The Robinsons Children's Library- video

My Robinson's Children's Library Family...

I made this before I left the Philippines to move to Singapore (I think)...oh wait, no, I made this before TCL was about to close...pero di natuloy...buti na lang! I miss those days!!!

Hongkong with My Mom, Dad and Sister

Here's another video from the collection:

This was a trip to Hongkong with my family (except my Kuya) in 2003, right after SARS! At first my Mom did not want to go because she was afraid of the danger of going to a country so badly hit by SARS. But when we got there, we all had a grand time!

Video with Anne and Hazel

I received an e-mail from photobucket about my account with them. I opened the account to upload my video experiments and those I created for my friend, Hasel, before she went home to to US. I have completely forgotten about these vidoes until today's e-mail. Watching them totally cracked me up!!!

Pardon the choice of song...

What I took home from the 2009 AAM Conference

Think about!

I was among the 21 AAM members who were fortunate enough to be able to attend this year’s conference through the Diversity Fellowship program. As a student, and an international one from a third world country at that, it is almost impossible for me to attend a national conference of this magnitude because it is just beyond my financial capacity. This is why I am tremendously grateful for the fellowship. 

After the conference, I took home new knowledge, validated learning, connections and inspirations that will continue to be valuable throughout the rest of my career as a museum professional.

When I signed up for the conference, I was prepared to learn. But I was not prepared to learn so much in just a few days! As a museum educator, I gravitate towards sessions that focus on education/interpretation. However, there are other topics I was also interested in learning more about: diversity, technology, audience development and leadership. It was very rare that I will only find one session I was interested in that was not scheduled at the same time as two other sessions I also wanted to attend! As such, the handout printing kiosks made available to participants during the conference were exceptionally helpful because it allowed me to learn from the other sessions I couldn’t attend by reading the speakers’ slides.

Since it would be impossible to list down all that I have learned from the conference, I decided to list down just three here:

1) Our visitors want to communicate with us. They will tell us what they love or hate about our museum, what they learned from their visit, how they can contribute to our exhibit, or even how to do our jobs better so they will keep coming back. Therefore, museums should make sure that we provide them a way to accomplish that, whether it’s face to face encounters, through comment kiosks (written, drawn or videos) at the exhibit, or online. It’s the sense of somehow being part of the exhibit that makes them feel more valued and their experience more memorable. 

Two examples that were shared during the conference were the Brooklyn Museum, which has a video kiosk at their lobby that allows visitors to leave their comments and the Art Gallery of Ontario, which provides activity tables where visitors can write, even draw their comments. 

2) Museums can use online social networking tools to their advantage, not only to promote their museums but to educate their audiences as well.

I learned that a number of museums actually have youtube channels! The Brooklyn museum has a youtube channel that is viewed by thousands of people! One of their more popular video “The art thief” has already been viewed over 32,000 times! If even 10% of those numbers translate to actual visits, then wouldn’t that be great? They also encourage visitors to create videos about the museum then they broadcast it through their website.

Another museum that uses this tool is the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. They upload videos to keep their audiences informed and interested. One of their videos showed how Burke archaeologists moved a 2,000 year old mummy and a 3,000 year old coffin from their storage to the museum’s gallery for temporary public display. There was also another one where they showed how they installed a 125 million year old "fish lizard" fossil in their gallery. These might be ordinary events for us in the museums, but for our visitors it’s exciting because it provides them a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes!

The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses twitter to share breaking astronomical news. They created a twitter account for their Mars Phoenix Lander mission to deliver news of the mission but eventually it became a way for them to interact with the public and respond to their questions about space exploration. At the end of the 152 day mission, they had over 41,000 followers!

Museums and libraries around the world have been using Flikr to upload images of their collections and make it available for the public to see, leave comments and even contribute information. The Commons on Flikr invites viewers to help enrich the collection of photographs by describing them through the addition of tags or comments. Some of the images from the Library of Congress’ photo stream have been viewed over 20,000 times and left with hundreds of comments.

3) Diversity is not just a noun, it is a goal that museums should aspire for. In order for museums to welcome and encourage diversity in their audiences, they too need to embrace diversity in their organizational staff. These people can be the museum’s ambassadors to their individual communities and help museums connect to a broader and more inclusive sector of society.

Being surrounded by over a thousand people who share my passion for museums is quite overwhelming. I had the opportunity to meet people who have shaped how I think as a museum educator. One such person was Lynn Dierking, who is one of the two major proponents of free-choice learning in museums. Call me geek but after reading a number of her books, researches and published articles, I was just terribly excited to finally get to talk to her in person to tell her that like her, I’m also from the University of Florida and that I find her researches absolutely interesting and useful.

The sessions and evening events also provided opportunities to make connections, share stories, challenges, frustrations and even aspirations. It is comforting to know that we don’t need to solve everything alone. Isn’t it great that somewhere out there is someone who has already experienced the current challenges your museum is facing and that they are willing to share how they have successfully overcome it?

When I go back home to my country, the Philippines, after finishing my Masters Degree in Museum Studies, I will bring with me all that I have gained from the conference: the knowledge, connections, validations and passion. These will serve as inspirations as we continue our struggle to convince schools, parents, government and the general public of the value of museums. The video, Spark, shown during the general assembly was a very powerful reminder about why I chose a career in museums- yes, MUSEUMS DO MATTER!

