THESIS REFLECTION: TRAINS VS. SHIPS...

BY: ROBIN NELSON

There are some interesting museums in New Brunswick. This post is about some of the museums that I am discovering in the province that deal with the railroad, raising certain question about the museums we open and why.

NB seems to have a number of railway museums. There are two dealing primarily with the railway: the New Brunswick Railway Museum and the Le Musée - Du Réel au Miniature.

Le Musée - Du Réel au Miniature

Other museums that deal with the railway and advertise the objects on display with this focus include:

TDC Model

Resurgo Place in Moncton has been renovated to add the Transportation Discovery centre (TDC). The front of the renovated building was designed to look like the front of a locomotive. The Chipman Museum deals with the history of the community and is housed in an old railway caboose. The Agriculture Museum of New Brunswick and the Antique Automobile Museum have a caboose and locomotive on display respectively.

There are a number railway sites that have become visitor information centers (VIC):

Hampton Station

The Hampton Station was the area’s first railway station and now houses the VIC, a gift shop, and railway artifacts from the Kings County Museum.

Personal photo of the exhibition that I discovered at the Edmundston C.P.R Railway Station (a VIC)

The McAdam Station is open for guided tours from June-October and serves as a VIC. Wikipedia seems to think it includes a museum as well. This discrepancy raises the question, at what point does a “site” or VIC become a museum? For instance, why is the Bristol CPR Station only a railway site?

The Bristol CPR Station

For those who do not know, the timber trade was huge in the development of NB because the province has a lot of wood and access to rivers. Further, there were wooden shipbuilding sites along the coast and rivers but, with the end of the Crimean War and the rise of steam-driven iron-hulled ships, the shipbuilding industry crashed in the late 19th century. Transportation industries, including shipbuilding and the railroad, are very important to the history and development of the province.

While you can learn about the lumber trade at the Kedgwick Forestry Museum or the Woodmen’s Museum, where is the museum devoted to shipbuilding?

Why are there so many railway museums, “sites,” and museums advertising that they deal with the railway? The shipbuilding industry is at least as important to the province’s development. Do people simply find trains more interesting then ships? Or, as the province is involved in funding and advertising, is this a deliberate decision?

Old Train Station Tourist Centre in Saint-Quentin, which display artifacts related to the CN

The simple explanation for more (or better advertised?) railway sites than shipbuilding ones is that ships were built and then floated away. However, the Old Train Station Tourist Centre in Saint-Quentin is a replica of the old train station built in 1920 and destroyed in the fall of 1983. Railway sites that burnt down have been rebuilt and are advertised by the province.

The New Brunswick Railway Heritage Association

For those clicking on my links, you may have noticed this provincially funded site: http://www.nbrailways.ca/index.html, which provides a guide to the museums and sites significant to the railway in the province. No such guide exists for shipbuilding sites (that I’ve found) or other industry in the province. Is this a deliberate cultural policy decision? How is what is funded, preserved, and built influenced by wider policy decisions? Are there large living groups of people with an interest in the railroad who are responsible for the large number of railway heritage sites? In this case, does the province guide decisions regarding heritage or are decisions made at the community level and then supported by government?

THESIS REFLECTION: 'QUEER' EXHIBITIONS?

BY: NICOLE RITCHIE

As many of you may know, WorldPride 2014 happened in Toronto this past June. This encouraged a wide variety of WorldPride funded, supported, and affiliated events, and, in particular, I was excited about the mass quantity of queer related arts and cultural events.

There were several events and exhibits that began before the WorldPride week in late June, while others are still continuing throughout the summer, including exhibits directly affiliated with WorldPride and ones that are just hopping on the queer summer bandwagon here in Toronto.

These events included a queered version of AGO’s First Thursdays entitled Fan the Flames: Queers on Fire, a queered version of Nuit Blanche entitled Nuit Rose, and even an exhibit co-curated by two of our very own Master of Museum Studies students entitled Archiving Public Sex.

