{ Savanna is a graduate student at the University of Oregon, pursuing her Master’s in Arts Administration with a concentration in Museum Studies. She is also employed as the Collections Manager at the Pratt Museum in Homer, Alaska. Her interests and research revolve around cultural and natural history collections, and ways in which community partnerships can be used to strengthen museum mission statements }
Savanna conducting inventory of natural history collections.
October 9th -13th, I attended the Museums Alaska Conference in Sitka, Alaska. This was a fantastic conference with a theme of “Connecting with our Communities.” Topics that were discussed with this theme in mind covered areas of collections, exhibits, education, and directorship.Before the conference officially started, I had the opportunity to attend a pre-conference session on XRF testing with XRF technology specialist, Bruce Kaiser. Museums (and other institutions) around the globe use XRF to identify elemental makeup of collections objects. Bruce had a day-long session on the physics behind XRF, how to read output from the device, and the specifics of material makeup of compounds that museums specialists generally focus on.
This was the second time that I had the opportunity to learn from Bruce. In 2011, Bruce came to the Pratt Museum in Homer, Alaska (where I am employed as Collections Manager), to lead a workshop with museum employees from several museums in South Central and Southeast Alaska. We used the knowledge gained from that workshop to test the Pratt’s large collection of Taxidermy, focusing on a specific element that was commonly used in taxidermy production pre-1970: Arsenic. During the conference, I had the opportunity to present on our findings from that arsenic testing session, including what our findings were (two dozen taxidermy mounts containing arsenic), what we have done to contain those mounts (polyethylene bags), community programming surrounding XRF (Trinkets or Treasures), and the future of arsenic in our natural history collection (elimination and replacement). This was the first time I had the opportunity to present at a conference. Despite any fears I may have had, I felt that the presentation was an over-all success.
Birds on Display at the Pratt Museum: as we tested for arsenic in the galleries, it became not a question of "duck, duck, goose" but rather "hot, hot, not."
Other sessions that I attended were predominately collections related (large objects, legal issues, NAGPRA), but I also attended the keynote speech (given by our own Alice Parman), and a session on how Alaskan museums have been using social media to further their missions. Alaska may be remote, and somewhat disconnected from the lower ’48, but we are still able to have a fantastic panel of speakers, resource-filled conference sessions, and a large number of leaders who are experts in their fields. I also was able to have the experience of being in one of Alaska’s older towns during the celebration of Alaska Day (interpreted as ‘Alaska Week’ in Sitka).
This Museums Alaska conference was a great success, and given some of the session content, I hope to see you all there next year!