Author: Ricky Punzalan

SMA – Call for Proposals

/ Ricky Punzalan

33rd Annual Small Museum Association Conference
Call for Proposals
Sunday, February 19 – Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Marriott Hotel & Conference Center, College Park, MD
(New Location!)
Conference Theme: All Hands on Deck
Deadline for Proposals: July 1, 2016
www.smallmuseum.org

View the Call for Proposals
Deadline: July 1, 2016

This year, the Small Museum Association’s annual conference will offer sessions that address the theme “All Hands on Deck.” Speakers are encouraged to explore how professional staff, board members and volunteers can work together to make small museums thrive. 

Several different types of session proposals are sought:

  • 60-minute session — individual speaker, panel presentation, or roundtable discussion
  • 90-minute workshop — workshop, panel presentation, or roundtable discussion
  • 3-hour seminar— in-depth, experiential, hands-on learning (2 slots available on Sunday afternoon)
Learn more about the annual Small Museum Association Conference at www.smallmuseum.org.

Leaders in Museums

/ Ricky Punzalan

As we near the end of the Spring semester, many graduates, myself included, are finding new professional opportunities, or delving back into work after graduation. For  my last post as the Graduate Assistant for the Museum Scholarship Certificate, and on behalf of my peers, I want to take this moment to consider two questions:

1) what kind of leaders are we/do we want to be within the field of museum scholarship and material culture studies, and;

2) how has our academic focus on scholarship prepared us for the challenges of leadership? What skills in our academic and professional archive have prepared us to be museum directors, lab managers, collections management specialists, curators, education and outreach directors, and beyond?

Consider this article ~ Whitehair_HistoryNews2016 ~ written by Karen Whitehair in the Winter 2016 edition of History News titled “We Are All in this Together: Twenty-First-Century Museum Leadership” on the leadership crisis in museums. As part of a writing assignment for a course through the American Association for State and Local History, Whitehair critiques the “demigod”-like expectations placed on museum directors. She offers advice from a handful of museum leaders on how they became leaders and the characteristics they say others can learn as they’re thrust into management positions.

A helpful read for professionals at any career-level, some advice may be new and some may be good reminders for reassessing one’s own goals. Throughout the piece Whitehair takes note of the active initiative each leader took to learn more about managing people, communicating effectively, and inspiring others to act on your vision.

MSMC Committee Member, Mary Alexander is interviewed in Whitehair’s article and says she learned from leaders she found effective. She advises:

“To review your own talents…and select a few ‘weaknesses’ you’d like to overcome and find a teacher or mentor to help.”

Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko, President/CEO of the Abbe Museum notes that she is “interested in being a leader of leaders. If I don’t develop leadership skills in others, then I end up only being a manager and no one is truly leading.”

Kristin Laise states that museums are businesses. Whether for profit or not, the leadership in a historic house museum will share the same qualities and practices of a small business leader. Finding effective ways to partner with others and grow the “business” of sharing history with the public is what Whitehair means by her title “We Are All in this Together.” Museums should figure out a business model that mutually benefits them and surrounding organizations with similar goals.

From a scholarship perspective, effective leadership means critically considering your museum’s role in the community, accessibility of your collections, the perspectives being communicated, and the relevance of your museum to larger societal discussions. Is your museum supporting or challenging the status quo? Leadership requires scholarship to make meaningful and relevant content, and scholarship  needs leadership to implement those ideas effectively.

Considering the first question of this post, I’d like to see myself and my peers from this Certificate program be leaders who embrace changing and alternative ways of managing museum spaces and material culture collections. I’d like us to be leaders who challenge our staff, volunteers, and visitors to question interpretations and functions of our material world. I think this conceptual challenge engages visitors with the material and can be an avenue for community discussion or promotion of newly imagined exhibits.

More importantly, leadership requires integrity to reflect on our own biases. To address my second question, this is what our academic achievements have taught us: to critically understand our theoretical and methodological roles in constructing historic, artistic, and cultural expressions of our past, present, and future. Not only should we continually learn from our “weaknesses” and failures, but discern our current strengths and abilities as leaders. As Anthropologists, American Historians, Librarians, and more, we have been trained for leadership. We ask big-picture questions that will drive the mission of an organization while considering how that vision is implemented at all scales. We have been trained in research methodology; in writing reports and grants; to lead and participate in groups; to be reflexive; and to communicate the importance of history, culture, archives, objects, and stories in daring ways.  No matter what direction we choose to take next, we are the solution to the leadership crisis.

