Call for Nominations: 2013 SAA Waldo Gifford Leland Award

Call for Nominations: 2013 SAA Waldo Gifford Leland Award

Please help us to recognize the best in our profession!

Have you read a great new book about archives? Seen an exceptional new finding aid? Encountered a new documentary publication that is head and shoulders above the rest? Has a new web publication really stood out to you?

If you have, please consider nominating it for the Society of American Archivists Waldo Gifford Leland Award. Nomination forms, a list of previous winners, and more information are at http://www2.archivists.org/governance/handbook/section12-leland. The deadline for nominations is February 28, 2013.

The annual Leland Award – a cash prize and certificate – recognizes “writing of superior excellence and usefulness in the field of archival history, theory, and practice.”
(Please note that periodicals are not eligible.)

Established in 1959, this award honors American archival pioneer Waldo Gifford Leland (1879-1966), president of the Society of American Archivists in the1940s and one of the driving forces behind the founding of the National Archives.

Join OMSI for the ExhibitSEED: Beyond Green Exhibits Workshop

The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) is presenting 5 regional workshops this spring on sustainable exhibit development. At this one-day hands-on workshop, exhibit developers, designers, and fabricators will discuss practical skills for creating more sustainable interactive exhibits. The workshop will focus on case studies and concrete tools that allow exhibit teams to make more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable choices throughout the exhibit development process.

There will be a series of five workshops this spring. We are currently registering for the first workshop which will take place on February 25, 2012, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (1945 SE Water Ave, Portland, OR). The other workshops will be hosted by the Children’s Museum of Houston, the Miami Science Museum, the Science Museum of Minnesota, and The Franklin Institute.

To register, or for more information, visit www.exhibitseed.org.

The workshop is free for selected participants. Participants may also request travel funding. ExhibitSEED and the ExhibitSEED workshops are funded by the National Science Foundation and developed by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) with input from local and national museum industry and design advisors.

Charles Redd Center for Western Studies Announces Multiple Awards for 2013

The Charles Redd Center for Western Studies is pleased to announce multiple awards for 2013 that are available for scholars conducting research related to Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

Please see the descriptions below or click here for further information and instructions for applying for each award.  Applications for 2013 are due by 11:59 pm MST on March 15. Please note the application website will be down for maintenance through the end of 2012 and will be available beginning January 1, 2013.

The Redd Center offers the following awards:

Faculty Research Awards provide up to $3,000 to faculty members at any academic institution to conduct research on any topic related to Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.  Research may be conducted at any location.

Independent Research and Creative Awards provide up to $1,500 to researchers studying Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming who are not connected to an academic institution.  Research may be conducted at any location.

Summer Awards for Upper Division and Graduate Students at any academic institution provide up to $1,500 for research support for any topic related to Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.  Research may be conducted at any location.

Annaley Naegle Redd Student Award in Women’s History provides up to $1,500 for research support concerning any aspect of women’s history in the American West (not limited to the Intermountain West).  Research may be conducted at any location.

Public Programming Awards provide up to $3,000 to any organization planning a conference, museum exhibit or lecture series on a topic related to Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

Fellowship Awards in Western American History provide up to $3,500 in research support for scholars who travel to BYU to use the L. Tom Perry Special Collections in the Harold B. Lee Library.

Visiting Scholar Program provides a housing stipend and office facilities for 2-4 months to enable university faculty of all ranks, independent scholars, freelance authors and other public intellectuals to visit and conduct research at BYU.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMITTING AN APPLICATION:

To apply for an award, visit the Redd Center website (http://reddcenter.byu.edu), and click on “Apply for an Award” on the right hand side of the homepage. You will then be taken to our awards application page. Select the award for which you would like to apply from the drop-down menu and complete your application. After you have completed your application, you will be given the opportunity to submit with or without printing your application for your records. We strongly encourage you to print a copy for your records. You will then receive a message indicating that your application has been successfully submitted. In addition, you will receive and email confirmation at the email address you list on your application. If you have any questions about the application process, or submitting your application, please contact Mary Nelson at 801-422-4048 or by email at mary_nelson@byu.edu

Applied Anthropologist at WMA 2012

By: Ashley Meredith – Doctoral Student, University of South Florida

The opportunity to attend the Western Museum Association meetings could not have been possible without the assistance of the WMA Board and Wanda Chin Scholarship they provided to me for the 75th Annual Meeting! The WMA stands out as one of the most committed organizations to professional development and collaboration between young researchers and museum practitioners that I have experienced. I give a big Thank You to the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and residents of Palm Springs for welcoming us to their wonderfully sunny Palm Springs!

