Reading Blog -- Oct. 15th

The nineteenth century bourgeoisie played a big role in the politics and economic development. They are educated and wealthier than most of the people in the society. When the bourgeoisie population grows larger and wider, Bourgeoisie spent a lot of time on signifying their clothing opposed to the working class. The most important function of Bourgeoisie’s clothing is to distinguish their identities, for example to emphasize the difference between Bourgeoisie and the working class.

The nineteenth century textile industry influenced the contemporary dress deeply. It improved the living standard and the development of the ready-made industry. This makes middle class people own their dresses easier than before. The lifestyle of bourgeois is like a starter of cloth making industry. They change the situation that only wealthy people can hire a tailor to design and make clothes for them.  

        After the French Revolution, men’s clothing was mainly dark green and dark blue. Wearing darker color shows the difference between the idleness and sumptuousness of aristocratic than the austerity and asceticism of bourgeois. The ideal of proper gentleman rose between the bourgeois. After destroying royal absolutism and winning the right to sit in Parliament, they dressed in darker color to show their taste and the ability to consume. The social class of bourgeois is between aristocrat and working class, which make bourgeois want to separate them from the lower class but still maintain the nobility sense of their identity.

        What is interesting in this book is that women were the ones who express her husband’s wealth. A man would wear black or any dark color but the woman would wear something pink and colorful to display their family’s glory and power. I am not sure about if this phenomenon still existing in today’s society but a woman’s appearance is still more brilliant and vivid than her husband.

Philippe Perrot wrote in the book that in nineteenth-century streets the top hats covered every bourgeois head. Although top hat’s physical shape makes any physical activities completely impossible. The top hat is designed to incorporate bourgeois propriety, through its stiffness and material. And by abandoning feathers or embroidery, the top hat makes bourgeois more propriety than aristocrat or working class.

        This gives me a more clear view on how does the top hat developed since nineteenth century from fancy hat for nobles to a more clear and humble hat for bourgeois. Clothing can not only reflect but also inculcate beliefs, values, and aspirations. Maybe a top hat is a small and common object in nineteen century society but the meaning of wearing it should be something important and essential.

Reading Blog -- Oct. 8th

When people try to exhibit something in the museum, the history will be detached into pieces and we use the ethnographic way to retell the story. In “Objects of Ethnography,” Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett mentioned: There are two ways of exhibiting objects. One is In Situ and the other is In Context. The In Situ method creates a simulated environment to describe the surrounding of the object. The goal is to duplicate a full or part of the real life of the exhibiting subject. When the object is exhibited through an in context method, other arrangements such as labels, charts, diagrams, and commentary will be used in the exhibition. Different than In Situ method, using an in context approach should contain more information along the object.

There are many different ways of making an exhibition. For example, the In Situ and In Context method are not in conflict. The point is to send the message to the viewer clearly. Is doesn’t matter how people classified the objects. What matters is how to give a straight and meaningful story to the visitors. If the fragments of the history are not connected successfully, the story will not make sense and viewer will not understand the exhibition completely.

Museums need to cut the history into pieces in order to exhibit the object easier. These detachments sometimes are limited to only smaller objects because things such as performances and big event are impossible to be recreated indoors or described through words.

In late nineteen century, museums shift their focus in an exhibition onto labels. This is the result of giving most of the attention into object studying. Even in today’s museum, I still found out that the exhibition is surrounded with explanations and labels. The objects in the museum are basically served as the evidence for the literal setups in the exhibition.

Ken Yellis takes two famous but controversy exhibitions in the history and tries to seek what visitors experienced in the museum. He starts with three reasons to do exhibitions in a museum,” you have a new story to tell or you have a new way of telling an old story, or our culture has changed so dramatically that the memory of the story has been lost or hopelessly corrupted.

The museum needs to balance all the visual and non-visual materials used in the exhibition because every visitor experience these senses differently. In all these senses, most people access deep emotions more through sound, taste, touch, and smell. But these senses are particularly hard to deploy in the museum.

Museums are the educator and the communicator of the present and past. Museums teach us “how do we know how to think about the past, the present, the future? How do we know how to think about the world, about others, about ourselves? “ All the stories, methods for classifying and analyzing help us to understand the history piece by piece and rethink about the current events and maybe think more about the future. The goal of a great museum is to send the message to the visitors, to answer their questions and even raise better thoughts that are related to the topic.

Our society is moving forward and so does the history. Museums need to renew the exhibition once a while. But only renewing the content is not enough, the future museum, as John W. Durel suggests, should add more new innovations to the exhibitions. One of the purposes of the museum will be giving nationally recognition for the children emphasizing the greater good that serves the public interest. The exhibitions will be no longer only indoors. There will be more historic site tours and living history experience programming. The point is to give visitors an easier way of understanding history rather than just theory and explanation on the label. By using new technologies and method, museums should be able to give a more flexible and experimental approaches such as sharing collections through internet. By sharing documents and images through internet, visitors can access to the information that are related to the topic. All in all, museums should find a way to help the public develop a more complex and subtle understanding of history.

After finishing this week’s reading, I start to think about how to exhibit my object (the man’s top hat). Maybe the top hat will be surrounded by pictures of man that wears similar hat in 1900s. 

Reading Blog -- Oct. 1st

The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth

Looking back to the creation of the United States of America. It is hard to ignore the American spirit of the “ordinary people”. These people built the early structure of the American economy and industry. The people play an important role in the nation’s creation because America is a country truly founded by the people and is filled by other immigrants from other country.

In this book, The Age of Homespun author tries to answer the question how does the female economy raised and had the industrial revolution changed not only women’s work but work itself? Because in 17^th century New England, weaving was a male occupation and only few families owned spinning wheels but at the late 18^th century, cloth-making was common seeing and the important foundation of the society.

This reading tries to analyze the American life of the early Americans. Especially the connections between homemade objects and professional made objects in shops.   

Quilts, Old Kitchens, and the Social Geography of Gender at Nineteenth Century Sanitary Fairs

Early in the fall of 1863, a group of Brooklyn women organized the Sanitary Aid Society for the purpose of working to benefit Union soldiers. The purpose was to raise money to assist soldiers and their families through the sale of handmade items and refreshments.

The quilt making is a symbolic practice in America. Understanding the history of these common things in American life can leads us to know the relation between the making of objects and its meanings.

        One of the most important meaning is that the raise of the women conscious. Those party and organizations looks like just a part of social activities but actually were the external expression of female consciousness. In the kitchen or the quilt making party in the nineteen century not only shows the efficiency and the elegant of women but also shows the social status of women start getting close to men.

The Architecture of Racial Segregation

The Challenges of Preserving the Problematical Past/ Robert R. Weyeneth

Racial segregation happened after civil in 1960s. Even the constitution of the United States protects people’s rights; the life of black and white Americans were totally different at the racial segregation period. In this reading, whether we need to preserve buildings built under the racial segregation period.

The Jim Crow Laws between 1876 to 1965 rules the law against all colored races especially African Americans. The law rules that all public facilities need to be separated into different sections for white and colored people. The Jim Crow Law was not against the constitution because everything was only separated into two sections but still equal to each other. But the truth is that mostly white people can get better service and support. This difference makes African Americans suffering a worse condition educationally, economically, and socially.

Racial segregation was established architecturally in two major ways: through architectural isolation and through architectural partitioning. Architectural isolation represented the enterprise of constructing and maintaining places that kept whites and blacks apart, isolated from one another. Architectural partitioning represented the effort to segregate within facilities that were shared by the races.

The values of preserving the architecture in the Jim Crow era are to let people understand about the race relations in that time and can be actually seeing the separate doors in one entrance. Thinking about how people were treated during that time should be a effective way to engage racial issues.

White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia

Dell Upton

In the second reading, author describes different point of view in an eighteen century plantation complex in Virginia. The complex was mainly designed according to owner’s needs. The big complex or mansion would be on the top of the hill and the slave house would be down the hill away from the main house.

From the view point of the white owner, everything is connected easily and close to his mansion. He can even build any new route to any places he wants. From the black people point of view, all the places are disconnect and inconvenient to move from one place to another.

Conclusion

The first two readings are about gender issue and the other two are about racial issue. All four readings are about the life of American under some sort of oppression and how do they respond to the environment. Using objects such as homespun, quilt, buildings, and slave houses to understand the life of people is an approach similar to archeology approach because they all starts with something small and tries to find out a bigger view. This week’s reading actually gave me a thought on researching about how to others feel when they see someone is wearing a top hat like the one assigned to me.(the object I got is a man’s top hat). What was the meaning of wearing that expensive top hat? Was it just a hat or people will consider the person who’s wearing it a wealthy man?