Research Highlights: Apotheosis

Our final Research Highlights post is brought to you today by Whitney Robertson. Whitney is the Museum Collections Manager at The Society of the Cincinnati in Washington, DC, located at Anderson House, a 1905 mansion that was originally the home of diplomat Larz Anderson and his wife Isabel, and has been the headquarters and museum of The Society of the Cincinnati (a Revolutionary War hereditary society) since 1938. She received her M.A. in Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice from the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC and wrote her thesis on George Washington’s attire. We hope you enjoy today’s post that combines science, history, and fashion all in one!

What do your bed linens look like, and what does that say about you? Most of us wouldn’t give a second thought to the stories our duvets might tell, but as a textile specialist working in museums with early American collections, I can’t help but think about it as I keep encountering a particular type of bed furnishing textile in dozens of collections, from the Met to Winterthur to my current institution, The Society of the Cincinnati. It’s a copperplate-printed cotton or cotton/linen blend in a pattern called “Washington and American Independance (sic); The Apotheosis of Franklin,” or sometimes just “The Apotheosis of Franklin and Washington.” Taking a look at textiles in this design is a great opportunity to explore the complexity of material culture related to textiles, as their story combines technology, trade, iconography, and fashions in interior décor.

Bed valance, England, c.1785, image courtesy of Dumbarton House/NSCDA

I first ran across an example of the “Apotheosis” fabric as an intern at the Society of the Cincinnati, and took a few samples from it to the conservation lab at the Textile Museum, where I was able to identify its fiber content using their polarizing light microscope. I found that the fabric was a combination of cotton and linen fibers, which is consistent with examples at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Many other examples are listed by their institutions as cotton.

Cotton fibers from Society of the Cincinnati bed curtain, 40x magnification

Linen fibers from Society of the Cincinnati bed curtain, 40x magnification

 In seventeenth-century England, cotton bed furnishings became a popular alternative to more costly and less washable wools and silks. These were first introduced in the form of block-printed patterns known as “chintzes,” imported from India and later produced domestically. Block-printing allowed for colorful but rather crude designs limited to relatively small pattern repeats. In 1752, Francis Nixon of Ireland adapted the copperplate engraving technique used for paper to produce patterns on textiles.

This offered the possibility of a much larger pattern repeat and higher level of detail, but it limited designs to one color as it was next to impossible to accurately line up a second colored plate on top of the first without producing a muddy appearance. This type of textile is frequently referred to as “toile,” a shortening of “Toile de Jouy,” or fabric from Jouy-en Josas, a French town that was home to the most famous producer of copperplate-printed textiles, the Oberkampf manufactory. We now use “toile” as a generic term to mean any copperplate-printed textile.

Historical events and mythological or allegorical scenes were frequent subjects of these pieces. Produced by an unknown English firm around 1785, the “Apotheosis” pattern is just one of many toile designs intended particularly for the American export market. In fact, many more eighteenth-century English printed cottons survive in America than in England. Our founding fathers were quick to pick up on the trend for toile bed furnishings; Ben Franklin and George Washington both placed orders for yardage in the late 1750s.

These two men happen to be the central figures in the “Apotheosis” design, surrounded by an environment rich with symbols of America and liberty. Washington drives a chariot drawn by leopards, accompanied by the figure of America in a plumed headdress (a classicized and Anglicized version of earlier depictions of America as an Indian Princess). She carries a caduceus, in this case a symbol of commerce. Ahead of them, an American Indian blows a trumpet decorated with Franklin’s famous “Join or Die” flag. The Battle of Bunker Hill is depicted in the background, and to the side is the “Liberty Tree,” with a tattered, upside-down “Stamp Act” tacked to it. Below, the goddess Minerva, bearing a shield with thirteen stars, leads Franklin and his companion Liberty to the temple of Fame, where two winged cherubs hold a globe aloft. Symbols of war and American flora and fauna fill in the scene.

Bed Curtain, England, c. 1785, collections of The Society of
the Cincinnati

While obviously meant to appeal to Americans, this pattern seems to have been well-known on both sides of the Atlantic. English poet Robert Southey’s 1807 book Letters from England, a series of fictional letters written by a Portuguese visitor to England, features a passage describing this pattern in detail, appearing his protagonist’s bed curtains at an inn in Carlisle. The visitor then comments, “I have often remarked the taste of the people for these coarse allegories.” It is true that there is little subtlety to this design, but its iconography is quite similar to that which appears in many other contemporary paper and textile prints.