~Sarah Janesko
Master of Applied Anthropology Candidate, Archaeology
Museum Scholarship and Material Culture Certificate

Curating the Curator: Perspectives from Dr. Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman

/ Ricky Punzalan

In our second post in the series “Curating the Curator: Perspectives from MSMC Committee” I introduce Dr. Barnet “Barney” Pavao-Zuckerman.

Barnet

Photo by Jannelle Weakly

Dr. Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman  is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Maryland and is the Interim Director for the MSMC Certificate while Dr. Freidenberg is on sabbatical. She received her PhD from the University of Georgia in 2001, completing her dissertation research in the Georgia Museum of Natural History. Prior to arriving at UMD, she was Associate Curator of Zooarchaeology at the Arizona State Museum for over a decade, as well as Associate Professor and Associate Director of the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. She is an archaeologist and currently conducting research on the colonial-period experiences of Native Americans in southeastern and southwestern North America.

Having worked extensively in museums with an archaeology background, I asked her: What was your first experience working in a museum, and what was the most important thing you learned? She responded with several stories that wove together why scholarship is important to her work and the challenges and lessons she learned throughout her career.

these “stories” are the result of years of research

I have spent my entire career in museums—in fact, with my move to the University of Maryland last fall, this is the first time in 20 years that I have not worked primarily in a museum setting. My first museum work experience was in the early 1990s, while I was in high school and college. My summer job was as a tour guide at Mount Lebanon Shaker Village, which is in my home town of New Lebanon, NY. I have wonderful memories of my summers at Mount Lebanon—it is a truly remarkable place. Spend an hour wandering through the Village and you understand immediately why the Shakers chose Mount Lebanon as the place to build their most important community. I was an inexperienced teenager, and our small historical site museum operated on a shoe-string budget, but I learned that as long as I could tell a good story, I could send visitors away happy they had come, and with greater knowledge and appreciation for the place and the people who lived there. I quickly learned that these “stories” are the result of years of research by scholars, both within and outside of museums. I read as much as I could about the Shakers, and apprenticed myself to several of the more experienced tour guides, particularly one who was known for his engaging, and sometimes “salty” (and very un-Shaker), tours.

“you know, sometimes we just burned them down when the rats got too much”.

My graduate research, on the study of animal bones from archaeological sites (zooarchaeology), was carried out in the Georgia Museum of Natural History (GMNH), on the campus of the University of Georgia. I went from a mostly open-air historical site museum to a natural history museum, complete with snakes coiled in jars of alcohol. I learned a great deal during my six years at the GMNH. In a natural history museum, museum scholars from diverse disciplines work side-by-side, and my interactions with curators in the natural sciences had a huge impact on my career, including in promoting the role that zooarchaeological knowledge can play in modern wildlife conservation problems. It was also at the GMNH that I first interacted with a living descendent of an archaeological study community. This experience was just the first of many that serve as a constant reminder to consider and question the impact of archaeological research on descendent communities. As I showed our museum visitor the animal bone remains from his ancestral Muscogee-Creek village, I explained to him we had identified a lot of burned rodent bones inside the village’s homes. I told him I had read that in the 18th century, Creek houses were often burned during funeral rituals for heads of household. He looked at me, smiled, and said “you know, sometimes we just burned them down when the rats got too much”. I also learned that sometimes archaeologists privilege the stories they want to tell over the ones that actually make the most sense!

How to make a bunch of dead animals compete with gorgeous ceramics, baskets, and tapestries?

So, we need to be careful about the stories we tell, but to stay relevant in the 21st century, museums have to tell the important and compelling stories. As I grew into a scholar in my own right, I learned to approach the arcana of my own archaeological research to find the stories that reach broad audiences. From 2002 to 2015, I was a faculty curator at the Arizona State Museum (ASM), on the campus of the University of Arizona (with a joint appointment in the School of Anthropology). Behind-the-scenes tours and public lectures were an important part of my position. Museum tour groups would visit ASM’s world-class southwestern Native pottery collections, its state-of-the-art conservation lab, and the new basketry vault (the second of ASM’s Save America’s Treasures projects), and then walk into the zooarchaeology lab, full of old and broken animal bones. How to make a bunch of dead animals compete with gorgeous ceramics, baskets, and tapestries? The rather un-charismatic nature of old bones meant that I had to engage my audience through story, not stuff. After a couple of tries, I was able to engage our audiences with the story of how tiny fragments of animal bones from Native American sites in Alabama and Arizona tell us something about the origins of trans-oceanic trade and the mercantile economy in North America, as well as the role of Native American labor in the emergence of the global economy. Making these connections from the local to the global is, as I would say in my tours, why I love what I do.

