A Baker's Dozen of Great Museum Experiences in 2016

I go to lots of museums every year. If you really want to know how many, you can check out the Google map I keep of my museum visits (museum nerdy I know). Some I go to for work, some for pleasure. Even with those ones visited for fun, I find myself pondering both the why and the how of the work we do. As I reflected about the year, I was always thinking about both the experience and the people I was with--clients, colleagues, friends or family.  This year's top ten roundup, turned into a baker's dozen, is all about the experiences.  Some of these connect to earlier posts, others were equally valued but never quite made it into the blog. I hope you enjoy them even a bit as much as I did. It's been a tough year, but there are always bright spots. I'll be curious if any of you see any common threads in what made my list. If so, please share your thoughts in the comments.

Frans Post:  Animals in Brazil, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

I love the Rijksmuseum for lots of reasons but I loved this exhibit when I saw it in November.  For seven years, beginning in 1636, artist Post was in faraway Brazil, sketching and painting flora and fauna.What made the exhibit great?  First, the drawings were discovered as part of a digitization project; second, it was a collaborative effort between an art museum and a natural history museum (see the llama above)  third, a witty, clean installation; and fourth, the exhibit encouraged deep looking and drawing. It was just fun, made more fun by seeing it with an old friend and museum-lover Irina Leonenko.

Columbus Art Museum, Columbus, Ohio

The Columbus Art Museum has made creativity the centerpiece of their work. Rainey Tisdale and I were lucky enough to get a walkthrough of their galleries with Cindy Foley, Deputy Director for Learning and Experience and we got to see a museum that embraces creativity in full flower. For instance, many museums would balk at putting a big jigsaw puzzle right in front of the work of art, as above. But these two visitors (notice, adults) were engaged in deep closing looking. They would pick up a puzzle piece, come in close to the painting, look and ponder, go back to the puzzle, talk to each other, and repeat. They spent far more time in front of this painting than they ever would have without this encouragement. In a gallery featuring American art, they're working to expand our ideas of the "American story," visitors were invited to share where their American story begins, and their vision for the future. 

Ukraine's Cultural Heritage Sector, Kyiv and L'viv, Ukraine

This fall, I returned to Ukraine with Lithuanian colleague Vaiva Lankeliene  (that's her above, with our thoughtful colleague Vasyl Rozhko, digging into data over coffee in L'viv) to assess the state of Ukraine's cultural heritage. It was incredible to have to opportunity to think deeply about not only the present but the past and the future. I found, not surprisingly, some everyday heroes who can inspire all of us as they work to shape a nation's future.

Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Headquarters Exhibit

It was something entirely new for me to do an exhibit in a police headquarters. Thinking about audiences was challenging. But that's not what made this experience memorable.  It was that I had the chance to think about community in an expanded way. The Constabulary (the oldest police force in North America) is a community unto itself, with long, proud traditions. They wanted to honor those traditions but also wanted the exhibit to reach out to the greater Newfoundland community in the same ways they connect every day with citizens. Huge credit goes to the museum committee, headed by Jim Lynch, who were willing to let talented designer Melanie Lethbridge and I put forth different ideas on both concept and design. This volunteer committee was far more willing to talk and think about risk-taking in exhibits than many museums.

Context Walk of the Uffizi 

Big crowded art museums are always tough. There are too many people, my knowledge of art history never seems quite enough, the labels are either amazingly uninformative or filled to the brim with art historical terms I don't understand. Over the last four years of working with Context Travel, I've had the chance to take some great walks in great cities and museums. Last winter, in Florence with Context staff, I was tired, had a cold, and initially thought, oh, I can skip this. I've been to the Uffizi before. But Alexandra Lawrence, a Context docent (the word the company uses for their guides) and art historian, made the Uffizi make sense to me. She put forth a clear theme for the walk, returned to it throughout, carefully selected individual works to move that forward, and had us look deeply, all the while sharing her own great enthusiasm.  The kind of museum tour we all want and rarely get.  I left feeling both renewed and smarter.

Little Museum, Dublin, Ireland

Without a doubt, the best labels I saw all year. Funny, irreverent, thoughtful, meaningful--and somehow they absolutely reflected the spirit of the city. At the same time, the labels never shied away from the political--from women's rights to the 1916 Uprising.

Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace, Savannah, GA

I'm a former Girl Scout myself but honestly, hadn't thought much about the experience in years until Lisa Junkin Lopez, director at the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace in Savannah asked me to do some evaluation of a new visitor experience, the re-imagined Library. JGLB has a great staff, up for anything, but what made this experience really great were the girls themselves. Girls who were inspired, who wanted to change the world, who believed that they could invent and be anything.  In these challenging times, it was a great reminder that our museums can, and should, inspire all kinds of people, in all kinds of ways.  

Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga, Latvia

I arrived in Riga last January to facilitate a series of workshops. But one of the first things that happened was to get a tour of the newly renovated National Art Museum from Una Sedlience, their deputy director. In the dark late afternoon, we got to wander through this beautiful building--before the art was installed. Up grand staircases, into magnificent rooms, through up-to-date open storage waiting to receive the paintings, and then up on the roof, overlooking the historic city. A magical experience in a gorgeous city.

National History Museum of Latvia, Riga, Latvia

At a workshop on increasing visitor engagement in exhibits, we experimented in the galleries devoted to Soviet-era history. Museum colleagues were asked to develop questions, post them near objects, and then, take some time and answer a question or two. I was blown away by the quality of the questions, and fascinated by the answers. Was the education system better?  Is your memory of Soviet times really the memory of your grandparents? Is collective better than individual? A grand experiment and one I'll long remember.

American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis, MN

The Midwest Museum Association held its conference in Minneapolis this year, and a reception was held at the Swedish Institute. I've never been to a reception that was so much fun. I got to learn about outcome-based evaluation through beer tasting, ate amazing food, and participated in a crazy tour of the Turnblad Mansion. Scott Pollack, Director of Exhibitions, Collections and Programs, led us on a tour, accompanied by live music, where all of us where invited to tell a tale of the room we were in; followed by Curt Pederson, Curator of Exhibitions & Collections sharing a bit of the true story. Best of all was sitting down next to a board member who beautifully articulated a vision for the museum that's inclusive and welcoming to all.

Mystic Seaport, Mystic, CT

Rainey Tisdale and I facilitated a two-day planning session as Mystic Seaport's team was working on the first exhibition in their brand-new building. Using lots of different creative tools, the team dug deep into identifying stories that mattered. What made this great? Working with Rainey, as always (see below) and a team that really seemed to enjoy each other. Also impressive was the museum's leadership team who were full participants in the days. We found many connecting threads and now SeaChange is open and on my visit list for 2017.

  

Crosslines, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Washington, DC

If you were in DC for the AAM conference, you might have gotten to see this exhibit. It was up for what seemed like minutes, but deserved a longer stay in the Smithsonian's castle. I got to see it with colleague Andrea Jones providing us a great opportunity to dig into the work. Big ideas, challenging content, artists really interested in engaging in an incredibly broad swath of the public. This project had it all.  It reinforced my sense that long-term exhibitions may be headed the way of the dinosaur--that nimble, responsive projects are our future.

Museums and Your Whole Self, NEMA Session with Rainey Tisdale

This year's New England Museum Conference was unlike any other conference I've ever been to.  It began the day after the election.  There were tears, hugs, confusion, and more. Rainey and I had a session on the last day. Originally were going to use the election as our focus to explore how museums can connect to our whole selves, not just our learning selves. That seemed wrong--everyone was too drained.  Rainey convinced me that the right topic was kittens, yes kittens!  She was absolutely right, and those of you in the audience were great participants as together we built out our giant paper dolls with crazy ideas to connect with our playful self, our spiritual self and more. I left feeling buoyed, grateful and determined.  

I already know that 2017 will bring more great experiences, even greater challenges for all of us and more dots on my map. I'm looking forward to all the challenges and my best wishes to all of you for the same in your professional life. Be brave, take risks, have fun--put your whole self to use. For inspiration, here's advice from a young Girl Scout.

Need a Mentor? Round 5 Begins!

In my last post I wrote about becoming a mentor. In this post it's all about those of you who want to become a mentee. Are you looking for an outside voice to help you think deeply about both your career and tough issues in the field? A push and/or a sympathetic ear? If you are, consider applying for my own little venture.

What's it like? The word cloud at the top of the post includes words that previous mentees used to describe the process after their year. Here's the deal for the coming year. Mark your calendar: the deadline for applications is January 4.  I welcome and encourage applications from anywhere in the world, although I'm sadly only an English speaker.

The Shape of the Mentorship

We'll schedule one-hour Skype or Google Hangout conversations at mutually convenient times once a month. In addition to the monthly conversations, I'll happily provide feedback, introductions as I can, and loads and loads of opinions. If I can, I'd love to meet you in person if we can intersect. From you, I'll expect two or three blog posts on deadlines we mutually set and of course, active participation and questioning along the way. It's your mentorship and it's up to you to take responsibility in shaping it.

How to Apply

If you're interested, by January 4, send me an email that includes your resume plus your responses to the following questions. No word count specified. Say what you have to say, short or long.

