What's the point of museum websites? | Museums Association
An interesting article which calls on people to submit their favourite museum website and smartphone apps.
Erfassen, erschließen, ergründen: Forschung an Museen
Forschung an Museen, 13.06.-14.06.2013 .
Two day, free conference in Vienna about research in museums. Sign up now and I’ll see you there!
© Horace Nicholls / IWM, ca. 1918, WWI soldier facial reconstruction, UK
In London and Paris, professional sculptors were responsible for the provision of cosmetic masks to be worn by soldiers badly disfigured during World War I: their results are recorded in the photographs of British home front photographer Horace Nicholls and in a silent film of Anna Coleman Ladd at work in her American Red Cross studio in Paris.
Both sources document the artistry of prosthetic repair, and Nicholls’ images dramatize the psychological impact of facial mutilation – regarded by many to be the most dehumanizing of injuries. Paradoxically, though, the juxtaposition of human face and portrait mask disturbs the equation of identity and appearance on which traditional portraiture depends. (+)
(via Hybrid Library: QR Codes Access eBooks in Subway Station | WebUrbanist)
A wall poster of QR codes to download ebooks, but it still has to look like a library/bookshop. Even having the same book/code printed ten times next to each other.
One wonders what you have to sign up for to get the wifi required to download whilst in a subway station.
Reminds me of my idea of a “metrocurator”.
via museumnerd This could be quite interesting. I put this into Austrian google and it offered me: 
From Museumsandstuff.org
“Museums are there for the masses”, “Museums are cathedrals for the modern era” and “Why are museums important?” Can anyone offer any other languages?
Full Press Conference announcing identification Richard III’s skeleton
You have all read about it, but if you want to see the various disciplines work together to show how the bones of Richard III were identified and what science can tell us about his life and death, then watch the whole press conference held at the University of Leicester (my Alma Mater) on YouTube.
More information via the University’s media centre.
Mary Leakey’s 100th birthday on google’s doodle!
TV's Time Team working with soldiers wounded in Afghanistan on an Anglo-Saxon warrior site
“Today is the day of the rather special Time Team Episode where we will be assisting personnel who have been injured in Afghanistan, carry out an excavation at Barrow Clump, as part of their Operation Nightingale.
“This is an archaeology project which helps aid the rehabilitation of personnel who have been injured, both mentally and physically. It uses the quiet, yet disciplined, thoughtful and physical atmosphere of archaeological excavation to assist in their recovery. Several of the soldiers are now studying for archaeology qualifications.”
Coinciding with their new series Grave Trade, check out History in the UK’s website for some great info on the history of death…enjoy!
- Death in Ancient Britain
- Death in the Dark Ages
- The Rise of the Body Snatchers
- Victorians and the Art of Dying
- Death Ritual and Superstitions
- Trends in Death
- Death in Ancient Civilisations
- Water Burials
'Racism' of early colour photography explored in art exhibition
“Can the camera be racist? The question is explored in an exhibition that reflects on how Polaroid built an efficient tool for South Africa’s apartheid regime to photograph and police black people.
“The London-based artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin spent a month in South Africa taking pictures on decades-old film that had been engineered with only white faces in mind. They used Polaroid’s vintage ID-2 camera, which had a “boost” button to increase the flash – enabling it to be used to photograph black people for the notorious passbooks, or “dompas”, that allowed the state to control their movements.
“The result was raw snaps of some of the country’s most beautiful flora and fauna from regions such as the Garden Route and the Karoo, an attempt by the artists to subvert what they say was the camera’s original, sinister intent.”
Click the link for the full article.
The question that’s slightly more radical is the social role of museums. To what extent are they there as a catalyst for change? Are they prepared to fight for some sort of social justice? Do we have a responsibility to reach all sides of society in what we offer? That means working hard to bring in people who wouldn’t normally visit. And leading on from that, should we have a workforce that reflects the community that are paying for us? People who work in museums sometimes say, ‘I didn’t train to be a social worker, I trained to be a curator.’ And of course we don’t want to go too far and lose the object in the middle. But the younger generation of curators is not happy for museums to be places where people come and worship in silence. They want them to be more like town halls, where debates happen, you can speak the unspeakable, and there are things going on. But a museum’s credibility is rooted in the objects.’
January 27th is International Holocaust Memorial Day. Yad Vashem has a site that offers educational material in a variety of languages:
On January 27, 1945, Soviet forces liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, discovering the largest Nazi killing center in Europe. Auschwitz has become a symbol of the Holocaust, representing the depths of man’s inhumanity to man. Eighteen governments have legislated January 27 as an annual Holocaust Memorial Day. In November 2005, the United Nations passed a resolution to mark January 27 as an international day of commemoration to honor the victims of the Holocaust, and urged member states to develop educational programs to impart the memory of this tragedy to future generations. Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies will be organized on the international, national, regional and local levels, including in universities and schools.
They also have online lesson plans, courses, databases, and more resources on their website.
Is anyone else familiar with Prezi? The presentation above is by Karen Lee and offers a less static and linear presentation than PowerPoint. The animation between slides can be a little dizzying if flipped through too quickly, but I think the potential to present information is a more visual way with a clear overview would definitely be an improvement on some of the incredibly dry or text-dense presentations we have all endured at some point.
Another presentation on her profile is “Exhibition Evaluation 101” which is worth a look.
Perhaps this would also be a good medium for online exhibitions? Or virtual tours of museums/exhibitions? There is the possibility to create an outline of objects and information and then offer several different ‘paths’ through using different presentations, much like a traditional guided tour. Or a a storyboard for exhibition planning.
Another interesting presentation is the “80 Dinge” presentation by Joachim Baur, a German Museologist.
If you search for museums under the explore tab you will come up with some other interesting projects, presentations and ideas on how to use more dynamic methods to link, explain and illustrate information.
Can anyone think of other uses/websites/applications that could improve communication like this?
The Jewish Museum in Prague has a some online exhibitions on their website, including the one above that explains the documents they hold relating to the Terezín Ghetto (Theresienstadt) during WWII.
Furthermore, their collections are searchable online, with many documents catalogued, scanned and plotted on a map showing relevant places down to the barrack within the ghetto. The photo above shows the 844 results when searching for a particular department within the administrative structure in the ghetto, plotted on a map and linking directly to the relevant archival material.
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