Museum Studies at Tufts University

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Author: Phillippa Pitts (Page 12 of 236)

Dispatches from the Mid-Atlantic: Museums in the Nudes

October 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

by columnist Madeline Karp

There is a trend here in Philadelphia that I think you should know about.

It’s called “Boy-lesque” and it combines burlesque dancing – an artistically-minded nude show – with boys. You could call it male stripping…but that’s not exactly accurate. It’s more about pushing the audience past their comfort zone than the sex. It forces you to talk about objectification, and to think about gender, and consider what it is, exactly, that makes you so squeamish about naked people. (After all, we’re all naked under our clothes, right?)

The thing is, classic burlesque dancing has become passé in the age of HBO and Fifty Shades of Grey. It has lately been repurposed to empower women and promote positive body image. It could be used to talk about serious issues, but it’s hard to shock someone into discussion when the shock of seeing mostly naked women in public has all but worn off.

Continue reading

Exhibit Spaces and Exhibit Catalogs

October 9, 2013 / / 0 Comments

by Cira Louise Brown

Over the past few months, I have been working to develop an exhibition catalog from an exhibit currently on display. The exhibition explores the topic of time from various cultural, scientific and mechanical standpoints, and uses artifacts from a variety of institutions and collections. I find the show to be very successful in its ambitions, and the content has even been integrated into a college class. Given that it’s a temporary exhibition, lasting less than a year, there was a need to preserve the content in the form of a catalog, in both eBook and iBook formats. I was tasks with laying out the book, using the existing style of exhibition.

As with so many design projects such as these, the task seemed straightforward enough. The exhibit content was done, photography of the objects was mostly completed, and the design standards had already been decided upon. Yet translating an exhibit into a book remains a tricky task.

So, in my brief foray into exhibition catalogs, here’s a little list of what I’ve learned. Continue reading

Reminder! Tomorrow’s talk at the Peabody Museum!

October 8, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Join Kevin Gover, the Director of the National Museum of the American Indian, tomorrow at 6 p.m. for a free talk and reception.

Here’s the invitation for more details!

You are invited to attend a 6:00 PM public talk and reception on Wednesday, October 9 at the Peabody Museum, “”Changing the Narrative: American Indians and American Cultural Myth,” with Kevin Gover, Director, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution.

Kevin Gover is a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and has been the director of the National Museum of the American Indian since 2007. He is a former professor of law at Arizona State University and was the co-executive director of the ASU American Indian Policy Institute. He also served as Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs for the U.S. Department of the Interior from 1997–2000.

Come for the talk at Harvard’s Geological Lecture Hall (26 Oxford Street, Cambridge), and stay for the special reception in the Wiyohpiyata: Lakota Images of the Contested West exhibition in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

Co-sponsored by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University and the Harvard University Native American Program

 

Learning Large Print

October 7, 2013 / / 0 Comments

by Tegan Kehoe

This fall, the museum where I work is having an exterior restoration project done, and this means the building will be enveloped by scaffolding with dark mesh covers. The gallery, which is largely lit by natural light, will be considerably dimmer. After a staff meeting that included a lot of joking around about lending out headlamps in admissions, a few of us realized that now would be a great time to create large print exhibit guides, which had been in the back of our minds for a while. I volunteered to spearhead the effort.

I set about looking for resources and examples to make the guides as useful as possible. In doing so, I learned that there are few universally-accepted standards in this area. In addition to making the font large, it is important to print on opaque, non-glossy paper, to minimize special formatting, and to use a clear and readable font, but often, I found I just had to read what many different groups had to say and choose what seemed to make the most sense for this particular project. I wish we had a focus group of testers, but it doesn’t look like that will happen. Continue reading

Museums in the News

October 6, 2013 / / 1 Comment

Of course, undeniably the story for this week is the fallout from the government shutdown: shuttering museums, historic sites and parks around the country. Although many articles, like this one from the Washington Post, focus on the National Mall, let’s not forget the bigger impact around the country.

Image Credit Kevin Lamarque /Reuters/Landov

Image Credit Kevin Lamarque /Reuters/Landov

Of course, as with any such situation, there are the heroes. For example, the Indianapolis Children’s Museum offered free admission for federal employees. While it was only for a weekend and family members still had to pay, what a great gesture to liven the spirits of furloughed workers!

In other news,  Continue reading

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