Niall’s Coffee Mug Exhibit

The collection I created for this assignment consists of several themed coffee mugs I have collected, these relating to Spiderman, Stitch, Luca, sloths, and household items. I chose these items for their variety of depicted themes, ranging from movie characters to inanimate objects, delivered through a standard medium of ceramic coffee mugs.

In addition to the required metadata fields of Title, Description, and Provenance (myself), I decided to use the fields of Medium and Publisher to provide more context for these items. Where the Title and Description fields address the content of each item and how this content is depicted, Medium specifies the material from which the object was made (and by extension implies the manner of its creation), and Publisher indicates the company or organization that produced the item. From this information, I would like the audience to consider not only the visual artwork of the item but also its material and social/economic origin.

The selection of the items for this collection was fairly straightforward, as coffee mugs are all classified by the same basic criteria of structure and intended use. The main challenge I faced in describing these objects was determining the level of description needed for each item. While I did not want to overload the description with unnecessary details, I also wanted to ensure that the information I provided was thorough and specific. Ultimately, I decided to take a middle ground of describing colors and images in general, without taking great lengths to provide additional details. However, this could come at the expense of accessibility, as this approach relies partially on the audience being able to view the item to gain this information.

With regard to the possibilities surrounding digital exhibits in museums, the two considerations that first come to mind are those of access and experience. In comparison to traditional exhibits, digital exhibits have the potential to make collections available to a much wider audience online. They can also offer ways of experiencing these items much closer and more in-depth than might be possible in a physical setting where the preservation of the artifacts is at risk. However, digital settings also require access to technology and the internet, as well as the ability to use technology. They also will not offer the same emotional impact as physically being in the same room as an object. Overall, digital exhibits are a useful addition to museum contexts, not in place of the traditional museum experience but alongside it and in dialogue with it.