Brilliant Labels in Dublin: Sweets, Nudes and U2

I love to be surprised in museums and it doesn't happen often, so I was thrilled to be genuinely surprised by labels(and more) at the Little Museum of Dublin this week. The Little Museum is the city of museum of Dublin and embraces its status as a museum of the people. It also embraces and embodies the values of generosity, informality and friendliness.

Here are two labels from the beautiful Georgian room where the tour starts.

Sweets and a label explaining why there are few labels, based on what we know--totally unexpected. I was definitely surprised! Plus, a great label explaining Georgian architecture. Good questions, and a big "so what?" for the visitor to contemplate as well.

And next, a label explaining this image the image at below left.

Make sure you read that last line. I was happy to learn about Nell McCafferty, but even happier that the label on this object challenged, in the nicest way (is nice overrated? not here) both museum practice and the visitor's own assumptions.

Lots of museums are complimentary about former politicians, but not many make political statements, even a soft one, about the contemporary need for civic leadership. And it's not only politicians who come in for a bracing critique. The museum's U2 exhibit traces the history of the city's most famous band in an space developed by fans. But did Bono and the rest become sell outs?

Even the gift shop embraces the spirit evidenced in these labels.

I've got another post to write about their exhibits commemorating the centennial of the 1916 uprising, but you may also want to check out their City of a Thousand Welcomes project. For free, you can sign up and meet a local for a cup of tea, coffee or a pint and conversation. Both visitors and residents who want to be Ambassadors can sign up via the website. I didn't have time to do it, but it's definitely on my list for a return visit. More than 2000 visitors last year took advantage of the offer.

And the take-away here? Ideas don't cost money. Most of the labels are simply produced--the effort is in the thinking and writing. The Thousand Welcomes project could be done by museums almost anywhere. No bells, whistles, or holograms here, just a reminder of what we can be as community-based museums.

Thanks, Little Museum for such a surprising, inspiring visit!

 

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Handmade

Over the last couple weeks of travel, I’ve encountered a wide spectrum of goods (and food) defined as local, or handmade, or artisan. It’s made me think about how and why we value such things, and how differing cultures seem, to an outsider, to consider them.

In Florence, Italy, I went on a Context Travel walk featuring the artisans of Oltrarno, the neighborhood across the river from the city center. Led by passionate advocate of all things local, Luca Santiccioli, we visited a metalsmith’s tiny basement shop, hidden in a courtyard; a woman paper marbler carrying on her family’s traditions; and a father and son team of etchers. As a city Florence is popular, really popular, and so not surprisingly, there are cheap, Chinese souvenirs in so many places but the love and care these craftspeople shared with us made their works sing. My small purchases will serve as beautiful reminders. What’s the future for workshops like these in Florence? It’s hard to say, and hard to say whether future generations will embrace the work. We noticed that as we passed one bespoke cobbler, that the owner was Italian, but the workers appeared to be Asian immigrants. There was something heartening in the fact that people from everywhere can become a part of local craft traditions as they adapt, change, but still retains spirit of place.

Then I went to Latvia. Although there are tourists in Riga, even in February, it’s not like Florence. I found different craft traditions, also shaped by both history and landscape. It was surprising to me how the craft traditions and design aesthetics also appeared to shape so many aspects of life. Exhibit designs often used natural materials and had a simplicity and clarity that seemed an inheritance.

And the mittens! Latvians are great knitters and there are hundreds of different intricate patterns for mittens, distinguished by region. In one workshop, I asked small groups to develop an interpretive label for mittens based on an emotion. And those mittens generated such great emotional content. One group had the emotion angry, and wrote a label from a child’s perspective, angry about itchy mittens and unable to go outside when mittens were wet; another group had joy, and talked about the trunk full of handmade mittens made by all the women in the family and community, that was a traditional bridal gift. Another group had sorrow, and talked about a grandmother, now passed away, whose memory lived on in mittens. And skepticism? One group wrote a label about mittens’ magic powers, encouraging a bit of skepticism—and laughter--in all of us.

I got quite a surprising answer when I asked a colleague about the strength of these craft traditions. “It’s fear, I think,” she answered and I looked at her surprised.. We are so small, she continued, that I think our traditions are one of the only things we have to hang on to. Needless to say, every part of the former Soviet Union continually found its traditions under siege, but this seemed to go even beyond that, to a sense that to be Latvian meant a responsibility to continue those traditions.

So what’s next? Italy is flooded by tourists, Latvia is losing its population to opportunities in Western Europe. Two sides of the same coin, in a way, in that the future is uncertain, and that dedicated craftspeople are continuing something that’s important for all of us.

