Curated by the artist Barbara Jones (1912–1978) for the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1951, Blackeyes and Lemonade was an exhibition of popular art or, what Jones defined as, “the things people make for themselves, or that are manufactured in their taste.” The exhibits, which included a tiled fireplace in the shape of an Airedale dog, a giant anthropomorphic lemon, pub beer pulls, advertising posters, and industrially manufactured confectionary, posed a challenge to a codified and class-based conception of taste, fine art, and high culture that was prevalent in the post-war British museum. Through an analysis of the production and reception of Blackeyes and Lemonade , this paper charts the intellectual and practical battles Jones had to engage in to defend her selection and interpretation of objects, while simultaneously defining an unfamiliar branch of esthetic impulse and attempting to redirect what she called the “museum eye.” Finally, the paper explores the role of the temporary exhibition in re-opening discussions about taste, class, and gender in the museum. Keywords museum , subject focus , women , research and topics , popular art , taste , 1950s , Great Britain
Our goal is to provide guidance to those responsible for security involving the protection of cultural property. It’s important to note that the authors here are speaking from positions as practitioners. Our experience in operations, security design, as well as careers in cultural property protection that provided knowledge through trial and error over time as well as working with colleagues in the development of industry best practices as a result of those trials, were instrumental in helping us form the opinions contained in the article. Hence the absence of research and academic references in this article.
This essay explores the work of women who shaped the collection of the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum: Historian and Director of Research Louise Daniel Hutchinson (1928–2014), Curator Portia James (1953–2015), and Historian Gail S. Lowe (1950–2015) whose exhibitions and projects built a rich community-based collection. Hutchinson’s work during the formative years of 1974 to 1986 elevated local voices in the research process and brought educator, Anna J. Cooper (1858–1964) out of obscurity. Portia James’ including community voices and perspectives in the exhibition process, resulting in her most celebrated exhibitions: Black Mosaic: Community, Race, and Ethnicity Among Black Immigrants in Washington, D.C. (1994). Her project amassed a large amount of oral history interviews, photographic documentation, and research files. Gail S. Lowe’s projects expanded the museum collection to include national and international voices on issues that resonated with the local community. Her exhibition exploring contemporary African American religious traditions, generated primary research materials on diverse faiths and spiritual traditions espoused by African Americans in Washington, D.C., and selected cities across the country. The collective work of all these women generated a wealth of resources and invaluable information that continues to be consulted by scholars and the public.
This persuasive position paper aims to discuss the public policy gaps in digital preservation identified by UNESCO and persuade the development of the current digital public policies. To evidence these gaps, the principal topics of digital public policies (digital strategy) from four countries were analyzed: Brazil, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The analysis evidence that these digital public policies are focused on the modernization of public administration and cybersecurity; they do not contemplate digital preservation. To support the position, current legislation in record management is indicated to connect the preservation of physical and digital documents. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is also used to persuade because digital preservation is an indispensable component of sustainable development. That is because today, large amounts of cultural heritage are created and only available digitally, and never “fixed” in a physical form, museums, archives, and libraries, also embarking on an epic journey to digitization and “no development is sustainable without considering culture.” Digital culture heritage must be available for future generations, and only digital preservation can guarantee that; therefore, digital preservation must be treated as a public policy.
In 1900, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) transformed the Evanston, Illinois home of their late president, Frances Willard, into one of the first house museums dedicated to a woman in the United States. For over ninety years, WCTU members used the collections to situate Willard’s social reform career in the framework of domestic and religious duty. Recent efforts by historians and community members to reinterpret the collections to demonstrate Willard’s significance to a progressive, nondenominational, and diverse audience has sparked contentious debate over the ownership of the museum. Drawing on archival materials, published texts, and oral history interviews, this case study examines the use of space and artifacts, as well as the verbal sparring such choices have provoked. The controversy over the Willard House collections suggests that when women’s political and professional activity is central to a house museum’s significance, it becomes an especially contested commemorative site.
Electra Havemeyer Webb, in 1947, founded the Shelburne Museum in Vermont. A “collection of collections,” the museum brought together examples of art, architecture, and even local trees, all showcasing Webb’s interest in objects that can educate and illuminate American life and culture. On the other side of Lake Champlain, Alice T. Miner, with her husband, created the Alice T. Miner Museum in 1924. Her collection focused on the Colonial Revival, though, in a sense, this, too, is a “collection of collections.” The character of their museums reflects on their individual personalities and circumstances, but the fact of the collections speaks to the time period and to the ways in which women have seen and understood American culture. This article explores what these collections tell us about the women who created them and about the ways in which race, gender, and class intersect in the inclusion and exclusion of objects and images. Whether the steamship Ticonderoga or the top of a crazy quilt made be Lena Olena Blow of Sciota, NY, in 1908, the objects chosen by Webb and Miner (respectively) tell a story, one that is reinforced by their presentation within the museums. Through examining the provenance and presentation of specific objects, this essay will consider the wider themes, including the relative invisibility of women, craftspeople, and people of color, considered through the two museums. Of particular interest will be the women themselves and their intentions in creating museums that have long outlived them. Were they aware of the significance of their work? Did they strive to include objects and images that illustrated race, gender, and class, as understood or misunderstood by the America of their times? Have the curators and directors that followed them changed the tenor of the museums in order to address those questions more fully?
