The President's House

One of the stops I made in Philadelphia on Sunday was to the President's House, no not the current President, but George Washington's. I thought he lived at Mount Vernon, you might be thinking, and that would not be incorrect, but when he was President, Washington lived in Philadelphia.

Why isn't this place better known? Well, that would be because the house no longer exists as it once did. As with many historic houses, all that remains can be found in the archaeological record. I saw the interpretation of it being constructed in October, and I'm glad to say that it's been completed.

Today, visitors to the President's House can peek into the archaeological record, a sealed section of the excavation is included in the open air exhibition on the house and George Washington's slaves. The exhibition is installed on a skeleton of the house, brick walls, and window frames, to scale of what once existed. It's actually really neat and I recommend checking it out, it's .

Here are some pictures to satisfy your interest:

From the outside looking in.
From the inside looking out. It's great to see so many people actually utilizing the space in some way.
There are videos too, in addition to signage.

Here on the floor are the outlines of where rooms and walls would have stood. Such a neat feature, very clever.
Here's some of the archaeology that was conducted on the site.

I totally recommend stopping by the President's House if you are in Philadelphia. It's right in the middle of some of the biggest tourist sites and across the street from the visitors' center. Stay tuned for more of my Cooperstown-Philly-Maryland adventure.

A Short But Sweet Museum Road Trip

Hello Everyone!

I just got back from a wonderful trip, and of course there were museums involved. It inspired me to write, and hopefully you will here more about my adventure soon, but in the meantime, if you have an interest in small museums, work at a small museum, or are thinking about someday working in a small museum, get involved with the Small Museum Association.

Their annual conference was the primary reason for my trip, and I had an absolute blast. In addition to great sessions and a ton of vendors at the resource hall, there was a banquet on Monday night and people could dress in costume if they wanted to. I also met some wonderful people and made some friends. I plan to add more about what I learned at the sessions I went to in the coming days. Just do yourselves a favor and visit SMA's website follow their blog and like them on Facebook. Soon they will be posting podcasts from some of the conference sessions and I highly suggest listening to those when they are released. Go to the conference next year, it's a great value and I'll be there too!

My Road Trip:

Saturday- Cooperstown to Philadelphia, PA.
Sunday- Philadelphia, PA to Ocean City, MD.
Visited: Eastern State Penitentiary, National Constitution Center, and the President's House
Ate at: Jack's Firehouse
Monday- Ocean City, MD
Tuesday- Ocean City, MD to Philadelphia, PA.
Ate at: National Mechanics
Wednesday- Phildadelphia, PA to Cooperstown, NY.
Visited: Franklin Institute and The Woodlands Cemetery

A Twitter Reflection

I have now been in the ranks of the twittering masses for just over two months. These are my observations of successful (and not so successful) twitter usage by museums (and related people and organizations) thus far. I will provide the names of those museums I feel are doing well, but at this time it is not my place to call out museums I feel are not doing the greatest job. (What can I say, I'm non-confrontational and am not in the position to ruffle feathers.) Anyhow, on to the post.

One of the things I love is the museum that provides interesting tidbits about goings on in the museum. The Shelburne Musuem in Shelburne, VT is one of my favorite twittering musuems (@ShelburneMusuem). Why? Because I want to know more about the museum than just what events are happening and. Yes some advertising of events is acceptable, since spreading the word is always good and twitter is certainly an outlet for it, but I want to know more than just that. I loved being told by @ShelburneMuseum that "The turtles have emerged! Collections Asst. Nick rescued one that was trying to cross the road in front of the Covered Bridge." I followed the painstaking process of restoring a Tiffany settee, and the pouring of the lighthouse foundation. Things like this made me like the museum that much more.

So rule No. 1 in twittering about museums is to provide something extra about the museum that one would not be able to find out otherwise. It is easy enough to look at a museum's event calendar to figure out what is going on (although friendly reminders don't hurt as long as it doesn't dominate the twitter stream). I look forward to tweets from @ShelburneMuseum because of this something extra, and the next time I'm up in Vermont when it's open (season starts May 17th) I know where I want to go.

Rule No. 2 in twittering is to not do the opposite of what @ShelburneMuseum is doing. Please do not tweet solely about upcoming events. I can find out about them elsewhere.

Rule No. 3 is to not heavily rely upon bots. What are bots? Autobots (no not the kind from The Transformers) as they are also referred to as are programs that search for tags on news stories, or anything really, and if the particular tag matches what is being searched the bot (hooked up to the twitter account) will tweet the link to the story. This often ends up in a tweet looking like *tag being searched* "partial article title..." link to story. What gets really annoying is when these searches occur all at the same time so in a span of a few minutes 5, 10 or more tweets come from one account, blocking up the stream. I like the idea of there being a real human behind the tweeting. This in no way is me saying I don't want to get links to something newsworthy online. I do, I just don't want them automatically given to me. I much rather prefer someone writing Found this museum news article interesting: link to story.

