FOTM Curatorial Plan / Guidelines for Curatorial Research

7 December 2009

Curatorial Teams:

Automobile: Sara Emmenecker, Curatorial Lead

Heather Lee, Research Assistant

Air: Anna Moir, Curatorial Lead

Coach: Janet Zwolinski, Curatorial Lead

Rail: Shana Weinberg, Curatorial Lead

Adrian Moore, Research Assistant

Ship: Elena Gonzales, Objects Researcher (Co-Curatorial Lead)

Amy Johnson, Historical Researcher (Co-Curatorial Lead)

Available Research Assistants:

Meghan Townes, will be in DC area for winter break
Bess Paupeck
Elena Gonzales, willing to assist another group on specific
research tasks if needed
Amy Johnson, willing to assist another group on specific research
tasks if needed

Documentation: Erin Boyle

What these roles mean

Research Phase

During the research phase of the project, the curatorial groups are divided by
mode of transportation. At a minimum, each group should have a curatorial
leader. This person will guide the research on the topic, remembering to always
hew to the curatorial questions we defined as a large group:
1. Who is moving and by what mode of transportation?
2. Who prepares and serves the food?
3. What kind of foods are eaten and how are they consumed, based on
different modes of transportation?
4. What are external influences driving changes in travel cuisine and
taste?
5. Wild Card! (This allows each curatorial leader some creative latitude to
bring in a special story or issue that comes up during the research
phase and is particularly interesting to her.)

Each curatorial leader should look towards answering questions one through four
with objects from the collection at the Culinary Arts Museum. The curatorial leader
is responsible for presenting a wish list of objects to the large group and the
Museum on February 1, 2010. At this time, the leader should have a general sense
of how the narrative of the objects will address the questions. There should be
some writing done, not labels, but some sense of a narrative developing. What do
each of these objects mean? What are the main points? Short narrative chunks
(notes) would be especially helpful. This is the meeting when we will need to let
Creative Services at Johnson and Wales know what we want to do, how many
panels we want to have, and generally what the specs are for the exhibition.

The relationship between the research assistant and the curatorial leader should
be defined in each group. However, the general idea is that the assistant is not
responsible for the curatorial area, but rather for specific research projects and
tasks that the leader will develop or that the curatorial group will plan and
develop together. These may be archival / historical research tasks or tasks
relating to research with objects in the Museum.

Implementation Phase

After the meeting on February 1st, we will make the transition to the
implementation phase of the exhibition.
• Initially (DATE TBD), the curatorial groups should submit the object labels
(including gang labels if appropriate), and content for main panels and
subsections to the project leaders, Sara, Elena, and Janet.
• Then, the folks who were curatorial leaders will switch to being curatorial
coordinators of one of the bit questions in the exhibition. In other words,
since the exhibition is organized by questions, not modes of transportation,
the important piece of work at this stage is reshuffling all of the content that
the teams created around modes of transportation into the questions. This
shouldn't be a problem since the curators were working on answering those
questions the whole time, but it will take some organization of the existing
chunks of writing and objects.
• Finally, once the exhibition is basically complete on paper, the project
leaders will go over it for a final time with Richard Gutman and check for
coherence, a unified voice, and consistentcy on topics, finalizing the
material for production and presentation.

Documentation / Transparency + Communication

Since a great deal of research will take place while we're all out of town, it is
crucial for us to use the blog to communicate with eachother and with the large
group. We want to make sure that the curatorial groups are communicating, that
the curatorial groups are sharing information with the exhibition group as a whole,
and that the exhibition group and the programming group are on the same page.
To this end, all researchers should:
• Familiarize themselves with Lucia and Erin's lovely blog:
http://brownph09.wordpress.com/
• Learn how and where to post research updates: ERIN??
• Regularly post working notes and ideas, especially after visits to the
 Museum to look at objects.
• In particular, we should make sure that there is a location on the blog to
submit crossover ideas, ideas that someone in the ships group comes
across, for example, that might work really well for the rail group, or
whatever, perhaps answers to big questions that include multiple modes of
transportation, or perhaps just ideas that actually pertain to other groups.
ERIN??

Steps for Objects Research:

1. Look at the lists of objects that Erin Williams, the collections manager at the
Museum, send us, if you haven't already.
2. Email Erin (Erin.Williams@jwu.edu), as soon as you have ideas of the kinds
of objects you want to see. For example, I want to see ships' menus. Make
sure that you let her know if you're requesting to see objects that were on
those Excel lists. If there are accession numbers or titles associated with
them, name those in your email. To the extent that you can specify the
subject and time period, do so.
3. At this time, begin setting up a time to visit the Museum and see the objects
she pulls, even if it's going to be a few weeks away.
4. Erin will locate and pull the objects.
5. Go to the Museum for your meeting. You'll look at the objects in the prep
room and talk to Erin when you have questions.
6. Repeat process!

Other important notes on objects:

• If you notice that you're going to want to borrow a specific kind of object or
a specific object, let Erin and Richard know right away.
• If you think you're going to want to buy a prop or an object, contact Richard
right away.
• If you notice something expensive... Like maybe an object needs
conservation, etc. Contact Richard right away.