Homework, Outline and One Page Discussion Paper

Prepare an outline and then write a one page paper that discusses one of the topics below.  Feel free to incorporate a compare/contrast approach.  Make connections to class content by using terms we discussed in class. Remember to own your thoughts and proof your paper.  Watch out for the use of "they" and "it".  Use spell and grammar check.  Use a thesaurus to improve vocabulary.  Avoid general references such as "the world", "people" and "everyone" - replace these words with specifics.  

Use homework assignments and class notes to help you with this assignment.

Guidelines for the one page paper:

Typed, single spaced, intro sentences and paragraphs, collegiate vocabulary, connections to visual culture. 

Note: Outline can be handwritten.

Topics:

Photography, Then and Now

Females in Society, Then and Now

Racial Profiling, Then and Now

Visual Marks/Symbols on the Body, Then and Now

Travel, Then and Now

Freedom of Expression (painting, sculpture, architecture, fashion), Then and Now

Industry and Technology, Then and Now

Homework, Photography

'The Atlantic" Remembers Its Civil War Stories by Michele Norris.
Link here to read (or listen).  Source is National Public Radio.
HW - Vocab, Summary/Outline, Personal Response (includes connections to course content).

The Spirit Photographs of William Hope
Link here to read and view a collection of images. Source is The Public Domain Review.
HW - Vocab, Summary/Outline, Personal Response (includes connections to course content).

Catching the Shadow of  A Lost World by Petra Mayer
Link here to listen to the story and view a slide show.  Source is National Public Radio.
HW- Vocab, Summary/Outline, Personal Response (includes connections to course content).
For those of you who seek more information and imagery on the photographer Edward S. Curtis, go to the Smithsonian Libraries.  Link here.

In your textbook (Kromm and Bakewell), Chapter 18, Marketing The Slave Trade: Slavery, Photography, and Emancipation: Time and Freedom in The Life of the Picture. pp. 255 - 260.
HW - Vocab, Summary/Outline, Personal Response (includes connections to course content).
Image source link here and here. 

Homework, David Wilson, Museum of Jurassic Technology

An exhibit of the cultural significance of cats cradle.

An arrow shows the path of a deprong mori.

Rotting dice from the collection of Ricky Jay.

An exhibit of the logical alphabet by Shea Zellweger.

Link to the museum's website here.

Homework:
Watch video posted above.
Read article from Smithsonian Magazine.  Link here.
Read article from New York Times.  Link here.
Vocab, Summary and Personal Response.  If you wish, you can combine all info rather than prepare separately.

Additional Reading (optional):
Revisiting the Museum of Jurassic Technology.  Link here.

Curiosity

Museum of Sex, Manhatten, NY

Museum of Ramen Noodles, Japan

UFO Museum, Roswell, New Mexico

Cabinets of Curiosity in St. Augustine

Robert Ripley, 1889 - 1949, American.
Traveled the world collecting the exotic.

Ripley was a cartoonist.

A contemporary advertisement for the museum.
The museum is located on San Marco Avenue in St. Augustine.

A recent addition to the Ripley collection.  Link here to see and read more.

Franklin Smith, 1826 - 1911.
Abolitionist, proponent for Washington D.C., travels and collects.

Villa Zorayda, located here in St. Augustine.
Built by Smith in 1883, inspired by travel to Spain, Egypt, Morocco.
Fantasy architecture in Florida.

Anna Maria Grosholtz (Madame Tussaud)
1761, France - 1850, England.
Wax artist.  Established first wax museum in England.

Established 1948.  Potter's Wax Museum is located in St. Augustine 
and was the first wax museum in United States.
Link here to view website.

Wax heads of those deceased displayed in home.
Anatomy Act of 1832 in Britian
"More and more teaching was done with wax models....The whole bodies that were produced were nearly all of women.  Many of those made towards the end of the eighteenth century were sold in Britai, France and elsewhere as 'Venuses'.  Their faces were beautiful, their 'skin' was coloured and tehy had eyelashes and flowing long hair.  Their bodies opened to reveal body parts, particularly foetuses.  The 'Venus' was displayed lying invitingly on silk or velvet cushions, and was often decorated with a pearl necklace.  Few whole male bodies were made.  Males had no wax 'flesh' or clothes and were always shown upright to demonstrate the position of muscles and bones.  Perhaps the difference was intended to show that men were good for action, but women only to reproduce and be ornamental."  -source is Madame Tussaud: The History of Wax Works by Pamela Pilbeam.  Chapter 1, The History of Wax Modeling.  Link here.

