A new student organized exhibit has landed at the Valene L. Smith Museum of Anthropology.
The grand opening of “Into the Blue: Maritime Navigation and the Archaeology of Shipwrecks” was held at the museum Thursday. Artifacts from the Frolic, a ship that sunk in 1850, and Bob Benner’s world-class collection of historical navigation instruments are on display.
The exhibit is the work of a long research project by Thomas Layton and Georgia Fox. The Frolic sank off the coast of Mendocino while transporting tons of cargo from China during the gold rush.
Graduate students specializing in museum studies worked from August through December of 2013 to set up the exhibit.
“The whole experience of putting together an exhibit from the ground up was really fun, like seeing the whole thing come together,” said Heather Martin, a first-year graduate student of museum studies.
Some students are eager to set up exhibits for other museums after getting involved with “Into the Blue.”
“I mostly focused on everyday stuff like writing correspondents,” said Bella Quijano, a first-year graduate student in museum studies. “I had the top of an inkwell and paper weights and nested weights. What was interesting to me was that they were selling 40 sets of weights but the weights were inaccurate.”
Other students worked on the Bob Benner collection.
“I especially like the incorporation of nautical equipment in terms of what you’re supposed to use and ideally navigate with, and hypothetically if you use it incorrectly you would crash,” said Liam Townsend, a first-year graduate student in the museum studies program.
Benner, a two-time war veteran, is a nautical and navigation enthusiast.
“I like the craftsmanship of the brass instruments,” Benner said. “I was going to be a weatherman as a kid and along came World War II and disrupted that track so I still have a lot of weather instruments like barometers and recording instruments, and they’re all brass.”
The exhibit is open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday until July 24. The museum is located in the Meriam Library complex next to the Janet Turner Print Gallery and admission is free.
Laura Hass can be reached at [email protected] or @laurahass1 on Twitter.
