Thursday, March 29, 2012

baskets

March 29, 2012
      For the last 10 months I have been working on an internship for Bucks County Community College.  The certificate is in Historic Preservation and I am a curator at the local museum in the town of Kingman AZ.
      I have so far figured out the basics to museum management.  My most important and most interesting task so far is returning some Native American baskets back to the one of  local tribes here.  This will bring great PR to the museum and create a relationship, hopefully, that has been non existent between the tribe and the museum for many years now.  It is my goal to get the tribe to provide some of their prized artifacts and display them for approximately three months in a temporary exhibit.  After the exhibit is over they will take the baskets we so want to give them.  This was a project I spare headed and convinced the board that this needed to be done.  I still can't believe they agreed with me.  I am learning the politics of a museum and like any agency it can be extremely difficult to get your point or your vision to others who are so set in their ways.
      This exhibit will be in effect after I  graduate from the program so I can't wait to see the publicity it brings and whether or not I get the credit for it or if the director and board will take it all.  This has to be one of the most pro active projects I have ever been involved in.  I will definitely provide more as to what the official outcome was and any postings with a link to the local paper.  As I believe they will probably have a write up on it.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

first time blog

Hello. My name is Tammi Watkins and I am new to the world of blogging.  I am hoping to help out by providing information about topics that I find interesting.  These include and are not limited to archaeology, historic preservation, museum studies and other conservation issues.  These are the topics I will mainly stick too.  I promise no child raring stuff, as I don’t enjoy reading my own friends’ blogs about their kids and their accomplishments.  I will spare you all from that. 

I will also try my best to avoid all religious and political debates, as these can be sources of frustration for a lot of people.  The only time I will mention anything political is if it is a law or an issue that pertains to one of the above mentioned topics.  I am very open minded but if I don’t participate in a political discussion please don’t take it personally. 

Here in the next few months my husband will be participating in an adobe restoration workshop.  He and co-workers will be restoring and stabilizing a 100 year old adobe ranch house.  I hope to get step by step photos and some documentation to share with others of such a great preservation (pro-active) project.  Currently, the crew has made over 1000 adobe bricks by hand and they are drying.  They take several months to dry before you can utilize them.  I believe the project will begin in April or May.  More to come on this project. 

Currently, I work as a curator at the local museum here in Kingman, AZ.  It has been a very interesting experience and a lot of work.  I am still trying to figure out how everything operates and functions.  The person before me left and took pretty much everything  with him.  So I had to learn everything on my own.  Is it correct?  I hope so.  I am just following what other’s did.  Copying how they accessed artifacts and how they filled out the appropriate forms.  This has lead me to my project for Bucks County Community College as a museum curator.  I am going to create and try to enact a manual of “how to’s” so that when I do leave the person filling in behind at least has half a clue.  The director didn’t even know what was going on in the curation area.  I will keep you posted more on this, too, as time prevails. 

Thank you for letting me be a part of this project and I can’t wait to see what others are going to share.