Surprise! My 5 Wishes for 2014

What will the new year bring?  Although at a New Year's Eve party the other night we made predictions and resolutions, serious and silly (think less,  climb more mountains, become a powerlifter were among the group's resolutions) I thought I'd just share my own five wishes for the museum field, and for my own work, for 2014.  Can wishes come true?  We'll see (perhaps with your help).

Wish #1  To be Surprised
My last museum visit of 2013 did just that.  I finally made it to the Museum of Jurassic Technology  It was, despite the fact that I knew about its approach,  surprising on many levels.  Surprise is an all-too-rare element in exhibitions these days, when much seems formulaic and overdesigned.  I'm looking to see exhibits that surprise and move me.  Got suggestions? 

Wish #2  To Connect
One of my most memorable museum experiences of 2013 was a very snowy Berlin day, with Twitter acquaintance Katrin Hieke, who made her way from Bonn to spend the day with me.  From a local history museum to the DDR Museum, from  the Jewish Museum to a walk past Checkpoint Charlie, I got the chance to learn about German museums, talk museums non-stop,  and in the process, gain a great new colleague resulting in a new project together.  I wish for more opportunities to talk with colleagues and learn about their cities and museums.  Upcoming in February are Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona,  Rome, Florence, Istanbul and Athens, so be in touch if you're in any of those cities. (and in the US,  Philadelphia,  Albany, NY, and other locations coming up too!)

Wish #3  Creativity into Practice (particularly at the top)
Rainey Tisdale and I think of our book, Creativity in Museum Practice,  as part manifesto, part tool kit.  We both wish that 2014 brings inspired creative practice into museums everywhere.  Museum leaders need to be in the front line of this effort.  I also wish, and intend to make real, creative practice in my own work every day.

Wish #4  Standards as Creative Constraints
I think a lot about standards, having worked with AASLH and as a MAP reviewer for AAM.  I tell organizations that they need to understand standards and how to use them.  But too often, I fear that museums use standards as a crutch for not going further, for not being more imaginative.  It's easy to make a plan to address a backlog of collections, but it's far harder to make a plan to involve your community. A standard doesn't prevent you from doing something--I wish that museums think of a standards as a creative constraint to push your organization further in your overall development.

Wish #5  More Great Clients
The shameless, self-promotion wish.  Last year clients like the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and Context Travel helped me learn so much.  Together we questioned assumptions; talked to visitors, to staff, to each other;  dreamed big dreams;  got inspired by great art, great cities, great literature (and more than a little bit of great food);  laughed, worked hard;  and together, took a risk or two,  knowing that we'd learn from success or failure.  If that sounds good,  I'd love to work with you.  Be in touch with your ideas.

 

 And finally, wish #6--as exemplified by my daughter and her cousins, above, have fun!

"Our History Museums will Include the Events of These Days"

As long-time readers of the Uncataloged Museum may know,  I have a special interest in Ukraine, starting from my time as a Fulbright Scholar and continued through ongoing visits and projects.  Not surprisingly, I've been following the events in Kyiv (more often misspelled in the US press as Kiev, the Russian spelling).  Several weeks ago, as protests began I wrote a post where I was so bold as to suggest what museums in the capital might be doing as the protests, now called EuroMaidan (for European integration and held on Maidan,  the main square) became more powerful, stronger and expanded out from the idea of integration with Europe. It became hundreds of thousands of people working towards a more civil society, turning away from the corruption that characterizes Ukraine's current leadership.  (If you want to keep up, the Kyiv Post, in English, is the best place to find information).

I first met Ihor Poshyvailo (pictured above with his wife Tania on Maidan in a photo by his son, Boghdan Poshyvailo) my first week in Ukraine and since then I've been privileged to consider him both colleague and friend.  He is deputy director of the Ivan Honchar Museum in Kyiv, the National Center of Folk Culture.  This week I asked if he'd answer some questions about what his museum and others are doing in this revolutionary time, and what he sees for the future.  Many, many thanks to Ihor.  This is a bit of a long post, but please take the time.