• What change would you like to make in the museum field?
• When did you fail and what did you learn?
• What's the most interesting exhibit or program you saw in the last year?
• What key questions would you like to discuss with me during the year?
• What non-work related book are you reading?

How Do I Decide?

Because this is my own individual project, I get to make my own decisions, sometimes with the counsel of a few trusted colleagues.  Previous year's mentees have been in graduate school, emerging professionals or mid-career types. I'm probably not very interested in you if your key questions are about becoming a consultant. This year, I'm particularly interested in those of you entering the field from alternative ways or whose career has taken a surprising path. Outside the US applicants, you're particularly encouraged to apply as well.

I want to be challenged and intrigued, I don't care about your Meyers-Briggs type or your grades in graduate school. I appreciate people who don't take themselves too seriously. I want to get off that Skype call every month ready to think more about your work and my work and the ways we can make change. Museums have a larger role to play in this complex world--but only if we dig in and get at it.

Questions, ask away!

Westworld, Museum Collecting, and the 2016 Election

In this guest post, 2016 Uncataloged Museum mentee Amanda Guzman contemplates the election and her current binge-watching fav Westworld for a look at the future of museum objects and the interpretation thereof.

In HBO’s Westworld, robotic, humanoid hosts – which (un)knowingly serve as too often tragic props in various narratives for the entertainment of guests in a futuristic park –  are periodically questioned on whether or not they have retained memories of their character’s loops in past storylines. The statement by one host, Dolores (pictured above) - “Doesn’t look like anything to me” - is a fascinating assertion then to make in this context. In the show, as in life, knowledge is power; the writers (“programmers”), administrators, and host techs (“butchers”) that manage the fictional Westworld park maintain order and their respective authority positions by the careful curation of knowledge. 

Why start a blog post about contemporary museum collecting practices and the 2016 election with this Westworld allusion?

Well, I began by musing on my current TV binge favorite because it relates to a question I have about how future museum visitors would and should approach, interpret, and mobilize past election material in developing their understandings of American history and their role within that narrative. To put it another way, I wondered how future audiences would come to perceive the election material of yesterday and today. Would they too say, “Doesn’t look like anything to me.”? 

As a bit of background, during the presidential election season, I noticed different museums highlighting and asserting the value of the continued collection of election material (particularly that of more traditional campaign memorabilia including buttons and signs) in the digital age.

To put it simply, election material not only publicly declares one’s partisan inclinations and preferred candidate but also (and perhaps more importantly) suggests a heightened level of pride in expressing those convictions.

To put it mildly, the 2016 presidential election – regardless of one’s political orientation – has been inarguably characterized by extreme levels of division and emotion. This has been widely commented on.

So, how might museums move forward with exhibition content in 2017? One answer is to acknowledge emotion (which can fall in the category of traumatic and dangerously crippling) and to mobilize it into larger social engagement with the important issues facing the country today – thereby transforming our publics from spectators to agential stakeholders.

Especially, in light of a noted increase in hate crimes and discriminatory rhetoric (some of which have targeted museums such as the San Diego Museum and Manhattan’s Tenement Museum), museums have a clear responsibility (and opportunity) to employ the facts of the past (and present) in projecting visions of the future – which include thoughtful, more inclusive conversations about ever-changing demographics.

The irony of this post was that I didn’t anticipate the emotion that I would have while writing, but here it is. To my chagrin, 2016 did very much look like something to me.

“Hooray for Politics!” Exhibit, National Museum of American History, Photo taken Fall 2016

Why Aren't You a Mentor?

Who me?  Yes, you, that experienced professional, emerging professional, or even grad student. You!

As regular blog readers now, every year I put out a call for mentees, and each year work with one or two of you. That call will be coming next week, but I wanted to push more of you to consider becoming a mentor yourself.  I've heard from many people that they would like mentors, but don't know how to find them and that the need for mentors outstrips the supply.

I emailed all my mentees (hi, you guys!) and asked some questions about my own program. I was struck by how many of them said some version of the same thing: "What struck a chord with me is this idea of former mentees paying it forward and magnifying our efforts."  Said another,

I would love to be a mentor someday but when I was doing it with you I would not have had the time to do it in exchange. But, for example, you could write up a little guide on your blog about mentoring museum professionals that would encourage and inspire others do to it.

So here goes: my five tips for being a good mentor, interspersed with some quotes from my mentees.

1.  Be honest.  Be honest about the time you spend, and more importantly, be honest with the mentee. You are not their boss, their significant other, or even a work colleague. They need you to be honest. I have found that sometimes I needed to be what felt like brutally frank about where people are in the field and where they might head.