To me, the most interesting and least understood question about these textiles is, “who owned them?” While countless curtains, fragments, and even entire bed furniture sets exist in museums, the majority of them have no provenance leading to the pieces’ original owners. So far, I have found three examples that do have provenance, in varying levels of strength. The first is a bed valance in the collection of Washington, D.C.’s Dumbarton House, which descended in the family of its one-time resident Joseph Nourse, register of the Treasury under the nation’s first six presidents. Nourse’s manuscripts account for the purchase of “cotton furniture” for bed hangings, most likely the set from which this piece came. The second is a bed curtain sold at Whitaker Auctions in 2010, linked to Revolutionary War Surgeon Albigence Waldo, and the third is a bed curtain in the collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, donated by a descendant of another Revoutionary War officer, Colonel Henry Sherburne. Since these three men make up a tiny subset of all the original owners of the textile, we can’t draw substantive conclusions from their similarities, but we do know that they were all connected to the creation of the new American republic by military or civil service and were men of some means who would have decorated their homes according to current fashion.

There is obviously much more to say—and even more to find out—about the “Apotheosis” toile, and I’m continuing to delve deeper in to the material. I’ll be presenting a paper on the pattern at the Textile Society of America’s “Textiles and Politics” conference in DC this September. If you’re interested, check it out!

Research Highlights: Sir Hans Sloane and the Founding of the British Museum

Our guest post today comes from Emily Sneff, who brings us a summary of her thesis research. Emily is from the Philadelphia area, graduated from Johns Hopkins with her bachelor’s in History in December, and her research comes from her honors thesis in History entitled “Furnishing Sloane’s ‘Nicknackatory’: The Many Founders of the British Museum.”

On a sunny afternoon in an otherwise rainy July in London, I walked from the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington to the Sloane Square Tube station. Along the way, I passed Sloane Avenue, Sloane Street, and Sloane Square itself, not to mention a statue of the ubiquitous Sloane near the Saatchi Gallery. Any other visitor wouldn’t have given the name much thought. In fact, in 2010 the BBC interviewed random visitors to Sloane Square, and few could come up with a reason or reference for the name (1). But I knew the exact reasons and references, and jumped at the chance to photograph every appearance of “Sloane.”

 

The reason I know about Sloane – Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), to be exact – is that I spent over nine months researching and writing about his life for my senior thesis in history at Johns Hopkins. My goal was to bring to light Sloane’s importance in the history as well as the future of museums, and his story has served as one of the greatest influences on my own ventures in the museum world.

Sir Hans Sloane is a name that should be known and remembered for many reasons. He was one of the most prominent doctors in early eighteenth-century London, the first English physician ever to receive a hereditary title. His account of the natural history of Jamaica, written after serving as physician to the governor there, was the first comprehensive scientific resource about the island. He succeeded his friend and mentor Sir Isaac Newton as President of the Royal Society of London. His recipe for chocolate mixed with milk inspired the Cadbury brothers. He welcomed prestigious visitors into his home, including Benjamin Franklin, Karl Linnaeus, George Frideric Handel, and Frederick, Prince of Wales. He died in his ninety-third year, after a life spanning several generations of colleagues and friends. But most importantly – for himself and for posterity – upon his death in 1753, Sloane left the contents and ideals necessary to create the British Museum, the first national public museum. My research revolved around this bequest, detailed in his will, and Sloane’s devotion to the thousands of objects and specimens in his collection.

Sloane’s medical career enabled his true passions – science and collecting. In the preface to his natural history of Jamaica, Sloane explained, “I had from my Youth been very much pleas’d with the Study of Plants, and other Parts of Nature, and had seen most of those Kinds of Curiosities, which were to be found either in the Fields, or in the Gardens or Cabinets of the Curious in these parts” (2). It was Sloane’s love of nature and his curiosity for curiosities that led him to collect. His connections as a physician and as a fellow of the Royal Society put him in contact with people around the world, and he encouraged each of his patients, colleagues and friends to bring back any interesting objects they came across in their travels. Of course, his enthusiasm to collect also brought criticism. One of his patients, Charles Hanbury Williams, wrote a satirical list of absurdities that he would seek out for Sloane’s collection, including “The stone whereby Goliath died” and “An antidote, if such there be, Against the charms of flattery.” His list ends by saying “This my wish, it is my glory, / To furnish your nicknackatory” (3). This term, “nicknackatory,” is not only my favorite description for Sloane’s collection, but perhaps the most accurate.

