Create a series of five to six visitor events throughout the...
Project overview: Create videos of park rangers telling the stories behind artifacts from the Yosemite Museum.
How your support helps: With more than 5.5 million objects and archives, the Yosemite Museum collection is one of the largest and most diverse in the National Park Service. It includes paintings by Chiura Obata and survey stakes used by John Muir to study the Lyell Glacier. It contains a charcoal sketch of the chairlift from the Ahwahnee to Glacier Point that was proposed in the 1920s to attract the Olympics to the park. It includes ethnographic material, fine art, historical artifacts, architectural elements, photographs, publications, memorabilia, zoological specimens, historical maps, film, maps, and rare books.
The Yosemite Museum can only display a tiny fraction of this treasure trove, and only a small percentage of visitors ever make it to the museum. With your support, we have an opportunity to bring this collection to a far greater audience through social media.
This year: In 2022, Conservancy funding will enable park staff and interns to produce a series of five 90-second videos highlighting five key artifacts. These videos will be shared on the park website and social media sites, expanding the park’s reach far beyond the physical museum and bringing an appreciation of Yosemite’s unique history to new audiences.
Artifacts will be chosen to support current priority park projects and topics. For example, interpretive ranger April Kuneida could present an Obata painting to amplify her current work on Obata’s history. Education ranger Anastasia Roy would choose an artifact that supports her teaching objectives with the new Virtual Learning Lab broadcasts.
These videos will help build public awareness and appreciation of Yosemite’s outstanding collection, as the museum approaches its 100th anniversary in 2025. This pilot effort will establish a workflow that paves the way for more videos to be added to the series beyond 2022, as the anniversary approaches.
Project partner: Yosemite National Park