I often like to watch a TED talk over lunch to get my brain moving in a fresh direction. Today there just so happened to be a wonderful talk by Thomas P. Campbell, the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, featured front and center on the TED homepage. His approach to curating objects in a museum is by highlighting their narrative, giving people a way to better connect with the objects through their stories, as opposed to just facts and dates. This is exactly the approach my former graduate art education professor at UT, Dr. Melinda Mayer, brings to museum education. She teaches museum educators to facilitate delight in art objects through storytelling, as expressed by Campbell in his talk:
"Bringing people face to face to face with our objects is a way of bringing them face to face with people across time, across space who's lives may have been very different to our own but who, like us, had hopes and dreams, frustrations and achievements in their lives. And I think this is a process that helps us better understand ourselves, helps us make better decisions about where we're going." -Thomas P. Campbell
Though I am an avid user of new technologies and love exploring the digital world, this video will give you insight into the role of museums and the value of authentic objects in our lives.
Warning: there is a bit of foul language in this video!