After reading everyone's posts from yesterday and today, I need to summarize (for myself) what are theme is. Maybe it's just me (and usually it is) but there are several great idea's we can work off of.
1. Design - Open Storage: Logical arrangement (type, tribe, date collected, Cotton "logic", or Process)
2. Concept/Theme -
- Whatever is chosen will have a NAGRA educational component
A. Exhibit Focus: on Cotton - the Collector - with the objects as the visual to the narrative. Carrie's idea and what Stacey reiterated pursing the exhibit as the "journey of the Cotton collection from maker to collector to donor to museum exhibit. OR
B. Exhibit Focus: on the objects as they move through the donor to museum exhibit with an additional component that incorporates the history of the collection and Cotton. This would incorporate Vanessa's title and outlined in Mary's (multiple meaning title) post. "Weaving Life Through Native California." This focus would include Process stations.
Hopefully I summarized this correctly - they sound very similar.
I believe that "B" with the process stations will perhaps be the easiest.
Just a note: we decide to move towards exhibiting "Cotton and his collection" with Cotton as the main focus, then we want to make sure that we have a good story to tell. A Cotton - the collector - exhibit might including incorporating "why" (and not just how) Cotton chose specific objects. As long as we have the research documentation, (and maybe access to his journals?) it would provide an interesting road map into who Cotton was as a collector by analyzing what his motivation was in acquiring these specific objects. Not sure if we have enough time to do this, but it's just an idea if we decide not to do the Process Station concept.
Now on to the research.
all gone
16 years ago
I was also thinking about featuring a couple of baskets, perhaps whichever one had the most movement juxtaposed another that did not change hands very many times.
ReplyDeleteI posted something about this on my blog and Dr. Castaneda expanded on it in a really cool way. For the sake of time, I'm just copy/pasting it here...
"Not Entirely Absent-Minded Professor said...
Great idea. I think you if you focus on a single basket all the way through, but then take side jaunts in the text (that explain how the featured object COULD have moved in a different direction) then you have an opportunity to focus on alternative basket(s) and basket histories. Does that make sense? I'm thinking about the difference between a basket made for the market (for instance) and one that was made for Indigenous use and later sold. Or one that was used and mended and reused and then collected in a pretty battered state, versus one that is pristine and never saw any use (or one that was commissioned, even)."
Also, I think someone said something about creating a map of CA with pinpoints from the major "collecting" areas. This would be nice and something our audience has to relate to.
Michele, I'm bringing my cat-herding kit to class today. Some of this has gone way off course, and we can integrate many of these ideas into the original concept (as I understood it--and which really worked for the Cotton Collection).
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