The Academy of New Media

The Academy of Natural Sciences was a really great place for the last of museum visits. Though it falls under the classification of the Wagner Museum (science), The Academy of the Natural Sciences was a great look into the progression of the museum world. While we were visiting, we got a rare inside look into the lives of museum workers and also the start of a brand new exhibit. The exhibit is called "Inside the Diorama" which is going to attempt to give vistiors a look into how the Academy of Natural Sciences was created. It will depict how the Academy's diorama's are crafted and give visitors a chance to see the "behind-the-scenes" of how the Academy's exhibitions are crafted. The idea of showing the public the manipulation that is used by museums to display their collections may be baffling to some but this trend is based on the public's desire to get a real interactive experience from their museum visit. As Michelle Henning describes in her, New Media essay, "The anxious desire for transparent communication has shaped the deployment of new media in museums, in particular, interactive new media."(p.311). Because the public wants to become more involved with the history they are trying to learn, museums are working towards finding new ways to teach their visitors. The inside the diorama exhibit will let museum visitors experience old media in a new way. What the Academy of the Natural Sciences is doing is pretty ground-breaking because they are on of the first museums that I have seen that is taking the old media and resources it has and updating them to "fit in" with 21st century learning and life minus the fallback onto "hyper-technology". [Computers at every corner, touchscreens and the like] Although they are not the first to make their museum exhibits interactive and more accessible to the visitor, they are breaking down the foundations of their museum in order to become more appealing. This new, interactive media has been changing the relationship with curators and their visitors. In Andrea Witcomb's Interactivity essay she describes interactivity from the curator's perspective, "...in employing interactives, curators in MacDonald's study felt they were empowering the visitor and thus becoming democratic in their museological practice..." (pg.355). And it does seem as if this new desire for interaction and control by the public is working to help people become more interested because they are allowed to shape their own experiences and also learn how museums function be there own curator. Hopefully visitors take advantage of this rare chance and really immerse themselves in the museum exhibit and learn something new.

Your Epic Heritage...The Constitution Center

Heritage has recently become a major trend within museums. Many newer museums now emphasize a connection to the past as a way to lure in new visitors and bringing new allure to visiting historical sites. As Heritage author, Steven Hoelscher describes it, "Heritage is a mode of understanding and utilizing the past that is, at its very core, deeply partisan and intensely felt."(pg.200) Heritage from this description is open to basically anyone that identifies with certain communites, countries, nations, etc. Heritage is easily accessible and easy to relate to because it is open for interpretation to all that wish to interpret it. Interestingly enough in his essay, Hoelscher points out that the practice of relaying heritage to the masses takes work. It involves taking the past and cultivating it to fit the "proper image" of what the past should be. This is an interesting dichotomy because that would mean heritage is not always open to all that wish to identify with it. This also makes it seem as if heritage excludes what it finds "less desirable" memories or people.

The Constitution Center was an interesting study in this new trend of heritage tourism, it was quite a visual and engaging experience. Of heritage on displays, Holscher references MacDonald whose idea of the display of heritage is, " ...a heritage display or representation is "intentionally, a clutural explicating device."(page. 204). This is definitely the case with the Constitution Center. There was the replication of the signers of the Constitution who stood at their actual heights provided a really different view of the signers, they seemed more life like and real. After that was the EPIC introduction which (shamefully) reduced me to pride induced tears. Yeah it was intense. From there was the very visual linear view of American history which was ever-changing. That exhibit especially was engaging because there were so many a experiences a vistior to the Consitution Center could have. It was a very democratic layout because how much or how little a visitor would like to learn is completely up to them. The most notable part of the linear American history was the way it moved rapidly through time giving the visitors a crash course in all things American. Time, according to Holscher, is essential to heritage. "Second, and just as revealing, is the processual nature of heritage, a social process that is contintually unfolding, changing and transforming."(pg. 206). Heritage has become a very essential trend in tourism because many people feel they are included within it and are actively shaping their own heritage every day.

The President's House across the street was a very poorly planned site in Olde City. Not only does it have the misfortune of being an open air establishment but the narrative inside makes little to no sense. It seems to be a very scatter-brained attempt at telling visitors the significance of the house. And in fact it is very important because it once housed the very first presidents. Also, the basement which is displayed pretty terribly is a place where the presidents once housed slaves. This is a place that is an example of heritage being excluded because it does not fully serve as a place for people to identify with or learn from.