I am also thrilled to be part of an institution with a thriving Museum Certificate program

As many of us know, museums face many challenges in the 21st century. Every museum I have worked in since I was a teenager has faced significant financial stress leading to reorganization, staff cuts, or programmatic shrinkage. Lately, the financial strain has been felt especially at state-funded museums, particularly in states that have chosen to balance budget shortfalls on the backs of educational institutions. While I was a curator at ASM, the 100-year old institution experienced unprecedented and crippling budget cuts. The last two years, in particular, were an extremely challenging time at the Museum, as the institution suffered heart-breaking staff losses due to state budget cuts. I miss the day-to-day life of a museum curator, but I am also thrilled to be part of an institution with a thriving Museum Certificate program in a state that invests in all aspects of higher education. I am realistic in my views on the future of museums and museum scholarship, but am committed to helping the students in our Certificate program gain the skills and knowledge that will allow them to thrive in a 21st century museum world.

~ Barney

Curating the Curator: Perspectives from Mary Alexander

/ Ricky Punzalan

For our first post in the series “Curating the Curator: Perspectives from MSMC Committee,” I introduce Mary Alexander.

Mary joined the MSMC committee last year and is currently instructing the Introduction to Museum Scholarship and Material Culture course. She has worked in and for Washington area history museums for the past four decades. She has been a museum educator, assistant director, leader of the Common Agenda for History Museums project for the American Association for State and Local History, and most recently administrator of the Museum Assistance Program of the Maryland Historical Trust.

I asked Mary, “What tools should every museum scholar take time to develop?” and she responded with the following insight:

A scene from “The Real Museum Directors of Kansas”

“The slide projector in the main exhibit hall kept needing adjustment so I had to open the back of the exhibit case and slip in to jimmy with jammed slides, replace bulbs and other mechanical fixes.  Because this happened so often I got to eavesdrop on visitors chatting in the gallery.  It was amazing what I learned simply by being a hidden observer.  All our highfalutin’ ideas about what visitors would notice from our impressive collections and our brilliant explanatory texts went right out the window.”

This scenario from an old friend of mine who ran a small museum in Kansas illustrates an important reality for museum professionals (curators, historians, researchers, registrars, educators)—watch out for the museum “bubble.” Visitors will surprise you with their perspectives, interests and ability to simply overlook what you consider so important.  In our Museum Scholarship and Material Culture Introductory class discussions we remind ourselves that we are not “regular” visitors and therefore we must always question our perspectives as potentially biased.

Be aware of your assumptions about visitors. Visit museums and take time to observe what others are doing and saying while they wander the galleries.  Note where visitors cluster and seem engaged; why are they stopping there?  Is it an object, a label, a bench to sit or an interactive?

Interpretation is complex and difficult to codify, but writing clearly is a central building block for both scholarship and its interpretive expressions. It’s easy to warn against jargon, but more important to focus on clear, concise descriptions that are readily understood. Exhibit design reports will quantify “appropriate” label length, but that’s not the solution, it is clarity. Working with others will improve your communication regardless of its form–labels, artifact layout, design decisions and programming–as it will inevitably challenge your assumptions and help you work towards clarity.

Your important tools are:

  1. Knowing your audience,
  2. Questioning your assumptions,
  3. Writing, re-writing, and writing again, and
  4. Working with others to gain clarity and provide understanding.

~Mary Alexander

Curating the Curators: Perspectives from MSMC Committee

/ Ricky Punzalan

TUNE IN FOR A NEW SERIES!

We’re starting a new blog post series called “Curating the Curators: Perspectives from MSMC Committee” in which  committee members of the certificate program give his/her view on museum scholarship and material culture (MSMC) topics.

We’re excited to feature our committee members’ voices on MSMC issues and read their stories not just as curators but as educators, researchers, and scholars of diverse subjects.  Take a seek peek of what’s to come: Committee Bios.

{Stay tuned for posts from our committee by subscribing to receive posts as they’re published each week (or so). Submit your email on the right side of this page, or “follow” us if you use wordpress.}

WHAT ABOUT THE COMMITTEE?

