Crunch Time

So, I blog all about my conference and launch my new website only to leave it for a couple of weeks.  It’s hitting crunch time of the semester and things are beginning to become urgent.  I still have a couple of blog posts backed up to work on, I promise I’ll get them out soon. The MAAM Conference about did me in, I’ll have to start a notebook of topics for a rainy day.  I have two big projects to finish up this month and lucky for me I’m enjoying both of them.

1. For History and Theory of Museum – 15-20 page paper on the history of an institution/museum/collection.  I’m researching the Old Barracks Museum in Trenton.  What an amazing place with such  rich history.  Built as a Barracks in 1758 it has served as barracks, housing for indigent women, a house of ill-repute, a school, a hospital, a site for small pox inoculation and more recently a museum.  Preserved as a museum by a group of patriotic women around 1902, this incredible piece of architectural history served as a nearby site to some of America’s most famous moments.  I spent five hours in their archives the other day and wished I could have spent the night!

Old Barracks Museum, picture from http://www.barracks.org

How often do people really think of the history of a museum itself? Usually we are thinking about the history of the objects within the museum and in the case of the Barracks  the former is perhaps the more interesting of the stories.

2. For Exhibitions A to Z – Create a theoretical exhibition from beginning to finish, as finished as it can be on paper anyways.  This has been a fun project for me, “Simple Joys: Little Things That Make Us Smile” is being kept in the dark until either finished or I find a space that ACTUALLY wants to let me do the exhibition.   That’s my hope.

The other big thing on my agenda now is finding an internship/job for next semester and summer.  I’m hoping to come up with something amazing.  I’m over having a job just to pay the bills, time to get back to the point at hand.

Coming up in my agenda!

LECTURE

A Matter of Class: John Cotton Dana, Progressive Reform and the Newark Museum

Speaker: Carol Duncan,  Professor Emerita, Ramapo College of New Jersey.

Location: Thursday, November 18, 4 pm at the Newark Museum, Newark, NJ

LECTURE

Museum Expansion in the Global 21st Century: The Case of Abu Dhabi

Speaker: Andrew McClellan (he wrote the book we use for History & Theory of Museums class!)

Location: Thursday, November 18, 7 pm
Nursing Amphitheater (room NU113), Caroline D. Schwartz College of Nursing Building, Seton Hall University