Week 6

This week I reviewed the report Prof. Johnson submitted to the museum concerning a survey we gave to the docents about their role at the museum and the profile it created about them as a group. Some of the things we found were that the docents were incredibly loyal to the museum and dedicated to their exhibits but occasionally wished they had a bigger say in the happenings at the museum and a better way to communicate with the education department. They view themselves as creative and feel they add a great deal to the exhibits. The information gathered through this survey will hopefully be used to bridge the gap between the docents and the education department as well as serve as a starting point for Prof. Johnson's book.

Week 5

This week was all about writing my impressions of the training and how the method of training shapes the way the docents interact with the public as well as how the exhibits educate. It seems to me that a good museum exhibit should be able to stand alone and be interesting and educational for the visitors but what I have seen while working with the docents is how incredibly vital they are to the educational experience. I must admit before this project I was one of those people who never went on tours and wanted to learn from the exhibit on my own but now I see how much I was missing out on by not utilizing the docents. Some docents like to facilitate, which is when they simply stand in the exhibit and make themselves available for questions, the best ones that I have observed find unobtrusive ways to share their knowledge, they more or less strike up a casual conversation that doesn't make the visitor feel as if they are listening to a rehearsed speech or that the docent is trying to reach some sort of "quota." The training I was able to observe helped me see how these docents learned to interact with visitors in this manner, I think the style of training the Field conducts is vital to the docent experience and I look forward to doing more writing about this and hopefully observing more trainings.

What a Day!

Today has been incredibly interesting and fun, I went with Prof. Johnson to the Field Museum to participate in the docent training for the new exhibit which is all about mummies. The mummies in the exhibit have all previously been in storage due to their fragile condition and are only available to the public until April and I got to be one of the first people to walk through the exhibit as well as listen to a walk through by Bob Martin, a curator for Anthropology at the museum. Dr. Martin was very enthusiastic and obviously extremely knowledgeable about the exhibit. These mummies are on display now because the Field had a chance to put them all through a portable CT over the summer that was loaned to them and the results are fascinating! There are a couple of highlights in the exhibit such as a 14 yr old boy (mummy 111517) that shows evidence of head binding, a female mummy nicknamed the "gilded lady" whose teeth were so worn due to diet and sand corrosion that they appeared to be from someone today about 70 years old when she was most likely around 40 when she died, and a collection of Peruvian mummies which was something I have never seen before. The exhibit itself is a nice blend of tradition and modernity which was something Dr. Johnson and I had suggested for the original Egypt exhibit this summer. There were large airy cases spaced nicely around the room which gave the exhibit a relaxed feeling as well as a respectful tone, the room was relatively dark but the pieces were well lit and the label copy was at the top of the cases so even if there were a crowd of people in front you could read it. Some of the coolest features, in my opinion, were the CT images on the walls next to their respective mummies, a video screen that showed various CT scans in a way that was not distracting in the least and 3D models of the skulls of each mummy that were 'printed' with a 3D printer. After the walk through there were 3 lectures, one by J.P. Brown, a curator who explained the CT scans and how the mummies are aged. There are a few things they look at to determine age, one are the epiphysis' to see if they have hardened, which they do by mid twenties, distortion and spreading of the spinal column, the condition of load bearing joints such as hips and the wear on teeth. He was especially excited by the discovery that the gilded lady had curly hair. Next was a presentation on Egyptian burials by Emily Teeter from the Oriental Institute of Chicago who had a lot to say about the life of the Egyptian people and had some interesting insights on canopic jars such as the mother of Khufu in the 4th dynasty was the first mummy we have that shows evidence of using canopic jars. The final presentation was by Nicola Sharratt, an Anthropologist at the Field Museum, about the Peruvian mummies which was fascinating. Some of my favorite things from her presentation were that Royal Inca mummies were brought out during festivals, traveled to visit other dead and were consulted for advice, and that Capacocha had a sacrifice of children on mountain tops when they believed the gods demanded it. These children were especially picked out as the most beautiful and perfect each city had to offer, paraded to the capital where the kind chose the most pure of them all to be sacrificed around his city and the rest were paraded back to be sacrificed on their own mountains, it was a little bit like an ancient Hunger Games except nobody survived. As you can probably tell this day was so jam packed with information it is impossible to get it all out in one blog but I have included some pictures to fill out the day. The first is a dismembered head, the museum has a large collection of mummies but a great deal of them are only partial mummies, this one actually shocked me so I had to include it. The second picture is of a sign at the beginning of the exhibit that has "smartphone scan things" that will link you directly to youtube videos which I thought was a really cool way to get the "techie" generation involved. The 3rd picture is one of the 3D printed skulls which were absolutely amazing.

Week 3

This week was a bit on the slow side, I spent most of it going over the transcripts from the interviews we had done with the docents and preparing questions for docent training next weekend. I am particularly interested in talking with the person in charge of the training to find out how they decide what information should go into the exhibit and how important they think the role of the docent is in educating the public within the exhibit. The transcripts reminded me of how knowledgeable the docents are about the exhibit they work in and I look forward to seeing them again now that I have a more clear idea of what Keith's project is about and the kinds of things I would like to include in the part of it that I am writing.