Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews [A discussion of her current museum project in the online journal Habitus.]
Posts from the ‘Museums’ Category
Sep 12
Aug 25
On “Options Dim for Museum of Folk Art”
The New York Times is reporting that the American Folk Art Museum in NYC will probably go under. This is mainly about financial issues, both the larger economy and mismanagement, but there is also an intertwined intellectual one and this can be seen clearly in the NYT story.
Billie Tsien, an architect who designed the new building, said the museum’s capacity to raise money was in part limited by its subject matter; New York’s movers and shakers do not tend to collect quilts and weathervanes.
The American Folk Art Museum has been pretty consistently hostile to the field of folklore studies–those scholars who actually study the vernacular arts of the United States, the Americas, and the world in context. On intellectual grounds, this day could have been foreseen long ago. That the architect who designed their (former) brand new building understands the museum so narrowly to be a thing of quilts and weathervanes speaks to how out of sync with contemporary folk art scholarship the museum was. There are no shortage of potential donors interested in folk art in New York City, its just that their folk arts of interests were not central to the agenda of the museum.
On more than one occasion, American Folk Art Museum staff told graduate students with whom I work that if they wanted a real museum job working with folk art they needed to get degrees in art history, not folklore studies. Well, those students are doing just fine and are studying and working with folk arts and artists everyday while the American Folk Art Museum is going under. Financial foundations are important, but so are intellectual ones. An elitist art history was not the best platform upon which to erect a museum nominally dedicated to the arts of diverse peoples and communities. I am not against art history, but I am against an art history that is opposed to folklore studies without even knowing what the field is about.
AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus Now Part of @openfolklore
An exciting development in the Open Folklore project is the inclusion of the AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus within the Open Folklore portal. This great advance was announced on the AFS website and at the Open Folklore portal. The ET is a valuable resource for folklore studies, ethnomusicology, cultural anthropology, and other ethnographic disciplines. Thanks to everyone at AFS, LoC, and IU who worked to make this next phase of both projects possible.
Wars and Rumors of Wars @Philbrook Museum of Art
Excited to see this promotional video with my friend Christina Burke, Curator of Native American and Non-Western Art at Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa. Christina is a great curator stewarding a great collection in a great museum. This video introduces the new exhibition Wars and Rumors of War. The exhibition is built out of the museum’s fine collection of Native American works on paper. Congratulations Christina, congratulations Philbrook. I hope I make it back to Tulsa in time to see the show.
Aug 4
Mathers Museum, Glenn Black Lab Merger Yields Cultural History Powerhouse
IU news announced back home:
Mathers Museum, Glenn Black Lab Merger Yields Cultural History Powerhouse
This is a big deal for the students with whom I work, the colleagues with whom I collaborate, and the collections that I have been studying.
Colorado College Road Trip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the Denver Art Museum
I have always wanted to visit the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Today I had my chance and it was great. As part of my “Introduction to Folklife” course at Colorado College, my class and I had the chance to go north to Denver for the day and to visit both museums. Both are impressive. Both have great collections and deep traditions of excellent work in those areas that matter most to me—world ethnography and Native American studies/Native American art. There was no way we could see more than a small portion of both museums, but what we saw in both institutions was great. Colorado is very lucky.
At DMNH we were generously hosted by Steve Nash, who showed us around behind the scenes in the Department of Anthropology (which he chairs). We also got to see Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, who was busy working on the next issue of Museum Anthropology (Steve and Chip took over editing the journal from me in 2009 and are doing great work with it.)
Our focus at DMNS was the Native North American culture halls, where we saw objects relating to our current reading and research project (centered on Daniel C. Swan’s book Peyote Religious Art: Symbols of Faith and Belief) and our next one (focused on Claire Farrer’s Thunder Rides a Black Horse: Mescalero Apaches and the Mythic Present). Organized on the basis of cultural areas, the DMNS exhibitions (which are steadily being updated and improved by Chip and Steve) do a great job of providing an basic orientation to the diversity of Native North America. This was evident when we got to the Denver Art Museum and the students had a better ability to appreciate the contexts for the work that is presented in a art museum mode there.
At DMNH we also had a chance to see the strange and remarkable carved gemstone sculptures made by Vasily Konovalenko to portray aspects of Russian peasant folklife. One could talk and think about them for hours and they were a great conversation point for our class and a great reminder of how complex not only art and material culture are, but how complex issues of cultural representation are, in general and under the banner of folklife in particular.