I think for me, the mentoring process came in phases. Our conversations built my confidence and I began to change my thinking. After I believed in my abilities I needed to create a plan to succeed, but I soon realized that I had limited resources and I needed to create a network.

2.  Don't be afraid of what you don't know.  Being a mentor is not being Wikipedia. Sometimes a question would send me looking for more information and ideas, and along the way, I learned as well.

This is also why I enjoyed the informal nature of the mentorship; each mentee had the opportunity to shape the conversations, and while I did appreciate the tangible task of writing the blog posts, I did also welcome the openness regarding how many posts we could write, and allowing the topics to emerge out of our conversations.

3.  Be generous.  You need to commit time, but I found the generosity that might be most important is generosity about your own experiences, including those failures along the way.

I have valued the ability to speak freely about what has driven my interest in museum research and what has stood out to me in today's exhibition content. On the flip side, I have enjoyed learning about what you do (as well as what that entails on a practical note) and the many different museum audiences that we can get at with our work (of particular interest being the U.S. v. Europe case study).
4.  Be committed.  I spend one hour a month Skyping with each mentee.  It's up to the mentees to chose the topic, and we try and schedule the next month as we finish.

For me it was a real connection and we took the time to really meet and talk. It had the value of obliging me to pause, discuss and reflex on my work, aspiration and challenges as a professional but in an other dimension then my day to day work.

5.  Be a lifelong learner.  

I have had the experience previously of moving from mentee and mentor; it is a powerful experience to be empowered to build on what you have been taught and to share your experiences.

I think it's particularly important as we work to make museums more diverse, inclusive spaces, that we look to mentor all kinds of people.  If you're in graduate school, can you mentor a high school or undergraduate student, to introduce them to the work of museums?  If you're an emerging professional who went to graduate school, consider looking for a mentee who is entering the field from another direction?

But, I can hear you thinking, where am I going to find a mentee?  Aren't they supposed to find me? I know some people seek out mentors, and several of my mentees have sought out next-step mentors, based on their experiences with me.  You can make it known that you're committed to the future of the field.  Talk to colleagues at other organizations and ask them to suggest potential mentees.  Go to Drinking About Museums in your city, meet people, and be open. Put a post on your LinkedIn profile.  If you appear open and enthusiastic, people will find you. Your mentee might be someone older than you;  or someone younger.  It honestly doesn't matter.  What does matter is that you pay it forward in some way, and that together, we make our field a meaningful place for everyone.  My little experiment in mentorship over the last four years has repaid me in more ways than I can count.

What questions do you have about being a mentor?

And stay tuned, for this year's mentor announcement.

What Next? A Month of Reflection

Like millions of Americans, the last month has been a confusing one for me. I returned home from Ukraine just two days before the election, proudly voted for Hilary Clinton (I just learned that a niece of mine wore different pieces of jewelry representing her grandmothers and great-grandmothers to go vote that day, in their honor) and drove to Mystic, CT for the New England Museum Association conference. Jetlagged, I went to bed early and woke up at 4:30 AM to learn that Trump had won the election.

Since then, I’ve been trying to figure out my country and its citizens, trying to determine what I personally need to do next, wondering about museums’ place in this world, and trying to listen and read as much as I can (though I have stayed away from TV news). I don’t have any answers yet but I wanted to share some ideas that have resonated with me.  It's a long post, bear with me.

Museums Can Be Essential

First, that very first morning at NEMA, I went to a session presented by Sarah Pharaon of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. It seemed very much the right thing to do that morning; and in fact it was. She reminded us of the power of history and of the important way that museums can move from relevance to essential parts of communities and the larger world.

Support and Action

I made a quick trip up to the Concord Museum mid-conference for the opening meeting for the development of plans for a new permanent exhibition there. Our conversations about the American Revolution and Henry David Thoreau were all shaped by the week’s events. But I’ll remember most what one of the museum educators said over coffee. She had decided on two things: support and action. This meant financial support for Planned Parenthood, an organization she supported; and action, starting to volunteer at a local organization working with refugees. That two-part approach made a great deal of sense to me.

Serious Play

Rainey Tisdale and I facilitated a session at NEMA about museums and your whole self: not just your learning self, but your spiritual self, your playful self, your civic self; and more. We were going to use the election as a starting point for our activity but it seemed just wrong, just too much at the end of a challenging week. Instead, our lively group of participants got to think about whole self museum development within the framework of kittens (and thanks, Rainey, for convincing me to do that!) Somehow that goofy exercise lifted all our spirits. We’re all going to need to be attentive to serious play as we move forward.

