School of Information Management & Systems.   Fall 2003.
142  Access to American Cultural Heritages.   M. Buckland.

Assignment 6: Museum Collections: Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Due Oct 6.

For your second museum visit go to the Hearst Museum of Anthropology and look at four small exhibits which we use as a basis for discussing museums and their roles, especially the first two:
- Beginnings: The Phoebe Hearst Era (1901-1920); the remaining first part of an larger exhibit A Century of Collecting;
- Native Californian Cultures;
- The World in a Frame: Photographs From the Great Age of Exploration, 1865-1915; and
- Ecuadorian Pottery and Textile Traditions.
Before you go, look at the brief descriptions of these exhibits at http://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu/media/press.html. Then click on the Native California Cultures exhibit at hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu/exhibitions/ncc/splash.html.
Read (at least) the Introduction and all the text about Ishi intercultural objects.
    The topics of the displays are interesting in themselves, but for the purposes of the course we are interested in what we can learn about the nature of museums as "cultural institutions" and their role of museum as active players in influencing how cultural heritages and cultural identities come to be constructed and influenced -- and how museum exhibits do this. The Hearst Museum exhibits are helpful for our purposes because this Museum is self-conscious about these issues.
    The nature of the exhibits shapes our experience. Museum collections are assembled in rather accidental ways. Our understanding of Yahi culture is constructed by outsiders (i.e. museum curators) with very incomplete knowledge.     Address each of these questions:
- What are they (the museum curators) trying to do?
- What objectives are they pursuing?
- What shapes and limits their ability to do it? and
- How do you suppose your perception of the Yahi was influenced, shaped, or impacted by the role of the curators who created the exhibit and presented the interpretation?
    Allow an hour for inside the Museum - or, better, make two visits. Hand in at class on Oct. 6 a short report (two pages, single-spaced, more or less) responding to these questions, adding any other comments you consider relevant, and, especially, noting some particular aspect of the museum or of the manner of presentation that surprised or interested you.
    Dr Ira Jacknis, an anthropologist at the Hearst Museum staff, will join us in class on Wednesday October 8 for an informal discussion of these exhibits, these questions, and, more generally, what museums and museum curators do.
    The Hearst Anthropological Museum is on the ground floor in the south-east corner of Kroeber Hall. It is in the south-east corner of the campus, where College Avenue joins Bancroft Way, opposite the Strada cafe. From Sproul Plaza walk uphill along Bancroft Way: It is the building on the left after the parking garage and tennis courts and not to be confused with the University Art Museum on the right (south) side of the street.
The Museum and the Museum store are open 10:00 a.m.- 4:30 p.m. Wednesday - Saturday, and 12 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. on Sundays. The Museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays, National and University Holidays. Admission is free for UC students, but take your student card.
    Later, as a separate assignment, you will visit an exhibit or historic site of your own choice.