Museum Studies Works

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 57
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    "With manly courage”: Reading the construction of gender in a nineteenth-century religious community
    (The University of Arizona Press, 1994) Kryder-Reid, Elizabeth
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    Visitor Experiences at Heritage Sites: A Phenomenological Approach
    (Sage, 1996) Masberg, Barbara A.; Silverman, Lois H.
    There is a surprising lack of understanding of visitors' perspective on the experience of visiting a heritage site. Previous studies used quantitative approaches that did not shed light on visitors' perspectives, terms, and meanings. Drawing upon the tradition of phenomenology, this exploratory study used qualitative research methods to examine college student visitors' perspectives on heritage sites they had visited. Respondents' experience was multidimensional: they emphasized activities in which they had engaged, their companions, site personnel they had encountered, and information learned during their visits. The results suggest a need for more careful site management (including the physical environment and site personnel) and changes in marketing, advertising, programming, and site missions. Further research on visitor experiences using phenomenological and qualitative approaches is needed.
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    Sites of Power and the Power of Sight: Vision in the California Mission Landscapes
    (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007) Kryder-Reid, Elizabeth
    The relationships of sight and power in the landscapes in California missions are explored in this study of three periods of mission history – the sites’ origins as the locus of colonial encounters between Spanish Franciscans and the Indigenous peoples of California, their later re- invention as public sites with “California mission gardens,” and contemporary tourist destinations. While seemingly disparate settings, this paper argues that the imposition of western power on Native peoples and the creation of romanticized oases in tourist destinations are parallel in a number of respects, particularly in the control of vision. The paper also explores diverse perspectives on this view of the land by examining indigenous ideologies of landscape and local expressions of meaning within garden design.
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    The Giant Footprints: A Lived Sense of Story and Place
    (University Press of Colorado, 2008) Cusack-McVeigh, Holly
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    Defining the Chaperone’s Role as Escort, Educator or Parent
    (Taylor & Francis, 2010) Wood, Elizabeth; Museum Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts
    The concept of family learning in museums emphasizes the interaction between related adults and children through the process of free-choice learning. The complexity of family learning in the context of school visits presents new questions for museum staff on the role of chaperones and the extent to which chaperone-led groups might function as family units. Do chaperones operate as escorts, educators, or parents on a museum field trip? This article provides a brief overview of existing field trip and chaperone research findings, raises some critical questions on the role of parents as chaperones, and describes the results from a study on chaperone behavior in the museum. Results from observations of 289 chaperones in a children's museum setting suggest that chaperone behavior is not necessarily influenced by exhibition context, but parents and chaperones do differ in preferred family learning interactions with children in museum exhibitions.
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    "Perennially New": Santa Barbara and the Origins of the California Mission Garden
    (UC Press, 2010-09-01) Kryder-Reid, Elizabeth
    The evidence presented in "Perennially New": Santa Barbara and the Origins of the California Mission Garden shows that the iconic image of the mission garden was created a century after the founding of the missions in the late eighteenth century, and two decades before the start of the Mission Revival architectural style. The locus of their origin was Mission Santa Barbara, where in 1872 a Franciscan named Father Romo, newly arrived from a posting in Jerusalem, planted a courtyard garden reminiscent of the landscapes that he had seen during his travels around the Mediterranean. This invented garden fostered a robust visual culture and rich ideological narratives, and it played a formative role in the broader cultural reception of Mission Revival garden design and of California history in general. These discoveries have significance for the preservation and interpretation of these heritage sites.
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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
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    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.
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    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.