response to Leah Arroyo’s “Science on Faith at the Creation Museum, Museum News, Nov./Dec. 2007 and Edward Rothstein’s “Adam and Eve in the Land of the Dinosaurs,” New York Times, 24 May 2007.<br /><br />Should institutions like the recently opened Creation Museum exist at all? Is it a museum or a church? <br /><br />The debate over whether such a “museum” should exist reminds me of many debates from the past that continue to survive among some. One debate between Thomas Henry Huxley and Matthew Arnold in the nineteenth century was rooted in the idea of science becoming an integral part of public education. Arnold, a headmaster himself and noted poet, believed that life’s mysteries would be lost with the adoption of science to school curriculum. The knowledge that such mysteries about life existed were to him more valuable than nurturing the ability to explain all that lay before us through science.<br /><br />It was the romantic William Wordsworth who authored that famous line: “We murder to dissect,” which, in essence, became a jeremiad for intellectuals like Arnold who believed that modern science would succeed at devaluing life itself through the act of “dissecting” it and thoroughly discovering how it worked. Huxley was one of the first evolutionists and his explanation of the beginning of life was a great challenge to Arnold and other like thinkers who believed the answers to these questions about man’s past had already been answered and that religious faith alone was its only test of accuracy. Contemporaries of Arnold like John Henry Cardinal Newman went so far as to belief that the fossils that evolutionists like Huxley held up as tangible evidence of their theories had been placed in the ground as a test of individual faith by God.<br /><br />Here we are some one hundred and fifty years later with a Creation Museum in our American backyard, but interestingly enough the old argument that required us to choose between one explanation or another, as resulted from the earlier debates, has instead been given an irritating twist. It seems that faith alone is good enough for selling whatever version of the beginning that official creationist dogma deems the truth in Cincinnati’s suburbs. In fact, with the idea that dinosaurs once roamed the Earth more mainstream than ever, and seemingly unchallengeable to ever greater numbers, some creationists have found it convenient to adopt the prehistoric as part of their official genesis story regardless of the fact that these thunder lizards are never mentioned specifically in the Bible. Such textual ambiguities and lack of references in the Bible have served those wishing to push particular agendas in the past so why not now. Some have explained that God’s six day work week for the creation project may not have been 24 hour long days as we recognize them to be today. It may have been some longer period of time. If such accommodations are accepted, why not also explain that these days of undefined length may have begun with dinosaurs in a distant past and ended with more recent occurrences, like, for example, 20,000 years ago, when the beginning of man’s residency on Earth has often been marked. <br /><br />Given the long establishment of secularized education and a mainstream acceptance of scientific authority, some creationists are using this new strategy of inclusion to win over converts. They mix and match science with their own interpretations of scripture-based “truth” about man’s beginning. What better means of delivery of their interpretation cum creationist view “adapted for modern readers” than through the apparatus of a modern-day museum.<br /><br />I find this especially troubling because these creationists have turned the whole notion of the secularized museum on its ear. They have done what the most heinous of propagandists of the past have done and adopted new mediums to repackage their message for an audience susceptible to the lure of flash and spectacle as a reliable source of truth. Many may argue that this is no different than religious murals of the past but shouldn’t greater literacy in the modern era made this type of propaganda obsolete? The child-like vision of the beginning as realized three-dimensionally at the Creation Museum, may be an indicator of just who is being won over to this “truth” of the beginning. <br /><br />In a recent article, one visitor is quoted as saying that” You can’t leave here without knowing the truth (Arroyo 2007).” Whose truth? In a nation that is often defined as evenly divided politically it is safe to bet that what is considered “truth” is, at least, bipolar not only politically but between those who give credence to evolutionary theory and those who don’t. Given this possibility, it is necessary that an equally strong presentation of the established opposing scientific view of “creation” be available to the public currently served by this new “museum.” The democratic conception of education itself necessitates that alternative truths be given a platform by which citizens can make informed decisions. With only a Creation Museum proximate to a portion of the population, this singular “truth” goes unchallenged.<br /><br />The fact that promoters of “intelligent design” dismiss the possibility of offering “hypotheses subject to change in light of new data” ignores one of the basic premises of modern education, the adoption of the scientific method for processing knowledge itself, so, indeed, the Creation Museum is not a museum as the concept of museums has come to be popularly defined in this or many other countries. The “museum” serves as a respected institution for disseminating religious propaganda and dogma, and because of this it is more accurately a reconstituted church.<br /><br />Because the Creation Museum makes use of the concept of “museum” as part of its identity, we should be alarmed. It is why it is the job of ICOM, AAM, and other museum organizations to educate people everywhere, including the Cincinnati area, that this is not a museum like other museums. After all, Ken Ham, AIG’s president and co-founder, admits himself that this museum is the work of “scriptwriters and designers.” Scriptwriters are responsible for fictions as well as “true stories,” but unlike them the curators of natural history museums are held up to a standard by which they act as facilitators of tangible evidence and more universally held theories rather than scripting the authorized and indisputable “truths” of a minority of church leaders. <br /><br />This “museum” should receive nonprofit status as a church, and forgo the claim of being a museum and any of the funding that legitimate museums are deserving of. The success of this “museum” would undoubtedly initiate others to follow its model, but I have faith that such museums will only succeed at selling their ideas when they go unchallenged. Legitimate natural history museums offer what the Creation Museum doesn’t, and that is a necessary openness to new discoveries and a willingness to revise their theories rather than to promote unchallengeable absolutes.Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-56946450844402434012007-11-20T11:55:00.000-05:002008-12-06T10:33:32.358-05:00More Thoughts About Being Child FriendlyMy priorities for a museum visit have changed in recent years with the addition of children to my family, so I feel that having joined an important demographic for many museums, whose target audience is the family, I have become acutely aware of the particular needs of this audience and how they might best be served. Although many museums have redefined themselves as audience-centered in the past decade and have made efforts to become more "child friendly" with increased programming and development of interactive offerings, there are many that have more quickly adopted a rhetoric and put off physical accommodations for another day.<br /><br />Often specific child age groups are ignored like pre-school children for those of school age; the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts is one that comes to mind. Although it has focused much on programming for school children, its physical plant has changed little in half a century. It hasn't struck on a way to engage children within the museum itself with its world-class collection of paintings, sculpture, and texture, although there have been some feeble attempts, or rather space and cues have been created for child audiences but without adequate staff, or even instructions for parent guided tours these remain silent and ineffective to the weekday visitor. A children's activity room lacks any written explanations for parent guides or links to the msueum's collections. There is a cool interactive screen that allows kids to draw with their finger on a screen and some other activities and second space for kids but, again, what about the collection itself; is that for adults alone? To be fair, this museum has some great print resources in their library, and space is devoted to children, but why would I come to the quietude of a museum with my children to sit in an equally restrictive library and look at books with them; I can do that at the public library with less need for restraint of my kids.<br /><br />Other art museums, like Harvard’s Fogg Museum, which has seen little change architecturally in its interior in decades, perhaps longer, offers visitors with children little, for cramped elevators don’t accommodate some strollers, there are no bathroom changing stations, or official private nursing areas that have become par for the course for many museums that seemingly want greater attendance. But maybe I speak too soon, for the Fogg will undergo a major refitting soon. Until then, some of us who want museums to be an important part of their kids' childhood will have to keep searching for that perfect experience worth frequent and continued visits. The Peabody Essex is on that short list.Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-51142379785400759312007-11-11T15:56:00.000-05:002007-11-12T08:51:46.534-05:00A Gem in Andover: The Addison Gallery of American ArtOn a recent trip to Andover, MA to visit its historical society I also visited the Addison Gallery. This was an unexpected surprise, for it has some current memorable exhibitions, and its collection, which is largely in storage, rivals that of some larger institutions in its quality and quantity of representational works from the eighteenth century through the present. In fact, I anticipate the planned expansion in the coming years and their goal of making more of this collection available for viewing to both the public and the students they serve in their extensive educational outreach.<br /><br />Until that happens, photographer Dawoud Bey's<em> Class Pictures</em> provides access to the ideas, experiences, and aspirations of American teenagers through large format portraits accompanied by a printed monologue. As part of the Phillips Academy, a preparatory school, it is appropriate that the art of its Gallery has a strong connection with one of its main audiences, school kids. That is not to say that this particular exhibit, or any of the others, will not be a treat for any age. Some of the kids depicted by Dawoud Bey express some saddening realities of being a teenager in America today, for here is neither statistic or thirty second blurb; these are thoughtful narratives that serve as self portraits to accompany this artist's portraits.<br /><br />A digital C-print of<em> Kevin</em>, who wears a zippered sweatshirt with the letters F-C-U-K emblazoned on it and self styled baseball cap, offers up his own seemingly parent-less life as an example of what has become the norm rather than the exception for many teenagers in America; he sees it as a mixed blessing in which he has "learned to value independence, hard work, and maturity, yet he has been "cursed" too by lost youth and the "burdens" he must carry alone. These are not just urban youth depicted; there are representations from public and private schools alike, including Phillip's Academy.<br /><br />At the same time that the MFA and Ipswich's own Historical Society are exhibiting work by Arthur Wesley Dow, the Addison's <em>Ipswich Days: Arthur Wesley Dow and His Hometown</em> is being offered. I was especially impressed with the photographs in the exhibit on display, for they include the rare occasion of seeing cyanotypes, a 19th century medium which required a special camera to deliver the strictly blue images. These monotone images exude an otherworldliness in their depiction of Ipwich, Massachusetts; moreover, they mimic Dow's own preferred medium of wood block prints that are also a part of this show. The influence of Japanese print on Dow is undeniable but his use of both a similar technique and color palette for scenery unique to his hometown experience make these something pleasingly unique, and something that exemplifies an American art tradition of adopting the traditions of other cultures for the sake of depicting our uniquely American landscape.Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-24437817413110656752007-11-11T12:27:00.000-05:002007-11-11T21:14:03.143-05:00The Revolving Museum in Downtown Lowell, MAI visited The Revolving Museum recently; it's worth a look. Situated in the downtown and next to a great vegetarian-granola type cafe where I got some good pomegranate elixir for the ride home. "The Electrifying: The Art of Light and Illumination" is the current feature. It is an interesting exhibit of light boxes in all shapes and sizes, but far more interesting is the museum space itself. This reclaimed 19th century brick commercial building is loaded with interesting details created by a local art community. There are all these Kurt Schwitters-type wood constructions inside that have been made from reclaimed building materials. I was especially taken with the kitchen facilities where large Matzo crackers, wheat thins, cheerios and the like have been adhered to the wall with ceramic adhesive; they were then coated with something like shellac or varnish. The effect is unique, but I couldn't help thinking that there must be roaches galore at night feeding on this ( in addition to furry pests). There is an art supply shop attached as well as an outdoor sculpture garden. Any one have any further insights into this place? Are there any other small museums worth a look at?Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-7518584591964577642007-11-10T15:49:00.000-05:002007-11-11T22:06:08.860-05:00Visiting a Museum Website: The Decordova Museum and Sculpture Parkurl address: <a href="http://www.decordova.org/">http://www.decordova.org/</a><br /><br />One issue included in any heuristic evaluation of a museum’s website design is assessing whether there was an intention for it to serve as an extension of the museum’s collections with links to educational resources, information about programs, upcoming exhibitions, activities, and the like or whether it serves as a separate and independent entity altogether. As a separate entity the museum website might offer a virtual museum experience that accentuates or supplements a parent actual museum. For my own purposes I often seek museum websites that provide further text and photos to and of those art works or artifacts that I have experienced in an actual museum, and the rare occasion seems to be websites that provide me with a comprehensive collections database. This satisfies my curiosity about works that I may have failed to learn the title of, or the artists responsible for them, after a visit to the real museum.<br /><br />The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park was one such website that satisfied my personal need for a collections database, a digital catalog of its works on display and some further insights into the mediums and the creative processes responsible for them, especially those works displayed outdoors. I saw much at my recent visit to the real museum, but there was lots of stuff I missed. A visit to its website provided a comprehensive catalog, replete with digital photos, of the DeCordova’s outdoor sculpture exhibits.<br /><br />It was this that taunted me into committing to a future visit, both actual and virtual, to rectify the deficits of my recent visit to the actual. Here, online, I was able to savor more details about the real experience of the late Nam June Paik’s Requiem to the 20th Century, 1997, among others. I learned that the spray painted Chrysler Air Stream car, central to this work, was from 1936 and not 1938 as I had thought, given the ever elusive, onsite, ground level information plaques and my distracting three-year-old’s unannounced flights to nearby sculptures like Paul Matisse’s The Musical Fence, an interactive hit with kids.<br /><br />Yes, these trivial details are important to me, the visitor. I was also able to learn that the Paik piece includes an audio of Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor and that the television screens that Paik replaced the interior view of the Chrysler with include videos of imagery indicative of the consumption, technology, and mass-culture born of the last century, if they had been functioning. It is at this time that I thought how appropriate it would have been to include a clip from those videos or even an audio that included a few bars from Mozart’s Requiem via streaming video or a podcast, since I was denied that on the actual visit.<br /><br />The website is devoid of both sound and video; something that I increasingly anticipate, since the technology is not brand new. Here, too, in a photo on the website, was one of my favorite compositions, Ronald Gonzalez’s Cones, 2006, a construction of steel armature and organic matter depicting a fantastical grouping of pine cone beings. Knowledge of this artist and the title of this work only became known to me through the website, a most important design consideration, for it is integral that you know what your audience requires of your site. Truly, Cones’ assembly in a grove of century old pine trees that enveloped it and cast it in daytime darkness put to rest for me why a museum website can never replace the three-dimensional experience of the actual; there is just so much more to be had in an actual museum experience. Beyond its offering of sculptures, DeCordova’s Park provided additional aesthetic experiences, and one of the most memorable experiences was entering a dark enclosure provided naturally by the canopy of some centuries old tree by my son and I. For this alone I would return to this Sculpture Park.<br /><br />As the site of New England’s only permanent public sculpture park with a majority of works on loan, the actual DeCordova temporarily satiated my love of outdoor sculpture display. Visiting DeCordova’s website afterwards served the purpose of further enriching that experience, through its designers’ thorough attention to not only its collections database, but archival materials of the museum’s past events, exhibitions, and insights into their education programs. The website immediately draws a visitor’s attention with its use of a moving and changing banner head that flashes the latest and upcoming attractions as well as the museum’s newest arrivals and recent "Gifts" of art by donors. Through this splash screen, there is not only a linear movement from the left to the right of text and imagery but a fading effect of that information once it reaches the right side of the page when another offering, in this sequence of four, replaces the former through gradual superimposition. This kinesthetic display makes use of a color palette of carmine red, cobalt blue, and photo gray, and these, superimposed on a home page of shades of gray, succeed at enlivening a website whose appearance would be otherwise commonplace.<br /><br />The menu of the homepage is located vertically at the right, and the offerings begin with "Exhibitions." An important aspect of Decordova’s current manifestation, for the museum has evolved considerably since its opening in 1950, is its emphasis, not only "on modern and contemporary art, " but on art work created in New England. Since almost all the works in the Sculpture Park originate geographically from this region, it seems logical that such a focus to the collection would not only be documented early in the website but emphasized; for example, their mission statement might be provided stating this fact. It doesn’t. In fact, its dedication to exhibiting "regional contemporary art" is only stated in one of the last menu clicks labeled "About DeCordova."<br /><br />This website exemplifies a user-centered design; navigation throughout the website is effortless and immediate in its usability. With a menu click to "Tours and Education," the museum reiterates its commitment to and clear focus on providing art education through not only "school visits, outreach," and "family programs." It is first indicated through an invocation at the right side of the homepage to "Registrar Now" through a link to course offerings in the DeCordova’s onsite Museum School.<br /><br />The website provides the museum’s education offerings in art media under the guidance of artists and art education professionals through a menu click. There are programs for both teachers and the interested that provide hands-on experience in everything from jewelry design, book arts, ceramics, painting, and print making, among other mediums. Well constructed web pages essentially provide the syllabus to these courses with attention to policies and other pertinent information, as well as easy registration through an Adobe Acrobat Reader plug-in. A calender of events, with easy clicks to further details of events and complimentary merchandising, is also included.<br /><br />One of the more valuable resources provided for educators is access to both enrichment and curriculum development in conjunction with its educational outreach. As mentioned in the paper "Expanding Art Museums into Humanities Classrooms: Research on Online Curricula for Cross-Disciplinary Study" teachers are drawn to sites that provide "tools for the classroom," and succeeding at this will ensure regular use instead of "one-time inspiration" by this target audience. A large proportion of today’s teachers seek out websites to assist them with their lesson development, and among the most popular sites with teachers are those that provide complete lesson plans that make connections between state standards in a subject area and a museum’s collections, and this website provides links to lesson plans for grades 6-8 (DiSalvo, 2007).