Posts Tagged ‘Mid-Atlantic region’
The Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums is hosting a workshop entitled, How to Create, Run and Sustain an Effective Internship Program on March 30th, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia (315 Chestnut St). Registration ($40/members, $50/non-members) is now open, but closes on March 20th. Download the PDF file here. Speakers include Petra T. Chu, Pauline Eversmann, Jacqueline R. Emerick, Katie Friedland, Rachel Kassman, and Jobi Zink.
From midatlanticmuseums.org:
Interns are an integral part of how museums fulfill their mission and having an internship is a “must” for most students in order to move forward with their career goals. Seems pretty straightforward, right? Think again! There are a lot of expectations involved in the partnership between an intern and an institution.
How do you know if they are a good fit? How do you design a project that will give you and the intern the most value for your time? What do they do? What are you required to do? Do you pay or not pay; stipend or wage? How do you get more?
This workshop is divided into two sessions. During the morning session, three of the largest museum studies programs will explain what they are looking for in an internship opportunity for their students. They will also share what sorts of things are not acceptable as an internship (hint: museum internships shouldn’t be shown on Dirty Jobs.) The afternoon session will be an introduction to two successful internship programs that can work at any museum. The presenters will share ideas, handouts, stories, suggestions and give advice on what sorts of things have worked in their programs. There will be time for questions and discussion to follow each session.
The title of this post is purposely misleading; all State Capitol buildings offer guided tours for free. If you are looking for something free and fun to do in the Mid-Atlantic, I suggest visiting a nearby State Capitol Building for a guided tour. So what if parking is a nightmare– it’ll be worth it, I promise.
Capitol buildings are awe-inspiring American palaces that serve as a unique symbol of their state. Typically, on a State Capitol building tour, a guide will share information on the history of the State Capitol, including how it looks (construction, design, and decoration) as well as how it works (an explanation of the legislative process). Visit one and you’ll be tempted to visit all five capitol buildings in the Mid-Atlantic. Once you’re hooked, you’ll be tempted to become a “Capitol Collector” and visit all 50. It is important to remember to bring valid identification and be prepared to go through security screening.
New York: New York State’s Capitol is an imposing example of 19th century architecture, mixing Italian Renaissance, Romanesque and French Renaissance styles. Local lore has it that the building is haunted by two ghosts. (That probably won’t be mentioned on the official tour.)
New Jersey: Tours of the State Capitol of New Jersey include the galleries of the Senate and Assembly, uniquely decorated conference rooms, the rotunda and the Governor’s Office reception room. Look for the early examples of electric chandeliers made by Thomas Edison’s Electric Light Company.
Pennsylvania: This five-story Capitol building was designed and furnished by Pennsylvanian artisans—the original architect wanted the American Renaissance style building to reflect the arts and crafts unique to the Keystone state.
Delaware: In Delaware you can see two state houses in one day. Visit Legislative Hall, the current seat of power, and then take a short walk over to the Old State House, which, according to their website, is the first permanent capitol building in America.
Maryland: Maryland’s State House has a rich and historic past. It is, according to their website, “the oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use and is the only state house to have ever served as the nation’s capitol.”
Washington, D.C.: Last but not least, there is the Nation’s Capitol building, the meeting-place of the country’s legislature. Construction of this iconic structure began in 1793. Take note of the grounds of the Capitol—designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, famed American landscape architect, who planned Central Park.
Friends and co-workers looking to apply to graduate programs have come to me for advice and it has been satisfying to be able to offer my two cents as a mini-mentor. It is especially important to me to help out where I can because when I first considered applying to graduate school, I really didn’t have any guidance. With a general idea of what I was interested in studying, I relied on a combination of Google searches, graduate student blogs, and blind guessing. Since none of my friends had applyed to graduate school and no one in my family had gone through the process before, who was I supposed to look up to for advice and instruction? It’s not like I could learn from the experiences of reality television role models on programs such as America’s Next Top PhD Candidate, Say Yes to the Stress, Who Never Wants to be a Millionaire, or So You Think You Can Pay off Your Loans. (I hope you’re listening network television producers!) All joking aside, in these planning stages I absolutely would have benefited from having a mentor to guide me through the process.
