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Lara: Wednesday, June 28

Today, I felt very privileged to see the progress of the exhibition through the lens of the stakeholder meeting! Seeing a detailed framework of the foundational narratives of the exhibit, as well as the initial design concepts for the aesthetic components of display and lighting, made me realize, even more viscerally, how many moving parts are involved in developing an exhibition of this magnitude. Especially at the beginning of the meeting, when Kate Quinn displayed a slide with a calendar detailing the progress and end-dates of multiple projects throughout the museum, it hit me how much work is planned and undertaken to both develop and maintain the museum's gallery space across the institution for years in the future. I can't yet imagine the full logistics involved in the running of all of these operations, let alone the entire organization itself, but I feel I have gained a more visceral understanding (and sympathy) for the limitations of the institution and appreciation ...
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Isabella: Summary of Archival Research

Although I only had a day and a half in the archives this week, I was able to find an incredibly comprehensive resource to help supplement my own research. It is called African Sculpture from the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania by Allen Wardwell. He provides a brief history of the museum's acquisition of the African collections and I have been using to create a clear, neat summary of how all of the objects came into the collection, who was involved, and when did the objects arrive in the museum. It has also helped me figure out which folders would be most useful to find richer information about the provenance of these materials. Bellow is a collection of my notes thus far that I will polish up into paragraphs later today: The book was published in conjunction with a cooperative exhibition between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Penn Museum. It was called "Treasures of Ancient Nigeria," and the bulk of the objects in the exhibit were purchased from ...
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Lara: Wednesday, June 7th

Today the workshop and brainstorming session offered another fruitful day of ideas and insights into the trajectory of the project. The metanarrative exercise was very productive preparation for the crash course in the museum's mission and history  as an institution that we received in the intern morning workshop. Alex Pizzati was as entertaining as ever, giving an overview of the museum's narrative that not only highlighted the historical progression of the museum and its collections, but an understanding of the many personalities that influenced the character of the space. While I have visited the archives before, I always feel that I am able to pickup on something I never fully appreciated previously, For instance, the archaeological illustrations that were out on the table really stood out to me, not just for their quality,but for the level of artistry that captured both the image and essence of the artifacts copied. The brainstorming session regarding the initial surve...
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