History Museums are not Art Museums: Discuss!

Submitted by sbrennan on Wed, 06/22/2011 - 6:04pm

Scheduled:

Fri, 11/18/2011 - 3:00am - 4:30am
Track:
Room: Vancouver

Submitter(s):

  1. Name: Sheila Brennan
    Title: Associate Director Public Projects
    Organization: Center for History and New Media
  2. Name: Eric Johnson
    Title: Head of Outreach & Consulting, Scholars' Lab
    Organization: University of Virginia
  3. Name: David Klevan
    Title: Education Manager for Technology and Distance Learning
    Organization: US Holocaust Memorial Museum
  4. Name: Sharon Leon
    Title: Director, Public Projects
    Organization: Center for History and New Media
  5. Name: Barbara Matthews
    Title: Academic Director of the Deerfield Teachers’ Center
    Organization: Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association

Abstract:

History museums outnumber other types of museums in the United States and yet most often the conversations in the museum technology world revolve around issues and case studies from art and science museums. Art and science museums are leading the way by exposing their collections and experimenting with new ways of interacting with the public (“fill in the case,” crowdsourcing topics, APIs) across digital platforms. History museums, as a group, are behind, and face different challenges when presenting their collections and exhibitions.

How do history-focused cultural heritage institutions look at their collections, exhibitions, and programming in different ways than art and science museums? How must history museums’ digital ventures differ to accommodate their disciplinary perspectives? This roundtable will discuss how history museums approach metadata, context, narrative, and inquiry with respect to their collections, their staff, and their visitors in order to suggest ways to invigorate their digital presence.

Session Description:

History museums outnumber other types of museums in the United States and yet most often the conversations in the museum technology world revolve around issues and case studies from art and science museums. Art and science museums are leading the way by exposing their collections and experimenting with new ways of interacting with the public (“fill in the case,” crowdsourcing topics, APIs) across digital platforms. History museums, as a group, are behind, and face different challenges when presenting their collections and exhibitions.

How do history-focused cultural heritage institutions look at their collections, exhibitions, and programming in different ways than art and science museums? How must history museums’ digital ventures differ to accommodate their disciplinary perspectives? This roundtable will discuss how history museums approach metadata, context, narrative, and inquiry with respect to their collections, their staff, and their visitors in order to suggest ways to invigorate their digital presence by the end of the session.

Questions may include the following:

  • What is the state of history museum web? Where have we come from and where are we now?
  • How does the history museum web differ from or compare with the history web, generally?
  • How do the disciplinary approaches to history, art history, art composition, hard sciences effect interpretation on-site and online?
  • Do history museums need websites?
  • Can we move away from a master narrative model of exhibitions and incorporate multiple perspectives and voices in digital formats?
  • How can digital media introduce museum visitors to the process of history making?
  • What are the risks in engaging the public in content creations?

Session Info

  • Type: Round-table
  • Keywords:
  • Relevance: Content creators and technologists primarily from history museums, but hope for art and science museum folks too. We mean for this roundtable to generate conversation, hence the title, but certainly do not want this to be divisive. Because of a difference in disciplinary approaches to collections and sources, we see that history museums face some challenges in the digital realm that are unique to history institutions and need addressing. They are under-represented, generally, at these types of conference. We hope the discussion will address similarities and differences among museums when approaching digital work on a variety of platforms. This proposal comes out of a discussion that began on Twitter and has continued in an email train about the desire of some people in the public history community to organize a meeting or series of discussions focusing on history museums & the web. This roundtable is a good place to start within MCN to look at what is now being done, what can history museums learn from other museums, and what disciplinary differences make the history museum "web" a slightly different place than the art or science museum "web."
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