Did anyone get a chance to check out any of the exhibits? I’d love to hear your thoughts! If not, don’t fret – there are several ‘queer’ exhibitions continuing this July and August. With my thesis, I may not be engaging directly with these exhibits or with a specific ‘queer’ exhibit, but I am constantly analyzing what ‘queer’ means for arts and cultural space. I would like to encourage you to attend one (or all!) of these exhibitions listed below, or any seemingly or self-proclaimed ‘queer’ exhibit in your vicinity and share with me your thoughts, criticisms, and opinions. In particular, I would like to engage in a dialogue in light of my previous posts on queer theory and my proposal to ‘queer’ museums, and how these existent and experiential spaces work within (or not) that frame of interrogation.

Wynne Neilly: Female to “Male”
July 23rd - August 24th
Student Gallery, Ryerson Image Centre
(article of note)

Wynne Neilly, January 24th 2014 – 24th Shot, 2014, Fuji Instax film

Just Me and Allah: Photographs of Queer Muslims
By Samra Habib
June 24th - October 5th
Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives

Excerpt from an interview with Samira Mohyeddin for the Queer Muslim Project

Camp Fires: The Queer Baroque of Léopold L. Foulem, Paul Mathieu, and Richard Milette

May 29th - September 1st

Gardiner Museum

Tours Everyday at 2pm - FREE for students on Tuesdays

(article of note)

 Robin Metcalfe, Curator, discusses “What is Camp Fires?”

Side note: I particularly like this quote from The Varsity that is demonstrative of ‘camp’s potentialities to work in dialogue with the concept of ‘queer’ as identified in my queer theory 101 post:

“Apart from its affinity for the frivolous, camp can be summarized as a form of resistance against dominant order, concerned with challenging the social conventions that marginalize queer individuals and oppress queer cultures.”

To conclude, here are some questions that I have and continue to interrogate. They are just a sliver of my own queries in order to provoke your thoughts and criticisms.

Are exhibitions ‘queer’ simply because they (which, who even is ‘they’?) self-identify as ‘queer’? Are the exhibits ‘queer’ because they contain content that is affiliated with the LGBT movement? Is ‘queering’ fulfilled by filling a normative arts and cultural space with such ‘queer’ content’? To what extent does being financially supported by WorldPride, a corporate sponsored non-for-profit organization, affect said ‘queerness’? Does the space and experience of the exhibitions differ at all from normative exhibitions? What affective experiences are being promoted? What are the overarching messages or narratives of the exhibits for the LGBTQ community?

For my thesis, I pursue a broader understanding of the que(e)rying of arts and cultural space that is more in dialogue with the non-normative, albeit ideologically and discursively. I would, therefore, also encourage you to share, in dialogue with this post, your experiences of what you felt was a non-normative arts and cultural space or exhibit.

ADDRESSING ISSUES OF PUBLIC ACCESS: SHARING PRINT COLLECTIONS USING SOCIAL MEDIA

THESIS REFLECTION BY: KATHRYN METHOT

Social media has allowed museum professionals to establish and participate in a community of shared knowledge. As most of my research has been theory-based, I have been looking for individuals whose museum work relates to my thesis topic. Through Twitter, I have been able to seek out and connect with several individuals working with print collections. I have hoped to understand the practical implications for dealing with paper collections through conducting interviews with these professionals. I have focused on several institutions with large print collections, with either active or inactive departments. One of my most important questions is what they feel the purpose of their department is in the museum and what their present and future objectives are. Finding out about the practical initiatives of print departments has helped to widen my perspective for my thesis and to think about the future of objects in museums and access to the public. Fortunately, I have received very positive responses from individuals I have recently contacted for interviews.

The Met’s Print and Drawing Gallery: Due to issues of preservation, most works are only on display for three months (source: http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/museum-departments/curatorial-departments/drawings-and-prints)

