I’m going to be blunt. I dislike Mackinac Island. It’s northern Michigan’s pseudo Disneyland, selling overpriced experience and tchotckies, taken home on throw away digital cameras and later placed on desks in cubicles.
This is all fine if that’s what you want out of life, out of vacation, out of your precious free time. We live in a service economy, which often translates to experience-based tourism, and Mackinac is the epitome of that. And that’s just not my cup of tea.
The conference was at the Grand Hotel, where you get “the slower, more leisurely pace of the past, but with all the amenities of the present.” From what I could see, this translated to people with dark skin and often Jamaican accents dressed in ties and tails catering to the wants of people with (a generalization, I know but really) light skin. Part of the “pace of the past” I guess. I asked a student at NMU who previously worked on Mackinac Island about the summer workers. Turns out many temporary workers on the island are often of Jamaican descent, stay on the island for the summer, then head to the Southern U.S. to work as temporary farmers and sometimes go back to Jamaica for the winter months. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Well it’s reality so it’s sort of trite to delve into that argument, but it did make me feel over privileged and uncomfortable.
Spending three days and two nights there was frustrating, particularly because it was for a conference of museum professionals. An island is a nice place for a retreat, but a museum conference? Not so much. I’d much rather be in an urban environment where I might actually go to some museums that are not historical reenactment parks. Hearing stories of previous conferences being held in Flint made me feel wistful that I had been around for that.
I will try to refrain from complaining for the entirety of this post, because the conference overall had some good points and decent sessions. It was also very nice to begin meeting my peers in the region, especially those with interests similar to mine – particularly visual art of the contemporary kind. I shared a bumpy and smelly horse buggy ride to the “director’s lunch” at The Woods restaurant, but it was worth if for the people I got to chat with.
Of the sessions I attended, the one on handling Native American artifacts with care and respect was perhaps the most interesting. There are a few hundred pieces of Native American artifacts in the DeVos Museum collection and I have no background in that area. There are some pretty specific guidelines for handling these objects, particularly for women. It’s also trite to argue about that point since I’m not educated enough to comment on it specifically. My job is to take care of the collection and do it respectfully. Luckily Northern has the resources at the Center for Native American Studies, which I fully intend on tapping into soon.
A session on creative budgeting was less than inspiring as was the session on new media. I think the trick to a successful conference experience is to attend sessions that are about things you have very little or no background in. The expectations aren’t as apparent then. However, during the less inspiring sessions I did manage to outline my most detailed list of goals for the museum in the next six years. And start planning my next trip out of Marquette – most likely New York, Miami or L.A./Portland, where I will bask in the glow of many museums and do happy dances in the shadows of contemporary art.
