Posts tagged museums
the faux bohemian
These guys doing the 3D scanning of the Gunboat Philadelphia are doing a good job of keeping the exhibit looking like a crazy science fiction movie with lasers and robotic arms and 3D models on laptop screens everywhere. Our in-house photographer was taking some shots of the process today and they’re going to look awesome!
I cleaned the Gunboat Philadelphia today! Which means that I was standing on the deck of a wooden boat built in the 1770s and under water for 150 years until it was retrieved from Lake Champlain. Which means that I obviously don’t need to diet in the new year.
Hey: this is why I have a job!
The Anacostia Museum has an interesting history.
Just another from the Smithsonian’s glory days.
Filming 9/11 objects for the Today show this morning. It’s depressing. I can’t wait for the exhibit where I’ll be talking about them all day…
“Pig Cafeteria.” From the collection of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture at the National Archives, and featured in the exhibit “What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?”.
It’s so awesome that the United States government had this photo taken.
Spot on.
HEY KIDS! It’s George Washington’s tent! At least, the bag it was stored in. The tent is on loan to Colonial Williamsburg at the moment. I don’t remember seeing it on exhibit there, but hey - it’s better than having it languish in storage here!
More discoveries
I spent the day rehousing some turn-of-the-century photographs of West Point in nice archival envelopes. I’d found them stuffed into a box underneath a desk in one of our storage rooms. Just as I was giving myself a big pat on the back for doing some historical good for the world today, I found an Allied invasion map of France (marked “Top Secret”) from 1944 wedged in underneath the box. Just another day…
Most of us learn history from books, but I think that it is physical objects - actual things - that most powerfully connect us to the past - things made by somebody with hands just like ours, for a purpose we can still hope to understand.
Neil MacGregor, A History of the World (via designtumblelog)
Enter the museum…
First Fridays at the LA Natural History Museum
What a great idea. Food, wine, and music at the museum for an older, hipper crowd than you’d usually find there, every first friday of the month. That’s the way you make communities want to support their museums.
Museums aren’t so old
I’m reading a PhD Dissertation on the history of film archives for my thesis, and the author mentions that “95% of all museums in existence today were created since 1945.” Her theory is that the destruction in the wake of WWII made governments in Europe and the United States prioritize preservation of heritage sites and historical objects. Interesting considering the popular conception of museums as stodgy, dusty old places. Consider the first photo that comes up when you do an image search for “museum”:
Not far off the mark, right?