And what can each of us do? As a tourist, bring home locally made souvenirs. As a museum worker, l, seek out these traditions in your community, both the ones practiced by longtime residents and those that new community members have brought from their new places. We don’t need to be a global village of chain stores, but perhaps we can be a global village of items that connect to place and people, that last a lifetime, and that remind us of the many beautiful places around the world.

 

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Asking Great Questions

My two weeks in Latvia flew by, filled with thoughtful, passionate engaged new colleagues, 8 different workshops, loads of conversation, plus a chance to learn about the past, present, and future of this country.

I facilitated one workshop at the National History Museum about integrating visitor voices and perspectives into museums. We talked about framing different kinds of questions and how and why visitors might be interested in responding. But then we decided to put to use in a space I had visited the day before. The museum is in temporary quarters, so it's a great time to think about ways to enhance visitor engagement when they move back into their reconstructed building. Not surprisingly, the exhibitions about Soviet times provided great food for thought. Each participant was asked to write three questions: one divergent, one convegent, and one evaluative, and place them in the exhibit. I then asked the group to become visitors, to answer questions that interested them personally.

The questions and answers provided depth, texture and complications to the narrative, as you can see from the images in this post. It was the simplest of prototypes, but helped us learn which kind of questions really attracted interest, although we also wondered what kinds of questions and answers an older generation would produce. It was a powerful reminder of the importance of prototyping and how it can extend our own learning and our own perspectives. On reflection, it seemed important to both ask and answer, to be both museum and visitor. Small written dialogues began to happen among the Post-it notes, talking about a time that remains difficult conversation. Many thanks to all my colleagues that day, who embraced experimentation and risk in the search for deeper meaning.

And Lenin, once so ever-present, so all encompassing, getting the question, "Who is this?"

My thanks also go to the Baltic-American Freedom Foundation who supported my trip here, and a planning committee that made everything work tremendously!

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What am I doing in Latvia?

Late last night, I arrived in Riga, Latvia, waking up this morning to the view above from my home for the next two weeks. Building from a chance conversation I had when I stopped over here in fall, 2014, I'll be facilitating a series of workshops for colleagues here on topics that include creativity in museums, community engagement and more.

I'll write more as I go along about my partners and sponsor, but this post is just a quick reflection on how grateful I am to have these experiences. In talking about the upcoming trip with a colleague a couple weeks ago, he said, "how great! You get to go into people's offices!" And then went on to explain that what he really meant was that this experience, and my others in Ukraine, give me the rare chance to see museums not as a tourist or visitor, but to understand the challenges, the dreams, the creative successes that we might only see from the inside--from that staff office.

But even if you're not headed to Latvia--you can do the same. Try a day at work when you change offices with a co-worker. Does it shift your perspective? Do a one day job exchange with a colleague. What do you learn? Go work somewhere else for the day or take the time to go have coffee with someone in a related but not exact profession. Embrace curiosity as a key element of your work--I have, and the results have been amazing.

One goal of this two weeks is to write frequent, if brief blog updates, so stay tuned. If you're so inclined, you can also find my visual note taking on Instagram as @lindabnorris.

 

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Meet the Mentees

One of the best parts of my year, yet one of the hardest, is choosing for my mentorship program each year. This year, more than 30 of you shared your dreams for the museum field, your personal hopes for the future, your creative heroes, and objects that moved you emotionally. Thanks to all of you and I only wish I had time enough for everyone.

Related wish: that my other more experienced colleagues would do the same. So I'll begin with that offer. If you think you have something to offer as a mentor, be in touch with me and we'll see how we could expand the pool of people willing to engage in deep conversations about the future. I can guarantee that you'll gain as much if not more than you give. Our professional organizations are mov slowish or not at all on this, and I know from my JHU students and from applicants that more mentorship opportunities are sorely needed. I can move faster than an organization so let's get going!

I wanted to share some of the great responses. Creative heroes: only one person got mentioned twice. Jim Henson of the Muppets. But also on applicants's lists were David Bowie and David Lynch, a sit-com writing dad, Lin Manual Miranda, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, several colleagues, and others.

Emotional objects: the range of objects was incredible from the way a child's shoe in a Holocaust exhibit moved a young mom, to human remains, to contemporary art, to a frozen piece of mutton, and emotions ranged from joy to deep sadness and everywhere in between.

My two choices were surprising to me and in retrospective, they have some connections I hadn't quite articulated in my head before having our first conversations. David Lewis and Amanda Guzman have or are working on their PhDs, and they both come from outside the history world. As the field considers how what kinds of training and degrees are useful, it's intriguing to consider the place of emerging scholars in museums (and, whether it was all worth it). I think my world view will be expanded by theirs, which is one of my hopes in the mentorship.

They'll each be writing blog posts over the course of the year, so you'll hear more from them directly, but for now, a brief introduction in their own words.

Dave Lewis (and, by the way, the first male, and as always, one of very few male applicants ever, a conversational subject for another day.).

Dave is Curator of Collections and Digital Media at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, TN. It's his first museum job and he will defend his dissertation this summer on music, AIDS and public health in Trinidad and Tobago.

His big questions framed around several areas--how do we think about collections in ways that matter, and in ways that reflect honest relationships with the communities such material comes from? He's also interested in thinking about how museums can participate in tourism events, and at the same time, enhance our roles as places of learning. Plus (Dave had a long list of questions) thinking about broad digital accessibility, and how collections can be more valuable in ways both economic and intellectual.

His creative hero: Diamande Galas. Check her out.

Amanda Guzman

Amanda's currently a PhD student at Berkeley in anthropology. She's interned at the Smithsonian, both at the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of the American Indian. She has a particular interest in the ways museums with Caribbean archaeological collections engage with both the diaspora and those in the community on the islands. Some of her big questions:

• What constitutes a compelling museum narrative?
• Should museums continue to be object-oriented display environments?
• How can one balance academic concerns and creativity in museum work?

The change she'd like to see, like many of you, comes from her own experiences.

I would personally advocate for the introduction of an earlier, easily accessible stage of deepengagement with museums - specifically as a potential career option. As a native New Yorker with ahistory buff mother, museums were ever-present in my childhood as trans-formative places ofencountering new social worlds through the exhibition of often unfamiliar objects. Yet, it was only through free educational programs (e.g. taking anthropology classes) and internships (e.g. giving toursto school groups and working in an archaeology laboratory) respectively in both high school andcollege, that I became aware of my own ability to participate in museums in a role other than that of avisitor. These experiences are what introduced me to the intersection of the fields of anthropology andmuseum studies. They informed my decision to major in anthropology and current pursuit of a PhDdissertation topic which privileges the analysis of the history of anthropology and the history ofmuseum collecting in the given geographic area of the Spanish Caribbean, specifically Puerto Rico.

I'm looking forward to a great year of conversations and my immense thanks to all of you who applied--I hope all of our paths cross in person at some point as you set sail on your careers.

 

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Border Crossing, Part 2

In this continuation of her earlier post on the crossing (or breaking) of museum borders, Andrea Jones takes a look at one border the museum world is often reluctant to cross:  who does what.

Educators Designing Exhibits

At the Accokeek Foundation (AF) we are a relatively small organization with a staff of educators, farmers, and other administrators that help us pay the bills and keep us afloat. We have no curators, trained historians, or scientists. In addition, we don’t have the budget to contract with an exhibit design firm to create the present-day exhibits that we needed for our Green History initiative. We had no choice but to cross the boundaries between educator and exhibit developer/designer.

But, the absence of experts actually gave us more freedom – not less. I’ve been to numerous conference sessions and workshops (one given by our own Linda Norris!) touting the benefits of prototyping. Our exhibits are a step beyond prototyping in that they are never really that permanent. They are just in a continual state of tinkering. We learn as we go.

We were particularly proud of our DIY exhibit “Underspace: The Science of Soil.” We commandeered an old storage shed and turned it into an immersive space that made dirt look pretty darn cool.

When visitors pull back the curtain, they suddenly enter a portal to the underground.

As we tend to take for granted what’s in the soil beneath our feet, we wanted people’s journey underground to look magical. After all, there are more living organisms in a tablespoon of soil than people living on earth! That’s pretty fantastical. We wanted our visitors to have a new appreciation for soil because (and you may have never heard of this environmental problem) healthy topsoil is disappearing by the day, due to heavy use of fertilizers, commercial development, over-plowing, etc.

In our quest to bring a sense of wonder to soil we brought our best crafting skills to bear. We used cardboard, plastic bags, yarn, lots of fluorescent paint, and black lights to transform our little shed into the most groovy “soil rave” you could imagine. The black lights were also a great way to hide the fact that this exhibit was extremely low budget (total cost around $300).

“Underspace” in daylight – not so impressive

“Underspace” under blacklight – wow!

On one side, we represented the vibrant, diverse life within healthy soil. On the other we recreated unhealthy soil, due to human causes.

Organic matter (compost) is being broken down by bacteria and mycorrhizae on the healthy side.

