Museum Archipelago
Arts
About
A tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Museum Archipelago believes that no museum is an island and that museums are not neutral. Taking a broad definition of museums, host Ian Elsner brings you to different museum spaces around the world, dives deep into institutional problems, and introduces you to the people working to fix them. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes, so let’s get started.
Episodes
- 112. In Relooted, You Steal Back What Museums Won't Return
It's 2099, and you and your heist team are about to case an unnamed high-security museum in Europe. One of the targets: the Kabwe skull, a roughly 300,000-year-old early human skull found in present-day Zambia in 1921. This is Relooted , a…
- 111. Why Software Hasn't Eaten Museums (Yet)
Museums today are filled with software, yet they've largely avoided being "eaten" by the tech industry. Unlike music or movies, exhibitions can't be downloaded or scaled infinitely. There's only one Mona Lisa. But if the wrong platform fin…
- 110. Revisiting The ‘Enola Gay Fiasco’ Today
For the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum planned to display the Enola Gay , the Boeing B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The plane was restored to be part of a full ex…
- 109. The Rise and Fall of Enterprise Square, USA
For the last few decades of the 20th century, if you visited Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, you could have been serenaded by a barbershop quartet of audio-animatronic portraits of America's founders as framed on U.S. currency. This was one of th…
- 108. The Museum of Utopia and Daily Life
The tension is right there in the name of the Museum of Utopia and Daily Life. It sits inside a 1953 kindergarten building in Eisenhüttenstadt, Germany, a city that was born from utopian socialist ideals. After World War II left Germany in…
- 107. Crypto and Museums Part 1
In November 2021, an extremely rare first printing of the U.S. Constitution was put up for auction at Sotheby's in New York, attracting a unique bidder: ConstitutionDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization. This group had formed just w…
- 106. Last Call on 'The Streets of Old Milwaukee'
I remember visiting – and loving – The Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) as a child. Opened in 1965, it’s an immersive space with cobblestone streets and perfect lighting that evokes a fall evening in tu…
- 105. Building a Better Visitor Experience with Open Source Software
While working at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History during the pandemic, Dr. Morgan Rehnberg recognized the institution's limited capacity to develop new digitals exhibits with the proprietary solutions that are common in big mus…
- 104. What Large Institutions Can Learn From Small Museums
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 major…
- 103. How Computers Transformed Museums and Created A New Type of Professional
Computing work keeps museums running, but it’s largely invisible. That is, unless something goes wrong. For Dr. Paul Marty , Professor in the School of Information at Florida State University and his colleague Kathy Jones , Program Directo…
- 102. Copies in Museums
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…
- 101. Buzludzha Always Centered Visitor Experience. Dora Ivanova is Using Its Structure to Create a New One.
Since it opened in 1981 to celebrate the ruling Bulgarian Communist Party, Buzludzha has centered the visitor experience. Every detail and sightline of the enormous disk of concrete perched on a mountaintop in the middle of Bulgaria was de…
- 100. The Archipelago Museum
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…
- 99. Museums in Video Games
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 hardwar…
- 98. At the Panama Canal Museum, Ana Elizabeth González Creates a Global Connection Point
When Ana Elizabeth González was growing up in Panama, the history she learned about the Panama Canal in school told a narrow story about the engineering feat of the Canal’s construction by the United States. This public history reflected t…
- 97. Richard Nixon Hoped to Never Say These Words about Apollo 11. In A New Exhibit, He Does.
As the Apollo 11 astronauts hurtled towards the moon on July 18th, 1969, members of the Nixon administration realized they should probably make a contingency plan. If the astronauts didn’t make it – or, even more horrible, if they made it…
- 96. Tegan Kehoe Explores American Healthcare Through 50 Museum Artifacts
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-c…
- 95. The Museum of Technology in Helsinki, Finland Knows Even the Most Futuristic Technology Will One Day Be History
In 1969, noticing that technological progress was changing their fields, heads of Finish industry came together to found a technology museum in Finland. Today, the Museum of Technology in Helsinki is the only general technological museum i…
- 94. Jazz Dottin Guides Viewers Through Massachusetts’s Buried Black History
The deliberate exclusion of Black history and the history of slavery in the American South has been slow to reverse. But Jazz Dottin, creator and host of the Black Gems Unearthed YouTube channel says it can be just as slow in New England.…
- 93. Bulgaria’s Narrow Gauge Railway Winds Through History. Ivan Pulevski Helped Turn One of Its Station Stops Into a Museum.
