Milwaukee Public Museum

Please answer the following to your best ability. There will be a short discussion on your visit to MPM Tuesday in Art 403.


Enjoy your trip!


1) How is the Museum Public Museum entrance indicated? Which entrance did you use — how do you know this?

2) Hebior Mamoth, where was it found and how did it get its name? Where did you find this information?

3) Locker. Put your unnecessary belongings into locker 89 if available. What is the fee? Did your locker work?

4) When you bought your ticket you received an indicator(s) of your purchase. What is it?

Questions Pertain to area in and surrounding "Butterfly Garden"
5) What are the instructions to enter the Butterfly Garden? How was this indicated? Was there an explanation given?

6) According to this section of the museum, what is the largest and most successful group of animals on Earth?

7) Name some differences between bugs and beetles.

8) In "The Streets of Old Milwaukee" what is the "Beer that made Milwaukee famous" and how did you find this? Is it substantiated?

Questions Pertain to "Entrance to the Rain Forest" 
9) What below is not a product listed in "The Abundant Forest." a. rubber  b. lima beans  c. poison frogs  d. pears  e. vanilla  f. allspice

10) According to "Life Changes Through Growth and Development" what animal group does the cicada come from? Where do you look?

11) What kind of birds make the hanging nests?

12) In the treetops what indicates a display? Can you easily spot the creatures?

13) What is the "Model for the Rain Forest Exhibit?" Where did you find out?

Questions pertain to "A Tribute to Survival"
14) In the opening display, Buffalo, what are three ways indicated to kill a Buffalo? How did you determine this?

15) Find the street signs affixed overhead. What do they represent? Is their purpose explained?

16) In "Making a living was EASY" Why is it easy? What tribes are represented?

Questions pertain to "Wisconsin Woodlands"
17) In the birds section what does a light represent? How does this system work? Why do you think it is used? Was it easily understood? What does "this area" mean?

Question pertains to "Latin America"
18) In "Warp Weft" cloth making is explained in a diagram and sample weaving. What is the warp yarn? The weft? What is the bobbin?

Question pertains to "Africa"

19) In "Savanna Bush" which animals are NOT represented in the physical display (stuffed or sculpted)? Which one does not appear on the diagram? a. Lilac-Breasted Roller  b. Sisal  c. Baobab Tree  d. Ostrich  e. Steenbok  f. White-Headed Vulture

20) In "Peoples of the Savannah" what are the names given to the Masai tools? What does the number indicate?

21) In "People of Central Africa" How is the region indicated? 

22) In "Western Africa, MALI," What tribes are indicated? How is the map represented? Why is it not similar to "People of Central Africa?

Andrew+M+R07

The placebo effect is strong within the UWM advising department; in fact, the department itself is one big placebo. In keeping track of my progress I have a degree worksheet that my adviser and I go over as a checklist for graduation. This review consists of a comparison of my transcript to the worksheet, a process I do myself with the two resources I already have access to.

This might lead you to say that the adviser is there to also answer questions about classes, and they do. Every adviser I’ve had has done an excellent job at reading verbatim, the course descriptions located on the UWM website, the same descriptions that are visible when browsing the class catalog and is the source of confusion.

You might also say that an adviser can help with transfer students in explaining how their credits will transfer, and you’d be hallowly correct again. My adviser has been a tremendous help in referring me to a professor who teaches an equivalent class at UWM.

The advising department seems to exist as a placebo in being a place of actual answers and exists more as a place of where to go next to find answers.

Andrew+M+R06

Barr’s art chart and its 51 arrows is an interesting concept, but I feel the arrows are closer to noise than visual elegance. I’m glad to see a version sans arrows and if I had to choose I’d choose none. This would, of course, take away the information layer that shows the relation between two artistic movements, but would increase the readability of what’s left. If the line weight of the arrows were reduced dramatically they wouldn’t take over the composition so forcefully; even reducing their value would enhance the readability of the text, however I would imagine that printing limitations of the time prevented this from being on economical option.

I’m not sure the use of arrowhead does anything to enhance how the diagram is read. Because it follows time, it the order of influence is implied to always flow forward in time. By using time as a unit of measure or location marker, the designer implies direction and flow on how the data should be read.

Instead of arrows, Barr could have incorporated special organization and arranged each artistic movement in such a way that an influenced movement appears directly below it’s influence. This would play of the use of time as the viewer would still understand the flow in which the diagram should be read and would communicate relationship by proximity, reducing the clutter of the arrows.

I’ve been creating a family tree over the last three or four years and have more than a hundred people on it so far which has lead me to continuously rethink layout and association of each person. That data represented is important when deciding on how it will be represented. With a family tree it’s intuitive to display each person chronologically and because the concept of a family structure is universal, displaying each person directly next to immediate family members also associates them without the use of arrows or other symbolic connectors.

It’s important to take into consideration the inherent, universal or built-in assumptions that come along with the data being represented, such as the idea of time being unidirectional. In doing so the designer gets “free” organizational components that each viewer brings to the design.