Beyond keeping the certificate program funded and functional, the Committee are integral to advising students on their practicum projects. Each student works closely with a committee member on the development and execution of their practicum proposals and final products. Committee members provide feedback to students on their proposals and are invaluable resources for navigating scholarship issues and local museum networks.

This series is geared toward emerging professionals and students who will work with the committee in various capacities. However, their thoughts and experiences are careful reflections we hope will reach colleagues in and beyond our network to continue conversations about how we use scholarship in our work everyday.

Join us in the coming weeks as we get to know the MSMC committee members!

This Thursday: Exhibit Opening at College Park Aviation Museum

/ Ricky Punzalan

You are Invited to the Exhibit Opening

for

Over Here & Over There: College Park and Prince George’s County in World War I

CPAviationPic

at the College Park Aviation Museum

Thursday, March 24
6 – 8 p.m.  – FREE
Drop in to be one of the first to see the exhibit and enjoy light refreshments.

Explore the development of aircraft, discover how the first military pilots influenced aviation during and after WWI and learn about the role of Prince George’s County and its residents during the war.

Latino Museum Studies Program

/ Ricky Punzalan

ATTENTION CURRENTLY ENROLLED GRADUATE STUDENTS.

The application for the 2016 Latino Museum Studies Program is now available!

This six week program seeks to enhance leadership, research, and creative skills through a series of lectures, workshops, and behind-the-scenes tours of Smithsonian museums and collections. Program focuses on developing museum practice within a framework of Latino Cultural Studies.

Applications are being accepted through APRIL 8, 2016!

Learn more about the Latino Museum Studies Program.

Museum Opportunities

/ Ricky Punzalan

In the past several weeks we’ve received a couple new museum opportunities we’d like to share with our network.

2016 Summer Internships at Alaskan Museums:

ASM-internship Pic

The Alaska State Museum (ASM) is continuing to coordinate summer internships at small museums and Tribal cultural centers throughout Alaska. These 8 week summer internships will begin in late May or early June and will encompass one or more of the following areas: collections management, exhibit development, collections database management, and collections research. Although the project sites are at small museums with volunteer or limited professional staffing, there will be ongoing supervision by the ASM Curator of Museum Services. Applications should be emailed to scott.carrlee@alaska.gov by Friday, February 5. See the linked flyer for more information: Alaskan summer Internships 2016.

Political History Curator Position Open Until Feb. 15th:

A Smithsonian Curator position was posted for a Political History Curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History​. You can view the announcement on USAjobs here: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/426702800

If you have an opportunity for our network of students and alumni, feel free to send us the details to post on our website. Email sjanesko@umd.edu.

Post-Symposium Thoughts

/ Ricky Punzalan

Symposium on Museum Scholarship and Material Culture of Prince George’s County: Starting the Conversation

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Dr. Judith Freidenberg gives opening remarks at the Symposium

This past Tuesday, Dec. 8th, the MSMC Certificate held a symposium to discuss ways in which the University of Maryland and museum and cultural organizations in Prince George’s County can better collaborate. It was well attended with over 35 participants representing over 20 museums and cultural organizations in the county.

The following notes provide a summary of topics discussed and key points made by speakers and attendees, followed by a reflection of the event by one of the Certificate students.

Use - IMG_20151208_171427_385Dr. Judith Freidenberg, Director of the Museum Scholarship and Material Culture Graduate Certificate program at the University of Maryland opened the evening with remarks about the purpose of the symposium. She highlighted the importance of creating stronger links between the University and the cultural and museum organizations in the county, especially for the Museum Certificate students who are preparing to enter the field as new professionals. Dr. Freidenberg also explained that this will be a conversation about “how to best work collectively to address common issues and problems.”

Four speakers addressed symposium participants beginning with Dean Gregory Ball of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland. Dean Ball spoke of his support of this event, having grown up in Prince George’s County and fondly remembering museum experiences.

Dean Ball said,“universities and museums are significant cultural institutions which can change the conversation” and incorporate new methods into museums and academia.

Susan Pearl, Historian with the Prince George’s County Historical Society gave a brief history of the county, drawing on the rich cultural outlets since its founding. Cities like Upper Marlboro, Bladensburg, Piscataway, and College Park have had a long history of theater, art, musical performance, and exhibits which continue to thrive today.

Use - IMG_20151208_172540_657The rich history and culture in the County that Mrs. Pearl described was echoed by John Peter Thompson, Chair of the Prince George’s County Historic Preservation Commission. He spoke about the county’s over 500 historic sites which provide opportunities to explore many aspects of the county’s cultures and history. He spoke highly of the resources at the Prince George’s Historical Society library open to anyone and located in the Greenbelt Library building with special collections pertaining to the county and beyond.

