Pretty much every museum has them, unless they have a massive army of curators or registrars madly accessioning items as they come in the door. They are the dreaded . . . Collections Backlogs. [Cue the offstage scream.] The Museum Cataloging Process With the downsizing of the Silent Generation and retiring Baby Boomers, both of whom amassed a good many items during the post-World War II pro-consumerism era, museums are being flooded with items being…
When I put together my history bucket list on The Pragmatic Historian, I included as one of the items “Watch fabric dying and weaving within an old mill.” Well, I haven’t been able to watch the processes of weaving and dying fabric within a mill, but I did have an opportunity to take a tour of a woolen mill. Not far from where I live, in Randall, Minnesota, is a fiber arts mecca that started…
In nonprofit organizations that create cultural events, particularly museums and historic sites, we like to think that everyone in the general public is our audience. That’s the great potential — that every soul who lives on earth will wander through our doors and be enamored with what we have to offer. That’s not true, of course. Challenges in Reaching an Audience People have to know we exist, be able to find us, have time to…
In my post “Making a Bucket List of History,” I mentioned taking “regular nostalgia trips through my collections of photos, books, music, fiber arts supplies and projects, and my writing notebooks.” When it comes to nostalgia trips, most of them arise in a haphazard fashion. People will be going about their business and something, be it a place or a sound or a scent or a phrase or an artifact, will instantly send them packing…
The Origin of the Bucket List It can be difficult to pin down the origins of terms that arise in the popular culture. Such is the case with the term “bucket list,” which has come to mean a list of things you want to do before you die. Slate’s June Thomas tried to follow the trail of the term in her 2011 article, but needed to add an update to it in May 2015. Apparently,…