Revised Syllabus

I've posted a revised syllabus under "course information." Please refer to it for the rest of the semester.

Assignment 5: Object Captions

Assignment 5 will unfold in two stages:

1. Object Captions

Write 3 to 5 50-word object captions and post them to your blog. Each caption should be titled “About ___”, so that the second word refers to the theme that you’ve chosen to focus on. So, in the case of Carla’s wedding ring, it could be "About wedding rings" or “About marriage" or "About divorce" or whatever aspect of the object’s history that you consider significant. Your name will appear at the end of the text, so please indicate in your post how you prefer to be identified.

Along with your captions, please email to me (do not post) a summary of the rationale underlying your various captions. Limit your summary to 5 pages or less.

These materials must be posted/submitted by no later than 5:00 PM on October 11.

2. Caption Critique

Before coming to class on October 13, review ALL of the captions posted by your peers and select one per object that you believe to be most effective and/or suitable for the First Person Museum. During the first half of class, we will work collectively toward compiling a list of captions that, during the second half of class, we will present to our project partners. Please come prepared to discuss the relative merits of each caption so that we can move efficiently and judiciously toward a consensus.

This assignment is worth 20 points. You will be evaluated on the quality of your proposed captions and the substance of your contribution to our vetting process.

Revised Exhibit Goals

Goals for the exhibit, listed in order of priority:
1) Visitors will recognize that they endow objects with value.
2) Visitors will understand that the person and his/her story is the focus.
3) Visitors will be able to articulate an emotional response to the stories in the exhibit.
4) Visitors will understand that the meaning of an object is influenced by time, place and experience.
5) Visitors will think about their own stuff differently.

Objects of Our afection

For those of you who don't have a Wednesday night class, check this out on Nov. 3.

GENEALOGY EVENT / After their mother’s death, Lisa Tracy and her sister faced several households’ worth of furniture and memorabilia and decided to track down the history behind each object. The search for family stories led Tracy all the way from her New Jersey home to the Philippines, as well as to the archives at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Tracy will talk about her journey and read excerpts of her newly released memoir, Objects of Our Affection: Uncovering My Family’s Past, One Chair, Pistol, and Pickle Fork at a Time. Followed by a book signing. FREE for members, $15 for nonmembers. Cost includes a one-day admission to HSP's research library.
Register here

Object of My Affection

Check out this fun piece by our own John Petit. John's film was part of a First Person Arts project titled "Object of My Affection" and it randomly partnered filmmakers with people and their objects. The goal was to create 5 minute documentaries about them within 5 days of meeting. John teamed up with a photographer whose important object was his hard drives of digital photos.

Wolfsonian Fellowship

The Wolfsonian–Florida International University is a museum and research center that promotes the examination of modern visual and material culture. The Wolfsonian’s fellowship program is intended to support research on the museum’s collection, generally for periods of three to four weeks. The program is open to holders of master’s or doctoral degrees, Ph.D. candidates, and others who have a significant record of professional achievement in relevant fields.

The focus of the Wolfsonian collection is on North American and European decorative arts, propaganda, architecture, and industrial and graphic design from the period 1885–1945. The United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands are the countries most extensively represented. There are also smaller but significant collections of materials from a number of other countries, including Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Japan, the former Soviet Union, and Hungary. The collection includes works on paper (including posters, prints, and design drawings), furniture, paintings, sculpture, glass, textiles, ceramics, lighting and other appliances, and many other kinds of objects. The Wolfsonian’s library has approximately 50,000 rare books, periodicals, and ephemeral items.

Applicants are encouraged to discuss their project with the museum staff prior to submission to ensure the relevance of their proposals to The Wolfsonian’s collection. For more information about The Wolfsonian and its collection, visit the website at http://www.wolfsonian.fiu.edu, call 305-535-2686, or email to research@thewolf.fiu.edu. Applications for the 2011–12 academic year must be postmarked by December 31, 2010.

HTML issues

If you are cutting and pasting from MS Word and having trouble posting to your blog, just change the font to Arial. Blogger recognizes much fewer fonts than Word, and does not recognize Times New Roman or Calibri.