The 75th WMA Annual Meeting marks my first attendance to a conference on museums; I was impressed with how well everyone communicated and encouraged not just networking but meeting and knowing each other! It was a pleasurable experience–the people, the location and the weather combined made the experience complete.

Concentrating in cultural anthropology and people in the Pacific, focusing on the anthropology of museums and heritage tourism, it is important to become familiar with the construction of museum exhibits, the discipline of museum studies and those who work with museums. As an applied anthropologist, I’m honored. Attending the WMA Annual Meeting provided a plethora of opportunities for me to represent the University of South Florida (USF) and to personally interact with museum practitioners. Through this experience, I learned a variety of their creative skills and had the unique opportunity to communicate with them about their ideas towards sustainable relationships between museums and the people represented in them. This conference exposed me to current research on museums, exhibitions, and curatorial responsibilities and will inform me to better address the challenges confronting contemporary museums and sustainable tourism. Upon my return to USF, I shared this new information with my department and certification program in museum studies to promote the scholarship associated with museums. My institution will benefit by connecting with the west coast and diversifying its collaborative research opportunities.

During the conference, I participated in a session to which Tarisi Sorovi-Vunidilo invited me and two students, Marion Cadora and Brinker Ferguson, through our mutual colleague Dr. Stacy Kamehiro (a professor in the Visual Studies program at the University of California in Santa Cruz). This presentation was a result of a course I enrolled in at the University of South Forida (USF) with Jane Simon, the museum curator at USFs Contemporary Art Museum (CAM), and my Master’s fieldwork on perceptions of Hawaiianness by residents of Hawai’i Island in 2009.

In my session, I met four wonderful women in research! Their research in the Pacific was unlike any I have seen before attending this conference. Brinker Ferguson spoke on innovative ideas of digital repatriation and its associated issues. Marion Cadora discussed Papua New Guinea and Tarisi Sorovi-Vunidilo discussed the activities of the Pacific Islands Museum Association (PIMA) and PIMA’s collaboration with Pacific Arts Association (PAA). Having this session on Monday facilitated meeting researchers in the Pacific fluidly.

After a day of presentation, Marion Cadora, Brinker Ferguson, Tarisi and her husband, and I shared dinner together in Palm Springs where we learned of Tarisi’s work in the Pacific! It was this set of conversations that led four of us to visit Joshua Tree National Park at sunrise just before the next sessions began on Tuesday at 9am in Palm Springs!

 

 

 

 

On Tuesday, Marion Cadora and I attended Tarisi’s roundtable discussion on museums in the Pacific. In this round table, I met Karen Kosasa who spoke extensively with me about the relationship between tourism and museums. The conference represented a unique opportunity to remain informed on the latest theories and methods in museum studies. Moreover, because other disciplines are represented besides anthropology, the WMA conference was a prime opportunity to meet Academy members who share similar interests and brainstorm about exciting new research avenues.

My main goal for attending the WMA conference was to present the results of my on-going research in museum, tourism and cultural anthropology in Hawaiʼi. This was first time Iʼve found a museum session I could attend that was totally devoted the Pacific and in ways my research focused and it was graduate student panel on museums in the Pacific. As I embark on my dissertation research, this conference connected me with many people working with the Pacific.

The meeting has been the catalyst for several innovative interdisciplinary project ideas as the conference was also a great resource to pursue collaborations. Overall, attending the conference was a great complement to academic journals as a way to stay current with research in sociocultural anthropology, to create contacts with colleagues from all around the world, and possibly to develop new partnerships with different institutions and/or disciplines.

 

Ashley Meredith, a doctoral student from the Department of Applied Anthropology at the University of South Florida and participant in the museum studies certification program, specializes in sociocultural research in the Pacific (Hawai’i), Europe, and Central America. She focuses on host-guest perceptions of local culture, the role of museums and policies in shaping those perceptions, issues associated with cultural heritage resource management and organizations involved in governing the identification and treatment of heritage resources such as UNESCO.

