welcome to Coucourse C
In Station Eleven, Clark began The Museum of Civilization because he wanted to preserve the memory of what came Before. His goal with The Museum of Civilization was to preserve civilization, and he put the artifacts in context-that is, he explained their role in life Before.
Once you start looking for them, museums are everywhere. Some are the ones we usually think of: the L.A. County Museum of Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; the Art Institute in Chicago; the Louvre in Paris; and more. Others are smaller or less traditional, and some are downright strange:
- the Potato Museum in Blackfoot, Idaho
- the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico
- the Condom Museum in Nonthaburi, Thailand
- the Bunny Museum in Pasadena, California
- the Salabh International Toilet Mueum in New Delhi, India
- the Museum of Clean in Pocatello, Idaho.
- the National Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin
- the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia just outside of San Francisco
- Leila's Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri
- The Thing Museum in Dragoon, Arizona
museum project: the most straightforward? perhaps; the easiest? maybe; the most steps? absolutely
Start your own museum.
You don't actually have to lease a property, collect items and display them; this will be a virtual museum. But you need to plan the museum which will preserve and display some set of artifacts that represent some aspect of civilization.
Choose the topic for your museum. Do you love old tin toy trucks? Native American musical instruments? Dolls? Stuffed animals? Tractors? Noodles? Nail polish? Regional Guatamalan cooking? Tabletop bar games (such as Skittles and mini-shuffleboard)? It can be anything. To make this project interesting, you should choose something you have a genuine interest in, an interest you want to share. It should also (in some way) represent "Civilization"--what Clark admires in the objects in his Severn City museum.
Aside from that, you may find that the term "museum" has a lot of latitude. Is a collection of wax replicas of famous human beings a "museum"? Is the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland a museum? Is a library a museum? Is Graceland a museum? These may be questions you need to consider, depending on what you choose to exhibit.
can I really do anything? no; there are restrictions :(
You are not a billionaire; you might raise a little money to sponsor a special exhibit (Kodak might lend you some old cameras, for example), but you cannot afford Van Goghs or Ferrarris or Cray computers.
You do not have a "luxe" space like the Getty Center or the Science Center in Exposition Park. Imagine you have commercial space of about 1,500-2,000 square feet in Harbor City or San Pedro or Wilmington. At about $19/square foot for an annual lease, this means you would be paying $30,000-40,000 just for the space annually, so you want to get visitors and sponsors. You can fit quite a lot into 1,500 square feet if you organize it cleverly, but it is not a huge space. The size of your collection has to fit inside it.
NOTE: feel free to have an even smaller space (maybe you lease the back room of a fabric warehouse to showcase a Museum of Thimbles; again, be clever about it).
how this actuallly helps you
Remember that one part of this project will be the research you do as you develop your exhibits. This research will show up as a (graded) 4-8 page research paper. If you had a museum of Sports, your research paper would have to be at least 200 pages because the topic is impossibly huge. If you did a museum of Marvel Entertainment or Disney or computers, your research paper would likewise be at least 200 pages because the topics are impossibly huge. Besides, the Disney Corporation is not going to let you use their name; they have their own parks, stores, museums.
So compare these two options:
A Museum of Baseball: Absolutely NOT! Why not? 1) it has already been done (visit Cooperstown, New York); 2) it is huge; 3) you do not have the money to buy the exhibits, and you do not have the space to show the exhibits; 4) a research paper on all of Baseball would be 400 pages at least, and you do not want to write a 400-page research paper for this class.
A Museum of Baseball Fan Appreciation Day Giveaways: Absolutely YES! Why? 1) it is a unique, quirky collection (fans could look at a bobble head from the defunct Wrigley Field and a foam finger from Candlestick Park); 2) it is made up of items that could be bought, gathered, donated easily; 3) it could be shown in your 1,500-squre-foot space (each area could be a miniature recreation of a stadium, perhaps); 4) it demands you do some unusual research (and learn something), but it is something you can present in a 4-8-page research paper.
Here are two more options for comparison:
A Museum of Computers: NO! You know why.
A Museum of Pre-Electric Computing Machines: YES! You would have an abacus, a slide rule, several other mechanical (pre-electricity) computing machines. Not only would these be unusual and interesting (it's not a ho-hum viist to the Dell website), but they would also fit with the novel (the electricity has been knocked out), and would showcase the sort of human effort and innovation that Clark values in the objects in his Museum of Civilization.
