by guest columnist James Stanton This year NEMA asked conference attendees to question why museums are needed now more than ever. In an increasingly diverse society, museums offer a space for people to reflect, learn, and honor their different histories while bringing communities together to …
by editor Phillippa Pitts Just home from Newport, RI and the 95th New England Museum Association Conference. NEMA is a fantastic organization that really brings together a diverse group of museums for three days of sessions, workshops, frantic business card swapping, and networking. People walk …
by columnist Kacie Rice
“Why museums?” It’s a question that haunts the museum world – whether it’s, “Why do you work in a museum?”, “Why should we bring our students on a museum field trip?”, “Why do we need museums?”, or the big one, “Why should my organization give money to your museum?”, we answer this question all the time. We answer that we’re advocates of free choice learning, that we preserve and protect our collective heritage, that we create valuable community gathering spaces, and for some of us, that we really do just like hanging out in smelly rooms full of animal skins. For the last century and a half, museums have been any and all of these things to our society and to the people who work in them, but they’ve also provided a service that many people don’t expect: innovation.
Continue reading Science in Museums: Carl Akeley, Museum Innovator
by columnist Catherine Sigmond Finally, Google has brought its widely acclaimed Art Project to science museums… sort of. Lately, I’ve been indulging my penchant for travel by exploring the world through Google Street View (did you know you can tour the Galapagos?!). So when I …
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 …
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 Exhibit Spaces and Exhibit Catalogs