To top it off, we enlisted the help of a sound designer friend (shouts out to the very generous Erik Spangler!) to make recordings of the soil on our site (along with other organic sounds) to create a soundscape for Underspace. I was surprised how much the piped-in sound helped to create a truly immersive space.

Unlike traditional exhibits, ours was created in about one month. The design process was a steep learning curve and the exhibit required continual adjustments after it opened. The first hurdle was the herculean task of translating the researched information about soil into a visible, 3D exhibit. How real should it be?

What about scale? How big should a rotting banana be compared to fungal mycorrhizae? We settled on a quasi-real notion of the underground world. We decided that exacting accuracy could take a back seat to stimulating interest. For example, if we didn’t make bacteria large enough to see, then we excluded a hugely important level of the ecosystem. We created these little round boxes to represent a zoomed-in perspective, but the scale was still not quite perfect.

Another thing about rushing – we didn’t adequately consult experts before transforming the research into a visual representation. One of our farmers (who is well-schooled in soil science) entered the exhibit and pointed out that our differences between healthy and unhealthy soil were too stark, too extreme. Our unhealthy side has zero bacterial life. “That would be impossible,” she said. “The bacteria activity would be lower, but not disappear completely.”

Polly Festa, farmer at Accokeek Foundation

In our quest for clarity (an educator’s tendency) we had created a contrast that was a bit too exaggerated. This was a good lesson. We may not have curators, but we do have farmers. We added bacteria to the unhealthy side and amended the text.

We learned to make better use of the expertise we had. This year, when we re-launch the exhibit, I’d like to consult with a soil scientist in our network. At the end of the day, we still have to make decisions about trade-offs and balances in the realism of our representation. But more voices will result in a fuller discussion and ultimately a more informed decision-making process.

On one final note, I would like to underscore the advantages we had in engaging the entire Programs Department in building this exhibit. Our part-time interpreters' contributions were a huge asset in exhibit development as well as in the actual construction. Not only did they lend their creativity but they became more invested and learned more content than if we had just planned a traditional training.

The process of creating the exhibit created a powerful learning experience for all those involved.

Granted, it’s not realistic to involve hundreds of people (the weekend visitors) in building something like this. I don’t think it’s scalable in that way. But I started to think of our young, part-time staff like a group of long-term visitors. After all, there are many of them that come and go on to bigger and better things. If we can involve them in projects like these and make a real impact on their perspectives, they could potentially take our lessons with them in their future careers.

There will always be a place for the high cost, slick-looking exhibit within the museum landscape. But I want to encourage small museums to take on projects such as this. Why do we have to look slick like the big guys? Sometimes the DIY aspect is exactly what is attractive to a visitor. It’s really about the ideas and the creativity you bring, not the dollars. Thinking across boundaries is something small museums are often forced to do by virtue of having small staffs and tight budgets. But perhaps we can think of these constraints as a strength – as permission to step outside of our comfort zones and defy categorization.

Boundary Crossing in Museums

In the first of two guest posts, Andrea Jones, Director of Programs and Visitor Engagement, Accokeek Foundation in Maryland reflects on what pushing out interpretive boundaries at a colonial farm to become more relevant and meaningful. Stay tuned for part 2!

Creativity is often described as “thinking outside the box.” But have you ever contemplated just how arbitrary these boxes are? While teaching high school anthropology, I learned that the concept of race doesn’t even really exist, biologically.  (Mind = blown!) It’s all a spectrum of physical attributes that are categorized differently all over the world. Yet, from an early age I was conditioned to check the “Caucasian” box on every required form. Consequently, the cultural concept of race affected my identity in a profound way.

Lots of other boxes are arbitrary, too. And today’s society increasingly questions those definitions as more voices are heard. Are there more genders than just male and female? What is an American? Is Pluto a planet?

Boxes can be comforting and useful since they help us to understand the world around us, but they are also limiting. They don’t honor the complexity of life and the myriad possibilities that exist when boundaries are crossed.

Looking at categories as arbitrary human creations is a powerful way to shift your perspective and unlock creative new approaches to interpretation 

in museums.

Here are three boundaries [two in this post, one to come] we crossed at my museum (Accokeek Foundation) and how crossing them helped us to increase our relevancy and challenge our thinking.

First, what is Accokeek Foundation (AF)? AF is a partner of the National Park Service on Piscataway Park just south of Washington, D.C., in Maryland. We steward and interpret 200 acres of this park, including two farms. One of these farms, the National Colonial Farm, has used living history for over 40 years to interpret the lives and techniques of middling tobacco-growers in the colonial era. 