Be More Attentive to My Own--and Others-- Privilege 

I’m white, I went to an Ivy League college and have a Master’s degree. I teach. I’m older than many of you readers. I’m female. I have lots of privilege. I’ve vowed to be more attentive to instances where I need to check that privilege, and to call out others on the same. This also means figuring out how to be the best ally I can. For me, that’s not a safety pin, but there are certainly other times and places, in my work and outside of work,  that I can listen, speak out, and work to make a difference.

Read More

I came across an NPR piece that suggested we all needed to expand our reading—to learn about people different than ourselves. I’ve put several books on my Goodreads list (if you want, please feel free to connect with me there) and if you’re looking, check out the New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year and the Guardian’s pieces in which authors chose their favorite books of the year. I admired my colleagues who managed to get thoughtful blog posts up over the last month, considering the role museums may play in building a more civil, civic society. In particular, I found these useful and thoughtful:

Center for the Future of Museums, “Healing the Partisan Divide”

Rebecca Herz, Museum Questions, “How Do Museums Create a Better World?”

Paul Orselli, Exhibitricks, “Are Trump Voters Museum Goers?”
Koven Smith, “Better Ways to Win: MCN 2016 and the Presidential Election"

Talk More, Listen Even More

The next week, I attended MuseumNext, which I found in different parts, fascinating and infuriating. First, the infuriating part: I’m stunned that, as a field, we consider a groundbreaking conference one where people read prepared remarks from behind a podium, with barely time for a question or two at the end. We know that’s not not how people learn. Everyone I spoke with at breaks felt frustrated. There was a strong sense that we were talking to the choir and more than a bit of discussion that seemed to frame things in terms of us and them. Although I live in a blue state, I live in a very red part of it. I think the us and them is unproductive at best. There were speakers that inspired me, and I’ll hopefully write more soon about them.

Advice from the 20th Century

I’ve had emails and Facebook comments and condolences from colleagues all over the world. This election was a big deal to everyone and uncertainty looms large, whether it’s how Trump’s relationship to Putin will affect Ukraine, how his business dealings will affect Turkey, how his approach to the world will affect the Baltics, or almost anywhere else in the world.

A Ukrainian friend posted a link to Yale historian Timothy Snyder’s Facebook post, now appearing in other places as well. I greatly admire his book Bloodlands for its deep understanding of the history of Ukraine and its neighbors; and he continues to be an active, thoughtful commentator on Ukraine and that part of the world.

He shared 20 lessons from the 20th century. I won’t share them all (you can find them in full here) but here’s a few that particularly struck me.

• Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning. 
• Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. (Don't use the internet before bed. Charge your gadgets away from your bedroom, and read.) What to read? Perhaps "The Power of the Powerless" by Václav Havel, 1984 by George Orwell, The Captive Mind by Czesław Milosz, The Rebel by Albert Camus, The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, or Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev. 
• Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow. 
• Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.
• Learn from others in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present difficulties here are an element of a general trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports. 
• Be a patriot. The incoming president is not. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

But interestingly, I found one good example for future generations coming from a member of a generation too young to even have a classification. Riding the New York City subway one day, I sat down across from a little girl with a big rolled-up sign. I asked if she had made it, and could I see it? She shyly assented, and unrolled it (she's at the head of this post). I asked if she’d been out protesting. Yes, she said, and her mom and sister nodded as well. (and the mom said it was okay to take her picture). This tiny citizen, with her big sign, lifted up everyone on that train. We smiled at her and each other, spoke to each other for a minute, and I somehow felt that perhaps, we were all in this together, in a way that mattered.

Museum people, we have work to do.

Heroes. Every. Day.

This election season in the United States has shown me, as I'm sure it has many of you, how easy it is to fray the threads of civil society.  Imagine Ukraine, a nation with a short democratic history, a just three-years-old revolution, occupied territories, and an ongoing war in the East.  Plus, the still-strong remnants of Soviet bureaucracy and a tenacious system of corruption that are a part of everyday life. For the past two weeks, I've been in Ukraine conducting an assessment of the cultural heritage sector with my colleague Vaiva Lankeliene from Lithuania for the Culture and Creativity EU-Eastern Partnership Programme.

To be sure, we've found many needs and issues in the sector in great need of reform. More importantly though, it's been great to see people that really are heroes--people who, in whatever way they can, are working to make museums and cultural heritage better. Their efforts are resulting, bit by bit, in those stronger threads that weave a stronger civil society together.

