“Smithsonian will honor biological males in Women’s History Museum to be ‘inclusive’: report” First off, whoever created this title should have consulted with someone before placing it on a report that talks about being more welcoming and inclusive to transgender identities. Having representation in a place full of artifacts and information from history is huge.…
Read MoreMuseums collect artifacts and art for both educational and enjoyment purposes. The collection and display of artifacts is a way to connect people living in the present to the past in that they are given to opportunity to examine material culture in a safe and curated environment. The curation of the past aids in making…
Read MoreAlthough the question of why museums collect specimens, artifacts, or works of art, is often overlooked by many who visit museums, it is an important question to ask. Commonly, it can be assumed that museums grow their collections in order to preserve, inform, and educate. It can easily be said that in the past the…
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 MoreFrom a historical viewpoint, museums have collected as a result of the Western interest in the curiosities of the unknown and strangeness. Not only was it to satisfy Western curiosity but museum collecting was also used as a method of forced assimilation and as a means of profit due to the social issue of colonialization.…
Read MoreI think that the reason that museums collect have changed throughout the years. Obviously, as we learned through each module, the reasoning behind museums collecting things didn’t start off as a positive thing. They started out as cabinets of curiosities, and very few (if any) precautions were taken before the collectors took whatever “curiosities” they…
Read MoreWhen I was younger I always thought that the preservation of history was one of the most important duties to take on in order for people to learn and understand the world before we even existed. Today, I still believe it’s very important to preserve history whether it’s human history or even the natural history…
Read MoreWow! What an interesting module and discussion we have been able to have this week. How collections end up at museums is something that rarely crossed my mind until arriving at the Museum of the North. I will be honest, like many museum visitors I think I was under the naive thought that museums must…
Read More` These past modules have given me a sense on why museums collect, if it within the museum’s collection policy, which is a core document in supporting the mission and vision of the museum, aesthetic purposes like some art galleries, educational aspects of a certain topic, to document evolution, or to try and create unity…
Read MoreAfter watching the videos and reading the materials this week, I got thinking about why museums collect the things that they do. Obviously, museums collect things that further their particular specialty – it wouldn’t make sense for a natural history museum to collect fine art. However, it seems that museums also collect things that further…
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