2012 Redd Award Recipient: Exhibition Overview

By: Elizabeth Sutton

Through the Looking Glass: Obsidian Travel and Trade in the Great Basin, Recipient of the 2012 Charles Redd Center for Western Studies Award for Exhibition Excellence

The Utah State University Museum of Anthropology was honored at this year’s Western Museums Association Annual Meeting in Palm Springs as the recipient of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies Award for Exhibition Excellence. The award was presented in recognition of the museum’s exhibit, Through the Looking Glass: Obsidian Travel and Trade in the Great Basin. This award is particularly meaningful to the USU Museum of Anthropology as we are a small teaching museum and committed to offering free admission and programming to the community.

The exhibit, Through the Looking Glass: Obsidian Travel and Trade in the Great Basin, at the Utah State University Museum of Anthropology.

Fifty years ago, our museum was unofficially founded in the basement of the Old Main building at Utah State University, as anthropology faculty began displaying archaeological artifacts and ethnographic items in cases in the hallway. Very much a labor of love by the anthropology faculty, the museum evolved over the years and was granted exhibition and curation space by the university, which was then filled with collections obtained by faculty during their course of their research and by select donations from community members. Currently, the Museum of Anthropology employs one full time Deputy Director who teaches courses in museum studies and anthropology, and oversees approximately thirty part time students each semester with program design and management, exhibition design and evaluation, and curation. The museum serves not only the students, faculty, and staff of Utah State University, but also the 100,000 residents of Cache Valley in Northern Utah. Our popular Saturdays at the Museum of Anthropology, funded by an IMLS Museums for America grant, provides free cultural programming almost every Saturday throughout the year. Students majoring in Anthropology and enrolled in USU’s interdisciplinary certificate in Museum Studies design each Saturday’s program around a theme, and engage audiences in hands-on activities and presentations by local scholars, artists, and experts.

As a university museum, we often struggle with the task of interpreting current scholarly research in relevant and engaging ways for our patrons. Interpreting academic journal articles for the general public is clearly not easy, but when it is successful, it has the power to bring the community together to appreciate and enthusiastically support academic pursuits and initiatives at the university.  In the fall of 2010, former Museum of Anthropology curator, Monique Pomerleau, and a group of anthropology and museum studies students began to plan the Through the Looking Glass exhibit as a vehicle to garner support for archaeological research conducted by Utah State University faculty. Everyone knows that archaeologists like to study rocks, but though this exhibit we hoped to educate people as to WHY archaeologists spend so much time with rocks. Using case studies of current archaeological research, the Through the Looking Glass exhibit explores the science and technology of obsidian studies, what obsidian was used for in the past, and how archaeologists use data from obsidian studies to reconstruct the behavior and movements of ancient peoples as they moved across the vast landscape of the Great Basin.

Under the mentorship of Ms. Pomerleau, students researched current articles on obsidian studies, wrote exhibit text, and agreed on the design of the exhibit. The success of our museum projects always relies on the collaboration of students, staff, faculty, and the community. A community member hand-built the base of the main exhibit structure and students spent hours sanding down the extremely treacherous edges of obsidian cobbles so that patrons would not be inadvertently injured.  Maps and other visuals were prepared in the Utah State University Spatial Data Collection Analysis and Visualization Lab as a joint project between museum and Geospatial lab staff and students.

Anthropology student Sarah Mooso carefully polishes obsidian cobbles for the exhibit.

Through the Looking Glass: Obsidian Travel and Trade in the Great Basin opened on January 22, 2011 with much fanfare. Community support was high and patrons turned out to see the new exhibit and enjoy flint knapping demonstrations highlighting the obsidian tool manufacturing process. Community feedback from the opening and subsequent exhibit tours has been extremely positive. The new exhibit is located next to our permanent exhibits on Ancient Life in the Great Basin which is frequently visited during school group tours. Local teachers consistently relate that they believe the Through the Looking Glass exhibit is a wonderful addition to our museum, and a needed contrast to the permanent cultural history exhibits. After learning about the history of human occupation of the Great Basin, students acquire knowledge as to specific methods professors at the university currently employ to continue to make discoveries as to how people lived in the region in the past.

A flint knapping demonstration during the exhibit opening engages audiences and illustrates the obsidian tool manufacturing process.

The Utah State University Museum of Anthropology is grateful to the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies Award for granting us this award for exhibition excellence. This recognition is especially meaningful to our museum because we are committed to providing our students with professional skills and confidence in their ability to successfully compete in the museum employment market after graduation.

