Ancient Goddesses in New York

While working on Ancient Goddesses in New York as my Capstone Project/Master's Thesis I was also in a class called Oral History. For my class project there, I tackled accessibility in museums, historic places, heritage sites, and in online exhibits, presentations, and education. I came to recognize that we still have much work to do in public history to make all history, art, and heritage accessible to all people. During the time I was in my final semester of school, I was also recovering from surgery and ambulating with a walker and I saw firsthand how much extra work it takes to navigate.

 

But this is nothing compared to what people who identify as disabled go through. There are as many unique forms of being differently abled. It could be you are in a power wheelchair, or dealing with blindness or vision impairment, or experiencing deafness or hearing impairment, or coping with any other number of situations. I interviewed a professional museum consultant, a teacher of accessibility issues in museums and online, a person in a power wheelchair who travels the world, a young man on crutches, and a disabled public historian who has visual impairment since birth. Thus, I have a far greater understanding of what is needed to truly make a brick and mortar, or online exhibit, accessible for all, not just some.

 

I have to own up to the reality that I have not been able to achieve all that in this exhibit. I did my best to bring together ancient goddesses and goddess history in New York. I did invest several thousand dollars into acquiring two web platforms (AG web builder and Storymaps.com), purchasing and taking photos, getting research books and books related to exhibits, as well as car services to and from museums. I was able to make the photos clickable to a super large format for easier viewing. But I don't have the resources needed to truly make this accessible to all.

 

However, I can dream and plan the exhibit I would do if someone hires me to put this together once I graduate.

 

The exhibit would have:

 

- A museum-quality web platform that allows all kinds of web content, that can be presented in several cross-referenced forms

 

- Well-organized website architecture, a professional quality CMS, and excellent navigation from both the top of the site and the side rail where the topics can be easily found and clicked.

 

- Ability to ENLARGE everything - the photos, the text, the headlines, the navigation text, and anything that can be viewed or accessed

 

- A map of New York that pinpoints ALL the places the goddesses live

 

- A video presentation that brings everything on the site into a PowerPoint and  video for easy viewing

 

- Transcripts to go with the video

 

- Audio excerpts to describe each goddess and each  historical site in the exhibit

 

- A PDF with large print captions and images of the entire site (I had the site copies and had one created but it needs so much formatting that it is not ready yet)

 

- Video tours of all the goddesses in the exhibit. (I took many videos and posted them on Instagram but the technology is just not smooth enough because I was walking on a walker and it was hard to capture the video).

 

- A Cross reference page of each goddess, at which museum or historical site, in several ways: By name, by culture, by location in a museum or elsewhere, and maps to where to find them linked to the online exhibition.

 

I created this exhibit on my own. I have built the pages and each part of it using the technology available and I AM SO GRATEFUL for the technology on this site that has allowed me to do this unassisted (Thanks Hector and the AG Web service!). I wanted to make this available to others, to put these goddesses into the public history record, and point people in the right direction to find them and spend sacred time with them.

 

I would love the opportunity to work with a small team, people whose hands are steadier than mine for video, and a budget to do this as a more accessible online exhibit. And I would love to do an accompanying book that gives people another way to meet the goddesses and learn their history. I will work on the book after I graduate.

 

A special thank you to Professor Anastasia Pratt for her guidance on this exhibit and all of my exhibits.

 

Blessings,

Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway