by columnist Cira Brown, This past Sunday, I visited the Museum of Science to see the new exhibit entitled “Dead Sea Scrolls: Life in Ancient Times”. Admittedly, it’s a topic I don’t know much about, which makes it difficult to evaluate how the exhibition presented the …
by columnist Madeline Karp, Since college, I have tried really hard to dislike Philadelphia. It probably had something to do with dating a guy from Pittsburgh, but it mostly boiled down to this: its not big like New York, it’s not the capital like Washington, …
Here’s our weekly round-up of our favorite things that were said about museums this week: the good, the bad, and the really quite strange!
by columnist Madeline Karp, I did not have the chance to make my mom breakfast in bed this Mother’s Day. I had to go to Philadelphia to be a princess. The Please Touch Museum hosts an annual Mother’s Day Princess Brunch for Centennial Guild Members …
Here’s our weekly round-up of our favorite things that were said about museums this week: the good, the bad, and the really quite strange! Star Wars exhibit at Indiana St. Museum Art Review: Fighters With a Wardrobe to Match Princess Diana museum to close, contents …
by columnist Madeline Karp,
If you’re friends with me on Facebook, then you may know that I spent Sunday morning at the Stainton Society’s Annual Brunch, which featured CNN journalist Anderson Cooper as a guest speaker.
The Stainton Society is an Atlantic City-based medical philanthropy group and the annual brunch is their big fundraiser for a local medical center. The who, what, and why of how I got into is event is really neither here nor there, but if you’re friends with me in general, then you may know that I am a huge Anderson Cooper fangirl. That had something to do with it.
I say this with only a little bit of bias: Anderson was awesome.
“There’s a value to bearing witness to what people are going through,” he said. “I think it’s important to see people in remarkable situations and acknowledge it.” No, bearing witness does not change the course of events, he continued. But it does open our eyes to other places and situations, and prevent someone who has passed away from simply dissolving into history, as if he never existed at all.
He went on to play to his audience, talking about how doctors and nurses bear witness to emotional, physical and medical extremes in hospitals – they see deaths and births, cure deadly diseases and deliver heartbreaking diagnoses. He then spoke about seeing war zones, of dealing with loss, of the people he’s met who remain optimistic, even in the direst of situations. On the surface, this all has nothing to do with me, or my profession.
But when it was all over, I had a strange thought: Anderson Cooper is a museum. (Specifically, I think he’s a history museum, but you can tell me if you disagree.)
Anderson Cooper has dedicated his life to bringing others’ stories to the public. They are stories from people you will never meet, stories that you may never hear otherwise. Some of them are terribly sad. Some of them are amazing. Some of them are funny in their own way. He wants to inform people and to tell them the facts – it’s up to us to interpret those facts, form an opinion and make that story mean something.
What is your museum’s mission? Technically, it may be to interpret history or make artistic masterpieces accessible for a nominal fee. But isn’t it really to bear witness to an historical moment? To recognize the human capacity to create amazing works of beauty?
Museums collect things, but the true story is that of the person who owned or used them. Objects tell a story – like Anderson Cooper, it’s the museum’s job to root that story out and share it with the public. With any collected object or exhibit, we have to find the story, ask the tough questions, edit the content, package it for mass consumption and give people something to think about. Please remember this exhibit, museums ask visitors. Please make this story meaningful.
I suppose what I’m getting at here is that in their own way, museums bear witness to the human condition and we as museum professionals are the reporters.
So what do you think? Is Anderson Cooper a history museum? Can history museums be Anderson Cooper?
Share you thoughts with me in the comments!
PS- I highly recommend reading Anderson’s book Dispatches from the Edge. In addition to giving insight into the lifestyle of a foreign correspondent, it may have helped inspire this column’s name. (Just a little.)