Sloane began by collecting natural history objects, but his interests quickly expanded to include books and manuscripts, coins, art and antiquities. These objects overwhelmed his home at No. 3 Bloomsbury Place, quickly outgrew No. 4 as well, and he eventually moved the entire collection to the manor house in Chelsea, where the Prince and Princess of Wales were given a tour of the collection in 1748. The Prince was proud to see such an extensive and varied collection in England, “esteeming it an ornament to the nation” (4). Certainly a more glowing term than “nicknackatory,” Sloane took the Prince’s words to heart, and began to think of his collection’s plausibility as a “British” museum.

By the time he composed his final will in 1751 (at the age of 91), Sloane had collected tens of thousands of objects, and was determined to keep his collection whole after his death. More than that, he wanted to create a new institution that emphasized the Enlightenment ideals of promoting science and making knowledge accessible. He also wanted his collection to stay in or around London, “where they may be the great confluence of people be of most use” (5). Sloane estimated his collection’s worth at £50,000, but wanted to offer it as a gift to the nation for just £20,000 (a bargain considering the time, energy and money required to assemble it). Parliament ultimately accepted the offer, but combined Sloane’s collection with the Cottonian, Harleian and Royal libraries to create one institution in London, to be named the British Museum.

So, rather than considering Sloane the founder of the British Museum, Sloane’s will should be considered the “catalyst” for the foundation, a term coined by British Museum historian Marjorie Caygill (6). What Sloane really provided for the British Museum, in addition to the objects, was an impetus to preserve history and to make it accessible. When the museum opened at Montagu House in 1759, almost anyone could view the collections, as long as they booked a visiting hour ahead of time and circulated through the museum in the prescribed manner. Today, that model has expanded to allow visitors from all over the world to visit the museum at their own pace, cost-free. The British Museum, Natural History Museum and British Library (which each contain items from Sloane’s collection) receive millions of visitors yearly, and the British Museum’s website includes the largest online database of objects in the world, realizing Sloane’s goals of accessibility and education in a way he could not have imagined.

In 1953, Gavin de Beer wrote a biography of Sir Hans Sloane, and commented that for many people, “he is nothing but a street and a square, when he is not confused with Sir John Soane (7)… Yet there is the British Museum at Bloomsbury and at South Kensington as a monument to his life, his work and his ideas” (8). Sloane’s legacy may still be obscure, but I believe his life, work and ideas serve as a wonderful model for museum professionals today, myself included. Although Sloane was not technically the founder of the British Museum, his model of an accessible universal museum with a mission of education has spread around the world. And the essence of his character – passion, inquisitiveness, and devotion – can be found in every dedicated museum professional, in the British Museum and beyond.

For more on Sloane and the foundation of the British Museum, you can visit this site.

 

[i] Video available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/zDObltR5QXaVB7rDAfQOow. For interviews in Chelsea, jump to 4:30.

[ii] Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, vol. I, Preface.

[iii] The Works of the Right Honorable Chas. Hanbury Williams [...], Vol. I (London: Edward Jeffery and Son, 1822), 126-9.

[iv] “An Account of the Prince and Princess of Wales visiting Sir HANS SLOANE.” Gentleman’s Magazine (18 July 1748): 301-2.

[v] Hans Sloane, The Will of Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. deceased (London: printed for John Virtuouso, 1753), 3.

[vi] Arthur Macgregor, Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, Scientist, Antiquary, Founding Father of the British Museum (London: British Museum Press, 1994), 45.

[vii] Find out more about Soane, a collector in his own right, at http://www.soane.org/.

[viii] Gavin de Beer, Sir Hans Sloane and the British Museum (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), 5.

Research Highlights: YouTube 101

This Friday we’re continuing our new series, Research Highlights, with a post from Dixie Leigh Clough, who recently graduated from George Washington University with a Master’s in Museum Studies. Dixie brings us an introduction to the ways YouTube can benefit museums, and how many museums are currently missing the mark. To find out more about this topic, we encourage you to visit her blog, Museums and YouTube.

The Atlanta History Center is one of the only museums I’ve seen that is truly joining the conversations happening across YouTube with the above video. The “Stuff People Say” phenomenon began after this video became so popular and riffs on the subject started to show up all over YouTube. As far as I know this is the one created by a museum. It is my hope that after reading this post, more museums will understand the need to join the YouTube community.

Does your museum have a YouTube channel (or, perhaps, more than one)? Chances are it has lectures that are recorded and uploaded full-length; formal interviews with staff and experts; documentary style videos showing museum work with a background of generic piano music; artifacts showcased in a formal manner; and if your museum is feeling particularly inspired, it might decide to host a YouTube contest like the Guggenheim or the Smithsonian. Though all of these ideas have merit, they do not speak to the culture of YouTube, which is one of informality, humor, approachability, covers of pop music and original music, collaboration, interactivity, and, most of all, community. Museums need to tap into this YouTube community if they want to have a meaningful impact online.

YouTubers have been building communities with other YouTubers and with their viewers almost since the beginning of YouTube in 2005. YouTubers talk to the world, the world talks back via comments and video responses, and the YouTubers continue the conversations in their videos. They also invite other YouTubers to join them in their videos building each YouTuber’s respective community. In late 2011, YouTube tuned into this sense of community and began to concentrate on rolling out new features to increase its value as a social network. Now when users log in they can see content related to their social network (what their subscriptions and friends are doing on YouTube) and past viewing behavior (recommended videos), rather than general video content.

The most-subscribed channels, and therefore the most active in the YouTube community, have over 5 million subscribers, with millions of views and thousands of comments.  None of the most-subscribed are museums, but I think that can change. If nothing else, there is vast room for improvement. Right now even the largest museums in the country are lucky to have a few thousand subscribers to their channels. Their videos often have less than 10,000 views and under 100 comments. This is a dismal showing.

Museum channels have been creating videos that some people will stumble across and watch, but what they should be aiming for is to become a most-subscribed channel and build a loyal audience that will consistently watch and comment on their videos. Though other viewers may watch your videos occasionally if they become viral, it is only a loyal community of fans, known as subscribers, that the museum will be able to galvanize into action when needed. This requires the museum to have conversations with the viewers and other YouTubers.

Currently, the social barrier of starting a conversation with a faceless museum is too high. It would be like talking to an idea or a building. You need to put an actual person, or people, in front of the company to be the face, the voice, and the personality of the company in social media, otherwise viewer interaction is going to be sporadic, minimal, and uninspired. As Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith say in their book, The Dragonfly Effect, “Put a name and a face and a few personal facts behind your cause, and you will see increased engagement.”[1] This personal factor really plays into social networking. Museums are excited when they get 20 or so comments on Facebook posts, but YouTube stars are getting hundreds of comments on Facebook posts. It’s because the viewers feel like they know them and they know they are talking to an actual person.

Museums also don’t make it clear that interaction is wanted. The easiest way to build a rapport with the audience and invite interaction is to vlog. The most commented on, liked, and discussed videos on YouTube are vlogs, totaling 40 percent of the “Most Discussed” videos.[2] Vlogs are video-blogs, a style in which one or two people talk directly to the camera, using jump shot cuts and sometimes editing to make it appear as if they are having a conversation with themselves. These vlogs can be a discussion of current events in the news, a recap of the person’s day, or any number of other topics. Often vloggers incorporate comedy sketches into their videos or footage of their experiences.  If the material is interesting enough, and the creator has the right connections (i.e. popular YouTube friends), their rise to the top of the most subscribed list can be meteoric.

A great personality is key to building a successful YouTube channel, but there is more to it, otherwise, Oprah and Ellen would have the most successful channels on YouTube. Instead they aren’t even in the top 50 most-subscribed channels and many of their videos have less than 100,000 views. In fact, when Oprah first joined YouTube, she made the mistake of believing her TV presence would translate to popularity on YouTube. She did not understand the YouTube culture and viewers ended up objecting to the channel’s “one-way conversation” approach. These channels did not progress beyond clips of the television show, never directly engaging anyone in the YouTube community.[3]

There has to be some form of interaction with the audience, otherwise your channel will not succeed. Each popular YouTuber is unique, but their videos are funny, creative, entertaining, and most of all, they ask the audience to participate. In addition to talking straight to the camera (and, therefore, the viewers), YouTubers often ask for specific comments or ask their viewers to challenge them to do something in their future videos.

Once a YouTuber has become popular, they do not always have to solicit comments to get them. Many comments on famous YouTubers’ videos repeat the funniest lines of the video or comment on another funny moment, however, when the content of the video is more educational, the comments tend to follow suit. Some of the most educational videos are created by the VlogBrothers—two brothers, Hank and John, who live in different states and started posting videos on YouTube to keep up with each other’s lives. Their videos discuss things like the Webb telescope, the French Revolution, the national debt, and The Great Gatsby. They also do silly things like talk about the best Zombie stories ever made or talk about giraffe sex (which is really weird). The comments on their videos follow suit, with more serious comments on their serious videos and comments full of inside jokes and sillier things on the other videos.

