Installing a New Exhibit Begins

Looking good, even in protective wrap!

Monday, March 30 and Tuesday, March 31 trucks arrived and members of the Weldon Exhibitsteam spent an intense two days unloading exhibit components.  Wednesday began installation and even at the start of Day 3 you can already see the exhibits starting to take shape. 

Unloading components

Before installation

  

It's thrilling to see what we've only imagined through design drawings starting to take shape in our museum- we hope you're getting as excited as we are!

WE staff applying photographic mural

Our sheep will supervise the rest of installation 

Written in the Land: the Mystery of Geoglyphs

One of the major projects I have been working on lately involves geoglyphs.  These earthen art designs are found in large amounts in places like Peru (the famous Nazca lines are geoglyphs), Chile, Australia, and the extreme southwestern United States- in other words: where I live. At the museum I am taking in a large collection of aerial photographs by local photographer and pilot Harry Casey, who has been flying over the geoglyphs for over 30 years, photographing changes to the land and the geoglyphs.  As of now the collection includes over 5,000 print and 500 slide photographs, with more yet to be accessioned.  I'm working closely with Harry and his wife Peg, going over images with them, listening to the stories behind the photos and the people who recorded them as well as the theories of the images themselves.  Three oversized images were included in our recent Seaweed, Salmon, and Manzanita Cider: A California Indian Feast exhibit and visitors were amazed- both by the beauty of the images and the fact that most of them had never heard of the geoglyphs. A recent article in our bi-weekly Land of Extremes newspaper series introduced local geoglyphs to a wider audience.

 

Photographing geoglyphs from above shows the images as they cannot be seen from the ground


This Saturday my co-worker and I accompanied Harry and Peg on the next step in our geoglyph education.  We drove to Pilot Knob, Arizona to record latitude and longitude for the geoglyphs found there.  The most famous, and easiest to see, is the Horse.  While some of our geoglyphs have been dated several thousand years old, the horse is obviously a much more recent work, based on its content. Horses have been extinct in the Americas for thousands of years, returning with the Spanish in the 1500s.

Desert pavement

The area around Pilot Knob has desert pavement perfect for geoglyphs, better than the pavement found in my area of the Yuha.  Looking over the rocks on the plateaus by the images we were able to see extensive desert varnish, the orange-red color found on the bottom of rocks that have remained undisturbed for thousands of years.  We were able to see tools scattered across the area: scrapers and choppers as beautiful or more than any in our collection.  Jessica even found some small fossils from when the area was under the ocean millions of years ago.

As tempting as it may be to remove these artifacts, thinking you are protecting them from the elements or other people, it is important to resist the temptation.  Artifacts randomly removed from an archaeological site are removed from their context, removing the story of the area as well as the artifacts themselves.  Take photos or drawings, not rocks.  

So long and thanks for all the fish!

(My apologies to Douglas Adams, but how often does a museum get to use a play on words like that?)

Staff member Jessica Brody says goodbye to the Salmon

With this weekend's Shawii Day we said goodbye to our latest traveling exhibit: Exhibit Envoy's Seaweed, Salmon, and Manzanita Cider: A California Indian Feast. This eight week exhibit explored foods native to California and how they were traditionally prepared by Native Californians.  Using artifacts from our collections that related to food and hunting we were able to supplement the statewide exhibit with information specific to the Kumeyaay Nation.

Young visitors enjoy baskets on loan from Manzanita

Between August 16 and October 12, 562 visitors came through the museum for the exhibit.  That's about 14 people each day we were open for eight weeks!  Visitors came from El Centro, Brawley, and San Diego; Freedom Academycame out from Holtville for a field trip;  and the San Diego Association of Geologists hiked out for their annual field trip.

A young expert teaches our Jessica Brody to crack acorns

We were thrilled by the positive response everyone had to this exhibit.  People loved learning new things about foods they thought they knew, and how complicated it was to prepare foods when today we have a microwave handy!

Staff member Albert Lutz takes down the exhibit

We have now begun the process of not only taking down Salmon to go onto its next home, but everything else in the museum's public area.  As you know, we will be closed for a few months of construction and when we open back up in the Spring we will have an exciting new permanent exhibit! You've supported us through the long beginning- now prepare to be amazed!

Don't worry- we'll be keeping everyone up to date on construction through the blog and Facebook- follow along in this stage of our adventure!

Up next: Mocking up our new visible storage exhibit!

