Carrie's Anthropology 196m Blog

I've been thinking this morning about how to organize ourselves as we start putting the exhibit together. I feel like we are all coming up with great ideas, but that everything is a little jumbled together. Some of us are excited about the Cottons and accessioning while it seems others are more interested in the NAGPRA side of things. Which I think is fantastic, but I worry that each of us may lose the big picture as we focus on our own points of interest.

So, with that in mind, I was thinking if we take the exhibit and break it up into parts it may become more manageable. The parts could be 1: before an object comes into the museum. the weaver, the materials, how was collected (could also have some focus here on was it made to be sold or to be used). 2: What happens to a object once it enters a museum 3: How does it leave the museum (NAGPRA).

We could create teams each working on a part of the exhibit, brainstorm ideas, come up with label copy, etc. There would, of course be a lot of communication between teams, but each of us would know what to focus primarily on...

Team 1: focus on the making of a basket, the materials and the weavers, the Cotton's, how he did the collection.
Team 2: explain how it came to the museum through a donor (would probably require some help from team 1) and focus on how an object gets accessioned, how it's inventoried, etc.
Team 3: how an object leaves the museum. NAGPRA, de-accessioning.

this is just one example of how to divide the exhibit, there are many other ways that may work better. Or Dr. Castaneda may have a way all planned out already, but I wanted to get my idea out there. Any thoughts?