Welcome to our weekly roundup of news articles about museums! At Peabody Museum, youngsters recycle trash into artwork Chicago Art Museum Opens Giant Screaming Palin Head Garden Exhibit. Getty Museum’s designated director deals with U.K. museum thefts A Tricky Museum Question China Extends Reach Into …
Elements of Expression: The Art and Design of Elwyn George Gowen May 3 – 20, 2012 Opening Reception May 3, 5:30-8pm Elements of Expression is curated by Tufts University students from the Museum Studies graduate program and presents the breadth of Gowen’s career, featuring color theory …
Check out this TED talk by Joshua Prince-Ramus. He and his architectural firm have designed a number of cultural spaces through a process he calls hyper-rationality, by listening to the needs of the space and providing the flexibility in which to serve the public. I was particularly struck by his responsiveness to the social aspects of these culture centers – one of which is a museum – and by the way in which architecture was not the star of the show, but in service to the greater mission.
Welcome to our weekly roundup of weird and wonderful news articles about museums! I don’t entirely know what to make of this bit of news out of Sweden: Museum Accused Of Hosting Racist Cake-Cutting Evacuated After Bomb Threat (Read the whole article, and you will be making …
For anyone lucky enough to be heading to the AAM Annual Meeting in two weeks, the Emerging Museum Professionals blog has just put up a great post about updating before you get to the conference. It applies to other conferences as well, so keep it …
The third Monday of April is recognized in Boston as Patriots Day. On paper, it’s a commemoration of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, one of the major events – perhaps THE major event – during the beginning of the American Revolution. Every year, there’s a large reenactment in Lexington and Concord. Local Minutemen reenactors wake at the time at which their towns were alerted that the regulars were out and march to Battle Green.
Yet, the event that everyone really celebrated today was the Boston Marathon. The news coverage this morning guessed that 500,000 people lined the marathon route. How many of those people knew that the real (on paper anyway) reason that they had the day off was because of the shot heard ’round the world? Why could I spend four hours watching live coverage of the race and during that time didn’t hear a single mention of the reenactment?
Similarly, Evacuation Day has always seemed to most people a thinly veiled excuse to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. How many people even know Evacuation Day exists?
I’m sure there are similar crossovers outside of Boston. Holidays celebrating public history are the result of years of lobbying by public history interest groups. They must have had some expectation or hope that it would raise the profile of the particular event they were commemorating.
How can museums help keep that profile higher? Is there any use to these days if we ignore them or treat them as yet another three day weekend? Are there better ways to commemorate important historic events? Why do we bother creating those holidays at all? How can we keep interpretation of them fresh?