Bowdoin College Museum of Art
On an icy cold Monday afternoon, while the Museum of Art was closed to the public, over fifty students from four courses from the Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) program visited The Object Show: Discoveries in Bowdoin Collections. While taught separately, these courses, all part of the Science Before Science cluster, treat themes in the history […]
Melanesian (New Ireland) Malagan Masks, 19th century polychrome, wood, natural fiber Gift of Harold M. Sewall 1898.67-69 The Malagan ceremony takes place among the tribes of New Ireland, an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The ritual is meant to complete the cycle of mourning for those who have died, sending off their […]
Micronesian (Republic of Kiribati) Shark Tooth Sword, 19th century shark teeth, wood, coconut fiber, leaf, and human hair 14.2013 Micronesian people have inhabited the Gilbert Islands, a chain of sixteen atolls in the Pacific Ocean, for more than two thousand years. The Gilbertese traditionally made a variety of weapons for use in tribal warfare and violent […]
Click on images for a slide show tour of The Object Show: Discoveries in Bowdoin Collections
By Kiyomi Mino ‘16, Student Assistant to the Curator In today’s society, sleek and discrete high tech devices controlled by complex computer coding and identity verification systems ensure that only those with special approval have access to privileged places. While today’s “locks” purposely have an inconspicuous design so as not to attract the attention of […]
“Telling history through things is what museums are for.” Neil McGregor, British Museum
Although this object might at first glance appear to be a spiny lobster, it’s actually an intricate ivory model, created in Japan towards the end of the 19th century. With the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Japanese feudal system was finally eliminated, and Japan emerged as a modern, industrialized country. The Japanese government encouraged artists to […]
By Cordelia Miller ‘15, Summer Education Assistant As a summer education assistant at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, I’ve been involved with research for the exhibition The Object Show: Discoveries in Bowdoin Collections for the past few months. Watching the show come together from the inside has been very exciting for me. Many of these […]
The Laws of Bowdoin College were published for two purposes: to publicize the rules and regulations for administering the College, and to convey to students how they were expected to conduct themselves within the College community. As such, the Laws served both as a summary of the College by-laws and as a student handbook. Although […]
by Andrea Rosen, BCMA Curatorial Assistant As curators from the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, the Peary-Macmillan Arctic Museum, and Special Collections came together to plan the exhibition The Object Show: Discoveries in Bowdoin Collections, two things needed to happen simultaneously: 1) we had to decide what the show was about; 2) we had to […]
