2018's Baker's Dozen of Great Museum Experiences

It's time for this year's baker's dozen of museum experiences that have surprised me, moved me, or intrigued me throughout the year.  Sometimes I get a chance to blog about them during the year, sometimes I don't, but all of these stick with me. If you've met me in person this year, you've probably heard me talk about one or more of these--so here they are, in no particular order for you, dear readers!

A special shout-out to colleagues at all these places--and all the other places I visited this year-- who have created bits of magic and deep meaning from the raw materials of buildings, objects, and most importantly, human stories.

House of Leaves, Tirana, Albania
In my work these days,  I visit many museums and memorial sites that tell the story of repressive regimes--but this place really surprised me.  It told the story of only one part of Albania's past, sharing the details of the surveillance of virtually every part of Albanian society.  It raised questions about victims and perpetrators. about pride in work even when it's repressive, about the ways in which societies come to terms (or not) with the past.  All of these complicated questions revealed in imaginative exhibition design that used objects combined with numbers and graphs (doesn't sound exciting, does it?  but it was).  My post on the House of Leaves and two other Albanian sites is here.

Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, CT*
I began working with the Stowe Center in 2013 on the re-interpretation of Stowe's home to more effectively engage visitors with all parts of their mission: We preserve and interpret Stowe’s Hartford home and the center’s historic collections, promote vibrant discussion of her life and work, and inspire commitment to social justice and positive change.  But my new responsibilities at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience meant that I hadn't had time to see the new interpretation fully installed over the last year.  But this fall, I did, and a walk-through with Shannon Burke, their director of education and my dear partner throughout the process was an interesting retrospective.  We saw some of our good ideas fully installed and also remembered some bad ideas that, thankfully, never came to fruition.  It was still moving to me, even though I knew all the backstory.  But more importantly, this is the place that I use as an example when I talk about the power of prototyping.  We experimented and tried again, and again, and again, learning all the way.

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia*
I did get a chance to write about this experience and consider to think about how we can show care to our visitors.  Full post here.

Maison des Esclaves conversations with students,  Gorée Island, Senegal*
Since I began at the Coalition almost two years ago, I have been working with Senegalese and American colleagues on the revitalization of Maison des Esclaves, Africa's first World Heritage Site and a Coalition founding member. Every bit of it is a complicated, fascinating experience to be unveiled later this year. But this spring, I got to spend a few hours with the young women students at Lycee Mariama Bâ on Gorée to understand more about their interests and knowledge regarding the site.  These smart, lively young women had so many questions and observations for us.  One key finding was about the importance of evidence.  They wanted to know how we know what we know about the site.  But they were also incredibly thoughtful about the legacy of slavery in Senegal and of the critical place Maison des Esclaves can play in discussing today's human rights issues.  In a word, #girlsrule.

Memorial Museums, Vilnius, Lithuania
I came to Lithuania to co-teach at the Baltic Museology School but my colleague Vaiva Lankeliene was good enough to spend a beautiful June day with me in Vilnius.  It was a nice of contrasts:  the weather was perfect and Vilnius is lovely.  But Vaiva knew of my museum interests, so she put together a day where we visited museums and sites of atrocities related to both the Soviet and Nazi regimes. We had worked in Ukraine together on a report on Ukraine's cultural heritage, so we had some shared experiences to draw on--but Lithuanian history was new to me.  We visited the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights, the Memorial Complex of the Tuskulenai Peace Park, and the Memorial at Panerai and all along the way, talked about history and meaning, and who gets to tell history and who is left out and more and more.

Theater of the Senses, MK Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, Kaunas, Lithuania
As a part of Baltic Museology School, I had one of the most surprising experiences ever.  The Theater of the Senses introduces you to the works of MK Čiurlionis without using your sense of sight. The goal was not to have you touch the paintings, but to rather, somehow, feel the painting through your other senses.  You were blindfolded, with a guide the whole time, as you are led through the gallery.  I was hugged by mountains, smelled the forest, heard funereal music and more.  It required a huge level of trust and ability to let go, which proved not easy for me, but a lesson on so many levels.  I was unfamiliar with the artist's work, so when I went back through the gallery, trying to match his works with my experience absolutely deepened my understanding of the works.

La demanda inasumible. Imaginación social y autogestión gráfica en México, 1968-2018 Amparo Museum, Puebla, Mexico 
This fall, I had a few extra days to explore Puebla, Mexico after a conference, and,found myself at Museum Amparo.  This exhibit, The Unassumable Demand looks at posters and other graphic arts from the 1968 student movements in Mexico until today, emphasizing the collective, often anonymous nature of the work. In writing about the exhibition, the curators state,

The student movement of 1968 in Mexico is not part of the past, not only due to the commemorations and revisions that have taken place over the last 50 years or to the tributes to the victims of those traumatic events. During all this time, invoking the 68 meant to denounce that the problems to which the movement had responded were still valid –injustice, repression, impunity–and, at the same time, to claim that the forms of social organization and imagination experienced back then continued to be reinvented. The movement of 1968 not only raised a series of political demands that were never fully met, but made it through direct modes of action that were equally unacceptable to the regime. Until today.

Why did I like this exhibit so much?  First, the works were tremendous and compelling.  Second, the installation design felt temporary in just the right way. Third, I learned some history, and lastly, I left with a sense of urgency about change.

