#mamuseumstudies

[kopplina-blog]

My Bank Holiday? Delicious Thai and wine with a side of Making Histories dissertation reading at the Churchill Arms in Notting Hill!

[kopplina-blog]

Aperol Spritz for a much needed break

[kopplina-blog]

Sometimes I’m proud I go here :)

[kopplina-blog]

Museum of the Citizen Panel at the British Museum 

Just another research day...

[kopplina-blog]

I had to catch some wifi at Waterstone’s this weekend - this happens sometimes when you’re locked out of your UCL account. Tea and focus group readings sounds like a great afternoon. 

[kopplina-blog]

The 5 in 1 Museum Monday: Museums Aiming to Fully Engaged With Their Communities and Affect Positive Change

Yesterday was the first Museum Monday back after the Reading Week break and I came back in full force. No visitor fatigue today!

Before our planned visits, I walked across the street to see the “Home for Christmas” exhibition in St. Martin-in-the-Fields. This is an excellent example of an interest in affecting a positive change in society. An artist had taken photographs of families with members who had gone missing recently and decades ago. The missing posters for their loved ones were displayed nearby. The hope is that information regarding these disappearances can reach the families and ideally bring those people “Home for Christmas.” It is moving because each photograph includes a message and shows each family standing outside of their front door waiting for their loved one to return home.

Our first official visit of the day through UCL was at the National Portrait Gallery to talk with the director of their Creative Connections Program. This program is in its fourth and final year and each year involves 1 artist, 1 borough of London, and 1 public school in that borough. The aim is to “create connections” between middle-school age art students, art, and their local community. They research influential individuals who have a connection to that area of London starting by reviewing the NPG collections. If they find an individual they feel is important, but does not have a portrait in the NPG collection, they find the funds to acquire one. This is an excellent program to boost the students self-esteem, foster their interest in art, and develop a sense of pride for where they come from. 

Last year’s borough was Camden, where I live. Key Camden individuals include: Benedict Cumberbatch, Helena Bonham Carter, Agatha Cristie, and Virginia Woolf. Walking through that exhibit left me with a sense of pride... and I just got here!

Our second visit for UCL was at the nearby Royal Academy of the Arts. This institution is the most well known for access programs addressing audiences which the speaker labeled as “at risk of exclusion.” This is a phrase I had never heard before and I don't really know where the ‘at risk’ part comes from, I’m fairly certain these audiences are largely already excluded and were never truly included in the first place. Within their galleries, they offer tours and personnel to assist individuals in wheelchairs and visually impaired. They also offer special educational programming for the developmentally challenged.

It is their partnerships with other organizations that I find the most novel and worth duplicating elsewhere. The speaker explained that they are not as often in the media for these programs because they choose to develop long-term programs that do not have an end date or culminate in an exhibition for the general public. Mad respect. It is largely their sponsors and donors who recommend other organizations he or she may be involved with or give money to so it requires little effort on their part to locate a potential match-up. They meet and discuss the mission of each and find areas that overlap and programs which fulfill each party’s goal. 

They have worked with the mentally ill, addicts, and the homeless. These are fantastic particularly because these are audiences who do not come to museums for a variety of reasons and this may be their only exposure to the museum. Their program with the homeless is just phenomenal because over a dozen individuals come for a few hours to socialize and create art every month. 

I asked the question if they are interested in extending a program to a prison or ex-convicts and she became a bit awkward and essentially said no because they want their participants to come back (i.e. spend money bc there is an entrance fee) and those individuals have not come up in their discussions. This doesn't really make sense to me because it is also unlikely that homeless individuals will return. It became apparent to me she would benefit from a better understanding of prisoners as human beings equally justified in visiting a museum, but hey, she admitted:

 “the Academy just isn't ‘there’ yet.” 

Maybe one day... 

Before we left the RA, we were able to see the Ai Weiwei exhibit they currently are running. Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist who critiques Chinese government oppression through his art. He takes pieces from collapsed buildings due to poor building regulations, names his pieces very provocatively (one is called ”grass,” which in Chinese is also a swear word), uses the middle finger, etc.  His company was fined for over 1 million and given 15 days to pay. Ai Weiwei sent them a famous “I.O.U.” He has been illegally detained and the Chinese government has revoked his passport to prevent him from escaping and exporting any more pieces. One of his more explicit works is 6 half life-sized models of his detainment cell (which he was forbidden to ever discuss), it displays him doing everyday activities (eating, sleeping, and even going to the bathroom) accompanied by his ever-watcful and armed guards. Everyone I saw walking through this exhibit was in awe at the human rights violations allowed to take place. 

Once our official visit was over, I popped across the river to the Southbank Centre currently displaying an exhibition titled “Re:form,” which displays works of art and poems produced by incarcerated individuals. Some are on sale and they even offer tours led by ex-convicts (which I plan to attend on a return visit). They had a lot of pieces I was very pleased to see. Their section on minors was really eye-opening too because the organization that funds this even fast-tracks grants to minors because they are moved through the system much faster than adults. What a wonderful acknowledgement of and accommodation for different prison experiences! 

Instead of comment cards on the exhibition, you can write directly to the artist of the piece in prison. I was talking with one of the tour guides and he stresses the importance of this to each visitor because many of these artists rarely get any mail and the smallest comment could have an immeasurably positive impact on them in a dark time. I think this group, like the homeless, just crave to still be seen as members of society, treated as human begins. They are too often made out to be monsters or sub-human and pushed outside of society’s circle because people require empathy. It is unfortunate, but too many of the general population do not want to or are incapable of feeling empathy for these groups right now, but I hope one day that changes. 

I am so excited about these types of programs and I see a potential career in this for me. I continue to hold a desire to bring something like this to prisons (not just therapeutic art, but offer them recognition in a multitude of ways I haven't fully formulate yet). I applying for a paid internship with the NPG to work with this year’s Creative Connections Program in Southwark. The school chosen is an all girls Church of England school with almost exclusively African and Caribbean students. If I were to get this position, I would have to drop the Exhibition Project, but I think this experience would be more beneficial to me. Fingers-crossed! 

These are the types of programs and exhibits museums should actively be seeking to participate in. They are such positive and creative ways of reaching out to various audiences and saying: 

“I recognize what you need and I want to help in the way we know how.”

I ended my day with an event at the Museum of London which just opened up the Crime Museum from the Metropolitan Police collections. It was a talk with the curators who revealed challenges to this endeavor and offered enlightenment on their decisions. The Scotland Yard has been collecting prisoner’s items for over 150 years. Their collection grew so large they decided to create a museum from which to train police officers and detectives. For ethical reasons revolving around items from recent crimes and human remains, this museum has never before been opened to the public. Therefore, there are some huge obstacles to overcome and major issues to consider when you open it to a general audience. 

In my opinion the exhibit is about as safe as a Crime Museum can get. It does not illustrate criminology in general or seek to answer complex questions about why people commit crimes (what an audience interested in true crime is looking for). The curators were very careful to tell stories about specific crimes situated in a specific time and place in history (as a historian, nothing is a product of solely its time and place). There was no critique of whether laws were ethical or not - not even the death penalty, though they displayed the last case in Britain where a person was hanged for forgery. I don't mean to say every object was “safe.” No. They had a shocking display of 6 hanging ropes with the names of the last individuals who faced their purpose. 

But in respect for what it is - a ground breaking exhibit which seeks to open up public access to a massively important collection - The Crime Museum is exceptional. 