Here's what I mean:

• Two years ago, a new staffer at the Ministry of Culture discovers there is virtually no information collected about the museum sector.  Using his own car, and paying for his own gas, he travels thousands of kilometers around the country, visiting museums and building statistical information that serves as critical benchmarks for the sector.  Sadly, he's now formerly of the ministry, but the useful data lives on.
• A director of a historic house museum believes that her staff should be like family, as it is a family house.  They work together, everyone sharing responsibilities--everyone gives tours for instance, as a way of staying connected and making room for everyone to pursue their research and community engagement interests. The result is a museum that is more crowded than far larger ones.  The public feels the spirit of the place.
• The collective work of the L'viv city administration who joined together to develop the newly-opened project The Space of Synagogues (below), an important and moving first step in integrating Ukraine's Jewish history into the nation's larger historical narrative.  It provides visitors to the World Heritage city a chance to contemplate and learn about an aspect of the city's history long erased.

• The colleague who received a grant to work with museums in digitizing their collections and is meeting unexpected resistance to such a project.  Some are opposed to sharing work that, of course, belong to the public.  He persists, diligently, in convincing colleagues and pondering new ways of persuasion. Not surprisingly, he's finding that lower-level staff have significant interest in collaborating, but directors,  not so much.  I know he'll get there.
• The head of historic preservation in a city, who works to control development in the historic center, despite the willingness of investors to go above her department to get a yes, when no was the right answer already given. She works with colleagues in other historic cities to develop and share guidelines for appropriate development, when most city departments are independent actors and information is hoarded.  Like it is for most of my colleagues here, corruption is the eternal subtext. Several museum directors mentioned wanting to have a lawyer on staff, because there is so much legal maneuvering, particularly about property rights.
• The enthusiastic director of a tiny small-town museum who wishes for more opportunities for professional development.  But, he cheerfully says, I took an online course on grant-writing, wrote a grant and got it. The result:  a series of public programs, tourist guides and walking tours.
• Two young staff members at a contemporary art center talk about their role as building up confidence and motivation among not just their staff members, but the community as well. They connect closely the ideas of public and personal responsibility in the realms of art and life.   Said one, the result of the 2014 Revolution was that people now understood: "No one will fix our problems.  We have no illusions left.  We just have to move our ass."

That last statement, and all my experiences this trip, have reinforced Margaret Mead's belief,

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. 

Changing the world one day, one step at a time.  Heroes.  Every. Day.

From the new memorial in L'viv

Heroes. Every. Day.

This election season in the United States has shown me, as I'm sure it has many of you, how easy it is to fray the threads of civil society.  Imagine Ukraine, a nation with a short democratic history, a just three-years-old revolution, occupied territories, and an ongoing war in the East.  Plus, the still-strong remnants of Soviet bureaucracy and a tenacious system of corruption that are a part of everyday life. For the past two weeks, I've been in Ukraine conducting an assessment of the cultural heritage sector with my colleague Vaiva Lankeliene from Lithuania for the Culture and Creativity EU-Eastern Partnership Programme.

To be sure, we've found many needs and issues in the sector in great need of reform. More importantly though, it's been great to see people that really are heroes--people who, in whatever way they can, are working to make museums and cultural heritage better. Their efforts are resulting, bit by bit, in those stronger threads that weave a stronger civil society together.

Here's what I mean:

• Two years ago, a new staffer at the Ministry of Culture discovers there is virtually no information collected about the museum sector.  Using his own car, and paying for his own gas, he travels thousands of kilometers around the country, visiting museums and building statistical information that serves as critical benchmarks for the sector.  Sadly, he's now formerly of the ministry, but the useful data lives on.
• A director of a historic house museum believes that her staff should be like family, as it is a family house.  They work together, everyone sharing responsibilities--everyone gives tours for instance, as a way of staying connected and making room for everyone to pursue their research and community engagement interests. The result is a museum that is more crowded than far larger ones.  The public feels the spirit of the place.
• The collective work of the L'viv city administration who joined together to develop the newly-opened project The Space of Synagogues (below), an important and moving first step in integrating Ukraine's Jewish history into the nation's larger historical narrative.  It provides visitors to the World Heritage city a chance to contemplate and learn about an aspect of the city's history long erased.

• The colleague who received a grant to work with museums in digitizing their collections and is meeting unexpected resistance such a project.  Some are opposed to sharing work that, of course, belong to the public.  He persists, diligently, in convincing colleagues and pondering new ways of persuasion. Not surprisingly, he's finding that lower-level staff have significant interest in collaborating, but directors,  not so much.  I know he'll get there.
• The head of historic preservation in a city, who works to control development in the historic center, despite the willingness of investors to go above her department to get a yes, when no was the right answer already given. She works with colleagues in other historic cities to develop and share guidelines for appropriate development, when most city departments are independent actors and information is hoarded.  Like it is for most of my colleagues here, corruption is the eternal subtext. Several museum directors mentioned wanting to have a lawyer on staff, because there is so much legal maneuvering, particularly about property rights.
• The enthusiastic director of a tiny small-town museum who wishes for more opportunities for professional development.  But, he cheerfully says, I took an online course on grant-writing, wrote a grant and got it. The result:  a series of public programs, tourist guides and walking tours.
• Two young staff members at a contemporary art center talk about their role as building up confidence and motivation among not just their staff members, but the community as well. They connect closely the ideas of public and personal responsibility in the realms of art and life.   Said one, the result of the 2014 Revolution was that people now understood: "No one will fix our problems.  We have no illusions left.  We just have to move our ass."

