Historical museum offers virtual exhibit tours
Clarke Historical Museum is offering virtual tours of exhibits and more
With its doors temporarily closed in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, the Clarke Historical Museum in Eureka is offering a series of online tours of its historic building and the exhibits inside.
To date, the tours — available on the museum’s Facebook page — have focused on the exhibit “Immigration, Expulsion, Homecoming: The Legacy of the Chinese Expulsion in Humboldt County,” as well as the museum’s historic lighting project. New tours are being posted every few days.
“We decided to do these tours relatively early into the closures for COVID to give viewers a closer look at some of the items in the collections, and let visitors tour the exhibit with a curator,” said Curator/Interim Director Katie Buesch in an email interview.
“We’ve done curator tours in the past that were incredibly popular, and we had been planning on doing one for this exhibit, but were unable to due to the closures.
“Doing the video tours,” she said, “gives us increased flexibility in being able to point out specific items that in a large tour group you might not be able to see, along with getting closer to the items. While we had been thinking about doing the tours for a bit, I was really inspired to get the video project into high gear after watching videos produced by a number of other museums across the country. Some were major productions, while others were simply a guy with a phone walking around the empty museum and telling stories about the museum.
“My favorite one,” she said, “was done at the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office in Washington, D.C. The tour guide was informative, funny and a real character in his tour. In most of the videos I watched, including that one, the tour guides acknowledged that they were doing the best they could and while the video quality is not Oscar-worthy, they could still do a lot with what they had and fulfill their museum’s mission of sharing their story with the public. As a curator in a small museum, that was inspiring to hear.”
Some of the virtual tours created at the Clarke will present more of a big-picture view — what the exhibits are about, some of the items on display and how they tie into a larger story, Buesch noted.
“Some tours will take a shorter, closer look at a specific item on display, talking about smaller details that you may not see at a cursory glance of the item,” she said. “Because it is a video and we’re closed, we’re able to open some of the cases and get closer to some items to see details.”
While tours are posted mainly to Facebook at the moment, Buesch says staff is looking into posting them on the museum’s website, www. clarkemuseum.org, as well.
“Instagram is featuring our #artifactoftheday and #basketoftheday posts that highlight interesting items and incredible basketry work in the museum collection. These are oftentimes cross-posted to Facebook, and our #basketoftheday posts are incredibly popular,” Buesch said. “Our Nealis Hall curator, Brittany, does a great job of highlighting the unique features of the baskets and the stories of the women who made them.”
More ideas are in the works for upcoming virtual tours, Buesch said, including some inside Nealis Hall, the Native American wing of the Clarke Museum.
“I have a few hopes for these videos and all of our digital content that comes out of the closures,” she said. “My main priority is that the videos help us fulfill our mission of preserving and telling the stories of Humboldt County. Digital media is a real help in that quest as we can expand our outreach beyond our building in times when people are sheltering in place. I also hope that the videos help us expand our audience and generate interest in visiting us when we reopen. I want people to know that we are here and we will continue to be here! Of course, we can’t do it alone, so I also hope that our digital presence encourages viewers to donate or become members.”
Buesch says the museum plans to keep doing tours and videos throughout the COVID-19 shutdowns.
“We’re going to have to get crafty if the closures last a really long time, but getting crafty and adapting to the closures has not been a problem with our awesome staff,” she said. “Video is a versatile medium to share information, so I’m looking forward to branching out from tours maybe into collections care and other topics. If you have an idea for a video or a question, send it to us at admin@clarkemuseum.org or through our Facebook (@clarkehistoricalmuseum), Instagram (@clarkemuseum) or our brand new Twitter page (@clarkemuseum).”