Week 7

    Hello readers! This week I have almost finished accessioning the Vacanti collection. I also spent some time familiarizing myself around the museum and preparing for an event later next month with two world war two veterans.

Firstly, a significant part of my week was dedicated to preparing for an upcoming event featuring two distinguished World War II veterans. The event, scheduled for next month, will be an evening dedicated to their firsthand accounts of their service. John Zuch, who served as a Machinist Mate Petty Officer, and Mel Jenner, a pilot who played a crucial role as a Scanner during the D-Day Invasions, will share their experiences and insights from this pivotal period in history. To promote this special event and encourage student participation, I designed and created a flyer. This flyer will be distributed to students across the UCF campus, aiming to draw a large and engaged audience to hear these veterans’ important stories. This event is a unique opportunity for the community to connect with history and honor those who served.

After making progress on the Vacanti collection accessioning, I shifted my focus to the museum's existing exhibits on the Vietnam War. My goal was to understand how the museum currently portrays the Korean and Vietnam Wars and assess how the Vacanti collection might complement or enhance these displays. I spent time examining the current exhibits, noting the artifacts included and the overall presentation. While I observed that the museum successfully displays a range of artifacts relevant to the time periods, I also noticed that many displays needed the descriptions accompanying the artifacts. In many cases, the descriptions lacked detail and context, making it difficult for visitors to fully understand the significance or purpose of the objects. In many more cases the artifacts were not displayed with a description at all. This observation will be important to consider when integrating the Vacanti collection, ensuring that its items are presented with clear and informative descriptions.

In conclusion I made a lot of behind the scenes progress this week. I don’t have any fun pictures to show this week but I was mostly just doing some of the important grunt work to make the collection come to life. I am really looking forward to the next coming weeks as I will finally be able to start thinking of how to display the collection in a way that will be enjoyable to all museum goers. 


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