Isabella: Wednesdays in the Archives

This morning, we were able to sit in on a lecture by Kate Quinn about her path towards becoming the Director of Exhibitions and the creation of an exhibition from beginning to end and a lecture by Dan Rahimi about future gallery renovations. From Dan, we were able to see a sneak peek into the future Middle Eastern galleries and what the museum will ultimately look like in a couple of years. The lobby will open up, glass hallways will connect the gift shop to the lower Egyptian wing, and more elevators and bathrooms will be built to make the museum more accessible. Instead of seeing the gift shop as soon as you enter the museum, you will see art and artifacts. To me, all of these sound like important and exciting changes for the Penn Museum. As for the Middle Eastern galleries, I enjoyed the focus put on defining the physical and cultural boundary lines of what is "the Middle East" and the creation of the modern city as the compare elements of Neolithic cities to Philadelphia today. I can't wait to see this exhibition come to life.

I also deeply appreciated Kate Quinn's insight into how exhibitions are created from the ground up. I didn't realize how Kate came into the Penn Museum with a fine arts/theatrical background and I can easily see her expertise in aesthetics in her exhibition creation. Kate Quinn stated that, "Exhibitions die on opening day," to express the importance of making sure an exhibition is relevant and accessible for all audiences. She said that on average, a museum visitor looks at a label or an object for an average of 23 seconds. Therefore, she only has 23 seconds to pull someone in and come away with something. She aims to help parents/guardians become a hero for just a moment with their child as they can use the labels to teach their kids something new or start an engaging conversation. To capture an audience with such little time seems like an incredibly difficult task, but Kate Quinn seems to be a master at it with her creative background and her expertise at drawing in an audience.

In the afternoon, I continued my archival research by sorting through Oldman's objects lists and looking deeper into Oldman's personal history. During this dig, I was able to find a fantastically useful resource. It is the book African Sculpture from the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania by Allen Wardwell. For his book, Wardwell synthesized all of the information in the museum about how the African collections were acquired. I have already began reading through the book online and it seems to be the perfect resource. It points us in all the directions we would need to know about the provenance of the African collections and I'll make sure to pass this information onto Professor Zuberi and the entire team.

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