Museum Studies Works

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Consuming Lines of Difference: The Politics of Wealth and Poverty along the Color Line
(2011) Mullins, Paul R.; Labode, Modupe; Jones, Lewis C.; Essex, Michael E.; Kruse, Alex M.; Muncy, G. Brandon
Commentators on African American life have often focused on poverty, evaded African American wealth, and ignored the ways genteel affluence and impoverishment were constructed along turn-of-the-century color lines. Documentary research and archaeology at the Madam CJ Walker home in Indianapolis, Indiana illuminates how the continuum of wealth and poverty was defined and negotiated by one of African America’s wealthiest early 20th century entrepreneurs. The project provides an opportunity to compare the ways in which wealth was defined and experienced along the color line in the early 20th century and how such notions of Black affluence shaped racialized definitions of poverty and materiality
Memory and Identity on Display in a “Family Museum”: A Video Poster
(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2014-04-11) Wood, Elizabeth; Peterson, Erik
The things we save of our everyday lives are not always considered “museum pieces,” but these items often find their ways into meaningful displays throughout the home. These objects become expressions of identity and memory. In Art as Experience, Dewey (1934), comments on the role of expressive objects as the tangible things of the world which represent meaning and experience. These objects are not simply mementoes or souvenirs of things past, but rather, emotional conduits that integrate and unify the sense of self; things from the past “become co-efficients in new adventures and put on a raiment of fresh meaning” (Dewey, 1934, p. 60). We are surrounded by these objects in all aspects of our lives, but it is not until they are assembled, or collected, in one place that the value and significance of these objects becomes clear. Vernacular museums, those which are set in “non-museum spaces,” are places that demonstrate a “connectedness between consumption, history, individuality, and place… [and which] allow people to discuss heritage without breaking from daily activities” (Gordon, 2012, p. 76).These settings provide an opportunity for exploration of stories of the past. A particular form of vernacular museum, what is best described as a “family museum,” represents a unique perspective on the meaning of objects as they interconnect with family and community history. The interdisciplinary approach to this study of material culture, experience, and family history encompasses a humanities research approach--posing questions about common assumptions, uncovering new meanings in the artifacts of human life, and finding new ways to understand cultural interactions. For this study in particular, the objects on display in the family museum and the way that they are displayed become a locus for the study of human experience. The poster presentation uses digital storytelling techniques to examine “The Loft,” a part of the Pierce Homestead in Mount Desert, ME, a family museum representing the collective material history of five generations of an American family. Digital storytelling is an emergent practice that incorporates traditional narratives with digital imagery, text, audio and video. Burgess (2006) suggests that the strategies of digital storytelling are fundamentally community oriented and represent “a field of cultural practice: a dynamic site of relations between textual arrangements and symbolic conventions, technologies for production and conventions for their use; and collaborative social interaction that takes place in local and specific contexts” (p.7). The opportunity to study and document vernacular museums like The Loft provides an important avenue for better understanding the personal connections that museums can build between visitors and objects, as well as ways memory, identity and sense of family. Each of thee artifacts in The Lof is a possession of the family as a whole, and “take their value from their association to events that are constitutive of the person or of the family history” (Marcoux, 2001, p. 72). Members of the family can point to and interpret their life events of the time, and connect this to the history and continuity of the family and community context, all through their relationship to the artifacts in The Loft. References Burgess, Jean (2006) Hearing Ordinary Voices: Cultural Studies, Vernacular Creativity and Digital Storytelling. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 20(2):pp. 201-214. Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York: Perigree Books. Gordon, T.S. (2011). Private history in public exhibition and the settings of everyday life. Lanham, MD: AltaMira. Marcoux, J-S. (2001). The refurbishment of memory. In D. Miller (Ed.)., Home possessions: Material culture behind closed doors (pp. 69-86). Oxford, England: Berg.
Art, Race, Space
(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2013-04-05) Kryder-Reid, Elizabeth; Labode, Modupe; Holzman, Laura M.; Mullins, Paul R.
