We are often asked if multiple ink colors can be used on a single impression. In this video, Jared letterpress prints a phrase about museums showing that 6 ink colors is possible. The phrase “Museums are not neutral” was printed with red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple ink using our Washington hand press. The wood type used is 15 line pica in size and the typeface is French Clarendon.
Our museum, like all museums, is not neutral. People often argue that museums should be neutral or that museums can’t be “political.” However, museums actually are cultural institutions that originate from colonial acquisition and they are about power. History is often written by the victors. It is important for museums to focus on multiple sources and perspectives, especially historically underrepresented groups. Promoting diversity is important to understanding a more holistic history of events.
I think the worst thing the NATM franchise ever did was convince a bunch of us to get museum studies degrees bc we're all gonna end up unemployed or underpaid and for what? Bc rami malek was hot twenty years ago? Bc the gay men were funny??
Move condemned by scholars and activists as part of a ‘systematic’ attack on Palestinian cultural identity
The British Museum has removed the term "Palestine" from its exhibits about the Ancient Middle East, after pressure from the organisation UK Lawyers For Israel (UKLFI).
This comes after other UK cultural institutions have been pressured by the same organisation. For example, earlier this year, the Encyclopaedia Britannica changed several entries in their Britannica Kids to remove Palestine, including from maps. UKLFI was also the only organization behind the complaints that made the Chelsea and Westminster hospital in London remove an exhibition with artwork designed by school children from Gaza.
UKLFI also pressured the UK-based Open University, and its director accepted to remove the term "ancient Palestine" from its future learning materials, but was met with resistance from the university's professors.
Ok, apropos of @ariaste's fantastic post the other day about the plaster casts at Pompeii and how they're interpreted, say hello to my Rant About Museum Storytelling And Emotional Experience That No One Asked For!
Tl;dr: stories capture the ambiguous nature of histories and multiple perspectives that museums are constantly struggling with, and they're too attached to The Concept Of Objective Truth to see it sometimes.
The long explanation is under a cut, because it will be loooong. However, BEFORE the cut-are YOU interested in what I'm about to say, aka storytelling about history? are YOU a huge nerd who doesn't understand why anyone wouldn't love reading every museum label in detail down to the citations? Well YOU are in luck, because you are 100% guaranteed by order of random tumblr poster to enjoy The Wisdom Of Emperors by the above-mentioned awesome @ariaste! Go follow it on the Kickstarter and give your money eventually so that we can get the cool stretch goals and see all the fun footnotes in a beautiful collector's edition! If you haven't already, go do that RIGHT NOW!! I'll wait! No rush!
Have you followed the Kickstarter? Good, now you can scroll past this read more XD
So, given I literally did a Master's dissertation attempting to look at this, you can guess I have Opinions™️ about this. I did not look directly at what I want to talk about here(academia happened), my dissertation was more looking at tour guides giving real facts while also acting as a historical character, the tension between the 'fiction' of acting and the truth of the facts if there was any, and how that might be useful to think about for museums. But really I find it fascinating how underutilised the concept of narrative and storytelling are in museum contexts, how they get shaped into something that ends up fundamentally identical to the standard, and how we shy away from 'fiction' as if it's antithetical to what museums represent, when it could be such a brilliant tool to serve that!
My big thing about it is that all of the EXACT same questions and choices you have to make that are underlying principles of good writing, that have been chewed over and thought about for hundreds of years at this point, are the same questions that museums are currently trying to answer and consider when they make displays/exhibitions. It's just that because very little of writing about writing is considered as scholarship, or relevant scholarship for museum studies professionals, they don't seem to notice and use this! (Sidenote: it's also because imo the choices and principles of good writing are essentially just applied critical thinking, and everyone ought to be taught those skills purely because of how it enlightens you on your critical thinking skills. When you as a writer ask yourself 'which POV would best fit the story I'm trying to tell?' you can then understand why someone else might have chosen THEIR POV, and for what intention). Questions like: how can we represent the wide range of traditionally excluded perspectives without suggesting they're a monolith? how do we show the ambiguity of the people that owned these objects, their achievements and flaws and cruelties and brilliance? how do we impart facts when we aren't sure which of the possible options actually happened? and incredibly importantly, how can we engage our audience with the objects we have in new ways and make their stories more accessible?