No. 4 Respond to those who reply to you through @ tweeting (where the @ symbol is placed in front of the twitter name, for example @museummusings). These messages show up in the sidebar under the aptly named @youraccountname, making replying to others easy. Now I know this rule is not always followed and I certainly understand why for some institutions it is not feasible. Sometimes the personpower isn't there and sometimes there are just too many questions/comments/suggestions to reply to them all. I do suggest replying to some when one can. I also suggest the Direct Message feature and have gotten numerous direct messages from museums just thanking me for following them. Things like this create a good relationship between follower and tweeter and I feel retains followers. I certainly appreciate them. The museum groups that sent me Direct Messages just for following them are @ShelburneMuseum, @heardmuseum, @metmuseum, @EngineMuseum, and @fordstheatre.

I also recommend using the established protocol of the hashtag #followfriday in which a tweet consists of other twitter accounts that you recommend following. The trend is to provide 5 of them. So even though today is Monday, I recommend following (in addition to myself and the accounts above): @TheWomensMuseum, @MuseumMaknMusic, @tenementmuseum, @fieldmuseum, and @GettyMuseum. There are many more museum related twitterers out there. Just search for Museum on twitter and go from there.

There has been much discussion in the museum world about this too. Multiple people have discussed twitter and its benefits on Museum-L and numerous tips on how to utilize it properly have been included. Apparently there are also podcasts on iTunes that deliver tips on how to effectively use twitter, although I have not used them. Connecting with others who share common interests and is a good thing in the museum world: person to person, museum to museum, museum to person. I maintain my stance blogged previously that twitter has the unique potential to reach the masses thereby expanding a museums presence in the virtual world.

Hello to all and today especially to those who found me via twitter.

National Council on Public History Conference- Part 2

One of the main reasons why I registered for the NCPH Conference was because of the Digital Projects Showcase, a mega-conference session of sorts in which 10 projects were presented for a total of about 15 minutes each. It was sponsored by the Museums and the Web conference (which I really want to go to but can't). I made sure that I got there early so that I could get a seat up close and success! I was one of the first few people in the room so I grabbed a good seat. Unfortunately the room was so long and narrow, many people who did not get there so early ended up in the back, making hearing and seeing difficult. What made this session interesting in the conference managing sense was that because of its organization, people were able to come and go between sessions (and people in the back could move up to the front). I think the format was a resounding success and I hope that future conferences will continue to use it for at least some sessions.

The first project showcased was the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, capturing memories of those affected by the hurricanes Katrina and Rita. As Michael Nelson from the University of New Orleans put it, the Memory Bank is preserving the stories of people who fell between the media extremes (which were stories of heroes or of crimes from desperation). It follows the format of the 911 Archive structure, and was created in collaboration with the Center for History and New Media using Omeka, a digital collections program.* After these hurricanes, one will remember, people from New Orleans were scattered from the area, which created a dilemma for the project because without people and their photos and memories, the project cannot exist. The solution for this was obviously to get the word out, but I found the method of doing this to be quite creative. The first is the use of posters displaying Katrina Crosses to catch one's attention and the information of how to reach the project and contribute a personal story. The second is the use of mailer cards. Each of the session goers received an example of this. In a simple sense these are twice the size of a postcard so that they can be folded in half and secured shut. On the inside is space for someone to share their story. It can then be mailed off where the story will be collected with others and entered into the Memory Bank. I love how that method makes project participation so easy for people. That of course works best for those who have access to the cards in some way. The first Mardi Gras after the hurricanes saw an influx of people returning to the city of New Orleans for the first time (consisting of visiting but still displaced residents and tourists). The Memory Bank used this opportunity to reach people by printing their own Mardi Gras cups for people to use. I think that was brilliant and very original, using the history, heritage and culture of the area to aid in the project. They have even created a Skype account as another method in which people can tell their story. One of the interesting things I learned was that the money FEMA had for documentation after the hurricane went into building documentation and not oral history. Thankfully this project has helped to document the memories, photos, and blogs of the average person who witnessed and suffered from this devastation. These things most certainly would have gone undocumented and eventually would have been lost completely had the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank not been created. The website for it can be found here at http://www.hurricanearchive.org/. They are still collecting people's stories, and it currently contains over 25,000 items.

