Link: The "Dot Room" Video

And now, a brief interlude for something delightful on a Saturday morning. I think this video perfectly encapsulates a peak museum experience:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanhelsington/4176481018/

I'm not usually much for cute vids, but...this is super cute. So there.

[By way of Hyperallergic.]

Free things for when you don't have a budget!

Let's start a series! I'm calling it: Free things for when you don't have a budget!


Because who has a budget?! Some of the best museum programs come from scavenged, borrowed, homemade, free, re-purposed, or imaginary materials. Sometimes I think it's more fun that way. Sometimes that's how I know I'm in the right field...

Ok, here's a good one I wish I found a long time ago. Stop using Gimp because you can't afford Photoshop in making your snappy museum publications! Instead...try Pixlr! It's online, so no downloads/IT permissions needed, and less clunky. Best for free photo editing I've found.

[I'm not, like, on the Pixlr dime or anything.]

Anyway, here's a little piece of what I made today using it...from photo to this:

Keeping Things

Museums keep things.


And we interpret, preserve, explore, and reimagine them. Today, the New York Times has a nice interactive feature called Belongings, which takes a personal look at the good old question of why we keep the things we do.


"There are three million immigrants in New York City. When they left home, knowing it could be forever, they packed what they could not bear to leave behind: necessities, luxuries, memories. Here is a look at what some of them brought."

Check it out here.

Putting Visitors to Work

Museum at Work? Why not put visitors to work?

One of my most memorable participatory museum experiences ever was at Mystic Seaport. It's pretty simple, they make a bunch of visitors work together to raise the sails of a 19th century ship. A staff "chanteyman" sings a work song to keep the pace. You're actually standing on the ship, doing it.

The physical novelty of my experience as a visitor served to underscore the extreme historical routine-ness of it. For me, I realized, this was a total break from my normal rhythms; for sailors 150 years ago, it was the most basic, even monotonous rhythm of their lives at sea.

It's an effective interpretive program because it's a relatively simple, immersive, authentic, and cooperative activity. Strangers rely on one another. It's dramatic. The sails are big, and real, and put up a lot of resistance against the rough rope. Mystic's interpretive staff make it clear that you have to take it seriously, too -- everyone on the line has to plant their feet properly, pay attention to the rhythm of the song to know when to pull the rope, and place hand over hand correctly as they pull.

I really didn't want to be the one to mess up. It feels like there's really something at stake. Check it out: in this video they're raising a whale boat (I think), rather than the sail, but the environment, effort, and chantey are similar enough to give an impression:

Can other museums put visitors to work in a similarly safe but powerful way?

Trying Out

Is there any historic industry more dramatic, frightening, and fascinating than whaling?

No. Proof: Moby Dick. More proof: some amazing nighttime photos from the New Bedford Whaling Museum of "trying out." That's when, after taking a whale, the whaling ship becomes a fiery 24-hour factory dedicated to cutting it up and rendering the blubber. Allow Herman Melville to evoke the scene more elegantly, with my unnecessary emphasis added:

Here be it said that in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the crisp, shriveled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.

By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the carcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur- freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations.

And now, some eerie photos of this incredible, seafaring factory work.

And one close-up:

Exhibit: Vertical Urban Factory

A new exhibit at the Skyscraper Museum in NYC takes a unique, relevant approach to industrial history with Vertical Urban Factory:


Vertical Urban Factory features the innovative architectural design, structural engineering, and processing methods of significant factory buildings from the turn of the 20th century to the present. Now, over a century after the first large factories began to dominate our cities, the exhibition poses the question: Can factories present sustainable solutions for future self-sufficient cities?


An interesting reminder that factories were once fundamental to the pre-sprawl urban experience, and a potentially powerful platform for considering current realities and future possibilities.


 New York Times review here.