Cooperstown Graduate Program....Learning about museum studies

CGP Graduate Class of 2011

Today, marks the end of my first week of official classes at CGP.  It has been a great week, filled with really interesting discussions, which has made me sure that choosing to go to this program was the right decision.  I've talked about "Culture and Collections" and "Research and Fieldwork" already.  Today, I attended two more classes: "Introduction to Museums" and "American Cultures I."  Both classes provided very stimulation conversation and debate, among a group of people who were all very passionate about what they talked about, which made the experience very cool.

Our major project in the Intro to Museums class involved working with the Oneonta World of Learning (OWL).  OWL is a group of mothers in Oneonta looking to create a children's museum in Oneonta, NY.  Our job is to research and investigate the feasibility of the project, then offer informed advice about whether the museum should be built, and if so, how much money is going to be needed, where the money may come from, what things will need to be included, etc.  I find, since this is a largely financial investigation that my background in Accounting will probably come in very handedly.

In American Cultures we talked about the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.  We discussed why and why not we thought it was a success, what our opinions were of it, and the troubles faced by museums addressing the issues of American Indians. It was a very interesting discussion.  Part of what I personally thought was wrong with the museum was that it was created my a large variety of different tribes, all contributing to the final exhibition space, and each group had an identity that they wanted portrayed.  The museum was focused more on what the tribes wanted displayed and talked about and less focused on what the audience was interested in seeing.  According to the readings that we did, it seemed that there was a more   internal instead of external focus.  A museum is a business, it should be focused on bringing in people and appealing to the public, not just forcing ideas of there.

Both classes today we had intense discussions about what the purpose of a museum is and what a museum should or should not be doing or be responsible for.  It got me thinking more and more about different aspects of museums, which was awesome.