Skip to main content

Last Chance to Hear Crystal Bridges’ Award-Winning Music Tour!

Recently, Crystal Bridges received the Gold MUSE award for Audio Tours and Podcasts from the American Alliance of Museums’ Media & Technology committee for the audio/music tour of the temporary exhibition This Land: Picturing a Changing America in the 1930s and 1940s.  This is the highest award that a museum can receive for an audio tour.  MUSE awards honor outstanding achievement for digital media that enhances the experience and engages audiences. They celebrate scholarship, community, innovation, creativity, education, and inclusiveness.  Judges consider each project’s accessibility in terms of ADA, the overall production quality, the inventiveness, and the impact that the project makes to the museum field.

The goal of Crystal Bridges’ winning audio tour was to illuminate guests’ exploration of the exhibition in a unique way. Thus we partnered with the Fayetteville Roots Festival to curate a collection of music to accompany This Land. Each of the stops on this musical tour featured a song by 2013 Fayetteville Roots Festival performers that captured the essence of a particular image in the exhibition. Crystal Bridges Associate Curator Manuela Well-Off-Man and Bryan Hembree, Director of the Fayetteville Roots Festival, provided background and commentary for each tour stop.

The museum enjoys wonderful relationships with local organizations that often allow for unique partnership opportunities, and music is an important aspect of the culture in our local community.  Thus when Senior Museum Educator Sara Segerlin had the idea to partnering with the Fayetteville Roots Festival for this music audio tour it seemed like the perfect fit.

The Crystal Bridges team believed that regionalist music would strongly interrelate with the artwork, either through the lyrics, the mood and rhythm of the song connecting with the painting’s mood and visual rhythms, or through instrumentation. Since the exhibition This Land: Picturing a Changing America in the1930s and 1940s focuses on artists’ responses to major natural events and the changing rural and urban landscapes prior to World War II, it was easy to find contemporary folk music that reflects the same sentiments amongst the musicians performing at the 2013 Fayetteville Roots Festival.

Personally, of the audio tours I’ve had the privilege of producing, this was one of my favorites. So it was wonderful to receive praise such as this from the MUSE judges:  “We loved the multi-sensory approach of this tour, and appreciated the different entry point to the exhibition theme for different types of visitors. This is a neat idea—Crystal Bridges went the extra mile to connect with their local community through this tour.”

I believe music-based audio tours have the potential to be a growing practice in the museum field.  Music can allow a viewer to engage an exhibit in a new way as well as helping him or her better understand a time, place, event, or emotion.  How can you not love great art and great music?

I’m also happy to announce that in honor of our award, we will be re-publishing the tour in our CB Museum app from now through July 10, 2014.  The app is available on Apple and Android platforms.  If you select “Museum Tours” and scroll through the list, you will find The Music Experience of This Land available for download. Since the exhibition is no longer on view in our galleries, wall labels are included and images of the artwork display while the audio plays.

Enjoy!

Also published on the Crystal Bridges Museum Blog.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

A New Way to See the Beauty of Morning in Northwest Arkansas

Last Friday my day started out unlike any other: I was up at 5:00 am. For those who know me well, they understand that this is nothing short of a miracle. I'm more a night person than a morning person, but that day I had somewhere special to be. I had been invited to a sneak peak of a new James Turrell skyspace at Crystal Bridges. I wasn't sure what to expect. I hadn't really understood any of the literature I read about what a skyspace is. When I asked around, no one could adequately explain to me what it was. They would try a few words and then just get lost in their thoughts. At this point the responses all became the same: “Just go, it will be like no other experience you've ever had.” I'll try to explain the experience, but like so many before me, I'm sure my words will clumsily convey the event. First let me describe the structure. From the walking trail you can see the native Winslow/Fayetteville stones that cover the outside. The circular structure s...
Read more

JIMI

This week I'm attending an 8 day museum management institute on Jekyll Island. Today was just the first day and although it was mainly welcome speeches and getting to know each other there was one session that was presented and I think it was a very interesting one. The session was on management and leadership. I think the thing the presenter hit on the most for me was the difference in what it means to be a manager and what it means to be a leader. It was very interesting to quickly learn the differences in the two types of work that both positions fill. He'll be continuing the discussion in a second session tomorrow, so I'll speak more on it later. Jekyll Island is beautiful and we were able to tour the historic district today. I highly encourage anyone to come out here if you ever get the chance. Georgia has laws that the island must remain 65% un-developed making it such a beautiful natural setting. Also every dollar spent on the island stays on the island and ...
Read more

Passing on a Keepsake

In previous posts I’ve talked about how I actually use some of my heirlooms or in other cases I wasn’t sure what to do with my heirloom .   Today I want to talk about another way to use an heirloom or a keepsake. I recently found a favorite childhood necklace of mine. You can tell it’s been well loved from the stains and fraying of the ribbon.  Again this is not something that has monetary value, it just has sentimental value to me. I loved ballet as I child. I read every ballet book in my elementary school library. I watched ballet as often as it was on the local PBS station, mostly The Nutcracker at Christmas. I dreamed of being a prima ballerina, but sadly lessons were never available in my small community. But somehow this necklace always made me feel special. I don’t remember where the necklace came from - the store, who gave it to me, or if it was given to me on a special occasion. But I remember the feeling it gave me every time I wore it - like my dreams were sti...
Read more