I recently spent a few days in Chicago, Illinois. This is the first in a series of posts about the museums, architecture, public gardens, and art I visited while there. During my fist full day in Chicago I spent part of the afternoon enjoying the Chicago Architecture Foundation River Cruise. The 90 minute boat tour featured … Continue reading Chicago Architecture From the River
Exploring History at the Royal Ontario Museum
ROM. Photo Credit: It_ParisI grew up in a rural community that is within commuting distance to Toronto. Despite this proximity and my love for museums I never visited the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) while living there. Last week while visiting family in the area I took the opportunity to explore the ROM for the first … Continue reading Exploring History at the Royal Ontario Museum
Artifact Meanings and Contextualization
In the museum world, objects are generally described with reference to their designers, or purchasers, or donors...But the whole history of an objects intersects with many other people, who employ many other skills and attach many other meanings.1 The above quotation from Richard Rabinowitz's article highlights the traditional way that museums tend to display and … Continue reading Artifact Meanings and Contextualization
Temporary Exhibits at the Dennos Museum Center
I spent part of last weekend in Traverse City, Michigan. The Saturday morning of my trip was spent wandering around The Dennos Museum Center located on Northwestern Michigan College campus. My visit was great, the space is well designed and featured a number of interesting visiting and permanent exhibits.The Dennos was far from busy when … Continue reading Temporary Exhibits at the Dennos Museum Center
Time Capsule History
I was recently listening to a speaker who used time capsules as the introductory hook in his talk. His description of time capsules focused on finding previously lost historical knowledge, the excitement of opening time capsules and the ability of time capsules to speak about the era they were created in.The idea of finding a … Continue reading Time Capsule History
Archival Advocacy: Canada and Abroad
There has been a tremendous amount of discussion in the twitter and blog realms about SAA's new publication Resources for Volunteer Programs in Archives. The publication garnered a heated post on the "You Ought to be Ashamed" blog, this post spurred a charged the twitter debate and number of other blog posts. See here and … Continue reading Archival Advocacy: Canada and Abroad
Graphic Novels and History Education
What to superheros, anime, and history education have in common? They can all be found in graphic comic format. Recently a number of publishers, historians, and education professionals have attempted to make lessons of history more tangible. This has contributed to a variety of history based graphic novels being produced.This month Renegade Arts and … Continue reading Graphic Novels and History Education
Unique User Groups and Heritage Organizations
The users groups of heritage organizations vary greatly from organization to organization. People who frequent a university archive, a children's museum, and a local history corner at a public library typically have very different needs. Providing quality programming depends on heritage institutions knowing their users and gearing specific programming to different types of users. One … Continue reading Unique User Groups and Heritage Organizations
Knitting, Binary Systems, and History
The work of Kristen Haring, a mathematician and technology historian, delves into significance of binary systems. A recent Spark interview highlights how binary systems have appeared throughout history and across cultures. What fascinates me about Haring's work is her efforts to make both math and history physically tangible. For example, she undertook a project to … Continue reading Knitting, Binary Systems, and History
Tale of a Town: History Meets Theater
This morning CBC played a documentary entitled, "Small Time Stories: From the Tale of a Town - Queen Street West." The radio documentary was based on the work done to compile the multimedia interactive play Tale of a Town that focuses on the history of the Queen Street West neighbourhood in Toronto. The radio production … Continue reading Tale of a Town: History Meets Theater