Here are two more, so you have plenty to go on:
A Museum of Disney: OF COURSE NOT! Not only will nobody visit this (they would go to Disneyland or just view the information already all over the Web), but you can't get rights to this information, can't afford the artifacts, can't house it all, don't want to do a 300-page research paper.
A Museum of Disney Theme Park Giveaways: YES! Disney theme parks have given away special tickets, cards, keychains, mugs, etc. to commemorate special occasions over the years. These are relatively small and often available on eBay. You could get the commemorative ticket and pin from Donald Duck's 50th Birthday Party (1984...yes, my wife and I were there), for example. There are loads of tradeable Olympics-style pins; there are the Disneyland Diamond Days Sweepstakes Prizes (a diamond Mickey Mouse hat!). Even if you looked at the international parks, this would be a relatively manageable research topic, and collectors WOULD visit such a museum.
you need to differentiate your museum; otherwise, nobody would come to it
A museum of The Evil Dead II would not draw anyone becuase people would prefer to sit at home and watch the movie rather than drive, pay for parking, look at a few exhibits (maybe text and still pictures).
But what if it were an interactive You Are in The Evil Dead II Museum? Visitors would go through exhibits and THEN appear in a green screen studio to re-enact scenes from the movie which they could take home (for a price) on DVD's. That would be pretty unique. Your research would focus on Raimi's movie AND setting up a green screen shoot.
some special notes on research and web-based projects
As I mentioned above, my all-time favorite museum is nearby in Culver City, David Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology. In 1995 Lawrence Weschler wrote Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder; it was a runner-up for a Pullitzer Prize. The book is, essentially, in two sections: the first part is an incredible look at the history of museums, what constitutes a museum, and so on; the second part looks sepcifically at The Museum of Jurassic Technology. Weschler commented that his favorite review was from a Paris magazine which commented that they were pretty sure this museum did not really exist. Well, it does, and I strongly recommend some of you visit it, and I equally-strongly recommend you use Weschler's book as a resource for researching museums.
To get a sense of the what-in-the-world-is-this inventiveness, and to give you a sense of what a Web version of a museum might look like (I hope this encourages a few of you to put your projects on the Web), here is the Museum of Jurassic Technology site.
Another site that might give you some ideas about turning this into a Web-based project was created by my daughter for a 102 (I believe it was called English 2) class she took. The theme/focus of her class was Los Angeles, and one of the final project options was to create a Website that somehow uniquely characterized Los Angeles. She chose to do a sort of museum of people with oddly-singular dreams that make up Los Angeles; she used a simple (and free) WordPress blogsite for her project: The Book of the Grotesque. Note that she even has an MLA-format Works Cited page :)
what you will turn in (and how)
As was noted in the pinkinsh sidebar box near the top, this project will be done in steps; there are four of them. Each step has a separate due date (see Class Schedule page). The first step requires you to go have some fun (yes, fun is required :)
1. visit a museum
You should do this first. It will give you ideas of how a museum operates, how it is set up, how things are displayed, and so on.
This step can be done any time before the Research Paper is due; it counts as part of your research.
It doesen't matter what museum you go do. As I keep saying, I love MJT in Culver City, but there are likely several small museums near you, and there are huge places like The Getty, The Natural History Museum and Science Museum in Exposition Park (where the Rams will play until 2019), The Page Museum and LACMA up on the Miracle Mile, and so on. Buy you might want to avoid those huge museums and visit a smaller one, a local one. No, they are not always as grand or as impressive, but they will be more like the modest start-up museums you are designing.
Get some ideas; pick up brochures and floorplan maps; chat with a docent or curator if you are bold; ask about setting up a museum, selecting exhibits, funding--whatever. Tour the exhibits and get some idea about inter-activity, informational placques, even things like lighting, cafeteria food, gift shop stuff.
Why not take a friend?
To satisfy this step and get credit for it, you can take a photo of and e-mail the image of the ticket (if there is one), or, better still, take a selfie of yourself in front of or somewhere inside the museum.
2. museum Project Proposal
Before you spend a great deal of time on the research, the invention, the writing, you will need to get a Project Proposal approved by me. Be sure you check the due date on the Class Schedule.
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: I will not accept your final project if you have not had the Project Proposal approved. Then things roll down hill in a very unfortunate way--you will not get a score for this 200-point paper; you will not pass the class.