**Found this on the Iragi museum that was destroyed in 2003(referenced in Hoelscher's article), it has been finally restored. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45484016/ns/world_news-christian_science_monitor/

Entertainment vs. Historical Accuracy

The Eastern State Penitentiary has been a main topic of interest all over Philadelphia and the world. After attending the "Haunted Histories' talk I was extremely interested in seeing the penitentiary in all its abandoned glory. The first thing I noticed aesthetically speaking is the gargoyles which immediately helped the ominous atmosphere of Eastern State. Then I found out something interesting....they weren't REAL. They were apart of the Haunted attraction that the penitentiary extended past Halloween. That was a bit annoying because any uninformed passerby would probably think that they were a part of the architecture. The tour itself was really informative thanks to an engaging and funny tour guide. Although, I could tell he was sizing us up at the beginning to see what KIND of tour we would be interested in. Basically that means the tours Eastern State gives based on the audience that attends. Our tour guide knew that were thinking critically about Eastern State so he gave us a tour that pointed out criticisms and failures of Eastern State's prison system and the prison system that the United States still has today. While we were outside waiting for our tour, there was an older group of visitors and I wonder what kind of tour they got, did their tour guide glaze over Eastern State's and the United States prison failures and instead just marvel at the architectural wonders at Eastern? (anecdotally: At most of the museums we have been, I've noticed the dichotomy of old ideas vs. new ideas. It is apparent that some people want to take museums to another level and other people would like to imagine as the stable place to gain knowledge. This, in my opinion, is having a negative effect on the progress of the public history field because society is changing and it is important to re-imagine museums so they appeal to a newer society.) Anyway, Eastern State does a very good job of KNOWING its history and the fact that, "Terror Behind the Walls" is helping with that is good and productive endeavor. And it is apparent to even to the average visitor that Eastern is trying to preserve the historical meaning of Eastern. Also, Eastern State challenges its visitors to think critically about prison systems and to look at whether or not things have gotten worse or better.

Place as a Museum

The Powel House museum is one of the 300 house museums in the city of Philadelphia. Do we need another house museum? My answer would be both yes and no. Places like the Powel House are so valuable, they show an insight into a way of life that is long gone and provided Americans with the basis of our history. The Powel House stood through the most formative moments in American history and witnessed the greatest events of all time. The Powel House is not only good for showing the basis of our country, but for analyzing the people who lived there which includes what they valued and why. The things they collected were important especially since it was around the time when collecting really started to catch on in society. For example the shadow rendering of Benjamin Franklin was ruined in order to make an inscription, a harried way to preserve the likeness so that future generations would know the importance of the previous generations. Beyond this the Powel House is an exceptional backdrop for the education of children who are not getting the same education that many people grew up with. With educational programs, the Powel House is taking the place of the school in some cases and giving kids a greater interest in their histories.  simultaneously.
Beyond the historical and educational, the Powel House and similar house museums are opening up the historical preservation to important hurdles and questions that need to be addressed before the field is expanded/imporved? How can museums be made relevant again? How do we address the way people think versus the way life actually was? Also, museums are caught at the crossroads of new generation and new idea versus old generations and old ideas of how things were and how things are supposed to work.

This leads to the other side of my argument against house museums. The Powel House has proven its functionality through giving help through providing educational programs to those who need it and still attracting a steady amount of visitors. The Powel House is a rare case because many house museums do not have the resources to fund programs such as education programs for those who are unable to have access to those types of programs on their own. Also, many independent house do not receive enough money from the government, etc. This means that house museums are privately funded which messes with the integrity and accuracy of the museums because they are expected to conform to the will of their benefactors. I instead would like the house museums to still function as homes but stay in their original conditions so the houses maintain their historical story.
So yes if house museums serve multiple purposes and are able to self sustain there should be more, if not the house should continue to serve as a home while being monitored to make sure they are keeping their historical backgrounds.

The "Other" Museum

Nestled on University of Penn's exspansive campus is the The Penn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. The museum serves as the first exploring the field of anthropology and the first where people studied other human beings' cultures. The field of anthropology grew out of 1893 world's fair in Chicago where "others" (third world) were put on display for the first world country to see. The University of Penn Museum today is a wonder to behold today, it is full of technological advancements and lots of interactive exhibits so people can fully immerse themselves in what anthropology has to teach them. At first glance, the museum seems completely fair and unbiased but after investigating for a while the organizational hierarchy started to peek through. In the African and Native American exhibits there was so much technology but that felt as if it was not teaching you much at all. Those parts of the museum seemed to be for a younger audience and were more about opinions rather than facts. (i.e. the white boards where serious questions about Africa were answered with statements like "BLAK PPL RULE! and cartoons). This is presumably because on the first floor the museum owners are more concerned with "WOWing" instead of educating the masses. On the flip side of that were the European and Asian and Egypt (which the museum posted in small font on some obscure door somewhere. "Egypt is a part of Africa")  exhibits which were impressive and were cohesive in their organization. Conn does touch on this in his essay, "The symbolism in the design of the museum was not subtle: from the entrance landing, one rose to find the civilizations of the Near East and the Mediterranean;\ conversely, the visitor went downstairs to find Native Americans from all parts of the New World" (pg.89) This is presumably because in the early 19th century, the average American's perception of the Native American race was far from favorable.

