Because #MuseumWeek

By Jamie A. Thomas

Which iconic museum set the scene for this mirror-image selfie?

M is for Makumbusho (Museum).

Where do you go when you want to explore at your own pace? When you want to learn with visual interest and engaged focus? You might end up at a museum. A place where objects, stories, and experiences are narrated through artful display and carefully crafted prose.

In Swahili, the word for museum is makumbusho, meaning a physical place of memories, related to kumbuka (remember) and kumbukumbu (memories). I like these Swahili terms because they capture the role of museums in archiving public discourse and stimulating our cultural understanding of our relationship to human events, created things, and natural phenomena. The Guardian recently had a wonderful piece on how a temporary outdoor art museum in a marginalized Mumbai community is challenging mainstream ideas of what counts as art. The Mumbai museum features the avant-garde pottery and intricate tools of local craftspeople, many of whom have never set foot in a museum space. The key revelation? "When you have a museum, you count."

Particularly because I'm chasing my own growing interest in museums, I recently set out to explore a bit of Old Sacramento on a visit with family. What I discovered enchanted me further with museum exhibits as forms of public discourse, and has me thinking about ways more of us can enjoy these spaces. And even though the power went out in one museum, this didn't spell the end of my memorable encounter.

As digital spaces become more ubiquitous, I'm finding it increasingly important to temporarily unplug and make time for physical visits to material collections. So now, I want to share with you some of the insights I gathered on visits to a variety of public history and art museums across Sacramento and Los Angeles. During my spring break from teaching, I experienced firsthand how tactile engagement, play, and ambient inspiration amplified my intercultural learning. Essentially, I found myself noticing and discovering new information during moments of wonder [and wander ] with museum collections. These are curative and educational approaches I now aim to incorporate into my own practice...

Tactile Engagement: We Sat in Antique Desks.

On a low-key driving tour with my sister and her boyfriend, I couldn't resist entering the open doors of a tiny home tucked in among the saloons and taverns of downtown Sacramento's historic riverfront. Turned out the little home was a one-room schoolhouse, now enjoying a second life as a free museum. The Schoolhouse Museum, to be exact.

Inside, we were transported back to California's Gold Rush. The school itself was a living, breathing exhibit, heated internally on that overcast, rainy day by a working iron stove. We walked between rows of antique wooden desks, and I could feel how much formal education had changed over time. And that's why this museum visit has stuck with me.

We sat at the desks, and talked with museum educators dressed as 19th century schoolteachers. I was reminded of the TV heroine of When Calls the Heart and her pioneering efforts in the wilds of Canada's frontier. I next thought to my many attempts at playing Oregon Trail on the Apple IIe computers at my elementary school, and reading Sarah, Plain and Tall as a kid in the 4th grade.

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And get this: my flight out to Sacramento from Philadelphia that weekend loosely retraced the steps of gold-rushing pioneers, who began their cross-country journeys with wagons crafted in Conestoga, PA, some 2 hours outside of Philly. At any rate, it was our tactile engagement with this petite museum and its collection that made for a greatly memorable experience.

Our schoolmarm photo op on the Schoolhouse's front porch.

A Museum We Could Play In. 

As we exited the Schoolhouse Museum, I lifted brochures on museums around the city for more information. The next day, I proposed we make a day of it. My sister wouldn't be able to join us, but what about a planetarium? And with that, Senya and I were off to the Discovery Museum Science and Space Center of Sacramento. At the edge of the parking lot, we were greeted by the rear end of a propulsion system. That was my first time close to a real rocket! Inside, just past the front desk, we read displays on local flora and observed small animals in rare form--impossibly tiny frogs, a rabbit with a natural lion's mane, and hissing insects. We were two adults having just as much fun as the K-6 children and parents surrounding us! And then the power went out.

Museum staff guided everyone toward the exits. Would this mean our planetarium dreams were over? With no indoor electricity, we explored the outside grounds. After a while, we learned there had been a larger citywide power outage. The staff generously offered everyone vouchers to return at a later date, or gain admission to another museum in the area. Vouchers in hand, Senya and I decided to make a short trip over to the Aerospace Museum of California, located in former aircraft hangers at the former McClellan Airforce Base.

​This museum of earth and space flight was affiliated with the Smithsonian, and housed important artifacts pointing to pioneering innovations and applications of aerospace technology, as well as the people key to their development and deployment. I had no idea that Sputnik referred to companion or satellite in Russian, or that there had been a woman cosmonaut early on!

I realize now that a science museum can operate in some ways like a public history museum, by communicating histories of technology.

We were able to activate pistons, hop into flight simulators, and engage with visual timelines of the space race, and women and men who contributed to the development of commercial and military piloting. Differently from the Discovery Museum, few exhibits were at waist height, and prose labeling was more extensive. The space wasn't exclusively designed for a kid audience. So we were surprised when we happened upon an open play area in the Aerospace Museum with guided activities! Should we go for it and play?

Play we did. We got to work on a set of differently sized wooden blocks, trying to use our intuition to build a bridge without any additional supports. Trapezoidal blocks and rhomboids, and a hexagonal keystone. For the life of us, we couldn't figure it out! One of the museum staff came over to check on our progress and had to give us a cheat. Hint, hint: The blocks are lettered. Following the scheme of As, Bs, and Cs, we fit our blocks together, an anthropologist and an engineer.

​After our delayed success, we gave shout-outs to contemporary bridge builders, and the medieval Peruvian architects of Machu Picchu. How did they do it with such precision? Around us, a few kids were experimenting with other guided activities on simple machines like the fulcrum and lever. Our play was inspiring us in ways the simulators and vertical displays and couldn't, by inviting us to collaborate and experiment with fundamental principles we often take for granted.

Ambient Inspiration in the Hills of Los Angeles.

After my weekend in Sacramento, I made the short flight down to Los Angeles to visit more family and friends. On the last day of my trip, I drove out to the Getty Center. I zoomed down the 405 after a necessary grilled cheese (with onions) at In-N-Out.

It had been a few years since I last peeked into the hilltop Getty, and so I was impressed to see the museum beginning its social media campaign on the tram ride up to the main buildings. We were invited to Find Your Inspiration and #GettyInspired.

The tram began winding its way up the steep hillside, and unseen voices issued a bold welcome. The Japanese, Spanish, and German of fellow riders seemed to echo the tram's multilingual announcement. A printed schedule of the day's events listed a curator's tour of Woven Gold: Tapestries of Louis XIV. I could make the tour if I didn't delay in exiting the tram.

The curator spoke into a microphone everyone in the group could hear through individual headsets, as the twenty of us followed her up the stairs and into one of the main galleries. Massive handwoven tapestries painted the inside walls with biblical scenes, royal crests, and seasonal landscapes. At first I couldn't make out the strands of gold in the artwork, but then the curator encouraged us to stand askew to catch the metallic glimmers of gold in the light. It could take up to 5 years for one of these masterful tapestries to be completed!

Save for one or two others, I had been the youngest person on the weekday gallery tour, and the only African American.

The tour completed, I emerged from the gallery to a panoramic view of LA's skyline and the museum's whimsical gardens. Succulents, bougainvilleas, and rock features simulated an intimate escape, even though visitors roamed the grounds en masse.

​The effortless ambient inspiration of the Getty's curated contours and landscape reminded me of why art matters, why the aura of place matters. As a reflection of all the things we tether to ideas (beauty, peace, pleasure), art communicates and commands calm, wonder, and introspection.