For this assignment I decided to focus on a smaller museum I am personally familiar with, the Wrangell Museum located within my hometown of Wrangell, in Southeast Alaska. This museum is a local cultural museum focusing on the history of the town, and the pre-contact Tlingit culture. For my second Museum selection due to my…
Read MoreThe controversy that I will be discussing today has been resolved but is nevertheless a good example of the controversial acquisition of indigenous property without regard for its cultural significance. In 1929 the G’psgolox Totem Pole was taken from the Haisla people of British Columbia and shipped to the Swedish National Museum of Ethnography in…
Read MoreFor this assignment I defined a collaborative effort as an exhibit designed with input from the public or clear contributions from non-museum personnel. For my example of a museum exhibit which demonstrates a collaborative effort I selected the online exhibit “Alutiiq -An Alaska native Language” from the website of the Alutiiq Museum. I classify this…
Read MoreFor this assignment I selected the New York metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) to locate a suitable piece of digital media. I selected an art museum since I feel like there is more to discuss about whether these sorts of media fulfill the purpose of art pieces compared to cultural artifacts. In an attempt…
Read MoreFor this discussion I settled on Corvus Corax or the Common raven as my species of choice. I find ravens a very interesting bird for a number of reasons including their mythological relevance with indigenous Alaskan populations, their unique visual appearance, and their intelligence. This combined with their frequent presence in urban areas of Alaska,…
Read MoreFor this assignment I chose the Russian Muzzleloader and the Lynx for a comparative analysis, since they both have very different considerations when considering the best ways to preserve them. The question doesn’t specify whether it is a lynx hide or the entire carcass that was being donated so I will assume it is…
Read MoreFor this assignment the Item from my home I selected is a Nepalese board game called Bagha-Chal which roughly translates to Tigers and Goats. I selected this item since it felt reasonably unique and like the kind of item that would make sense to include in a museum collection. For ease of comparison, I then…
Read MoreThe number and types of complications that occur when carrying for a living collection grow in parallel with the size and complexity of the collection itself often to a greater extent then non-living collections. This is mostly due to two primary factors which affect living collections, but not non-living collections. Firstly, living collections are…
Read MoreTo me asking why museums collect is almost the same as asking why museums exist at all. In many ways its collection is the thing that defines a museum and its purpose. If the first step of creating a museum is to create a mission statement and a subject for the museum to display, the…
Read MoreFor this question I chose the Chicago Field Museum for my examination. This museum received a short mention in some of the previous weeks readings, and I selected it largely due to it being a recognizable example that I was sure was sufficiently large and included both natural history and cultural collections. In addition, I…
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