Besides allowing unfettered comments, other important activities for a YouTube channel to take part in are subscribing to other channels, participating in discussions in the YouTube community, making videos that draw on other YouTube stars’ characters and material, responding to comments, or simply watching. It is also important to comment on videos you admire.  This means that your subscribers see that you commented on a video and many of them will go watch the video just to see why. This creates a greater bond, not only with the person whose video you commented on, but also with your subscribers as you might introduce them to another YouTuber they want to follow.

For museums, joining the YouTube community is an opportunity to show a large audience what your museum does and to do so in a fun, exciting way. If you engage a wide audience, they will likely want to visit your museum if they are in town, tell others about that cool thing your museums is doing, thus spreading your mission to others, and maybe even donate their time and money to your museum.

Think about it, and talk to your museum about being more proactive in joining the YouTube community. Believe me, the potential benefits are immense!

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[1] Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith, The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010), 42.

[2] Burgess and Green, YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, 53.

[3] Burgess and Green, “The Entrepreneurial Vlogger: Participatory Culture Beyond the Professional-Amateur Divide,” in The YouTube Reader, 103.

Research Highlights: The Unbounded Museum

Today’s post brings us the first submission in our second series, Research Highlights, looking at the contributions that EMPs are making to the knowledge and advancement of the museum field. Our first author is Larissa Nickel, who brings us a post about a multimedia research project she helped conduct through Johns Hopkins University. Utilizing museum as performance art and an applied artistic medium, Larissa explores the integration of new media theory into the practical operations of museums by challenging the traditional architecture, design and structure of museum governance and exhibitions within the relational environment of artists, the visual culture of design, and the investigation of new architectural forms relevant in today’s new media discourse. As an Emerging Museum Professional, 2012 MA Museum Studies candidate in the Johns Hopkins University Museum Studies Program, and Emerging Arts Leader/Los Angeles, she received her BA in Art Studio from the University of California, Santa Barbara combining her artistic practice and museum experience to amalgamate new media, and innovation into the museum environment. You can find out more about her research and studies at her blog Exitutopia. 

This past January, along with 23 other graduate students from the Johns Hopkins University Museum Studies Program, I traveled from California to Washington, DC to participate in an experimental two week project titled The Unbounded Museum. This multimedia research project was coordinated by artist Randall Packer, taught by JHU Museum Studies faculty member Judith Landau, and was in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution Mobile Strategy and Initiatives. The project explored the contemporary architectural notion of “thirdspace,” a hybrid concept that blurs the division between physical and virtual spaces in order to create a third, equally dynamic space that creates a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation.

Photo Credit: Larissa Nickel, Cabinet, New Media, 2010

The opportunity of this project built upon my interests in new media art and research on the creation of a “new museum” a space which invokes the cultural memory version of Constant Nieuwenhuys’ New Babylon, which provides a lively, playful, and intellectually stimulating discourse that expands audience and museum into the global paradigm by transcending concrete and abstract space through digital architecture, visual wayfinding, and technological communication—a reinvented curiosity cabinet or constantly remixed museum.

That childlike freedom to relish the destructive force as a means of play and to constantly rebuild and become again and again is the basis for my investigations and research on transforming our existing cultural institutions into “new museums.” By exploring the endless possibilities in a collaborative thirdspace environment we can expand our existing institutions into even better systems of collected memory, or educational pursuits by releasing our boundaries.When I was a child, I was encouraged to be an inventor—to create and recreate, to imagine impossible things and then make them possible, to engage in an archaeological dig through material culture, to collect narrative tales of diverse lands, to synthesize and interpret my personal story, to curate a visionary and eclectic collection, and to derive pleasure in the Godzilla-like toppling of building block structures simply in order to start over again.

In order for The Unbounded Museum project to create a dynamic space of distributed authorship and enable on-site and remote audiences to interact, students at the JHU DC seminar employed live collaborative dialogue through social media platforms, and on-site nomadic mobility via mobile technology which connected us to throughout our journey to our online visitors. Our thirdspace visits included six project site museums: the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of Natural History, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Newseum, the National Zoological Park, and George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens.

