MUSEUM METHODS

Welcome to blog central for ANTH 177 (Spring 2014). Students in this course maintain individual blogs in order to record their weekly lab hours and summaries, journal their brilliant thoughts about our readings, discuss our exhibit and inventory project, and generate discussion about museum-related issues, events or opportunities. This is a nuts and bolts course that complements ANTH 176: Museums, Culture & Society (an introduction to the scholarly field of museum anthropology).

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Thursday, April 3, 2014

For Holly and Nancy

Here is the link to the Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection at UT.

The Social Biography of Things

Do you collect souvenirs or ephemera from your everyday life and travels? Or, if you've been lucky enough, from some sojourn abroad? Where will these things end up a century from now? In an estate sale, antique store, or the home of your heirs? Perhaps in the hands of a student researcher like yourself? What kind of stories will they tell? One that reflects your own life history, means and sensibilities? The aesthetic and technological roots of their manufacture? Their own peripatetic lives as bits of material culture? The nascent years of the locale and institution in which they have momentarily come to rest? These are questions that matter in museum anthropology. And they are central to this collection and course.