The proposal itself is not hard, but it does require you to have considered your options, to have thoroughly read and understood the project choices. The (short) proposal will be typed in MLA format, and it will include:
A project title (it can certainly change)
An overview of your project as you envision it. What will your museum feature? What is your Mission Statement (purpose of the museum)? How do you see this fitting in with Clark's ideas about what constitutes some important aspect of "Civilization" and human effort? Do you have ideas about what the standing collection will be? Will you focus on a special exhibit?
Explain the focus of your museum (NOT "fashion" (too big) but "changes in American Naval Uniforms" maybe). How is your museum differentiated? If it is a museum of Quentin Tarentino movies, why on earth would someone go to your museum rather than just watch the movies or read about them in a book? You need to design something that would entice people to get into a car, drive across town, pay for parking, pay an entry fee (unless you picture a free museum...how will you make money?). One student museum, for example, was focused on Mexican regional cooking. That can be read about in a cook book or eaten at a restaurant, but the student imagined setting up each room as a modest kitchen from one region with characteristic art, stove, utensils, background details. Information on the unique foods of that region (and why certain foods appeared in some states but not elsewhere) was displayed on placards in each room. AND there was sampling (in hopes of getting people to attend the museum cafe) as well as bi-weekly cooking instruction in one region, then another, and so on.
An initial Works Cited page (in MLA format) showing some sources that relate to the contents of your museum. You could also include sources on the history or museums in general and how to set up a museum, but be sure there is plenty on what the exhibits will contain.
You will e-mail the Project Proposal as an attched Word (.doc, .docx or .rtf) or .pdf file. Once it is APPROVED! you can go on to the next step.
Simple enough. Before submitting your proposal, look at the Proposal Sample for your project in the Resources section on Etudes.
3. the Research Paper
The research paper will be due prior to the Final Project (due date is on the Class Schedule). It is absolutely required and is worth up to 100 points.
Reminder: if you did not yet do Step 1: Visit a Museum (see above), then you need to do that now :)
The paper must be in MLA format and will be about four-to-eight pages (with an additional page being he Works Cited page). You should have at least four sources, but you will probably have more. DO CONSIDER BOOK SOURCES; they tend to be more detailed and more credible.
One or two sources might be about museums in general (how to set one up, etc.), but most of your sources should focus on the museum's collection(s).
Create a research paper showing what you researched and how you will use the information. For example, if you are going to create a museum on nail polish, you'll need to do some research on nail polish: who invented it? Where? Are there any examples or pictures of ancient nail polishes? How did nail polish change over the years? What is different about today's nail polish? And so forth. If you find a specialized article on Tippi Hedron's role in flooding the nail salon industry with Vietnamese women, something like that might make a very interesting special exhibit in your museum.
Remember to stick to a narrow focus. Baseball history does not work. How changes in the composition of baseball bats have affected the game does work.
You will e-mail the Research Paper as an attached Word (.doc or .rtf) file.
You can view a partial Research Paper Sample for your project in the Resources section on Etudes.
4. the Final Project
Your final project will include an overview of your museum (a floor plan would be great!) including a list of key artifacts in different sections of the museum, and a guided tour. This is worth 100 points.
It's hard to give you a specific page count. Your project will likely have several sections, and a lot depends on the vehicle (paper, PowerPoint, web) you use. You should have lots of pictures of "things" in your museum, and you will want accompanying text with the images (like a sign with information by an exhibit in an actual museum). With so many images, this could be pretty long. Here is just one possibility:
You could put together a museum catalog. This is not a simple tri-fold brochure with general information; it needs to have the same sort of detail as the other options (Prezi, website). It could have several sections: About Us (or Welcome to the Museum of XYZ), a floorplan, Sections on key exhibits with a few representative pictures and the accompaning informative text, which is why you did all of that research (NOTE: if you take text directly from your research sources, that is OK, but be sure to document/credit those souces in your brochure). Heck, you can include Directions To, Contact Information, Thanks to our Sponsors, Facilities (Cafe? Gift Shop? Parking?)--whatever you imagine would be in that museum catalog/guide book.
It would be easy to do the same with a Prezi site, a PowerPoint document or with a website.
You certainly may turn this in as a Word (.doc, .docx or .rtf) or .pdf document, but since there will be a lot of visuals as well as text, consider a Prezi or a PowerPoint file (attached to an e-mail), or (if you are Web-savvy), you could create a museum website (maybe on a free blogsite such as WordPress or using SimpleSite) and send me the URL (http address) to the site where I can look at it. You could look again at these sites to get some ideas: Museum of Jurassic Technology site and The Book of the Grotesque.
You can view some Final Project samples for the museum in the Resources section on Etudes.