That last statement, and all my experiences this trip, have reinforced Margaret Mead's belief,

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. 

Changing the world one day, one step at a time.  Heroes.  Every. Day.

From the new memorial in L'viv

Whodunnit? The Tale of the Missing Credit Panel

Recently I found myself in a conversation about credit panels for exhibitions: who's on, who's not, and why.  I posted a request for samples on Twitter and Facebook and thought I'd share a bit of what I learned from all of you (thank you everyone!)

Basically I found that credit panels fall into two groups.  First, there's the more the merrier:  the museums that take the opportunity to acknowledge as many people as possible. For instance here, from the Museum Centre Vapriikki in Tampere, Finland, via Katrin Hieke in Germany:

And from the Oakland Museum, via Suzanne Fischer, egalitarianly without job titles.

From Dean Krimmel and the Jewish Museum of Maryland:  Funders, administrators, staff and even students.

And from the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts, a high expression of the form, letting the public know that exhibition development is a team effort in every way.  As the label says, "it's a complicated creative process" and that that process is made of real live people, working together.  So much more compelling than just names. I also enjoy the fact that the sponsors are credited in the informal "Hi!" from the director.

Annemarie de Wildt of the Amsterdam Museum in the Netherlands shared on Facebook that:

"We discussed this issue recently in a discussion about the future of the museum with a theatre director. In the theatre/film it's of course very different: naming everyone although the difference in importance shows in the size of the letters."   

But there were those of you whose organizations shared credit for sponsors only.  Colleagues responded to my Facebook query saying:

"We don't include staff but we do include our Advisory Panels that are made up of community members and scholars."

"I don't think we have a real pattern or logic to it. I think the consultants is because it's assumed that otherwise no one would know they helped. Internal, it's just part of our day job. But [at our museum] there's been no deliberate conversation about it. We had some fairly long conversations about who should go on the newest one (it was a community-sourced project with a TON of donors & participants) but the question of internal staff never came up."

"It has been discussed. The question comes up periodically and I am certain it will come up again. We seem to fall on the "no need to print a thank you for doing your job. I don't see how you can thank exhibit staff without acknowledging development staff who raised the funds, education staff who carry out programming for the duration of the exhibit, marketing staff who make sure we're covered in the press, etc. We publicly acknowledge exhibit staff at opening event where donors and sponsors are present. We reserve panels for sponsors and donors."

Where do I fall?  I'm all for credit for everyone.  Exhibits, even small ones, are complicated animals, requiring the skills and talents of so many people, from wall-painters to label-writers to the person who saves you by working late one night to reprint something.  Public credit is cheap.  Why should we be stingy about it?  Couldn't we take our inspiration from the Car Talk guys and their credits?  A sense of humor never hurt anyone.

Interventions

Today's guest post is by Caren Ponty, a former student of mine in the Johns Hopkins University Museum Studies Program.  She brings a wealth of experience from her career in community development, a perspective that inform her reflections on several efforts, on both sides of the Atlantic, to re-contextualize museum collections.

With the opening of the new Smithsonian African-American Museum on the Washington Mall last month and the AAM’s focus at the 2017 annual convention on diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion, I have been thinking more about what this means to museums, its audiences and its collections.  Having worked on community equity issues as part of my career in community development, the one thing I think I know is that even the definition of diversity can be a tricky subject. The term can be applied to any number of areas that one considers outside the mainstream, whether it be race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, and more. No one seems to have a clear-cut characterization; it depends upon context, but it is based on representation.

