Museum Archipelago

On Berlin’s Museum Island, four stone lion statues perch in the Pergamon Museum. Three of these lions are originals — that is to say, lions carved from dolerite rock between the 10th and 8th centuries BCE in Samʼal (Zincirli) in southern Turkey. And one is a plaster copy made a little over 100 years ago.

Pergamon Museum curator Pinar Durgun has heard a range of negative visitor reactions to this copy — from disappointment to feeling tricked — and engages visitors to think more deeply about copies. As an archeologist and art historian, Durgun is fascinated by the cultural attitude and history of copies: the stories they tell about their creators’ values, how they can be used to keep original objects in situ, and their role in repatriation or restitution cases.

In this episode, Durgun describes the ways that museum visitors’ perception of authenticity has changed over time, how replicas jump-started museum collections in the late 19th-century, and some of the ethical implications of copies in museums.

Image: Reconstructed Lion Sculpture Sam'al near modern Zincirli Höyük, Turkey 10th-8th century BCE by Mary Harrsch

Topics and Notes

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:15 Sam’al/Zincirli Lions
• 01:09 Pinar Durgun
• 01:22 Museum Island
• 01:40 Find Divison
• 02:28 Gipsformerei
• 03:12 Replicas Jump-Started Museum Collections
• 04:35 Trending Away from Copies
• 05:27 When Visitors Feel Tricked
• 06:00 When Visitors Are Okay With Copies
• 07:28 Ancient Cultural Contexts About Copies
• 08:07 Hokusai’s Great Wave
• 08:35 “Immersive Experiences” Made Up of Digital Copies
• 09:08 Digital Copies
• 12:39 Museum Archipelago 97. Richard Nixon Hoped to Never Say These Words about Apollo 11. In A New Exhibit, He Does.
• 13:32 How Should Museums Present Copies in Their Collections?
• 14:36 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖

Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or even email to never miss an episode.

Support Museum Archipelago🏖️

Join the Club for just $2/month.

• Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don’t make it into the main show;
• Archipelago at the Movies 🎟️, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies that take place at museums;
• Logo stickers, pins and other extras, mailed straight to your door;
• A warm feeling knowing you’re supporting the podcast.

Transcript

Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner. Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

On the Museum Isl...

The Computer Games Museum in Berlin knows that its visitors want to play games, so it lets them. The artifacts are fully-playable video games, from early arcade classics like PacMac to modern console and PC games, all with original hardware and controllers. By putting video games in a museum space, the Computer Games Museum invites visitors to become players.

But, players can become visitors too. Video games have been inviting players into museum spaces for decades. In the mid 1990s, interaction designer Joe Kalicki remembers playing PacMan in another museum – only this one was inside a video game. In Namco Museum, players navigated a 3D museum space to access the games, elevating them to a high-culture setting.

Since then, museums and their cultural shorthands have been a part of the video game landscape, implicitly inviting their players-turned-visitors to think critically about museums in the process.

In this episode, Kalicki presents mainstream and indie examples of video games with museums inside them: from Animal Crossing’s village museum to Museum of Memories, which provides a virtual place for objects of sentimental value, to Occupy White Walls where players construct a museum, fill it with art – then invite others to come inside.

Image: The Computer Games Museum in Berlin by Marcin Wichary (CC BY 2.0)

Topics and Notes

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:15 Computerspielemuseum Berlin
• 01:23 Joe Kalicki
• 02:06 Namco Museum
• 03:42 Digital Museum Spaces Elevating Video Games
• 04:26 Museum of Memories by Kate Smith
• 05:25 Occupy White Walls
• 07:18 Discovery Tour for Assassin's Creed Origins
• 10:11 Animal Crossing
• 11:29 Video Game Engines In Museums
• 12:44 Joe Kalicki’s new podcast, Panoply
• 13:13 Museum Archipelago's 100th Episode Party 🎉
• 13:44 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖

Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or even email to never miss an episode.

Support Museum Archipelago🏖️

Join the Club for just $2/month.

• Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don’t make it into the main show;
• Archipelago at the Movies 🎟️, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies that take place at museums;
• Logo stickers, pins and other extras, mailed straight to your door;
• A warm feeling knowing you’re supporting the podcast.

Transcript

Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner. Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

The Computer Games Museum in Berlin knows that its visitors want to play games. The central interpretive throughline, called Milestones, presents a timeline of the rapid development of the video game industry through 50 individual games: from Spacewar!, developed in 1962 at MIT to the latest console and PC games.

But nearby, tucked into corners and side rooms, visitors are invited to play many of these games on their original hardware with original controllers.

The museum even goes so far as to emulate the space...

Public historian and writer Tegan Kehoe knows that museum visitors act differently around the same object presented in different contexts—like how the same visitor excited by a bayonet that causes a triangular wound in an exhibit of 18th-century weapons could be disgusted by that same artifact when it’s presented in an exhibit of 18th-century medicine. Kehoe, who specialises in the history of healthcare and medical science, is attuned to how objects can inspire empathy, especially in the healthcare context.

Kehoe’s new book, Exploring American Healthcare through 50 Historic Treasures, looks for opportunities for empathy in museum exhibits all around the U.S. Each of the 50 artifacts presented in the book becomes a physical lens through which to examine the complexities of American society’s relationship with health, from a 1889 bottle of “Hostetter’s Celebrated Stomach Bitters” that claimed to cure a host of ailments to activist Ed Roberts’s power wheelchair that he customized to work with his range of motion.

In this episode, Kehoe describes how her work has helped her see tropes in the way museums tend to present medical topics and artifacts, how the aura of medical expertise is often culturally granted, and how living through the current coronavirus pandemic changed her relationship with many of the artifacts.

Image: Ed Roberts's Wheelchair, National Museum of American History. Treasures of American History online exhibition.

Topics and Notes

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:15 The Old State House “Weapons of the American Revolution” and “Medicine and the American Revolution”
• 01:35 Tegan Kehoe
• 02:00 Exploring American Healthcare Through 50 Historic Treasures
• 02:30 How Museums Tend to Present Medical History
• 05:40 Who Is “Worthy” of the Most Care?
• 08:02 Ed Roberts’s Power Wheelchair
• 10:06 Ambulance Damaged in the 9/11 Attacks
• 11:28 Lessons from the Latest Pandemic
• 13:41 Pre-Order Exploring American Healthcare Through 50 Historic Treasures
• 14:00 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖

Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or even email to never miss an episode.

Support Museum Archipelago Directly 🏖️

Join the Club for just $2/month.

• Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don’t make it into the main show;
• Archipelago at the Movies 🎟️, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies that take place at museums;
• Logo stickers, pins and other extras, mailed straight to your door;
• A warm feeling knowing you’re supporting the podcast.

Transcript

Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner. Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

Museum curator and historian Daniel Neff used to present tours in the Old Statehouse Museum in Boston, the site of the Boston Massacre in 1770. One tour was called “Weapons of the American Revolution” and went into gory detail of the carnage inflicted by bayonets and musket balls.

At the same museum, Neff also presented a tour called “Medicine and the American Revolution,” often featuring the same grizzly battle wou...

In the early days of this podcast, every time I searched for Museum Archipelago on the internet, the top result would be a small museum in rural Finland called the Archipelago Museum.

As my podcast continued to grow and my search rankings improved, I didn’t forget about the Archipelago Museum. Instead, I wondered what they were up to. What were the exhibits about? Did they ever come across my podcast? Were they annoyed by my similar name?

And while the museum had a website and a map, there was no way to directly contact them. Years went by as the realization sank in—the only way to reach the museum was to physically show up at the museum. No planned appointment, no scheduled interview.

So, for this very special 100th episode, I went to Finland and and visited the Rönnäs
Archipelago Museum.

Topics and Notes

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:15 Why is Ian in Finland?
• 00:45 Museum Archipelago's Early Days
• 01:30 Same Name
• 03:14 Arriving at the Archipelago Museum
• 04:05 Naomi Nordstedti
• 04:30 Life on the Archipelago
• 06:04 Opening the Museum
• 06:54 Boats
• 07:55 The Archipelago During Prohibition
• 08:28 Thoughts About 100 Episodes
• 10:40 Thanks For Listening
• 10:54 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖

Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or even email to never miss an episode.

Support Museum Archipelago🏖️

Join the Club for just $2/month.

• Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don’t make it into the main show;
• Archipelago at the Movies 🎟️, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies that take place at museums;
• Logo stickers, pins and other extras, mailed straight to your door;
• A warm feeling knowing you’re supporting the podcast.

Transcript

Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner. Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

This is episode 100 of Museum Archipelago, and I’m in a rental car 80 kilometers outside of Helsinki, Finland looking for a museum.

Field Audio - GPS: “In 400 meters, turn left onto the ramp”.

Field Audio - Ian: “I think... I can feel we are close to the Gulf of Finland”

But not just any museum. I’m deep in rural Finland because of the name of this podcast: Museum Archipelago.

Field Audio - Ian: “You know, I hope the museum has a bathroom...”

When I was starting this project and choosing a name, I hoped to create an audio lens to look at museums as a medium, and to critically examine museums as a whole. If no museum was an island, I reasoned, why not name the show after another geographic feature – a collection of islands?

And I enjoyed the symmetry with Gulag Archipelago – just a slight sinister undertone that this won’t be a fluffy museum podcast. And when I came across the quote by philosopher Édouard Glissant, “I imagine the museum as an archipelago”, the name stuck.

Museum Archipelago was snappy and a great name for a podcast – there was just one problem: the Archipelago Museum, located somewhere in Finland.

Field Audio - Ian: “Ah, I see a sign for the museum, but I can't pronounce it – ”

Field Audio - GPS: “Turn left”

For the first 20 or so episodes of the show, every time you searched the words Museum Archipelago on the internet, the top results would be about the Archipelago Museum in Finland, instead of my podcast.

It didn’t really bother me – well maybe a little – but no, it didn’t really bother me. Archipelago is a great word...

The Murney Tower Museum in Kingston, Ontario, Canada is a small museum. Open for only four months of the year and featuring only one full-time staff member, the museum is representative of the many small institutions that make up the majority of museums. With only a fraction of the resources of large institutions, this long tail distribution of small museums offers the full range of museum services: collection management, public programs, and curated exhibits.

Dr. Simge Erdogan-O'Connor has dedicated her studies to understanding the unique dynamics and challenges faced by small museums, and is also the Murney Tower Museum’s sole full-time employee.

In this episode, Dr. Erdogan-O'Connor describes the operation of The Murney Tower Museum, discusses the economic models of small museums, and muses on what small museums can teach larger ones.

Image: Murney Tower Museum

Topics and Notes

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:15 Understanding the Landscape of Small Museums
• 02:38 Dr. Simge Erdogan-O'Connor
• 03:00 Murney Tower Museum
• 08:29 Overcoming Challenges with Digital Solutions
• 09:46 What Big Institutions Can Learn from Small Museums
• 09:54 The Power of Local Connections in Small Museums
• 13:20 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖

Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or even email to never miss an episode.

Support Museum Archipelago🏖️

Join the Club for just $2/month.

• Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don’t make it into the main show;
• Archipelago at the Movies 🎟️, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies that take place at museums;
• Logo stickers, pins and other extras, mailed straight to your door;
• A warm feeling knowing you’re supporting the podcast.

Transcript

Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 104. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.

Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner.

Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

Let’s say you sorted every museum on earth in order by the number of yearly visitors.

At one end, with yearly visitor numbers in the millions, would be large, recognizable institutions – places like the British Museum in London. There’s a cluster of these big institutions, but as you go further along the ordered list of museums, the visitor numbers start to drop.

At some point during these declining visitor numbers, you reach small museums. Exactly where in the order you first reach a small museum doesn’t really matter – one definition of small museums from the American Association of State and Local History is simply: “If you think you’re small, you’re small.” You could do the same sort by number of staff members or by operating budget – the effect would be more or less the same. The point is that once you reach the threshold where small museums begin, you still have the vast, vast majority of museums to go.

Simge Erdogan-O'Connor: You just realize how many small museums are there in the world. Unbelievable numbers, right? They're everywhere and they hold such an important space in local cultural landscapes. Even if I dare to say more than large institutions.

The sorting exercise illustrates a long tail effect – each small museum, while attracting fewer visitors individually, collectively hosts an enormous number of visitors. There’s just so many of them. ...