Your museum has made a statement in support of the protestors on EuroMaidan.  Can you tell me what the statement says, why the museum made it, and how the decision was made to issue it?

The first statement on our museum FaceBook page was made spontaneously on December 1st, and it said that the Honchar Museum supports the protest rallies which took place all over the country and that we will join the next day public meeting in Kyiv. And it ended with a call in caps: LET'S PROTECT OUR UKRAINE! The next statement was much more conscious  on December 10th we had a staff meeting and agreed unanimously to support the protests and blame the riot police for crimes. Next morning - December 11th at 1 am - there was another riot police attack on Maidan and we created a text of an official statement and published it on the museum Facebook page at 4 am.  In the evening - after agreement with our director,  Petro Honchar - we posted it on our website.

 

It said that we officially support the civilization choice of the Ukrainian people - Eurointegration; that we blame the government for failing to sign the agreement and the police attacks and beating of peaceful students and protesters. That as a cultural and educational institution we recognize the importance of human rights for civil society and an independent state. As a center of folk culture we  glorify the eternal traditional virtues of our ancestors - freedom, faith, honor, democracy and humanism. We appealed to the government and president to guarantee freedom of speech and etc. and we join offiical statements of other museums in Kyiv and Lviv as well as Ukraine ICOM Committee and Council of Directors of Lviv Museums.

I know other museums have also done similar efforts--can you tell us about them?  Is there any coordination of museum responses or just individual museums?

I know that mostly museums in Kyiv and Lviv responded. In Lviv (quite understandably - their local government support the protests) the Council of Directors of Lviv Museums coordinated protest statements of a number of Lviv museums. In Kyiv it was individually. Among the first was 'oppositional' Pavlo Tychyna Memorial Museum, which opened its doors to protesters and proposed to them tea and rest. Also Museum of Kyiv History (quite unexpectedly as it is run by the City Hall and personally mayor of Kyiv whose headquarters were taken by the protesters) and about a dozen of its branches in Kyiv including your favorite museum of Bulgakov, museum of Pushkin and a number of others.

Because virtually all museums in Ukraine are government run and funded,  do you worry about repercussions?      

Of course, there was and still is such a worry of  repercussions in this or that way - in the same way that it is known that a driver of the metro car was fired just for telling people in subway cars how to get to Maidan when the central three stations close to Independence Square were closed to try and keep protestors away.   Also there are stories when commanders of the riot policemen from Kirovohrad and Poltava who rejected the command to go to Kyiv and were fired for this. And a bus of pro-Maidan activists who regularly took people and sound equipment to Maidan were fired this night in Kharkiv. Of course, in case Maidan fails there are lots of ways of repercussions and museum directors are well aware of this possibility: that's why not many museums even in Kyiv declare their attitudes to the events.  Another fact - director of the famous here Museum "Territory of Terror" in Lviv was summoned for questioning by the investigation department of the prosecutor's office in Lviv region as "a witness" to events on EuroMaidan in Lviv.

I've seen, thanks to Facebook, two different efforts of the Honchar Museum on Maidan itself.  Can you tell me about the installation of the Didukh?  What does it symbolize and why did you decide to do it?  What was the reaction of people?

On two days our museum,  together with the studio Ethnotoloka organized a flash mob, installing a Didukh (see top photo) on Maidan at the foot of the Independence Monument. Didukh is a very important traditional symbol for Ukrainians which was the same symbol of Christmas and New Year as a New Year's Tree now. It's a Christmas decoration, symbol of sacrificing the best harvest. "Didukh" literally means "the spirit of ancestors" and was made out of the first or the last wheat harvest. It symbolizes the household's wish for an abundance of nature and a bountiful harvest for the upcoming year. Traditionally it was placed in every Ukrainian home before Christmas.

As we virtually shifted all our public educational and performance programs to the Maidan, so we decided to install Didukh there as a beginning of the traditional Christmas celebration in Kyiv and a symbol of Ukraine. Many people liked it, they made pictures before Didukh (as it's very big), asking what does it mean, where it's possible to buy it for their homes etc. Before that we had a celebration of folk holiday Kateryna on the main stage of Maidan and today we had there a celebration of Andriya - reproducing the folk holiday, and organizing folk dancing on the Maidan.

