Dr. Sherril York , executive director of the National Center on Accessibility , was part of the team that renovated the White House Visitor Center in 2012. Design priorities included making the experience accessible for all visitors. The new visitor center features raised line floor plans, tactile 3D models, and physical directional keys adjacent to touchscreens. In this episode, based on her case study for the fall 2015 issue of the Exhibitionist , Dr. York describes the process of working on a...
Apr 18, 2017•10 min
When the Kigali Genocide Memorial was first built in 1999, it was a burial site outside the Rwandan capitol city for thousands of victims of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide Against the Tutsi. Rwandans came to visit the final resting place of friends and family. Today, the city has expanded to envelop the memorial, which has also expanded to include a museum and archive. We talk with Honoré Gatera, the manager of the memorial, about what the center means to the city and country in 2017 and why a museum...
Apr 03, 2017•15 min
Image: Two propaganda maps at the Maps and the 20th Century exhibit at the British Library. The Maps and the 20th Century exhibit at the British Library is quick to get to central theme of the exhibition: in order to understand a map, you must understand how and why it was made. Maps are not neutral. In a museum context, however, it can be tempting to present a map as the source of truth. Topics Discussed: 00:00: Intro 00:14: Maps in Museums 01:08: Limiting the Gallery to the 20th Century 01:45:...
Feb 27, 2017•5 min
Image: A Civil War-era village that would have served as the hub of Disney's America. Image (c) Disney In 1994, Disney was hard at work on a new theme park called Disney's America. The park, which would open in Virginia not far from Washington DC, would showcase the “sweep of American History.” Confident and enthusiastic, Disney executives were walking a tightrope between entertainment and history. Topics Discussed: 00:00: Intro 00:14: Disney's America 00:37: "The Complexity of the American Expe...
Feb 06, 2017•7 min
The Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Seminole Indian Museum is commemorating three anniversaries in 2017: the 200-year anniversary of the first attack of the Seminole War, the 60th anniversary of federal recognition of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and the 20th anniversary of the opening of the museum . Carrie Dilley, Visitor Services and Development Manager at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki museum, compiles data collected from visitors. Last year, she discovered that visitors from one third of countries visited the museum , ...
Jan 16, 2017•11 min
The Lonely Palette is the best museum podcast out there. Host Tamar Avishai wants to make art more accessible and to help people feel more comfortable talking about what they see in museums. She uses her experience as a Spotlight Lecturer at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston as a jumping off point for her relaxed and unconventional approach to art history. Topics discussed: 00:00 Intro 00:16 Tamar Avishai 00:29 The Lonely Palette 01:26 Museum education as a recent addition to the museum experienc...
Jan 02, 2017•12 min
Image: Guard tower from Camp H at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola at the National Museum Of African American History And Culture The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) opened in September 2016. Today we will talk to some of the people who were thinking about the museum in 2007. Sara Smith and Andrew Anway were part of the Interpretive Planing team. They discuss NMAAHC director Lonnie Bunch's guiding principals for the museum as a whole, trips to other mus...
Dec 12, 2016•12 min
Curator Rainey Tisdale sees two possible futures for museums: they play a more interdisciplinary role for their audiences or keep going down the same path they're on, becoming less and less relevant each year. Why should it be the job of the museum to enter the domain of other traditional institutions? And how can museums engage the public in new ways? By bringing together brain, body and spirit. Notes: - City Stories - @raineytisdale...
Jun 23, 2016•5 min
Image: Lenin's mausoleum, Moscow. CC by Veni The American Association of Museums (AAM) has this to say about human remains in its code of ethics: “The unique and special nature of human remains and funerary and sacred objects is recognized as the basis of all decisions concerning such collections collections-related activities promote the public good rather than individual financial gain.” When AAM uses the word “special,” it means that every instance of a dead body is special, not a special bod...
May 24, 2016•7 min
Image: A rendering of Minik in the New York World When Robert Peary brought six Inuits from Greenland back from his Arctic expedition, they landed in the care of the American Museum of Natural History. Among these people were an eight year old boy named Minik and his father Qisuk. After Qisuk became ill and died, the museum staged a fake burial and put his remains in the museum as artifacts. This is part one of a two-part series on dead bodies in museums. NOTES: Give Me My Father's Body: The Lif...
