"Rocking Out" on the Fossil Freeway

If you have visited the exhibit Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway in recent weekends, you may have encountered UW students hanging out in the gallery, showing off fossils and talking to museum visitors. These students are part of a group called Rocking Out – they focus on presenting hands-on outreach programs in the earth sciences, and they’ve been kind enough to lend their time to the Burke Museum so that visitors have the opportunity to touch real fossils and ask questions about what they see on exhibit.

So what motivates these students to volunteer their time to talk to museum visitors?

Rocking Out member Shelly Donohue describes why she loves volunteering at the museum:

For me, the best part about volunteering in the Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway exhibit is giving kids the opportunity to hold and touch some of the specimens. I am studying science because of educators in my past that took me exploring on field trips, let me hold a snake at the zoo, and energetically answered any question I could think of. These people fed my curiosity and opened me up to how interesting and exciting science can be. When I volunteer, I love giving kids a specimen they can hold, such as a dinosaur vertebra or a fossil shark tooth, and asking them to guess what it is. Some of them get that same excited sparkle in their eyes that I used to get in mine, and it’s great that now I can be the one inspiring curiosity and showing these kids that learning can be fun… or at least to give them bragging rights over their friends about getting to hold a dinosaur bone.

Earth and Space Sciences graduate student Karl Lang discusses his personal favorite fossil – “Jefferson’s Chesapeake Scallop":

This past Thursday was Free First Thursday at the Burke and that evening I was chatting with visitors to the Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway exhibit when I ran into an old friend: Chesapecten jeffersonius. Oh the memories! You see “jeff” and I go way back, at least five million years to the early Pliocene. We originally met in the Yorktown formation, a soft sandy coquina forming large bluffs along the York River in the Virginia coastal plain. Growing up in Virginia, I spent many lazy summer afternoons crawling over these bluffs pulling out handful after handful of Chesapecten jeffersonius.

These shells are the fossilized remnants of a scallop-like creature that dominated the shallow marine seas off the east coast of North America for about five million years in the late Miocene to early Pliocene. The shell is known as an “index fossil” because it is so plentiful over only a short segment of the stratigraphic record, characteristic of a very specific piece of geologic history. Chesapecten jeffersonius has found its way into American history as well. It was the first fossil described in North America by English colonists, and remains the state fossil of Virginia. The Burke museum has a fantastic collection of fossils actively used in research, including this very special scallop. Be sure to stop by the Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway exhibit to say hello and meet the remarkable Chesapecten jeffersonius.

Visit Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway this Saturday from 10 am – 2 pm to meet the members of Rocking Out and try hands-on activities in the gallery.

Top 3 things about working with museum visitors that they don’t teach you in a classroom

Guest writer: Laura Crisp, Museology graduate student

You might think that as a student in the Museology graduate program, I would have had my fill of museums. But after spending about 15 hours as a Burke 101 student in the Pacific Voices gallery this quarter I have learned a lot about museum visitors and museum education that I would not have learned in a traditional classroom.

Here are my Top 3 from Burke 101 gallery sessions:

1. A teddy bear makes everything better. We had a hard time attracting visitors to come try their hand at making a button blanket, until we found a teddy bear wearing a button blanket! After that, kids were much more likely to approach us and make their own blanket. Somewhere in Seattle, there are some very well-dressed stuffed animals!

2. Everyone has a story to tell. It was awesome to not only teach visitors about Native art of the Pacific Northwest Coast, but to learn from them as well. I had the privilege of talking with a glass artist, many third-graders, and many Husky fans on their way to the stadium.

3. Seeing the real object, instead of just a picture in a book, is an invaluable experience for many visitors. This was especially true with the large Nuu-chah-nulth mask, “You mean, people actually wore those, and danced with them on?!”


Mask from the Burke Ethnology collection. Nuu-chah-nulth style, Euro-American Made by Bill Holm. Material/Technique Carved, Painted, Wood Motif Head. 1973.

Button Blankets and Burke 101

Guest writer: Laura Crisp

Hello again from “Burke 101!” If you haven’t come to visit us in the Pacific Voices gallery yet, we hope you do – students in Burke 101 are currently working on a large button blanket project and we need your help!

Here’s some background information for you:

Button blankets are typically worn in many potlatch ceremonies and depict the crest of a clan. Many of the dances in a potlatch cannot be danced by just any tribal member; dancers often must inherit the right to the dance. Because of this link to their ancestors, the dancer will make a point to show their back to the audience so that they can see the family crest. Buttons used on the button blankets were originally made of shell, which was also a type of currency. For a non-native American, this would be like wearing a jacket with your family’s name on it and covering it with money to show your wealth!

Here’s an example of a button blanket from the Burke collections:

The project that we have set up in the Pacific Voices gallery (see website for schedule) is a collaborative effort to create our own version of a button blanket. We have based the design on a Raven creation story and encourage you to come help us add designs to this blanket – but don’t worry, you won’t have to actually sew any buttons on: we’ve substituted round white stickers to make the activity more accessible to a wide variety of visitors. We hope you’ll stop by on one of the Thursdays or Saturdays listed on our schedule.

Photos: (Right) Courtesy of Laura Crisp.

(Left) Kwakwaka'wakw Button Blanket, date made 1940-1970.

The 411 on Burke 101

Guest writer: Laura Crisp

For those of you who don’t know, the museum’s Burke 101 program is back after a summer hiatus! My name is Laura Crisp and I am a second-year student in the Museology graduate program at the UW. This quarter I am thrilled to be taking “Native Art of the Pacific Northwest” from Professor (and Burke Curator) Dr. Robin Wright, and I am participating in the Burke 101 course teaching visitors about Northwest native art.

Burke 101 provides UW students with a unique opportunity to develop and present informal education programs for visitors in the Burke galleries. If you come see us in the galleries, you will be able to touch authentic Native objects, do hands-on activities, or even just have a conversation about Native art and culture. The students in Burke 101 really enjoy talking with visitors and we love being able to teach and learn from you! If this sounds like something you are interested in, please see our Web site for the schedule and for more information about the Burke 101 program, http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/events/burke.php.

As the quarter progresses, I will be posting on the Burke blog again to report back about our gallery sessions… I hope you come check us out in the galleries! Here’s a fun fact to entice you: Native peoples used to make their diapers out of cedar bark… can you imagine the labor that must have gone into that? Think about that the next time you pass the diaper aisle at the grocery store!

Photo by Storms PhotoGraphic

New Podcast: Burke 101

Posted by: Rebecca Durkin

Take a listen to our latest podcast, "Burke 101: When Students Become Teachers." You can play it on your computer from the Burke Museum Podcasts Web page or subscribe to the podcast by adding the following URL to your podcasting software's subscriptions manager:
http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/podcast/burke.xml.

This new podcast is a short info piece on a great new program at the Burke that trains UW college students to serve as interpreters for museum visitors on the weekends. Hear from the students, professors, and visitors who make this program come to life.