Week 2 Readings

For our second week of readings, we focused on three articles:

-De-Schooling the Museum: A Proposal to Increase Public Access to Museums and Their Resources
-the Museum of Anthropology at Wake Forest University Collections Policy (rev. 12/2008)
-the MOA Collection Plan

The first article discusses how to reduce biases in interpretation. One of the most interesting solutions the author offers is the idea of visible storage, a concept I had never considered before. Visible storage involves presenting the museum's entire collections behind a glass wall for visitors to walk through. The idea is that the objects are not stylishly arranged or given text boxes, so the audience is able to make their own interpretations.

This solution has its benefits and its drawbacks. It allows visitors to see the entirety of a collection, so it does reduce bias by eliminating the choice of which objects to display. The main problem, though, for me at least, is that the average person in a community may not have the level of education or experience with that subject necessary to be able to interpret the artifacts. If I were to visit a museum displaying artifacts from a First Nations culture in Canada, a subject I have little experience in, and no interpretations were offered, I would feel overwhelmed and probably leave after only a short time. That being said, for an academic audience with an interest in the museum's subject area, this style of storage could be nice to have for research projects or class assignments.

Another consideration, aside from the immense cost, is for the staff. If I were working in the curation department of a museum, I would not be comfortable sitting behind a glass wall while people wandered through, watching what I was doing. Overall, while I do think it is an interesting idea that could work in certain settings, it does not seem to be a practical solution to try to implement widely.

Through all the solutions offered, it seems that the interpretation given by a museum in a structured exhibit is a necessary learning tool despite the potential for biases or misinformation. The best way to address this problem is to be aware of your possible preconceptions and how they are effecting the exhibit being built.

The second two articles showed me how the MOA handles acquisitions and manages their collections. I enjoyed getting to see the details of the process, especially after I had read in Beverlye Hancock's article on the history of the Museum, how the current policy evolved.