The second project was the Massachusetts Studies Network (I'll be calling it MASN). What started 5 years ago at UMass Boston as an attempt to collect photos that represented life in Massachusetts, blossomed into a collection consisting of 1,300 photos and stories, creating a digital portrait of Massachusetts. Using volunteers, freelancers and one part-time worker, MASN runs what is called the Massachusetts Memories Roadshow numerous times a year across MA. This is done in a format similar to the TV show Antiques Roadshow (which I love). In an event, people are allowed to bring in about 3 photos showing life in MA at some point in time. These photos are scanned into a computer and the stories that go with these photos are recorded. In return, oral history/photo scanning donors get a keepsake photo of them with their photos at the event and the satisfaction of having preserved local history. Held at local historical societies or community buildings, local residents past and present of all ages can interact and find common ground. One of the challenges this project faced was how to make it extend beyond a physical event? One way was to create a social network hosted on Ning, which allows people to connect with one another digitally and continue to share interests, photos and stories. There is also a Flickr group. Both of these sites brought up questions after the presentation about copyright issues that go way beyond what I understand at this point. I was excited by this project and it was amazing to see what could be accomplished without funding (especially when each Road Show costs $8,000 to $10,000 to run). The website for the social group is located here at http://mastudies.ning.com. The link to the Flickr group is http://www.flickr.com/groups/massmemories, it is newly live and I'm sure that more will be added to it as time goes by.

Part 3 will be comprised of more of the projects showcased during the session starting with GIS in Annapolis.

*This is probably the most general of definitions of Omeka and in no way does it justice from the little I know about it. I really hope to learn how to work with it at some point in the not too distant future (aka grad school).

National Council on Public History Conference- Part 1

Last Thursday and Friday, I attended the National Council on Public History Conference at the Biltmore in Providence, RI. For me it was great because I live only 1/2 hour away and could take the bus, which was doubly great because I get the bus for free because I am a student who goes to a school that worked a deal out with RIPTA for free statewide bus rides. So on Thursday I took the bus to Kennedy Plaza, which is literally across the street from the Biltmore. Unfortunately I missed the bus back home that I wanted to take and had to wait an hour for the next one in the drizzle, but it all worked out. I think beyond that stressful experience, the only lowlight of the conference was the weather. It rained, a lot. During one of the conference sessions, I could hear thunder and watch lightning. When it wasn't raining, it was drizzly and very foggy. I felt bad for those who went on tours and for those who wanted to explore the city.

Beyond that I think the conference was a resounding success, elsewhere* it has been reported that 603 people registered, the most so far for NCPH. It was great for me, a student, to mingle with others (including many other students, which speaks loudly for the future of public history). I also got to see the latest in public history related books and sit in on sessions showing the future of public history. There was so much offered that it made deciding on what to see difficult, but at I learned in an attempt to go to one session which was full, there was something else that I could go to without worrying if I would have an interest in it.

I had very much been looking forward to Session 8, called "Remembering Slavery," dealing with how different sites portray the history of slavery and how audience views of that history has changed over time. I took a class on the African American Diaspora my first semester at Salve Regina (technically my junior year after transferring) and found it fascinating. However, even with my arriving quite early for the session, which I figured would be crowded, there was no room and people were already sitting in the doorway. Disappointedly, I walked to Session 9, "Commemorating Times of Change: Innovative Approaches to Public History at the Presidential Libraries of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan".

I've never given Presidential Libraries much thought beyond knowing that they are libraries which happen to contain the particular President's writings, papers and correspondence, while they do contain these things, they also feature exhibits on the specific President or about the time in which they held office. I found myself to be quite interested in the topics presented, which involved how do you keep the public involved with the particular past (something that most historiy museums face, if not all). What makes this so vital to the Presidential libraries, however, is that as time goes by people become increasingly separated from the events and the President himself, for example when school children come to view exhibits.

The first presentation was about FDR, entitled: "Action and Action Now" FDR's First 100 Days. In addition to giving a brief history on the events surrounding his election, we were presented with information regarding the challenges that were faced in creating the exhibit and how these were ultimately dealt with. In a sentence, it was the challenge of presenting the scale and scope of the crisis that was not a recitation of a history made stale by the cliches of Alphabet soup (brought on by the different things he created during his administration: WPA, CCC etc). In order to do this, they thought it best to create a narrative into five chapters of his administration, ranging from a room meant to give the feel of his radio "fireside chats" to installing scaffolding to bring about the effect that FDR was responsible for many building projects (and was often shown as a construction worker in cartoons that contained scaffolding on buildings). They also acknowledged that this era is a period of contested history and rather than promote or ignore one side, the decision was made to frame the debate and provoke a dialogue among the audience, a move I think is vital to have in a museum atmosphere. Initial comments of the exhibit were along the lines of how people had it rough during the Great Depression, but as we have entered our own economic crisis, many comments are about how the times are similar to today. It is because of this crisis that those at the library decided to leave this temporary exhibit on display until the end of this year.

The second presentation was on the JFK library, which gets an amazing 6 million visitors a year, many of whom are school children or foreign. This exhibit was created to look at events through the JFK's eyes and follows a chronological path of his administration. The exhibit even contains a replica of the stage used during the first televised Presidential debate. The goal of the exhibit was to strike a balance for those who witnessed the history with those who know relatively little about what took place so that all who go to the library have an engaging experience with history that is still meaningful today. The presentation also mentioned how size constraints have limited the amount of things that can be shown in the exhibit, and because of this events like the Vietnam War are left out of the story. They also mentioned how temporary special exhibits are highly successful and allow them to portray other facets of JFK's Presidency, for example they once displayed Jackie Kennedy's dresses. Things like this bring a whole new audience to the library (always important). There is also an extensive website for the library that can be found here. Interestingly, I learned that this library is also Kennedy's memorial, which is why there is not on in D.C.

The third Presidential Library is Ronald Regan's whose educational mission is to "Engage, Excite, Educate" a very good mission if you ask me. It houses 55 million papers of his and the exhibit is currently in a redesign where context is being added along with thematic presentations involving things like the Cold War. One of the interesting ideas the presentation was the Great Communicator Files, which shows the process of creating a speech. Another was the opening of the Air Force One Discovery Center which is geared to audiences at a fifth grade level and was created to provide room for debate among exhibit goers.

What I originally was disappointed in going to, I came out an hour and forty five minutes later being quite satisfied by this new information. If I'm ever in the area of one, I will totally go to a Presidential Library.



Other semi-conference related, but not so specific things I learned are: everyone has presentation troubles in some way, like verbal crutches (umm, uh, and um uh... unnecessary words that fill up empty space), going over time limits when not reading a script, and not having tested powerpoint images and movies prior to presentation time (sometimes your pictures are way too small to properly see in the audience). As a student, I see this a lot, and am glad it happens in the professional world as well. While certainly not desired by any means, it makes me feel better that it pretty much happens to everyone, as I am guilty for doing these on occasion as well. I continue to maintain that it is important to work on these elements (especially making sure that everything is working on powerpoint as that happens to be a pet peeve of mine).

* elsewhere is the homepage of the NCPH which is located at http://www.ncph.org

A Tuesday Catch Up

This week's artist is Claude Monet, an artist I consider to be an amazing Impressionist. Born in 1840, I am rather fond of him because he was the first real artist that I remember studying in school. I'll always appreciate my junior high French class for introducing me to many artists like Degas, Renoir, Manet and Cassatt. Perhaps known best for painting water lilies, he also painted people, haystacks and the Rouen Cathedral. I remember hearing about how he would move from one canvas to the next as the light on the Cathedral would change and would return to the beginning of the series the next time the lighting was right. There were more than 30 of them. I find that absolutely amazing to have that many of one subject in a series. He died in 1926. I saw some of his work in a special exhibit of Impressionist artists at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston when I was in the 10th grade. It remains one of my favorite exhibits to this day.

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I spent Thursday through Sunday in Cooperstown, New York for the Cooperstown Graduate Program's Interview Weekend. I would love to go there for Museum Studies. It is the only place I applied to. I'm crossing my fingers and wish all of those who also went the best of luck. Decisions are already in the mail and I'm anxiously awaiting to get a letter. In addition to meeting a lot of great museum oriented people, I got to go behind the scenes at the Fenimore Art Museum and the Baseball Hall of Fame and visited the Iriquois Storage Facility which also houses collections from the Farmers' Museum. I also rode the carousel at the Farmers' Museum. There really are no words to describe the weekend and everything that I got to do. So cool!!!

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I promise I will post about the now passed "pork" measures that John McCain unhappily tweeted about that first got me into twitter. I feel that it is important to still know what these things are, I know that I was introduced to a number of good cultural institutions in this way.

Also coming soon, the third post about my thesis and the ceramics that I analyzed for it.

Mixed Topic Monday

Today's entry will be a little different than my usual posts as it consists of a few topics rather than just one, partially due to being busy over the past couple of days and the desire to talk about all of the topics without turning them into separate posts and spreading them out over the next week.

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First, the artist of the week is Joan Miro. This artist has been featured at the bottom of my blog since finding him late last week. Now that Dali week is over, Miro has taken the spot at the top of my blog. Coincidentally, this morning, I discovered via twitter that there had been an exhibit at the MoMA from November to January. (I'm sorry I can't remember who tweeted this but thank you.) Feel free to follow the link to view the online portion of the exhibit at http://media.moma.org/subsites/2008/miro/flashsite/index.html. I had chosen Miro to feature this week because of the colors used in much of his work. I love color and surrealism and whimsy and Miro, who I had never heard of before (I'll admit I am very much an art novice) really fits what I like yet breaks out of my constraints into so much more. Here is a link to the blog I got the museum link from because this blog can do Miro much more justice than I can http://www.artsjournal.com/man/.

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Also from twitter courtesy of @PresNation about one of the few places in Newport I haven't gotten to visit. A sign of the times, the Touro Synagogue will no longer be giving public tours aside from the ones already booked for the summer. The Touro Synagogue is the oldest Synagogue in America and just cannot afford to pay the two tour guides who were let go last week as stated in the Providence Journal article found here: http://www.projo.com/ri/newport. Having spent almost three years in and about Newport including two summers (and being an RI native) I had only seen one actual tour group in passing and two advertised. Maybe I just never knew where to look, but I am sad that I didn't take the opportunity to go there when I could have. The article does go on to say that tours should recommence come the summer when the new museum on the property opens, the Loeb Center for Religious Freedom.

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Also a belated Happy International Women's Day! I was off celebrating my Aunt's birthday yesterday and did not post about it. I wanted to post a link to this museum that I found via twitter and am now following. Fittingly for the day and month (and year round in my opinion) is the The Women's Museum in Dallas, TX. The link to the museum is here and the link to the twitter feed is here @TheWomensMuseum. It is most certainly one of the museums that I mentioned in my previous posts about twitter- very much a place I would go to during a road trip to that area.

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In honor of the movie Watchmen, which opened up on Friday, here is the link to the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. http://www.moccany.org/ Currently the museum has an exhibit up featuring a collection of things related to the Watchmen movie and comic. The museum is located in New York City and if you are interested in the movie, the comic or the museum in general the exhibit, The Art of Watchmen, is open now until May 2nd.

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Lastly, the Please Touch Museum which I featured in an earlier post also has a twitter page which can be found here @pleasetouch.

Isn't twitter great? Back to the usual sort of posting next time.

The Twitter Potential

I have officially joined the ranks of twitter as of yesterday afternoon. Up until a few days before that, I didn't realize that it had a web presence, I honestly thought it was just a cell phone thing. Anyhow, one of the things online that I follow faithfully is the Museum listserv and a topic started on Thursday involved John McCain's twittering about pork in the Omnibus bill (I will have a totally different post about this perhaps tomorrow evening). I actually spent time in researching if it was really John McCain tweeting or a fake one, after all there was an article a few weeks ago discussing celebrity posers, so I was skeptical. There was also the thought running in the back of my mind that during the campaign he didn't know how to use email, so how could he possibly use twitter? My research came up with the following conclusion: John McCain twitters with help. I'll accept that, but if he was using twitter, why wasn't I?

So I joined twitter as a way to expand my online presence and awareness, to be primarily used in conjunction with this blog. So there will be tweets alerting to new blog posts and some that sum up blog posts in 140 characters or less, but in a short amount of time, I realized how twitter will allow me to do much more than that.

I began following numerous museums that are using twitter to update their followers on new exhibits, different events and museum specific news. Many of these museums follow each other too. I have been introduced to museums that I didn't know of and thus I have been spending a good portion of my Saturday looking at these museums' homepages. I would love to go on a huge road trip to visit many of them.

Not only am I following museums, I am following museum professionals, museum studies students and all around museum enthusiasts, including other museum bloggers. It is a great way to meet new people, forge contacts and just stay connected to others with like interests. I find people so interesting and I like to network and learn from those who know more than I do. Above and beyond following someone's tweets, I've seen twitter used to find roommates for museum conferences, plan gatherings, and have short and succinct conversations. I am also pleased to see that there are many my age who are interested in entering the museum world for their careers.

The first step is for museums to get out there and tweet, then following like institutions. Soon others will begin to follow the newly twittering museum. I think a crucial step lies in making the statement that the museum is now on twitter, whether that announcement comes on the museum website, via an email newsletter, or even posted (albeit with small signs) around admission desks or at the museum store. I don't know if I'd think to search twitter for a single institution if I didn't know that there would be a positive result, searching for the keyword museum and rolling from there has proved successful enough. The point is though, that tweets can only reach those that are following them and these numbers are far lower than some attendance numbers, so why not reach as many people as possible?

In conclusion I love the connectedness that I get off of twitter, because it is so much easier I feel to find other people with similar interests. It is also something that is easy to do, which means that museums and other cultural institutions can cheaply utilize it, and if utilized properly I think that this is a great virtual expansion of a museum's reach. It's already starting to happen, and I only see this going further as more museums catch on and decide to tweet along with the rest of us.

Hello to anyone who found me through twitter and thanks for visiting!

Random Search Result: The Please Touch Museum

I stumbled upon the Please Touch Museum located in Philadelphia, PA by chance: through doing a random search for the word please. I don't even remember why I searched for it, but the Please Touch Museum was at the top of the results list. Similar to my finding the Canon Camera Museum, I stumble upon museum related things when I'm not looking for them.

