Sunday, October 28, 2012

October 23 and 25, 2012

This Tuesday and Thursday, Demone and I created a rough draft version of labels for our timeline. This week, we focused on writing labels for each of the timeline's dates and we plan to begin work on labels for objects and pictures in two weeks. 

To create the labels, we reviewed tips from Beverly Serrell's Exhibit Labels: an Interpretive Approach. Following Serrell's suggestions, we planned to limit the length to around 150 words and we set our target reading level at around 6-8th grade. 

We began by splitting the dates evenly between us. To create the labels, we would copy the text from a given date into Microsoft word and analyze its reading ease. We would then slowly begin editing down the text so that the end content was both shorter and had the appropriate reading level.

We then submitted our labels to Ms. Bryner and Ms. Cromwell for revision. With their comments and suggestions, we further edited our text. Next week, we will review the labels we have created and revise them to final draft form.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

October 16th and 18th, 2012

This week, our main goal was to narrow down our timeline, objects list and photographs list so that we could start finalizing the content of our exhibit.

Establishing our main idea and writing our introductory panel last week allowed Demone and me to form a specific idea of what we wanted our exhibit to show. We now have a better grasp of which events should be displayed and which events, though important, would be better not to include in this exhibit.

We printed out a copy of our objects list and a copy of our timeline and began cutting out each objects' information to tape next to the event with which we would display it. As we pasted in our artifacts, we edited out both events and objects. By the end of Tuesday, we had a semi-final draft of our timeline and artifacts list.

On Thursday, we continued our work narrowing down and finalizing, this time with our photographs. We pulled the photos we had chosen at the beginning of the semester back out to re-examine. By the end of the day, we had a specific list of photographs and will begin scanning them in next Thursday.

October 11, 2012

Today, Demone and I analyzed our introductory panel. We worked with corrections/suggestions sent to us by Ms. Bryner and Ms. Cromwell to produce a draft of the panel that said exactly what we wanted. 

We then pasted our paragraph into Microsoft Word to use its review tool that analyzes the reading level of a text. MS Word rated our panel's text as college-level. Our target reading level was between sixth and eighth grade, so we slowly changed the label, word by word, until it registered at our target level. 

Once we had adjusted our paragraph this meet this level, we read our old and new drafts side-by-side to make sure that the new version communicated the same message. We decided that it did and set-it aside for a final review later in the semester.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Week Four and Five Readings



The readings for these two weeks were:
 
-"Temporary Exhibits" and "Visitors and Interpretation" from Introduction to Museum Work by Hugh Genoways 
 -"Always True to the Object, in Our Fashion" by Susan Vogel
-and selected readings from Exhibit Labels: an Interpretive Approach by Beverly Serrell

The two chapters from Hugh Genoways' book addressed the need for a museum to know its visitors. Last week, Demone and I analyzed data from the Museum of Anthropology to get a more precise idea of entrance numbers, age groups and reasons for visiting. This data, as Genoways discusses, is vital to designing a successful exhibit. It is how we decide at what reading level to create our panels, at what height to hang them and what kinds of hands-on activities to include. We need to find a balance between age groups as well as between people who visit for recreation and more serious learners. 

Considering all these factors, Demone and I decided to aim for a 6-8th grade reading level to appeal to children, Wake Forest students, faculty and staff, and members of the community. 

Susan Vogel reminds us that demography is not the only key factor in designing an exhibit. She says on page 193, "We can be insiders only in our own culture and our own time." Her article highlights the importance of consulting members of an exhibit's target culture to gain insights that curators and exhibit designers may not be aware of while also ensuring that the members of that culture feel the exhibit accurately reflects them.

Our final set of readings dealt in depth with the process of creating exhibit labels. As I mentioned in Tuesday's blog, Demone and I have been using relying on this book extensively as we have been designing our introductory panel. This book will be a valuable resource as we begin writing labels and designing the exhibit.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

October 9th, 2012

Today, Demone and I worked together to create rough drafts of the introductory panel. We used a GoogleDoc so that both of us could write and edit at the same time. 

