Swancey's Travels

Exploring South Street Seaport Museum on day 5

Sometime during 8th grade I visited South Street Seaport Museum and I had memories of it and assumed it would look the same, but I was completely mistaken. My memory failed me as I approached the area and nothing looked familiar. But maybe that’s a sign that my previous visitor experience did not truly connect to create a core memory. However today will be an experience, I will remember as it was all about caring for a museum’s collection and cultivating an exhibition at the South Street Seaport Museum. We were given the opportunity to explore the 2nd and 3rd floor of the museum’s collection. When I first heard that I thought we were just going to explore museum floors and get a tour specially about items on display that connect with our program of visitor experience; however, this was so much better. We were behind the scenes where the magic of museum’s are located in the storage. Physically Venturing into the storage area was exciting, and as someone who’s considering a career shift into collection or curation, I had only recalling seeing this area in books and personal research.

As someone considering going into collections management or being a curator this was extremely interesting to me. It was fun to learn that I can still work directly with the items without being a curator because that was a key element of our conversation with Martina, Karly and Zack from the South Street Seaport Museum.  While talking with the group, they described the first new collection to be presented in two decades, called the A.A. Thompson and Company Warehouse Exhibition. Their discussions on the new exhibition was engaging as we learned how they designed, selected, and wrote objects labels for the new exhibition. I loved how they disagreed at points but in the end decided that there needed to be four main parts for each item and each had to have an interactive aspect. Understanding that every department had a voice in the process made it a collective museum voice which also allows ownership by every working with and in the process, and when interpreting items. Having a wall that can be manipulated for future displays, and interactive both physically and mentally to tell the story they want to present. It was encouraging and hopeful to hear that pretty much all of them had no background in Nautical history before working at the South Street Seaport Museum but that may be why they work together to find a story they now feel is important to the museum’s mission and feels like a personal mission for each person. In the end I could not help but think that caring properly for you collection allows you to have quality items that serve a purpose but one you will feel proud to interact with.