The Please Touch Museum is a children's museum and if I were little, this place would be a lot of fun to go to and spend hours. This so does not look like a museum where one brings their kids for an hour or two. I don't think that I would want to leave. They also have a playhouse theater with original performances and a carousel. Age wise, I think the museum is geared towards the toddler to kindergarten age group, at least it looks that way from the pictures that the website provides.

One of the things I like about the museum website is that for every listed exhibit, there is a list of children's books that fit the theme of the exhibit. It's a great idea especially for when kids find a particular exhibit really fun, parents can then bring home some of that fun in books dealing with similar topics. I wonder if these lists are provided at the exits of these exhibits for parents to take with them. Some of the books listed are for a slightly older age group than what I would have guessed based on the pictures, so far I've seen a book recommended for up to age 8, but there is nothing wrong with that in the slightest. It is just another way to expand one's imagination and knowledge. It also gets older children (maybe older siblings) involved with what the younger kids had fun with at the museum.

I am impressed by just about everything that I see on the website, and am further impressed by the food offerings in the Please Taste Cafe. Everything listed seems healthier than one would find in any other cafeteria like atmosphere for both kids and adults, and all of the prepared foods are nut free. It is also fully wheelchair accessible. Now a days, I think that these things are so important.

If you are in the Philadelphia area, I certainly recommend checking it out if you like what you see on their website.

They also have a blog, detailing the history of some of the more popular children's toys, which can be seen at http://www.toysandplay.blogspot.com/. The most recent post chronicles the history of the Easy Bake Oven.

It's A Museum: Common Sense Please

Before today, I had never heard of the National Canal Museum located in Easton, PA. After going to it's website, I think I would rather enjoy spending an afternoon there. In addition to the museum itself, there is a historic house, a technology center, a park, and a canal boat ride. This boat is pulled by two mules.

If it were not for this canal ride being in the news, I do not think that I would have heard about the museum. First, I think it is necessary to read the article here at CNN that was posted yesterday. For those of you who don't want to read the whole article, basically the Transportation Security Administration wants the Canal Museum to pay for biometric Transportation Worker Identification Credentials for those who lead the mules who pull the canal boat. These are the same credentials needed for longshoremen and truckers to make sure that they have been given extensive background checks.

The people who lead these mules are costumed interpreters and the canal boat moves slowly along a small route that passes nothing needing extra security. Oh, and it's expensive to get these credentials. "Common sense dictates," as one of my teachers would often say, that this is highly unnecessary. Luckily it is not just the museum community who thinks this as this debate has reached Capitol Hill.

If I read anything new on this issue I will definitely update this story, but in the meantime, go check out the National Canal Museum.

Canon Camera Museum

Occasionally I stumble across museum related things while I am not trying to. Take for example the Canon Camera Museum, which I found on the Canon website while looking up the differences between two different flash memory camcorders. There it was, on the sidebar of the page... an ad for the Canon Camera Museum. Of course I clicked on it.

I was taken to a new page with animation. It started off blue and as the animation panned down I could see that it was a of a museum complex set in the country. There are open pastures, a garden, a pond, horses and what seems to be a petting zoo. And the horses move as do the kids and animals at what I'm thinking is a petting zoo. It's actually quite cute. I would be in love with the museum's setting if it were a physical place.

The museum complex is made up of 5 buildings: A more classical motifed building with pediment, pilasters, and columns. This building is in the center and is the largest. It is called Camera Hall. The other halls are housed in buildings that are progressively more modern looking in terms of architecture. The Design Hall reminds me of the Farnsworth House. There is also History Hall and Technology Hall. There is an information building as well but it's only real purpose is to balance the museum complex's design. When it's clicked on, a pop up gives a basic 'Welcome' and introduction.

When any of the other four buildings are clicked on, the animation zooms closer to that building and one can see that the people out side of the buildings are excited to be there. The children bounce up and down. It's all very cute and highly innovative.

Camera Hall is just that, a hall about the different types of cameras. Digital Cameras, Film Cameras, Digital Camcorders, Analog Camcorders, Movie Cameras and Lenses. They are all set up as if they would be different exhibition rooms in a physical museum.

History Hall is formed by the Canon Camera Story, a more complex version of the Canon Camera Story and EOS- Goddess of the Dawn.

Design Hall features the Design Room, Portrait of the Pioneers, the Camera Design Process, and the Theory of Design Evolution.

Technology Hall consists of the Technical Room, Virtual Lens Plant, and the Technical Report.

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The Canon Camera Museum is very much worth checking out. I love it when I see technology being used for museum purposes in this way. I think that while museums in the physical sense may be limited to the walls of the buildings they are housed in, the limits to their virtual presence are almost nonexistent (or they should be nonexistent anyway). I really do think that this is an avenue into which we are going to see more and more museums head in the near future. I do hope to be a part of it in some way.

