MAKING A MUSEUM: Materializing Regimes of Value with the NYC Department of Sanitation

As Katie requested, this post summarises what is expected of you by the end of the semester. We would like a project report which contextualises your final text for the exhibition (to be included in the paper) in the light of your scanning, archival, oral history and other research. This should be 10-15 pages (co-authored together). We are looking both for an overview of your work this semester but, more importantly, for an analysis of the key intellectual issues you became interested in and a critical dissection of how working with the different media (interviews, archives, libraries, ethnographic research) helped you to develop your ideas. We would also like you to note here any commentaries you had about the functionality of the archive, the utility of the blog (including any criticisms) and the general contribution of digital media to the project. We also want to hear any ideas you might have about the future of the museum.

In short, this assignment should draw together all of your different work over the semester and link the museum based work to the intellectual investigations you have been undertaking into the DSNY.

A tenatative breakdown or structure for the paper which you might like to follow, but which YOU CAN ALSO CHANGE OR AMEND could be:

1. Introduction - to your topic and theme,

2. Overview of what you did during the semester

3. Critical analyses of what you learned from working with these different media (what you learned from the images, from the oral histories, from other research.

4. Discussion of the usefulness and limitations of different media and the digital domain

5. A copy of your final text for the exhibition, contextualised in terms of why you focused on these specific images and ideas (this can be based on your previous assignment of course - those of you who worked seperately please liaise)

6. A summary of your ideas for the future of the DSNY Museum (and some provisional ideas/summary of what you might like to put in a Kimmel window for next semester)

All of these sections should be included but please feel free to add more or less.

The due date for this assignment is: Monday December 16th.

(which will give you time to reflect on the opening of the exhibition