Posts tagged public history
Public History and New Media
One Grad Student's Exploration into Public History
In terms of usefulness, this book is an A+.
This will be my last friday at my internship for awhile.
I won’t go for Fridays in June, but in July I will be going 4-5 days a week.
It’s very much a create-as-you-go internship.
I’ll miss this place on Fridays. I had even gotten used to the pepto pink walls in the library space where I write my papers.
The Native American Room
What is the storyline/ main point of this room?
“This interpretive display interprets a Timucuan village over 1200 years ago. Through dramatic lighting, animal sounds and the smell of palm fronds, students get a feel that they have returned to the past. The murals depict economic and various daily life activities of the Timucua. Students are encouraged to investigate the way of life of the Native Americans by examining artifacts, identifying flora and fauna of Florida and making tools. During growing season, this tour can include a trip to the Native American Garden.”
Problems:
1. The 4th grade education standard requirements ask that students learn about the Seminole Native Americans and Seminole Wars in Florida. However, this room is about the Timucua Native Americans. They also want students to learn different tribes, so if there is a way to compare the two tribes, it would be good.
2. Each exhibit should be designed for three different groups of public visitors:
- “Streakers”: visitors who rush through, look at maybe headlines/titles and big pieces
- “Strollers”: visitors who take slightly longer, stop to read some interpretation, may come back for more information in another visit.
-“Studiers”: Those who stop to read all information within the first visit; considered a small part of public visitors, though.
-The timeline that gives context about the history of Native Americans in Florida and how the European settlers affected the tribes is located on the wall outside the exhibit area, actually. Field trip groups are exposed to this before entering the room, but public visitors may not notice it before entering.
- The walls in the Native American room are completely covered with murals painted by local area artists in 1985. While it provides some clues for daily life activities in Native American villages, it does add some difficulty to labeling. Do we keep all the murals, only some?
-A small supply closet with central AC inside juts out in front of the entryway to the room. This is an awkward obstacle that provides unused space. There is no way to knock out and eliminate the closet in the immediate future, so how can this be worked into the traffic flow and exhibit itself?
Whiteboard 1: How the exhibit room is currently set up.
Whiteboard 2: How to address the obstacles without moving the large structures (see photos of exhibit.)
Whiteboard 3: Possible rearrangement of the main structures of the exhibit?
Whiteboard 4: Overall main questions and considerations for this exhibit.
What is your feedback? If you were visiting this exhibit, what would you think?
It’s probably a good indication that you’re doing something you love when it’s what you chose to do on your Sunday off.
My advisor lent me a few more books, including Great Tours!: Thematic Tours and Guide Training for Historic Sites by Barbara Abramoff Levy, The Manual of Museum Exhibitions by Barry Lord and Gail Dexter Lord, and Reinventing the Museum by Gail Anderson.
I’m going to try to outline some main points and consider how these can be applied to the Student Museum exhibits and also compare to the curriculum I saw at the Geneva Museum on Friday.
After our meeting Friday, my advisor and program coordinator decided to move up some of my deadlines since I am making good progress. This means I need to have a typed up assessment of the exhibits’ strengths and weaknesses done in the next couple of weeks so I can move onto working on my proposed schedule for exhibit changes before midterms.
Today at my internship I got to churn butter and grind coffee beans in machines over a hundred years old, hold a variety of Civil War bone saws, and watch a nearby horse get spooked after a musket fired.
I’m sorry, what century am I living in again?
Day 1 of my internship is complete.
I spent today observing a class field trip through three of the rooms at the Student Museum. I observed the Geography Lab, Grandma’s Attic and Native American Room.
Luckily since I had written the 41 FCAT 4th grade benchmark standards into a small handheld notebook, I was able to reference them while jotting notes in my larger notebook during the presentations.
Overall, I was impressed by the docents’ ability to engage the students for that long of a period of time with the materials they had.
However, it was impossible not to notice all of the potential for growth and new technology in the museum as well.
I’ve been trying to accumulate sources for an annotated bibliography that I am expected to complete this week. Overall, I have about six of the necessary 8-10 sources for my bibliograhy. I plan to thumb through UCF’s library tomorrow while I am on campus printing all of my timesheets.
The one gem I really treasure from my sources is Alice Parman and Jeffrey Jane Flowers’ Exhibit Makeovers: A Do-It-Yourself Workbook for Small Museums. I am partial to this workbook because it not only breaks down points of assessment very easily for professionals, but also sets goals and aspirations in tiers based on financial availability- which is a HUGE consideration for the museum!
All in all, I was so excited throughout today. At first I found it awkward to observe while the 4th graders were in the room because they were definitely trying to figure out why I was there. However, once the students became engrossed in the material I was able to learn much more than just observing the rooms on my own. I was also lucky to question and engage the docents present to get feedback on things I notice and points for improvement. Sadly, though, there are two more tour days where I’ll be observing this week and the museum has such few docents I will most likely be with the same docents each day. They are wonderful people, but I was hoping to assess more variety in the lesson plans since many of them depend on the personalities of the docents.
Tomorrow I plan to apply more of my reading to the notes I took initially so when I observe Thursday and Friday I can hopefully do so on a more technical level.
Also, highlight of my day: I got to try home churned butter and homemade milk for the first time (which is part of the Grandma’s Attic exhibit) and I have to say it is absolutely delicious.
The museum is such a fun and nurturing environment. I really, sincerely hope that UCF’s involvement can inject more energy and life into the museum as well as establish more sustainability. I’ve been volunteering and working with these individuals for almost a year now, and it is so hard not to become emotionally attached to the place and cause.
My internship begins here tomorrow bright and early!
I am happy to announce that I will officially be one of the new summer interns for the Sanford Student Museum and UCF’s Public History Learning Center this year!
My job this summer will be to familiarize myself with the literature on exhibits and education programming, assess the current exhibits of the museum and to see how to improve the exhibits while still adhering to the current 4th grade standards.
I start May 15!
Here are a couple pictures I took from yesterday’s Historic Preservation Colloquium.
The first was probably my favorite house from the tour of homes. Not only did I love the modern exterior and bright orange door, but the homeowners had decorated the inside in 1950s and 1960s surf culture theme! It was so creative and energetic, I went through that house twice.
The event also had lunch from local food truck vendors. Volunteer docents, such as myself, received one free entree and one free dessert. I enjoyed fish and chips from Winter Park Fish Co. and a free cupcake from Yum Yum Cupcakes! After that I helped as a tour guide at a Sorensen and Fletcher split level modern home, where I met the Thomas Family. Not only were they really sweet and had a great home, but I was amazed by the time they took to restore a lot of their home to look as original as possible. After the owners before them had replaced the windows with traditional style frames, the Thomas family replaced them again with 1960s modern windows and also repainted and restored the original 1960s speaker from the doorbell. It was a very cool to see people who really enjoyed the style of their house.
And finally, the exhibit that was in the main foyer of the Colloquium was actually created by none other than my own classmates, Anne Ladyem and Adam! UCF History Department is taking over! :]
Casa Feliz. Winter Park, FL.
Architect: James Gamble Rogers II. Erected: 1932.
Tomorrow I’ll be a volunteer docent at the Winter Park Historic Preservation Colloquium, hosted by Casa Feliz (pictured above.) Sadly the colloquium is at the Winter Park Community Center and not on site at this gorgeous house! I’ll be a docent though at a couple Winter Park historic homes, which I am pretty excited about. Expect pictures while I enjoy my lovely break from my final projects. :)
THE 50 COOLEST MUSEUMS
Complex did an article on the 50 Coolest Museums. Informative, innovative, inspirational and definitely cool. Check it out!
(via preservationva)