My Favorite Living Museum

My favorite Living Museum is Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, MA. Meant to capture life during the 50 year period of 1790-1840, it consists of 59 buildings including homes, a traditional New England church, places of work and industry and farms with real animals. Whereas some other outdoor living museums close during the Winter, at Sturbridge, there is something to do year round.

I enjoy it for numerous reasons one of which is the personnel's ability to perform characters but step outside of the role and truly explain what one is doing with a more modern understanding ... moving beyond a scripted dialog, so to speak. This also provides a revisitability because you could walk around on numerous occasions and hear different things said each time, even from the same people.

Once upon a time I may have not chosen it because of its having moved its houses to that spot to create an artificial village that never existed. I appreciate that now, however, because although these houses have in part lost their authenticity having been moved from their original contexts, they have been saved from a much worse fate. This, I think is a very good thing.

I last went two years ago in the Fall. It was a beautiful day and Sturbridge was a great way to spend that day.

Pictures to come.

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There are a limited number of other Living Museums that could have earned the title of my current favorite Living Museum. This is due primarily to the fact that I have been less often to this type than any other and the one I have been to the most is Sturbridge Village. It apparently was also the favorite of the teachers in my elementary school and of my Girl Scout troop leaders.

Other contenders:

- Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, MA.
- The Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, NY. I haven't managed to go here during the museum season, missing it by only a few days the last time I went to Cooperstown. I did, however, participate in a hearth cooking demonstration here in one of the houses, which ranks among the top museum experiences that I have had. Hearth cooking is amazing and tons of fun.

I also intend on traveling to Williamsburg to visit Colonial Williamsburg. I don't know when that will happen exactly, but it is high up there on my list of places to visit.

My Favorite House Museum

Today is the first installment of my favorite museums. Today I feature my favorite museum house, Kingscote in Newport, Rhode Island.

Owned and operated today by The Preservation Society of Newport County, Kingscote is my favorite because unlike many other house museums, although certainly not all, everything in Kingscote is original to the house. Nothing has been brought in to add to the house or create an attitude. I always wonder how many people realize that the things in the Breakers, for example, were not necessarily owned by the Vanderbilt family. Many of these things are representations of what the family could have owned. In no way am I saying that this makes touring the Breakers not worth it. It is a fabulous mansion and totally worth the cost of a tour and the crowds. Look everywhere it is gorgeous both in its exterior architecture and its interior opulence.

Just make some time to visit Kingscote as well if and when you come to Newport. It is a great example of the Gothic Revival and as I have already mentioned, everything in the house goes with the house. The entire collection was left with the house by the last descendant of the King family. The Preservation Society became the property's owner in 1972. The collection contained within the house is large and amazing, but in some cases results in a little bit of object crowding. The tour groups are smaller however and the tour runs at a slower pace, allowing one to appreciate much of the collection and tour guides do a wonderful job pointing out the intricacies of certain objects that might get missed with only one glance around the room.

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Other favorite museum houses:

Smith's Castle in Wickford, RI - the history of the Smith family alone is enough to tour the house. It was also a dairy farm for sometime before becoming a house museum. It is also situated on a beautiful plot of land near the water, an area with a history of it's own.

The Whitehorne House in Newport, RI - owned by the Newport Restoration Foundation, it is a house museum in the sense that it is a house, but is more the home of a wonderful furniture collection. It also has a very interesting restoration story with the pictures to prove it. Well worth a visit if you are spending some time in Newport.

Edith Wharton's The Mount in Lenox, MA - this might be my favorite of the house museums that I have not yet visited but are on my list. The website makes it look beautiful, a very rags to riches in terms of preservation and restoration. It was recently saved from foreclosure and an uncertain future by the tireless efforts of those who work and love the Mount. I have been wanting to get here for quite some time; maybe I will see you there.

The Final Two Questions

8. What do you do in your free time?

In my free time, and I do have more of it now that my thesis is done, I read (just about anything), write (mostly fiction, I've been working on a story now that is over 140 pages long), hang out with my friends, listen to music, blog (obviously) and plenty more. I'm interested in most things and like to have multiple projects going. I am also trying to reacquaint myself with html so that I can make websites, although I do currently use programs like Microsoft Publisher and Apple's iWeb. I'm working on one for my thesis currently, but that's an entry for another day.

9. If you could open your own museum, what would it have?

I had to do a project in the sixth grade called "My museum" and it featured rooms based on what my interests were or what I collected at the time. I had room for my American Girl Doll, Felicity, a room for my books, one for the Kachina Doll I had just gotten, and one for baseball, among others that I can't remember now. Oh, my museum was shaped like a cat.

