African American Tourism

When a museum has prestige on a national level, they can be under high scrutiny of exhibits or objects displayed by the public. Controversial topics, for example, the Enola Gay exhibit, has left historians hesitant and confused on how to create exhibits with correct history, but also not upsetting any individual who were involved with said history. Historians have a trying task of addressing both sides of a historical event, even though it might depict individuals in an unflattering way. A historian is not allowed to have a bias for events, this could have an impact on the way an exhibit is created. Another point that was brought to light in Bunch’s article was museums have the ability to educate the public, so difficult topics should not be

Fred Wilson is an art activist for minority groups, especially the African American population, which in today`s generation, is looked upon as the unseen minority group (Grinberg 2012). Wilson creates innovative exhibitions to display art and artifacts found in museum collections with arrangements that represent minority contemporary artists. His ideas lead the audience to acknowledge that changes in the perceptive view transform the whole meaning of what is presented.

Miles (2002) suggests that a ‘darker-lighter tourism paradigm’ does indeed exist. He argues there is a distinction between ‘dark’ and ‘darker’ tourism, that is, a greater notion of the macabre and the morose can exist between sites. Miles proposes there is a crucial difference between sites associated with death and suffering, and sites that are of death and suffering. Thus, according to Miles the product and experience at the death camp site at Auschwitz-Birkenau is conceivably darker than the one at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. (Stone, 2006)

Philadelphia has just launched a new marketing campaign targeting the African-American travel industry. This segment is underserved when it comes to advertising spend in the U.S. With its newest campaign, Visit Philadelphia is implementing a documentary video series on travel which is hosted by Tarik Trotter or more popularly known as Black Thought.

When constructing an exhibit, the museum staff must ask themselves: What demographic are we designing this exhibit for. Correspondingly, the museum staff ponders what is the line of sight for the targeted demographic, so they know where to place the artifacts and how the exhibit should be structured. Similarly, the museum staff must predict how the public will respond to their exhibit and the necessary precautions to avoid negative reviews. Most importantly, the museum staff must question if the exhibit can offend a certain demographic and the steps they will need to take to properly represent that society. When creating an exhibit, the museum staff must contemplate how the structure and content will relate to the audience and what is the best approach to have interaction between the exhibit and its attended audience.

Over the course of many centuries, museums have become public institutions available to all classes, stemming from the emergence of a more influential lower class (Lehman 2009). Prior to this, museums followed noblesse oblige, and believed it was their duty to guide, educate, and demonstrate higher standards for the masses. These notions of class divide have not subsided even since museums have become public, and this tension has transformed and continues to manifest itself today. Since the mid-80s, museums have perceived themselves as businesses and have utilized marketing strategies in order to shift their reputation away from being “marble mausoleums” who are reliant on traditional models of income, and towards a customer-focused approach that seeks to inform, entertain, and preserve. Lehman argues that for museums to succeed, they must establish an ethos that runs beneath, and connects, their marketing decisions and goals in order to change for the public, with the

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and finest art museums in the world. The museum’s collection consists of prehistory and present artifacts from every part of the globe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is located at 5th avenue and 82nd street in New York City. On Monday, November 5th, my brother and I took a trip to the Metropolitan Museum. It was a very long journey to get there. When we arrived at 34th street, we took the E train and transferred to Lexington Avenue to get to 86th street. From there we walked a couple blocks to get to the Metropolitan Museum. The reason why I took my brother is because he loves museums, so wanted someone who would not want to leave the museum after a short period of time due to lack of interest. Not only I enjoyed this trip, but also my brother enjoyed it maybe even more. Although this isn’t the first time that I visit the Metropolitan museum, every visit never fails to amaze me by how massive it is. Not only the Metropolitan Museum is imposing from how it’s beautifully designed from the outside, but also the inside of the building is mind boggling from the great amount of priceless of artwork it contains. When my brother and I first entered the doors of the museum, he was blown away. He couldn’t believe how enormous the museum actually is. Not only local New Yorkers took a visit that day, but also Tourists from around the world. Our trip mostly focused upon Islamic and Ancient Egyptian art and we found it to be

