Monthly Archive for December, 2010

Smithsonian’s African American History and Culture Museum founding director, Lonnie G. Bunch, III, to speak in Johannesburg 2011

Published on December 29, 2010 in Headline and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Lonnie G. Bunch, III, founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, will be joining the 2011 Inclusive Museum Conference at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, 3- June-3 July 2011.

Historian, author, curator and educator, Lonnie G. Bunch, III is the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. In this position he is working to set the museum’s mission, coordinate its fundraising and membership campaigns, develop its collections, establish cultural partnerships and oversee the design and construction of the museum’s building. Rooted in his belief that the museum exists now although the building is not in place, he is designing a high-profile program of traveling exhibitions and public events ranging from panel discussions and seminars to oral history and collecting workshops. The museum, the 19th to open as part of the Smithsonian Institution, will be built on the national Mall where Smithsonian museums attracted more than 24 million visitors in 2005. It will stand on a five-acre site adjacent to the Washington Monument and opposite the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. More…

New approaches to signage

Published on December 29, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Simon Stephens at Museum Practice….

As well as the growing importance of brand identity in signage and wayfinding, the other big influence is new technology. Digital signage, interactive floorplans and handheld multimedia guides are all becoming more common, particularly for those with bigger budgets.

Digital signage offers flexibility, and can be easily updated and personalised. “Digital signs are fantastic for real-time information,” says Lucy Holmes, creative director at design consultancy Holmes Wood, which has worked on wayfinding projects for the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), Manchester Art Gallery, the Natural History Museum and Tate Modern, among others. It was recently appointed to design a wayfinding masterplan for Museums Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery.

“Digital signs remove the need for lists of static content and therefore de-clutter spaces,” says Holmes. “At the V&A, we designed a bespoke system to feed real-time information onto the screens in the two main entrances. At Manchester Art Gallery we created a simple set of templates that could be updated immediately.” More…

Inclusive Museum Journal: Recently Published

Published on December 28, 2010 in Journal. 0 Comments

museum_frontThe most recent issue of The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum includes:

Vietnam Museum of Ethnology: The Making of a National Museum for Communities

Published on December 23, 2010 in Book and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Vietnam Museum of Ethnology: The Making of a National Museum for Communities by Nguyen Van Huy is now available from the On Museums imprint.

For more than a decade (1995–2006), the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology has undertaken many journeys: journeys to bring relevant ethnographic objects to the museum; journeys to reach the opening of the museum’s permanent exhibition in its new structure–itself shaped like a traditional bronze drum–journeys to prepare temporary exhibitions; journeys to seek out and erect houses of different ethnic groups in the museum’s outdoor exhibition; journeys to learn about and present craft demonstrations and performances; journeys to implement educational programs for children; and journeys to introduce multimedia into museum activities. Each journey–creative and educational–has provided opportunities for us to learn about how the people in our country have adapted to changing conditions.

Although all the above journeys took place at different times and involved different, specialized skills of staff members, it can be said that all the journeys shared the same aims: to link the museum with communities; to make the museum more accessible to the public and relevant to contemporary life; and to celebrate the ordinary people of the different ethnic and social groups who hand down the traditions of their ancestors to current and future generations. This is the fundamental orientation of the museum’s activities, which I have had the privilege to present in papers at various international conferences dedicated to cooperative learning. Here, I have compiled these papers to provide our friends and colleagues–especially colleagues from museums in Southeast Asia–with a better understanding of the activities of the VME. By reading these papers, one can follow the new road that the VME has taken in fostering and presenting the cultures of ethnic peoples living in Southeast Asia.

Smithsonian censorship: Fire in their belly

Published on December 21, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From The Economist…

The funniest part of the CNSNews.com article that ultimately got David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly” pulled from the National Portrait Gallery last week is the sensitive-content notice at the top: “WARNING: This story contains graphic photographs of items on display in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery.” What’s in those graphic photographs? Mostly, the rather familiar (though still powerful and disturbing) image of a thin, nearly naked man nailed to a wooden cross, bleeding from open wounds. A lot of ants are crawling on the crucifix, but you can’t make them out in the web images. There are a couple of images of other naked guys further down in the article, but of course those aren’t the images that generated any controversy; nobody ever wound up pressuring the Smithsonian to pull Larry Rivers’s portrait of John O’Hara wearing nothing but his motorcycle boots. The web article’s author, a conservative activist named Penny Starr, was clearly trying to gin up some late-80s-style culture-war outrage at the idea that the Smithsonian was sponsoring an exhibit of gay artists. But the part of the story that proved to have legs, once the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue decided to pick it up and got it endorsed by John Boehner, was the part about the crucifix with the ants crawling on it. More…

Inclusive Museum Journal, Volume 3, Number 2 now available

Published on December 14, 2010 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

museum_frontThe second issue of Volume 3 of The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum has now been published.

Volume 3, Number 2 includes:

Continue reading ‘Inclusive Museum Journal, Volume 3, Number 2 now available’

Museum Sells Pieces of Its Past, Reviving a Debate

Published on December 8, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Robin Pogrebin at The New York Times…

A galloping horse weather vane sold for about $20,000, and the cigar store Indians brought in more than $1 million. A Thomas Sully oil painting of Andrew Jackson netted $80,500, and a still life by Raphaelle Peale, part of the family that put portraiture in this city on the map, was auctioned at Christie’s for $842,500.

These were just a few of more than 2,000 items quietly sold by the Philadelphia History Museum over the last several years, all part of an effort to cull its collection of 100,000 artifacts and raise money for a $5.8 million renovation of its 1826 building.

In doing so the museum stepped into the quicksand of murky rules, guidelines and ethical strictures meant to discourage museums everywhere from selling collections to pay bills. It is one of the hottest issues in the museum world today. With budgets shrinking in a bad economy, the pressure to generate revenue is growing along with fears that museums are squandering public trusts meant to preserve the artifacts of the past for future generations. More…