Relationships between mentor and mentee take different forms, but generally speaking a mentor is a professional who offers encouragement and advice to a younger person looking for direction. These partnerships are invaluable and often teach rewarding lessons that are not covered in a traditional classroom setting.
The large majority of my peers who have meaningful mentor partnerships have linked up with professors with similar research interests but it doesn’t always have to be that way. While professors have guided me through the sometimes murky academic waters, as someone who isn’t primarily concerned with starting a career in academia, I have found professional mentorships to be more valuable. The best lessons I’ve learned have come from job supervisors willing to take me under their wing and teach me how to learn from their mistakes and successes. To me, this is almost a dual mentorship because these folks navigated through similar educational situations, but are also able to offer practical career advice as well.
The first bit of advice I give out to anyone who will listen is to visit the website Freerice.com. It’s an engaging game that tricks people into learning vocabulary, grammar, and math skills. In addition to preparing players for at the very least the GRE, with every right answer the sponsors of the site donate ten grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. Check it out.
This time of year, the Fairmount neighborhood in Philadelphia is dominated by Eastern State Penitentiary. The prison is always a strong presence, but when thoughts turn to ghosts and things that go bump in the night, those tall walls loom ominous and foreboding. The site does a great job of using this to their advantage; their popular haunted house, “Terror Behind the Walls,” turns 20 this year. I’m easily scared, so I avoid Eastern State around Halloween. Nonetheless, it is one of my favorite historic sites on the East Coast – absolutely worth it, whether you decide to go for the thrills or the rest of the tour.
Eastern State Penitentiary opened in 1829 to much fanfare. It was the first true penitentiary, designed to encourage remorse and repentance in the criminals it housed. From the very beginning, it was a unique institution; officials from across Europe and the United States came to see its distinctive architectural plan and individual cells built to house prisoners in solitary confinement. Today, you can wander through the long corridors and peek into the same cells, guided by an audio tour recorded by Steve Buscemi. (Creepily appropriate, right?) The site isn’t fully restored, and there is something evocative, haunting, about the crumbling walls and remnants of jail cell artifacts.
"A cell on the oldest block at Eastern State Penitentiary."
The prison officially closed in 1971. Over the course of its history, it held thousands of prisoners in many different kinds of prison environments. (Al Capone spent eight months at Eastern State; his luxury cell is a popular stop on the tour.) Although prison sites regularly draw tourists – think Alcatraz – Eastern State Penitentiary is unique because of the sheer length of time it was in operation. Visitors begin by contemplating the prison experience in the 19th century; the Pennsylvania System, piloted at Eastern State, focused on solitary confinement, labor, and exercise as the path to reforming inmates. Later on the tour, visitors come face to face with the 20th century: the fully mechanized death row cellblock is a stark example of changing attitudes towards criminals.
And so, Eastern State Penitentiary explores its past within a larger context of punishment and imprisonment. The prison population in America is growing exponentially and inequitably, and capital punishment remains a hot-button issue. Yet there are few forums in which to explore where we’ve come from and where we are going. What is our responsibility to those who break the law? Eastern State Penitentiary, by virtue of its own history, has an important role to play in this discussion. Historic sites are valuable because they help us understand important topics by historicizing them, by providing the perspective of the past, and by tracing that trajectory into our own future.
Eastern State Penitentiary
2027 Fairmount Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19130
“Terror Behind the Walls,” September 23 through November 12
The American Association for State and Local History met last month in Richmond, VA for its conference Commemoration: The Promise of Remembrance and New Beginnings. The organization recognized its award winners at a banquet held on September 16th, 2011. The Mid-Atlantic recipients are:
Award of Merit Winners:
Delaware Historical Society (Wilmington, DE), for the Read House Exterior Preservation project.
New York Historical Society & El Museo del Barrio (New York, NY), for the exhibit Nueva York: 1613-1945.
City of Philadelphia Department of Records (Philadelphia, PA), for the website PhillyHistory.org.
Fairmount Park Art Association (Philadelphia), for Museum Without Walls™ AUDIO.
Jefferson County Historical Society (Brookville, PA), for the exhibit Living on the Land.
Pennsbury Manor (Morrisville, PA) and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (Harrisburg, PA), for the exhibit William Penn: The Seed of a Nation.