Wax models by Joseph Towne (1806 - 1879, British).
Many of his models are on display at Guy Hospital in London.
More info and image on The History Blog.  Link here.

Wax Model Doll

With their capacity to titillate as well as educate, anatomical models became sought-after curiosities, displayed not only in dissecting rooms but also in sideshows and the curiosity cabinets of wealthy Victorian gentlemen.  For a small admission fee, visitors seeking an unusual afternoon's entertainment could bisit displays of these strange dolls in London, Paris, Brussels and Barcelona.  -source is Welcom Collection.  Link here.

Dr. Frederick Ruysch and Peter The Great

Ruysch (1638 - 1731), doctor in Amsterdam.

"Ruysch made about a dozen tableaux, constructed of human fetal skeletons with backgrounds of other body parts, on allegorical themes of death and the transiency of life...Ruysch built the 'geological' landscapes of these tableaux from gallstones and kidneystones, and 'botanical' backgrounds from injected and hardened major veins and arteries for "trees," and more ramified tissue of lungs and smaller vessels for 'bushes' and 'grass.'"

Source for above images and text found on Morbid Anatamoy.  Link here.

Peter The Great, 1682 - 1725, Tsar of Russia

Teeth Pulled By Peter The Great

Iron Maiden

Head Crusher

"Peter arranged the "tsar's cabinet" on a royal scale typical of all his endeavors. The scope of the undertaking involved the entire state. In 1717 Peter ordered the governor of Voronezh to start trapping birds and wild animals. In 1718 he signed a resolution that read: "Should anyone find underground or underwater some old thing, namely: unusual or rare stones, human skeletons or bones of animals, fishes or birds, which differ from ours, or which are bigger or smaller than normal, as well as old inscriptions on stones, iron or bronze..." kitchen utensils, weapons, in other words all "old or wondrous" objects, the latter should be promptly submitted for the tsar's inspection. And from all around Russia various findings or oddities started to arrive: a sheep from Vyborg with two tongues and two sets of eyes situated on each side, lambs from Tobolsk, one with eight legs and the other with three eyes. All travelers were ordered to buy "rare" things both from foreign and domestic "trading people"." - source is Russian Academy of Sciences.  Link here.

Source for above images found here.

Cabinets of Curiosity

Cabinets of Curiosity - encyclopedic collection, Renaissance Europe, objects yet to be defined.
The term cabinet originally described a private room, usually for a man, used early modern Europe.
Renaissance - "reborn", a cultural movement, 14th - 17th century, began in Italy and spread to rest of Europe, observation - linear perspective and science, politics - diplomacy, humanism.
Humanism - reacts against utilitarian, civic life, often included women, grammar, history, poetry, moral philosophy.

Ole Worm, 1588 - 1655, Danish physician

Ferrante Imperato, an apothecary of Naples.  Engraving from 1599.

Engraving

Engraving

Painted in 1636.

Shells and Coral

Before photography.  Drawings to document, illustrate written text of findings.

"No-one, gazing upon the multiplicity of natural productions, could fail to worship God in His Creation. "

"As in other late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century natural histories, butterflies and other metamorphosing insects became analogies for the Christian transfiguration of the human body at the Resurrection; Vincent boasted that his cabinet contained every species described in Maria Sibylla Merian’s book on the subject."  -source is Scientific Symmetries by EC Spary.  Link to pdf article here. 


"[H]istorian Roelof van Gelder distinguishes five different motives which, [to] varying degrees, played a role in inspiring Dutch citizens to build up a collection. Firstly, the possessor of a rich and beautiful cabinet could acquire a good reputation, because he could be sure of important guests entering his house. Secondly, the collected valuables could serve simultaneously as merchandise and as investments. Thirdly, the collected objects, besides contributing to the collection, could generate a certain aesthetic satisfaction. Fourthly, the religious consideration that man could learn to know God better through the study of of his Creation played a substantial role for some Dutch collectors. As a fifth reason van Gelder mentions scientific curiosity, deriving from the humanistic ideal of the universal scholar."- source is Neat Nature: The Relation Between Nature and Art in a Dutch Cabinet of Curiosities from the Early Eighteenth Century.  Link here. 


The source for above images and information came from the blog Bible Odyssey. Link here.