Art, Race, Space is a collaborative research project that takes as its starting point E Pluribus Unum, a public art installation proposed for the Indianapolis Culture Trail by renowned artist Fred Wilson that was cancelled in 2011 due to controversy surrounding Wilson’s appropriation of a freed slave figure from the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Art, Race, Space” goes beyond examining the visual legacies of racial bondage to explore how the public responses to sculptures, memorials, and archaeology reveal our society’s faultlines of race and inequality. Building on the ideas about race, class, visual culture, and democratic debate that emerge from the Indianapolis project, the faculty have designed a multifaceted program to advance scholarship and promote civic dialogue about these significant issues. The faculty members organized an interdisciplinary symposium in January, 2013. Supported by an IAHI grant, the symposium explored the complicated relationships between art, race, and civic space with presentations by Wilson, community representatives who supported and opposed the sculpture, and scholars from a variety of disciplines who examined historical and cultural contexts of the controversy that had revealed Indianapolis’ longstanding racial and class tensions. The dialogue was expanded with the presentation of historical and contemporary examples from other parts of the United States. In order to encourage public dialogue, the symposium provided opportunities for audience members and presenters to engage in conversations, and it deployed social media (Twitter and Facebook) to encourage broader participation. The project's goal is to further scholarship and encourage public conversation on race and materiality. To this end the faculty have created a website, a Facebook page, Twitter account, and are working on an open-access curriculum to support dialogue in schools and informal learning settings about the complex issues of art, race, and representation. The faculty are also collaborating on academic publications, including selected proceedings and an article on the symposium's "hybrid discourse" that combined university and community resources, expertise, and communication practices and brought together diverse voices in constructive conversation about the challenging issues surrounding E Pluribus Unum.
The Guantánamo Public Memory Project: Exploring the Pedagogy of the Curatorial Process
(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2013-04-05) Labode, Modupe; Kryder-Reid, Elizabeth
In fall semester 2012, two graduate classes in IUPUI’s Museum Studies Program participated in the Guantánamo Public Memory Project (GPMP). Each produced digital products and a panel for the GPMP’s traveling exhibition about the history of the United States’ relationship with the Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba. This exhibition is the product of a collaboration among 11 universities. The class “Introduction to Museum Studies” is required for all incoming graduate students in the Museum Studies program, produced an exhibition panel on “The Arts of Detention” as a semester-long project within the introduction to museum history, theory, and ethics.. The “Guantánamo Project” class focused wholly on the GPMP and was comprised of students in the Museum Studies and Public History programs. In this poster, the class instructors will compare and contrast how students in the classes learned and applied the basic curatorial processes of creating an exhibition—research, interpretation, writing, image selection. The classroom products that will be considered include the exhibition panel, blog entries, digital projects, and student presentations at the December 2012 “Why Guantánamo” conference. The School of Liberal Arts student evaluations and the Museum Studies programs’ evaluations will be used to assess student perceptions and learning outcomes. Although many have advocated using exhibitions as a form of classroom practice, there is relatively little scholarship in this area. This poster will contribute to that scholarship.
EFFECTS OF HUMAN-ORANGUTAN COOPERATION AT THE INDIANAPOLIS ZOO
(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2012-04-13) Riefler, Don; Hetrick, Erin M.; Libby, Chelsea; Wood, Elizabeth
The Indianapolis Zoo is in the process of developing a new orangutan ex-hibit. The exhibit aims to help zoo guests develop an appreciation for the cognitive abilities of orangutans as well as understand how those abilities have helped the animals survive in the forest. The goals of the experience are to ultimately affect zoo guests’ attitudes and beliefs about orangutans and the importance of forest conservation. To that end, the zoo will be im-plementing interactive devices that allow orangutans living in the exhibit and zoo guests to work cooperatively on a series of discrete, individualized tasks. In the summer of 2011, IUPUI Museum Studies graduate students con-ducted visitor studies research and evaluation on a Chutes Interactive proto-type. The prototype invited research participants to cooperate with an orangutan by taking turns with the animal to rotate a series of chambers. With each rotation, a treat moved from the top of the device to a bottom chute, where the ape could retrieve it. Researchers used questionnaires, meaning mapping, and direct observa-tion methods to measure: 1) the extent of guest interaction at the device, 2) gains in general content knowledge/conceptual that occurred after the expe-rience, and 3) prototype functionality with regard to the exhibit goals and mechanics. Evaluation of the experience revealed that the cooperative expe-rience stimulated little long-term change in participant attitudes and behav-iors toward orangutans; that participants showed cognitive gain after the prototype activity, but not in knowledge areas identified as the core goals of the experience; and that design elements should be reconsidered to ensure the device would function properly more often.
