AMST 205

HOMEWORK TWO

Looking At Artifacts

DUE TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1996

This is an exercise in "reading" an object. You will be expected to use the three objects pictured here and analyze them using Fleming's model as a curator might for a museum collection.

Mount your response on your homework2.html page. Your page should include the images of the three objects in appropriate places as well as images of any of the labels you use as resource material.

Object #1

Click HERE for images of the label.

Object #2

Click HERE for images of the label.

Object #3

Click HERE for images of the label.

PART I - Five Step Classification Process

This basic identification is all most museums tell you about the objects they exhibit. They provide this information in small "identification labels." This exercise should help you expand your awareness of what you can see when you look.

Choose ONE object of the three pictured above and provide the following information about it:
a)History: Where and when it was made, by whom, for whom and why; any successive changes in ownership, condition, function.

b)Material: What material/s is the object made of?

c)Construction: What are the techniques of manufacture employed? Is there any evidence about workmanship?

d) Design: What is the structure, form, style, ornament, iconograpy involved in this object?

e) Function: What is the intended role(s)of this object in the culture it was made for?

PART II. Description

Now look carefully at the object. Consider its form and decoration. It will help to try to draw it yourself in order to be able to describe it. Pretend that you are telling someone about the object in a letter or over the telephone. That person cannot see the object and is not familiar with it.

Describe it in your own words. Tell about its shape and the pattern on the surface. How well can you convey the appearance of an object through words?

Test yourself and your description. Without looking at Object #1, read what you have written and try to draw the form and ornament precisely as you have described them. Have you said enough about the shape? Have you said how the parts relate to each other or where the ornament is positioned?

Please note that while here you are asked to describe a single object so completely that you could then draw it, most descriptions are not so complete. They usually say only enough to satisfy the immediate purpose. Many descriptions use technical terminology that serves as a shorthand system for those well acquainted with the vocabulary of the decorative arts.

Part III. Comparing Similar Objects

Use Fleming's five step classification process to write a BRIEF identification label for objects #2 and #3.

Which two objects are most like each other? What features establish their similarity?

Assess the way you look and learn most effectively. Some people quickly absorb and master new information by reading or looking. Others need to draw or to manipulate what they have seen or read into their own oral or written forms. In one or two sentences, briefly analyse which process, drawing or description, helped you most to see the objects.

Part IV. Fleming's Four Operations

Now turn to Fleming's four operations to answer some of the important questions we can ask about an object. Choose any ONE of the three objects for this part of the exercise.

A. Identification
Based on your identification label, how would you classify this object? Is it authentic? What is it?

B. Evaluation
How good an example is it of its kind? How would you rate its aesthetic quality and workmanship?

C. Cultural Analysis
And now you are ready to explore the cultural context of the object. Because all three objects are contemporary, you can analyze them in terms of your own experience. You do not have to do historical research to become knowledgeable about a past culture to explain the way people used them or how they thought about the objects. Even so, some questions may be helpful in your thinking about cultural context.

Consider your object. Who might use it? What might they do with it? In what situations? What kind of human relationships does the object suggest? What is the significance of the relationships? And therefore, what does the object tell us about the people and their culture?

Consider the object as a vehicle of communication - what does it say in terms of status, values, feelings, meanings? Consider it as a vehicle of delight - what does it say in terms of form and decoration?

In museums this kind of analysis is often included in so-called "content labels" rather than in the "identification labels" you constructed in Part I.

D. Interpretation

An artifact is not subject to just one correct interpretation. This will vary by audience and by the person interpreting it. What is your opinion of the object? "I like it because the balloons remind me of my brother" or "I don't like the color orange" or "I don't like eating off of paper plates because ...."

Each section of this exercise has introduced an important skill or concept that we will explore further throughout the semester. Later, you will be asked to choose an artifact from the Greenbelt Museum collection and you will write both a content label and an identification label for it.