museum studies – Public Work

May 3, 2018April 25, 2019

Episode 09: John Kannenberg on The Museum of Portable Sound

Every museum has its own unique soundtrack. This week on Public Work, Ruby Thiagarajan, a first-year Master’s Student in Public Humanities at Brown University, talks to John Kannenberg, a multimedia artist and the Director and Chief Curator of The Museum of Portable Sound. Ruby and John discuss why John decide to create a museum that’s the size of a cell phone, what it’s like to curate sound, and what we might learn from the sounds of museums.

Ruby Thiagarajaran

Ruby Thiagarajan is a first year MA student in Public Humanities at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage. She is interested in contemporary museology practices and in thinking about how cultural institutions can do better by their audiences.

John Kannenberg is a multimedia artist, experimental curator, writer, and researcher whose work investigates sounds as cultural objects, the frontiers and borders of digital heritage, the multisensory geography of museums, the psychology of collection, and the human experience of time. His art practice emphasises process, creating and breaking rules for the work’s realisation in ways that blur the boundaries between intention and accident. In his current role as Director and Chief Curator of The Museum of Portable Sound, John has founded an institution that exists on a solitary mobile phone to research the collection, curation, and display of sound as a museological object while critiquing conventional museum practices and music industry-imposed limitations on the digital distribution of sound.

You can find every episode of Public Work on iTunes, and you can listen via the Anchor embed below (or find and download episodes on our Anchor page). We’ve also backed up every episode of Public Work in Brown University’s Digital Repository for long-term preservation.

Episode 09: John Kannenberg on The Museum of Portable Sound by Public Work: a public humanities podcast

Every museum has its own unique soundtrack. This week on Public Work, Ruby Thiagarajan, a first-year Master’s Student in Public Humanities at Brown University, talks to John Kannenberg, a multimedia artist and the Director and Chief Curator of The Museum of Portable Sound.

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song “New Day” by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International).

April 11, 2018April 25, 2019

Episode 07: Maggie Unverzagt Goddard and Mika Matsuno on BAD ART

BAD ART

What is Bad Art? Where do our ideas about aesthetics come from and how do those ideas change over time? Have you ever taken a still life class where the model was a dog? What does Enya have to do with all of this? Find out in our conversation with Maggie Unverzagt Goddard and Mika Matsuno, the Brown University students behind a recent crowdsourced exhibition on Bad Art.

This episode is part of our series on the creators behind Gallery Lab, an exciting collection of pop-up exhibitions, performances, and other programming hosted by the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage (Brown University).

Maggie Unverzagt Goddard

Maggie Unverzagt Goddard is a PhD candidate in American Studies at Brown. She received an MA in Public Humanities from Brown and an MA in American Studies from the George Washington University. Her research engages visual culture and performance studies through a focus on objects, aesthetics, and the body.

Mika Matsuno is an undergraduate senior at Brown studying History and Sociology. She enjoys most the tactile experience of art making and gravitates most towards collage, printmaking, and fabric arts.

Episode 07: Maggie Unverzagt Goddard and Mika Matsuno on BAD ART by Public Work: a public humanities podcast

What is Bad Art? Where do our ideas about aesthetics come from and how do those ideas change over time? Have you ever taken a still life class where the model was a dog? What does Enya have to do with all of this?

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song “New Day” by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International).

March 21, 2018April 25, 2019

Episode 04: Zhuohan Jiang and Susan Smulyan on Museums and Shanghai

Learn all about museums in Shanghai from our latest episode, which features a conversation between Public Humanities graduate student Zhuohan (Bella) Jiang and Susan Smulyan, Director of Brown University’s John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage. Zhuohan and Susan discuss why they think museums are particularly popular destinations for the city’s younger populations, how the cultural and economic factors of Shanghai and China are shaping the kinds of museums opening there, and what the uses of WeChat might tell us about visitor engagement here and in other global contexts.

Zhuohan (Bella) Jiang is a first-year Master’s student in Public Humanities at Brown University. She studied culture industry management at Tongji University in Shanghai. Developing much of her museum practice in Shanghai, she wishes to engage in a dialogue that supports innovation, global conversation, and public engagement in arts institutions.

Susan Smulyan is a Professor in the Department of American Studies at Brown University and the Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage. She is the author of Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting and Popular Ideologies: Mass Culture at Mid-Century, and co-editor of Major Problems in American Popular Culture. Most recently she was a Senior Fellow at Fudan University, Shanghai, where she was researching the new museums being built in China.

Episode 04: Zhuohan Jiang and Susan Smulyan on Shanghai and Museums by Public Work: a public humanities podcast

Learn about museums in Shanghai from our latest episode, which features a conversation between Public Humanities graduate student Zhuohan Jiang and Susan Smulyan, Director of Brown University’s John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage.

