Museum Studies Blog

The Whole Picture: The Colonial Story of the Art in Our Museums & Why We Need to Talk About It, by Alice Procter. London: Cassell, 2020. REVIEWED BY MORGAN COFFMAN   How many times have we wandered through the halls of museums, marveling at the art hanging upon the walls and squinting to read the …

Heritage Management: The Natural and Cultural Divide. Edited by Heleen van Londen, Marjo J. Schlaman, and Andrea Travaglia. Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing, 2020. Reviewed by Mathilde Sbinne   Nature and culture are often seen, perceived, and studied as two opposite and separate poles – especially in the Western world. Edited by landscape, archeology and heritage experts …

Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Documentation, by Hannah Turner. Vancouver-Toronto: University of British Columbia Press, 2020. Reviewed by Sarah Terheide Museum documentation practices have had a central role in reinforcing colonialist knowledge and ideologies in collections’ records and interpretation. This may be surprising to some considering how mundane systems of documentation can appear …

By Karen Breece, IUPUI Museum Studies MA student Halfway through the first semester of my internship, the Indianapolis Zoo’s Director of Education, who had been my acting mentor since I started, told me that my actual mentor who had been on maternity leave all this time was not coming back. She had been laid off. …

By Ross Edelstein, IUPUI Museum Studies MA student Sometimes, you wonder why something hasn’t been done before.  Sometimes, your realize things haven’t been done for a good reason. Sometimes that good reason isn’t good enough. Many museums like to offer sensory kits – usually with fidgets and tools.  But the Eiteljorg, where I have been doing …

By Michael Rice, IUPUI Museum Studies MA student  Interning at the Indiana Medical History Museum has been an incredibly rewarding experience. Being transported back to a different era every time I crossed the threshold was humbling. One of the tasks that comes with the internship is the opportunity to lead tours. This did not come …

By Olivia Underwood, IUPUI Museum Studies MA student In a crowded tray lies hundreds of loosely piled baggies, their contents shining out to any researcher or volunteer visiting the storage space of the Masonic Library and Museum of Indiana. Lapel pins, badges, awards, and other pin fastened objects clink against each other and their own …

By Emily McAvoy, IUPUI Museum Studies MA student Recently I was speaking with a colleague of mine about the selfish nature of artists. This may sound harsh, or overly critical, but it is true. All artists are incredibly selfish.  But from the perspective of a curator, I am envious of the ways in which some …

By Molly Reynowsky, IUPUI Museum Studies MA student Before I took the position of Curatorial Exhibition Intern at the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library (KVML), I was like most other Indiana high school graduates: I had been assigned to read Slaughterhouse-Five in my junior-year English class. And that’s it, that was my only connection to …

By Lorna Dawe, IUPUI Museum Studies MA student Have you ever sat in a classroom during school in grades k-12th and the teacher begins to do roll call — calling the names of each student one by one, usually in alphabetical order?  You know your last name and exactly how much time you have to …