This week I will be travelling to New York and meeting with curators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum. Later this summer I am hoping to interview Benjamin Levy, the curatorial assistant in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs (PDP) at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA). I connected with Benjamin on Twitter after I read an article about the PDP’s Tumblr account (link: http://blog.artbma.org/2014/07/posts-for-print-lovers) which presents images of prints in the museum’s collection. Each image is paired with an interesting caption about the work. The Tumblr page has helped to combat the issue of public access to printed images. Due to light-sensitivity, paper collections can only be on display for a limited period of time. Social media initiatives such as the PDP’s Tumblr account opens up a wider collection of works to the public and looks to ignite an interest in prints (it even includes a fantastic ‘ask me about art’ section). As digitally curated exhibitions become more popular, I was intrigued by what this could bring for the future of paper collections. Although the public would not be viewing the prints in their physical form, presenting the works online allows museums to display more of their collection and to reach a wider audience. This has given me a lot to think about regarding the future of print collections and how inaccessibility can be combated, while addressing an issue of preservation and digitizing fragile works of art. I look forward to speaking with Benjamin later this summer and will bring up this issue in my interviews in New York.

Any feedback or thoughts about this topic would be greatly appreciated!

A LETTER TO OUR READERS

Dear Readers,

As we complete the final stages of our internships and summer jobs, the contributing editors of Musings will be taking a short summer break. Our Thesis writers will continue their column for the duration of the summer as they make headway in their research. We hope you have enjoyed our spring and summer articles! We have learned so much about blogging over the last seven months and are eager to further develop Musings in the Fall. We look forward to returning in mid August with an exciting new content program and helpful tips for incoming students.

Thank-you for your continued support! Happy Summer!


Jaime and the Musings Team

For now, we'll leave you with this hilarious/terrifying photograph we came across!

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/71635450296560727/

THESIS REFLECTION

BY: ROBIN NELSON

Canadian provincial cultural policies are interesting because no one level of government is responsible for “culture.” Instead, a region may be influenced by federal, provincial, and municipal policy. The origins of provincial cultural policies in Canada reflect different funding frameworks, which have subsequently been shaped by distinct regional concerns and priorities (Gattinger and Sainte- Pierre 2008). In addition, past patterns of support for the sector, which differ provincially, help shape its treatment in subsequent budgets. Despite these historical differences in provincial cultural policy development, Canadian cultural policy analysis has primarily been conducted at a federal level (Gattinger and Sainte-Pierre 2008), which is why, I believe, my thesis is important.

Hopewell Rocks, New Brunswick

I want to spend this post answering a question that I am sometimes asked when discussing my thesis: Why use NB as my case study?

1) The most obvious answer is that I am from NB, but there are also some academically justifiable reasons.

2) There are three general support structures for the “arts”: i) the French or direct model where the government is the patron, ii) the English or indirect model where the government funds arms length organizations who then support the “arts,” and iii) the American or private model, which involves privatized support. Within Canada, provincial frameworks often represent one of these models but have evolved into more hybrid approaches.

The framework for Government of New Brunswick (GNB) intervention is distinctive. GNB has a tradition of direct involvement in cultural funding, influenced by the province’s position as Canada’s only officially bilingual province. As argued by Gattinger and Sainte-Pierre, “the conception of a culture that is based on biculturalism is an important provincial characteristic” (2008, 175). Within the historical development of the province’s cultural policies, living one’s own culture and speaking one’s own language are understood as rights guaranteed by the government (2008, 175). GNB, therefore, has a history of direct involvement in “culture” due to its role as guarantor.

3) The province has had an articulate and comprehensive cultural policy, Cultural Policy for New Brunswick, since 2002 that purportedly guided government involvement in heritage funding (until the recent release of Creative Futures: A Renewed Cultural Policy for New Brunswick). Additionally, prior to 2002, the province had a less well-known heritage policy, From Partnership to Stewardship. The Canadian government and some of our provincial governments do not have a similarly articulated policy (which doesn’t mean “cultural policies” are not enacted, only that there is no official and comprehensive policy that guides intervention).

4) New programs (the Museum Network, the Exhibits & Activities Grant, and the Museum Collection Inventory Program) were introduced with the implementation of Cultural Policy for New Brunswick, influencing museum public programming.

5) In 2012, the policy began a renewal process, which involved extensive consultation. The public given the opportunity to present their ideas and submit their thoughts in writing. These documents have served as good sources of information in preparation for certain interviews.