Using History to Teach Environmental Science

Along the east coast, where we are, you can’t throw a stone without hitting a butter churn or a spinning wheel. There is no shortage of historic farms to get your colonial fix. And frankly, the hey-day of this kind of interpretation seems to have passed. We decided it was time to look outside of the discipline of colonial history in its purest form. It was time for a remix.

One day a visiting mom said to her child, “See, aren’t we lucky we have electricity and cars, and all the things we have today?” I thought about what she said. Yes, life was definitely more convenient. But through the lens of environmentalism, all of the convenience has come at a great cost.

Coal burning plant with mining in front.  Photo:  Getty

What if the colonial era was a starting point for the story of the most challenging environmental issues today?

Instead of considering 1770 (our chosen interpretive year) as a time just before the American Revolution, what if we used this snapshot in time to look at family habits in an era when people were more directly connected to each environmental choice they made?

Today, water comes out of our bathroom sink – but from where? How much energy does it take?

"Hidden from view" water treatment plant     Where does water come from?

How does that compare to colonial times? The typical middling colonial family knew exactly how much energy (physical energy) it took to haul water from a nearby stream or well. They used it judiciously – approximately 4 gallons/day per person (according to our estimates). Today, each American uses between 80-100 gallons/day. That is a 2,000% increase in water use.

Most of us are completely disconnected to the “secret life of water” because of today’s complex infrastructure, urbanization, and increased job specialization. We don’t know how much energy is used in treatment plants and how little fresh water is readily available as the population swells and the climate changes.  By combining two disciplines, we can look at scientific issues with an eye towards understanding changes in human behavior through time.

In an initiative we call Green History, we rotate themes on the farm every 6- 8 weeks or so: Energy Conservation and Climate Change; Water Conservation; The Health of Soil; Food Waste; etc. Our first-person colonial interpreters invite visitors to join them in activities that act as conversation starters around the theme. For example, they help to carry water using a yoke to help our colonial family do laundry or water plants.

It’s hard work. But instead of leaving visitors with the shallow understanding that “life was hard back then,” we try to redirect that assumption to a bigger question:

“What is more important, convenience or conservation?

Can we have both?”

Colonial interpreters are trained to start dialogues designed to get visitors talking about this question, to help them draw comparisons between colonial life and their lives.

The interpretation is not designed to romanticize the past. Although colonial people used less water, they also did not have the benefit of current-day sanitation afforded by convenient water – sanitation that saves lives. It’s complex.

Seeing history through the lens of science has been a hugely impactful perspective-changer for our institution, as well as for me personally. But I’d be lying if I said it’s been easy to thread the needle, given that visitors expect a purely historical experience.

We work continually to try out different scripted conversation starters to help get visitors to think of themselves as current-day environmental decision-makers, while surrounded by the past. Part of the challenge is branding ourselves as an institution known for this kind of interpretation so that people are attracted to the experience because of its environmental conscience – rather than colonial history alone.

Time Traveling from Present to Past

The Colonial Era, as a specific category of history, was another boundary crossed. We wanted to completely erase that famous question that is often asked in history class: “What does this have to do with me?”

Each of our Green History themes includes a small hand-made exhibit that draws attention to a current-day environmental issue. This issue is then brought to life in the past on our colonial farm. Visitors usually encounter the current-day exhibit first, which provides a great way to frame their experience in 1770.

Since most of these exhibits are staffed by an interpreter, the area becomes a center for questions that you can’t ask a first-person colonial character.

During our Food Waste theme, we created sight rare to most colonial farms – a bicycle rigged to a compost tumbler. The odd contraption was meant to draw people in to talk to our staff member about compost.

They could take a spin on the “Hot Rot” (as we called it) and also play a compost sorting game to win $2,200 in fake money (the cash value of the food wasted by the average American family of four each year).  

Visitors were then invited back to 1770, to help the Bolton family to do some fall food preservation. The living history interpreters on the farm taught visitors preservation methods that have been lost in recent generations (pickling, drying, repurposing apples into apple butter, etc.).

The characters also make efforts to communicate something deeper – the true value of food when you are the human who has grown it from seed. Wasting is not so easy when agricultural plants are precious and cared for over many months.

This past to present boundary crossing is an explicit way for our visitors to connect history to their lives. It gives a fuller picture of a specific current-day issue – that it didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. These problems are the product of many thousands of decisions made by everyday people over time.

It also becomes obvious how RECENT some our environmental problems are. Food waste has increased by 50% since the year I was born (1970!). The brevity of the problem actually gives me hope that the trajectory of this course can be altered. We want to pass on this feeling of hope and empowerment that the context of history provides. The future of history is not inevitable.