Review of a Museum Website

For my review of a museum website, I chose to look at the website for the Salem Witch Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. The museum is designed to look old and creepy, with its description of the museum written like a novel. It describes what a description of a with would have looked and acted like according to 1692 superstition. There is even an exhibit dedicated to the perception of witches through the years and even to the present day practice of witchcraft. This is a description taken from the website:

"You are invited into the exhibit space by a picture of Macbeth's three witches, examples of the stereotype. Next you see nine images on a wall - all can be labeled "witch" but by their variety you conclude that file definition of the word has changed as our beliefs and customs have evolved. The images range from the witch in Hansel and Gretel to the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz to Joan of Arc and John and Elizabeth Proctor of the Salem trials."

The website also includes a list of frequently asked questions about witches including those women, and five men, who were convicted and put to death during the Salem Witch Trials. There is even a link posted so that you can trace your ancestry to see if you are related to anyone involved in the trials.
Not only this, but the website has a description of the history of Salem itself. Overall, I would love to visit this museum given the chance, and the website is a valuable tool in determining your level of interest in the museum.

Review of the Appaloosa Museum and Heritage Center

Located in Moscow, Idaho off of West Pullman Road, the Appaloosa Museum has an interesting architectural appearance to it; shaped like a dome with a futuristic undertone, it has three iron horse structures located by the front doors. When you walk through the front doors, there is a large plaque immediately on the wall to the right, reading: “It only lasts a moment, but while it lasts it’s the greatest game there is.”
Setting the tone for the rest of the museum, it gives the viewer a context with which to understand the history of the Appaloosa and of the training and competitive riding game itself. The museum is organized into these two distinct categories: the history of the horse itself, and the history of competitive riding throughout the Heritage Center. Located online is the mission of the museum, stating: “The museum is a non-profit organization established in 1975 to collect, preserve, study, and exhibit objects and information that illustrate the history of the Appaloosa horse.”
As I began walking through the exhibits, I noticed that the exhibits didn’t follow a specific or organized pattern, making it somewhat difficult to choose which exhibits to look at first, since everything on one end of the museum was in a chronological order. One common artifact emerging throughout the museum was the use of saddles; many saddles used by the Nez Perce Indians were put on display, as they were a culture that relied heavily on the Appaloosa horse for support and travel.
The exhibit I chose to focus on was titled, “The Appaloosa in Advertising.” This exhibit was a large glass box filled with various household products that featured the Appaloosa horse. Ranging from food stuffs like horse-shaped pasta noodles, hot sauce, and jam to children’s games and cleaning supplies. Overall, I found this exhibit, while interesting, to be extremely comical and unnecessary. The only thing this exhibit did was express that at some point, the appaloosa horse was a semi-popular icon to children. Then again, so are all sorts of barnyard animals; the appaloosa in this respect is not very unique. So while I was intrigued by the exhibit, I found it to be unimportant due to the fact that children don’t tend to prefer one barnyard animal over another, although the kiddy section of the museum would be more successful in capturing the attention of young kids. Overall, it seemed to be more of a kooky add-on to the museum rather than a serious exhibit warranting genuine interest.
After my visit, I visited the museum website, which had a link to a slide-show featuring some of the exhibits. I didn’t notice the “Appaloosa in Advertising” exhibit in the web-site leading me to believe even the museum didn’t take the exhibit seriously either. This one exhibit shouldn’t deter anyone from visiting the museum, however, because the other artifacts and exhibits within it are very intriguing and educational. My decision to analyze the “Advertising” exhibit was based on the fact that it didn’t seem to fit within the wider scope of the museum itself.
As for the museum staff, while they were friendly and courteous, were largely unengaged with the visitors. Most museums I’ve been to have a very friendly staff excited to give a tour of the museum they work for; the Appaloosa museum was not that charming in this respect, although it did give the viewer a chance to look through the museum’s artifacts by themselves so that they may draw their own conclusions. Still, I would have liked to see a more passionate staff to get me excited about the material. On the whole though, this museum was filled with interesting and enlightening information about the importance of the Appaloosa to Indian culture. The website for the Appaloosa Museum and Heritage Center is:

http://www.appaloosamuseum.org/cms/default.asp?contentID=1

Review of “A Burial Ground And Its Dead Are Given Life,” by Edward Rothstein (from the New York Times’ Art section):