A startling number of conservators tell stories about mistreatment of collection material by the public. We used to hear a familiar type of problem: vitrines marred by strollers, glass broken by resting parents, or a pencil falling out of a pocket onto a background. Now, the story is more dramatic: French fries deposited on remote surfaces of large dinosaur specimens. Is an exhibit successful if attendance contributes to the damage of delicate material? This paper provides a broad overview of the risk to exhibited collection material imposed by visitors. Patterns of damage to collections correspond to specific characteristics of the exhibit spaces themselves. This investigation looks at problems encountered at one large paleontology exhibit and overlays successful concepts drawn from sources outside the museum world.
A wide range of inherent vices and acquired hazards can be found in museum collections worldwide. Inherent hazards include items decorated with lead paint, objects containing dyes and pigments, archaeological and geological collections containing silica dust, poisonous herbarium specimens, geological collections that naturally contain heavy metals or are radioactive, objects created from uranium glass and even historic medicinal collections containing old medications and other dangerous substances. Acquired hazards include historic chemical pesticide treatments including toxic metal-based poisons such as arsenic and mercuric salts and, later in time, organic compounds such as DDT were also employed. How can museums identify and manage these complex issues? This case study addresses these concerns and highlights a multi-year collaboration between the Indiana University Indianapolis Museum Studies Program, Purdue University’s School of Health Sciences and the Indiana Medical History Museum (IMHM) that can serve as a replicable model for other museums grappling with these same conundrums.
Dorothy Shepherd (1916–1992), a scholar of Ancient Near Eastern and Islamic art, helped lay the groundwork for scholarship in her field during a period when curatorial work and scholarship was dominated by men. She attended the University of Michigan and after graduation was appointed assistant curator of decoration at the Cooper Union Museum, New York. During World War II Shepherd served in the newly formed Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section of the United States military and in 1947 was appointed associate curator of textiles at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA); she retired from the CMA in 1981. During Shepherd’s tenure, the CMA acquired textiles and Islamic objects, and organized textile exhibitions showcasing Cleveland’s collection; Shepherd also authored numerous publications. In addition, Shepherd produced a significant but as yet unpublished catalog of 280 Islamic textiles in Cleveland’s collection. All of this is evidence of a noteworthy career that deserves further study and recognition.
Established in 2020, the Promoting Exhibit Access and Safety (PEAS) Working Group was formed by cultural heritage, safety, and health professionals with a shared interest in finding multidisciplinary solutions to “detrimental visitor interactions (DVI),” defined as “any incident where an individual engages with an exhibit and harms themselves, others, or a collection item.” The Working Group is composed of individuals from various private and non-profit organizations that connect to international, national, regional, local, and tribal audiences. In 2021, the Working Group surveyed attendees at four cultural heritage conferences to get a broader perspective on what institutions are already doing at the intersection of access and safety. The following article is a presentation and analysis of the survey results which comprises both quantitative and qualitative data.
As the national design collection of the United States, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City is dedicated to historical and contemporary design with a collection of over 215,000 objects. Since its founding in 1897 as the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, its collection departments have been defined taxonomically by materials. In 2022, the museum created a new collecting department for the first time in its history, acknowledging that Digital collections represent a separate “material.” The introduction of a Digital department stakes a claim that digital design is itself a separate discipline with its own needs of collections management, curation, and conservation. Digital design as both process and product is now pervasive throughout design fields and the collection will continue to grow as the museum strives to represent contemporary design practice. While the museum’s early digital collecting came from a lineage of graphic design and typography, this article discusses the challenges inherent in developing new taxonomies, typologies, classifications, and collections management and preservation processes.
The development and implementation of pandemic response protocols for museum workers and visitors evolved over many months following the recognition of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a major public health threat and crisis trigger. Initial response to the crisis in many museums was cessation of all activity and interaction with the public and with coworkers. Museum functions were suspended. Museums closed their doors to visitors and staff. Access to exhibits and collections was disrupted. Ensuring the safety of objects on display was difficult. The air we breathed, the objects we touched, the spaces we were in were all suspect as potential transmitters of the virus. As research was conducted on virus transmission, research results were incorporated into the development of reopening protocols for museums and museum collections allied with a university museum consortium. Case studies of the compilation, distribution, implementation, and reflection of pandemic response protocols within consortium member museums provide insight into including these crisis protocols for emergency response and collections management policies going forward.