Today my museum would be just as diverse, or random if you would find that more fitting. If it were based off of the things I collect, it would run the gamut from rocks, archaeology, teddy bears, m&ms, books, and baseball. I would also include a room for the physical exhibit that I would like to create from my thesis, one on different cultures and... I see a lot of expansion happening in my museum as I think more about this question.

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I also see a fun project in the works with regards to this question. More to come in the next few weeks.

On Why I Do Not Have A Favorite Musuem

As promised, here is my elaboration on why I do not have a favorite museum. You will all find out eventually that with most things in my life I do not have just one favorite of anything...except maybe with sports. So I have favorite museums, however, they fall into different categories. In other words, I have a favorite house museum and a favorite living museum (and favorites in other categories), but I don't favor one over the other. At least I don't think I do anyway. Also, as my geographic range has been mostly limited to the Northeast, I reserve the right to change my favorites, as all people should. Although as I visit more museums elsewhere I might just end up having my favorite house museum in the Northeast and my favorite house museum in the Southwest. That's just the way I do things. :-)

Next week, I shall make it the week of my favorite museums. Tomorrow I will finish up the rest of my introductory questions.

About Me Continued

4. What experience do you have?

a. In an actual museum setting I do not have any experience except with being a visitor. I do have experience in working with collections. I was Lab Manager at the Salve Archaeology Lab and after training my successor, I have now "retired," although I would love to be there more than once a week (which is what has been happening the past couple of weeks). I have processed archaeological collections from start to finish encompassing cleaning, sorting, cataloging, photographing and rehousing artifacts. I have spoken at and volunteered for conferences related to cultural and historic preservation and have related gallery experience.

5. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

a. In 5 years I will have been finished with grad school for about 3 years. I see myself continuing to work in collections, although I see myself transitioning to more of a curatorial position but possibly just on the far side of that 5 years.

6. Where do you see yourself ultimately?

a. Ultimately, I would love to combine my experience in collections with my interests in curation, education, and the digital realm. Through collaboration I would like to create online exhibits and electronic field trips and work in an administration position. I don't think that this position has been created at all museums yet so maybe I would have to create it. I've already thought of a title: Director of Museum Presence on the Internet... or something like that. I think I would fit best in a medium sized institution where I can wear multiple hats and do all of that. I do plan on getting a certificate or degree in web design to help me create online exhibits and electronic field trips. Also, if I am better suited to be a consultant for museums looking to create those elements for their internet presence, then that's okay too. I'm open to it. But as this is a question about what I would like to do ultimately, I would totally love to have a museum to call home doing what I love.

7. What is your favorite museum?

a. Since I came up with these questions, I saved this one for last, because it is an obvious question for someone wanting to work in a museum. . . but the simple answer is: I do not have a favorite museum.

Gasp! Stay tuned to tomorrow when I elaborate on this answer.

About Me

As promised yesterday, here is a little bit of information about myself. I figured this would best be set up as a list of questions, and yes I did come up with them myself, so if you feel that I have left something out, please comment and let me know. My comments are called musings, just so you know.

1. Where do you go to school?

a. I go to school at Salve Regina in Newport RI, where I am a senior majoring in Cultural and Historic Preservation. I am not taking classes this semester, for reasons I'll post later, but I am set to finish up my graduation requirements and graduate in May. If any of you are looking to apply to undergraduate schools I highly recommend Salve and the CHP program.

2. What are your educational goals?

a. My goal currently is to get a Master's Degree in Museum Studies. I only applied to one school, the Cooperstown Graduate Program, because once I visited it, I knew it was for me. If I don't get in I'll just reapply next year. I'm not going to settle by going somewhere else. Depending on where I end up career wise, I am also contemplating getting a certificate or degree in Web Design. I also am open to getting a Doctorate, maybe in American History or something similar. I don't think that I could ever not be learning. I'm a lifer, lol.

3. What first got you into museums?

a. I have always enjoyed history, anthropology and the like. I also have archaeological experience and have spent two summers excavating around Newport. I seriously considered going into archaeology for a while, but as I will delve into later it was my job as Lab Manager that showed me that museums were my calling.

My first introduction to museums came from my Grandma, who had a lot of museum coffee table books. The pictures in them were exquisite. And I really wanted to reach into these photos and hold these objects. It was so cool how all of these objects, originating from all over, could be in one place.

As I got older and started going to museums, I really started to wonder how museums operated in order to have all of these things, and who decided to display them, and how could I get to work with such neat objects. Until I got even older, I didn't know that what I saw displayed was only a minute fraction of what the museum actually had, which only made me have even more questions.

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With the desire to keep my posts relatively short, stay tuned for tomorrow when I will continue to answer some basic questions about me and other museum musings.