We organise dancing every evening on the Independence Square, so our presence is constant there. We made the decision to shift our programs to Maidan from the very beginning in order to reach new and wider audiences, to join and support the protesters and because some people at the beginning of the protests wrote to us on Facebook when we announced our December program questioning whether it's ethical to celebrate in the museum when all attention of the country is focused on Maidan.

I see now that you're collecting examples of posters and other items from Maidan--really contemporary Ukrainian folk art.  Are you documenting in photographs or actually collecting the work?  Why did you decide to undertake this?  

We are documenting in photographs. It's not easy to collect the work as what's interesting for our collection is still working and hangs on that Maidan "New Year's Revolutionary Tree."  The  Lviv Museum of History asked people to bring everything connected to EuroMaidan there for future exhibitions.

We decided to do it for two reasons - first - because you sparked me with this idea and second - a lot of materials - oral stories, songs, creativeness (even in making barricades or ways of warming and  ways of laying firewood), some art expressions are in fact urban contemporary folklore, which is quite new for us but very important. And of course they will become a part of Honchar collection.

And one blue sky question:  imagine Ukraine ten years from now.  What do you hope it will be? 

I don't just hope but believe that in ten years we will be a part of the EU, our government will be less corrupt and much more controlled by the strong civil society; our history museums will include in their exhibits the events of these days, and we will remember with great appreciation students who firstly sparked this revolution which helped us first to change ourselves, to feel us as one strong nation, and secondly change the country with this historical civilization choice. Nowadays, there are fears that Ukraine will be split in two parts or become another Belarus according to Putin and Kremlin strategies, but I do believe in the  better future of my nation and this confidence goes not from my idealistic inner self, but from hundreds of thousand twinkling eyes, hot hearts and real deeds of the Maidan protesters I witness and feel personally during these three weeks of the Revolution.     

Photos:
Top photo by Boghdan Poshyvailo for the Ivan Honchar Museum
Additional photos from the ЄвроМайдан – EuroMaydan Facebook page:
Maidan on December 14 by Alexander Dvoretskyi and others, uncredited, but if you know who deserves credit, please let me know!
 

What's Next, Donetsk?

 

It seems hard to believe that spring was just arriving in In late April, when my Hungarian friend and colleague Gyorgyi Nemeth and I spent just over a week in Donetsk, Ukraine, under the auspices of a Cultural Manager Residency with Eko-Art, a local NGO.  Now, as full summer has arrived here in the Catskills, I've finally found some time to share our thoughts on the visit.

Our goal was to learn as much as we could about the industrial heritage of the city, to share some ideas about how it might be presented, and to meet with as many interested people as possible.  You can read more about our experiences in previous blog posts (here and here) but we wanted to share widely our observations about potential opportunities and next steps.  This post will focus on the more intangible aspects of heritage and possible presentations; a following post by Gyorgyi will focus on the built environment.

What's Happening Now

The industrial heritage of Donetsk is amazing—pure and simple.  It represents a substantial opportunity for a Ukrainian city to take on aspects of history that currently do not receive much focus in other cities.  There are a number of  individuals and organizations working to preserve and share the history and heritage of industrialization in different ways:

