Talk:Bowers Museum

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Bowers Museum article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

While the biographies of living persons policy does not apply directly to the subject of this article, it may contain material that relates to living persons, such as friends and family of persons no longer living, or living persons involved in the subject matter. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately. If such material is re-inserted repeatedly, or if there are other concerns related to this policy, please see this noticeboard.

Museums Low‑importance

	museums portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Museums, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of museums on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MuseumsWikipedia:WikiProject MuseumsTemplate:WikiProject MuseumsMuseums articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

California Mid‑importance

	California portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject California, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of California on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CaliforniaWikipedia:WikiProject CaliforniaTemplate:WikiProject CaliforniaCalifornia articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

The following Wikipedia contributor has declared a personal or professional connection to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view.

Susan M Anderson (talk · contribs) This user has contributed to the article. This user has declared a connection. (Connection to museum declared in this Teahouse post.)

Individuals with a conflict of interest, particularly those representing the subject of the article, are strongly advised not to directly edit the article. See Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. You may request corrections or suggest content here on the Talk page for independent editors to review, or contact us if the issue is urgent.

Flagged as Advert

The article appears to have been largely re-written by User:Bowersprintern who, as their username suggests, is probably writing with a bias towards the museum. There are a number of items in the text that are weasely and self-promoting, such as this gem:

It provides children a fun environment where imagination and creativity are not only encouraged, but nurtured.

--Phantomtails (talk) 03:00, 30 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment moved from main page

The following was a comment edited into the main page by User:Silvrboxtr that I have moved here:

Since the WPA was not created before 1939,is it not a contradiction to state that the ceiling mural was created under the WPA before The Bowers was openned in 1935?

--KNHaw ^(talk) 22:06, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The ceiling mural in the Fluor Gallery was painted in '32, and was not a WPA project. If I can remember to, I'll take down some notes on the cieling mural there (as I work at the museum), but would that be usable? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.167.91.210 (talk) 06:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Bowers Museum. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080630101719/http://www.heydaybooks.com:80/news/issues/v5n2toc.html to http://www.heydaybooks.com/news/issues/v5n2toc.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 18:48, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, fellow and more advanced and experienced Wikipedians: Please help me to improve the entry I created on the Bowers Museum that was taken down by TheBanner because it was considered too promotional. What should I remove? It is not too different from the Met NY or Los Angeles County Museum of Art's entries. I am guessing there are some indications in the history but don't really know how to access it. I need to teach myself how to use that section but in the meantime any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much. Susan M Anderson (talk) 23:42, 9 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

December 9 edits and revert

Hi. I reverted what looks like a exceedingly harsh previous revert. User:The_Banner reverted User:Susan M Anderson extensive edits. There may be too much detail, mostly about the "Special Exhibitions", but the extended version, namely its description of the Collections looks much better than the previous stuby version. It may need some trimming, it may need to sound less like "the museum's site", but outright deletion of so much content and a few excellent images, looks way too harsh - Nabla (talk) 23:46, 9 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nabla Thank you for restoring the article so I can improve it. I really appreciate it. Do you think I should reduce the section on Special Exhibitions? Are there too many Further Readings? What do you suggest? I am so happy to get some feedback from you. Susan M Anderson (talk) 23:55, 9 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I just read it through. To me it is just great, you made me wish to get there (which I'll likely never will, it is half a world away...) But I admit that I am not at all an expert on Wikipedia's best content style, many editors out there know more than I do. If you did not yet, take a look at a few articles about similar museums. I wouldn't cut much on the Special Exhibitionsbut but maybe you could keep only the best of the best, and skim through the rest. I think there is too much further reading, yes, probably good for academic work or for the museum's site, but maybe too much for a general encyclopaedia. Try maybe to keep the one that are mostly about the museum as a whole...?. I'll take the liberty to trim and format the wp:external links section. The link to David Roberts need to be disambiguated, it currently points to a long list of people with that name, you need to pick a more specific link. And I bet you'll get more and better input, also feel free to drop me a line, although I am not always here, so it may take days to reply - Nabla (talk) 00:28, 10 December 2016 (UTC) PS pinging: Susan M Anderson - Nabla (talk) 00:31, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I came across this article at the Teahouse and after looking at it perhaps The Banner did remove a bit too much with their edit, but I think The Banner was on the right track and there is still too much promotional sounding text. For example, this paragraph

California Bounty: Image and Identity, 1850-1930" takes viewers on a journey through the historic wing of the museum and California's visual history, shaped by a unique mixture of Mexican and Anglo traditions as well as the state's position on the Pacific Rim. Paintings drawn from the museum's collection epitomize California's land, people, and offerings as a place of produce and plenty. They also reflect the massive advertising campaign by real estate developers, citrus growers, the railroads, and other boosters to bring people out West. Artists were major participants in selling the fruits of Eden. Highlights of the painting collection are a group of forty works by William and Alberta McCloskey and California plein air paintings.

reads more like a promotional brochure for the museum than an encyclopedic article written about the museum.

I also have some concerns about the way it's using images. The Bowers Museum#Selected collection highlights section seems problematic for all kind of reasons, but mostly for WP:NOTGALLERY and WP:PROMOTION, but also possibly per WP:COPYVIO. This over use of images makes the article, in my opinion, again look closer to a promotional brochure for the the museum than and encyclopedic article written about the museum. There are already quite a lot of images being used in the article, so adding this on to the back end seems it appropriate to me. If an image is encyclopedically relevant (i.e., tied into a textual discussion) to the reader's understanding, then showing it makes some sense as long as there are no copyright issues. Many of these other images can simply be added to c:Category:Bowers Museum (if there are no copyright issues) and where they can be seen using the Template:Commons category added at the bottom of the page.

I also am not sure about the copyright status of some of these images. Some of the photos taken are depictions of 3D works of art and care needs to be taken when claiming a free license over such things as explained in c:COM:ART. In many cases, the person who takes such a photo can freely license the photo itself, but the artistic work itself may be still under copyright protection. You cannot simply take a photo you find online attributed to another author/creator and license it as "cc-by-sa-4.0" without providing proof that the copyright holder has agreed to and understands what it means to freely license their work in such a way.

I think some serious trimming needs to be done and it might be a good idea to ask someone from WP:MUSEUM to take a look since those editors probably might eb able to offer some more suggestions on improving the article. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:45, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is not the first time this article had to be cleaned up from advertising by an intern of the museum itself. In fact, in the section just above this one, Susan states (...) What should I remove? It is not too different from the Met NY or Los Angeles County Museum of Art's entries. (...) In my experience, that is plain marketeer-language! The Banner talk 08:23, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]