 

Elizabeth Sutton received her B.A. in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles and her M.A. in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is currently a Ph.D candidate in Anthropology at UCSB where she specializes in household archaeology. With over 12 years of experience in education and 7 years of museum experience, Elizabeth has trained countless students and volunteers in curation and museum management and held curatorial positions with the John Cooper Archaeology and Paleontology Center at Cal State Fullerton, the National Park Service, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, and the UCSB Repository for Archaeological and Ethnographic Collections. She currently serves as deputy director/curator of the Utah State University Museum of Anthropology where she also teaches courses in anthropology and museum studies and directs the interdisciplinary certificate program in museum studies for both undergraduate and graduate students.

Oregon History Day Restarted!

By: Keni Sturgeon

For those who are not aware, National History Day (NHD) is an academic competition centered on aspects of American history for students in grades 6-12.  Each year, more than 500,000 students nationwide, encouraged by thousands of teachers, participate in the NHD contest. Students (as individuals or groups) choose historical topics related to a theme, conduct primary and secondary research through libraries, archives, museums, oral history interviews and historic sites, analyze and interpret sources and draw conclusions about their topics’ significance in history. Students then present their work in original papers, websites, exhibits, performances or documentaries. Their submissions are entered into competitions in the spring at local and state levels where they are evaluated by professional historians and educators. The program culminates in the Kenneth E. Behring National Contest held in June at the University of Maryland, College Park.

In Oregon, the Oregon Historical Society (OHS) coordinated our state-wide NHD annually since the 1990s. OHS promoted and developed the program with great success until funding became a problem in 2005. Although a small group of teachers and historians tried to keep Oregon’s NHD program going as a non-profit program, they lacked the organization of an established agency, and Oregon held its last state-wide contest in 2008.

Annie Salinas, 17-yeard old, placed first in her division in the 2011 Kenneth E. Behring National History Day Contest

Now in 2012, OHS has once again taken the lead on this important program. The institution’s recently hired Education & School Services Manager, Denise Brock, has taken on the leadership role for our state’s NHD. She held a workshop for teachers on Oct 12^th about how to get Oregon History Day started in their classrooms, and OHS is very near to attaining a grant for the winners of junior and senior divisions for all categories that will cover transportation to the National Contest. The next step is finding venues for the various regions in the state to have places to compete and then to prepare for the state-wide contest on May 4, 2013. In addition, Denise will need to train judges in each region. She is also informing educators about how they can best use OHS’s research resources (on site and online) to teach their students the thrill of discovering and using primary sources in their projects.

“So, this is exciting! I am a former high school history teacher, so I feel equipped to support teachers in a strong way with the process,” said Denise in a recent email conversation.

Getting set up for the exhibit category at National History Day finals

Courtney Lupton-Turner, Talented and Gifted Specialist for K-12 in Jefferson County School District 509J, applauds OHS for retaking the state’s Nation History Day program and has supported the effort though letters to granting agencies. “National History Day is a great fit for Oregon because it provides a unique opportunity for students to participate in a year-long in-depth research experience…. the National History Day program, with its endorsement from the Oregon Historical Society, provides me an outstanding framework within which I could build an enriched strand of instruction for our students…. As our NHD program developed it grew to include school administrators, teachers, parents, community members and local historians who all worked together to promote and participate in the program. I am so grateful that the Oregon Historical Society is once again making National History Day a priority for our students and I fully support their efforts to make this project a reality.”

Last year in Oregon, only two schools competed. As of November 2012, we are up to eleven schools. Hopefully even more will decide to enter. Oregon Historical Society’s leadership for the program not only allows for better promotion and coordination at a state-wide level, it has created a fund to help offset the travel costs for Oregon students selected to participate in the National Contest, who would otherwise not be able to attend. OHS is helping to provide the opportunity for Oregon’s students to have experiences of a lifetime – experiences discovering the exciting world of the past though our state’s museums, archives and historical societies.

 

Keni Sturgeon is the Curator and Museum Director at the Willamette Heritage Center, as well as adjunct faculty at the University of Oklahoma and Linfield College teaching Museum Studies courses. She received her M.A. in Anthropology and Museum Studies from Arizona State University and in now in her 16^th year in the museum profession. She is the Past Chair of AAM’s Committee on Audience Research and Evaluation, as well as a former board member of the Oregon Museums Association.

