Senior Studio — Beyond the Museum Walls

Museums are struggling to achieve their goal of servicing society and its development. In order to survive, museums must find ways to expand their community segments — embracing those that do not already go to the museum and reinvent themselves to be relevant across social, cultural, economic, and technological changes. What are other alternatives to reach the non-museum goer and provide memorable experiences that build a connection between them and the museum?

Project Goals:

Create experiences beyond the walls and ideas of the current exhibit in new meaningful, participatory, and inclusive ways. Specifically, your work is expected to support the thinking of future exhibitions in the areas of:

• Attracting and retaining existing and new audiences.
• Creating new types of content and delivery methods to expand and show the museum collection remotely with an improved authentic experience for the visitor/participant.
• Creating new ways for the museum to engage and collect insights from visitors/participant
• Decolonizing exhibitions by representing broader perspectives and contributions including those from the local communities
• Having a positive social and cultural impact in the local communities through broader access, active participation, and education
• Leveraging new technologies to improve awareness, access, and the overall museum experience
• Communicate how it ties back to the CMOA

Visiting the Carnegie Museum of Art exhibition “Extraordinary Ordinary Things.”

Considering the assignment is based on the CMOA exhibit Extraordinary Ordinary Things, to find inspiration, I visited the exhibit. Walking through the space I recorded greater themes that came to mind when looking at the objects displayed in the cases.

Gender Roles

Looking at the selection of teapots and vegetable dishes, I thought of the women who spent their time within the household in the late 1920s. I thought of the woman designers that had experienced that lifestyle themselves, creating a better experience for the women that continued to be a housewife. I thought about the role objects had in representing and reinforcing rigid gender roles.

Walking past the handcrafted section, I thought about the value and importance of craftspeople, a field that is slowly being wiped out through the processes of mass manufacturing. I thought about how mass manufacturing created the suburban and consumeristic culture that we live in currently, with little thought and care given to most of our objects. Inherently this exhibit is trying to bring back that feeling of deeper appreciation for objects that we have since then lost.

Sharing Knowledge

The initial section of bookshelves was fascinating to me. Besides the aspect of individual form and function across these different objects, it pushed me to think about the role of the shelves in holding tangible objects that are a source of intangible value — knowledge. I thought about the community Pittsburgh has formed around public “bookshelves” with the Little Free Libraries.

Appropriation

Whenever I see British artifacts within a museum, I always attempt to see the inherent South Asian influence present within these objects. Museums largely represent stolen cultures to me, and I will get frustrated seeing both Asian artifacts in a Western museum and Western artifacts with a large Asian influence. This exhibit attempted to address that issue by including objects that had been appropriated in the past.

What is a Museum’s Purpose

Museums tend to represent European supremacy and are often an exclusive space. They don’t include vast communities in determining what artifacts are important, nor do they tend to give credit to the deserving parties. With this pop-up museum experience, can we begin to question what museums symbolize and expand our understanding of the space?

Whiteboarding Thoughts

Carrie Furnace Trip

09/10/21

Place-Based Education

With the Carrie Furnace trip, I was reminded about the importance of understanding the history of the place that we are living in. Considering the types of audiences we reach with the places that we are placing our exhibit, we have a large opportunity with teaching people about Pittsburgh.

With both the museum and the furnace there is an opportunity to understand how people used to live in Pittsburgh, develop a deeper appreciation for this city. I feel that a general consensus among the college students here is a lack of love for Pittsburgh, even though there is a lot to appreciate about the city.

All the art within the exhibit gave value back to the different materials at Carrie Furnace that was once central parts of the life of the different workers at Carrie Furnace.

Goals of Experience

• Increase appreciation for the city of Pittsburgh
• Increase understanding of the importance of physical objects
• Open up the museum experience to make history exciting

Potential How Might We Questions

• How might we increase the audience’s understanding of the built environment to deepen appreciation for place?
• How might we increase audience appreciation and in terms of attachment to objects in their life?
• How might we reveal the untold stories of the people behind the objects? How might we showcase the intricate and interconnected ripple effects of such objects in our society?

Ideas

• Museum participation & value — create a space in which participation within the experience is somewhat involuntary (taking from the user) the same way different cultures have been appropriated