Lara: Friday, June 30
Following on the coattails of a quiet day in the archives, Friday's survey extravaganza was a welcome change, full of dynamism. The free admittance to the museum and advertisement of the institution's Independence Day Weekend Events on its the museum and local websites tripled visitor attendance and definitely benefited our collection of data. Attendance was diverse, but from my perspective, school groups and families dominated the gallery space, with many families traveling with small children in strollers. As a result of the inconvenience it would cause to have young parents with very young children stop with their families in the middle of the hall to answer questions, I focussed on conducting interviews with adult visitors who were alone, in groups of their peers, or with independently mobile family members (i.e. children w/o the need for strollers).
By and large the most successful surveys I conducted were with lone individuals older than 60. One man in particular took the opportunity to sit down with me and go into detail for each question, especially taking time to describe his own collection of African objects that he had acquired throughout travels he had taken over the past two decades. The man was white and a former employee of the University of Pennsylvania. He was very eager to share his thoughts and feeling about the exhibit, and by the end of our interaction, he had convinced himself to donate his objects to the museum.
The enthusiasm with which individuals described their interest in the collection and its holdings was varied, but those who were visibly excited by the collections were also persons who were eager to learn more about their history and where they came from. The lack of understandable context for the African Gallery and Imagine Africa objects was touched on numerous times by visitors, and many mistakenly assumed that the gallery reflected archaeological, not anthropological holdings.
The answers I garnered from visitors about the differences between African art vs. African artifact also spoke to the confusion they had regarding their own understanding of visual and material culture. To most visitors I met, they described artifacts as objects that were either old or used for daily life, while art could be both old and new, and constituted objects of creative expression. However, many faltered while they presented their answers, making caveats about the fluidity of the categories. One woman even mentioned that the masks in the gallery could constitute both categories.
The process of talking to visitors always reassures me that there is a greater public for which we serve who want to engage as viscerally as we do with the material we are studying. This description doesn't constitute every visitor, but from those I met on Friday, I was so happy to have them be a part of the research process, even if it was a small part.
By and large the most successful surveys I conducted were with lone individuals older than 60. One man in particular took the opportunity to sit down with me and go into detail for each question, especially taking time to describe his own collection of African objects that he had acquired throughout travels he had taken over the past two decades. The man was white and a former employee of the University of Pennsylvania. He was very eager to share his thoughts and feeling about the exhibit, and by the end of our interaction, he had convinced himself to donate his objects to the museum.
The enthusiasm with which individuals described their interest in the collection and its holdings was varied, but those who were visibly excited by the collections were also persons who were eager to learn more about their history and where they came from. The lack of understandable context for the African Gallery and Imagine Africa objects was touched on numerous times by visitors, and many mistakenly assumed that the gallery reflected archaeological, not anthropological holdings.
The answers I garnered from visitors about the differences between African art vs. African artifact also spoke to the confusion they had regarding their own understanding of visual and material culture. To most visitors I met, they described artifacts as objects that were either old or used for daily life, while art could be both old and new, and constituted objects of creative expression. However, many faltered while they presented their answers, making caveats about the fluidity of the categories. One woman even mentioned that the masks in the gallery could constitute both categories.
The process of talking to visitors always reassures me that there is a greater public for which we serve who want to engage as viscerally as we do with the material we are studying. This description doesn't constitute every visitor, but from those I met on Friday, I was so happy to have them be a part of the research process, even if it was a small part.
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