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Richard C. Saylor, Michael J. O’Maley III, Kimberly L. Stone, Ted R. Walke, Christy Gauthier, and Don Giles, for the publication Soldiers to Governors, Pennsylvania’s Civil War Veterans Who Became State Leaders.
The Wharton Esherick Museum (Paoli, PA), The University of Pennsylvania Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Philadelphia), University of Pennsylvania’s Architectural Archives (Philadelphia), and Hedgerow Theater (Media), for the project Wharton Esherick and the Birth of the American Modern.
Congratulations to all the winners!
(From AASLH Award Program)
On the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, memorials and exhibits served to preserve and sustain public memory. This year’s anniversary marked the culmination of years of effort for two major commemorations in the Mid-Atlantic, the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York City and the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The anniversary also saw the dedication of local memorials and openings of special exhibits across the region. Although we cannot provide a complete list, the following are memorials and commemorations highlighted earlier on our news page. Jersey City dedicated “Empty Sky” on September 11, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology opened Excavating Ground Zero: Fragments From 9/11, and The New York Historical Society opened a commemorative exhibit, Remembering 9/11.
Hurricanes Irene and Lee have left portions of the Mid-Atlantic region flooded and struggling with water damage. If your repository and/or collection has been affected you can apply for a disaster relief grant through the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archivesl Conference’s website. Qualifying archives receive up to $2,000 in relief money. The deadline for those affected by Hurricane Irene is September 16, 2011, the deadline for those affected by Hurricane Lee is September 30, 2011. Donations toward relief efforts are also being accepted.
Civic engagement comes in different shapes and sizes. Last month, I wrote about how one museum uses its history and collections to incite visitors towards social action. There are quieter methods, too. I worked at a museum that co-hosted an annual event with a student group; in addition to the opportunity to see art after hours, it included yoga in the galleries, shoulder massages in the lobby, and goodwill all around. It was always a smashing success. Engaging the community can be about opening your doors and seeing what they might want to use your space for.If we’re looking for institutions that have found innovative ways to invite the community into their museum, the Delaware Art Museum shoots to the top of the list. Its Outlooks Exhibition Series “encourages community involvement in the creation of exhibitions that will be hosted by the Museum.” In the three years since the initiative has been in place, twelve shows have gone up. Exhibition themes have ranged from folk art, to modern ceramics, to juried shows with artworks from various community groups. In each case, the exhibition is proposed by an individual or group in the area, with the aim of representing a group, exploring a cultural identity, and/or focusing on a particular medium. Several shows have provided a space for area artists, often amateurs, to display their work.
Brian Joseph Repetti, Title: Cubistic Self Portrait (Created 2010). Lent by the artist, Delaware Art Museum.
The most recent exhibition, “Creativity Multiplied: Art Teachers of the Christina School District,” is a celebration of art educators. Eleven teachers exhibited 27 artworks, selected by an artist and former University of Delaware faculty member. The pieces are bright and lively, and taken as a whole they are a testament to the kind of creativity and inspiration these artists bring to the classroom.
It’s no small thing to involve the public in the work that you do. In the field of public history that practice is termed “shared authority,” and there is a reason the concept still pervades most discussions of community engagement. It can be hard to let community partners dictate some of the terms. In an art museum, exhibition development is the bread and butter of curatorial work. How do you successfully transfer some of that job to your audience, without losing your vision or sacrificing your quality standards? The Delaware Art Museum knocks it out of the park.
This week, Nina Simon at Museum 2.0 wrote about institutions with a public service perspective – museums that have transformed their mission and made their work about community-wide advocacy. For me, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in lower Manhattan is a model for civic engagement. This is the museum that inspired me, as a graduate student, to think outside the box of history museum offerings and consider the many ways a museum could contribute to social change.
The immediacy of those tenement apartments, interpreting the lives of Irish, German, Russian Jewish, and Italian immigrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries, generates a feeling of pride and a connection with the American experience, the story of immigration. That sounds a bit simple, I know, but there is a quiet power to witnessing the recreated worlds of people that share the same struggles as you do – paying the bills, feeding a family, acclimating to new surroundings, finding work. This was the first place I toured where the dominant story was about the working class and the poor, and thus felt relevant to a broad audience.