• Izolyatsia is in a former insulation plant and has made a name for itself by working with both international and Ukrainian artists to create site-specific works.  Their 2011 exhibit by Cai Guo-Qiang was one of the most memorable experiences I’d had in a long time.  The creative staff has begun working to collect oral histories of the plant as time permits and the site and city continue to provide fertile ground for site-specific work.
• The Regional Museum has a chronological exhibition, done in the 1980s,  of the history of the region, including the industrial history.  The industrial exhibition is a bit dated but contains some intriguing objects and archival materials.  The collections and education staff at the museum were very generous with their time and very interested in hearing about other industrial history projects, asking us to share our perspectives on the museum and future possibilities.  2013 marks the second year of the Night of Industrial History in Donetsk, an evening that brings a number of organizations together to create events focused on the history and the Regional Museum is a key participant. 
• The Metallurgical Museum is located in a building just outside the gates of the metallurgy plant itself.  We understood from the director that there are plans for a new, expanded museum.  As currently composed, the Museum is a static, old-fashioned exhibition.
• While we were in Donetsk, the city government announced that they would be restoring the John Hughes' (Welsh founder of the metallurgical plant and the city) house (currently in private hands) for use as a museum, but no details were announced as to what the museum would be about or what it would contain.
• Journalist Yevgeny Yasenov is the primary author of http://www.donjetsk.com/.  Here he encourages the sharing of photographs and memories,  wanders into and documents the current state of historic spaces.  Yevgeny was kind enough to sit down with us for a bit in the Park of Forged Figures for a wide-ranging conversation (and thanks go, as for our entire Donetsk experience, for interpretation by Anya Kuzina).  We covered lots of ground, but of particular importance was the fact that, as everywhere in the former Soviet Union, there is no history and little motivation for communities to work together to preserve their own history.  In that way,  this and other online efforts, including one by Daniel Lapin who showed us Hughes house,  represent a way to reclaim history from scientists and scholars, many of whom still embrace an older way of thinking. 
• We found it challenging to find much scholarship about industrial history in Ukraine—artist Paul Chaney shared some information he’d found from UK historians and museums, focusing on John Hughes.
• And of course, Eko-Art, our sponsor for the visit, now has an expanded interest in the ways that industrial heritage can build a sense of community.

Industrial History is Everyone's Story

When we began working with students at the Lyceum, several people doubted that those particular students, headed towards university, would have any direct connections to mining or metallurgy.  But they did—every one had a family member or neighbor who had worked in the mines.  This reinforced to us that industrial history is everyone’s history in Donetsk.   In the student projects, they shared photographs, memories, archival materials and objects that together, can help to create a nuanced, multi-faceted understanding of the community’s past and help to inspire conversation about the future.

So What’s Next?

The opportunities are limitless and we hope that organizations work together to increase an understanding.  Gyorgyi will talk in a later post about what can be done to preserve the built industrial heritage, but here are just a few suggestions to begin preserving and sharing the city’s history .

• Involve young people in the process of collecting oral histories.  By training students to conduct oral histories, it expands the range of workers for inclusion and helps to build a broader understanding of the changing nature of industrial work in the city.  These individual stories help move the history from “the workers”  in a generic sense to a more complex, nuanced understanding that includes many voices and perspectives.  It shares the authority of telling that history, moving it from a single perspective to a broad, complex view.
• Begin a process of collecting material culture related to industrial work over the last fifty years (generally, not much is represented from 1960 on in museums).  Collect workers’ clothing, documents,  material from social clubs, and more.
• Develop outdoor exhibits and signage that draws attention to the history.  Students suggested posters on trams to attract an older generation (because they go so much slower than marshrutkas they are less crowded and people have time to read).   Interpretive panels could be on bus stops or pop-up exhibits in the city’s many well-kept parks.
• Building on the current web presence, expand the work of museums and local avocational historians on the web, in Russian, Ukrainian and English .
• Develop walking tours (either guided or with downloadable audio guides) that highlight the city’s industrial heritage.
• As Izolyatsia is already doing, continue to embrace ways in which contemporary art can lead to deeper explorations of the region's history.
• Work with the local tourism agency to establish industrial heritage as an asset.  Consider establishing an industrial history working group to share ideas and approaches within the city.
• Continue to expand international connections such as those already developed by Izolyatsia and the Regional Museum.   Consider partnering with Donetsk's sister cities including Pittsburgh, PA and Sheffield, England.  There’s no question that industrial historians and enthusiasts worldwide view Donetsk’s history as something of enormous interest.

And finally, citizens of Donetsk, embrace your industrial history the same way you embrace your football team!

Do You Need Every Single Thing?

