Month: March 2014

The Museum of Museum Souvenirs

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This interesting online initiative requests museum visitors to share their favourite souvenirs………

The Museum of Museum Souvenirs is an online crowdsourced collection, where these souvenirs can all find a home. If you have any museum souvenirs sitting at home, we’d love to add them to the collection. Don’t worry though, the originals remain with you, we just need photographs.

As well as souvenirs bought in museum gift shops, we also accept souvenirs that you made at a museum, e.g. at an event or workshop, a museum souvenir that someone brought you back as a gift, or other kinds of souvenirs that are a memento of a museum experience.

Looking back on my museum visits, I try to think of what I would share.

I purchase a memento of each major temporary exhibit. Chinese coins, a Giganotosaurus model, posters, reproductions of cuneiform writing on a tablet. I enjoy scouring the gift shops of museums and art galleries, looking for a unique gift to myself that will remind me of my visit for years to come.

 

sightings – Museum on a mobile

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For the museum’s Centennial, the Friends of Textiles and Costumes designed and constructed a hanging mobile, now featured prominently off the main lobby.Each triangular panel focuses on a unique museum gallery. The panels slowly twist and turn above the visitors under the watchful eyes of the Edmontosaurus. Mobile 01 Pat SparrerIf you look closely, you can see the Anomalocaris I stitched for the Palaeontology panel….on the top orange triangle.

panel layout

fabric panel layout photo source : Pat Sparrer

In close-up, my addition is easier to see. It’s the centre animal of the three at the lower edge of the panel. The panel was under construction at this point.

Twitter by the numbers

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Out of the blue, I got an e-mail from Twitter giving me a review of activity on my account over the last week. I had no idea there was so much going on, except that I now have 66 people/institutions following me @CreativeLorie

These Tweets helped you make connections, got people excited, and started your friends talking.

6,171 –  Total Views

27  –  Retweets

33  –   Link Visits

Favourite posts all involved photos of dinosaurs. They are one of the biggest draws to our museum. Including this Ankylosaur skull cap displayed at our recent March Break event.

dinosuar

ankylosaur skull cap photo source : Lorie Pierce

In case you are wondering if that is an illustration of a Stegosaurus in the upper left. Yes, it is. We were also showing a femur (upper leg bone) from that dinosaur.

 

#MuseumWeek

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#MuseumWeek

Organized by Mar Dixon and Culture Themes in collaboration with Twitter, #MuseumWeek is a chance for museums around the world to gather together, share thematic content an urge people to get involved. Mar says,  “Every day of the year museums and cultural institutions across the world are using Twitter in exciting and interesting ways to tell the stories of their collections to new audiences.” #MuseumWeek will shine a light on these activities, giving a real-time glimpse into the workings of museums. 

March 24 Day 1 – A day in the life (#DayInTheLife)

• We will highlight a few members of staff to give you insight into a typical day 

March 25 Day 2 – Test your knowledge (#MuseumMastermind)

• We’ll ask questions, propose riddles, and create quizzes (1 per hour). For example: Where is this object from, which species is shown here, date this object, what year was this painted?

March 26 Day 3 – Your story (#MuseumMemories)

• Encourage people to share their stories – favorite museums, most memorable visits, favorite works of art and objects

March 27 Day 4 – Buildings behind the art (#BehindTheArt)

• We’ll share facts, trivia, historic images, anecdotes from the museum’s history

• We’ll also share a few hidden gems of the museum…

March 28 Day 5 – Ask the expert (#AskTheCurator)

• Self explanatory, ask us ANYTHING!

March 29 Day 6 – Museum selfies (#MuseumSelfies)

2013 became the year of the selfie, and so far in 2014 the trend has shown no sign of fading.

• We want people to get creative and tweet their #MuseumSelfies. This could range from people tweeting their selfies from within the museum space to getting involved from home or on the move!

March 30 Day 7 – Constraint drives creativity (#GetCreative)

Challenge! 
• We’re asking people to mimic their favorite dinosaurs and tweet a picture, vine or instavid or reach the expert level and provide your own guided tour of a collection through a tweet, Vine or instavid.

sightings – The Panda Ant

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panda ant

panda ant source : viralcircus.om

 

The Panda Ant

The Mutillidae are a family of more than 3,000 species of wasps (despite the names) whose wingless females resemble large, hairy ants. Found in Chile, they are known for their extremely painful stings, hence the common name cow killer or cow ant. Black and white specimens are sometimes known as panda ants due to their hair coloration resembling that of the Chinese giant panda

Visitor counts

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March Break is always a busy time at the museum. Attendance figures can be obtained from the number of tickets scanned at the door. But how can you be sure that your display or activity, which may be embedded deep within the building, is getting noticed and visited?

Although I am unsure of the total visitor count for the recent 9 day event, according to our counts, almost 1500 visitors stopped by our table to chat about palaeontology.

Palaeo table

March Break Palaeo table with volunteer photo source : Lorie Pierce

Some hints for driving visitors to your part of the museum :

1. Tell key front desk staff or volunteers where you are and the information/activities visitors can take part in at your station

2. Make sure the signage for your area is easily seen from the stairwell or elevator

3. Have a wearable craft for the kids – as soon as they start wearing their newly created hat, necklace or wrist cuff around the museum, other kids will want to know where they can make one too

4. Be enthusiastic and enthuse your volunteers. No one wants to stop at an activity where the staff are sitting like bumps on a log. Explain why what you are sharing is awesome…..in my case it was the difference between archaeology and palaeontology. Curators on our staff are doing incredible current research in both these areas.

5. Set up a tent. Our field station tent was a natural draw, being visible from a distance and intriguing visitors as to what they would find inside.

Of course, these comments are more relevant for larger institutions. However, a small museum may rent a booth at a fair, or market itself at a sports event or shopping mall. Hopefully these suggestions will be helpful in those cases.

Storage in basements

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shelving

storage shelving photo source : Denver Art Museum website

Recently in a museum listserv discussion, these suggestions were brought forward when considering storing artifacts in a basement:

 –  seal the walls and floors before finishing

 

–  get dehumidifiers

 

–  step up pest control

 

–  ensure all storage units are up on platforms or otherwise raised

 

– look into floor water sensors

 

–  look into separate environmental systems

 

–  make sure elevators are large enough for items to be stored