Mining the Museum: How Museums Outline the Truth About Culture, Arts, and History

Assignment #3 400-word Article Précis or Analytical Summary (5%)
Upload in doc files or pdf. Please put your name on your document.
5% late penalty per day of lateness applied at 11:00 am.
Lisa G. Corrin, “Mining the Museum: An Installation Confronting History.” Curator: The Museum Journal 36 no. 4 (2010): 302-312.
Instructions: This 400 word précis (an analytic summary) asks you to succinctly synthesize Lisa G. Corrin’s essay about Fred Wilson’s ambitious exhibition “Mining the Museum.” The goal here is for you to show a clear understanding of the analysis of the exhibition, including its history and components, but above all capturing its motivations, effects on audiences, and significance.
Corrin is interested in a critical museology and was actively involved in commissioning Fred Wilson’s intervention in the form of a museum exhibition.
Your précis should address the main arguments of Corrin’s essay rather than a list of facts presented by the author. Your précis may be speculative; it can include questions or points of confusion. But the main point is to show your grasp of the author’s subject and view of it. When writing a précis it is useful to ask yourself: what question is this author trying to answer? What is their point of view?
Your précis should capture the outline of Corrin’s essay. What is its subject and what line of argument does she develop around it. How do examples sustain various parts of the argument?
To get started, consider these guiding questions in reading the essay and in writing your precis; you will likely touch on many of these issues:
How is the museum an ideological apparatus?
How has that silent function been brought to light?
What aspects of the museum are questioned?
Does the author see the artists’ installation as a positive move forward?
What issue in particular seems to have been avoided in these artists’ installations?
How has Fred Wilson addressed the ideological blind spot of museums and their curators?
What type of museum was the installation designed for?
What kinds of interventions did Wilson make?
What role did research play?
How did multi-media installations change people’s perspectives on portraits? Or labels on other works?
How did it address the museum’s audiences?
How did it change the audience’s expectation of the museum?
Reflect on the title of the exhibition as “mining” is a double entendre.
.To write 400 words takes some discipline. You need to condense your prose and make sure you invoke the key terms in their discussion. It is suggested that you take notes on the article, writing summary sentences are you go so that you put the important points into your own words. This strategy helps you to digest and map out the succession of ideas and to put their words into your own. I think you will find it easier to then fashion a couple of paragraphs based on your notes.
You do not need to include a bibliography; rather, write one proper footnote for the essay in Chicago style. If you quote the author within the body of your essay, use the short social science citation form: i.e. (Corrin, 34).