<br /><br />These resources could be improved upon and added to, for there are a limited number that have not been added to in some time. The DeCordova has taken its cue from such demands to increase its "impact" on an Internet community it serves in other ways though, including an attention to cross-curricular concerns in outreach exhibits like "Portable Gallery on the Go," which can be accessed by clicking "Tours and Education." Its choice of themes for this tool includes titles like "Puzzles and Daydreams: Art Works for Thinking" and "Harold "Doc" Edgerton: The Inventor as Artist," among others.<br /><br />Another element of a museum’s website that I often anticipate is its attention to archiving past files; often these are ignored in web design. This undoubtedly has much to do with the fact that web design is evolving and that frequent redesigns necessitate cutting costs that include reconfiguring files from a past site as one of our course readings suggests. But a lot of stuff has been lost as a result— a whole new era of communications (Hamma, 2004).<br /><br />One of my recent experiences with seeking such archival information online from a museum website pertained to an outdoor re-enactment of a P.T. Barnum "humbug," the nineteenth century discovery of the Cardiff Giant in Upstate New York" which had been featured outdoors in situ at the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, NY some ten years ago. The giant-size stone in human-form had laid in a hand dug hole canopied by a reproduction period circus tent as it had once been discovered and publically displayed some one-hundred and fifty years ago. I had made mention of the situation in a paper I was writing, but I needed more information.<br /><br />The museum had not archived the information I sought online, that had formerly been accessible through their website, and, for that matter, all records of this transient exhibit seemingly ceased to exist. A phone call to the museum proved just as disappointing. Archiving such information seems of great importance to a museum website that seeks to educate its audience as well as cajole scholarly research. The Decordova seems to understand this as evidenced by a link, at the top right of the homepage adjacent to the museum’s name, to archival materials about past exhibitions dating back, sometimes, ten years.<br /><br />In summary, as a medium size art museum DeCordova offers much to their website visitors. Its attention to educational materials as well as information about works loaned to them and in their permanent collection is exceptional. The museum website in many ways distinguishes itself among other museums of similar size with its attention to archival materials and an offering to educators of lesson plans and learning materials related to their collection.Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-71800325722275272732007-11-07T11:16:00.000-05:002007-11-11T22:25:12.958-05:00Whose Drips and Splatters? Pollock Matters Exhibit at the McMullen Museum of ArtOn display in a subterranean corner of Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art are paintings from a recently discovered cache of art works found in a storage locker; they are the focus of a current exhibition entitled Pollock Matters. Controversy over the possibility of their attribution to Jackson Pollock has necessitated the seemingly unlikely pairing of art historians and scientists from the disciplines of both analytical chemistry and theoretical physics on a grand scale in an attempt to use all the resources available to make the most conclusive determination of their provenance. Their scientific analyses could be likened to some TV CSI drama if we were to not only pay heed to recent press coverage but consider the predominant focus of this exhibition’s own catalogue. Scientists have both sought to profile the individual or individuals responsible for these works as well as identify the creative methodology responsible for them.<br /><br />The investigation of these works, now known as the "Matter paintings," has included the identification and examination of a fingerprint extant as well as the discovery of a matching one found on art materials at Jackson Pollock’s own Southampton, Long Island studio. These findings were the impetus for subsequent analyses and the comparison of paint samples found at the studio with one taken from one of the paintings. Aiding in this particular investigation has been state-of-the-art forensic technology like Fourier transform infrared and Raman spectrometry. Scientists like Richard Newman and Michele Derrick, from the MFA’s own Scientific Research Lab, have focused on the examination of inorganic paint pigments in order to date these paintings contemporaneous to Pollock. Ultimately, they have sought evidence to prove or disprove whether these paintings were indeed created as and when the labeled brown paper wrapper they were reputedly found in would lead us to believe. It was that brown paper wrapper, which includes the inscription "Pollock (1946-49)" and "32 Jackson experimental Works (gift +purchase)," that necessitated, perhaps almost immediately, a determination of whether the paintings contained within are the work of the iconic Abstract Expressionist or not.<br /><br />Disputes over provenance are not uncommon, and works by long dead artists continue to be discovered. Other Pollocks have come to light in recent years and are still likely to be discovered. And one might think that Alex Matters, the discoverer of these disputed paintings and the son of the late Henry and Mercedes Matter, friends of artists Jackson Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, and artists in their own right, would be the likely bearer of some previously undocumented, authentic paintings by Pollock. But it is these paintings’ seemingly unorthodox appearance and their definition as "experimental" that have brought their provenance into question by the art community at large. Foremost among the questions raised is " why hadn’t they come to light earlier, given that the elder Matters, had not only contributed to the official documentation of Pollock’s late and most iconic work during their own lifetimes. Moreover, there is strong evidence that they would have taken advantage of an opportunity to benefit financially from the considerable market value of such works had they been known to exist and been genuine.