The Penn Museum is crucial because this is one of the first museum where you can see how skewed the organization of the museum is. Based on social Darwinism that was prevalent, the founders of the anthropology museum tried to place themselves above the "other" cultures around them. Anthropology was created essentially to find the linkages between the "savages" and civilized and explain all their differences.
"By using an evolutionary model to explain human cultural development, the Philadelphians who founded the University Museum tried to conceive of an anthropology that linked the savage and the civilized in
the s ame intellectual construct." (pg.91) Analyzing the museum is tough because it is hard to put oneself into a 19th century mindset and really experience what the visitors were experiencing because all of the artifacts and knowledge are very basic ideas with which most people were taught from a young age. This may be why in the museum more of the exhibits are beginning to be geared towards younger middle schoolers. The museum overall is a nice one to visit because it has a wealth of information inside of it, despite the way its presented. Also, the museum is a nice insight into the mind of the average 19th century person trying to figure out the world around them, which is commendable, even if it was backwards right?

Peale's Museum

Charles Willson Peale was one of the most influential Philadelphians when it came to the arts. He is probably most famous for his painting endeavors and his many famous portraits depicting influential people. His perhaps most famous painting, The Artist in His Museum is a self portrait that also shows his museum. Behind him there is  a museum full of Peale collected taxidermy specimens and portraits of the intellectual greats of Peale's era. Peale's museum represents a time when there was a shift in collecting and the introduction of the idea that what you collect represents who you are. In Sharon MacDonald's "Collecting Practices", MacDonald analyzes that collecting became a way to make statements about one's identity. "Collecting was a means of fashioning and performing the self via material things; and the new social figure of the collector became the epitome of the then relatively novel idea that personal identities can be made rather than being definitively ascribed at birth." (pg.85) Essentially people were realizing that they could mold who they wanted to be in society by what they owned. Peale's Museum was very representative of the idea of "molded identity".

The building itself was one of the most famous in Philadelphia, a place where tourists went to experience the place where democracy was signed into law and where great minds thought of ways to govern a new nation. Peale's Museum on the second floor of that building placed him, the owner and idealist behind the whole museum placed him among the great men of the era. His collections not only showed off his extensive travels and research endeavors but the museum also showed off his artistic prowess. His taxidermy specimens were set against intricately painted backdrops of their natural habitats. Also, Peale's museum housed some of the most famous men of that time who sat for Peale's museum paintings. Which also shows to the visitor that Peale himself must be influential because all of these influential people agreed to be apart of his museum.

The site of Peale's museum are important to the study of museums work because his museum helped set guidelines for the meaning of museums and shed light on the meanings people attach to objects and museum spaces.

Free Science?

The Wagner Free Institute of Science stands at the intersection of 17th and Montgomery, a hidden gem among the "rough" North Philadelphia neighborhood that Temple University inhabits. From the outside, the Wagner looks like just another semi-rundown mansion of former North Philadelphian wealth. The architecture is a typical Georgian style, which is pointed out in "Museum Architecture" as paying homage to Roman and Grecian styles. From the outside, the Wagner's architecture upon close inspection is somewhat intimidating which could be a main reason why the people of North Philadelphia have never completely embraced it. The architecture of the building really portrays an image of superiority where one can really feel the divide between the elite and educated versus the ones who "cannot see" or are of a lower class and quality of education.  Inside the Wagner, its a completely different story. Upon entering you stumble into a bona-fide museum world. The inside downstairs is completely a place to learn, for the elites to teach the "non-elites. Although, the Wagner's mission statement is not to exclude, it still comes across (from my opinion) as the elites taking "pity" on the lower classes. Upstairs the museum space betrays the size of the Wagner where museum visitors can find over 100,000 specimen carefully collected, and displayed for centuries.
After visiting the Wagner, I noticed two things: First, I was not impressed by the Wagner. And immediately I tried to figure out why. Then I came to the unhappy realization that I have been so spoiled by new museum technology that I was too lazy to even look at labels and try to visual them in the context of their own environments. I am now so used to receiving any information about objects or specimen at the same time that I am seeing them that I was off-put by actually having to remember the specimen and research it my own. After this my second realization was that the Wagner as a whole is an amazing representation of the past for history and museum aficionados alike to study the foundations of historical preservation and understand where the pratice of history collection has come from and how it has evolved into the modern museums that we are so coddled by today.

Museums Blog

Blog all about museums: Richard Wall House Museum. The very first museum I worked at :)