Daniel Traister Special Collections

Museums have long served a purpose as cultural staples. For every museum, big and small, careful consideration is used in selecting its contents. When securing new items for a museum, it is most important to consider public appeal, educational value, and cost-effectiveness.

After graduating from the University of Oklahoma, I started working at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. For about a year, I worked with artists and authors to organize book signing events. Now, life has taken me to Texas, and I am currently working at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the most visited museum in Houston. I have decided that a graduate degree in Museum Studies will help advance me in a career field in which I am very passionate. For my graduate research, I would like to delve deeper into museum theory, work to fully understand how guests interact with objects, learn how curators create exhibitions, and research the capabilities of digital technologies in the galleries.

I hope to see museums make more concerted efforts to educate the public. Too many exhibits are of the “passive, didactic looking” than like the engaging Object Stories program (Dartt, Murawski). Exhibits should seek to tell untold narratives, and programs should be places of communication and cross-cultural encounters. For too long, difficult confrontations have been avoided, both inside the museum, and by dominant communities

In Steven Lubar’s book, Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present, the recurring idea that museums are “more than the sum of their parts” plays a critical role in the overall argument (329). Lubar notes many aspects that make up a museum, the collection, for example is an essential part of any museum, but the community, as well as the experiences of the patrons create a lasting museum experience. Additionally, Lubar aptly utilizes real-world examples, contemporary and historical, highlighting the work of individuals in museums and establishing a connection between past and current events. Central to this narrative is the example of the lost Jenks Museum. Lubar uses this museum to argue that museums of the past can educate museum goers

In the article, Conspicuous Consumption by Melanie Townsend, she talks about how, as a society, we have developed a compulsive need towards accumulating collections and material items without any regard for the repercussions of our actions. Museums are caught between keeping relevant in today’s changing global environment and the need to protect, preserve and be the keeper of public collections in a way that upholds their mandate. One of the points that I found most interesting was about the Glenbow Museum and Smithsonian actively linking their collections. However, it was also pointed out that even though the Glenbow has been a leader in beginning repatriation, they then turned around and hosted an exhibition that conflicts with the good things

Recently I have interacted with public history issues common in an archival and museum settings such as the interpretation of objects and historical displays. Regarding previous coursework, in Historical Methodology, I learned that the interpretation of exhibits could provide a special atmosphere on a subject in history that can influence an audience’s opinions on an event. At the historical society, I came across this issue when setting up an exhibit describing the Los Alamos community during the Manhattan Project. Such artifacts as the original iron gate to the laboratory’s processing building in Santa Fe during World War II provides tourists with a sense of heritage allowing them to form their questions and views of the community’s history. With the presentation of the gate and several other objects allowed those that visited the historical society’s museum with a connection to the past. Regarding this, I encountered questions about the community’s connection to the Manhattan Project and opinions on the use of the bombs on Japan by the museum’s visitors. Also, I have experienced how interactive exhibits have taken the place of actual objects. The new addition of the museum features several interactive displays on the Cold War. Though

I learned that museum trips for the purpose of learning or not just to take time away from the school or as a “reward” for students; rather, the teacher must make connections to the classroom learning and see the museum activity as another resource method to engage children. As Erdman suggests, “Collaboration with a museum takes planning to ensure the process is effective for everyone. As with any aspect of education, goal setting and reflection are key” (p. 18). Moreover, I recognize the value of Erdman’s article is its germane inclusion of technology. Erdman’s discusses how more museums “are embracing the potential of a digital museum” (p. 17) and with more schools looking to use 1-to-1 laptops, could provide teachers with another avenue for student learning. Again, I recognize the importance for an effective incorporation of museum education will need careful panning because “Collaboration with a museum takes planning to ensure the process is effective for everyone” (Erdman, 2016, p. 18). In short, I recognize three important ideas from the week’s readings—connecting museums to early childhood development, my own understanding of the purpose of museums, connecting museums to student learning—provided me with a foundation and motivation to incorporate museum education to my

The display is curated by Interim Director of Museum Studies, Dr. Kendall H. Cocoa, with B. Karenina Karyadi, Lauren Nochella, Kristy Odett, and Ariana Rizo, as a halfway prerequisite for the CSULB Graduate program in Museum and Curatorial Studies.

“Most current digital repositories ... do not have specific mandates for long term preservation, nor do they have the necessary long-term budgets. Instead, they are mandated to support access and re-use in the near-term future. Long term preservation may be one of their aims, or at least hopes and wishes, but it is not (yet) a responsibility” (Digital Curation Centre and DigitalPreservationEurope, 2007, p. 2). The New York Academy of Medicine created digital surrogates for several items in their collection, hosted online by CONTENTdm. They now can be considered a digital repository. As they are a relatively small organization, and somewhat new to managing digital collections, much of their current focus for their digital collection is to support “access and re-use in the near-term future.” They have not yet been able to consider their plans for the long-term preservation of their digital collection.

