Isabella: Saturday Guest Evaluations

Today was an extremely productive day for guest evaluations as Maeve and I were able to collect over forty interviews on a relatively slow day. I was able to talk to plenty of really interesting guests and collect even deeper information for the art/artifact and the interest in the collections questions. Many people spoke of their personal African art collections (such as shields, masks, and wood carvings) and even a store in Wilmington, Delaware that specializes in African decor for (what I assume to be) white households. Most people today also expressed great interest in finding out the provenance behind the collections, comparing the African collections to the other collections in the museum and they seemed disturbed by the fact that this gallery did not describe how the objects were excavated, donated, discovered, etc. One woman even complained about the smallness of the African exhibition and said that it should be the largest exhibition in the museum to reflect its importance. I strongly agree with her and I hope that the hugeness of the Penn's collections and importance of the materials is reflected in the new exhibition. Overall, I hope that both Monique and Jess will be able to benefit from our findings and that the data will help inform the future of the African exhibitions in a positive way.