We started by looking over pages from last week's and this week's reading from Exhibit Labels: an Interpretive Approach by Beverly Serrell, particularly pages 23, 33 and 45. We looked over again exactly what an introductory panel should do. It is a short 20-300 word paragraph that should present the "big idea" and offer a brief summary of the exhibit. On Friday, during our weekly meeting to go over the readings, Ms. Bryner explained that the introductory panel is like an essay's introductory paragraph, it presents the thesis. The "big idea" is the overarching theme or goal of the exhibit.

Demone and I chose a big idea and then created three possible drafts of an introduction. On Thursday, we will go over these drafts with Ms. Bryner to ensure that we have selected an appropriate big idea and to refine our introduction. On Friday, Demone and I will turn in a final draft.


Friday, October 5, 2012

Week 3 Readings

The readings for my third week of the internship focused on ethical issues surrounding museums and their collections.
The articles assigned were:
-Murray's "Bones of Contention: Human remains in museum collections"
-Barbara Krishenblatt-Gimblett's "Objects of Ethnography"
-F. Cultural Collections: NPS Museum Handbook, Part 1 (2006)

Krishenblatt-Gimblett's reading dealt with many subjects, but one that I found most interesting was the dilemma facing exhibit designers of choosing between "in context" and "in situ" displays. In context refers to arranging an artifact with others in a curio and in situ means arranging an artifact in the context of its environment (ex: building a replica of a house to display house hold items). Synthesizing this reading with others I have done for this internship, I would say that there are two main factors that I would consider if I had to choose between these two displays. The first would be the size and number of the objects. If the in situ replica would greatly overshadow the artifacts, I would choose to display them in a curio. But if I had several objects that could reveal a lot about a way of life by being shown in situ, then I would choose that option. The second consideration would be the visitor population. If it was for a museum that caters mainly to adults and university students, then I might lean more towards using a curio, where as if the museum is visited by good numbers of children, then I might lean more towards an interactive in situ display.

Murray's writing explored ethics in relation to human remains. The most important consideration when dealing with human remains is permission to examine them. Different cultures have different views on remains and their views should be considered. If possible, the nearest relatives of the remains discovered should be consulted as even within cultures there is great variation. Today, there are stringent laws in place to protect human remains and ensure that proper care is taken in dealing with them.

One such law is NAGPRA, discussed in detail in the article from the NPS Museum Handbook.I have done several readings on NAGPRA in past archaeology classes, but I found this reading particularly interesting as I had just read about how the MOA had to take inventory to comply with this law in doing research for our timeline. Talking with Ms. Bryner in our weekly readings-discussion-meeting on Friday, I learned even more about the impact NAGPRA has had on how objects are acquired and cataloged. The combination of readings and discussion this week has helped me understand how NAGPRA operates in museums on a regular basis.

Overall, each of the readings so far has helped me start to understand how museums operate, the ethical issues facing them and the type of work that goes into working for one.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

October 2nd and 4th, 2012

On Tuesday, Demone and I worked together to refine our objects list. We reviewed two spreadsheets that Ms. Bryner sent us on artifacts displayed in specific exhibits. We picked out a representative sample of African masks and also selected artifacts from Treasures from the Moravian Attic.

We found out that the artifacts that we had picked to represent the MOA's recent acquisitions were already going to be used in another upcoming exhibit, so we went back through the MOA's Artifact Database (http://moa.wfu.edu/research-collections/) to find different ones to display.

In addition to working on our artifacts list, we also met with Sara Cromwell to review the Museum's entry statistics. These statistics gave insight into the age groups visiting the MOA and the reasons for the visit (was it for a lecture, a summer camp, an adult program, school education, etc.?). Demone and I reviewed the spreadsheet to better understand our target audience.

On Thursday, Ms. Bryner took Demone and me to the Museum's off-site storage center. We examined, in person, the artifacts that we had selected off the website to further refine our list. There were some artifacts that we chose to remove from our potential display list and others that we chose to add. 

I greatly enjoyed the trip to the off-site storage facility. It offered good insight into how the Museum preserves, stores and catalogs artifacts. It was also helpful to see the objects in person as some turned out to be much bigger than they had looked online and others much smaller.

By the end of the visit, our objects list was still long, but now that we are able to visualize the artifacts, I think that it will be easier for us to narrow down the list next week.