A visit to the Burke Museum

Tl;Dr: I got to visit the Burke with a staff member – awesome.

My friend P. works at the Burke Museum at the UW, and gave me a tour. I’ve never been in, it was great.

The Burke was founded in 1887 (?) by some of the Denny kids, so it’s one of the oldest museums in Washington. A few years ago they moved to a new building, designed to let visitors view the workers in the museum. You can look past the exhibits into the stacks and labs. We saw lab workers dissecting the head of a bear (quite gory)  to put into the collection. I got to take a look at the collection of spears and model boats, and talk to a collection curator. I got to see a bunch of interesting exhibits (Wooly dogs! Seattle Shorelines) and a review of Shell Middens (basically junk piles of shells discarded after eating). The middens are basic, which peot cre their content from the acidic rain of the PNW and preserves their content. All super interesting.

It was also great to talk to P. about a recent trip to the tropics for research. He described a ceremony used to search for a missing child – it’s like a giant community wiji board: the tribe members jointly negotiate a large log-like pointer to decide which direction to search in, then the whole community goes off searching that way. Fun to talk about visiting the tropics.