Rothstein’s article discusses a museum created when a burial site of black New Yorkers was found in Lower Manhattan. Identified as being formed in 1755 and called the “Negro Burial Ground,” it provided great insight into the history of black people living in New York during an age of slavery. Months after the discovery of some 419 bodies, a visitor’s site was constructed to express the burial ceremonies of black culture in their historical context. It wasn’t until 1993 that the site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and protected as a national monument. In 2007, a sculpture was created and placed the site in a historical as well as a museum framework.
The museum itself consists of a class-room, a video, and a shop featuring models, statues, displays, recordings of songs and chants, and photographs; outside of the museum is the actual burial ground where there are many raised mounds where the coffins and bodies had been buried. Rothstein describes a display with several scrapbooks detailing the amount of political activism it took to preserve the site, something he found to be a bit exaggerated. In keeping with this cynicism, Rothstein describes his feeling that the museum was often times prejudiced and expressed the deplorable condition these specific slaves had endured as being debatable. Specifically, he notes that many of the skeletons feature signs of malnutrition, which should have been compared with an average white worker’s skeleton to put the malnutrition into a fairer plane. Rather than simply stating that these people had endured far more hardships than any other societal group of the time. In my opinion, this is a bit callous of a statement; the men and women buried at this site were on the lowest rung of society, therefore it is natural they would not have the healthy skeleton of their white counter-parts. Granted there are individual cases in which this would be false, but the overwhelming majority of cases would follow this patte

Arcitechture of A Museum

Architecture can often influence how you perceive a museum; it can sometimes give you an initial idea of what you may find in its collections. In my own experiences, I have found this to be true; an example of this is the Experience Music Project in downtown Seattle. Inspired by the look of a smashed guitar, the building has a lot of curved steel arranged in an eccentric pattern, very much similar to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain. The EMP, however, has bright colors added to the steel, and it even has the downtown monorail running right through the middle of it. The fact that the museum is designed like this is very appropriate for the content inside. Mostly dedicated to musician Jimi Hendrix, the museum also has a lot of other exhibits dedicated to further enriching guests into the world of music. A huge guitar spiral and guitar room compliment the museum as well, which furthers the notion that the outside design is not only appropriate, but an attraction in and of itself.

Effectiveness of A Museum

When I think of what an effective museum is, the first thing that comes to mind is the museum staff. The museum staff is what inspires and educates the visitor, determining the overall outlook of the museum itself. I've been to museums that were filled with interesting artifacts and were obviously doing very well economically but they didn't really stick in my mind as great experiences. One example of this was the Bodies exhibit in Seattle; my biology class went to see the exhibit and despite the very intricate and fascinating exhibits, the staff did not seem all that interested or engaged in the subject or in informing their visitors of the educational knowledge around them. In the end, this field trip, which could have been a great experience with a lot of educational benefits, fell short of what it may have been and became an almost forgotten memory. On the other hand, an engaged staff that cares about their visitors can turn an old, perhaps run-down museum into a memorable and fascinating experience. An example of this would be when I went to the McConnell Mansion Museum in Moscow, Idaho. This old mansion used to belong to a family of prominent Idahoan politicians. Not only has the mansion been restored to its original framework, but many other interesting artifacts from the time period are showcased as well. When I first walked into the mansion, it was really cold and even had a terrible odor to it. Not looking forward to the rest of the visit, a staff member immediately came to me and said she would be more than happy to give me a tour of the place. She gave me one of the most intricate and informative tours I've ever had; to my surprise she even told me that she was brand new to the museum, which told me how passionate she was about her job, which made me excited about the museum as well.

Contextualizing a Museum

Many times a museum takes representations of actual artifacts and places them in a larger historical context. For example, in a museum with skeletons of large pre-historic animals, often times the bones are actually made of plaster. They construct them together in order to give the viewer an idea of what this animal may have looked like. In my home-town of North Bend, there is a local museum with many artifacts from its past. Among these artifacts are constructions that depict what pioneer life may have looked like. There are dummies dressed in clothes from the time among items constructed to look like they would a hundred years ago. This is an example of how a museum may present information and historical facts without using artifacts from the time period. It will still make similar points it set out to make, it just doesn't do it in the traditional way that many expect a museum to.

Seeing a Museum

Looking at artifacts in a museum is entirely different than looking at the same artifacts in their natural state. What a museum does is put these various artifacts into a historical framework that can help the viewer to understand what context to put the knowledge of the artifact into. A museum uses a variety of ways in which to do this. It can be as simple as the layout of the museum, the way the lighting focuses on the artifact, the way the objects are dispersed throughout an exhibit, or the amount of information and background presented with the object. When I was in Hawaii, I visited Pearl Harbor to see the USS Arizona Memorial, which is also considered a museum. The order in which the artifacts and information were presented created a large emotional impact on everyone that was there. It began with a walk-through of various artifacts taken from the wreckage and from WWII in general. After giving the visitor a sad background into the war's beginning and end, groups of visitors are brought into a theatre room where they watch a video of the United States' entrance into the war. After watching actual footage of the Japanese attacks, the video concludes with a few modern day facts about the memorial site. After this, a shuttle takes the viewers out to the water where the Arizona is submerged in water. Lists of the names of the men that died are listed on the memorial, giving the viewer a somber depiction of WWII.


http://www.nps.gov/valr/index.htm