Individuals collect documentary artifacts for various reasons, some of which relate to the need to preserve official documents needed for their survival in the legal and political structures in which they live, such as birth certificates, old passports, property deeds, educational or professional credentials. Others relate to artifacts with sentimental value—personal, familial or communal lives. Additionally, individuals construct collections, in many cases, as ways to attest to the ways in which they see themselves and their roles in the world around them. History buffs, for example, collect documents that they deem historically significant, so do music lovers, and art enthusiasts, among others. Still, no matter what the nature of the collections

As for the institution itself, the museum saw this exhibition as a step toward larger institutional changes. They recognized that they primarily serve a white middle class audience. For Carnegie, this exhibit and hopefully the programming accompanying it would help the museum to become more diverse, inclusive, and diversify the demographics of their audiences.

ultural institutions, like the cultures that foster them, evolve over time. Zoos & Aquariums, as well as museums, were established from private collections and the human urge to keepsake the different, the extraordinary, the exotic. The human species has evolved to use its dominion over other species to its benefit. The acquisition of animals as collectible has always been more fascinating and exciting than natural history objects. This is in part because wild life is less common, difficult to acquire and more costly to maintain. Keeping living animals has been the ultimate trophy for many collectors of the elite. Collections brought a microcosm of reality to the homeland. The concept of the natural history museum, zoos and aquariums has undergone great changes over the past decades; shifting from private collections to public displays. In the following text, I will discuss a brief history of the zoo as living museum, and how institutions, such as Sea World, use cutting-edge experiential design and “crowd pleasing ‘edu-tainment’to revive their relevance for the

Science museums are a dying breed. With the continuous reliance on the internet, museums are losing relevance. But there are some things the internet can not provide, things that must be focused on in order to make a successful museum exhibit. Certain aspects of exhibits that are unique to the museum experience, such as interactivity with both the exhibit and with other observers, should be focal points of science museum exhibits. Interactivity allows a deeper level of learning that the simple act of reading something off of a screen is incapable of giving. Furthermore, an interaction between people--even if it is subconscious--can provide further insight, especially if said people are at different levels of education or otherwise understanding of the topic at hand. That being said, it is also important for an exhibit to offer potential for learning at a variety of different levels of understanding. There should be, if possible, something to further the knowledge of every individual that views the exhibit. Whether the viewer is a young child or a graduate student, or a practiced adult, they should all be able to gleam some insight from their visit. Part of this uptake of information at all levels is due to another critical factor of exhibits, the ability of the display to encourage deeper thinking. This insight learning is possible if the exhibit somehow prompts the viewer to

From temples of sacred objects, to repositories of colonial trophies, and from monuments of civility, to spaces for self-expression and empowerment, the shape, the function and the appeal of the museum trough history and across cultures has been fashioned by the preoccupations and expectations of each society that has chosen to construct them. Wondrous and monstrous, extraordinary and mysterious. Wonders of nature, culture and science-fruits and spoils of Renaissance age of discovery- found their way into European ‘cabinets of curiosity’ – those days collection included works of art, precious gems, outlandish fruits, four-footed beasts, an Indian lip-stone, blood that rained in the Isle of Wight, unicorn’s horns, dragons bones. Cabinets of exotic and rare objects were privately owned by collectors, often royal or aristocratic. Such cabinets demonstrated the owner’s wealth and prestige, on one hand, but on another level, their intention was to genuinely arouse curiosity and wonder. Then along came the Enlightenment and the French and American Revolutions. A new museum order responded to, and even served to make manifest, a new world order. Museums including Louvre, the British Museum and Peale’s Museum, began to open to the public from the mid to late 1700s. Previously private collections were converted into public exhibitions, an

I aspire to help others experience the childlike joy which I felt when first visiting the Royal BC Museum and I intend to achieve my goal by becoming a museum curator. I have chosen to focus my career path on museums because, as my childhood experience demonstrates, they are the ideal venue to encourage a lifelong love of learning. The process of learning in a museum is not passive, instead visitors are encouraged to seek our information for themselves. Not only is this activity enjoyable for the visitor, it also exemplifies the idea that we should be engaged in our own education and curious about the subject matter. Additionally, museums are a unique educational experience because their objects offer visitors a concrete connection to what they are learning about. Viewing