<br /><br />Other recent Pollock discoveries have more irrefutably bore the mark of the artist. While the small format of the majority of the Matter paintings defies the popular conception that Pollock exclusively painted large canvases, and many of his best known drip paintings seemingly support that, this was one of the first popular misconceptions about the Matter paintings. Although labeled "experimental," some argue that their small format would not have allowed Pollock’s exceedingly kinesthetic style of painting to evolve, but rather it would have resulted in constraints that the artist reputedly sought to avoid in the adoption of his free flowing method of creation. Size is the focus of Claude Cernuschi and Andrzej Herczynski’s own study, which resulted in the essay "Cutting Pollock Down to Size: Boundaries of the Poured Technique." The essay poignantly begins with a quote from Pollock himself: "‘I enjoy working big and—whenever I have the chance, I do it whether it’s practical or not...I’m just more at ease in a big area than I am on something 2x2; I feel more at home in a big era." Their study of the Pollock oeuvre seems to contradict the artist himself. Although Pollock may have idealized such circumstances for the creative process his output only includes twenty five percent of large proportion, and many fall within a range of 3x3 feet, close to the size of the Matter paintings.<br /><br />In addition, many have argued that the materials used in these works, revealed through chemical analyses to include "gouache," multiple types of paint mediums, and additives for the purposes of a desired fluidity, are decidedly uncharacteristic of the artist’s choices. Pollock is known to have purposely sought to maximize the rheological, flexible or elastic, behavior of his chosen paint medium, for this allowed him to achieve his signature, rhythmical, paint applications. There is significant documentation bearing witness to Pollock’s own knowledge of paint mixing and how to achieve the desired effect of greater elasticity. Through a procedure whereby his stick or dry brush never actually touched a painting’s support, he used the effects of gravity to drip and splash paint. He used the paint’s, natural or affected, fluidity to realize patterns of interweaving threads on the un-stretched canvas that he characteristically laid horizontally on the floor. These details of Pollock’s creative process are given visual prominence in Pollock Matters with two large-as- life photos of the artist at work in his Southampton studio. These add to any one of the many possible narratives that the visitor can construct from the offerings of this exhibition.<br /><br />"Untitled no.9," among the Matter paintings, has revealed through analysis an "acrylic emulsion" that would support the idea that, like Pollock, whoever produced these paintings purposely mixed paints for reasons of elasticity. Analysis has also revealed a "plasticizer" in the purple-red pigment found on the drip paintings on paper in the exhibition, which could support attribution to Pollock given both the stylistic similarities to his work and his propensity for mixing paints. But even with state-of-the-art analysis at the forefront of this investigation, scientists repeatedly, as in the case of the aforementioned identified "plasticizer," were unable to provide an identification of that additive, or, ultimately, an irrefutable conclusion about many of the paints and materials examined. These, simply, may never be forthcoming because of the incomplete record of paints and other materials manufactured and used in the creation of art at any time.<br /><br />One of the most potentially revealing sources of physical evidence in determining some of the unanswered questions in this investigation is the floor in Pollock’s studio that the artist once painted his un-stretched canvases directly on, according to Nicholas Eastaugh and Bhavini Gorsia’s "Preliminary Study"(143). This floor includes not only outlines of paintings attributable but a significant record of paints used by the artist. Scientists also believe that this paint may be contaminated, given that tourists currently tread on it. Scientists offer conjecture about what evidence may reveal, but the fear that significant contamination to this potential information source makes the discussion of the future discovery of any eventual conclusive evidence from specifically this source seemingly moot.<br /><br />The discovery of a "latent impression" fingerprint on the recto of the painting "Untitled no.1" and matched with a fingerprint found on a paint can extant at Pollock’s studio has succeeded in confounding the situation even more. Since there is no known documentation of Pollock’s fingerprints, forensic verification relies solely on the provenance of those paint cans found decades after Pollock’s death in a studio subsequently used by his wife Lee Krasner. An inability to make a conclusive connection between Pollock and the paint cans casts doubt on the owner of those fingerprints; subsequently, these paint cans have been the focus of an extensive analysis of their contents which have been compared with paint samples from the Matter paintings.<br /><br />The most conclusive and damning evidence against sole attribution of the Matter paintings to Jackson Pollock came from an analysis of samples from the paint cans and from the paintings themselves. Paints contemporaneous to Pollock were seemingly only found to exist below layers of more recent paint applications on some of the Matter paintings. This suggests that Pollock may have made some initial contribution that was subsequently added to by additional "campaigns" of paint in imitation of him by others in subsequent years. Findings also place considerable doubt on the paint cans as Pollock’s own because they held no remnants of "an acrylic resin" that has been proven to be one of the building blocks of Pollock’s drip painting methodology. Given these findings, we have to ask why should it be believed that Pollock himself ever used these cans, or that the fingerprint on them is his? The absence of Magna paint amongst these paint cans is also a point of contention, for it has also been established that Magna was a key ingredient to "all the late Pollocks" (149).<br /><br />The significant cracking that characterizes the physical state of many of the Matter paintings has been attributed to multiple "campaigns" of paint application. These multiple layers of paint give credence to a theory that the substrate may include initial campaigns by Pollock with undocumented early examples of paint not yet patented or even available in American markets as well as subsequent campaigns of paint by an unknown artist or artists over the period of years. It is also plausible that such pigments, in addition to the Swiss-made "Robi paints" documented on the brown wrapping paper, that Henry Matter may have supplied for the artist’s use, were of either pre or post-Second World War era European manufacturing; therefore, allowing the possibility that their composition was neither patented nor documented in that time and place or known internationally.<br /><br />Central to this analysis of paint was the determination of "terminal dates" for pigments used in the Matter paintings, which simply means the date before or after which the materials used in the paintings were not available. Any materials used that were identified as only existing after Pollock’s death date in 1956 "could not, ipso facto, have been used" by him (135). But, for argument’s sake, such desired termini could not be conclusively determined if one considers that some pigments may have been available to Pollock before their known patent date. Such concessions made by the authors of the scientific analyses of pigments further confound any conclusive determination of the provenance of these paintings. If we were to consider simply that the Matter paintings included titanium-coated mica pigment that documentation tells us only existed since the 1960s, or the presence of a shade of orange found in "Untitled no. 19" that contained two pigments of a paint class that only came on the market in 1971, or, finally, in the case of two of the Matter paintings, "Untitled no.17" and "Untitled no.19," the presence of a red pigment that wasn’t patented until 1983, we might totally abandon the idea of any attribution to Pollock. But what if these paints existed before their patent dates and simply weren’t documented?