Community makers, major museums, and the Keet S’aaxw: learning about the role of museums in interpreting cultural objects

Paper
Charles Zange, The George Washington University, USA

Published paper: Community makers, major museums, and the Keet S’aaxw: Learning about the role of museums in interpreting cultural objects

Digitized images and their underlying objects are in separate spheres of exchange. The objects underlying these assets are of irreducible material: they are physical things with unique meaning to their diverse source communities. With more cultural objects coming online, how are community voices being mediated through the museum space and to the visiting public?

Building from anthropology research on the Tlingit Killer Whale Crest Hat, this paper looks at the placement of digital assets within a sphere of exchange between object creators and end users. The goal of this paper is two-fold: first, to take a closer look at a few examples of how museums work with community makers; and second, to begin a discussion that critically evaluates the future of community-driven digital projects.

Bibliography:
This paper will build on previous anthropological research for a course at the George Washington University in Fall 2013.

Bibliography
Bell, J.A., K. Christen, and M. Turin. Introduction to the Digital Return and the
Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge: After the Return. Special Issue of Museum
Anthropology Review, 7(1-2).
Benjamin, W. 1936. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm (accessed
October 20, 2013).
Bolter, J. David and Richard Grusin. 1999. Remediation: understanding new media. Cambridge:
MIT Press.
Christen, Kimberly. 2005. Gone Digital: Aboriginal Remix and the Cultural Commons.
International Journal of Cultural Property, 12(3): 315-345.
Christensen, Stephanie. 2011. The Case for Implementing Core Descriptive Embedded Metadata
at the Smithsonian. Archiving 7. http://www.imaging.org/IST/store/epub.cfm?abstrid=44581
(accessed October 20, 2013).
Digital Return. 2013. http://www.digitalreturn.wsu.edu/workshop/ (accessed October 20, 2013).
Geismar, Haidy. Defining the Digital. Special Issue of Museum Anthropology
Review, 7(1-2).
Hollinger, R. Eric, Edwell John, Jr., Harold Jacobs, Lora Collins, Carolyn Thome, Jonathan
Zastrow, Adam Metallo, Günter Waibel, and Vince Rossi.Tlingit-Smithsonian
Collaborations with 3D digitization of Cultural Objects. Special Issue of Museum
Anthropology Review, 7(1-2).
Howe, Jeff. 2009. Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of
Business. New York: Three Rivers Press.
IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services). 2013. Grant Applicants: Program Guidelines,
National Leadership Grants – FY12 Guidelines.
http://www.imls.gov/applicants/national_leadership_grant_guidelines.aspx (accessed October
20, 2013).
Ingold, T. 2007. Materials against materiality. Archaeological Dialogues 14: 1-16.
Jonaitis, Aldona. 1986. Art of the Northern Tlingit. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Keane, Webb. 1997. Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an
Indonesian Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kopytoff, I. 1986. The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. In A.
Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective: 64-94.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Larkin, Brian. 2008. Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Meyer, Isabel. 2013. Digital Asset Management System. Presentation as part of a graduate
course at the George Washington University titled Digitization and Digital Asset
Management, October 8.
Myers, F. R. 2002. Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Personal visit to the Q?rius exhibit by the author. 2013. Q?rius exhibit at the Smithsonian
National Museum of Natural History, December 12.
Smithsonian Institute. 2011. Smithsonian Directive 610: Digitization and Digital Asset
Management Policy.
----. 2013a. Best of Both Worlds: Museums, Libraries, and Archives in a
Digital Age by G. Wayne Cough, Secretary – A new e-book exploring our digital journey.
http://www.si.edu/BestofBothWorlds (accessed December 17, 2013).
----. 2013b. Mission and Vision. http://www.si.edu/About/Mission (accessed
December 17, 2013).
----. 2013c. Repatriation Office, Department of Anthropology: Collections.
http://anthropology.si.edu/repatriation//collections/index.htm (accessed December 17, 2013).
Salmond, Amiria. 2012. Digital Subjects, Cultural Objects: Special Issue Introduction. Journal of
Material Culture 17: 211-228.
Simon, Nina. 2010. The Participatory Museum. Santa Cruz: Museum 2.0.
Weiner, Annette B. 1992. The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving. Berkely: University of California Press.
http://mw2015.museumsandtheweb.com/proposal/who-owns-the-keet-saaxw-learning-about-indigenous-voice-in-the-digital-realm/
mw2015.museumsandtheweb.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-39
27214
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:BXOE36RZ2VCPGZW2QXK4KRRYOIPY6CRS
<urn:uuid:7d32a09e-750a-42c3-a9dc-3f5d103afe81>
2017-09-20T13:00:53Z
45.56.102.161
text/html
sha1:T66BE6OURWH2W6Q5MXSYQEMVSNNQXKQQ
<urn:uuid:8faf44f6-fd68-4421-95fc-8355f652ec59>
http://mw2015.museumsandtheweb.com/proposal/who-owns-the-keet-saaxw-learning-about-indigenous-voice-in-the-digital-realm/
length
response
<urn:uuid:9782327b-0b53-4df1-aff8-4fb16eba1dad>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-167-232-168.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-39
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for September 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf