Today’s post is from Geralyn Ducady, Curator of Programs and Education at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology.
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Even regular readers of our blog may not know that the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology has a vibrant outreach program to local schools. The “Culture CaraVan” program travels to schools throughout Rhode Island and parts of Massachusetts and is taught by our Education Coordinator, Kathy Silvia. In addition, we have two special programs that are in-depth collaborations with Providence schools run with the help of Brown University graduate student interns. This academic year, Alexandra Goodman and Emily McCartan, both Masters students in the Public Humanities program, serve as our education interns.
The “Think Like an Archaeologist” program is a collaboration between the Haffenreffer, the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology, the RISD Museum of Art, and Providence Public Schools, now in its fourth year. It features a five-session, hands-on, experiential study of archaeology for sixth graders: four sessions are in the classroom and the fifth is a visit to the RISD and Haffenreffer Museums. We recently visited the Nathan Bishop School; this year we will also work with the Nathaniel Greene, Roger Williams, and DelSesto Schools.
Students at the Nathan Bishop School work on a mock dig
Müge Durusu-Tanrıöver, Ph.D. student at Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute, helps a Nathan Bishop student identify his find
Geralyn Ducady, HMA Curator of Programs and Education, compiles a class map of the mock dig site
We have another great collaboration, started last spring by Education Intern Alexandra Goodman, with the principal, teachers, and students at Fox Point Preschool. Our pilot program with the school included a visit to the classroom and two visits to the Museum with the four-year-olds. This year, Alex plans to develop an extensive curriculum featuring multiple in-class and museum visits for both three- and four-year-old groups. We hope to culminate their experiences with a small exhibit curated by the students! Look for that information in the spring.
~ Geralyn Ducady, Curator of Programs and Education
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Thanks Geralyn! For more information on our education programs, or to schedule a program, see http://brown.edu/Facilities/Haffenreffer/education/index.html
Liz Hoover’s discussion of Native American Environmental Health Movements (from November 21, below) mentioned Akwesasne Mohawk artist Natasha Smoke Santiago’s work on view at Manning Hall. This exhibit has been extended and can be seen for a few more hours. If you’ve missed this exhibit, get to Manning as soon as you can!
Natasha Smoke Santiago’s Strawberry Belly, on view at Manning Hall
~ Jennifer Stampe, Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology
This week’s post is from Liz Hoover, Assistant Professor of American Studies at Brown. Her class recently visited Culture Lab to see Yu’pik materials including clubs, knives, bags, and clothing, as pictured below.
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Native American Environmental Health Movements Students at Culture Lab
American Indian reservations are currently home to over 600 Superfund sites, and countless other sources of environmental contamination. Many of these communities are concerned about how contamination from these sites will affect their health, and about how conventional risk assessments done at these sites do not often take Native culture and subsistence into account. In the past, scientists had sometimes descended on the community, collected physical data and personal information, and left without concerns of tailoring their studies to community needs, or reporting results back to the community. Today, many Native communities are taking charge of the research process, and partnering with scientists through a “community based participatory research” (CBPR) approach, which takes a more democratic and ecological approach to the study of environmental health. Native American Environmental Health Movements (ETHN1980J) examines how environmental contamination has impacted the health and culture of different Native communities across North America. We look at three case studies to understand how these communities organized around environmental health issues, how they pushed for results, how they worked with and/or fought against science. Within each case we learn about the culture and history of the community, the more recent histories of environmental contamination, and how the community has organized and sought to draw attention to their environmental health issues. After examining the PCB contamination of the St. Lawrence River that bisects the Akwesasne Mohawk community and the uranium mines that affected miners, their families, and community members who consume contaminated water on the Navajo reservation, the class is now looking at the PCB contamination of food sources for Yu’pik villagers on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska.
We have used Culture Lab as a place to explore the material culture produced by each tribe. Because this class draws an interdisciplinary range of students, ranging from Environmental Studies, Public Health, Ethnic Studies, and Biology majors, for some students this is their first experience in working with museum objects while as college students. These mini-field trips have been a hit! Students find that viewing and handling objects made by people connected to the tribal communities that we are studying makes the interruption of those cultures by environmental contamination all the more real: it is one thing to read about how PCB contamination is impacting Yu’pik resource usage, it is another to witness an entire table filled with a myriad of creative household and hunting items crafted from animal skins, bones, teeth and sinew.
Students Examine a Yu’pik Beaded Mukluk
Recently, the Haffenreffer hosted Akwesasne Mohawk artist Natasha Smoke Santiago. Through her contemporary pieces, students have been able to visually engage with both the Mohawk creation story as well as contemporary health issues through Natasha’s brilliant new piece featuring Sky Woman constructed from insulin bottles. In this way, through the Haffenreffer’s older collections and newer exhibits, students have been better able to grasp what Native people have at stake when they pursue environmental research.