<br /><br />Scientists have also sought to relate theoretical physics to an analysis of Pollock’s established brushwork in comparison with that exemplified in the Matter paintings. Specifically, a fractal analysis would focus on both the aforementioned drips and splashes of the artist’s work. Through microscopic studies of the painting’s surface the possibilities of Pollock’s own improvisational method of pouring and dripping paint and the "inherent fluid instabilities of his streams of paint" might allow the condition whereby the known factors of "chaos theory" may be present. These might be evidenced by particular geometrical patterns extant in the work. But this type of scientific analysis was also inconclusive, for only one of the Matter paintings presented the condition necessary for a fractal analysis. From the outset such an analysis could only "attempt to eliminate a work of art as genuine." More disappointingly such an analysis can not determine who was responsible for a work of art. That, according to Nicholas Eastaugh, in "Analyzing Jackson Pollock: Scientific Methods and the Study of the Matter Paintings," is "the job of the scholar" (133).<br /><br />Confounding the possibility of a deception through imitation by someone is the inconsistent fact that these paintings were not produced with any thoughts of their survival for any length of<br />time, so why would someone have gone through all the trouble? Before their scientific analysis, some of the paintings were actually restored to the point of obstructing their verso making a complete examination of them difficult. Reinforcement was applied to the verso of some these presumably to reinforce their deteriorated state. Alex Matter has made the claim that there were works that disintegrated when he opened the aforementioned wrapping paper for the first time; hence, there was an immediate need for restoration. Photos documenting the warped state of some of the canvas board seems to support this decision, yet for some this decision has succeeded in further exasperating the suspicion that some type of fakery is at the heart of these paintings’ existence.<br /><br />There are a number of other plausible scenarios regarding the origin of the Matter paintings suggested by the art, text, and material presented at Pollock Matters. The facts tell us that the Pollocks and the Matters were all artists in their own right and friends. The paintings were found among the belongings of Herbert Matter. They were packaged in a brown wrapping paper with an inscription and date verifiably written by the hand of Herbert Matter himself. The historical record tells us that Pollock’s career as a artist was less than stellar until his breakthrough drip paintings around the late 40s; in fact, Pollock was producing both semi-abstract paintings, that had characterized much of his career for a decade or more, and total abstractions, like Composition with Pouring II, as early as 1943. At the same time, and the McMullen provides examples of these for the purposes of comparison, Lee Krasner and the Mercedes Matters were experimenting with a similar fluidity of line in their respective mediums, as was Hans Hoffman, mentor to both Krasner and Mrs. Matter. Additionally, Herbert Matter, a photographer, had been experimenting with light pencils and long film exposures which resulted in squiggly white lines and multiple blurred poses of figures on exposed film, which are alarmingly like the "drip" paintings in their kinesthetic execution. It seems possible that all of these experiments and ideas were a popular topic of discussion among these friends. These ideas may have come together and been physically realized through some impromptu experimentation by Pollock and the others.<br /><br />These disputed paintings may indeed be that missing link between Pollock’s earlier documented work and the studio paintings in his Southampton studio that brought him great recognition a short time later. I believe that because Pollock synthesized these ideas through repeated experimentation and executed a significant body of work he deserves the recognition he has received, but these other artists are part of a important narrative in art history. Their contributions to this specific moment should be mentioned too, and this scientific analysis that plays such a prominent role in Pollock Matters serves a novel function in that it presents a number of plausible narratives about the creative process of art; one of these might be that the Matter paintings are examples of that rarer occasion when collaboration included a communal execution of works as well.<br /><br />Although this exhibition presents much scientific analyses, some of these studies remain decidedly inconclusive. The suggested inconsistencies in the termini of painting materials will succeed in maintaining the strong, initial intuition held by many that these painting are not the work of artist Jackson Pollock until some more conclusive evidence to the contrary comes to light. It is also likely that these findings will succeed at maintaining the initial mystery of these paintings for others who wish to perpetuate the notion that these paintings may not only be the work of Pollock but may collectively serve as a type of Rosetta stone for Abstract Expressionism, for such an outcome would mean that such art treasures still lay out there waiting to be discovered. Ultimately, this novel pairing of scientific analysis with art historical scholarship offers an exhibition experience that presents multiple narratives and invites the visitor to come up with their own conclusions.<br /><br />Reference<br />Landau, Ellen G. And Claude Cernuschi, eds. Pollock Matters. Mc Mullen Museum of Art/Boston College, 2007.Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4469423278244096677.post-21400803345000028042007-11-04T11:42:00.000-05:002008-12-06T10:32:17.536-05:00A Place To Take The Kids: The Peabody Essex MuseumThe Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) came to my attention recently with a presentation by James Forrest, its Creative Director, in my Museums and New Media class. A survey of recent design projects for the museum’s state-of-the-art website, which included its collections database as well as representation of highlights from its past, present, and future exhibitions peaked my interest in visiting the real museum; in fact, I am among the first to dispel the fear that so many have about the increasing role of museum websites and their potential to overshadow the actual museum.