Kids Today: Representation of Teenagers in Museum Collections

It was the party that made the front page. A 16 year old in suburban Melbourne held a house party while his parents were away. 500 teenagers turned up and so did the police.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=67024

The Sydney Morning Herald cited "Social networking websites, email and SMS messages" as the technology to blame in a story published on January 14, 2008 and the next day called out to readers to SMS or email them with their opinions about teen parties.

The Age reported that the young man's party garnered international coverage no doubt in part because the 16 year old chose to speak to the press shirtless, wearing oversized yellow rimmed sunglasses, a hat and wrapped in a childrens pink bed cover.

The kid declared the party, "the best party ever" and the sensational party turned into a perfect sensational news story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc0CB6URrV0

No doubt the opinion columnists are ready to rage on about the problem with kids today. It's a perennial favorite.

Which got me thinking: how were teenagers and the problem with kids today represented in the past?

This blog is a workspace for a researcher working on the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Project Reconceptualising Heritage Collections: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Museum Collections and Documentation, a partnership with the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney and the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

This project is studying online museum collection environments and the new opportunities digital media provides for cross-disciplinary engagement and the co-production of collections information both within the museum, across curatorial areas and with stakeholder communities.

The aim of the study is to research and develop new approaches in which digital technologies can be used to broaden the interpretive capacity of museum collections data.

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