On June 18, 2022, the National Museum of the American Latino (NMAL) debuted the Molina Family Latino Gallery (MFLG), the Museum’s first exhibition space. Inside the National Museum of American History (NMAH), the Gallery opened ¡Presente! A Latino History of the United States, an exhibition affirming NMAL’s credo that Latino history is U.S. history. In the 4,500 ft 2 Gallery, objects on loan from six Smithsonian (SI) units and over 50 external lenders are on display in large wall cases and highlight “nooks.” Despite all objects being behind large glass doors, visitors can engage with multi-sensory interactives, digital interfaces, and the 500 ft 2 General Motors Learning Lounge. One nook highlights a ceramic Tree of Life by Veronica Castillo on a rotating base. The QR codes throughout the Gallery allow visitors to explore the Museum’s online presence, including a 3D-scan of Castillo’s piece. Even with efforts for broader accessibility, the Gallery still faces unexpected challenges when considering exhibit access and safety. This article explores MFLG from many angles and the balance between collection care and interactivity. From environmental monitors to enthusiastic visitors, ¡Presente! demonstrates the challenges that museums face and serves as a platform to prepare for the new National Museum of the American Latino.
Hallie Q. Brown Community Center (the Center) began as a settlement house in 1929. It has and continues to serve the predominately Black neighborhood, commonly known as Rondo, in Saint Paul, MN. I am the first professional archivist hired by the Center and, as such, I was the first to establish workflows, implement standards, and provide easy access to the Center’s archival collections. Yet, I was trained to be an archivist by white people at predominately white institutions and have learned over time that not all the frameworks, ideas, and expectations impressed upon me apply in community archives which serve Black people. In this paper I will discuss the underappreciated social and emotional labors involved in being a Black woman in charge of a community archive, which serves a historically Black community, and was initially led by Black women. I will explore aspects of internal colonialism, catalog description, and efforts in community collaboration and outreach as it relates to collections entrusted to the Hallie Q. Brown Community Archives (HQBCA). This paper will offer a vignette into the journey of a professional serving the majority as a minority in collections care, to serving an underrepresented community as a fellow member of a marginalized group.
In the Pop-up-VR Museum, a selection of design objects from the Design Museum collection can be explored as virtual reality experience together with stories and comments collected in workshops organized with senior communities and museum visitors amongst others. The collaboration between the museum and the Aalto University Department of Art and Media in the EU Horizon 2020 project SPICE (2020–2023), seeks to increase social cohesion and inclusion through cultural heritage. Using semantic tools designed and developed in the project, it studies ways to promote novel forms of “citizen curation” activities. The article discusses the co-design process between media designers, heritage professionals, and different user communities, with varying understandings and needs regarding museum data and Finnish design heritage. In the museum, community-based data raises practical as well as ethical issues. Also the new digital artifacts challenge existing systems: what and how should be preserved in the museum collection from the dialogue with the user that takes place in the Pop-up VR Museum and does this new data demand re-assessing earlier information and, how does should the process of creating new digital artifacts be documented and described.
This article shares the approaches, research and consequences of catalog-centered historical research at the Museum of Cornish Life, a result of the author’s Art Fund Headley Fellowship in 2022. It argues that museums are inherently forgetful institutions that avoid and often do not preserve their own history. If museums are to think and do things differently, particularly when employing decolonial approaches, they must start with reconstructing and understanding their own institutional and documentation ancestry. In the absence of an organized institutional archive the author turned to using critical close readings of both the historic and current collections catalogs to reconstruct patterns of curatorial preference, language, terminology, and classification use, and their impact on collections making. This research, coupled with piecing together scattered fragments from newspapers and surviving correspondence, led to the start of a major long-term effort to create a new museum knowledge base in the form of a digital archive to preserve the multiple voices and influences of the museum and its collections.
The special approaches to cataloging architectural drawings that were developed in the analog era of printed catalogs have persisted for over half a century. But the growth of digital technology in more recent years has created new challenges and opportunities for custodians of architectural drawings that have yet to be fully explored. This article examines traditional approaches to cataloging architectural drawings in the United Kingdom, including the highly influential system developed at the Royal Institute of British Architects in the 1970s, alongside recent literature and examples of modern finding aids to reveal the impact that digital technology has had on the practice of archival description, together with the possibilities that new technology offers for presentation and access to online descriptions. By highlighting the key developments in digital cataloging and relating them to the medium of architectural drawings, this article will enable custodians of architectural collections to ensure that their catalogs are fit for purpose in the digital age.
