Book Review: Jay Kirk's Kingdom Under Glass

I finished this book a few weeks ago, and keep forgetting to write it up.  On a scale of 1 to 5, I would give Kingdom Under Glass a 3.5.  

Photo borrowed from Mike Ansel from his blog "Hunting with Mike".  It was way too good to resist!

 

It was an engaging read, but it was a touch too novelistic for my tastes.  Kirk understands this flaw, and goes to some lengths in his afterward to describe how he came to the conclusions he did regarding Carl and Delia Akeley's thought processes and motivations.  He makes some valid points, but I simply don't agree that a book that presumes to know what a little girl on a street car in the early 1900s thought about Carl Akeley's arms should be classified as non-fiction.  

Now, on the flip side, this very engaging style of writing made the book much more readable than a traditional biography, and I tore through it.  I deeply appreciated that Kirk told the story of the Akeley's from both Carl and Delia's perspectives, especially when it would have been so easy to dismiss Delia as paranoid or unstable.  Again, I think Kirk got a little too far into what he thought these long-dead taxidermists were thinking, but it was a wise choice to split the focus of the book between them both.

My only other issue with Kingdom Under Glass is that I wanted more of it to be about the dioramas and museum work they they both did so well.  A large portion of the latter half of Kirk's book is extensive descriptions of the African safaris on which the Akeleys collected their specimens, which is fascinating, but not what I had hoped for.  On the other hand, the focus on the safari and the hunting of great African mammals just as conservation of species and habitat was beginning to become a concern is a nice echo of current worries and sentiments, and a good reminder to modern readers.  I suppose I can't really fault the book for not being exactly what I wanted, since it was so good at being what it was: a highly stylized and novelistic, but incredibly readable biography of two fascinating people who lived during a fascinating time.

In the end, I would definitely recommend that museum lovers read this book--but save your money and check it out from the library.

My Museum Booklist

I've recently finished Jay Kirk's Kingdom Under Glass (review to follow soon), and it's made me want to read up more on the history of history museums.  Here's the book list I'm working on right now--recommendations would be lovely!

Still Life:Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom.

   -Inspired directly by Kirk's book, I'm eager to learn more about the art that featured so prominently in America's first museums.

The Species Seekers: heroes, fools, and the mad pursuit of life on earth by Richard Conniff

   -A gentleman I knew at the Field Museum had a species of bird named after him not too long ago, the Laniarius willardi, and this selection is in honor of him.  I love the idea of these people who purposely seek out the unknown; they're the engine behind museum research and also a little bit crazy--sounds like the perfect combo to me!

The Participatory Museum by Nina Simon

  -I really enjoy Nina's Museum 2.0 blog (though I have to limit my reading of it in order to keep this space from being a complete carbon copy of her), and I'm excited to read her thoughts in a more extended form.

Dry Storeroom #1: the secret life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey

 -I tend to gravitate towards novelistic histories, and this seems to fit the bill as an engaging history of museums. 

What are you reading about Museums?  I'd love some suggestions to expand my reading list!

Why I'm thankful for Museums.

Tomorrow Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving, and I'm taking the occasion to reflect on why I'm thankful for museums.

(c) the incomparable Bill Watterson

1. Dinosaurs.  I was never the kid who knew all the prehistoric periods and could spell  "Pachycephalosaurus" before I could spell my own name, but I fricking love those kids.  The kids who vibrate with excitement when they come in the door, the kids who have T.rex rainboots and stegosaurus mittens, the kids think that coming to the natural history museum is THE best thing ever--those kids make my day.  They make my job worthwhile.  They run across marble floors and yell with excitement when adults talk in low moderated tones, and just generally remind museum visitors that science and history is something that you really should be excited about.  I'm so grateful for the enthusiasm and passion that dinosaurs evoke in kids.  Also, dinosaurs were giant lizards.  Some of them slammed their heads into one another, some of them sat on nests, some of them had feathers, and some of them weighed 100 tons...how can you not be grateful to live in the same world where these mind-blowing monstrosities used to walk?

Plant cells.  (c) me and my fancy-pants camera

2. Quiet corners.  This might seem odd, but one of my favorite things to do in a museum is to try to find some quiet corner that most visitors avoid.  At the Field Museum it was the Hall of Plants, tucked away in a corner of the balcony.  It was an older hall, and lacking the flash of the dinos and Ancient Egypt, most visitors didn't even notice it.  That's their loss, because it's a gorgeous hall with displays that are a testament to the ingenuity of the model-makers.  I loved sneaking up there on busy days and soaking up the beauty and the quiet; it felt like it was all made just for me.  I find a lot of museums have those halls.  Some are less renovated, some are overshadowed by more exciting neighbors, some are just plain out of the way, but to me they seem extra special because they're so lonely. Who will remember and love those artifacts if I don't take the time to do it?  I'm serious--the next time you're in a big museum, try walking in the opposite direction of the crowds and see what you discover.

