by columnist Tegan Kehoe
Students in this year’s Exhibition Planning class were given a challenge: choose an image that inspires you from the photographs in Historic New England’s exhibition, “The Camera’s Coast,” and use it as a jumping-off point for a full-blown exhibition plan. In May, the Tufts University Art Gallery will host an exhibition that will offer a peek into their minds, with mini-exhibitions showing what each of them came up with. In the meantime, follow along on the Facebook page and on guest posts on this blog for previews into the process. The first guest blogger, Tegan, normally writes the column “The Wider World,” but today she’s sharing a bit about the foibles of research.
Snapshots: 15 Takes on an Exhibition is to take place at the Tufts University Koppleman Gallery May 6-18, 2014. Opening reception Tuesday, May 6, 2014, 5:30-8pm. See the Facebook page here.
One of the things I love about history and museum work is all of the weird research paths I end up going down. In the past few months, I’ve been collecting ideas, information, and images for my exhibition proposal “Rich Clam, Poor Clam” and the detail view of it which will be my part of Snapshots: 15 Takes on an Exhibition. “Rich Clam, Poor Clam” is about the cultures surrounding food in different social classes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in New England, focusing on the way seafood had a special place in the diet of both the poor and the rich. Here are a few snapshots of what I’ve found along the way.