Examining the Saint Louis art Museum gave me a new prospective on art and what it does for our society. The art museum is obviously filled with art, but it’s how they present the art that strikes me. From the statue of King Louis IX of France to the building itself shows that there is a lot of history in and around the museum. The museum is one of the principals of art museums in the country, with paintings, sculptures, and cultural objects from all over the world. The building is three-story tall and is located in Forest park. It’s free to attend the museum because the city pass a bill with subsidy from the culture tax from Saint Louis and city district. So, the museum was trying to achieve a since of culture coming from Saint Louis region

Since the beginning of civilisation, people have been drawn “towards sites, attractions or events that are somehow linked to negative historical events where death, violence, suffering or disaster played a major role” (Sharpley and Stone, 2009). Dark Tourism is a growing phenomenon that which academics are still yet to fully understand. The concept of Dark Tourism has been around thousands of years, dating back to before even Roman times. The idea that people from all over the country would travel to the colosseum just to see a fight to the death was a form of tourism. One academic in 2005 described it as “travel to sites of death and suffering” (Stone, 2005).

The art museum is a place that collects and preserves very valuable and profound pieces of art created by some of the most influential artists of all time. Not everyone can understand the emotions and profound ideas that are expressed in old works of art. Only a fraction of all people can really appreciate a fine work of art and understand its true meaning. Many people that go to the art museum do not belong. They do not hold the higher level of education needed to look at a painting and see its full potential. I do not think the people of art museums should put in the effort to democratize these institutions mainly because you cannot train people to enjoy art, because education of art is not valued, and because the elitism of the art

Every museum has an object that has a story to tell to the visitors. Collecting institutions will often spend more time, energy, and money caring for the objects that visitors do not see than the institutions spend on the public exhibits. (Moses, 1) These objects, whether displayed in exhibits or in storage hidden from the public view, are instilled with meaning, as the objects “tell us who we are as individuals and as a society” and “connect us with our past.” (Moses, 2) However, while collecting institutions, whether big or small, can present and collect objects that resemble and define who we are as a society, institutions will constantly face internal and external struggles that will define how an institution not only presents the

Throughout this course, I have reaffirmed my desire to engage others in the process of learning. I have always been fascinated by the potential museums possess to involve visitors in inquiry and even cultivate a love for learning. Accordingly, my goal has always been to bring my passion for learning to museum visitors. Due to my background in archaeology, I have always given the bulk of my attention to objects within museums, giving little thought to my own experience let alone the experiences of others. Museums Today: Missions and Function, however, has taught me to emphasize the museum audience and the experience of visiting rather than the collection itself. The concept of being audience focused rather than collections driven, is

“The questions then are (1) how to decolonize the museum and (2) how to assess what a decolonial option reorienting the work museums can do (e.g.,) in a nutshell, reproducing the rhetoric of modernity and the logic of coloniality or entering in a spirit of epimistic and aesthetic disobedience undoing what museums did in a modern/imperial history: learning to unlearn and to enact museums for decolonization of being and of

When people think of ghost tourism, they typically think of visiting a haunted house or cornfield. However, the phenomenon goes lot deeper than that. It helps connect tourists to deeper meaning of history and culture of historical places. Many cities and towns around the world profit when visitors go to haunted sites where ghosts and supernatural activity have been present. Tourists and tourism companies have different motives for exploring and hosting tours of historical landmarks. Some companies take the economic route and strictly attempt to make capital gain, while others take the time to thoroughly explain and connect with the tourist about the culture and history of the haunted sites. The historical places involved in ghost and dark tourism have similar goals but can be very different. These sites range from simple ghost tourism locations including haunted houses, and tours, but they can also encompass scenes of mass disaster.

Cultural relevance, understanding and education are the key areas that modern museums seem to be addressing seriously. As a public institution a museum must consider its role in society, the way culture is represented and displayed and most of all, how interpretation affects those not of museum training backgrounds, for example a visitor or patron. Some would argue that art, is an expression of a culture and its political and economic values (Hein 2006), while others would suggest that is the artifacts of long lost peoples and cultures that have the most worth to the public (Sabeti 2015).