Show Notes

“Why Shanghai, China is the Place to be for Contemporary Art” (Jiayang Fan)

“Alternative to Museums: Public and Independent Art Spaces in Shanghai” (Julie Chun; Yishu Vol. 15.6, 2016)

Shanghai K11

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song “New Day” by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)

March 7, 2018April 25, 2019

Episode 03: Hannah Mooney and Molly Pailet on Monuments and Memory

This episode kicks off a series focusing on Gallery Lab, an exciting initiative here at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage that invites graduate students and their collaborators to curate, perform, and organize an exciting array of exhibitions, events, and activities. You can read more about Gallery Lab in the Brown Daily Herald and check out the full calendar of events here.

Hannah Mooney and Molly Pailet stopped by Public Work to talk about “Monument Worthy,” an exhibition they curated on the topic of “personal memory markers.” Hear Hannah and Molly talk with Jim and Amelia about the monuments and debates informing their work, the forms of monuments to personal memory that were revealed in their exhibition, and the ways we remember, erase, and interrogate history through our relationships to material objects large and small.

Hannah Mooney is a first year in the Public Humanities Master’s Program, who is interested in public history, museum education, and historic preservation. Aside from Public Work, her favorite podcast is 2 Dope Queens. For tweets related to museums and history, or more likely dogs, you can follow her @hannahemooney.

Molly Pailet is a first-year student in the MA Public Humanities Program. She is passionate about applied history, non-traditional education, and creating opportunities for engagement and connection. Her favorite podcast is The Mortified Guide, because she too has a very embarrassing collection of journals that the historian in her can’t bear to get rid of…primary source documents! Check her out on Twitter @akimboflamingo.

Episode 03: Hannah Mooney and Molly Pailet on Monuments and Memory by Public Work: a public humanities podcast

Hannah Mooney and Molly Pailet stopped by Public Work to talk about “Monument Worthy,” an exhibition they curated on the topic of “personal memory markers.” Hear Hannah and Molly talk with Jim and Amelia about the monuments and debates informing their work, the forms of monuments to personal memory that were revealed in their exhibition, and the ways we remember, erase, and interrogate history through our relationships to material objects large and small.

Show Notes

Learn more about Itaru Sasaki’s phone booth (mentioned by Molly) at This American Life and CityLab.

New Orleans Mayor Rich Landrieu’s speech on the removal of Confederate monuments (mentioned by Hannah) can be found online: here is a transcript and here is video.

When asked for reading recommendations on monuments and memory, Molly and Hannah mention Erika Doss’ Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (2010) and Dell Upton’s What Can and Can’t Be Said: Race, Uplift, and Monument Building in the Contemporary South (2015).

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song “New Day” by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)

February 28, 2018April 25, 2019

Episode 02: Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko on Small Museums

This episode gets into the nitty gritty of the museum world. After Jim and Amelia briefly chat about recent trips to small museums, first year public humanities student Maddie Mott interviews Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko, President/CEO of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine. Cinnamon shares her career trajectory, offers advice for folks wanting to get into the field, and talks about running a small museum. Their conversation also touches on one of the most important topics in the field right now: “decolonizing the museum.” Learn more about the Abbe Museum on their website.

Maddie Mott is a graduate student studying Public Humanities at Brown University. Before she came to Brown, she worked in development at the Clackamas County Historical Society and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. She is interested in studying new ways to make museums more inclusive, accessible, and sustainable, both internally and externally.

Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko joined the Abbe Museum as President/CEO in 2009. Prior to that point, Cinnamon was the director of the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana where she led the organization to the National Medal for Museum Service in 2008. A passionate advocate for museums – their successes and their needs – and small museum expert, Cinnamon holds a BA in Anthropology and Art History from Purdue University, and is a graduate of the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) MA program in Anthropology with a specialization in Museum Studies.

In 2004, the Indiana Historical Society published Cinnamon’s first book The Art of Healing: The Wishard Art Collection. She is the co-editor of the Small Museum Toolkit, a six book series, published by Altamira Press in 2012. In addition to editing, she authored the chapters on strategic planning and fundraising tactics. She is currently revising the second edition of the popular textbook Museum Administration.

Episode 02: Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko on Small Museums by Public Work: a public humanities podcast

Maddie Mott, a first-year Master’s Student in Public Humanities at Brown University, interviews Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko, President and CEO of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine. Catlin describes how she came to work at the Abbe, what small museums offer employees and audiences, and what it means to “decolonize” museums. Public Work is produced and hosted by Amelia Golcheski and Jim McGrath.

Show Notes

In the intro to this week’s episode, Amelia discussed a recent trip to the Robert Russa Moton Museum in Farmville, Virginia. Jim talked about his visit to the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma and its exhibit on Kris Kristofferson.

Among other topics, Catlin and Maddie’s conversation makes reference to the Small Museum Association, NAGPRA, and Amy Lonetree’s Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (2012).

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song “New Day” by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)

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