6) From 2002 to 2012 NB policy implementation was influenced by several contemporary events, such as two changes in provincial government - meaning three different governments with distinct priorities oversaw the policy during that time - and a provincial as well as global economic downturn. The Heritage Branch, which administers funding to museums, was also housed in four different departments during the period examined. All of these factors may have influence policy outputs and museum programming, which is something I am investigating in my interviews.

What do you think about my selection of NB as my core focus? What pros or cons might I have missed?

INSTALLATION OF THE WEEK: THE TERRY FOX MIRACLE MILE

BY KATHERINE HANNEMANN

June 28, 2014 marked the 33rd anniversary of Terry Fox’s death. Of course, his death is not what makes Terry Fox remembered thirty-three years later, but rather his brief yet extraordinary life. And this is precisely what the Terry Fox Miracle Mile, this week’s featured object/installation, attempts to convey in a series of lightbox panels permanently on display in Canoe Landing Park.

Miracle Mile at Canoe Landing Park. Source: Toronto Savvy 

I would be hard-pressed to find a Canadian for whom Terry Fox was not a household name. The legacy of his “Marathon of Hope,” or endeavour to run across Canada in an effort to raise awareness and funds for cancer research, remains a fixture of Canadian history. Additionally, Terry Fox’s unwavering perseverance continues to remind us of what a remarkable individual he was. Running an average of one marathon (or 26.2 miles) per day on one human leg and one prosthetic leg, Fox ran from St. John’s to just outside Thunder Bay before stopping due to recurrence of cancer in his lungs.

Terry Fox. Source: WordWarrior

Because of this legacy, it is no surprise that Terry Fox has been remembered and memorialized in all sorts of ways, ranging from statues to running races to postage stamps and honorary titles. The Terry Fox Miracle Mile is, in my opinion, one particularly innovative example of such memorials. Created by Douglas Coupland (another notable Canadian), the installation presents several seemingly unrelated images -- a child’s drawing, a smorgasbord of diner food, a torn-apart gym sock -- weaving them together with text panels that describe their importance to Fox’s journey across Canada as well as details of his life and his goals.

 

Text panel from the Terry Fox Miracle Mile. Source: Flickr

The installation is spaced along one mile, guided by little red maple leaves lining its perimeter. An introductory text panel invites viewers to experience the mile however they choose: walking, running, or any other mode that takes viewers around the panels. To me, the most baffling element of this installation is the experience of distance itself -- the single mile of the installation is a mere drop in the ocean of Fox’s own journey (3,339 miles, to be exact). Indeed, in Coupland’s own words, “I can’t wrap my brain around what a staggering physical accomplishment it was.”

My experience of the Terry Fox Miracle Mile not only caused me to think about this “staggering physical accomplishment” and the awe-inspiring potential of the human spirit and body, but also about the ways that Terry Fox in particular (but historical figures and events generally) have been remembered through objects, exhibitions and memorials. Elsewhere, Fox’s legacy has been conveyed with static objects -- for example, one of his sneakers in the Out of the Box exhibition at the Bata Shoe Museum or the Marathon of Hope 1980 Ford Econoline van at the Canadian Museum of History -- but this installation struck me as uniquely engaging and memorable. True, there was no “authentic” object to point to as an actual remnant of his journey. However, through its unexpected imagery, physical challenges, and thoughtful text, the installation provides innumerable avenues (physical and intellectual) through which to honour and remember Terry Fox. Another important aspect is that the installation is permanently on display in an outdoor public park, and it uses this public presence to reach an audience with a diversity of memories and experiences of the Terry Fox story, encouraging them to learn more.

 

Part of the Terry Fox Miracle Mile. Source: Flickr

Perhaps this blog post would have been better suited near Terry Fox’s birthday, July 28, because the installation truly is a celebration of his life. Luckily the Miracle Mile tells his story on any given day of the year, so choose an arbitrary date and go see it.