(c) http://timbrown.smugmug.com

3. People watching.  My favorite thing to do in art museums is to watch the people looking at the art work.  I love looking at the art, too, but I feel like my reactions are heightened by absorbing the delight and wonder of the other people are sharing the experience with me.  I once had the great good fortune of being in the gallery when a group of high schoolers were introduced to Georges Seurat's Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and it was one of the best experiences I've ever had at the Art Institute.  They were so excited, but having never seen or known much of the painting before walking in the door, they also had the most honest and candid reactions to a painting I've ever seen.  And whether it's a teenager curious about color choices or an elderly gentleman sitting in quiet wonder, looking at people looking at artifacts is half the fun of museum-going.

So that's my short list--what museum-y things are you grateful for?

Aaaaand we're back!

Okay, I'm done fighting with the internets, and a million apologies for the more-intermittent-than-usual posting these last few weeks.  Let's pick up where we left off last week.

So after reading this article the question I have is whether a capital investment in exhibits is the right choice for small museums that are struggling, and as usual, I don't have any real answers.  I certainly agree that interactive and immersive exhibits are more appealing and educational for the general public, and it's time for many of the older static diorama-type exhibits to be retired.  They were brilliant in their day, introducing museum-goers to lands and ideas they couldn't imagine, but that era has been blown away by the age of internet.  People today need more than manikin soldiers in French-Indian War uniforms to be engaged in the history of a region, and the folks at Fort William Henry are definitely on the right track with that concept.

What I'm less certain about is whether those improvements are the right choice all of the time.  And I'm working through this in my head as I type, so forgive any incoherence, but part of me really wonders if updated digital exhibits is really going to bring visitors in the door of those tiny out-of-the-way museums.  I'm at war with myself on this, because I want people to go and enjoy those tucked away historical  sites, I really do.  But knowing how hard it is to get visitors into shiny new high-profile museums I worry that there's very little that will induce them to go into the older museums that have less excitement surrounding them.  The pessimist in me thinks that visitors will look at updated exhibits in an older smaller museum as a lipstick-on-a-pig solution; touchscreens and new recordings might not be enough to convince people who visited in the past that it's worth checking out again.  We've talked about what it takes to get people in the door in the past, and the Debbie Downer part of me worries a lot at updated exhibits just aren't enough.

But when I step back, reread the article, and think about what other solutions there might be, I have to admit that I think updating exhibits is probably the most important thing a smaller and older museum can do.  You can have an amazing ad campaign, brilliant membership offerings, and the most dedicated team out there--but getting people in the door won't matter if they never want to come back again.  New exhibits are not a silver bullet--they aren't going to magically bring in new visitors--but they are an incredibly important step in the revitalization of a museum.  I still firmly believe that museums need the whole package of history, innovation, and community, but the more I think about it, the more I think that exciting and updated exhibits are the first link in that chain.

Selling History

AP Photo/Mike Groll, File

I know there are a lot of museum folk out there who would take issue with that title--for many museums aim to share history and not to sell it.  But even if you're not focused on earning money, a museum still has to sell the idea of its collections to potential visitors.  With that in mind, here is today's suggested reading.  Class will reconvene on Wednesday for discussion.

Question.

So far I've been going off on my own tangents every few dayswithout any clear agenda--just writing about facets of the museum world that effect or interest me.  What do YOU want to be reading about and discussing?

SO. JEALOUS.

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but now that he's built up a decent blog of his own I don't have any excuses:

Image probably (c) MSI Chicago at www.msichicago.com

This is Kevin.  [As full disclosure he's a friend of a friend, but we've never met.]  Kevin is the lucky son of a gun who won the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago's Month at the Museum competition, and he's spending a month living every day in the walls of MSI.  This is the second year the Museum of Science and Industry has held this contest, and I LOVE it.  I love it more that I can really say, because it does exactly what I think all museums should strive for: it makes adults look at museum collections with renewed wonder.