This past summer while on a Johns Hopkins University graduate seminar in museum studies, I had two encounters with museum exhibitions which focused on seeking to redress the exclusion of blacks in collections in Great Britain. The first was at the National Portrait Gallery in London where the special exhibit Black Chronicles was a discrete intervention among multiple galleries throughout the museums. (For those unfamiliar with the term, art ‘intervention’ applies to art designed specifically to interact with an existing structure or situation, be it another artwork, the audience, an institution or in the public domain). The intention was to focus attention to the overlooked, underrepresented black community (which in Great Britain includes Asians) whose portraits would be few in a museum dedicated to paintings of the elite British.  While the dispersed special exhibition seemed somewhat confusing, the photographs, particularly those hung in the first gallery on a stark black painted background. The portraits, from the 1850s through 1947s, showed unimaginable, stunningly-displayed images of private lives never seen. While snaking our way around to see the exhibit, I knew that it had made the impression intended when I spotted one of the exhibit portraits staring at me while at dinner at the Museum’s restaurant. I realized that prior to experiencing the intervention, I would have had no idea what the photograph was doing there and it may have seemed out of character. But aimed with this knowledge of interspersing the voices of blacks throughout the museum, it seemed to blend into the room in a way where it might seem naturally suited.

This same technique is being used at The Old Manse in Concord MA in a project entitled Art and the Landscape. (Note from Linda: Caren has been working with me on an unrelated interpretation project at this site). One element of Art and the Landscape, created by artist Sam Durant, added artifacts related to the African presence in Concord to the interior of this historic house. The goal, similar to the project at the National Portrait Gallery in London, is to make the struggles, history, and culture of Africans in Concord more visible within the historic narrative and to integrate the knowledge that enslaved people lived here and were part of the Reverend Emerson’s household at the time of the American Revolution.  Visitors who have seen these interspersed objects or participated in some of the prototyping have walked away commenting that prior to seeing the exhibit, they never thought much about this issue. This is particularly interesting given that this is a community best known for fighting for their right to be represented in government. As few people visit for the tour that focuses exclusively on this aspect of history, one can see the value of the interventionist approach to reach more visitors and provide them to think more about this part of our national heritage.

The second approach I saw to engage diversity was Raphael Albert’s Miss Black and Beautiful at Autograph ABP’s exhibits at their own galleries in Shoreditch, London.  Curator Renée Mussai (who had also curated Black Chronicles mentioned above) has a remarkable and relatable display of black beauty pageants from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, including some from London, and spoke to us about the unanticipated interest from black women--close to 850 people showed up for the opening. But even more brilliantly, running simultaneously in their upstairs gallery was an exhibit entitled Unsterile Clinic, whose goal is to raise awareness of the widespread practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). As described on their website, Aida Silvestri’s sculptural photo-works are shown with text poems based on interviews conducted with participants whose personal testimonies provide harrowing insight into their experiences.  This juxtaposition of social beauty and social justice was bone chilling.

Making visitors aware of an uncomfortable topic while sharing images of pride and more acceptable subjects brings me back to our new American museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Here, the events of our American heritage, which includes our African-American past that is part of all of us, are served by a museum that makes us proud by elevating the narrative of who we are in a broader and all-encompassing manner.

Images:

Sarah Davies (formerly Forbes Bonetta) and James Pinson Labulo Davies
by Camille Silvy, 1862
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Brochure, The Meeting House, Art in the Landscape
Aida Silvestri, Type II B: Distance. From Unsterile Clinic, 2016

Mythbusters: Pilgrim Edition

Virtually every American knows a Pilgrim myth or two.  It's the kind of thing many of us learn at every Thanksgiving dinner and with every hand-made paper turkey on a school classroom window. I'll have to admit, that when I visited the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, MA, I expected more of the same.  The museum opened in 1824 and describes itself as "America's museum of Pilgrim possessions."  But, I was walking by, and decided to visit--and was incredibly surprised at the smart, thoughtful exhibit that deconstructed--that busted those myths--about Pilgrims.

A few examples:   the opening label talks about the Pilgrim story, but doesn't quite give the full hint that some myths are about to be busted.  The mythbusting took two prevalent forms.  First, deconstructing what we believe (and the stories that museums have often told) about objects.  For instance, the spinning wheel above, and label below, which says, "in fact, no spinning wheels recorded in the Colony until the late 1630s."  (no sheep, either).

And here's another one, about a sword. When was the last time you read a label that said, "This is not possible."

The exhibit included reproduction clothing, showing how our ideas about Pilgrims were reflected in the clothes worn and depicted, in films, paintings, and even in museums.  Below, a label from one interpretive era, and clothing from another.

With some objects and images, the labels cleverly paired the mythmaking (Longfellow, you have much to answer for) with quotations from historic documents.

The romance of laughter and tremulous voices, compared with death and eleven children.  This painting of Thanksgiving gets these contrasting labels.

Note the inclusion of the contemporary voice of Linda Coombs, a member of the Wampanoag nation, on the label, contrasting directly with Sarah Josepha Hale's 19th century voice.

It's the rare museum that takes on busting up its own history.  Consider your own history museum. What stories could benefit from some revision?  Can you do some rethinking that lets your audience into the messy nature of history?  How about a new take on those cows in your community?