Now more than ever, museums seem to be striving towards creating memorable experiences for visitors. The pandemic necessitated the use of technology and virtual tours so that exhibits could still be enjoyed. Suddenly you didn’t need a plane ticket to take a tour of the …
Over and over again, zoos and aquariums around the world are making headlines for their same-sex penguin couplings. One of the most iconic couples was Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins who began performing mating rituals at the Central Park Zoo in 1998. After …
The theme for this week of My Home is a Museum project is Balance. The author of the idea is Anuja Jayasekara, he is a PhD student in Physics at Tufts. As many of us try to maintain a healthy balance of work, academic studies, self-care and social lives, I thought this theme idea was a perfect fit. Therefore, I encourage all readers to share the pictures and stories of objects which embody a sense of balance for you. Send a picture (or 2) of your object along with a short description to sayyara.huseynli@tufts.edu.
If you need a little inspiration, read Anuja’s story.
“I collected these rocks when I took a walk in the National Seashore in Cape Cod. I keep them on the top of my dresser and I try to balance them on top of each other. They stay balanced for a while and whenever I open my dresser to get something, they crumble down and I would have to balance them again. However, I can never get the same orientation of the rocks as before. But they stay balanced in this whole different way too. And the process repeats. It resembles the way of life. Doesn’t it? We try to balance everything but one thing changes everything then we try to balance it again. But it is never the way it was before.”
If you’re still figuring out your summer plans, I’d like to recommend taking the Revitalizing Historic House Museums HIST 0289 – A course taught by Ken Turino and Barbara Silberman, which I took last summer. This course takes a deep dive into historic house museums: the …
Since Valentine’s Day was this past weekend, I thought that a fitting topic for this week would be LOVE. LOVE is a collection of sculptures created by Robert Indiana (born Robert Clark), an artist from New Castle Indiana. The sculpture is of the letters “L,” …
The past few weeks have been emotionally and mentally challenging for many people. As graduate students, we have to maintain a good work and study performance while juggling our Covid colored social lives and personal care, in addition last week many experienced the stress related with the election. This week I would like to invite our readers to share pictures of the objects in your homes that helped you relax, ground and move on.
Send a picture (1 or 2) of your “something relaxing” to sayyara.huseynli@tufts.edu. Include your name and where you currently live.
As usual, I will be the first person to share. Last week, I felt that I was attacked by news coming from everywhere, academic work deadlines gave me anxiety and personal life was troubled. While I was journaling one day, I got an idea that I should create a collage of my emotions. I mapped my emotions, connected them with other forms of art, like cutouts of paintings and drawing and added words. I extracted the words and phrases from the quotes by my favorite philosophers, poets and other artists. While creating this kind of art, I felt calm and relaxed.