The Mummer Museum

The Mummer Entraceway with the most recent winners

The Mummer Museum opened in 1976. If you open another window with the website, you can actually listen to String Band Music while you read this. I don't really know the difference between String Bands and Fancy Brigades and the Comics. So I will admit that while I went to the Museum to entertain a teenage cousin, I was indeed hoping to learn something new. However, I don't really think that it has been updated, other than the substitution of a newer costume here and there, since 1980. I won't lie: I enjoy putting on a costume that has been bedazzled with countless sequins and feathers as much as the next guy, but if you wanted to actually LEARN about the Mummers, I'd steer clear of the text panels.












At the top of the stairs, you enter a small hallway and are greeted by a figure in costume that looks kind of dated, but you hope its not a portend of the rest of the space.

Inside the warehouse like space, similar to the spaces where these creations are manufactured, there are photo murals on the walls and random snippets of costumes with no real labels all over a room with lots of natural lighting. I know these are pirates. But I don't know which club made them, what year they were worn, if they won awards, or if they belong to a fancy brigade [let alone what a fancy was]. Arrrrgh.






This the first text panel you see out of the giant warehouse-like space. And the light has burned out the panel: The Origins of Mummery. I *know*. I was disappointed as well.

It kind of looks like a Fun House, and really, why shouldn't it? What you are really seeing is that not a lot of the lightbulbs work. On the left? A series of "questions" and you can hit a button to see the answer. 2 of the 8 worked.

I don't know what was 5 degrees in 1918 and 62 in 1973, I just know that information stopped around then.

"these" are Mummers. There is a chance that one of the lit up featured folks was working on a Pan Am plane

Though they seem fancy, in that different images light up at various times, its obvious there once was a third of these outlines that no longer works at all. And while I like a period mustache as much as the next museum visitor, it seems like this part could be easily updated.

The highlight, of course, is being able to don a costume seen in a recent parade. I still have no idea if a Fancy Brigader, a String Bander, or a Comic wore this, but with those feathers and that hat? I can't say that I didn't have a good time.

Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal. (Steve Lang)

We should steal the Brooklyn Museum of Art's website. It's incredible, and not just because they have a feature on Michael Jackson's Ebony shoot in their galleries. They have blogs. Lots of them. And pictures. In fact they have a whole community section with all kinds of cool stuff. Now, it's in Brooklyn where all the cool kids are so maybe we don't have that base around here, or the ICA is taking that demographic with their hip art. But I still think we should look into this type of thing.

Also we need painting racks, going to the CHF reminded me of the ones at the Brooklyn Museum. I hope we get one just like the Brooklyn Museum's through the master plan. If James Cahill says our paintings are good then we should have a rack to keep them out of harms way.

At the British Museum - some new ideas (Lynn Grant)

This was my first trip back to the British Museum since they'd done their major renovation: filling in the central hollow square and turning it into a reception/special exhibit/shop/cafe space - something like what the masterplan envisions for the inner courtyards, I think. I liked it. The Xian warriors exhibit was due to open two days after I was there and the hype was enormous. One neat new idea was stations like these in the galleries. Manned by volunteers, they gave visitor a chance to directly experience artifacts similar to those exhibited in the gallery.

Can you believe a conservator is actually almost encouraging artifact handling? But, with the right artifact choices, it's an idea worth considering.

The BM had its collecting philosophy prominently displayed in its Egyptian gallery:

The Wellcome Collection - exhibit ideas (Lynn Grant)

I did not have much free time in London, but I did get to see one museum besides the BM, the Wellcome Collection, which just opened its new exhibit space in June of this year.



I really enjoyed their permanent exhibit Medicine Man, featuring the collections of their founder, pharmeceutical entrepreneur Henry Wellcome. During his lifetime (1853-1936) he made a huge collection of art and artifacts relating to health.





The objects themselves were fun (Florence Nightingale's mocassins!) but they also used some interesting display ideas. Labeling for the artifacts themselves was minimal: a number, object name, materials, date, accession number; some cases didn't even have that much. To find out more, you had to explore...


Text labels were 'hidden' in cupboard like this in the adjoining walls (note the little white knob on the right-hand door). Inside there was a thematic label (left) and detailed artifact labels (right), with the basic object information (as above) augmented by more background information on the specific object (for instance, the Florence Nightingale, a pioneering nurse, had worn those mocassins while working at Scutari during the Crimean war.) This way, the visitor could experience the artifacts with whatever level of info they wanted.


What I really loved, though, were these little drawers below the wall cases, such as this one showing a collection of amulets. (The individual object labels were in an adjoining cupboard). The right-hand drawer is labelled with a hand, and included a reproduction of one of the amulets that could be handled, along with braille labeling. [In another of these drawers below a Durer etching was a three dimensional relief version of the scene in the etching with braille labels]

The left hand drawer had three push-button recordings of various people talking about what the objects in the case meant to them. In the case of the amulets, there was an anthropologist talking about the meaning of amulets in various cultures; a prominent Islamic author talking about how amulets had been a part of her everyday experience growing up and how strange it was to think of them in a museum context; and a well known British author talking about how he put more faith in amulets than in modern medicine. I could imagine lots of applications for the idea of using different voices to discuss the same objects in our galleries. These were pretty low-tech interactives, but they worked really nicely, much better than the more ambitious 'speaking chairs' that they had in another gallery that were already on the fritz only 2 months after opening.

Asia Society (Steve Lang)

Here is 29-64-248 at the Asia Society. Things went smoothly, so there is nothing really to report. I thought I would just show a photo of one of our pieces in situ. On another note, I recommend checking out the Reading Public Museum. I went and saw the Degas and the Art of Japan exhibit which was very good. I liked the events that they tied into the Degas exhibit, not only at the museum itself but also at surrounding Universities and institutions in the Reading area. One thing that I LOVED, was a little area with books related to the exhibit. There were books about Degas and Japanese Prints, and various sources to learn about some of the things you were looking at. They set up a table and chairs and had books all over the place, from children's books to art catalogs, to how-to guides. They also had a video running that talked about how you make an exhibit and what went into the planning of this specific exhibit. The curator talked about who they had to hire to hang the pieces,the configuration of the catalog and how much shipping and packing adds to the cost. They probably did this because you had to pay extra to see the exhibit and wanted to educate the public that "it's not just about putting stuff on a wall."

I was also impressed with their range of collections as all of our sections were well represented. They got their start at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and had a little display about the history of the museum. They also had an animatronic curator, we need one of these. Who is most robot-like......



"Oh, hello, I didn't see you come in, welcome to the....."