Thinking Outside the Box

By: Brooke Devenney

This year’s Western Museums Association Annual Meeting in Palm Springs was an insightful and interesting experience for someone like myself just starting out in their museum career. The theme I took from this year’s Annual Meeting and conference was the idea of “thinking outside the box,” both literally and figuratively. Two of the sessions I attended demonstrated this idea most effectively. The first was “Whats Now/What’s Next 2012: Showcasing the New and Notable of the West’s Most Innovative Projects and Programs” led by Robert Checchi, Senior Designer at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The second focused on two local projects that I am familiar with and that literally think outside the box with their innovative use of architecture through a combination of preservation and restoration. This session was “Creating Cultural Resources: Restoring and Rehabilitating Modern Buildings,” moderated by Sidney Williams, Curator of Architecture and Design at the Palm Springs Art Museum.

As you can see, both of these sessions focus on interesting and groundbreaking projects executed in Southern California, but through the course of conference I was amazed at the range of great projects and exhibitions being created at museums and universities from Alaska to Utah. I would like to start with the first session I attended at the conference and the one that really created excitement for the rest of the conference. During “What’s Now/What’s Next” Robert Checchi presented a view of museum exhibition display and educational interaction that was completely new to me. He demonstrated recently developed and interesting ways that technology can be integrated into a visitor’s interaction with the artwork.

In the Getty Museum’s current exhibition, The Life of Art: Context, Collecting, and Display Robert has created an interactive component to deconstruct the featured artworks using iPads as part of the exhibition. On the iPads is a hands-on program that the museum has created internally to help decode the different elements of artworks selected from the museum’s permanent collection. The Getty features the interactive program on their website so you can try it out for yourself. As the viewer learns more about different elements of the featured work the discreet parts literally come alive, revealing their full color. According to Robert, and I agree, not only does this encourage the viewer to learn about the different aspects of a complicated work of art, it also encourages the viewer to look at the real artwork on display. Other projects at various museums in the session featured different ways that technology can be used to give people a point of access to varying types of museum collections.

The second session I would like to cite is “close to my heart” because I have worked with Curator Sidney Williams, along with architect Leo Marmol, on one of the featured projects in “Creating Cultural Resources.” Both projects in this session, the Palm Springs Art Museum’s new Architecture and Design Center, Edwards Harris Pavilion and the Annenberg Estate, Center and Gardens at Sunnylands, are examples of Modern architectural buildings that have been restored, rehabilitated, and adapted to new uses. During the past year I have worked with Sidney on the museum’s Architecture and Design Center, Edwards Harris Pavilion, the site of the former Santa Fe Federal Savings and Loan bank in Palm Springs.

The museum acquired the building with the intention of rehabilitating it to be used as an architecture and design center. The Palm Springs Art Museum’s webpage about the project has further details and great Julius Shulman images of the original building. Through this project the museum has the opportunity to work with Marmol Radziner Architects who designate a whole portion of their architectural work to restoration, including sites like the Kaufmann house  by Richard Neutra in Palm Springs. During the session Leo Marmol spoke about the need for old buildings, like the Architecture and Design Center, to be rehabilitated and adapted to new use, not only to preserve the historical value of their Modern heritage, but also in considering a more sustainable approach to building. The museum is also excited to set a new precedent by housing an architecture and design center in a museum that is itself a Class 1 historic site. The museum feels that this is a new and different way about thinking about museum expansion as well, since the Architecture and Design Center is also a part of the museum’s permanent collection, itself a work of art.

Through these two sessions I was able to obtain a new outlook on the way museums can interact with the public and “think outside the box” for their programming. In “What’s Now/What’s Next” the new idea was the exploration of new ways of using technology to engage the viewer in a work of art. In “Creating Cultural Resources” I learned even more about how museums can “think outside the box” about the role of their institution in relationship to it’s own architecture, rehabilitation, and sustainability.

Brooke Devenney grew up in La Quinta, California and graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2008 with a dual Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Studio Art. Upon graduation Brooke took a position as Special Events Coordinator at the Palm Springs Art Museum, and for the past three years has held the concurrent positions as Architecture and Design Council Coordinator, Photography Collection Council Coordinator, and Collectors Forum Administrator. These positions have given her first-hand experiences with architecture, photography and Contemporary art while working with the Senior Curator and Curator of Architecture and Design. She currently works at the Palm Springs Art Museum as Curatorial Administrator while obtaining her Master of Arts in Art History at the University of California, Riverside.

Photo credits:

Mounts attributed to Wolfgang Howzer
Porcelain: Japanese, about 1650; Mounts: English, about 1670 Hard-paste porcelain, underglaze blue decoration; gilt metal mounts Collection J. Paul Getty Museum

Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture and Design Center, Edwards Harris Pavilion. Rendering by Marmol Radziner Architects.