Category: What We’re Reading (Page 5 of 6)

I follow the American Association of State and Local History on facebook (which I would highly recommend!). The other day, they reposted an entry from their blog that caught my eye.

“5 Ways to Get a Woman Out of the Kitchen,” written by Dollie Boyd, discusses an important aspect of interpretation: how to bring to life the people often found on the periphery. In this case, the person in question is Sarah McEwen Doak, wife of Rev. Doak of Doak’s House in Greeneville, TN. The only mention of her in the visitor tour was in relation to her 13 children, which Boyd recognized as an issue that often happens in historic houses. The article talks about strategies that can be used to transform the way that we think about existing interpretation. It can be easy to continue on with current tours or exhibitions, especially with low budgets or small staff numbers. However, it is important to take a step back from everyday museum life and examine what we are interpreting and how. 

This article is a good reminder for any museum, aside from historic houses, not to become complacent with the interpretation that is already in place. Who is on the margins of the stories we are telling? Whose voices are not being heard? Keep in mind that even if there is a particular point of view present, it may be marginalized, as was the case with Sarah McEwen Doak.

We know how difficult it can be to keep up with current museum literature during your busy everyday life, particularly if you no longer have a syllabus to guide you. Our goal is to provide our readership with up-to-date information about a wide variety of topics that people actually find useful.

Each week, we put out a call to you for suggestions of items worth reading, such as:

• news articles
• blog posts
• graphics
• journal articles

If you come across something relevant, please submit it to us (along with a few short sentences about why you think it is particularly helpful) at tufts.museum.blog@gmail.com. We will post your suggestions as they come in, as well as adding them to our permanent What We’re Reading page.

So, please keep your eyes peeled and keep us in mind when you find something interesting!

Just as a reminder, the What We’re Reading page also compiles some helpful blogs that are worth checking regularly.

Today’s “What We’re Reading” post comes to you from Ingrid Neuman, Tufts professor of the course Collections Care and Preservation and Conservator at the RISD Museum

“The Custodians: How the Whitney is transforming the art of museum conservation”, The New Yorker, January 11, 2016

This article by Ben Lerner, a 2015 MacArthur Fellow, discusses the history of art conservation, and juxtaposes traditional techniques with the newest challenges facing conservators of contemporary art. In specific, he chronicles efforts at the Whitney Museum to evaluate unstable contemporary art works and determine the justification for replacement parts or replication –  the action of which has direct implications for the future maintenance, classification and description of the work thereafter.

The critical question which reverberates through the entire article is: at what point does a work of art become no longer the “original” due to replacement or re-fabrication of  parts?

This article clearly presents the extraordinary challenges conservators of contemporary art must navigate which sometimes run counter to the traditional ways conservators operate within the museum context.  The topics of reversibility, the original state, prototypes and future technological capabilities are all very timely and important topics with which students within the field of Museum Studies, and particularly those interested in Collections Care, should become familiar.   The care of contemporary art is still very much an emerging field and will continue to pose very important challenges and deep philosophical conversations within the field, and with living artists, as we work together to preserve contemporary art now and into the future.

We know how difficult it can be to keep up with current museum literature during your busy everyday life, particularly if you no longer have a syllabus to guide you. Our goal is to provide our readership with up-to-date information about a wide variety of topics that people actually find useful.

Each week, we put out a call to you for suggestions of items worth reading, such as:

• news articles
• blog posts
• graphics
• journal articles

If you come across something relevant, please submit it to us (along with a few short sentences about why you think it is particularly helpful) at tufts.museum.blog@gmail.com. We will post your suggestions as they come in, as well as adding them to our permanent What We’re Reading page.

So, please keep your eyes peeled and keep us in mind when you find something interesting!

Just as a reminder, the What We’re Reading page also compiles some helpful blogs that are worth checking regularly.

Today’s “What We’re Reading” post comes to you from Cynthia Robinson, director of the Tufts Museum Studies program.

Many museums conduct professional development workshops for classroom teachers, but until now, most developed their own agendas, with little more than tradition to guide them. Recently, Alfredo Bautista, a former Tufts post-doctoral associate and now Research Scientist and Lecturer at Nanyang Technological University’s National Institute of Education (Singapore), has pulled together a compilation of studies from across the world that summarize the best practices from a variety of countries. Among their findings are that professional development is most effective when teachers are able to engage in active, collaborative learning with opportunities to reflect and experiment, and when the professional development extends over time, rather than existing as a one shot deal.

Read Alfredo’s article, “Teacher Professional Development: International Perspectives and Approaches,” in the open-access journal Psychology, Society & Education. vol. 7(3).