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Friday, October 16, 2009

We're Looking For A Curator!

Do you have the skills to conduct informed research? Would you like to have a major role working with a talented curatorial staff? If so, we have an opening for you! The Arab American National Museum is seeking a person to fill its vacant Curator of Community History position.

The AANM is the first museum in the world devoted to Arab American history and culture. By bringing the voices and faces of Arab Americans to mainstream audiences, we continue our commitment to dispel misconceptions about Arab Americans and other minorities. The Museum brings to light the shared experiences of immigrants and ethnic groups, paying tribute to the diversity of our nation.

The AANM is still relatively new. We have an energetic and talented staff, and we working with urgency to build this institution into something big! In its first few years the museum has become an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution and an active member within the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. We have big goals for the next few years, and we seek a committed person who would like to help us grow the institution on a national level.

For more information on the position, visit the job listing on our parent organization's website.

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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Blog Action Day: Climate Change


Today in the blogosphere is Blog Action Day on Climate Change. We're not an officially registered Blog Action Day blog, but we'd like to talk about the "green" changes we're trying to implement in the Museum.

While we could do so much more, our main focus at the moment is consuming less. We think this is a great way to ease the entire institution into more eco-friendly practices. This applies to everything from office supplies, to electricity, to water and anything else we can think of. While the entire staff is trying to use less paper over-all by going digital as much as possible, the Curatorial staff is going one step further and reusing paper that has only been printed on one side. One drawer in our printer is dedicated to holding this paper for use on non-confidential things that have to be printed but don't need to be printed on a virgin piece of paper. This small step will save us reams of paper a year! We hope to introduce it to the wider staff as time goes on.

Another area we are truly dedicated to consuming less, is with electricity. As a non-profit institution we need to closely watch all of our unnecessary spending. One thing we can easily do is use less electricity by turning off the lights in our offices when we're not in them. A step further is to turn off the lights in the exhibition spaces when no one is in them! This we'd like to achieve by using motion sensors to detect when a visitor is viewing the exhibits, turning on especially for them and then turn off when they leave. The trick is to not leave anyone in the dark! With some tweaking, we think we can achieve this and cut our energy usage in half!

Our final area of interest at the moment, is exhibit building materials. New sustainable building materials are available, such as Wheatboard in place of formaldehyde-laden MDF, canvas instead of vinyl banners, and zero VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) paint. Some of these are more costly than their counterparts, but if it makes the Museum a healthier place to visit and work, then we are dedicated to delivering that.

We are excited to see the new eco-friendly products available to us, and we hope that in the future they are no longer considered speciality items, but instead, standard practice. Are you making earth-friendly choices at home or at work? Tell us about it! Give us more ideas where we can improve ourselves!

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Friday, April 24, 2009

Recent Collection Acquisitions

The AANM's Collections Committee meeting is coming up May 11th! As usual members and staff are looking forward. Our proposals for next month are only a handful and we can share some more about those in an upcoming blog, but the highlight acquisition from our last meeting, held here at the museum in January, was this Karkey(left); a donation from Mr. Raff Ellis who resides in California and has recently published a book "Kisses From a Distance" . A Karkey is used to distill 'arak' a favorite alcoholic beverage of Lebanon. To learn more about arak and arak making, follow this link:





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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Ahlan Wa Sahlan!

Welcome to the Arab American National Museum Curatorial Department's blog. Here you will find musings on exhibits, collections, design, new media initiatives and other aspects of curatorial work. This blog is meant to be a conversation, so please feel free to leave comments, suggestions, and/or a haiku or two.

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