Welcome

Prof. Miriam Posner
Email | Office hours: Wednesday, 1pm-3pm, Rolfe 3318

Most people associate museums with objects, whether they be works of art, fossilized bones, or PEZ dispensers. But objects (or images of objects) now proliferate widely in digital form. Now that we don’t have to check our coats or pay a fee to see images of rare artifacts, do the objects themselves still matter? Have museums lost some of their cultural authority? What have they, or we, gained? What is a museum’s purpose in the digital age?

We’ll investigate these questions in a distinctly hands-on series of encounters. This class takes a pragmatic look at various aspects of the museum profession today, while also giving us a chance to pause together to talk about what all this means for museums and their communities.

READING SCHEDULE

If readings are not linked directly from here, they’re available on CCLE under the appropriate week.

WEEK 1 | APRIL 3
INTRODUCTION

No required reading.

WEEK 2 | APRIL 10
DECOLONIZING THE MUSEUM

Guest: Dr. Wendy Teeter, Curator of Archaeology, UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History

Rigo 23: From the Heart of Santa Madera

Launching a Dream: Reviving Tongva Maritime Traditions

“‘Launching a Dream: Reviving Tongva Maritime Traditions’ opens June 5 at Fowler Museum” (UCLA Newsroom)

Mapping Indigenous L.A.

Brown, Deidre, and George Nicholas. “Protecting Indigenous Cultural Property in the Age of Digital Democracy: Institutional and Communal Responses to Canadian First Nations and Māori Heritage Concerns.” Journal of Material Culture 17, no. 3 (September 1, 2012): 307–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183512454065.

Bennett, Tony. “The Exhibitionary Complex.” New Formations 4 (Spring 1988): 73–102.

WEEK 3 | APRIL 17
DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT
Guest: Yvonne Lee (UCLA MLIS ’12), Digital Projects Manager, Los Angeles County Museum of Art


And please see your email for Yvonne Lee’s slides!

Part I: LIS in the Museum

Zoller, Gabriela, and Katie DeMarsh. “For the Record: Museum Cataloging from a Library and Information Science Perspective.” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 32, no. 1 (2013): 54–70. https://doi.org/10.1086/669989.

Skim: Silvaggi, Antonia. “Emerging Job Profiles for Museum Professionals.” R2.2. Mu.SA: Museum Skills Alliance, 2017.

Part II: DAMS

What is a DAMS?

DAMS Implementation and Maturity Model

VRA Metadata Standards

Metadata Standards (skim): VRA Core, IPTC, FITS, PREMIS, reVTMD

Vendors (skim): LUNA, NetX, OpenText, Piction, ResourceSpace

WEEK 4 | APRIL 24
DIGITAL STRATEGY
Meet in the Hammer Museum lobby at 2pm
Guests: Susan Edwards, Associate Director, Digital Content, UCLA Hammer Museum; Phil Leers, Project Manager, Digital Initiatives, UCLA Hammer Museum; and Haley Di Pressi (UCLA ’15), Registrarial Assistant, UCLA Hammer Museum

“Why the Hammer Museum’s new free digital archives are a game changer” (Los Angeles Times, September 7, 2016)

Peacock, Darren. “Making Ways for Change: Museums, Disruptive Technologies and Organisational Change.” Museum Management and Curatorship 23, no. 4 (December 1, 2008): 333–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/09647770802517324.

Morrison, Alex. “Digital Strategy for Museums.” New York: Cogapp, 2017.

Alliance Labs. “Museums and Digital Strategy Today,” July 10, 2017.

Skim: Museum Digital Strategy Examples and Resources

WEEK 5 | MAY 1
EXHIBITING CULTURES
Meet in front of the California African American Museum at 2:30.
Guest: Tyree Boyd Pates, History Curator, California African American Museum

Read chapter one: Carter G. Woods, The Mis-Education of the Negro, 1933.

Twiss Houting, Beth A., Mary Jane Taylor, and Susy Watts. “Learning Theory in the Museum Setting.” In An Alliance of Spirit: Museum and School Partnerships, edited by Kim Fortney and Beverly Sheppard. Washington, DC: AAM Press, American Association of Museums, 2010.

Please see CCLE under “Week 5” for an EXCITING homework assignment!

WEEK 6 | MAY 8
(DIGITAL) PROJECT MANAGEMENT & MUSEUMS ONLINE
Guest: Gene McHugh, Head of Digital Media, UCLA Fowler Museum

Whitelaw, Mitchell. “Generous Interfaces for Digital Cultural Collections” Digital Humanities Quarterly 9, no. 1 (2015).

Stack, John. “Exploring Museum Collections Online: Some Background Reading.” Science Museum Group Digital Lab, January 23, 2018.

Museum Catalogues in the Digital Age (OSCI Final Report). The Getty Foundation, Los Angeles, 2017.

Gat, Orit. “Global Audiences, Zero Visitors: How to Measure the Success of Museums’ Online Publishing.” Rhizome, March 12, 2015.

(Bonus: Check out the Collections as Data project.)

WEEK 7 | MAY 15
EXHIBIT DESIGN
Guest: Dr. Mary Battle, Content Developer, Ralph Appelbaum Associates

Chan, Sebastian, and Aaron Cope. “Strategies Against Architecture: Interactive Media and Transformative Technology at Cooper Hewitt.” MW 2015: Museums and the Web 2015, April 6, 2015. http://mw2015.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/strategies-against-architecture-interactive-media-and-transformative-technology-at-cooper-hewitt/.

Greenblatt, Stephen. “Resonance and Wonder.” In Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, edited by Ivan Karp, 43–56. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3824277.

Isaac, Gwyneira. “Technology Becomes the Object The Use of Electronic Media at the National Museum of the American Indian.” Journal of Material Culture 13, no. 3 (November 1, 2008): 287–310. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183508095497.

WEEK 8 | MAY 22
VISITORS OF COLOR
Guest: nikhil trivedi, Web Architect, The Art Institute of Chicago

Visitors of Color Tumblr

Lucille Clifford, “at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989” and context.

Wilson, Fred, and Howard Halle. “Mining the Museum.” Grand Street, no. 44 (1993): 151. https://doi.org/10.2307/25007622.

Wilson, Fred. “Guarded View.”

Caballero, Cecilia. “Mothering While Brown in White Spaces, Or, When I Took My Son to Octavia Butler’s Exhibit.” Chicana M(other)work, August 23, 2017.

WEEK 9 | MAY 29
DIVERSIFYING THE PROFESSION (+ DATA WORKSHOP)
Guest: Dr. Nicole Ivy, Director of Diversity, American Association of Museums

Ivy, Nicole. “The Labor of Diversity.” Museum, February 2016.

Excerpts from Ahmed, Sara. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012.

Schonfeld, Roger, and Mariët Westermann. “The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey.” New York: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 2015.

Optional, just released: Facing Change: Insights from the American Alliance of Museums’ Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion Working Group (May 2018)

WEEK 10 | JUNE 5
VIRTUAL REALITY
Guest: Francesca Albrezzi, Ph.D. Candidate, UCLA Department of World Arts & Cultures

Rae, Juno, and Lizzie Edwards. “Virtual Reality at the British Museum: What Is the Value of Virtual Reality Environments for Learning by Children and Young People, Schools, and Families?” MW2016: Museums and the Web 2016 (blog). Accessed March 30, 2018.

“20,000-Year-Old Artifacts, 21st-Century Artifacts,” The Verge