I leave you with this interesting entry for the PSA for The Brooklyn Museum, First Saturday Video Contest.

(Image of girl taken from http://www.philaculture.org/image/2840)

New York May 09

I obviously loooove New York since I keep coming back every chance I get. I again went to the MoMa to check if the Starry Night is back. Unfortunately, it's still on loan! Well, another visit perhaps. The pictures from MoMa were taken by Joseph Laban (thanks Joseph!).

Most of the other pictures here were taken on board a double decker bus. My friend's mom wanted to experience being a tourist for a day (although she's lived in NYC for over 18 years) so we hopped on a bus and took the downtown tour :)

Scrap book from 2001-2002 US-France- Italy travels

These pictures were taken back when digital cameras were still pretty expensive and negatives were taken to photo centers for developing. I tried to keep most of my tickets and stubs, even admission buttons because I planned to put them in a scrapbook. I obviously need better scrap booking skills :)

For over a year after I came home from my trip, these pictures just sat inside boxes. Finally, one New Year's eve, with my sister's help, I sat down and finished cutting and pasting them all. When I was about to move to Singapore, I bribed my sister to scan all the pages for me since I don't have any room to spare on my already overweight luggage.

AAM Conference in Philly

My first AAM conference. There were a number of UF Museum Studies students who attended and we had a chance to meet a couple of alumni of the program. We attended lectures, panel discussion and evening events. We also visited a few museums in between sessions. Overall, it was a pretty intense and enlightening experience.

American Museum of Natural History

I have been to the American Museum of Natural History (http://www.amnh.org/) several times in the past. I have also been to several other natural history museums and after visiting a couple of them, they look pretty much the same: exhibits of stuffed animals, dioramas of how people lived, rocks, minerals, meteors, insects in glass cases.

But I was particularly excited to revisit the AMNH because we've discussed how natural history museums in the western world use to taxonomize other cultures- one article had an exhibit at AMNH as an example. This means that cultures that are different from the west are categorized as less developed than theirs, so the more different the culture is, the lower its rank in the hierarchy. I won't get into details because this intro will get longer and longer (if you're interested, I can send a copy the essay I wrote for my class on this topic). I'm sure you know how I feel about this considering that I come from the orient.

But I digress. I was excited to visit AMNH also because they have a new temporary exhibit on Climate Change. Having just finished a course on museum exhibitions, I was curious to see how they presented the exhibition. I was very impressed at how they were able to translate abstract concepts into concrete and visual examples! I think that it's a very effective way of making the exhibit accessible to a wider audience, making facts more relevant and getting their message across.

Whenever I visit a museum, I always look for their kids or exploration/discovery section. AMNH has changed theirs since I last visited, which is probably expected considering my last visit was seven years ago! I included below some pictures of the activities at the AMNH's discovery center designed for both kids and adults.

The Mum Song (to the tune of William Tell's Overture)

A tribute to all the wonderful moms out there and the hardwork they do day by day- all in the name of LOVE!

Thanks to Peter for sharing :)

Philadelphia Museum of Art

The amount of impressive artworks this museum has is overwhelming! I was thrilled to see a couple of works I learned about in my humanities class in college like Brancusi's "Bird in space".

I was also pleasantly surprised to see several of Duchamp's works on exhibit- including "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" or more commonly known as "The Large Glass". This artwork is a classic case of the challenging task of transporting contemporary art. The funny thing though is that when the glass broke, Duchamp didn't want to fix it and he said that the cracks are part of the work!

It seemed to me that the exhibitions strongly geared towards adults. Although they do have Self-Guided Family Tours and Children's Audio Tours, so I know that they keep children in mind. But I think that a children's exploration area would really be an excellent addition. It's an enormous building- I'm sure they can find space for it!

I should mention that the front steps of the museum are known as the Rocky Steps. Yes, Rocky the movie of Sylvester Stallone! Remember the scene where he runs up the steps and did the now famous Rocky Pose after successfully climbing the steps? Well, turns out a lot of people do that- sort of like a testament of their personal success. There's a published a book called "Rocky Stories: Tales of Love, Hope, and Happiness at America's Most Famous Steps" written by two journalists from the Philadelphia Inquirer who spent a year interviewing people who ran the steps. No, I did not do the Rocky Pose - perhaps next time :)

Exploring the city of brotherly LOVE - Philadelphia

I arrived a day earlier for the AAM conference so I can spend time exploring Philadelphia on my own. The moment I stepped out of the subway - I was in love! Philly is definitely high on my list of favorite US cities - right next to NY (which is my first!). They have so many museums, the city has public art all over, and everything is almost within walking distance!

I tried three of the must-try food in Philadelphia: Hoagie, Pretzel and of course the famous Philly cheesesteak! Yum yum!

Museums Matter - SPARK

"SPARK is a powerful and emotional short film about humans, and the profound impact that Philadelphia's museums and cultural institutions have on their and hearts and minds. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Glenn Holsten, the film features interviews with arts lovers, cultural leaders, and civic leaders including Derek Pitts, Lily Yeh, Peggy Amsterdam, and Gail Harrity. The film debuted at the American Association of Museums Conference in Philadelphia on May 1, 2009.

This video is copyrighted with creative commons as a Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States copyright. You are free to share this, and we ask that you acknowledge the copyright holder, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, and make no derivative works. SPARK was produced in association with the American Association of Museums."

Quoted from: Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance (https://www.philaculture.org/news/2829/spark)