~ Liz Hoover, Assistant Professor of American Studies
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For more information about Professor Hoover’s teaching and research, see http://brown.edu/Departments/AmCiv/people/facultypage.php?id=1341838558
Learn more about Natasha Smoke Santiago’s work at http://brown.edu/Facilities/Haffenreffer/exhibits-manning/NatashaSmokeSantiago.htm
Today’s post about conservation projects at the HMA comes from Nathan Arndt, Assistant Curator at the Haffenreffer.
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While many students know of the HMA’s galleries located at Manning Hall, many remain unaware of the work that is done at the Collections and Research Facility in Bristol. It is in these historic buildings (below), built by Rudolf F. Haffenreffer III and the site of his original museum, that the collections are stored and our cataloging, research, and preservation work is done.
The Collections and Research Facility in Bristol
This year we have employed two Post-Docs, four Proctors, and two interns to assist us in preparing the collections for both student and faculty use. Like most museum museums, we have conservation concerns that range from insect damage to mold removal. The Haffenreffer has turned these problems into highly useful teaching aids, by giving students the chance to learn basic preservation and conservation skills.
One of the largest projects we are currently working on is removing all artifacts from the North Wall storage area and retrofitting the space to better fit our collections. Historically, the area has been the most difficult one in which to maintain the proper environment for our collections — and many of the objects show evidence of this. High humidity and a once-leaking roof have left many pots with salt residues which were damaging the pigments and putting the pots at risk. We are currently undergoing an extended soaking process that safely removes these salts. Its results as can be seen in the photographs below.
Nasca Bowl Before
Nasca Bowl After
Maricopa Pottery Before
Maricopa Pottery After
We are constantly researching the best methods to care for our objects and we work very closely with a contracted conservator to ensure that these collections are available for students to use in exhibits and for research. In some cases, such as our beaded table top, we only clean half of the item so that we can it as an educational tool, and show what years of dust, soot, and water can do to an object.
Table only half cleaned
It is through proper preservation and conservation methods — and educating others about them — that we can ensure the survival of our collections.
~ Nathan Arndt, Assistant Curator
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A note from the editor: We welcome guest bloggers! If you are interested in writing about your experience with the Haffenreffer, please contact Jennifer_Stampe@brown.edu
Hurricane Sandy edition: The Haffenreffer has weathered the storm and its staff members are getting back to work and checking for damage (we’re happy to say things look fine so far). We were planning a post about new acquisitions but, after a couple of unexpected days away from work, have had to postpone it. Instead, we present these pictures from the recent visit of the Haffenreffer Museum Student Group to the collections facility in Bristol (with thanks to Assistant Curator Nathan Arndt for his camera work). The group is making plans for a spring exhibit, weighing the options described below.
Above, curator Thierry Gentis discusses objects from the J. W. P. Jenks collection with students. Jenks founded and built the collection for Brown’s first museum, housed in Rhode Island Hall from 1871 to about 1915. His collection speaks to the relationship of anthropology to the natural sciences, and to institutional change in the discipline’s “museum era” at the end of the 19th century. Learn more about the Jenks Museum of Natural History at http://www.browndailyherald.com/the-wonders-rhode-island-hall-once-held-1.2243733
Above, students examine objects from our substantial collection of furniture from Africa. They may propose an exhibit focusing on Ashanti stools, important as personal, utilitarian objects and as symbols of status, rank, and power.
We look forward to working with the Haffenreffer Museum Student Group, and we will hear from them here when they have decided what direction their exhibit will take. The group is registered with the Undergraduate Council of Students at Brown University. For more information, see http://haffenrefferstudents.wordpress.com/
Our very best to our colleagues recovering from Hurricane Sandy!
~ Jennifer Stampe, Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology
Sven Haakanson photographs Alutiiq bag at HMA
A few weeks ago, the HMA hosted a visit from Sven Haakanson, Jr., Executive Director of the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository in Kodiak, Alaska. Haakanson gave the Jane Powell Dwyer Memorial Lecture, a compelling talk titled “Using Collections to Explore Local Heritage: Lessons from the Alutiiq Museum.” He described the work he and museum staff members do to support a living Alutiiq culture through arts, language, and archaeology programs, and he outlined an approach that sees the museum and its work to teach about an Alutiiq way of life as both a tool for promoting local change and a platform for garnering respect from outsiders. Given a long history of Alutiiq dispossession, the museum’s brief is to “reverse the studies” or repatriate knowledge, reclaiming it from contexts where it is of little use to Alutiiq people (who call themselves Sugpiaq and are also known as Pacific Yupik).
