Exploring ideas and engaging in conversation
Check out this amazing story from the Sunderland Museum. In 1913, their curator came up with a program for blind visitors–adults and children–to let them explore objects. Architectural columns, historical gas masks, and scores of natural history specimens were included.
courtesy of Atlas Obscura
Make sure you scroll to the end of the article to see the clay models that the visitors made after their visit. Really incredible!
How is this different from what we do today?
Here’s an interesting piece by GalleristNY about “Hack the Met,” a highly unauthorized tour operating inside the Met, drawing new, young, often-techie New Yorkers into a dialogue that covers everything from medieval armor and musical instruments to Thomas Gainsborough…. with flasks.
Mr. Gray, who grew up in Georgia and moved to New York in 2007, discovered the Met two years ago when a girl brought him there on a date. He began leading the tours after realizing how few young people frequent the museum. When he asks peers to name their favorite New York museum, MoMA will get a few nods, but apparently no one ever mentions the Met. “I met someone the other night who said, ‘the New Museum,’” Mr. Gray told the group with a pained expression. His mission, he said, was to make “the best museum in the world” hip for a younger crowd.
Rainey Tisdale, one of our own professors here at Tufts, has been agitating for a museum to step up to collect the objects relating to the Boston Marathon bombing before they disappear.
Listen to her in this interview on WBUR, which aired this morning: http://www.wbur.org/2013/04/23/saving-marathon-memorial-items.
by editor Phillippa Pitts
Museums talk a lot about being members of their communities, meeting niche needs and providing unique third spaces. Today, some of the museums in Boston stepped up beautifully. Below is just a rough screen capture snapshot of how our community responded to the Marathon Monday bombings.
Starting with the Boston Children’s Museum fantastic and speedy response to their visitors’ needs:
Thoughts and comments on these responses are welcome below. Also if you have other screenshots from museums in Boston or around the country email us (tuftsmuseumblog AT gmail.com) and we’ll share them!
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