History of the Museum

"The Peale Museum was awunderkammer of the first order, and its famous mastodon skeleton can be seen looming in the shadows behind the curtain.  Peale financed scientific expeditions to collect natural history specimens for his marvelous museum, which was eventually sold to P.T. Barnum and fellow showman Moses Kimbell, who had previously collaborated to exploit "a curiosity supposed to be a mermaid" but which was in fact a clever fake."Charles Wilson Peale, 1822, self-portriat, The Artist in his Museum.
Source link here.

Fred Wilson, American, b. 1954

Fred Wilson
Link here to watch ART 21 video.

Watch and Listen:

Scholl Lecture Series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v2as0pNkog

Read:

Nasher Museum of Art. 

http://www.artsjournal.com/flyover/2009/10/fred_wilson.html

"As a student of material culture, I knew the importance of allowing objects and their makers to speak. As a poet and fiction writer I know that stories can kill as well as cure." How Objects Get Their Meaning by John Perreault. Source Link: http://www.artsjournal.com/artopia/2004/05/fred_wilsons_quest.html

Mining The Museum, 1992

Maryland Historical Society

What we don't see on display is significant. 

Didactic - Intended to teach, particularly in having moral instruction as an ulterior motive. 

Provocative - Causing a strong reaction, especially deliberately. 

Context - The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement or idea. 

Display - Make a prominent exhibition of (something) in a place where it can be easily seen. 

Wilson’s intervention was a correction of the museum’s identity in the sense that it made the underlying racism apparent. Using glass cases and neat labeling, Wilson’s installations mimicked the usual methods of museum display but with a twist so that a new voice or persona was created. As he said it himself: “By bringing things out of storage and shifting things already on view, I believe I created a new public persona for the historical society.”

Slave shackles surrounded by silverware. 

Synecdoche - A figure of speech in which, most commonly, a part stands for the whole. Wilson uses found objects synecdochically. In other words, a pair of crude slave shackles stands for slavery and the repression of its meaning and history.

Modes of Transport

Wilson communicated his critique through a strategic juxtaposition of the museum’s artifacts. The audience was left to draw the conclusions. Wilson exhibited an old baby carriage in which a Ku Klux Klan hood substituted the usual bedding. The baby carriage was placed next to a photograph of black nannies with white babies — their future employers. Again, Wilson did not make any explicit statements, but simply provided the audience with a strong visual statement about the persistence of racial hierarchies. The suggestion that children readily absorb their parents’ prejudices was clear.

Selections from the Maryland Historical Society

Plantation furniture surrounding a slave whipping post used until 1950's.

Guarded View

Wilson commented:

“The majority of museum guards...tend to be African American...Many of the museums on the East Coast pride themselves, and get...funds...for having such large minority employment. But actually all the employment is in the guards, and the fact that they’re in that level of the museum and not on the upper levels, affects the kind of artwork that’s displayed and the kind of visitor that comes through the door.” 2

The piece consists of posed black mannequins dressed in security uniforms displayed on a small platform; this piece was later developed into a performance by Wilson. Invited by the staff of the museum to give a pre opening tour, he greeted them as himself, and then arranged to meet with the group elsewhere, during the short lapse of time Wilson changed into a guards uniform and waited at the designated space, not one member of the team recognised or approached him and it was only when he announced his presence and the purpose of the deception, that Guarded View’s point transpired and was fully understood.

Another section of the installation appropriated Picassos’ Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Aware that Picasso had been inspired by ethnographic collections and tribal masks from ‘primitive’ cultures when making Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Wilson adorned some of the nudes with tribal masks and when viewers peered through the cut out eyes they were met with the eyes of two Senegalese people and Wilson himself on a videotape asking questions such as “if my contemporary art is your traditional art, is my art your cliché?”3

Wilson's work at the Maryland Historical Society was as much about exposing the Eurocentric structure of museums as it was a healing process for all of those affected by their history being concealed. In a form of conclusion Wilson states

 “Museums are afraid of what they will bring to the surface and how people will feel about certain issues that are long buried. They keep it buried, as if it doesn’t exist, as though people aren’t feeling these things anyway, instead of opening that sore and cleaning it out so it can heal.”4

Source Link: http://www.archivesandcreativepractice.com/fred-wilson 

https://hammer.ucla.edu/take-it-or-leave-it/artists/fred-wilson

Link to history of black female stereotyped. 

https://visualculturelc.blogspot.com/2021/01/women-slaves-bodies-violated.html

Museum Interventions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T31_hfpSnDc