Its ways of doing so are inspiring. Among other projects, the Alutiiq Museum sponsors artists’ travel to collections made over the last two centuries and housed in museums in Russia, Scandinavia, and Europe. Participants document the collections, study how objects were made, produce similar objects for the Alutiiq Museum’s collection, and teach community members the techniques they have learned. This work requires a lot of grant writing, as well as a lot of relationship building.
Haakanson also visited the HMA Collections and Research Facility in Bristol to view coastal Alaskan objects from the collection. Below, he photographs one of these objects, a gutskin pouch from the Aleutian Islands (HMA 64-921). While our information about the pouch comes in part from a tag on it that reads “Tobacco pouch made of fish skin. Herschel Island (Alaskan Indians),” Haakanson thought the material was certainly sea lion throat, a thing he could tell, in part, by its width. This is one of many insights that we’ve now added to our records, and we’re glad to have it. Haakanson works with an artist who wants to make just such a bag. He planned to try one out himself on his return to Alaska. We hope to hear how that goes, and will report on it to you when we do.
In the photo above Haakanson photographs this pouch. His hand is in the picture to provide a comparative scale. For the artists who will use the photo, there’s no better way to indicate it. Click on the photos below for a better view of the bag and to see other photos from what was a fun session!
~ Jennifer Stampe, Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology
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Learn more about the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository at http://alutiiqmuseum.org/
The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology Director’s Blog is, with this post, reborn as the HMA Blog, a collaborative project of the Haffenreffer’s extended community. Over the next several months, you’ll hear from staff members, postdocs, students, faculty, and others using the HMA in their research and teaching. We begin with a brief message from Bill Simmons, Professor of Anthropology and Acting Director of the HMA (as well as long-term denizen of the Haffenreffer realm, about which more in another post):
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First of all, our thanks to Steve Lubar for his leadership as Director of the Haffenreffer Museum following Shep Krech’s retirement. Through an excellent series of very-well attended presentations by museum leaders from near and far, Steve provided Brown with remarkable opportunities to meet and hear from experienced individuals who are active in museum innovation at other colleges and universities. The Culture Lab that Steve envisioned for Manning Hall has quickly become an invaluable resource for museum teaching at Brown. With the lively assistance of Emily Stokes-Rees, Postdoctoral Fellow in Museum Anthropology, Steve also was very effective in broadening the on-campus base of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates who are discovering the value of the Haffenreffer for teaching and research. Steve is now working hard on a well-deserved sabbatical, and we wish him well.
I am delighted to serve for this academic year as Acting Director, with the expectation that the new permanent Director will begin on July 1, 2013. You should hear from us shortly with the announcement of who the new Director will be. My primary goal is to continue building the student, faculty, and community base of the Haffenreffer as an asset to the academic quality and cultural distinction of Brown University.
A university museum has a different genius than other kinds of museums. It both shines the light of the university out to the world, and is an opening through which visitors and guests can directly visit the source of this light. The genius loci reflects the collaboration of museum staff, faculty, and students who through research, teaching, and exhibit planning express their ideas–whether anthropological, historical, archaeological, art historical, ethnomusicological, or of many other possible disciplines–through the medium of its collections. Whether the objects are exciting new discoveries being viewed for the first time, or earlier collections being interpreted in new ways, they express what is new as knowledge is created. The uniqueness of the university museum is in this umbilical proximity to the creation of knowledge. It serves internal teaching and research functions of the residential campus in numerous ways that range from career interests in museum-related professions, to new ways of deepening learning through the use of objects, to the broader goal of enriching a liberal education. It also fulfills the powerful obligation felt by this university to open up its educational and cultural value to those beyond the campus community. Being a more tangible than virtual institution, its residential community can build numerous connections to its neighboring communities through real human networks.
The Manning Hall Gallery and its Culture Lab are humming with start of the semester activities, as is the beautifully refurbished storage and conservation facility in Bristol. The Museum staff is a highly talented, dedicated, and professional group working hard to bring collections to the classroom and to overseeing the complex tasks of collections management, exhibition planning, and generous service to the campus community and wider public. They will be blogging here, along with faculty, students, and others, to introduce themselves and to engage you in the important and interesting work we are doing together.
I welcome any ideas about innovative ways that the Haffenreffer can shine its light within Brown and outward to the public. Please comment here or contact me at William_Simmons@brown.edu
~ Bill
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A note from the editor: We welcome guest bloggers! If you are interested in writing about your experience with the Haffenreffer, please contact Jennifer_Stampe@brown.edu
