Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Sharing Collections

Part of my motivation in starting this blog was to share a peek of what behind the scenes looked like for a collections person. My favorite things to share are cool objects from the collection, and box making. Because making boxes, or object mounts more generally, is one of my favorite activity. One of my goals, once the collection move was completed, has been to photograph our collection objects and get those photos online, so that you all can see what I get to see everyday, and so that I can learn more about them from people who know more than me! Because I'm always looking to expand my knowledge about the collections.

This past week I've begun uploading some photos to Flickr. Why flickr? It's fairly cheap, easy to get access to, and you can comment on it! Also, I've seen that other museums, like the Magnes Museum have been sharing their collections there. So I've sent out a trial balloon - uploading 408 images of our collection.

Agates from the Bentley Collection
387 photos of beautiful agates.
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Baskets from the Collection
An incomplete photoset - it will be expanded as we photograph more of our baskets. But baskets are a wonderful and important aspect of our collection, and we believe that the more we can learn about them, the greater the stories we can tell.
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And now, a question: What sort of objects would you like to see from our collection? What interests you most?

2 comments:

Jeff said...

These are great photos, Lynn! I just saw another museum documenting something online (not as thoroughly as you, but they have "buzz" for their product): The Great Whiskey Thaw:
http://whiskythaw.canterburymuseum.com/
They have one crate of whiskey left behind by the Shackleton expedition in Antarctica, and they're thawing it out to see the contents. Saw it and thought of you. --Jeff W.

Margaret said...

Thanks for this blog! I'll definitely pop in to see what you are up to. I'm a grad student at the Corcoran/Smithsonian in the Decorative Arts program, and I'm very interested in finding out more about collections management :)