School of Information Management & Systems.
142  Access to American Cultural Heritages.   Buckland. Fall 1997.

Assignment 4: Visit the Hearst Anthropological Museum between Oct 1 and Oct 8.

This course involves visiting two exhibits: First the Hearst Anthropological Museum, on campus; later, as a separate assignment, an exhibit or historic site of your own choice. Exhibits are deliberate, purposive, and generally expensive exercises in presentation and interpretation. They must necessarily have some perspective, otherwise the selection of items to present and the way in which they are presented would have no organized basis. One can review an exhibit much as one would do a book review. What is the theme? What is selected for display? What is the point of view? How is it done? How well is it explained? How much prior knowledge does it assume? What other selection of material might have been presented? What other "voices" expressed? What other perspectives might have been possible? How would you want to do it differently? How do you evaluate it overall? To whom would you recommend it? and so on.

1. First, in the area outside the entrance, look at some displays about the Museum entitled "Approaching a Century of Anthropology. An introduction to the history and breadth of the collections of the museum, featuring California Indian, ancient Peruvian and Egyptian, African and Indian collections.
2. Then examine carefully   Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture. Then look at the other exhibits.
3. Food in California Indian Culture. Examine the displays and explanations.
4. Scheduled to open Oct. 1 is a related exhibit of photographs by Dugan Aguilar (Maidu/Pit River/Paiute) of contemporary California Indian cooking and eating. Included are traditional foods such as acorn soup and pit-roasted deer and newer foods such as fry bread and supermarket groceries.
5. Collecting Pueblo pottery, 1890-1910. Read the introductory statement by Dr Ira Jacknis at the left of the entrance.

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 very helpful for our purposes because they are self-conscious about these issues. The Ishi exhibit comments on how our understanding of Yahi culture is constructed by outsiders with very incomplete knowledge. The pottery exhibit draws attention to the rather accidental ways museum collections are assembled.

Allow at least an hour for inside the Museum. I recommend making two visits. Hand in at class on Oct. 9 a short report (a page or so) on some particular aspect of the museum or of the manner of presentation that surprised or interested you. Be prepared to discuss the exhibit in class on Thursday Oct 9, when Museum curator Dr. Ira Jacknis will join us.

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, downhill from the Boalt Hall School of Law. It is the nearest campus building to the 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 from 10:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday; from 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. on Thursday.admission is $2 for adults, $1 for seniors, and $.50 for children 16 and under; free admission for museum members, UC students with student ID, staff and faculty. Free to the public on Thursdays. The Museum is wheelchair accessible. The webpage for its exhibits is at
http://www.qal.berkeley.edu/~hearst/exhibits.htm