CAG on museums: Objects in the Great North Museum Mouse House

View of the Mouse House

The Great North Museum: Hancock Mouse House is an area of the museum especially laid out for younger audiences and families and is also the space where the Learning Workshop ‘Museum Mice’ takes place. It is run by a Gallery Interpreter who is very experienced and engaging on Thursday and Saturday mornings. It is a space where under 5 year olds learn through story telling, singing, and play.

 As part of the museum gallery space, it also houses actual objects from the collection such as taxidermy animals, items of general natural history, and ethnographic objects. The other day I had the chance to install a couple of new ethnographic objects while some really cute little kids scampered around my feet. I mostly attempted to choose interesting objects from the ethnography collection, but also rather hearty ones to stand the playroom nature of this gallery particularly.

Display case integrated into the Mouse House bookcase wall

African tourist souvenir mask now on display

Although the Mouse House space is mainly geared for child learning, it is a requirement that all children be accompanied by their parents and in that sense it is also important that museum learning for younger children also accommodates families as a whole. This can be as simple as providing a space where families are invited and welcome, providing interesting things to start conversations, and providing self-led and staff-led learning. There are a lot of factors of course that can aid or hinder family learning, but figuring out these issues has become an impetus of the museum learning programmes.

Glass jar cases

Taking a Nigerian headdress off of display

The goal for the objects that are installed in the children’s space is to provide an outlet for interesting conversations between adults and children that stimulates engagement and exploration.

 

Putting the Ugandan drum made of hide and wood into the glass jar display

Stabilising the object mount (with extra large clown gloves)

CAG on museums: The Future of Ethnographic Museums in Oxford reflections

View of Radcliffe Camera from inside of the Bodleian

One of the key questions of the Future of Ethnographic Museums Conference circulated around how museums created at the height of the ‘museum age’ could be reconfigured to engage with new audiences and respond to changes in a globalized twenty-first century world. The conference was very academic and included curators, researchers, and museum professionals and therefore the discussions were driven by individuals with definite gravitas and influence in the museum world. There were many interesting points brought up in a rather philosophical reflection on the ‘future’ of ethnographic museums, spoken about particularly in terms of what is presently going on at museums around the world.

Garden view outside Lady Margaret Hall/Lady Marmalade Hall

The conference started off with the anthropology star James Clifford (!), who began proceedings with the keynote lecture. Clifford’s talk generally spoke about ethnographic museums in a fraught relationship with cultural communities in the era of globalization, using the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at UBC Vancouver as an example. MOA has come under fire by many cultures of the area who have taken up arguments over not wanting to be associated with museum because of the word anthropology. The word itself has been too connected to colonialist intentions and an antiquated view of cultures. Clifford also mentioned how the word ethnology, which was used to characterize collecting and the comparison of cultures has become completely defunct.

James Clifford!

There were other very interesting points made in the conference and very thought provoking talks, but I will summarize just a few of the things that have really stuck with me.

Sharon Macdonald spoke about the Humboldt Forum in Berlin and the intention to move the ethnographic collections to Museum Island, which Clifford also used as a point of comparison the previous night. Macdonald’s paper compared different approaches to citizenship, nationality, and issues of multiculturalism that have threatened museums through various political agendas. Both she and later Wayne Modest talked about museums shying away from difficult histories and some countries wanting to steer away from telling colonial histories at all, which prompted the attempt to close down the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. These trends outline a difficult phase for memory connected to ethnographic collections, or as Modest suggested, an active ignorance- referring to Ann Stoler’s concept of cultural aphasia as “the ‘inability to recognize things in the world and assign proper names to them’, especially in matters relating to the colonial past in Western societies”. Also very interesting in the discussion of these presentations, was the point that it is often difficult even for museum professionals to articulate to politicians and those adverse to ethnographic collections, what exactly the importance of collections are and why you can’t disregard even their more difficult national stories.

Hay in the Wolfson Nature Reserve

Another really interesting point was brought about by Clare Harris’s talk on the digitally distributed museum and issues of using The Tibet Album, and community reactions to the release of photographs onto the internet. The project has created a digital archive of British photography in Tibet from 1920-1950. The question of who uses these images and issues of freely circulated information on the internet is an interesting point. I’ve long wondered myself if historic photographs, or significant cultural objects are appropriate for release onto the internet. I think in terms of ethnographic material there will always be specific communities within a group or perhaps even individuals who do not want images of their ancestors or ancestral objects visible for the world to see on the internet. What kind of digital forums could encompass the concept of digital repatriation (although a difficult concept in my opinion), but maintain the knowledge that communities might want to keep restricted to themselves and made available only to them? If using the internet for digital exhibitions, social media to spread information, and online databases as the repository of museum metadata has been a major part of twentieth century museum practice, is there a step beyond for how museums can communicate to particular communities digitally in the twenty-first century?

I also took some time to reminisce about my university days and get around Oxford, so the photos are from some of those moments.

CAG on museums: Social media and museum engagement

I honestly hadn’t realized there was so much chatter over the issue of blogging and its relevance in the academic world. Being fairly new to blogging about my job and a few other interests related to anthropology, I had assumed that the power of using a blog as social media was simply to keep writing in general and if that media inspires ideas or input for bigger projects then it has been successful if not entertaining to reflect on retrospectively.

In the past week I’ve read quite a few critiques and defenses of the academic blog (not exactly what this blog is by the way). The idea of a very ‘serious’ blog doesn’t seem to really capture the point of one in the first place, and as the debates have continued about whether blogging has a place in academic publishing it seems that most people have missed the point.

Perhaps since I work in a museum, it seems more likely that because I interact with the public I should be able to explain what I do, research, and am interested in for a general audience. Writing online definitely has nothing to do with speaking to an academic audience, other than that perhaps a blogger might have some communication skills in my opinion which aren’t emphasized enough in academia. How many academics really step out of their academic jargon comfort zone and just interact with colleagues and the general public through normal communication? Academia tends not to change as quickly as online formats of communication, but nonetheless, opportunities to communicate should be taken on.

It seems more now than ever, at least in the museum academic sector, that the idea of being social media savvy and capable is very important. I’ve heard countless talks about how museums engage with the public through social media, and there are workshops (today!) to discuss these issues in depth (June 7 Newcastle University ICCHS workshop). It is no doubt an important skill to be able to remove oneself from academic writing and write for a wider audience, but because of the fleeting nature of social media itself, to expect that any post, tweet, blog, or update on social media will stand as a legacy of a researcher is to misunderstand the main purpose of social media as a tool for networking, promotion, and at times self-motivation.