Friday, April 24, 2009

Friends, Romans, countrymen (or country ladies)

Lend me seven minutes of your time--time that you are probably wasting anyway on things like Scrabulous or internet porn.

Do you like museums? Sure, we all do. But did you know that museum exhibitions are essentially built around the tastes and opinions of jerks like you? It’s true. Museum professionals work hard to ensure that whatever exhibitions they plan are tailored to meet the needs of everyday people and appeal to the broadest range of individuals. We gather this information up front through a process called “formative evaluation”. Formative evaluation is when a young, sassy, visionary museum professional, such as myself, surveys a group of people on a particular exhibition theme or topic, to challenge their own assumptions on what they believe people think or know or just think they know. The information gathered from just such an exercise can determine if the exhibit is doable, salvageable, or if it should be killed dead.

As some of you may already know, I have been designing an exhibit on kimono, entitled Kimono from Heian to Harajuku: The Evolution of Japan’s National Costume. Now, necessity compels me to make tools of you all. Please help this lowly grad student complete her project by taking my pathetic little survey which can be found here: What wonders await you? The last five questions can be answered with words, sentence fragments, or nonsensical musings. More importantly, THERE ARE NO RIGHT ANSWERS, so say whatever strange, perverse things come to your strange, perverse mind.

In summation, do me a kindness and proceed to the following link, and I will promptly remove your name from my kill list.

Hey, what’s that link again?
Here it is, dummy!

Thank you all for your time, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England. Never forget that I love you.