Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog! Today I will be talking about this Spring exhibition, as well as the project I did for it. The theme for the exhibition our project, and our part of the exhibition was WW1.
For our project, called Dulce Et Decorum Est, was all about Canadas connection to WW1, and how our country forged their identity. The first keystone that we did was go to a museum, as well as watch a documentary. Here are my museum notes if you would like to read them.
What is an exhibit? An exhibit is a way of showing different parts of information, and making it interesting! To make an exhibit, you need to do a lot of research, and find an interesting way to show it! My favourites were the one where you open the door, and where you watch a short film.
My favourite part:
My favourite part of the museum was learning all about the exhibits, and the history of North van. I especially loved the interactive exhibits. I feel like this is really going to help us with our project.
Before:
What was memorable about these experiences? I think the most memorable ones was when I was interested about what the museum was showing. Probably my favourite museum that I’ve ever gone to is Drumheller on the PLP trip.
For the ones you remember the most, why? What was it about that museum or that exhibit? For Drumheller, I think it was both! The vibe of the museum is very cool, and each exhibit is very interesting as well. My favourite exhibit is the one of the huge T-Rex where all of the skeletons are.
After:
What did you like? Why? I really enjoyed the interactive exhibits, and the exhibits that used senses other than sight. I also really liked the timeline one that was on the projector.
What important advice did you get from our hosts?
I got the advice to not cram my exhibit, and to put lots of information, but not too much. And also to make it interesting and interactive!
What learning from this experience is relevant to our final project?
The learning from this experience will really help for creating our exhibits.
Notes from website:
What different forms can exhibits take?
Exhibits can take many, many different forms. I think the biggest job of a museum curator is to make their exhibit different and more interesting than all the rest. I saw a whole bunch of different forms including an interactive timeline, a matching game, little body’s of text, an audio device, a quiz, and so much more. Museum exhibits have something in common though. That is they use more than one sense. Very few include only sight. Most include sight and sound, but I saw one that had sight, sound, and touch!
How do curators decide what to include in an exhibit?
They do research on their topic, and weed out the most important and interesting parts. Then they have to keep simplifying their information for the exhibit they want to show.
How are the exhibits arranged?
Exhibits can be arranged by both theme and/or timeline. In Monova, it was arranged by theme, then in each theme it was sometimes arranged by time.
What are the goals of museums?
The goals of museums are to give information about a certain topic. It is also sometimes people’s goals to open a museum on a certain topic that they’re passionate about. They are usually about where they museum is, for example Monova is in North Vancouver, and it is in North Vancouver!
Paragraph: how do museums tell stories?
Many museums goals are to tell stories about history. Usually they are about where the museum is based. For example, Drumheller (The Royal Tyrell Museum) is about dinosaurs in Alberta, and has tons of different stories about different events that happened in Alberta at the time. Museums also usually tell stories through exhibits, no matter the type. I believe that the best exhibit to tell a story is either sound or touch, because I believe that they are directly related to memory. This is because you can usually hear things in memory’s, and you can also remember the feeling of things. Sight is also very important, but almost every single exhibit has sight incorporated.
Once done that, we wrote a contrasting narratives paragraph. I did mine about interment camps. I think that I did quite well on it, because I revised it when I had feedback, and got a rainbow. Here it is!
During WW1, Canada had internment camps. Internment camps held Canadian citizens with a background of German, Ukrainian, etc. prisoner. These camps were an extremely inhumane way to deal with these “aliens”. This was the way that the Canadians referred to these Europeans. As Canada was out forging its national identity with battles such as Vimy Ridge, soldiers back home stood guard on these many innocent people. In these battles, Canada played a main role in fighting. Although, Vimy ridge is one of the greatest examples of how Canadians became known as fierce, smart fighters. This national identity has also shown itself throughout many points in our history, not only WW1. D-day and the Afghan war also show these traits. I feel that these camps were completely unnecessary, and Canada wasted many resources and soldiers keeping these camps secure. There were around 24 camps in WW1, and if we estimate each camp to have around 100 soldiers, we are looking at 2,400 extra soldiers for Canada. Not having those soldiers would have been a much bigger problem if we had lost the war.
The last but not least Keystone was our Exhibit! For my exhibit, I wanted to highlight how physically challenging WW1 was for the Canadian recruits. As well as everything mental, they also had to go through so many physical challenges. So for my exhibit, I found a real WW1 training manual online and printed it off. The I had a whiteboard, and a short keynote presentation. I also had a backpack with weights in it. The purpose of the backpack and whiteboard was to see how many push-ups you could do with 30, 15, or 0 pound on your back. I did make it quite difficult, although I wanted to showcase how difficult things were during WW1! Here’s a photo of someone trying out my exhibit.
Thanks for reading!