In other words: which POV should we choose? how do we represent the nuances of our theme? how much space for interpretation should I leave for my reader? and how can I keep my reader engaged and reading? It's an incredibly powerful overlooked tool! And my humble opinion is that museum storytelling is seen in the profession is seen as a separate thing to storytelling. In trying to bring that authoritative voice that they see as being integral to museum expertise, they bar themselves from allowing the ambiguity that makes the storytelling function, and avoid making the specific choices that keep it engaging. To give them their credit-this can be a high risk strategy, particularly at the minute, as it can receive a very negative reaction from people that want their museum experience to be ONLY FACTS PLEASE, NAME DATE CATALOGUE NUMBER DESCRIPTION MOVE ON NOW. Turns out the general public can also have opinions about what The Objective Truth is, who knew.
HOWEVER, getting on to my other big thing: the best thing, to me, about museum experiences is the emotional. That is what sticks with an audience, makes it a memorable experience, and can associate facts with place and object and memory and experience. And that's stories all the way down. Not to mention the fact that by the very evidence of a human being picking the thing up and deciding to keep/'collect' it for a museum, the thing has a story attached. Everything in a museum has been touched by human hands or was considered important by a human, and that's a story, baby! So many of these objects in museums are so intensely human that it kills me to think about, and yet they sit there! Someone's desperate wishes for a good afterlife for their relative described just as 'beads used as grave goods', or 'funerary offerings'! And then people can just take a picture and move on! Because no one wrote a story and made the experience that grabbed them by the shoulders and said hey look a cool thing!!!! But apparently the impartiality and Objective Truth of the thing must be preserved at the price of anyone ever knowing what that is!!! Because education and emotions don't go together and no facts can ever be fun!!! (It also happens to be even more democratic and open, because people will be struck by the story which resonates with them, rather than a prescriptive museum path of 'this is what you ought to know' transactional relationship. Which, you know, people might enjoy? And might bring them back in again and again?)
I want to follow a character around! I want museums to go full experience crazy! I want museum escape rooms! Museum immersive theatre shows! Choose your own object adventures! I want actors and poetry and guidebooks that are a mix of academic paper and stories! I want museums to ask how can we tell our object's stories, not how can we get people to learn these three facts by the end!!! I want to cry openly at being the same as a human from prehistory that tried to reach out to me in the future via making art and saying we were here and realising that we would recognise each other!!!!!!!!
Whooo. Ok. Anyway. APPARENTLY, you need to have experience in crap like budgets and managing live events and creating an entire festival from scratch before they let you do anything like that for museums, so you get this rant instead. If any museums want some cool immersive theatre and don't mind my only experience being a huge autistic special interest in museum stuff and writing a couple of novel drafts and scripts, hmu?
On April 8, 2026, an anonymous man returned an approximately 1,500-year-old Woodland-period pot to the visitor's center of Kolomoki Mounds State Park.
In March 1974, more than 120 artifacts were stolen in the middle of the night from Kolomoki. A handful of pieces were recovered from art dealers in St. Augustine and Miami, Florida in the following years, as well as from a few other locations around the country, but as of 2026, more than 70 pieces are still missing.
The anonymous man who returned the pot in 2026 was caught on CCTV surveillance footage placing a cardboard box on the counter of the visitor's center. He reportedly told the staffmember at the desk that he "believes this belongs here," and when asked where it came from said, "it's a long story and I don't even know half of it. I think y'all will be happy to get this." He then abruptly left the visitor's center before the staffmember could even open the box.
At this time, the unidentified man is not consdered a suspect in the original theft, but the Georgia Department of Natural Resouces is seeking the public's help to identify him. News of this recovery was not made public until a month after the return.
Returned pot, as published by the Atlanta Journal Constitution
Read more about this in the Atlanta Journal Constitution (paywalled)
State officials are asking the public for information to recover more artifacts stolen from Kolomoki Mounds State Park.
or in the Georgia Department of Natural Resources' press release
Earlier this month, an individual anonymously returned a pottery vessel believed to be among approximately 120 artifacts stolen from the sit
back with some butterfliessss saw these at a museum and did this pop out piece for a final critique. the exact species weren’t on display at the museum, so if anyone has any clue lmk :)
