<p> This study examined reflective practices and work engagement among museum exhibit developers in the United States. The primary goal of this sequential explanatory study was to determine if there is a link between reflective practice and work engagement, and to understand the nature of any link. Secondarily, the study sought to identify the extent of reflective practice use among exhibit developers, the extent to which exhibit developers are engaged in their work, exhibit developers&rsquo; perceptions of reflective practice, and exhibit developers&rsquo; perceptions about the benefits and challenges of engaging in reflective practice. Using Spearman&rsquo;s coefficient, this study found that reflective practice and work engagement are significantly correlated (<i>p</i> = .002). This study also found that exhibit developers are highly reflective concerning their work and are very highly engaged in their work. According to this study, exhibit developers have higher than average vigor, dedication, and absorption. Participants in this study suggested that reflective practice influences vigor and dedication in exhibit developers. Reflective practice helps exhibit developers persist through challenges in their work and helps them feel they made the correct career choice. Engaging in reflective practice also helps exhibit developers feel like they are engaged in significant work, feel more inspired, and feel challenged by their work. Exhibit developers have many different perceptions of reflective practice, including the following: thinking of reflective practice as mindfulness; engaging in reflective practice by looking at past experiences; using reflective practice to ensure the pieces fit together as a cohesive whole; using prototyping and evaluation as part of reflective practice; using reflection as critique; reflecting while looking at other people&rsquo;s exhibits; and having reflective discussions. Benefits of engaging in reflective practice included focus on audience needs, incorporation of diverse perspectives, ongoing engagement with projects, meeting personal needs, gaining assistance and confidence in making decisions, and promoting adaptability. Challenges to engaging in reflective practice included time, money, the attitudes of museum or team leadership, other colleagues, the institutional culture, and the field in general.</p>

No description available.

Town Creek Indian Mound is a rural museum and historic site located in Montgomery County, North Carolina. Archaeological excavations at Town Creek historic site have occurred in varying capacities for nearly ninety years. Since 1955, Town Creek’s museum has served to represent archaeological endeavors occurring at the historic site. Therefore Western-trained and white archaeologists have been the sole voices presented within the museum space. Town Creek’s current museum exhibits are stuck in a state of pastness, only representing a small portion of Native lifeways; namely discourse on ritual, ceremony, and death. Current exhibits and historical interpretations at Town Creek’s museum view Native pre-history as separate from extant, historic Native groups, creating ruptures between representations of the past and present. Public memory that is held by tourists and returning visitors supports similar interpretations of a separate and mysterious Native past. The last two years have been a period of change at Town Creek’s museum. The museum exhibits at Town Creek, which are some of the oldest in the North Carolina Historic Sites division, and are being critically re-examined for the first time since 1983. And for the first time, the museum has begun processes of Native stakeholder engagement. Town Creek’s museum has the unique opportunity to move forward with new interpretations. How can the museum at Town Creek situate itself in these developing dialogues of change?

<p> This thesis proposal demonstrates the idea of using advertising strategies to engage the visitor, optimizing the short time the visitor spends in an exhibit. The art, object, and experience is treated as the product and the visitor, although they are not purchasing the product, is the consumer. Each topic is presented using a statement and corresponding image using advertising principles of keeping it short; delivering a clear narrative; and show, don&rsquo;t tell. Art, contemporary photography and video documentaries, combined with corresponding stories, are used to expand upon the exhibit theme, Gender, once the advertising element for each section has engaged the visitor.</p>

<p> This thesis investigates how my representations of experience through arts-informed autoethnographic research are significant in establishing the pedagogical nature of place. I seek to understand how <i>place-conscious education</i> in a community setting can encourage students&rsquo; relationships with the spaces they inhabit and lend to a more just learning environment. Many educative tools are provided and analyzed which are derived from <i> wayfinding</i> and <i>psychogeographic</i> methods. Data was collected over two months throughout the Summer of 2015 while participating in the Onward Israel service learning program in Israel and Palestine. My digital photographs and excerpts of stream-of-consciousness style poetry serve as the data set to illuminate the rich sensory encounters and art making processes indicative of experiential learning.</p><p> This context-driven artwork encourages questions and dialogue about sociopolitical conflict and wars, migration and occupation. It is concerned with physical as well as psychological borders, checkpoints and boundaries. I utilized poetic and photographic inquiry as well as cognitive mapping to explore how concepts of <i>travel</i> are intricately linked to practices of self-reflexivity, community building and alternative curricula development outside of the formal classroom setting. This qualitative data is not a strictly defined set of interviews or statistics. Instead, vignettes of a more totalizing experience can be extracted, analyzed, dissected and/or rearranged. It is an exploration of identity, agency and untraditional ways of knowing the self/Other. I underscore how new pathways and possibilities for teaching emerge from a greater acceptance and validation of experiential knowledge and an attuned consciousness to place.</p>

<p> This thesis examines and exposes the active student life of 1947 Newcomb College graduate Coralie Guarino Davis. Through the analysis of her diaries, I examine both the academic and social structure of Newcomb as a coordinate college and its effect on students in the 1940s as well as social and cultural events such as World War II and Carnival. Davis graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree that enabled her to work professionally in the art field and briefly as a Carnival designer. During her college education, Davis also experienced World War II. Davis and other students aided in the war effort through fundraising, experienced war rations, and anticipated the Allies victory. She also participated in Carnival as a queen of her krewe, the Elenians, in 1947. The exhibit is derived from her diary writings and presents an example of the typical Newcomb student experience during the 1940s in regards to education, the war, and New Orleans social events. Both my research and exhibit work to bridge the gap on Newcomb College history during World War II and enhance the scholarship on women in higher education and in New Orleans during the decade.</p>

Between 1768 and 1780 Captain James Cook led three epic voyages from Britain into the Pacific Ocean, where he and his fellow explorers- artists, naturalists, philosophers and sailors, were to encounter societies and cultures of extraordinary diversity. These 18th Century South Pacific encounters were rich with performance, trade and exchange; but they would lead to the dramatic and violent transformation of the region through colonisation, settlement, exploitation and disease. Since those initial encounters, museums in Britain have become home to the images and artefacts produced and collected in the South Pacific; and they are now primary sites for the representation of the original voyages and their legacies. This representation most often takes the form of exhibitions and displays that in turn choreograph and produce new encounters with the past, in the present. Drawing on Alfred Gell's term 'technologies of enchantment' my practice reconceives the structures of exhibitions as 'technologies of encounter': exploring how they might be reconfigured to produce new kinds of encounter. Through reflexive practice I critically engage with museums as sites of encounters, whilst re-imagining the exhibition as a creative form. The research submission takes the form of an exhibition: an archive of materials from the practice, interwoven with a reflective dialogue in text. The thesis progresses through a series of exhibition encounters, each of which explores a different approach to technologies of encounter, from surrealist collage (Cannibal Dog Museum) and critical reflexivity (The Hidden Hand), to a conversational mode (Modernity's Candle and the Ways of the Pathless Deep).

No description available.

<p> This thesis documents the research and development behind a proposed exhibition advocating for the principles of sustainable urbanism to young adults. <i>Emerald City</i> interprets Philadelphia as an evolving system of infrastructure and traces its relationship to the natural environment from the Industrial Age to the present, followed by an exploration of the city&rsquo;s possible future through the lens of current proposals of sustainable development.</p>

Final Project (M.A.)--John F. Kennedy University, 2006. / "July 18, 2006"--T.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-90).