Tool Class with Stan- or Remembering the Hands-on Approach

making arrows with Stan Rodriguez

I've been so busy with work these last few months that I have let a lot of things slide.  This blog, even though I have plenty to write about that is archives and museum related, keeping in touch with friends and family, and pretty much anything not directly related to the work of building a new exhibit.  Plus the other 30 or so jobs I do every day to try and keep the museum treading water.  I'm not complaining- more like apologizing to readers (and friends and family) and trying to set up an explanation for this post.

On Wednesday, my co-worker Jessica and I drove up to Kumeyaay Community College on the Sycuan reservation to meet with Jess's friend Stan Rodriguez.  Stan is very active in tribal education and communication and has agreed to help us with a few aspects of the exhibit the museum is building.  Specifically, we needed an arrow and a pair of sandals for the exhibit and he agreed to help.  We went up and had a fantastic few hours with Stan- he taught us how to make arrows, how to weave agave fiber, and didn't laugh at us when it was pretty clear we had no idea what we were doing, but just encouraged us to relax and try again.

One of the things I was most excited about was getting to actually use an arrow shaft straightener.  We have a large collection of straighteners in the museum and I had done a lot of research on them for a newspaper article and to help me revise exhibit text.  But until this week it had all been theoretical knowledge.  Now I've actually used a heated straightener, heard it hiss as I straighten a carrizo reed on it, and learned the best ways to ensure that the reed ends up straight.

Using an arrow shaft straightener

I've not only handled the fiber of an agave plant, I've helped make the sandals that will go into our exhibit. Granted, Stan did most of it since the idea is that they actually look like sandals, but I worked on them too.  The night was a great reminder that hands-on learning is both fun and essential to museum staff, and archives staff as well.  You are not just preserving artifacts, photographs, or papers- you are helping to tell stories of people and how they live.  You are entering the lives and cultures of other people and hopefully coming away with not only a better understanding of those lives but also more respect.  As one visitor said after seeing our exhibit- "Now when I go out into the desert I think I will have more understanding of how people lived here. It is amazing to realize how it was done and that today most of us couldn't manage it."

The desert has stories to tell, and we can only begin to understand and appreciate those stories when we immerse ourselves in the environment.    Whether that is hiking in the desert, learning to make sandals from an agave plant, or turning book knowledge into reality, these are all important ways to relate to our work and see things in different ways.  Plus, it's important to remember to get out and interact with people and have fun sometimes- even if you can only schedule it in by telling yourself you're working.

Hand made agave fiber sandals

New exhibit at the museum

This weekend marked the opening of our new traveling exhibit Seaweed, Salmon, and Manzanita Cider: A California Indian Feast.  Opening weekend was sponsored by Imperial Valley Aggregates and Gibson & Schaeffer Inc. - and therefore free to the public. We were thrilled that over 100 people joined us over the three day festivities to celebrate our    
largest traveling exhibit yet.

Family sees what could be found in Lake Cahuilla

Friends, family, Museum members, and first time visitors all came out to experience this new exhibit.  They enjoyed two different videos running in different locations- one that came with the exhibit on making acorn bread and the award winning First People Kumeyaay. They learned new and exciting things about grinding the all important acorn for food and roasting agave in pits.  And everyone loved the take away recipes!  Hopefully we'll hear back from people after they've made the meals to tell us how they liked it!



Kids enjoyed a new twist on our signature coiled clay program by also learning a bit about finding clay in its natural state and how the Kumeyaay ground it to create the pliable clay needed for ceramics.  There are also grinding stones in the exhibit from our education collection that can be touched and a game where kids try to think of everything they would need to make their own dinner.

Learning to grind clay

What are YOU making for dinner?

Tools for hunting on view

 With the exception of historical photographs of food preparation and hunting, jars of food provided by Exhibit Envoy, and a basket collection on loan to the museum from Johnny Eagle Spirit Elliot of Manzanita Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, all artifacts on display came from the museum's collections- many never before on view to the public.  All the artifacts relate to food: hunting it, cooking it, eating it.  While learning about the importance of fishing for food our visitors can also see a map of Lake Cahuilla and learn a little more about that fascinating part of our desert landscape.  Shells from both the ocean and Lake Cahuilla are on display, as are a collection of projectile points found along the lake's shorelines.  In an area on hunting visitors can not only see knives, arrows shaft straighteners, and throwing sticks- they can also see a preview of the upcoming permanent exhibit.  A collection of projectile points takes the visitor through a journey of changing technology, changing climate, and changing game.  From mammoths to rabbits, we have taken lot of visitor feedback into consideration when designing this case.

Baskets on loan for this exhibit only

Seaweed, Salmon, and Manzanita Cider: A California Indian Feast will be at the Imperial Valley Desert Museum until Saturday, October 11.  If you and your family weren't able to come for the opening weekend fun, we hope you have the chance to stop by and see this once in a lifetime exhibit before it leaves the valley!

