Thesis Post #2: We Live in a Society

Right now, I want to start focusing on ideas related to sociology and power dynamics. I received a lot of feedback from my advisors and Dr. Lent to look into the relationship that the Tonga people have with the dominant ethnic groups of Zimbabwe, so my next step is to do that. One source that my secondary advisor recommended explains what happens when an ethnic group has to commoditize its culture for economic gain. It is possible that the BaTonga Community Museum - a state-sanctioned museum - may be contributing to generalizations about the Tonga people or making local artisans only show off traditional arts rather than contemporary ideas. I don't know what the case is yet, but I'll see as I do more research.

Post #7: The Cold Numbing the Fingers that Type a Thesis

My goal over winter break is to read the sources recommended to me by my secondary advisor, Professor Casey from the Anthropology department. She provided me with a lot of sociological/anthropological sources, some of which couldn't make it into my lit review, but I will start reading them over the break. I will still be volunteering at the Air and Space Museum from Wednesdays through Saturdays, so that leaves the rest of the week to do reading. I plan to count all the articles, and then budget how many to finish each week. I'll be taking notes as I go, so hopefully, by the time Spring semester starts, I'll have a rough outline of talking points for my thesis. This will also help me compile a list of focused questions for my advisors and Dr. Lent.

Changes to my Research!

My research question in particular has changed over the course of the semester. As I've done more and more research into my topic and talked more to my professors about the Hostile Terrain exhibition I've shifted my question to become more focused. My purpose in the exhibition will be more public and community outreach and helping to table writing events that contribute to the exhibition. To follow in line with my purpose in the exhibition I've made my research question this: "How do museums and exhibitions engage visitors and their communities with contemporary human rights issues, such as the humanitarian crisis on the US-Mexico border?" Now I've taken a greater focus in visitor/community engagement and contemporary human rights issues. I have also found two case examples for my research which I've already begun to read about! I am using the Tenement and Holocaust Museums in New York City. Each one has amazing projects to reach out to their visitors and surrounding communities to engage with not only historical, but contemporary human rights issues such as immigration, refugees, genocide, and antisemitism. From this I see my research evolving to include doing short impromptu interviews with people in the writing sessions for the Hostile Terrain Exhibition to gain insight on their feelings and thoughts about engaging with this material and about being a part of the exhibition.

Post #5: The Light of Knowledge Shone Upon the Topic

Before saying what I have learned, I'll start with restating my research question, which has been recently revised, “How can African and Asian museums identify the European influences within their professional practices, deconstruct those influences, and form new models that better serve to reaffirm their native cultures?” Firstly, I have learned that Non-European museums are more willing to tackle controversial topics related to imperialism than European museums. For example, even in the French overseas territory of Reunion Island, in the planned Maison des Civilisations et de l’Unité Réunionnaise (MCUR), the staff was prepared to interpret the history of slavery on the island. Secondly, Non-European museums tend to interpret native cultural patrimony and ethnographic objects differently than European museums traditionally do. European museums have displayed these cultural objects as primitive or in such a way as to imply that the cultures that produced them are historical rather than modern. Museums in the countries/territories themselves, however, interpret their cultural objects as part of an ongoing story about the people -- the past informs both the present and the future. They want to distance themselves from a view that their cultures are primitive or dead.

Thirdly, I have learned about some of the challenges museums face in Africa and Asia. The MCUR was never ultimately created because of political backlash from the French mainland. Funding is a big problem in developing countries, where the central government does not have much money to spare to support cultural institutions. In recently independent countries, many museums face the struggle of convincing the public that they are no longer puppets of the former imperialist governments. Local communities often distrust museums because of the theft and appropriation of their cultural artifacts, and the apparent pandering to tourists. The National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe (NMMZ) is attempting to counteract these historical tensions and build relationships with communities by establishing "community museums" that promote local culture, including arts, language, and crafts. Because of the NMMZ's decolonizing efforts and culture affirmation, I have chosen one of their community museums, the BaTonga Community Museum as my case study.

I still need to learn about the sociological/anthropological reasons why it is important for a cultural group to have agency over the presentation of their own culture. It could also be interesting to look more into why communities distrust institutions. There may be some psychological and political aspects there. I also have to do more research about the history of European globalization and colonization, especially of the British in Zimbabwe.

Hello World!

     Hello, my name is Rachel Baldwin and I am a fourth year Anthropology/Sociology and Museum Studies double major. I'm interested in history, science, and technology museums and how they engage visitors. It's interesting how they handle visitors of different ages, ethnicities, and abilities. I'm also interested in socioeconomic inequality and immigration in the US. I've also held and interest in LGBTQ+ studies and gender studies. Outside of my majors, I love to do martial arts, watch cartoons and shows, and paint on occasion. 
     I'm still very new to the Museum Studies field, but I've had a little experience to help me. This past summer, I had an internship with the Genesee Country Village and Museum (GCV&M). I worked in collections cataloging new acquisitions, inventorying the collection, taking photographs of objects, helping to create a public digital database, moving objects, and doing minor cleaning and polishing of objects. I also had the opportunity to write a small essay about an object of my choosing, a police lantern, that was posted to a social media blog. I was lucky to have interned there and I learned so much about working in a museum, the GCV&M helped me so much! I've also taken a class called the Legal and Ethical Issues of Collecting which taught me many of the skills I used in my internship and helped me contextualize the work I did. Below is an image of the Wehle Galley at GCV&M.