Apr 22, 2016•7 min
At an art museum, would you rather listen to a detailed guided tour or just enjoy the art without any interpretative support? Are you more comfortable visiting with a friend, or do you prefer being in a group of interested strangers? The Dallas Museum of Art has determined that visitors fall into one of four clusters, based on their preferred learning styles. While she was director of the museum, Bonnie Pitman applied the results of the survey to make the museum more engaging to all types of vis...
Apr 04, 2016•9 min
Dustin Growick (https://twitter.com/DustinGrowick) is in charge of audience development and the team lead for science at Museum Hack (https://museumhack.com/). Growick and Museum Hack treat a museum as a platform to build something more personal and fun. One of the tools that they use to make it more personal and fun is the museum selfie. The theory is that taking selfies is easy way to put yourself literally and figuratively in the context of the museum. In this this episode, Growick discusses ...
Mar 11, 2016•5 min
This week, we visit two museum works by architect Santiago Calatrava : the Prince Felipe Museum of Science in Valencia, Spain and the Milwaukee Art Museum in Milwaukee, USA. Both museums look nothing like the museum icon on maps and in mapping programs. Do these facades have anything to say about about what the museum icon might look like in 50 years? Do these buildings even make good museums? Correction: This episode misidentifies the Milwaukee Art Museum as the Milwaukee Public Museum. Notes: ...
Feb 10, 2016•6 min
Most of the time, nothing. This week, special guest Carole Sanderson of the National Roller Coaster Museum and Archives describes the process and challenges of documenting the entertainment industry. Notes: Six Flags New Orleans - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia National Roller Coaster Museum: Welcome Matterhorn Bobsleds - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Special thanks to Carole Sanderson...
Jan 27, 2016•9 min
Until Muzeiko opened in Sofia, Bulgaria on October 1st 2015, there were no children’s museums in the Balkans. One of the reasons for the lack of children’s museums was a cultural attitude towards childhood education during communist times, according to Vessela Gercheva, the Programs and Exhibits Director for Muzeiko. In this episode, Museum of Museums visits Muzeiko to find a shifting attitude towards children's education. Notes: Muzeiko - Official Site A Children’s Museum Comes to Bulgaria - NY...
Oct 01, 2015•7 min
Image: Monika Bernotas and her family interact with statues of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin that were previously located in the cities of Lithuania at Grutas park. Go to the central square of any Soviet influenced country like Lithuania, and you will find empty pedestals. The pedestals used hold monuments to Soviet leaders. Where there once were statues of Lenin and Stalin, you now find overgrown bushes and pop-up cell phone stores. Where are the statues now? In Lithuania, they are in a pseudo...
Jul 24, 2015•7 min
Built in 1966, the Bison Hunt on Horseback diorama at the Milwaukee Public Museum is a throwback to an older style of exhibit, without projectors or screens. In this epsiode, Dr. Ellen Censky, Senior Vice President and Academic Dean at the Milwaukee Public Museum, talks about the diorama and modern exhibit design. Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/museum-archipelag...
May 27, 2015•7 min
As one of the nation's most-trusted category of institutions, museums project an enormous amount of authority over their subject matter. In this episode, Seb Chan, Director of Digital & Emerging Technologies at Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, talks about the ways that museums can share that authority with museum visitors comfortable with a less top-down approach to authority. For discussions on how museum's got to amass so much authority, stay tuned to Museum Archipelago. Museum Arc...
May 05, 2015•10 min
Early 20th century cartoons showed exhausted visitors craning their necks to read labels and stopping over to examine artifacts. What's the story 100 years later? Topics and Links Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach by Beverly Serrell MUSEUM FATIGUE, 1928, JAMA Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/museum-archipelago/id1182755184), Google Podcasts (https://www.goo...
Apr 15, 2015•6 min
The lobby is where you transform from an ordinary person into a museum visitor. In this first episode of Museum Archipelago, host Ian Elsner introduces the show and describes the transformative power of the museum lobby. Topics Discussed: The British Museum by J. Mordaunt Crook (https://library.lincoln.ac.uk/items/19453) The museum foyer as a transformative space of communication by Ditte Laursen, Erik Kristiansen, and Kirsten Drotner (http://www.journals.uio.no/index.php/museolog/article/view/3...
Apr 03, 2015•4 min
