maeve: tuesday june 6th

I started Tuesday morning in the library with Isabella, each of us researching some of the links and articles Monique sent us. I read the "Penn Museum 2017 Exhibition: Overview" first, which was quite similar to what Jessica told us of the exhibition plans on Monday. It mentions the thematic clusters and threads, saying they want visitors to "experience several narrative paths" and "a rotating survey of the extensive presentation of Penn Museum's entire African holdings." I'm intrigued by the idea of rotating displays--I'd want to know more specific plans for this, as they mention they intend to rotate some of the thematic clusters and lend things to other museums. This overview is also from last January, though, so this plan may have been abandoned. The "African Collection Statement" was pretty straightforward, though I did wonder how the museum is going to highlight that the bulk of their collection is from 14 completely different countries. None of the plans seem to challenge the notion of an "African" collection. It describes the artifacts on display as having "been chosen to provide a visual and ethnographic overview of the major cultural areas of Africa" (emphasis mine), a statement I was wowed by. Area, culture, and identity are completely erased in the current exhibit, with everything jumbled into the vague, dark area of "Africa." The Sherbro collection apparently has meticulous documentation and is incredibly comprehensive, which made me wonder why we hear so much about them not having enough information on their objects--why don't they emphasize what they do know? They also mentioned that their Moroccan collection is lesser known and was thoroughly documented, so I was a bit disappointed to notice that it doesn't seem to be part of the plans for the new exhibit.I also read "Evaluation Can Be Fun," which made me wish we had access to all of the art created during ArtSplash last summer. Imagine Africa and the Idea Lounge are both sort of experimenting with more creative ways of gathering audience input other than surveys, so it'll be interesting to hear from Lara how much useful information was actually gathered in the Imagine Africa gallery. The exhibit already highlights the meanings woven into textiles or beaten into bronze weights, so it might be interesting to ask visitors to do something with those stamps. I'd also be interested in exploring poetic/storytelling forms that could be used for an experiment similar to the renga experience the author talks about. The final article I read today was Monique's "Writing the History of Humanity: The Role of Museums in Defining Origins and Ancestors in a Transnational World." Though I'm of course already familiar with the general ideas of Monique's research, it was great to read a complete piece exploring the things we've been discussing for a few years. I was reminded again of the significance of the Penn's evolution exhibit being situated right next to the African galleries, a setup which has a bronze sculpture of an ape staring thoughtfully down Imagine Africa in a position weirdly similar to the mask at the center of that exhibit. Penn Museum visitors are definitely part of the transnational culture elite Monique identifies--as an academic institution, it probably draws an even more intellectually privileged audience. Many visitors she interviewed identified formal school settings as the places they learned about evolution, but I'd be interested in finding out how schools incorporate museum exhibits on evolution into their teachings about it. Learning things "through school" often means through museums. A huge percentage of Penn visitors seem to be school or camp groups--even my first experience with it was on a field trip. At such an academic institution, it's going to be important to evaluate their tours and school programs, because most of the exhibits seem to be obviously lacking information that might be included in tours.
After lunch with Isabella and Lara, I set out to begin my self-guided tour of the museum to produce the metanarrative. We decided to split up to better cover a few different possible experiences that could shape how we perceived the museum. I've always started from the Kress entrance, moving through the cafe to the Imagine Africa gallery and beyond, so I knew that I wanted to reflect that experience. It took me a few hours, but I visited every part of the museum, reading whatever I was drawn to and then choosing labels at random from groups of objects I'd passed over. The Penn is very different from the American Museum of Natural History or the National Museum of Natural History, both of which make narratives/themes of exhibits much more explicit in their wall texts. For example, the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples is grouped into sections by area, and each section is further divided into thematic groups (mostly by function, as I recall). Large wall texts at the entrance of each section (or at another focal point within them) gave an overview of the area and the themes explored by the objects in the exhibit. In D.C., the only anthropological/archaeological exhibit is on ancient Egypt--all of their other cultural exhibits are always temporary ones about contemporary cultures, which is interesting in and of itself. I started working on my meta narrative when I was home, but I ended up taking a friend to the hospital and was unable to finish it.