Maeve's Day Two Reflections

Today we met at the Penn Museum to listen in at one of their talks for their internship program. I've completely forgotten the names of the people who spoke and unfortunately I didn't bother to write them down, but it was a very interesting and informative talk. At the beginning of the talk, the Penn Museum's mission was explained as "transforming understanding of the human experience," which I thought had an interesting parallel to our main research inquiries. I also noted that though the speaker stressed the importance of making the collections available to the public, the Penn's status as a research institution meant that collection and preservation were prioritized. He also mentioned that they're redoing all of their permanent exhibits, but made no mention of when the Africa exhibit could expect to see change. I was once again struck by the separation of Egypt from the rest of Africa, and though I understand the categorization on some levels, it was nice to see a note clearly stating "Egypt is part of Africa" in the "Imagine Africa" exhibit.

Some assorted notes/thoughts on the talk:

• women! Sarah Stevenson (?), mother of museum studies, curator, and first female recipient of an honorary PhD was only one of many female anthropologists, archaeologists, and otherwise museologically inclined women involved in the history of the Penn, which was pretty cool
• "three major ancient cultures" made my eyes roll 
• the first synchronized sound documentary AND the first capture of an aboriginal language on synchronized sound!! that was particularly interesting to me as a film & media person
• "we've dug everywhere" v.s. the fact of their singular Subsaharan expedition 

Alex (?) took us and the other interns on a brief tour of the archives, which was really cool! I loved the phonograph and the brief overview of photographic history. Even though I'm fairly familiar with the history of photographic methods, it was nice to see how it has tied into museum history. I really want to watch the "What in the World?" television show they produced--it sounds fascinating. It was also interesting to learn that the Penn led the charge to refuse to collect objects without proper documentation in the 1970s.

"Imagine Africa" is situated right next to human evolution, which made me wonder if the museum is truly interested in challenging peoples' perceptions of Africa. I wasn't sure what the purpose of the interactive pieces on the wall were, but the children going through the exhibit were playing with them so forcefully that a security guard actually told them to stop. The words and images on the main wall are fairly randomly dispersed, and the whole thing was a little confusing, but the rest of the exhibit was significantly better (especially in comparison to the "Look Again" exhibit). Instead of vague terms like "power bundle" or "power figure," the labels for objects used accurate, clear terminology. They even included maps of Africa highlighting where objects had originated (where appropriate). There were short, clear, specific questions in the labels that invited the audience to think deeper about the objects without inviting them to create their own random/contextless meanings. The exhibit is clearly an academic setting, almost to a fault: Dani and I agreed it reminded us of school.

We also explored the Native American and Mesoamerican exhibits. I noticed that the Native American exhibit has contemporary Native art--like a clay spoof on "Grand Theft Auto"--mixed in with historical art/artifacts. Though the exhibit purports to be about Native Americans in the modern world, this choice struck me as oddly patronizing. It seemed to suggest that all Native American art belongs with artifacts.