To enter the contest, people have to submit essays and videos, meet with staff and go to demonstrations at the museum, all with the point of  convincing the decisions-makers that they would be the best possible ambassador for MSI.  (And we all remember how I feel about museum ambassadors, no?)  So basically a bunch of grown-ups spend the contest trying to prove how awesome learning is and how much they love museums and want to share that love with other people.  The sharing is a BIG component--Kevin's home base is a plexiglass cube in the middle of the main hall and he spends his days interacting with visitors.  He chronicles his adventures in his blog, facebook, and twitter feeds, and is basically a giant PR windfall for MSI.  Kevin gets to spend his days doing awesome and unusual things, getting excited, and then telling everyone about it.  His adventures take a place that everyone in Chicago thought they knew and turn it into something new and exciting that they want to go see again.  THAT is what every museum needs to be doing. 

Inviting a houseguest (museumguest?) to spend a month in your building is certainly not the right answer for every institution, but MSI has really tapped into something with this project.  The response they've gotten has been huge, and that gives me hope--there are lot of people out there leading grown up lives and secretly dreaming of blowing things up, sleeping on submarines, and getting to share that excitement with everyone  they meet.  They just don't realize it until they have the chance.

Art + Museums + Cultural Sensitivity = Great Things

Continuing on Monday’s idea of the Artist in Residence at the Field Museum, I did a little more poking around to see what other similar programs existed in other museums.  There are a lot of wonderful programs out there bringing art into museums in new and exciting ways, but I was most struck by the Natural History Museum in London’s new response to some old images in its collections.

The Natural History Museum houses the John Reeves Collection, a collection of nearly 2,000 scientific illustrations John Reeves commissioned from local artisans while he was stationed in Canton (now Guangzhou) in the early 1800s.  The prints are gorgeous, and at a time when Europeans could not travel freely in China they introduced Westerners to the amazing flora and fauna of Asia.  The Natural History Museum has chosen to use these images as the basis for their first international artist-in-residence program, and invited artist Hu Yun to London from Shanghai.

Artist unknown. Image (c) Natural Museum of History

The residence program is loosely structured, and while Hu Yun spends much of his day in the thick of the Reeves Collection the artwork he produces does not have to draw from any specific theme or style.  The general idea is that by immersing himself in the collection—and I have to tell you that I’m super-jealous of the access he has to those prints and the library stacks in general—anyway, the idea is that the style and feeling of the Reeves drawings will infiltrate anything Hu Yun creates, so all of his art will be an indirect response to the originals.

There are many things I love about this, but my favorite part of this program is the way it gently addresses some of the colonial issues at the heart of the collection.  These prints are named for the man from England who collected them, but none of the artists who actually created them are credited at all.  We don’t even know their names.  Inviting a Chinese artist to bring his cultural understanding to bear on images that were so thoroughly co-opted by an agent of the British East India Company is incredibly thoughtful (and I mean that in the “full of considered thought” sense of the word, not the Miss Manners etiquette sense).  More than thoughtful, having learned that this program exists it immediately seemed necessary to me—there needs to be more conversation around the way artifacts in many natural history museums were obtained in the past and this seems like a beautiful and sensitive way to begin that discussion.

And now my real question is not about the artwork that Hu Yun will produce or the kind of grants NHM applied for or whether the discussion this project engenders will truly address the issues of colonial influence in museum collections.  The question I’m left is, “Why on earth aren’t more museums doing something like this?”

Art /Artifact take 2

Today I want to introduce you to Peggy Macnamara, the Field Museum’s artist in residence.  Though I only knew her in passing while I worked there, I am an ardent fan of her work.  (I also adore how sneakily her pieces are displayed in the halls of the Museum, just up on a wall mixed in with the specimens hanging out and giving you a totally new perspective on that dead lizard you’ve just passed.)

What I love about Peggy’s work is not just that it’s beautiful and intricate and articulate, but that it’s scientific.  These are not impressions of animals, but deep rich renderings of them, accurate and true.  The subjects of Peggy’s paintings have personality, and I feel like looking at her paintings gives you a perspective and appreciation that you don't always get from the specimen itself.

To me, these vibrant watercolors are the reverse side of Terry Evans’s work.  Terry’s photographs take the specimens at the Field Museum and emphasize their stillness and timelessness.  They are very definitely pictures of dead animals and plants, and the images take that death and make it something remarkable.  Peggy’s paintings take those same specimens and give them life and color and vibrancy and a movement that’s really remarkable.

When I am rich, I shall have an office with Terry Evans photos on one wall and Peggy Macnamara paintings on the facing wall, mirror images of the same thing.

[UPDATE: Maybe it’s a good thing Blogger decided not to post anything last week.  WBEZ, the public radio station in Chicago just did a profile on Peggy Macnamara, which you can listen to here.]