<br /><br />My response to PEM’s website was just the opposite, for I was anxious to soon experience the museum, its collections, and, at least, one of its numerous historic houses in three dimensions. Furthermore, although not a feature of PEM’s particular website, virtual tours of historic houses and museums themselves pale in comparison to the kinesthetic pleasures of being there and maneuvering through rooms and up and down stairways, and the like. After visiting web pages devoted to particularly PEM’s Yin Yu Tang, a two hundred year old Chinese merchant’s house and a touted highlight, I especially anticipated the real experience of walking through its wooden two-story structure and walled courtyard believing that its virtual representation promised an even better real experience.<br /><br />My demands for a museum visit have changed in recent years with the addition of children to my family. Having joined an important demographic for museums, I am acutely aware of its particular needs and how they might best be served. PEM has embraced a mission that claims to be both "people-centered" and "dedicated to providing ...experiences to diverse audiences, " so I set out to see how true that is. What I found was that it provides extensive resources, programming, and facilities for particularly visitors with children.<br /><br />Although many museums have redefined themselves as audience-centered in recent years and have made efforts to become more "child friendly" with increased programming and the development of interactive offerings, others have merely adopted the rhetoric and been slow to transform their physical plant in order to do so. PEM, with significant financial backing, has been among those to realize a mission that seeks to insure "compelling and meaningful experiences to diverse audiences."<br /><br />PEM includes all the bells and whistles of a child friendly institution. Salem, Massachusetts, its home, is a year round tourist destination with much to offer, and it is only fair to recognize that PEM has benefitted immensely from the city’s strong infrastructure which includes good parking, handicap ramps, and functional sidewalks. Getting to and from the museum’s door is more hassle free than many urban museums. Reaching Salem by car from Boston and its nearby environs via Interstate 95, 128 North, and, finally, 114 East, was virtually painless on the weekdays at noon when I visited, and the signs directing you to the museum once you entered Salem seemed to be every fifty yards. The New Liberty Street parking garage is a stone’s throw away from the museum, and if, on the rare occasion, the four tiers of parking are full there is a municipal lot on nearby St. Peter Street.<br /><br />If you are coming by the Newbury/Rockport train line from Boston, you would arrive at the Salem Station at one end of the city’s Pedestrian Mall; the other end of which, after a five-minute walk, is the museum. The No. 450 or No. 455 bus from Boston’s Haymarket Square, gets you to Salem, and you can reach the museum after a short walk. For the more adventurous, the Salem Ferry, a 50 minute catamaran ride, from Boston’s Central Wharf will bring you to the Blaney Street Wharf in Salem between June 15 and October 31. A taxi ride or walk is necessary to reach the museum from the wharf. Of course, for visitors with small children and strollers, driving and parking nearby is the least strenuous means of getting to the museum.<br /><br />From the top tier of the Liberty Street garage a nearby elevator brings you to the ground level tourist shopping mall. Exiting to the outside street there is a short walk around the corner to the new glass and steel atrium of the museum’s entrance. The entrance, to this museum that has seemingly spared no expense in its recent architectural transformation, state-of-the-art website, interactive tools, exhibition development, and world class collection, among other things, is decidedly understated. Where are the bright banners and signs invoking visitors to come and see its wonders? They simply aren’t there. I can remember purposely not visiting this museum in the past because its nondescript entrance turned me off. In order to get to the entrance doors one passes through a sea of pedestrians and street entertainers that seemingly celebrate Halloween year round here.<br /><br />I observed volunteers and staff eager to serve visitors at PEM. Making my way to the museum’s doors for my first visit a volunteer spotted me and rushed and opened the door for the stroller containing my son and daughter; how’s that for service? Entering for my second visit large groups of high school students were exiting which is indicative of the educational outreach underscored in PEM’s printed brochures. The admissions desk in the "Atrium Way" is attended by conscientious volunteers who, on my second visit, gave my family and I free admission once I offered up my student ID card and added that I was in Tufts’ museum studies program, which peaked this particular volunteer’s interest. I also added that Jim Forrest, their aforementioned Creative Director, had recently spoken to one of my classes, and that seemed to clinch the deal. Children under sixteen are always free, but I nevertheless saved a considerable sum. In addition to the free admission, which is regularly a steep thirteen dollars for adults, eleven for seniors, and nine dollars for students, this volunteer also served up two free tickets for the self-guided tour of the Yin Yu Tang house, which I had set my sights on, an additional eight dollar value. I had visited the museum two weeks before and only received the student discount, so this was simply my lucky day.<br /><br />In addition to the visitor’s map one is handed, there is an abundance of free printed resources for maximizing one’s experience, and these are available in French and Spanish. "Viewpoints" offers visitors enrichment through textual thematic links to the collection. It also includes stories about some of PEM’s highlights. Given the fact that you can’t "do" the museum justice with just one visit, such a resource is a great introduction. After two visits of roughly two hours each, there are still areas of the museum that I have not thoroughly explored. Another resource, "Family Guide," offers a collaborative experience whereby parents and children are directed to "share their impressions" with each other and locating details of particular works in the museum. It also includes an introduction to reading labels for young children. Such resources are invaluable for engaging children and making them lifetime museum visitors. Following these prescribed tours or using PEM’s numerous printed gallery resources promises to further enhance the museum experience.<br /><br />There are coat rooms off to the right of the Atrium Way, but security is amenable to you carrying your backpack or bag at your side. After you pass beyond the admissions and membership desks, the space opens up to reveal the full breadth of this new steel and glass Atrium which forms the nucleus of the newly expanded museum. All areas of the museum are accessed from here, including the museum’s award-winning café, with its comfortable seating of patio tables and chairs on its ground floor. There is also a "Garden Restaurant," which offers larger and more expensive fare off of the Maritime Art galleries to the right. Food selections at the Atrium Café include a lunch for two of gourmet sandwiches and soft drinks for under twenty dollars. The museum shops are located adjacent to this. The museum’s bookstore is worth the visit alone for it has a large selection of books and multimedia resources related to current and past exhibitions, including numerous museum catalogues that have been accessible all over the museum.