Collaborators

Most museum curators look for collaborators to partner with for fiscal support. I recently stumbled across another blog concerning museums and their collaborators. The blog included clever ideas for how to get the community involved with one's museum. Obviously for our purposes, we had a more limited array of collaborators to choose from, however it is still interesting to see on a wider scale what museums would do on a professional level to maintain and strike up public interest through collaborators.
 One example mentioned was having an exhibit that involves the public directly by featuring industries relevant to the community. Providing open dialogue also allows the public to enter in, or, as the blog calls for, allowing the public to contribute their own artifacts and possibly an oral history to the museum, its a two-way learning experience for the curator and the attendee, as we've been discussing in class.
This was eye opening to me as to ways to involve the public and seeking out support and involvement which ultimately adds value, not necessarily in monetary worth but in many other forms of contribution.
You can read the entire content here!

Many Histories

Something that had been occurring to me in light of our implementation of the exhibit was the sheer number of those in history who perished in the sinking. As we have done research on these unfortunate passengers I had something of regret during our implementation when our participants would choose "poorly", a passenger I knew would not survive the sinking.

There was a vast array of people whose lives have been minimized to just another link in the archives. Each had hopes, dreams of the future, a story cut short by this tragedy. As we went through the faux sinking, I was also able to sympathize greatly with passengers who felt the confusion and fear as life boats began leaving with their loved ones, leaving them aboard to face what lay ahead. It was also interesting to see the reactions of our participants, as to the conditions in the frigid North Atlantic as well as the ultimate fate of their chosen passenger. Obviously this is purely observation, but I believe this helped tie them to the history of the sinking, building a personal connection that is hard to attain from a history book.

I found a video that just shows some shots of the splendor aboard the Titanic as well as what explorers have found it looks like now.

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=remembering+the+titanic&FORM=VIRE3#view=detail&mid=186C748910CB5C71069E186C748910CB5C71069E

The Unsinkable Molly Brownie

"Why brownies?" is a question that plagued the hearts of many of the visitors who stopped at our exhibit during our implementation. Having originally intended to provide Titanic-inspired cupcakes as incentives for engaging with our exhibit, we came to the conclusion that while brownies are an equally delicious, equally popular dessert, they were a much more appropriate incentive because of the Titanic survivor, Molly Brown.

Molly Brown, forever immortalized for her heroism and bravery in the face of the tragedy, is recognized by many because of Kathy Bates' portrayal in the 1997 film. As one of the most famous survivors, a dessert based on her name provided additional informational value and the opportunity to  acknowledge her story as well as the stories of our other passengers.