Alison Fong, Social Media and Outreach Intern for the University of Arkansas Museum

Author: Alison Fong | Majors: International and Global Studies, History, and Asian Studies

Alison Fong is an International and Global Studies, History, and Asian Studies major with a minor in Japanese and East Asian History and Politics in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. She is currently a social media and outreach intern at the University of Arkansas Museum. After graduation, she plans to pursue a master’s degree in History.

I have more to show than I have to talk about my work with the University of Arkansas Museum. I have so many different ongoing projects that it is hard for me to know where to start. If I had to summarize the entirety of my summer internship in four words, they would be: IDEA and social media.

Well, IDEA isn’t actually a word – it’s an acronym for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility.

These four words have revolved around my life for the past two years. I have always loved museums, but it was only about two years ago that I started thinking about diversity in museums. There is something electrifying about discovering hidden stories and perspectives from minorities, adding more context to a narrative that the majority has cemented as resolute and monolithic.

Having worked with the University of Arkansas Museum on creating their first IDEA Plan, a document declaring the museum’s commitment to IDEA, I jumped at the opportunity to work more closely with the museum. A major project in my internship is working on an IDEA study of the museum’s collections, where I highlight certain objects that may be problematic for the museum to keep. The museum has a long history and a lot of artifacts in its collection that previous curators have acquired but are sensitive in nature or purpose.

Ethnology, in particular, is a tricky collection to work with as most of the artifacts in ethnology contain objects that were given to or bought by tourists or that were commissioned or purchased by a curator. While none of these objects may have been unlawfully taken from their original owners, a problem that might be more likely in the archaeological section of a museum’s collections, there are still objects that have sacred or ritualistic significance and were sold to collectors or tourists as art. The possession of such objects can be problematic, especially if there are certain conditions behind viewing an object. For example, certain African masks cannot be viewed by women because they belong to a male-only secret society. My project sets the foundations for the museum to review its possession of these objects and make educated and informed decisions on their future.

Another major project is a maker’s list that will appear on the University of Arkansas Museum’s website. We hold many objects that were crafted by indigenous artists, but their stories are rarely ever told. The goal of the maker’s list is to empower the producers of these pieces by giving recognition to their work and their lives.

As someone who writes historical research papers habitually, I have never encountered as much difficulty with research as I have with these two projects. Many of the artists are not recorded in our database or are barely known to the world. I feel like a detective, having to piece together pottery vessels to potters by the curve of their signatures or the remains of their initials in the database. The lack of information about these indigenous artists merely reiterates a cold, hard fact about the representation of indigenous peoples in history and in art.

However, I didn’t just work with the collections intimately in this way; I also had to find new ways to engage with the collections through social media. Since late June, I have curated a majority of the posts on the University of Arkansas Museum’s Instagram and Facebook pages. I never thought that I would have fun running a social media account. I barely post on my personal social media.

However, I have learnt so much about the collections from how people engage with our stories. From fun posts about National Ice Cream Day to more serious posts about the Japanese American internment in WWII, I have had learn how to convey as much context and meaning to an object with only so many words and with so many emojis. As someone who has trouble with concise writing, it is a welcoming challenge to learn how to say so much with only so little. Staging artifacts so that they look their absolute best when revealed to the public brings me a bubble of joy, especially when the shot is just right. (I also never knew how difficult it was to photograph crystals.)

For someone whose expertise lies in the humanities, I found myself challenged with creating posts for the sciences. The University of Arkansas Museum houses not just historical, archaeological, and ethnological artifacts but zoological and geological artifacts too. I had to remind myself to equally represent our natural sciences collections on our social media to display the diversity of our collections.

I learned a different way to express diversity and inclusion. I used to only think about IDEA in relation to humans, race, gender, socioeconomic status, age, and more, but I had never thought about it in relation to animals, fossils, and rocks. There are so many endangered species and different varieties of crystals and fossils that are unknown to the public, and I have the opportunity to share their stories as well.

My internship has taught me a lot about working in museums, but more importantly it has taught me a lot about myself. I enjoy working with the collections – truth be told, I feel a little bit like Lara Croft when I work the back (without guns and death traps) – but I think I like engaging with the collections and the public a little bit more. I look forward to being the University of Arkansas Museum’s new social media and outreach intern for my last year of college.