A few thoughts on the museum podcasts and readings:

One of the cool ideas from this summer was the public facing museum.  These were installations in non-traditional museum spaces--highly public areas.  

The museum can make a wide array of artifacts accessible to a large number of people.  The public facing museum that is mobile takes this asks the public to not only view the exhibit, but to interact with the exhibit and possibly re-create the exhibit.  I like this idea as a tool for teaching and learning in the classroom because it asks students to bring themselves and their knowledge to the learning.

In contrast, some of the traditional museum place the visitor more in the role of being passive observers.  The organizing and labeling and presenting of objects is an activity that is the domain of the museum leaders.  This is especially problematic with regard to African exhibits, which have historically been influenced by colonial mindsets that decontextualize cultural artifacts from their cultures.  This perpetuates harm by not allowing people with historical ties to objects to have a say in the telling of the stories of the objects.  

The podcast asks us to think about the underlying values of the museum.  What is the history of how museums in the west have come to obtain African objects?  What is the duty of repair for museums?   How can the museum give voices to people who are connected to the objects?