maeve wednesday july 5th

Back at it after a nice long weekend! SEPTA made me miss part of Katie's talk but I still caught her powerpoint on how they judge exhibitions to be successful:

  • considerate of the audience it hopes to reach
  • makes the subject come to life
  • makes its point quickly
  • has something for all ages
  • is memorable 
  • makes it clear where one should begin and how one should continue
  • uses modern display techniques to help one learn
  • uses familiar things and experiences to make its points
  • includes a comprehensive display of objects and/or specimens
She and Dan Rahimi also talked about how the museum was focused on bringing in special blockbuster exhibitions for a while but has pivoted towards solid permanent exhibitions, which is why we're seeing the long-term focus on renovating all of the galleries instead of things like their silk road exhibit. The Israel & Canaan exhibit was supposed to be temporary in 1994, which blew me away. I was also struck by something Katie said about the pedagogical shift the museum has taken with label-writing. When curators were in charge of their own labels, the museum's texts were generally at a 25th-grade reading level. They now aim for 6th grade.

In the archives, I gave up on Umlauff and found that the church emailed me back about their records of Rev. Dr. Durbin. I can continue to pursue this path if we think it'll be relevant. I also went through more of the files and added notes to the donor files of Collins, Donaldson, and Hill. Perusing object lists has proven to be a bit futile, as most donors barely note anything on these lists. I started in on Sarah Frishmuth's objects--I'm going off of the spreadsheet Lara made, to ease confusion--and Alex told me that she gave the museum a massive collection of musical instruments which were later separated according to origin. The museum used to have a painting of her by Thomas Eakins, and there's a massive box of correspondence with her dating almost to the 70s as her collection was the subject of many research projects. I'll be combing through it, but I already found some references to the ivory trumpets chosen for the exhibition, so I'm hoping this will be pretty fruitful!

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