Jennifer Tyburczy’s brilliant observation that all museums “have played an important but often overlooked role in the institutionalization of categories of sexual ‘normalcy’ and ‘perversity’” can also be applied to house museums and historic sites. House museums, as sites for interpreting private lives, are engaged in complex ways with presentations of sex and sexuality. Read More
Like many community museums, we’ve had a difficult time encouraging and maintaining a young adult audience. We know that members of generation Y love information, history, museums, and artifacts. We also know that members of generation Y sometimes like to focus more on presentation style, technology, and media than on content. Read More
On a summer 2013 study trip to historic sites in and around Boston hosted by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage in Philadelphia, participants were struck by the wide variety of ways they saw gender and sexuality interpreted–or in some cases, not interpreted at all. Read More
When I was researching the The Politics of Public Memory: Tourism, History, and Ethnicity in Monterey, California (State University of New York Press, 1993) in the late 1980s, I was deeply affected by the disparity between the haves and have-nots in Monterey. Read More
As part of its ongoing efforts to highlight the diversity of career opportunities for historians, the American Historical Association has organized an offsite workshop at the National Museum of American History during its conference this week. The workshop offers a chance to hear from leaders from some of the foremost history museums in the United States. Read More
On the final day of Reading Artifacts Summer Institute (RASI), each group was required to present its artifact to an audience of other participants, museum staff, and volunteers. Throughout the morning, artifacts that had initially seemed ambiguous and daunting at the start of the week were slowly separated into layers of meaning and their hidden histories were recounted. Read More
The Kentucky Derby Museum, a non-profit organization located in Louisville, Kentucky, announces the opening of its Colonel Clark Library. With collections dating back to the mid-19th century, the Colonel Clark Library is an outstanding resource for historians, especially those interested in agricultural, sporting, and local history. Read More
On the second day of the Reading Artifacts Summer Institute (RASI), we received the artifact accession files. Although our physical examination of the stove had proven effective, artifacts need some help to speak. Read More
In August 2012, a group of 26 doctoral students and museum professionals from different disciplines and multiple countries gathered at the Canada Science and Technology Museum (CSTM) in Ottawa, Canada, for the fourth annual Reading Artifacts Summer Institute (RASI). The one-week program, guided by staff and volunteers from the museum with guest scholar Dr. Read More
The first big step in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s re-installation process was to conduct visitor research. How do visitors feel about the current South Asian galleries? What do they already know about the area’s religions, geography, cultures, etc.? Read More
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