In 1916, concerned that the remote Rhodope mountains would be hard to defend against foreign invaders, a young Bulgarian Kingdom decided to build a narrow gauge railway to connect villages and towns to the rest of the country. The Bulgaria…
- 92. The Pleven Panorama Museum Transports Visitors Through Time, But Not Space
The Pleven Panorama transports visitors through time, but not space. The huge, hand-painted panorama features the decisive battles of the Russian-Turkish War of 1877–78, fought at this exact spot, which led to Bulgaria’s Liberation. The la…
- 91. How Fake Museums Are Used in Theme Parks with Shaelyn Amaio
Museums can be a shorthand for truth, or for history, or for what a culture values. Disney theme parks all around the world use fake museums as a tool to immerse visitors in the themed environment. This detailed world-building can make the…
- 90. Civil Rights Progress Isn't Linear. The Grove Museum Interprets Tallahassee's Struggle in an Unexpected Setting.
The Grove Museum inside the historic Call/Collins House is one of Tallahassee’s newest museums, and it’s changing how the city interprets its own history. Instead of focusing on the mansion house’s famous owners, including Florida Governor…
- 89. Tehmina Goskar Critically Engages with Curation, Wherever It Happens
Dr. Tehmina Goskar, director of the Curatorial Research Centre, co-founded MuseumHour with Sophie Ballinger in October 2014. The weekly peer-to-peer chat on Twitter “holds space for debate” for museum people all around the world. This mont…
- 88. Jérôme Blachon Collects and Transmits Precious Memories at the Museum of Resistance and Deportation in Haute-Garonne, France
During World War II, a Nazi collbatoring regime governed the south of France, and the city of Toulouse was a Resistance hub. The Vichy Government promoted anti-Semitism and collaborated with the Nazis, most specifically by deporting Jews t…
- 87. The Vitosha Bear Museum Lives in a Tiny Mountain Hut
Vitosha Mountain, the southern border of Sofia, Bulgaria, is home to about 15 brown bears and one bear museum. According to Dr. Nikola Doykin, fauna expert at the Vitosha Nature Park Directorate, the bear population is stable—if humans sta…
- 86. Nashid Madyun Fights the Compression of Black History at the Meek-Eaton Black Archives
History professor Dr. James Eaton taught his students with the mantra: “African American History is the History of America.” As chair of the history department at FAMU, a historically Black University in Tallahassee, Florida, he was used t…
- 85. The John G. Riley House is All That Remains of Smokey Hollow. Althemese Barnes Turned It Into a Museum on Tallahassee’s Black History
During the period of Jim Crow and the Black Codes, a self-sustaining Black enclave called Smokey Hollow developed near downtown Tallahassee, Florida. As the first Black principal of Lincoln High School, John G. Riley was a critical part of…
- 84. On Richmond’s Transformed Monument Avenue, A Group of Historians Erect Rogue Historical Markers
Near the empty pedestals of Confederate figures that used to tower over Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, a new type of historical marker now stands. The markers have most of the trappings of a state-erected historical plaque—but thes…
- 83. Chris Newell Forges The Snowshoe Path as the First Wabanaki Leader of the Abbe Museum
Chris Newell remembers the almost giddy level of excitement he felt when he visited the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine as a kid. Every summer, the family drove for more than two hours for his father to perform songs about their Passamaqu…
- 82. Statues and Museums
In the wake of the racist murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol tore down a statue of Edward Colston, a prominent 17th Century slave trader. Protesters rolled the statue through the street and push…
- 81. Living History in a Pandemic at Old Sturbridge Village
Old Sturbridge Village is a living history museum in Massachusetts depicting life in rural New England during the early 19th century. But the early 19th century isn’t specific enough for the site’s historical interpreters—to immerse visito…
- 80. British Museum Curator Sushma Jansari Shares Stories and Experiments of Decolonising Museums
The British Museum’s South Asia Collection is full of Indian objects. Dr. Sushma Jansari, Tabor Foundation Curator of South Asia at the British Museum, does not want visitors to overlook the violence of how these objects were brought to th…
- 79. The Future of Hands-On Museum Exhibits with Paul Orselli
The modern museum invites you to touch. Or it would, if it wasn’t closed due to the Covid-19 outbreak. The screens inside the Fossil Hall at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC say “touch to begin” to an empty room. Th…
- 78. How Museums Present Public Health with Raven Forest Fruscalzo
Museums across the globe are now closed because of Covid-19. Some of those shuttered galleries presented the science behind outbreaks like the one we’re living through. As Raven Forrest Fruscalzo, Content Developer at the Field Museum in C…
- 77. Trump Asks, “Who's Next?” Lyra Monteiro Answers, Washington’s Next!
