Dear Marieke,
I too love the idea of community curators; I think it is vitally important
for museums to design exhibitions that ask visitors to make meaning of the
objects, rather than authoritatively telling the visitor why something
matters (evaluations that are always embedded with so many cultural
assumptions, etc etc etc.)
The Atwater Kent museum, Philadelphia's history museum, opened an exhibition
last year called The Real Thing and Why It Matters. From their collections,
the curator, Cynthia Little, pulled a wide variety of objects, and asked a
wide variety of professionals, specialists, to comment on the object. For
example, the owner of a candy manufacturing business talked about an early
20th century tin candy mould. Some of the specialists did include curators.
Also, each object had its standard tombstone label as well, so visitors
could still learn those vital stats if they so chose.
I believe you can contact Cynthia from the Atwater Kent's website:
www.philadelphiahistory.org
Best of luck,
Justina
Justina C. Barrett
Getty Museum Educator for the American Art Planning Project
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Box 7646
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19101-7646
(215) 684-7390
(215) 236-4063 (fax)
-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Marieke Van Damme
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 5:08 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MUSEUM-L] "community curators"
Hello-
I was just reading my latest issue of the Curator
Journal (p. 122) about the Brooklyn Museum of Art and
the National Museum of the American Indian having
"community curators", that is, "ordinary" museumgoers,
write the object labels in exhibits. Has anyone done
this with success/failure? Is there a place I can go
to learn more about it? I think it is a great concept
but I'd like to see who else has tried it.
Thanks,
Marieke
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