The Tenement Museum could stop right there and I would be impressed by the quality of their research and interpretation. But, it doesn’t. Instead, the museum is committed to using history as a means to get at contemporary debates, namely immigration, and inspire community action on a range of issues. There are some who would find the phrase “using history” worrisome, but the Tenement Museum is living proof that you don’t have to choose between rock-solid scholarship and policy. (There are institutions which strike that balance poorly, but that’s a different story for a different day.)
Visitors participate in a Past & Present discussion at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. (Photo: Lower East Side Tenement Museum.)
In April, I was lucky enough to participate in a roundtable discussion about civility and civic engagement in public history practice with Lokki Chan, an educator at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. In this current political climate, it can be hard to imagine people who disagree coming together to discuss the past and try to build upon some kind of shared experience. But that is exactly what the Tenement Museum’s dialogue program aims to do. Starting with a seemingly innocent question, “Where are you from?,” educators like Lokki work to deromanticize the past and complicate the present, making space for difficult dialogues about immigration today and in history. The program has been remarkably successful; in the past year alone, over 5,000 people have chosen tours with this discussion component and the responses have been overwhelming positive.
A perspective shift is an important goal. The museum also makes space for a different kind of engagement, through the “Agents for Change” initiative. In this section of the website, the museum highlights stories of community leaders, both historical and contemporary, who have brought about positive change in the community. The stories are meant to galvanize the reader into action; there are links and tips for pursuing similar goals in your own neighborhood. The initiative is bold and compelling.
For many of you, this love letter will feel familiar. But for those of you who haven’t yet been to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, or for those of you who are seeking out institutions where civic engagement has become part of the mission without cannibalizing their other goals, this post is for you. Now is as good a time as any – better even, as their new visitor’s center is slated to open soon – to visit and be inspired.
Lower East Side Tenement Museum
108 Orchard Street
New York, NY 10002
Daily, 10am-6pm
As someone who works in the humanities, I occasionally find myself in the position of defending my line of work. Museums are places to admire the master works of our civilization and reflect upon our shared past, but I often feel a push to define our function in society in more immediately beneficial ways. We want to help solve problems and provide useful services to our diverse audience, as much as we want to promote a love and appreciation for the arts. That’s what civic engagement is all about, right?
I’ve long been interested in art museums that use their collections to teach visual literacy. The Yale Center for British Art, among others, uses paintings as a way to help medical students better diagnose patients. Both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Collection offer programs to help police hone the skills of observation for use in crime prevention or crime-solving. All of these initiatives convincingly demonstrate the need for sophisticated visual skills and the role art museums can play in developing that expertise.
Visual literacy can be useful to other populations, too. In December, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh held a workshop on making art accessible to people with dementia. This event brought together partners from the Pittsburgh Alzheimer’s Research Center and the Greater Pennsylvania Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, as well as museum professionals from the Museum of Modern Art’s pioneering program. (MoMA began offering programs for Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers in 2004.) The Carnegie Museum used this workshop as a way to launch an expanded slate of tours, called “In the Moment,” which follows upon the heels of a successful pilot program.
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pa.
To create “In the Moment,” the Carnegie Museum worked closely with Woodside Place, a senior care facility in nearby Oakmont. Tours are offered monthly for residents and their caregivers; since May, tours are also available for individuals with early and middle-stage dementia who do not live in a residential care facility. Each tour includes discussions around 4-5 separate pieces of artwork in the Museum’s collections. The results have been stunning. Some works have stirred up long-term memories, allowing residents to engage with their own past in constructive ways. Participants have made connections between their experience and that of their peers, their caregivers, and the larger world – an occurrence that becomes less frequent as Alzheimer’s progresses. Because the entire premise of the tour is to talk about what you see, conversations and connections occur in a low-stakes environment. The pressure is off; what a relief for patients who need a respite from the frustrations of grasping at receding memories.
Art museums will always be places to encounter works of art. The opportunity to stroll through a gallery examining master techniques and pondering an artist’s meaning is a powerful experience. But, it’s not the only way to foster a connection with the arts. Museums are engaging new audiences in increasingly creative ways, constantly striving to be community institutions. With “In the Moment,” the Carnegie Museum of Art is being a good neighbor – responding to the needs of a local population and living up to the promise of accessibility and inclusion.
Carnegie Museum of Art
“In the Moment” tours offered on the second Tuesday of each month; Cost: $15/pair
4400 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
(412) 622-3289