SWEET HERITAGE: CHERRY GARCIA, THE VERMONT COW AND LOCAL SUSTAINABILITY

BY: IRINA MIHALACHE

Waterbury is a small town in central Vermont with a little bit more than five thousand people, a handful of farm to table restaurants and one main road. However, Waterbury is one of the most visited cities in Vermont due to one iconic American (and global) dessert which comes in flavors such as: Cherry Garcia, Chubby Hubby and, most recently, Karamel Sutra. And I am sure that by now, all of you have recognized, with nostalgia, melancholy or excitement, the Ben & Jerry’s “sweet heritage”

Entrance to the Ben & Jerry’s factory

“Sweet heritage” is the term that I use to describe my experience in the Ben & Jerry’s factory, which offers its visitors a very interactive and engaging hybrid museum-like experience, highlighted by a 30-minutes factory tour, a taste of a new or classic Ben & Jerry’s flavor and a trip to the graveyard of retired flavors, to which I will return shortly. Along the way, I encountered various museum-like displays showing the history of ice cream scoop design or ice-cream making techniques before industrialized production. I will admit that I entered the factory with relatively low expectations, not in terms of the palatable pleasures to be experienced at the factory but in terms of the curatorial and interpretive strategies, which I did not imagine to be as clever and engaging as they proved to be.

FlavoRoom – the last step on the tour, where visitors taste the flavor of the day, 
image by Irina D. Mihalache 

The reason for the highly successful experience in the factory, for me at least, was the storytelling which I think I can best describe, without too much academic fuss, as a combination of tongue in cheek smart humor, fun cultural history references and food activism. As museum scholars and practitioners, we all know that one of the goals of any museum is to inform and educate, providing a few takeaways for visitors, something which they will remember beyond the walls of the museum (or the factory). The first stop on the factory tour is an eight minutes long introductory video which tells the story of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, two childhood friends from New York dropped college and took an ice cream making correspondence course. This would be the beginning of one of the largest ice cream companies in the world, which never lost its local connection to rural Vermont. The focus on Ben and Jerry, who are featured in the video several times, once even in an interview with Stephen Colbert, who was honored with his own ice cream flavor.

Sign on the wall of FlavoRoom. Photo by Irina D. Mihalache.

Stephen Colbert!

While the factory does not present itself as a heritage site, there are hints to “heritage” all throughout the space: in the care for telling and displaying the history of the factory, which is locally grounded in a rustic Vermont terroir; in the preservation of a coherent visual aesthetics referencing the much loved Vermont cow, obvious in a variety of places, from the trash cans to the bank machines; and the theme of local sustainability and social activism.

Large poster in the main lobby at the factory. Photo by Irina D. Mihalache

Cow-themed bank machine in the factory lobby. Photo by Irina D. Mihalache

In lieu of conclusions, I leave with my favorite tombstones from the graveyard of retired flavors, which displays, cemetery style, all flavors which have come and gone. Who said ice cream cannot make a political statement?

Photo by Irina D. Mihalache

EXHIBITION REVIEW: Bee Exhibit at the Museum of Food and Agriculture

BY: MEAGHAN DALBY

So, since this post is about exhibition reviews – I thought I might actually review an exhibit this week. Shocking, I know. Last month, I went to see what would end up being one of my favourite exhibits. The Canada Agriculture and Food Museum is located just outside of downtown Ottawa, and is geared towards children and families. There is a petting zoo, live demonstrations, lots of activities, and exhibition spaces. While I was there, one exhibition was about bees. First of all, it was called “Taking Care of Beesness.” Enough said, amiright?

The exhibit was simply laid out, in a linear fashion around the room. It was also very accessible both physically and intellectually. Again, it was obviously focused on kids as an audience (perhaps that’s why I liked it… big kid at heart?). They used the honeycomb shaped plaques (as seen in the picture below) to provide us with information, which added to the atmosphere. There was a great mix of information provided through traditional reading, touch screens, and self-discovery “hands on” activities.

The picture above shows a glimpse in to some of the information visitors are given. They cover topics like how honey is made, how people have used it for thousands of years, why the bee is important to the ecosystem, how bees are different from wasps and yellow jackets, and different kinds of bees found in a hive. It’s simply and aesthetically laid out, with options to explore further on the touch screen.

It was by no means the most complex exhibit I have ever seen, but the Agriculture and Food Museum effectively presented the information to their audience in an entertaining and informative way. The information was not overwhelming, and there was a simple path to follow. What I liked was how they used their interactive activities to reinforce the information presented. For example, after reading about the different kinds of bees in a hive, the visitor comes across a double sided plexiglass case, which has housed a live bee colony. Visitors are encouraged to identify the queen bee, the worker bees, and the drone bees.

