Time to Define

So we left off on Friday talking about living history and riffing off the “realness” of sites and artifacts that must be constantly replaced to be maintained. It’s a facet of museum work that I hadn't dedicated much thought to in the past, but it’s fertile ground for discussion.

While I've argued a few times that there is an inherent value in an original versus a copy, I haven't ever taken into account the fact that some of those “originals” are in fact, by some definitions, copies. Okay, I mentioned it in passing regarding Ford’s Theater, but only to support the idea that the contagion of that location was the key to the rebuilt theater not being terribly grotesque. And honestly, I would classify a theater rebuilt on the same site much differently than a ship rebuilt plank by plank. I think that it's important in this discussion that we differentiate between "replicas" and "restoration".  Frankly, it's something I should have done much earlier in this discussion.

For my purposes, I'm considering a "replica" to be something that is built or created from scratch from new materials to closely resemble an object, either because the original is too fragile, rare, expensive, or otherwise unfeasible (is that a word?) to display.  A replica may be made with period tools or with period materials, but it is a modern creation.  For me, Ford's Theater as it stands now is a replica - it is built to mimic the original interior of the same building, but it's made with modern materials.  The same thing stands for replica skeletons and hands-on models that mimic actual artifacts.

A restoration, on the other hand, is what I would consider the USS Constitution - new materials and tools (or new materials and old tools, old materials and new tools, etc) are used to repair an existing historic artifact.  Now, this does get a bit tricky, as Howard Manfield touches on in that chapter excerpt, because at some point in a long restoration, the original materials used to create the object will be wholly replaced by the newer elements meant to maintain it.  So does an item that has been repeatedly restored like that remain a restored item?  Or does the act of constant replacement turn an original artifact into a replica of itself?

I'm sure that Manfield will discuss this at greater length in The Same Ax, Twice, and since the copy I put on hold just arrived at my local library I will look forward to getting his thoughts and reasoning.  For my part, I would argue that an original artifact, no matter how repaired or replaced can never become a replica (and that's exactly why I added the key phrase "from scratch" in my definition above).  A heavily repaired object is certainly different than one in pristine* condition, but the repairs don't change it's inherent being.  In fact, based on my thoughts from last week, I'm inclined to say that the repairs and restorations simply add to the story of the object.  (Which ties back to my pet contagion theory in a way - do the restorations add value, in the sense that the object now tells a deeper story about several different eras, or do they remove value in the sense that the object has been altered?  I suspect the answer is different for different objects.)

I'm off to spend the weekend reading about restorations (okay, and maybe also about teenaged necromancers, because I read Lish McBride's first book to see if my nephew would like it and now I really need to know what happens next), and I look forward to digger even deeper into this topic next week.




*I vividly remember the day (January 23, 2007, btw) that I learned that the actual for-real definition of "pristine" is "belonging to the earliest state or period, original." I had always thought it meant "clean", but that's the second variation of the second definition! The first definition makes pristine a work much more applicable to museums and artifacts than the second.
[Why yes, I was an English major, why do you ask?]

Living History

**Uh, I have no idea why my template is suddenly being so weird and highlighting things and replace fonts with Comic Sans.  It's important that you know that I would never use Comic Sans, and that I'll be tinkering with my formatting over the weekend to get everything shipshape.  (Which will be a lot punnier once you read the post below...)**

“Museums are filled with cases of tools that no one knows how to use anymore. A repaired ax is a living tradition.”

--The Same Ax, Twice by Howard Manfield  [First chapter available online]

photo by Mark Wilson, Boston Globe

After diving down a rabbit hole that I opened by reading this post on Paul Orselli's ExhibiTricks blog (Oh, I wish I could have gone to AAM this year!), I ended up at an online copy of the first chapter of Howard Manfield’s  book, The Same Ax, Twice.  Having just reserved my library’s copy of the full book, I only have this chapter to work off of, but it’s given me a lot of food for thought.  (As has Paul Orselli’s post on the "Is it Real?" workshop – I’m eagerly awaiting the day the audio copy of that session is available for purchase online because holy schmoly is that right up my alley or what?)

The quote at the top of this page spins off from an old joke Manfield relates earlier in the chapter – an anecdote in which a farmer claims that he’s had the same axe his whole life, and has only replaced the handle three times and the head twice.  (ba-dum-ching!) You've probably seen some variation of that before, but Manfield uses this old saw as a sort of call to arms for restoration.  Not just the restoration in the sense of fixing something and putting it in a case, but the living restoration of tall ships and heritage sites:  the restoration of an axe that’s used every day.

Please go read the chapter.  It’s insightful and deeply poetic, and it brings up a point that I had not thought about before – that the act of preserving something big, like a manor house or a wooden ship is also the act of preserving the skills needed to create and repair that same thing.  In a world of power tools and motorboats, it means something to repair and rig a ship by hand.  We can put artifacts in cases to preserve them, but doing that removes them from hands that could use those artifacts and contributes to the death of certain skills. It gives me a new vantage point on the idea of living history.  It’s not just pleasant volunteers in hoop skirts churning butter and gamely pretending they don't know what your iPhone is – it’s real people working hard to remember not just how things were, but how we used to do them.

Now, I still think that it's vitally important to preserve the objects of our past. But it's worth thinking about ways in which we can preserve both the tool and the skills needed to operate it.

We'll pick up on next week with another spin on the same idea - preserving an artifact vs. preserving a way of life, and whether a replica that can be handled can be more valuable than an original that's locked away.  Enjoy your long weekend!

Oh, it’s been a long time, hasn't it?

(c) Bill Watterson

I wish I could say I had a good reason for taking an unannounced year-long sabbatical, but I just needed a break to think and work and buy a house and adopt a dog learn to kayak and try to brew beer and time sort of got away from me.  But now I’m back, with a year full of thoughts and pondering and questions, and I’m excited to dive right back into thinking about museums:

Over the last year a few concepts have come up again and again as I worked in and thought about museums.  

• What does a museum do for its community?  What should it be doing for its community?  
• What role do exhibit design and strategy play in a museum’s place in the community? 
• How can a museum’s collections and research be more accessible to the public?  Should they be?  
• How can a museum that is already built and conceived alter its exhibits without altering its identity?  
• How can museums that aren't specifically built for children still reach them in a meaningful way?

I've really started thinking a lot more about the public face a museum presents, what it means for the museum and its community, and how exhibits can advance that interaction.  I’m very excited to spend some more time thinking about it and discussing it in this larger forum to see what we can come up with.

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.