Aaron Marcavitch, Director of Maryland Milestones, described the importance of “Heritage areas” as cultural landscapes created to preserve the meaning of these spaces without owning or restricting the land. He engaged participants to consider the benefits of making tourism work for the small and sometimes remote museums and organizations in the county.

Think about local museums and organizations as an alternative form of recreation to mainstream tourist locations in Washington, DC., he exhorted.

The speakers set the tone for the conversations that happened around each table of symposium participants. Issues discussed included:

  • How to better represent the diversity of the County’s history?
  • Addressing the transient population within the county
  • Engaging stakeholders – getting people to care about and invest in cultural organizations
  • Leveraging County projects like new construction and transportation outlets to get better signage for smaller museums
  • How to better work with the public schools
  • Uniting museum “Friends Groups” to discuss shared challenges
  • Acknowledging what museum staff don’t know in order to address gaps
  • Creating new ways to track visitors
  • Better awareness of home school opportunities – bulletin boards, parent groups, brochures, as field trip sites
  • Use social media to connect with broader audiences outside of the museum spaces

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Once groups shared their conversations about common issues, Dr. Freidenberg asked

“What are your organizations are good at? How can we use these successes to help each other?”

Some responses included:

Then the discussion led to ideas about improving communication and resource access between the University of Maryland, College Park and the County museums and organizations. Comments included:

  • How to connect students with organizations for class projects and internships
    • The Prince George’s Historical Society reported 5 graduate students working on projects through word-of-mouth references
  • Can county organizations have access to University library resources?
  • Two-way sharing between individual organizations and the Museum Certificate program via website (umdmuseumcert.wordpress.com).
    • Announce events, internships, write a guest post about an important topic, or contribute an exhibit review, etc.
  • Contact the Museum Certificate program about hosting the Certificate’s graduate class on a tour of your museum, or hosting a graduate student for their practicum project.

 

Reflection from a Student

Sarah Janesko
Masters of Applied Anthropology Student
Museum Scholarship and Material Culture Certificate student
Class of 2016

This event was successful in bringing people together in a single room to talk about relevant issues. It was successful because everyone who attended cares about their organization and community. It was successful because participants were not afraid to talk about what is lacking in their organizations, and about what goes right.

There is a lot to be said for the presence of University faculty, a dean, students and local museum and material cultural professionals starting a conversation together in one room. However, big issues were discussed that can’t be easily solved in 2 or 3 hours. Getting to “success” in the long-term will involve action by all parties to continue the conversation.

It felt similar to our seminars as part of the Certificate program. Students discuss scholarship issues around the classroom table and then visit museums and talk to the directors and curators about how they handle community partnership, collections management, accessibility, diversity and many other issues. Understanding how different museums implement the scholarship in their daily work and programs is critical to reproducing those successes elsewhere.

Hopefully, this is what the Symposium has started with the museums in Prince George’s County – thinking about 1) what programs, initiatives and goals were successful, and 2) the ways to receive help from and 3) give help to other museums and organizations working toward similar goals.

Has your school, organization, museum, historical society had luck with partnerships like this? What made them successful in the long-run?

Scholarship for Small Museum Association Conference

/ Ricky Punzalan

The annual Small Museum Association (SMA) conference attracts more than 250 museum professionals, board members, and volunteers from a wide variety of small museums. They attend sessions on topics ranging from collections and education to staffing and board issues. We offer a large Museum Resource Hall and plenty of informal networking opportunities for you to talk with (and get ideas from!) other small museum professionals and volunteers.

This year, the conference theme Museums and More will encourage speakers and attendees to explore the ways in which museums are pushing themselves beyond their traditional roles to reach out to and serve their communities. The conference will take place in Ocean City, Maryland on February 14th – Feb 16th 2016.

SMA offers scholarships each year through the generosity of past conference organizers and attendees as well as several partner organizations. All scholarships cover the cost of conference registration as well as hotel stay and most meals. Anyone affiliated with a museum, library, historical society, or related graduate study program (e.g. Museum Studies, Public History, Library and Information Studies, Historic Preservation) is eligible for the SMA Scholarships. This includes full-time or part-time employees, board members, students, interns, and volunteers.

Applications may be submitted by e-mail or mail by November 27, 2015.

For more information go to: http://www.smallmuseum.org/Awards