Dancing with Donors

Over the last few weeks I've been working a lot with donors, and find myself reflecting on all the class time we spent talking about donors.  I don't think there was anyone sitting in those classes who thought it was anything but a waste of time. We're all adults, most of us have worked in libraries or retail, there's nothing you can teach us about people and how to handle them, how difficult they can be, and how crazy they can make you.  Yet now I'm glad for those classes.  Some of what professors were trying to get across must have penetrated my skull, because I've been thinking about those classes all week and realizing I have actually been following my professors' advice.

Everything happens at work at the same time, so it's no surprise both my donor dances started around the same time.  One donor was concerned about cassettes he had given to the museum.  We were going to get them digitized, and this was one of the big selling points for him to give us these cassettes.  He doesn't trust museums in general, but he agreed the tapes should be made more easily available and we were the people to get it done.  Then he started worrying. Where was the digitizing going to take place? Could he be present? Should he just buy a machine and take back his tapes and do it himself (that way if something went wrong he had no one but himself to blame), we weren't going to mail them anywhere were we?  Since we are currently researching and building our permanent exhibit and the tapes were securely stored, digitizing them wasn't on my front burner when he started calling. But what it really came down to was, he needed some hand holding.  He needed to hear (from my boss who he knows better than he knows me), that we knew what we were doing, that we had a plan, that everything was under control. He wasn't worried we hadn't digitized the tapes the second we got them, he just had visions of the U.S. Mail losing these records and needed to hear that things were going to be alright.

The other story concerns a reluctant donor.  She was convinced by friends that she should bring her things to us, but wasn't really sure why.  She didn't see her notebooks or photographs as important to anyone but herself, and wasn't buying it when her friends and I talked about how she was a primary source, an expert in the area, and her notes would be important to researchers. She was willing to give us some of her things, but had too much of an emotional attachment to what we as a museum really wanted her to give us.  She finally decided to loan us what we wanted and let us scan them before giving them back.  What she was willing to donate were things I didn't really want, but took anyway.  When she called the next day to say she hadn't read the Deed of Gift I had carefully gone over with her and she had signed, and there were photographs she only wanted to loan not give, I agreed to alter the Deed of Gift.  Did I have the right to tell her she'd signed them over and couldn't take them back? Yes. Legally do these notes on archaeology of government sites even belong to her in the first place? No (but that's a whole different highly technical subject for another time). Do the things she gave us to keep have any value to us as a museum? Possible, but not likely, and I'm sure there will be a few blogs worth of figuring out what to do with them at a later time.

But our business is as much about preserving relationships with people as it is preserving the artifacts and archives we work with every day.  Being accommodating, being willing to take items that don't necessarily fit the scope of collections, or hand holding and assuring someone you really do know what you're doing, makes for building blocks in that relationship.  As much as we want to beat our heads against the wall when dealing with a difficult donor, sometimes you just have to go with it. When the donor says "but I don't know you, where's that other girl?" and you have to explain that she left for a different job but you're just as qualified, you can't take it personally. Because you're building trust, a personally connection and relationship with someone. Not as a museum, not as an institution, but as an individual. And going out of your way to make a good impression at all times leads to positive comments and, we can hope, eventually leads to convincing donors to give you the collections you really want to get your hands on.

Exhibit Reception

Exhibit design drawing- Lake Cahuilla

We've been working hard to get our permanent exhibit into the final phase and this weekend we rolled out the final exhibit design drawings to the public.  A public reception on Saturday displayed the drawings, test text panels in English and Spanish, and was a great opportunity for us to thank those who have been big supporters over the years.  This was very much the culmination of what we've been working towards since the first staff member was hired.

The event was a huge success, with 158 people in attendance for the reception and the screening of  First People Kumeyaay, a new documentary on the rich history and culture of the Kumeyaay Nation. We received a lot of positive feedback on the upcoming exhibit.  People are excited to see the progress this grassroots museum has made and be a part of the growth they see.

Exhibit design drawing- Agave roasting

I am thrilled to be a part of the growth and development of the museum and the building of this new exhibit.  I've been wearing more hats than I ever expected to since coming here, and I think for the most part they all fit: Archivist, Head Curator, volunteer coordinator, intern mentor, event planner, exhibit designer, docent, researcher, social media specialist, and a hundred other little jobs that need to happen to keep a small museum running.  A small museum and a small staff means everyone has to be flexible, and can't be afraid to learn new things.  I'm still growing into some of my hats, but every day more and more of them seem to fit a little better.