After short drive downtown and a quick street-side gyro, we hit the art museum. Like DMNS it is huge and impressive and impossible to see properly on a single day trip. Here our foci were the Native American and non-western art halls, as well as the galleries devoted to the art of the Western United States. We saw the galleries for the arts of Oceania, Africa, Asia, and Native North America. DAM was among the first U.S. art museums to get serious about Native American art and their collections are stunning. In my own area of special interest, the DAM is currently exhibiting 5 (!) beaded bandolier bags from the Southeast. This is simply dumbfounding and a reminder of how deep the collection is. All the galleries provided rich learning opportunities for me and for the students. I was reminded of how fun it is to teach in the presence of rich collections well-displayed. (I really missed being a curator today.)
The students seemed to have good time. They were easy, engaged, and wonderful travel companions and all the logistics went off without a hitch.
Colorado College and its amazing block plan (which makes such trips possible through its one class at a time format) are at the root of the day’s success. Many people did great behind-the-scenes administrative work to enable me (as a new to CC visitor) to take this trip with the students. Thanks to everyone who heaped to make it happen.
Job Openning: Executive Director of the Institute of Texas Cultures
Did everyone notice that the position of Executive Director of the Institute of Texas Cultures is open? This is a major position for someone with the right public folklore and/or museum work background. See: http://chronicle.com/jobs/0000677703-01/
New Jobs: Carrie Hertz Edition
I am thrilled to have more happy job news to report. Carrie Hertz has just been appointed to the post of Curator of Folk Arts at the Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University. This is a great curatorial position for a great museums and material culture scholar in folklore studies and anthropology. Carrie is also a doctoral candidate in folklore studies (major field) and anthropology (minor field) at Indiana University. In her research, her special emphasis is on dress and adornment in the United States. For her dissertation, she is completing conducting an ethnographic study of wedding dresses in the Midwest. She has held a range of museum posts previously and also served with me as editorial assistant for Museum Anthropology and Museum Anthropology Review. The Castellani Art Museum has excellent collections and a remarkable track record of research and exhibition work on folk and vernacular arts. Congratulations to both Carrie and the museum!
Collection Manager for Nation American Languages Collection (SNOMNH)
From Mary S. Linn, Curator of Native American Languages, Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
Hello Friends and Colleagues,
I am writing you to announce the that we are taking applications for the position of Collection Manager (CM) for the Nation American Languages collection at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK. This is one of only a few digital and physical archives of endangered languages in a museum setting in the US. We are partnering with many different Oklahoma and regional tribes and tribal people as the collection grows, and we are involved in collaborative efforts to make the collection significant to revitalization work. The CM is directly responsible for the processing, care (of both digital and analog collections), and accessibility issues. In addition, we sponsor programming in language documentation, revitalization, and conservation, and the CM makes the collection available and user-friendly to patrons, and makes it up-to-date as technology and user-needs change. A proactive CM will also help shape the future growth areas of the department. So, this position is unique and exciting, and a great opportunity for someone starting their career.
I encourage you to pass this information on to students and others you know with a BA or MA degree and experience in language media.
Here are the instructions to get to the application:
left Quick Links: Job Postings
left: Search Listings
Job Listing Number: 11275 (this is enough to get you the full listing and application)
Title: Curator/Archivist I
For more information on the Sam Noble Museum, please go to : http://www.snomnh.ou.edu/
For a brief introduction to the NAL Collections, please go to: http://www.snomnh.ou.edu/collections-research/nal.htm
You can search our catalog at: http://www.snomnh.ou.edu/db2/nal/index.phpThank you all,
MaryMary S. Linn
Associate Curator, Native American Languages
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Adjunct Associate Professor, Native American StudiesSam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
University of Oklahoma
2401 Chautauqua Avenue
Norman, OK 73072
405-325-7588 (voice) 405-325-7699 (fax)
Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains
I am very pleased to note the publication of the exhibition catalog Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains. This book has been published by the Brooklyn Museum in cooperation with the University of Washington Press on the occasion of an exhibition of the same name that has been organized by the Brooklyn Museum and that will travel to the Autry National Center for the American West in LA and the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul. It is a beautiful book on a topic that long been of scholarly and general interest. The project has been organized by and the catalog edited by Nancy B. Rosoff and Suzan Zeller of the Brooklyn Museum. I am taking special notice of the book here because it includes contributions from three of my close friends and collaborators. Daniel C. Swan and Michael P. Jordan (Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History) have published a chapter titled “Tipis and the Warrior Tradition,” which focused on their collaborative work with Kiowa people and organizations and Christina E. Burke (Philbrook Museum) has published a chapter on “Growing Up on the Plains,” which explores child raising and associated material culture among the Native peoples of the Plains in the context of the tipi as vernacular architecture.
Shreds and Patches 