Weekly Blog Roundup

Here are a few interesting & exciting posts from the museum blog world.

First up: this is not a blog post, I know, but it has potential to be really excellent. A group of public historians are putting together an "unconference" in Boston that they're calling History Camp. I'm loving watching this develop; the interactive nature of planning, the open sourced presentations, the transparent fun of it all. I'm trying to get some time off to go down and talk but even if I can't, I wish them well!

How much interpretation is too much? from Every Word Counts

I have a grad school friend who swore that she'd never write another exhibit label after we graduated. I'm the opposite: I love them. I love the wordsmithing and the thinking and the tweaking. I love it until I violently hate it, but I always swing back around to wanting more by the time a new project comes up.

This is a great post about the times when you can do too much explaining. I've found myself falling more and more into the minimalist camp for labels; I want people to say what they mean and then get out and leave the rest to me. (That doesn't mean I want a basic tombstone label - but I don't want to read 500 words, either.)

News Roundup from Museum, Politics, and Power

I know: I'm rounding up a roundup. Consider this my way of saying that this blog makes me think and react and consider in ways that I don't usually. It's a fascinating multinational project that's tackling big issues that we don't often get to address.