Museum Curator Blog Post

The most important part of curating an object or objects is getting the point across. As a curator, you want the one thing that you want people to know displayed in the biggest and brightest way possible. Our exhibit was comprised of 4 pictures a graph and an article. The pictures showed the evolution of the loom, from the house to the mill. The graph showed London's growth from 1800 to 1914, which grew by more than 8 times the size as it was. The article was about a man who was very much opposed to the mills and why the people are being treated unfairly. We came up with our title "Just Keep Spinning" because we were displaying spinning wheels and we wanted to add a creative and happy touch to it. We hope that our viewers can understand the immense changes that came about during this time period and how the evolution of the spinning wheels contributed to this. 

Group B presented about transportation. From their poster, I was able to infer that many vast changes occurred in the world of transportation. One thing that I was able to learn from this group is that in less than 50 years, the people of the United States were able to create hundreds of railroads linking up much of New York, but were also constructed in places like Ohio and Maryland as well.

Group C created their project on living conditions in England. From just a few pictures on their poster, you could tell that they did not live right. In an article on their poster, a man said that "I have seen tens of thousands of old, young, and middle-aged of both sexes . . .earning abundant food and domestic accommodation without perspiring at a single pore." I liked this quote because that is what much of England was like, and it really contrasts with the hard workers who are being paid next to nothing. 

Group D presented about child labor. This poster made me feel sad, from the pictures of children pulling mine carts to statistics about child work ages. The one picture that really got to me was the one with the one child pushing the cart and another pulling, because they were sending young children to do the work of a grown man so that he can sit around all day and do nothing. 

Group E talked about cotton trade and slavery. They had a map, a drawing, a graph, and more to explain their exhibit, and they did a great job. The on piece on their exhibit that really struck me was the US slavery statistics from 1770 to 1860, shown here. In 1820, the Industrial Revolution happened, which is why the statistics for slaves skyrocketed in this time period.