I actually learned something on my trip to the Agriculture and Food Museum (not always the case in museums). It was clear that kids and parents alike were enjoying the exhibit. I had to wait a good 15 minutes to take the above picture because there were little faces pressed against the glass. 

Taking Care of Beesness presented what it promised: information about the lives of bees, and their impact in our world as humans. At a time when the importance of bees in the ecosystem has been somewhat prominent in the news, this exhibit was poignant, informative, and effective.  It also reminded me that sometimes simple is better.  They didn't spend thousands of dollars on fancy displays, but used alternative methods of communicating the information.

What do you think? Have you seen any exhibits which are simple, yet effective? Do you think having a live bee colony is an effective learning tool or potentially cruel to the bees?

THESIS REFLECTION: QUEER THEORY 101

BY: NICOLE RITCHIE

So what is queer theory? As outlined in my first post, my goal is to queer museums.  But, what does ‘queering’ even mean? 

In order to provide a general understanding of queer theory that will contextualize my future posts, I decided to dedicate a post to defining this field.  Like any attempt at briefly defining a major body of knowledge, I struggle to be brief and concise while not over simplifying. Therefore, please note that there are major gaps, oversights, and simplifications below, as well as a clear emphasis on the academic development of ‘queer theory’ rather than a history of the term ‘queer’ and queer identities/communities/activism.

Queer theory emerged in the 1990s in the USA after the AIDS crisis, an event that greatly affected the feminist and gay communities and its politics.  Teresa de Lauretis is credited with first using ‘queer theory’ at a conference at UCSC in 1990.  The term, which has historically been used as slander, was, at that point, being reclaimed and adopted by a burgeoning body of academics and activists.  Most famously, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet (1990) and Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) are credited as the founding queer theory texts.  On the most basic level, these two texts interrogate the binary structure of heterosexuality and homosexuality and the culturally constructed performance of gender, respectively.  Sedgwick and Butler marked a move into questioning the social, cultural, and political structures and systems that both create and perpetuate those identities and activities seen as ‘non-normative’, and thus an interrogation of the ‘normative’.

Meme of Judith Butler

In the last twenty-five years, the field has grown vastly.  Queer theory has been utilized as a lens in almost all disciplines from the humanities and social sciences to engineering and medicine. In order to provide a taste of the diverse definitions of ‘queer theory’, here are some brief quotes by several of the ‘big’ queer theorists.  There is also, by no means, an agreement as to what ‘queer’ means, what queer theory seeks, and what queer world-making entails.

“…queer refers to nonnormative logics and organizations of community, sexual identity, embodiment, and activity in space and time” (6).

– Judith ‘Jack’ Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005)

“Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world” (1).

– José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009)

“…queer must insist on disturbing, on queering, social organizations as such – on disturbing, therefore, and on queering ourselves and our investment in such organization.  For queerness can never define an identity; it can only ever disturb one.  And so, when I argue, as I am to do here, that the burden of queerness is to be located less in the assertion of an oppositional political identity than in opposition to politics as the governing fantasy realizing, in an always indefinite future…” (17). 

– Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004)

And what about ‘queer’ in our society today?  Generally, I would say that we think of the Q in the LGBTQ acronym, or the extended one of LGBTTIQQ2SA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, intersex, queer, questioning, 2-spirited, and asexuality).  Queer is a growing ‘non-identity’ adopted by those not partaking in ‘normative’ labels or values or activities, such as genderqueer, pansexuality, or non-goal-oriented sexual practices. 

Thus, ‘queer’ has been taken up in both academic and community environments to a variety of ends.  Furthermore, I would like to note that I have not truly touched on various complexities of the relationship of queer theory with feminism, with queer activism, and more.

However, I will leave it at that – I recommend checking out this humorous article entitled “What the F@#$ is Queer Theory?”.  Hopefully, we can flush out some of these brief points and any further curiousities or comments about ‘queer’ in the comments, as well as elucidate my use of queer theory for my thesis in future posts!