Highlights Archives
Museum Artifacts Featured in Curators' Favorites
In January 2005 museum staff began to post online articles about some of the intriguing objects in the Wisconsin Historical Society's massive artifact collection in Madison. Every week, a different object was given the Museum Object of the Week treatment: a short essay to describe the artifact, chronicle the circumstances of its manufacture and use, and interpret its historical significance; a photograph of the object itself; and supplementary images to help place it within its historical contexts. After more than 200 such articles, the Society has converted Museum Object of the Week into Curators' Favorites. Although new content will not be added weekly, Curators' Favorites will continue to showcase more museum objects on an occasional basis, as time and opportunity permit.
Some objects featured in Curators' Favorites were selected because they coincided with exhibits held at the Wisconsin Historical Museum in Madison. But perhaps the most important aspect of the feature is that it allows the museum to share objects that are individually significant but may not meet current exhibition needs. In the past these items would have remained carefully preserved in the museum's storage rooms, but out of sight and largely inaccessible to the general public. Curators' Favorites will continue to allow curators to select significant objects from the collection with fascinating stories and couple these artifacts with images and associated items from other Society programs, such as the library and archives, to produce a new micro exhibit online.
The process of deciding which objects are worthy of being featured on the Web is a subjective one. Museum staff tries to select objects of diverse types, time periods, and cultural affiliations to highlight the breadth of its object collections. Museum curators use a number of factors to assess the significance of artifacts. Among these are association, primacy, aesthetic quality, rarity, novelty, typicality, antiquity, symbolism, and evidential value.
The in-depth stories that curators write about these fascinating artifacts are now integrated into the larger Museum Online Collections portion of the Society's website. Museum Online Collections brings together information about several of the Society's museum collections, including children's clothing, paintings, dolls, samplers, moccasins, and ceramic art. Together with online exhibitions, these pictorial tours of artifacts constitute a "virtual museum" that allows the Historical Society to share its objects and the stories they tell with people around the world.
:: Posted January 8, 2009
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