2nd Visit to the Michigan Historical Center

Today we visited the Michigan Historical Center for the second time--and I feel this visit was much more instructive. Listening to Maria Leiby talk through the exhibits on Michigan as we walked through them allowed us to see inside the process of exhibit-making. Her sort of off-hand comments and interesting asides helped at least me to realize new intricacies of designing exhibits. For example, in each exhibit area Maria would explain that certain things had to be left out because there weren't artifacts to fit that story or that stories were included because of certain artifacts. Even at this stage of our planning process, I think we need to keep in mind the feasibility of collecting artifacts--if we have no artifacts all we have is a story, which is about equivalent to an essay, and does not embody public history. I know we have touched on this, but the more she talked, the more I began to realize that if we started finding artifacts, things, perhaps this would help our class form our story.

Maria also emphasized that most of the exhibits were designed as an entire environment rather than by display cases. In fact, in every room she would point out an "ordinary" looking object that actually served as a case with more artifacts. I thought this was a great use of space, but also a way to make exhibits more interesting/interactive.

I did notice however, that many of the exhibits seemed to lack a clear organization. On my own, without Maria, I don't know if I would have proceeded through all of the displays in the proper order. Also, there seemed to be too much information in such exhibits. I consider myself an educated person, and even I wouldn't stand there and read all of the information that was available, let alone small school children trying to take in exhibits.

Concerning the planning/design stages of exhibits, all of our speakers emphasized that they work on teams and committees because the job is just too big for one person. I think Dr. K has already established this precedent for us by making teams, but I think we need to start utilizing this mentality. Maybe this will be easier once we really have a focus and direction.

I found this visit very helpful and interesting--it got me excited about this project again. Therefore, I sincerely hope we can stop spending class time discussing a direction and what we want to do, and just pick one and get working.