THE MONUMENT CIRCLE PROJECT: CURATING DIGITAL HISTORY FOR COMMUNITY DISCOURSE
(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2012-04-13) Schmidt, Maggie; Labode, Modupe
Digitized museum and library collections have transformed the knowledge landscape. The Internet enables audiences to explore high-resolution images of primary documents from around the world with a click of a button. Yet in spite of increased accessibility, many online collections remain concealed by inadequate search terms and incon-sistent citation methods. Under the guidance of Modupe Labode, Assistant Professor of His-tory and Museum Studies at IUPUI, I curated Monument Circle Project, an online collection of primary documents, annotated research materi-als and an interpretive blog to frame E Pluribus Unum, a controversial public art proposal, within a historical context. In 2007, contemporary artist Fred Wilson proposed to re-appropriate a figure of a freed slave from the Indiana Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Community outreach meetings revealed that broader perspectives of social and racial con-ventions from late nineteenth-century Indianapolis – the time in which the monument was constructed – were key to understanding the con-troversy surrounding the proposed artwork, yet were missing from public discourse. The art project was cancelled in December 2011. Using analyses of monuments by Austrian writer Robert Musil (1880-1942) and art historian Kirk Savage as an intellectual frame-work, I utilized Flickr.com, an image hosting and online community fo-rum, and WordPress.com, an open source blogging tool, to curate and interpret primary documents from archives across the country. I de-veloped standards to organize and manage these documents with the goal of increasing public visibility on life in Indianapolis during the turn of the twentieth century. Monument Circle Project demonstrates how digital history can add valuable and rich commentary to contemporary issues.
Crafting the Past: Mission Models and the Curation of California Heritage
(Taylor & Francis, 2015) Kryder-Reid, Elizabeth; Department of Anthropology, School of Liberal Arts
Small-scale representations of the California missions in the form of mission models and miniatures have circulated in public and private display contexts for close to a century. Produced by students, hobbyists, preservationists, and artists, this material culture constructs, in specific and codified ways, an ideal mission materiality. For almost a century the mission models have been consumed through the distinct discursive practices of crafting, collecting, displaying, and buying. The models allow me, therefore, to trace the production of cultural memory in daily life through the materialization of heritage constituted through formal and informal practices, across personal and public spheres, and over multiple generations. In their representation of landscape, labor, and Native Americans, these discursive cultural artifacts contribute to the construction of a highly politicized past that reinforces a romanticized and valorized presentation of colonialism. A postcolonial critique of the models also raises questions regarding the roles of heritage professionals in mediating community-curated history.
Defining the Scope of Your Evaluation
(Taylor & Francis, 2015) Wood, Elizabeth; Museum Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts
One challenge of conducting evaluations is finding the right questions to guide the work. A clear purpose for a study gives the evaluator a good sense of what information can answer the questions, and helps frame the scope of the project as a whole. Knowing the scope of the evaluation project provides a sense of the resources needed. A common pitfall for those getting started with evaluation is trying to carry out a project before thinking about the overall purpose of the evaluation. This article provides a brief overview of defining clear and concise evaluation questions and thinking about the overall scope of an evaluation project. Examples include questions and strategies used in small, medium, and large-scale studies.
Integrating Scaffolding Experiences for the Youngest Visitors in Museums
(Taylor & Francis, 2012) Wolf, Barbara; Wood, Elizabeth; Museum Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts
Research demonstrates that children have vast potential to expand their knowledge base with simple supports from adults and older children. Children's museums have a heightened awareness of the value in and the need to reach out to support adults accompanying children, thus bringing about an emphasis on family learning. Iterative exhibition studies conducted at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis illustrate the impact of planning for family learning. But for any museum, intentionally applying the strategy of scaffolding by building on simple concepts and working toward mastery of ideas, can inform adults and simultaneously help children stretch to new levels of understanding and achievement. This strategy requires curators, educators and exhibit developers to work collaboratively to determine various levels of accessibility of content and activity moving from entry level ideas through more complex and abstract ones for older children and adults. Children visiting museums of all types is certainly nothing new, but their experience in those spaces has changed over time. From the earliest iterations of children's museums, to contemporary practices in museums of all types, the attention museum professionals place on the needs of this special audience is changing. The idea of hands-on learning, facilitated and mediated learning experiences, and scaled-down environments have become more prominent (and often expected) in museum settings where young children visit with their families. The increased visitation of family groups, especially those with young children, requires greater attention by museum educators, exhibition developers, and designers to support the learning needs of this audience. Most children's museums place special emphasis on designing environments that support learning for very young children. Lessons learned from the work done in children's museums can provide models for those in other museum settings to meet the needs of early learners.
Growing FLORES for the Museum
(2016) Wood, Elizabeth; Zemanek, Alysha; Weiss, Laura; Carron, Christian G.; Museum Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, founded in 1925, is one of few children's museums with a substantial collection. The changing needs of family audiences, and the museum's shift in direction toward a family learning mission, began to raise several questions for the collections and curatorial staff regarding the selection of objects that would hold the greatest potential for use with family audiences. The questions led to the development of the Family Learning Object Rating and Evaluation System (FLORES). This case study describes the development of the rating instrument and strategies the team took to fine-tune its use through input from curators and museum visitor preferences. By drawing on inherent object qualities as well as visitor preferences, museums can find ways to better understand the visitor-object relationship and in turn move toward more intentional selection and inclusion of objects in exhibition planning.

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