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OH MY GOD THE DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE PUT CHRISTMAS HATS ON SOME OF THEIR DINOSAUR EXHIBITS JUST
LOOK AT THAT
WELL HEY THERE LITTLE GUY
IT’S A PARTY
TIS THE SEASON
(Source: hasook, via lostinhistory)
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It’s that time of year again…
Students are leaving campus for the holidays, and the Museum staff doesn’t know what to do with all their new-found free time…
So we decided to make the museum a bit more…festive!
HOLIDAY HATS FOR ALL THE SPECIMENS!!!
Today was a hard day for a lot of people on this planet, and I’m bad at talking about feelings, but this made me feel better so I hope it helps you, too.
The barnacles are my favourite.
I wish we were allowed to Santa Hat the Walrus.
(via thebrainscoop)
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"The third category is the unlucky ones. After taking a museum-studies course they struggle to get any work at all. They take on more and more voluntary work, perhaps eventually getting a short-term contract post in, for example, documentation. They often end up in jobs they don’t really want because they’re the only ones available. When their first post comes to an end it takes them months to find anything else, and when they do it is often at a similar level. This continues for years, until they eventually are forced to give up on museum work and try a different sector, either because no more jobs are available, or because they have reached perhaps 30 years old, have not progressed and can see no prospect of earning a living wage in museums. In the worst cases, people effectively waste up to 10 years of their life failing to get a reasonable museum job and can become extremely upset, as shown by some of the comments recorded in appendix 2."
–“The Tomorrow People: Entry to the museum workforce“ - Maurice Davies, 2007 (via museumsandstuff)
I am terrified that this will be me. The ‘months before finding a second post’ part.
Of the people who did my MA, I only know of one who, by a huge stroke of luck, has actually ‘progressed’ a significant amount in the sector in a year. Most are like me - voluntary work, and one entry-level job, which is excellent no matter what it is because hey, at least it’s in museums. Two, that I know of (there were only 24 on the course) have already given up because with their qualifications they can step into another sector easily and immediately earn about 3 times as much money.
Museums: prepare to need more qualifications, have more responsibilities and work harder than any other sector, and get paid less than the cost of living.
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"social media is not a bullhorn that you use to broadcast what you’re doing. It is a town commons that someone in your museum needs to be facilitating on a daily basis in order to cultivate an engaged community to whom your museum actively listens. That means taking the time to track down and amplify members of your audience who are saying interesting things that other members of your audience might want to hear."
–Erin for Edgital -
Museum Mondays
So what if it’s Monday? Instead of Manic Monday or Blue Monday, why not start the week with a little museum nerdiness. From here on out, let’s celebrate Museum Mondays. That said, I’m going to kick off this series with the International Council of Museums’s definition of a museum. And guess what? Apparently, there are at least 55,000 museums in the world! This includes all types — ranging from nonprofit arts organizations to natural history museums as well as historic sites and zoos. I love museums because of their potential for discovery. Why do YOU love museums? What do you like about them? Which museum do you visit the most and what for?
Museum Mondays! I need this to be a thing.
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"Your Labels Make Me Feel Stupid"
Moving away from the “priestly voice of absolute authority” in art museums to providing more context and and information that encourages people to respond in their own way.
Interesting article via artnews.com.
At the Oakland Museum, executive director Lori Fogarty acknowledges that team-based interpretive practices “put the curator more in the role of a kind of moderator rather than a sole author. Curators are experts in their fields, and in an art museum the curator typically develops an entire project. That’s a lot of authority and control to let go of.”
Yes. Yes. A hundred times YES.
Excellent article dealing with the knowledge/audience dynamic.
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Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Iraqi National Museum Deputy Director Mushin Hasan holds his head in his hands as he sits on destroyed artifacts April 13, 2003 in Baghdad, Iraq. http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0305/pcox.html
Submit to Holes: Looting in Photos on the Flickr group pool, and see more photos on the official Flickr and Pinterest. Learn more about looting at Things You Can’t Take Back.
Holes: Looting in Photos is an effort to bring together many images of looted archaeological sites and looted artifacts to more effectively present what our destroyed human past actually looks like. By displaying both the individual artifacts/sites alongside the repetition of countless holes, dug up bodies, and defaced stone, I hope to provide a different kind of resource for learning about looting, as well as a more meaningful comprehension of the overwhelming global scale.
Follow for more!
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Indoor Google Maps help you make your way through museums
In the past, navigating through museums could be an art form in and of itself. But Google Maps for Android has got wayfinding inside your favorite museums down to a science. With indoor maps and walking directions for U.S. museums now available on your Android phone or tablet, you can plan your route from exhibit to exhibit, identifying points of interest along the way, including between floors.
Today, we’ve added more than twenty popular U.S. museums to our collection of over 10,000 indoor maps that we launched in November: the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cincinnati Museum Center, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History and 17Smithsonian museums—plus a zoo!(via museumsandstuff)
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Stuff White People Like: #104 Unpaid Internships
“White people view the internship as their foot into the door to such high-profile low-paying career fields as journalism, film, politics, art, non-profits, and anything associated with a museum. ”
DAMN I’m too white for my own good. - Crimes Against Curators
Museums & Things
This is my blog for museum, history and heritage-related goodness, with a particular interest in the use of digital media in museums and Natural History.
Also expect galleries, archives, libraries and other related awesome stuff. Also dinosaurs.
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