Although I enjoy the specialized tasks offered by my group-skills, I feel that the class-oriented assignments have thus far provided a more authentic experience of the collaboration that most museums thrive on. Problem solving is a major component of this course, and it seems that we are most efficient at overcoming conceptual obstacles during our in-class discussions or online via Slack. I need to take more of an active role in these group talks, as they are an immensely helpful forum for discussing critical topics regarding the exhibit. Thankfully, this cooperation has continued to be fruitful outside of the classroom.
The first Charrette and History Harvest was an interesting look at how the class performed when given a complex task to carry out. I took on the role of one of the harvest coordinators during this event. I worked with Jillian Lobner and Hannah Ashley to record and photograph any objects that attendees offered for submission. Jillian and I traded off the tasks of questioning donors about their objects and writing down the histories of those artifacts. I typically handled the objects themselves and prepared them for Hannah to photograph. We functioned as a capable team during busy moments in the harvest, and quickly coordinated with each other when multiple donors arrived at the same time. When the harvest slowed down, I often sat at the charrette tables to listen and talk with different guests. In the end, we recorded historical and physical information for three sets of objects and will contact the owners if we end up deciding to use them in our exhibit.
While my group-skill assignments allow me to research different aspects of museum work, most of my knowledge on the subject matter of our exhibit has come from class-centered activities. Our early historiographic essay assignment forced us each to examine a specific element of Fort Collins’ history of immigration. This gave us a collective awareness of different perspectives on the topic. I am quite pleased with the end result of my essay, which focused on the importance of religion in local immigrant communities. I now feel that I have stronger understanding of the varied ways in which this subject impacted immigrant life in early Fort Collins. Unsurprisingly, I am going to focus on how to integrate this topic into the wider framework of the exhibit.
Members of the class have occasionally withdrawn from their group-skill tasks to pursue other avenues of immigration research. I participated in a few of these informal research excursions. On February 17, a small group of us visited the Museo de las Tres Colonias in the Andersonville subdivision of Fort Collins. I mainly went to get photographs and historical information, though I also wanted to personally explore the local community. On February 23, I joined in on a meeting between various project members and city archive curator Lesley Struc at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery. Our purpose for that activity primarily centered around gaining access to the museum’s collection of archival photos, though we also toured the gallery floor to see how the museum presented its exhibits on immigration. I am hoping to join my classmates on more extracurricular research excursions, as they are generally very resourceful activities.
I am very confident in the quality of the class work I have completed in this course so far, though I feel as if I am not taking enough of an active role in the development of the exhibit. This may be because most of my group-skills focus more on the design and implementation of the exhibit itself than on raising public awareness, which has been primary objective of these early weeks. Regardless, as the semester unfolds, I intend to involve myself more directly in the shaping of this project, both in terms of class-work and group-skills.
Update for Final Evaluation
Now that the exhibit has ended, I am fairly pleased with my overall performance in terms of my non-group skills work. I especially enjoyed getting to engage in some historical research for my portion of the exhibit’s thematic narrative. As mentioned above, I studied the roles of churches and religious belief in Fort Collins’ burgeoning immigrant communities. This effort was quite fruitful, and I gained a considerable amount of information regarding two German churches and one major Hispanic one. Additionally, I also contributed to the related walking tour by writing detailed entries on Holy Family Catholic Church and German Evangelical Congregational Church. My involvement with the latter led to me visit the site and get a tour of the old church (including fascinating areas normally inaccessible to the public) from the local pastor. After getting his approval, I installed a physical panel on site next to the main entrance.
Throughout March I continued to participate in group excursions to the Museo de las Tres Colonias and Bee Family Centennial Farm. Though I am disappointed that I did not engage in a second history harvest, I am somewhat satisfied with the objects we were able to acquire on these trips. For instance, our second visit to the Museo on March 27 ended with me acquiring a rosary for our exhibit, allowing me to complement my topic’s photographic displays with a physical object. I would have personally preferred to get an artifact from within the Hispanic community itself rather than get one on loan from a museum, but I feel that the end result nevertheless gave some extra substance to our general exhibit.
I was given an extra set of responsibilities on March 20 during one of our in-class discussions on the exhibit’s development. In addition to my duties on the exhibit layout and mount and display teams (or perhaps because of them), I was given the task of overseeing the spatial layout of the project. This basically meant that I had to ensure that the disparate topics and components of the physical exhibit cohered in a smooth and uncluttered fashion. Although communication between team members sometimes frayed, I am very pleased with the overall result of the exhibit itself. I believe that we managed to work together as a very efficient team, especially near the final hour when Kim, Carly, Ray and I continued to work until 11 pm on the night before the opening. I have a slightly varied judgment on the outcomes of some of my group skills, but I am generally satisfied with the work I did on a class level.