The statue of George Washington in New York City's Union Square commemorates him on a particular day—November 25th, 1783—the date when the defeated British Army left Manhattan after the American Revolutionary War. The statue celebrates the…
- 76. 400 Years Post-Mayflower, the Provincetown Museum Rethinks Its Historical Branding
Sometimes, a historical event is all about the branding. And the brand of Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts as the spot where the Mayflower pilgrims first disembarked 400 years ago this year is pretty strong. The branding is strong…
- 75. Museduino: Using Open Source Hardware to Power Museum Exhibits
Proprietary technology that runs museum interactives—everything from buttons to proximity sensors—tends to be expensive to purchase and maintain. But Rianne Trujillo , lead developer of the Cultural Technology Development Lab at New Mexico…
- 74. 'Houston, We Have A Restoration' with Sandra Tetley
Every time an Apollo astronaut said the word Houston, they were referring not just to a city, but a specific room in that city: Mission Control. In that room on July 20, 1969, NASA engineers answered radio calls from the surface of the moo…
- 73. Sanchita Balachandran Shifts the Framework for Conservation with Untold Stories
The field of conservation was created to fight change: to prevent objects from becoming dusty, broken, or rusted. But fighting to keep cultural objects preserved creates a certain mindset — a mindset where it’s too easy to imagine objects…
- 72. ‘Speechless: Different by Design’ Reframes Accessibility and Communication in a Museum Context
Museums tend to be verbal spaces: there’s usually a lot of words. Galleries open with walls of text, visitors are presented with rules of do and don'ts, and audio guides lead headphone-ed users from one piece to the next, paragraph by para…
- 71. Assessing Curatorial Work for Social Justice With Elena Gonzales
Museums are seen as trustworthy, but what if that trust is misplaced? Chicago-based independent curator Elena Gonzales provides a solid jumping off point for thinking critically about museums in her new book, Exhibitions for Social Justice…
- 70. The Gabrovo Museum of Humor Bolsters Its Legacy of Political Satire Post-Communism
To the extent that there was a Communist capital of humor in the last half of the 20th century, it was Gabrovo, Bulgaria. Situated in a valley of the Balkan mountains, the city prides itself on its unique brand of self-effacing humor. In 1…
- 69. Soviet Spacecraft in the American Heartland: The Story of the Kansas Cosmosphere
From Apollo Mission Control in Houston, Texas, to the field in southeastern Russia where Yuri Gargarin finished his first orbit, there are many sites on earth that played a role in space exploration. But Hutchinson, Kansas isn’t one of the…
- 68. The Akomawt Educational Initiative Forges a Snowshoe Path to Indigenize Museums
Akomawt is a Passamaquoddy word for the snowshoe path. At the beginning of winter, the snowshoe path is hard to find. But the more people pass along and carve out this path through the snow during the season, the easier it becomes for ever…
- 67. Cité de l'Espace Celebrates Apollo Day from the Middle of the Space Race
Cité de l'Espace in Toulouse, France is a museum in the middle. It is in the middle of France’s Aerospace Valley and the European Space Industry. But it is also geographically in the middle of the two competing superpowers in the Space Rac…
- 66. From ‘Extinct Monsters’ to ‘Deep Time’: A History of the Smithsonian Fossil Hall
The most-visited room in the most-visited science museum in the world reopened last week after a massive, five year renovation . Deep Time , as the new gallery is colloquially known, is the latest iteration of the Fossil Hall at the Smiths…
- 65. Sarah Nguyen Helps Fight Digital Decay with Preserve This Podcast
Everything decays. In the past, human heritage that decayed slowly enough on stone, vellum, bamboo, silk, or paper could be put in a museum—still decaying, but at least visible. Today, human heritage is decaying on hard drives. Sarah Nguye…
- 64. Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Atlantis Experience Is Part Museum, Part Themed Attraction
The Space Shuttle Atlantis Experience, which opened at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida in 2013 brings visitors “nose to nose” with one of the three remaining Space Shuttle orbiters. The team that built it us…
- 63. Sex and Death Are on Display at The Museum of Old and New Art
The Museum of Old and New Art opened in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia in 2011. With a name like that, MONA could include any type of art. But looking at the collection, it’s clear that its creator, millionaire gambler David Walsh , has a fas…