Divided into six groups of four, each individual student conceived of a thirdspace “experience” that when combined together within the group would transition into a full museum site visit of four “experiences” each transforming our physical visit to the museum into a live feed environment that allowed a digital audience to move through exhibitions, or guided tours with us, and more importantly to participate by asking questions or responding to conversations, objects or stories uncovered at the museums.

Photo Credit: JHU DC Seminar, Twitter Conversation, 2012

Our student designed interactions exposed our creativity as our imaginations were invigorated to invent possibilities within our museum research in exhibition design, or accessibility, or educational gaming. The adaptability of our own interests into technology based interactions was a great learning opportunity that exposed incredible potential as well as limitations. We combined social media and smartphone devices, iPads, mobile apps, blogs, twitter conversations through #jhudc and the host institutions, Soundcloud recordings, and a variety of technology in our networked performances created to investigate four concepts:

1. Creating an effective narrative in a nontraditional storytelling process;
2. Translating object based learning into ephemeral space;
3. Looking up vs. looking down or will those devices intrude on our ability to interact in person or can we balance our techno-gadgetry and our physicality;
4. The telematic embrace- can thirdspace connect emotionally with audiences?

As we moved from museum to museum, we made mistakes, evolved our process, and honed our experiments and situations to mixed results. We learned that fluid timing was difficult, narrative threads can be confusing in nonlinear time, translating objects requires some advanced thought and some type of visual or audio description and stretches visual literacy skills. Tour guides or lecturers need to be prepped in advance so as to not launch into their usual speeches and to allow the non present visitors they can’t see to interact.

Photo Credit: JHU DC Seminar, NMAI Collective, 2012

We learned that using mobile devices for too long can be physically and mentally exhausting, and that the telematic embrace requires investment on both sides to be open and willing to connect. Plus, each museum is unique, what works in one may not be culturally appropriate or Wi-Fi available in another so there is not a one size fits every institution solution. Our final conclusion seemed to resolve that these types of situations employ synecdoche—knowing the institution and figuring out how the parts sum up in order to strategically choose the best options for the best results.

As an adult and emerging arts professional, I do find it easier now to plunge down the rabbit hole like Alice, suspending disbelief in order to look through the glass with curiosity and wonder and to believe in the science fiction of a “thirdspace” post-museum—a museum that lives unbounded and infinitely transformed. That this project happened in the span of two weeks should inspire every museum professional to consider how their own work process can be translated to this new space, a hybrid, participatory, and global space. The lessons learned by inventing and exploring the unknown are exciting, valuable and uncharted on our cartographic museum map.

The Unbounded Museum encourages us to take that journey into the digital wonderland because our audience is already there and willing to participate. Taking inspiration from my own project site—the National Museum of the American Indian—the time to explore the next phase of our beloved museum institutions as they move forward in this voyage is absolutely now. The new museum environment is in thirdspace, and while getting there is a new, untested pathway, according to the holistic ideas of the First Nations people “all roads are good.”

Call for Proposals

Hi there readers. We’re pleased to announce two upcoming series on the EMP Blog, and we’d love to have your help with them! We’re currently accepting proposals for posts about both these topics, and you can find out more information below.

 

Museum Moonlighters: Making it Work

This series will shed light on the diverse and dynamic lives of EMPs by profiling individuals who currently work other jobs in order to support their passion, education, and/or career in museums. These posts will give readers a glimpse into the realities of the field and provide them with practical advice as well as examples of triumph and tribulation. The goal is to capture our fellow EMPs’ diverse stories and offer readers information that is real, relevant, and personal. The initial run of this series will be five posts in March and April, and may continue beyond that based on responses and interest.

If you’d like to share your story, please send an e-mail toemuse.blog@gmail.com by March 1^st with the title “Making it Work.” We’ll send you the brief questionnaire we’re using to select candidates.

 

Research Highlights

Our second series, “Research Highlights” is just what it sounds like. EMPs across the nation are conducting important research that contributes to the base of knowledge in our field, and we want to draw attention to those contributions. From your thesis, to research done on the institutional level, to more formal pursuits that might be aiming for publication, we know you’ve done something worth sharing. We want to invite any EMP with research experience to participate in this ongoing series by writing a guest post here on the EMP blog.

To be considered for this series, please send an e-mail to emuse.blog@gmail.com(deadline ongoing) with the title “Research Highlights.” We’ll be in touch with you about a schedule and post guidelines.

 

Do you have any other ideas for series you’d like to see on the blog? Feel free to shoot us an e-mail about those as well, or to find out more information about becoming a contributor in general.