Clik here to view.
Dr. Praveena Gullapalli, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Rhode Island College
Praveena Gullapalli, Archaeologist and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rhode Island College, will be at the Rockefeller Library Digital Scholarship Lab on Tuesday, April 15 from 3 – 4 p.m. to deliver a lecture titled “Exhibits, Display Strategies, and Visitor Engagements.” This event is free and open to the public.
Museums have been places where people engage with a variety of objects organized into displays, and through them, engage with aspects of the past and the present, with the familiar and the foreign. Because visitors encounter these exhibits not in isolation but in conjunction with already formed views of the world, in the process, they remake the nature of those same exhibits. These re-makings and their implications lead to a more nuanced understanding of what happens in museums and consequently about the nature of exhibits.
In her talk, Gullapalli will discuss how her experience with museum exhibits can inform the ways in which exhibitors present artifacts in other, smaller exhibit settings, such as libraries and academic departments, to enhance visitor engagement. She asserts that it might be in these smaller spaces that exhibits can be more agile, engaging with a variety of visitor experiences and expectations.
Praveena Gullapalli is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rhode Island College. She is an archaeologist who received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where her doctoral research investigated the organization of iron production in northwestern India. She is also interested in and has investigated the ways in which archaeological knowledge is constructed and disseminated, especially within the context of museums and other popular media in colonial and post-colonial contexts. She is currently developing a project (with Shinu Abraham at St. Lawrence University and K.P. Rao at University of Hyderabad) that investigates the pre-modern production landscape of southern Andhra Pradesh, also in India.
Date: April 15, 2014
Time: 3 p.m.
Location: Digital Scholarship Lab (First Floor of the Rockefeller Library)