It has helped to connect the “Black Museum,” as it was known before, with the public. One example involves the Whitechapel Murders and Jack the Ripper. The Met Police was often accused of having more information on who Jack the Ripper was and hiding it from the public. The curators say this is just not true. The popularity of the case comes from the fact that there was never any information, no evidence was collected, and therefore it cannot be found in their collection. Further, what is in the collection that relates to these murders is included in the exhibition but is quite underwhelming. It is a simple flyer from the police requesting information on these murders. It does not say “Jack the Ripper” because that name didn't even exist yet. 

Also, both of the curators of the Crime Museum have ties to UCL (one received her MA in Museum Studies there and the other is currently getting another postgraduate degree there). So there is justifiable hope for employment...

[kopplina-blog]

Halfway there...

This week was the much needed reading week here at UCL. “No classes?!?! That sounds more like a mid-semester break, Allison” you might say. You’d be wrong. With a report due on Museum Management in the coming week and an essay on Representations of Identities in Museums due the week after that, its true name is reading and writing week. 

It has been at least relaxing to not have to sit in a class worrying about these things. I would have worked more in my dorm if there weren't scheduled (and loud) repairs and a lapse in internet coverage occurring. So out I went. And money was spent. And food was eaten. When you can't stand the library anymore and you have been dying to try out restaurants and bars, this happens. 

So how’s it coming? I’d say decently well. I am still caught up on essential readings and making some good headway on additional resources. Once I have completed the report (which I am currently avoiding now with only 100 words to go..) and created an outline for my essay, I will feel like I have things pretty much handled... until the next round of deadlines of course. 

I discovered I cannot do it all, something always slips (this week, my exercise regimen), but I have found some additional time in the schedule to do some volunteering at the Grant Museum of Zoology on campus where they are excited to have me get involved with memberships and social media aspects of operation (and so am I!). More information should be coming soon too regarding an opportunity at the Jewish Museum in Camden Town to help organize their first late night around Valentine’s Day. 

My classes for next semester are finalized: the Exhibition Project, and Cultural Heritage, Globalisation and Development. Hoping to be an Exhibit Designer or work with Visitor Studies or Public Outreach, these are pretty good options. 

In the next couple weeks, I will meet with the Placement Coordinator for UCL and hopefully she will have some good news. I would love to get involved in a program designed to widen audiences or re-evaluate an ethnographic collection. One of the reasons I chose to write about representations of identities within museums is because I am so interested in it and creating more sensitive and inclusive institutions. On Wednesday, I attended discussion titled “Towards a Decolonial Curatorial Practice which proved quite interesting. It is no surprise that through their representations and the language they use, exhibitions can perpetuate violence, stereotypes, or create a misleading distance between viewer and viewed. 

It has been a struggle within the past decade or two to balance traditional curatorial expertise with legitimizing a culture’s right to have an input in how they are represented. The US is actually quite ahead of the game with the passing of NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) of the 90′s, which has been functioning quite well. It was predicted that collections would be flying off the shelves back into the hands of the Tribal Associations (some has been returned usually with specific reasons - i.e. human remains or materials with specific cultural significance), but it actually has resulted largely in increased discussions and significantly more contextual information for deeper and more rounded exhibitions. Give a little, gain a lot.

But I digress, back to my life...

Unfortunately there is still no word about my desired dissertation topic: the Cell Block 7 Prison Museum. It’s the ONLY MUSEM IN THE WORLD IN AN OPERATING PRISON! Please oh please let this come true. I want to explore the unique visitor experience of learning about the prison... standing in the prison with prisoners. I think this, combined with the rise in popularity in true crime, heightened scrutiny of police and calls for prison reform, signify an increasing public concern for prisoners and injustice in America. What is the role that the prison can play in representing prisoners? Through this is it possible to positively impact their re-introduction into society? It is a fascinating possibility. 

I am missing Thanksgiving, but my program is hosting our own Thanksgiving on Black Friday which we are all very excited about! I’m bringing some mulled wine :) (maybe a dessert or appetizer too). There are some other vegetarians so we should have some good options. 

Christmas is fast approaching and then I will be home for a bit! There is just so much that has to be done before that....