Often when conversations about new museum initiatives come up,  the reason for inaction is that there’s too much to do and not enough funding.  I won’t argue with the fact that right now is a really stressful financial time for every organization, but I do want to propose that perhaps, local history museums own too many meaningless objects--and that paying attention to meaningful objects will give us more time, more money, and more connections to our community.  After all,  consider the BBC/British Museum collaborative project, A History of the World in 100 Objects, a connection my colleague Christopher Clarke made at the WNYAHA meeting last month at the same time I was working my way through the BBC audio.

A couple months ago, I was working on a planning report for a museum looking to be more targeted about their contemporary collecting efforts.  A tweet looking for other models sent me to the McLean County (Illinois) County Historical Society and Susan Hartzhold, their curator, was good enough to chat with me about their efforts.

This historical society is an old one, founded in 1892, and a relatively large one,  with 9 full-time staffers.  When collecting started, in 1892,  all the objects were collected with provenance—a way of enhancing and reinforcing a sort of ancestor worship, I suspect. Susan’s been on staff for 20 years and she describes the issue as “stuff vs. meaningful stuff.”  As an organization, they were facing decades of collecting from curators who, for whatever reason, didn’t ask the questions that would provide the context for the object.

Some historical societies and museums might just shrug their collective shoulders at that issue—but McLean County chose another direction.  For the last ten years, the staff has gone back and looked at every single object,  trying to find, through research,  what meanings there are for each object—who owned, who used it,  how it compares to others.   They have looked at 18000 objects and deaccessioned 6000 of them.

There was not a collecting policy until the 1970s and now, Susan says, they have become, as a staff, hard-nosed about the collections they hold.  They have gotten rid of things that qualify as a “cabinet of curiousities,”  had no provenance or were in poor condition.  They have established benchmarks (i.e. limitations on the number of something—like wedding dresses from the same period) and objects with provenance always trump objects with no provenance.

It’s taken ten years and is part of a larger strategic plan—but what’s equally important, the size of the collection still stands at 18,000 because the society has continued to collect, but have been much more focused and strategic in their collecting.

What is that new collecting like?

Much of it has happened through partnerships with community organizations.  A local Black History Project grew from a teachers’ project and the museum became a repository for materials that were collected documenting the African American community in the county. 

There is an active South Asian community and the museum worked for five years to more fully engage with them—a task that was helped substantially by bringing in a traveling exhibit on Asian Games and inviting groups to support the exhibit.  But the engagement didn’t end with the traveling exhibit, the museum continues to work with the South Asian community.

There is a growing Hispanic community in the county and the museum has begun efforts to engage with it.  Susan admits that it’s a challenging effort as the museum is located in a courthouse, which makes many new immigrants fearful. They are currently working towards a partnership with a community’s Hispanic group to develop programming  for an upcoming exhibit about traditional Mexican arts.

Susan makes the point that these community efforts take a long time, take patience.   She says, “We have to go to them, we have to say, what can we do for you?’   

And that’s a great take-away from this story.  Collecting and caring for collections is a time-consuming process—but a wasted one unless we really approach the process in a thoughtful way—both in terms of what we have and in terms of how we engage with our communities today.

Images and captions courtesy of the McLean County Historical Society, and many thanks to Susan for taking time to share her work.

Top: 

The nightgown was donated by a local woman, Jean, who was born in 1916.  When asked about the nightgown, Jean had a wonderful story -- She said that she was surprised by the gift, that it really wasn't her style.  She felt that her husband had purchased it for one of two reasons:

             1) He didn't know what to get her, so he let a sales clerk in the lingerie department at the local department store  "convince him that it was exactly what she wanted."  During that time period lingerie departments always had female sales clerks who helped both male and female customers. It wasn't unusual for clerks to help male customers pick out gifts for their wives or girlfriends.

             2) "He'd seen way too many Jean Harlow movies"

Jean said she only wore the nightgown once, but the story and the nightgown tells us so much about  the culture of the time period.

 Bottom:

The pottery was brought to America by  the Alvarez's family; purchased in Zacatecas, Mexico. The donor’s father came to Bloomington in 1972, her mother and 2 brothers followed in 1974.  She joined them in 1975.  Her parents returned to Mexico in 1995, but the rest of the family stayed.