<br /><br />The tour of the Yin Yu Tang house is self guided and limited to thirty minutes. One enters the site through glass doors off the ground floor of the Atrium. Yin Yu Tang and its courtyard, which can be seen from every level of the glass Atrium, was disassembled and shipped from China. Security is attentive to visitors making their way into the courtyard of the house reminding them to watch their step. The paving stones of the path are loose and slippery, and I saw one visitor trip on them. This visitor was assured by a vigilant security guard that these loose stones will soon be remedied. There is no accommodation in this area for wheelchairs; navigating a wheelchair through the narrow spaces of the house itself would seemingly be impossible.<br />In my previous visit two weeks before, I was handed an "audio wand" for the self guided tour. The wand is a relatively old technology which I found physically awkward to handle in comparison to smaller mp3 units I have used in other museums. The wand is hard to juggle while keeping hold of a child, or if you have to carry other things. It took one hand for me to hold it and another to punch in the two-digit codes for each of Yin Yu Tang’s audio stations, which are designated by discreet, numbered, stone blocks on the ground. The wand has since been replaced with a smaller mp3 player,"audioguides," which allowed me to hold it and enter codes with one hand this second time round.<br /><br />Although the Yu Yin Tang is self-guided, there are knowledgeable security guards that offer up anecdotal information about the house freely to visitors. There is no labeling or signage in this site; all information is officially imparted through the "audioguides." This is what makes the experience so unique, for it truly immerses the visitor in a different place and time. The museum has nine other historic houses situated in Salem, but these are experienced through more traditional guide led tours. Visitors expressed their appreciation to staff, and punctuated this with a professed love for this exhibit and the museum as a whole; in fact, I frequently overheard unsolicited praise for the museum by fellow visitors. Adjacent to the house, after exiting, is a theater that provides a comprehensive video narrative of the house’s origin, its construction, and the process by which it came to rest in Salem.<br /><br />Additionally, there is seating in another room where laptops provide access to the museum’s web pages on Yin Yu Tang. Pertinent print resources are available too for visitors to sit and peruse. There is an inviting mahjong set-up for those inclined, and a plasma screen display of an exhibit of contemporary photographs of rural China, the house’s original location. Clearly, the museum invites the visitor to make a day of their visit and enjoy its offerings at their leisure; it occurred to me how antithetical this all is to early museum planning and practice which sought to usher visitors in and out of the museum speedily and systematically.<br /><br />In another corner of the museum my son sat on the floor entirely absorbed in a set of reproduction Anchorstone blocks, once popular in 19th century Europe, an offering of one of the dozen or so activity boxes in PEM’s Art and Nature Center. This area alone attests to its commitment to educating and entertaining young visitors. The Center’s current focus is origami, and there are expert examples of folded paper animals and reptiles housed in vitrines interspersed among tables set up with interactive activities for children of all ages. For traditionalists, there are taxidermic birds and fish behind glass too. Origami lotus flowers hooked up to an air bellows, which can be pumped by foot, is popular with kids; the flowers consequently spin.<br /><br />The Center has several art studios where adults and children alike can currently do origami by following step-by-step streaming video demonstrations offered up on PEM’s website. This exemplifies how this particular museum has maximized visitor use of its website. This particular activity seemed to attract enthusiastic parents and their school age children while others with pre-schoolers in tow gravitated to a nearby area of comfortable seating and shelved activity boxes filled with games, puppets, and toys thematically related to art and nature.<br /><br />Elevators are roomy and provide access to all areas of the main museum. Couches and cozy sitting can be found in numerous corners of the museum, and these always include a choice of exhibition catalogues. These could and did provide unofficial places for nursing mothers as well as places to pause, "chat & relax," as PEM’s own brochures define their function. Bathrooms can be found on all floors except the third, and their commodious spaces and changing tables are a welcome feature to parents with small children. Water fountains were always located nearby.<br /><br />Numerous touch screen kiosks provide visitors added experience through choices of relevant audio and video. One example mounted on a wall of the current Samuel McIntyre exhibition included an audio narrative and digitally reproduced primary documents about "a classical education" in 18th century America. In an exhibition of Southeast Asian art, a large plasma touch screen provided text, video, and audio on a variety of subjects related to this region, including, but not limited to, religions, music, and dance.<br /><br />The museum was not faultless, for I felt that the collection’s safety had taken precedence over that of visitors in one instance. In the Native American and Oceanic Art collections lighting levels were seemingly lower than other areas of the museum. I attribute this to numerous exhibits of textiles which are extremely susceptible to deterioration by light. I had difficulty seeing in this particular area. Science tells us that it takes twice the amount of light for a forty year old to see what a twenty year old sees, so I could only guess the difficulty 60 and 80 years old had maneuvering in this area. Adding to my concern were vitrines with sharp and jutting edges unseen in other areas of PEM that one had to maneuver around in order to see what there was to see.<br /><br />PEM serves as model of how a museum can, as its mission states, "create experiences" which bring the "wider world" to its audience. Its attention to making the museum more than just a place to house art and culture is exemplified by its attention to actively educating through continuously developing new and meaningful experiences using the highest quality programming, publications, and ground breaking technology available in addition to making their collections more accessible to larger audiences of all ages. There is room for improvement though. The wheelchair inaccessibility of exhibits like Yin Yu Tang comes to mind. The museum might bring an approximation of this one-of-a-kind experience through a virtual tour on request. Finally, the museum might consider using timers to bring about greater momentary illumination to its dimly lit exhibition spaces while still limiting deteriorating exposure to light.<br /><br />References<br /><br />Peabody Essex Museum, "Mission Statement," <a href="http://www.pma.org/">http://www.pma.org/</a> (Accessed October 31, 2007).Robert Schmickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05768181033922131024noreply@blogger.com1