An introduction to the U. S. Army Women’s Museum in Virginia. It’s celebratory and vague (you can easily swap the word “women” with “African Americans,” “Virginians,” or even “Latvians,” and not change the patriotic message very much) but who knew such a place existed.
Category Archives: Historical interpretation
Highlights from the Virginia Association of Museums conference
Last week the Virginia Association of Museums (VAM) held its annual conference at the Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, Virginia, and I was fortunate to be asked to speak at their historic house forum. It was my first time at their conference and I was so impressed by the quality of the sessions and the camaraderie of the participants. I wasn’t able to stop by every session, but I wanted to provide some highlights from a few I did attend.
The Nexus of Art and Science. Rebecca Kamen, professor of art at Northern Virginia Community College, talked about the ability of art to interpret historic scientific and medical collections found in museums and libraries. Rachel Carson’s The Sense of Wonder (1965) prompted her to work with such diverse institutions as the American Philosophical Society, Chemistry Museum, and the National Institutes of Health. A recent work, “Divining Nature: An Elemental Garden,” explores the orbital rotations of elements in the periodic table through sculptures. I’ve seen lots of examples of science being explained in new ways, but I’ve only encountered a few glimpses of it being done with history–anyone have any suggestions?
Using Social Media to Conduct Historical Research. Lynn Rainville, a professor at Sweet Briar College, discussed how she used Facebook, Tumblr, and other social media to study Continue reading
Video: Denver History Minute
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This Denver History Minute produced by Denver 8 TV and Havey Production follows the political history of women in Colorado during the 20th century. It covers a lot of information in a short period (actually 1:30).
Video: Interpreting a woman suffrage photo
The Local History Specialist of the Pikes Peak Library District in Colorado interprets a 1915 photo of women seated in an open car advocating for the woman’s right to vote. The content is a bit overwhelming for me (its needs some themes and fewer discrete facts) but it provides an example of interpreting collections through video. It’s part of the “Framing Community, Exposing Identity” series to interpret “iconic images capturing life at the foot of Pikes Peak.”
Video: Sufferin’ ’til Suffrage
Friday’s video break goes nostalgic with a 1976 Schoolhouse Rock musical segment on woman suffrage with lyrics performed by Essra Mohawk, who performed with the Mothers of Invention and the Jerry Garcia Band. Rock on!
It’s women’s history month, but boy, good videos on the topic are rare. Is opportunity knocking?
Video: Connecting the Threads
This 38:00 freshly produced documentary follows the transformation of an historic clothing factory in Lebanon, NH into an art center. Directed by Ken Turino of Historic New England and produced in collaboration with AVA Gallery and Community Access Television of Upper Valley, it features interviews, oral histories, and historic images.
Video: The City Concealed
This video by Thirteen introduces Weeksville, an African American community founded in the 19th century in Brooklyn. Today, it is an historic site that interprets the history, re-discovery, and preservation of this special neighborhood as a “multidimensional museum”.
Video: The Voices of Drayton Hall
This 2:24 excerpt from a self-guided multimedia tour of the landscape integrates the history of the people who lived and worked at Drayton Hall, an early 18th century plantation in South Carolina. This multimedia tour was produced in collaboration with the History Channel.
New England’s History and Architecture Explored in June
Historic New England presents the tenth annual Program in New England Studies (PINES), an intensive learning experience with lectures by curators and architectural historians, workshops, and behind-the-scenes tours of Historic New England’s properties and collections, as well as of other museums and private homes in the region. This year’s program begins on June 17 with Cary Carson on the 17th century in the Boardman House and ends on June 22 with Richard Nylander and Nancy Carlisle on the Colonial Revival at Beauport.
PINES examines New England history and material culture from the seventeenth century through the Colonial Revival, and delves into building design and technology, and the wide-ranging lifestyles illustrated by the historic sites on the itinerary. Highlights include private tours of Historic New England properties in Greater Boston; Essex County, Massachusetts; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; South Berwick, Maine; and Woodstock, Connecticut; workshops in furniture, ceramics, and textiles at Historic New England’s facility in Haverhill, Massachusetts; and a private tour of Continue reading
WebWise Conference Coming Up in Early March
WebWise 2012: Project demonstrations
WebWise, the annual conference hosted by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, will be held in Baltimore on March 6-8, 2013. This year’s conference is co-sponsored by the Roy Rosensweig Center for History and the New Media and is being organized and presented in a very different manner. In advance, participants (anyone, actually) voted on the proposed workshop topics and then the conference organizers recruit speakers to fill the slots. For the project demonstrations, the participants will be divided into three groups and then rotate through three different sets of presentations. In addition, there will be a series of three-minute lightning talks over lunch, facilitated project/partnership incubator groups, and one-on-one speed consulting sessions. Indeed, there’s only one plenary session scheduled for the entire conference–Audrey Watters of Hack Education–as a keynote on the last day.
I’ve attended as many WebWise Conferences as possible because the content has been outstanding and I often come away with new approaches and strategies, even from the sessions that are far outside my field. This year’s reformatting seems intriguing, but much of the content remains a mystery so Continue reading
