Boston

My classmates and I, along with our professors Cindy (Material Culture) and Doreen (Exhbition Design) spent the last week of October touring around Boston and New England. It was my first time to Massachusetts, and the only north-eastern state I've been to now besides New York. Here's a brief summary of the trip and what I thought about it.

Monday we woke up quite early and drove from Cooperstown to the Wallace Center, which would be our home base in Boston for the week. After a quick sack lunch, we hopped on the T. I reminisced about my French Metro and Tram experiences, and before too long we were off the train and walking across Boston Commons. Our destination was the Robert Gould Shaw memorial, where we met with Ryan McNabb, a ranger and head of the NPS African American National Historic Site. He then led us, as well as a few general visitors, along the Black Heritage Trail, which primarily focuses on the abolition movement in Boston. It was absolutely fascinating, and one of the highlights of the trip for me. We walked all over Beacon Hill, as he told stories, passed around copies of documents, and helped us understand what it would have been like to have lived in Boston. I learned that Boston was, for a long time, an end point of the Underground Railroad. Our tour ended at the front door of the Museum of African American History. Their current exhibit, Let Your Motto Be Resistance, is a collection of photographs of famous African Americans, from athletes to musicians to politicians on loan from the Smithsonian. There are some absolutely gorgeous photographs, and some very moving ones. I was especially struck by the photograph of the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., which shows his children looking over the open casket for the first time.

Tuesday we started the morning by speaking with Katherine Armstrong, the PR Director of the  Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. She told us about some of the very interesting programs they are enacting, which are all really trying to help people see beyond the art museum. It was really neat hearing about how hard they are trying to separate themselves from the "mausoleum." Unfortunately, when you actually walk through the museum, that is exactly what it is. Isabella Gardner took her checkbook to Europe, and bought whatever caught her fancy. There is the entire interior of a French chapel, which is bad enough, but the worst part were the illuminated illustrations cut from books. Those always make me sad. The museum itself is not to blame, it is simply this woman and her own idiosyncrasies.
From the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, we went to the Museum of Fine Art. We got to talk with two of their textile curators, which made my textile-loving roommate very very happy. They showed us a number of samplers, talked about an upcoming exhibit they're using the samplers for. It was very interesting, especially because of our sewing project, where we get to make our own samplers within a quilt square. After we spoke with the textile folks, we had the chance to speak with their educator. It was really neat hearing about some of the programming they are doing. On Wednesdays, they host drawing sessions in their galleries where general visitors are allowed to come in and draw what they see, while professional artists give tips. After speaking with her, we got the chance to wander through the museum. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had three of my favorite Monet paintings. I sat and drooled over those for awhile, and enjoyed watching how other visitors observed them. From there, I moved to their Egyptian exhibit. The neat thing was that all of the pieces of their exhibition have been together since they were entombed. It sounded like it was actually something that was the fault of the economy, originally the collection was supposed to include loaned pieces but the economy made the museum reconsider their decision and simply pull from their own collection.


Thursday was probably the best day of the trip. We started out at the Boston Children's Museum. It was great fun. They turned us loose on the museum an hour before they opened, and the group of twenty-somethings that we are all reverted to a bunch of five-year olds. There was climbing, playing with bubbles, jumping, singing and lots and lots of laughter. One of the things that intrigued me the most was that a large part of their exhibits are in both English and Spanish. It was fun for me, my Spanish is awful (only a semester) but lots of French, so I can read some. It was a challenge trying to read it. We played until moms and their kids started showing up, but then I felt kind of awkward staring at them. I did have some interesting observations. It was mostly moms standing back and talking to each other, watching their kids playing. I would have loved to have seen more of the moms (sorry, there weren't dads) engaged. We got to talk to a number of the educators and an exhibit designers. It was neat getting their perspective on working with kids, and trying to engage parents. We also asked about their policy on lone adults that come in. They have a really interesting system in place to keep the kids there safe. 

From the Children's Museum, we trekked over to the Science Museum. It was HUGE. A number of my classmates had purchased tickets to see their blockbuster Harry Potter exhibit. Sadly, as fanatical as I can be about Harry Potter, I'm also poor, so I just went through the rest of the museum. It was a TON to take in. I was very, very frustrated with their listening devices. On a number of stations they had "ear trumpets", for lack of a better word, that I was extremly uncomfortable having to use. Then, to add insult to injury, they only repeated the instructions for the exhibit, not the audio presented. They also had a whole exhibit on music and patterns, but the headphones were hearing aid incompatible. It frustrates me, a lot. For the most part, I can still hear most of a normal oral presentation. But a lot of the latter exhibit only put out sound through its headphones, which I couldn't use. All in all the rest of the museum was neat. I was especially impressed with a tiny, tucked away exhibit about mammograms. Its something I think all women hear about and fear a little bit, but it was really neat getting to actually learn about what is involved. They even had gel packs to feel to see if you could find the lumps. We then talked with a really neat guy who played a pretty cool magic trick, trying to show us how hard it is, but how hard they work, to take boring, dry science facts and turn them into something interesting and engaging. He's involved with some really great things, and it was neat to see how the science museum has grown over the years.

Friday we got out of dodge (or Boston) and spent a day with the Historic New England. They own a number of house museums all over New England and New York. We visited two; the Gropius House and the Codman Estate. They were two diametrically different places. The Gropious house is a Modernist 1930's house, it was the home of one of the fathers of the modernist movement. The curators are really struggling with balancing the museum habit of preserving the old versus the modernist philosophy of replacing anything that begins to wear down. Things are helped yet complicated by the fact that Mr. Gropius's daughter is still alive, and has very strong opinions about how the house should be. They do, however, have a wonderful opportunity to learn things from her.

The Codman Estate was...interesting. It is a mish-mash of artifacts from a variety of time-periods, and is full to the brim with stuff. They have changed their interpretation four different times, and still have had very little success bringing people into the house. They do, however, have a number of people who use their grounds or who rent out the carriage house. It is a challenge, to see how they can bring people inside. I personally wonder if focusing more on the interior designer son that grew up in the house would help them, but it will be interesting to see what happens over the next few years. After we toured the house, the staff of Historic New England hosted us for a really fun lunch and talked to us about their stewardship program. It focuses on helping the public that lives in historic homes to preserve them. It was absolutely fascinating, and something I knew nothing about. Especially since Nate and I have a daydream about someday living in a historic home, it was fun to hear about what they've done with the properties they hold and those they've deaccesioned.

Alright, I apologize for having taken so long to have posted this, but better late then never, right?