National Museum of Beirut, Lebanon
To be honest, my expectations of the National Museum in Beirut were a bit low.  I find national museums sometimes outdated and not very interesting. But Nathalie Bucher made sure I understood the meaning of the place in the country's recent past.  The museum was on the front line during the Civil War and still bears some bullet pockmarks on its front columns.  An introductory film that Nathalie made sure I watched told the story of how curators and the director did their best to protect this cultural heritage from destruction.  They encased the largest sculptures in cement coffins, hoping they would survive the decades-long war.  Many of them did, and they are now beautifully installed in the carefully restored building that both honors the history and for me, at least, gives hope for a future for Lebanon where so many different cultures have crossed and combined for centuries.

Boxer at Rest, Palazzo Massimo, Rome, Italy
I had time for a quick stopover in Rome and went back to Palazzo Massimo for a quick visit.  It's a lovely museum overall, right near the train station and well worth your time (also, key for Rome sometimes, never crowded).  But this Greek statue of a boxer at rest, from thousands of years ago, and excavated in Rome in 1885, thrilled me again.  It's both the statue itself, immensely human, but also the photo alongside,  showing the statue when found. An archaeologist on site that day wrote, "I have never felt such an extraordinary impression as the one created by the sight of this magnificent specimen of a semi-barbaric athlete, coming slowly out of the ground, as if awakening from a long repose after his gallant fights."

Kanal Museum, Brussels, Belgium
A place I hadn't heard of until I had a rainy day to kill in Brussels.  An extension of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, it's in the former Citroen factory, a huge space to explore.  I caught it right in the middle of its experimental phase:

From 5 May 2018 until 10 June 2019, following a radically experimental approach, the former Citroën garage will turn into a platform open to a reflection on the stakes of the museum of the future. Curated by Bernard Blistène, the director of the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, a multidisciplinary programme will seek to fill the spaces that were recently emptied of their functions and left in their current state. Many of the proposals seek to echo the identity of the site, but also its human and social history, tangible across the different workshops and offices and in the different fittings of this vast complex.

What did that mean?  Some of the installations I saw reflected on the building itself--installations about workers in workers' locker rooms.  Others were inspired by the space.  Others, by materials--an exhibition of artwork made from steel, as the factory once used. And in still other spaces,  I wasn't sure how the artworks connected, but it didn't matter.  The space felt informal--and fun to explore.  Lots of families were there--and how often would you feel welcomed to bring a toddler on their scooter. I hope the museum doesn't give up its experimental nature and continues to be a place where ideas are both welcomed and constructed.

War Childhood Museum, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina*
I visited this museum in the spring and then in June, also had a chance to speak on a panel at the Hrant Dink Foundation in Istanbul with Amina Krvavac, the director.  The museum sprang from an online request from founder Jasminko Halilovic for those who experienced the siege of Sarajevo (the longest siege in modern history) to share their experiences.  First a book, now a museum, it's the simplest, yet incredibly compelling of experiences.  One object, one story; another object, another story.  From these objects and stories, from things as simple as mended pants and canned goods, a visitor gains a fuller view of the war.  But more importantly, the museum has now expanded and works with children affected by the war in a number of places, develops educational materials related to those experiences, and provides us all with the space to rethink the idea of children in war--they are not merely victims, but distinct individuals whose creativity and courage can inspire all of us.

Casa Vicens, Barcelona, Spain 
It's the building.  While in Barcelona I visited several Gaudi buildings--and rediscovered that every tourist in Barcelona wants to see those same buildings.  But Casa Vicens,  outside of the center and newly opened in 2017,   It's Gaudi's first first house, and it was the kind of place, in both its exuberance and its concern for family life, that made you want to move in.  I loved exploring up and down, inside and out.

Shared Reconciliation Program, Kigali Genocide Museum, Kigali, Rwanda*
I did find time to write a blog post about this--one of the most compelling experiences I've ever had and a reminder that reconciliation is possible.

The experiences marked with an asterisk are members of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience.  I urge you to check out our work and to consider how your museum, memorial, or memory initiative can be involved.  Have questions--comment or email me!

If you're interested in knowing ALL the museums I visit, please check out my Google map.  As I finished this post and went searching for pictures, I thought about so many other museum experiences this year:  in Saint-Louis, Senegal; in Romania, in Newfoundland, and so many more--far too many to mention, but all of them in my memory.

If you want to share your own great museum experience of 2018, please comment below or elsewhere on social media (on Twitter or Instagram, tag @lindabnorris).   May 2019 bring even more compelling experiences, no matter where you are. 

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.

What AM I doing?

In a conversation with my great Take 5 colleagues the other day, we were talking about the shape of our days, our weeks and our months as independent professionals.  It's fairly often that I get asked questions about what I do, either by people interesting in becoming freelancers (by choice or not), people beginning their career and wondering how I got from there to here; and even people I met on airplanes, who ask things like, "so you pick the stuff on display?"  I thought I'd give a one-month (slightly longer) recap, to give a sense of what independent consulting means, at least in my case. Here goes:

In mid-July, I headed off to St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, where I'm in the final stages of an managing and curating an exhibit for the headquarters of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary.  An exhibit in a police headquarters is a first for me, and I'm working with an enthusiastic group of volunteers and designer Melanie Lethbridge.  I love St. John's, so I always make sure that my time there includes not only the archives, but also some walks out and about. This time, an evening spent watching whales cavort off Cape Spear, the easternmost point in North America.  Plus, time planning a new book project with Jane Severs, checking out the new exhibit at the Rooms, and a lively lunch with Jane and Kate Wolforth, talking all things interpretation.

In late July, I was a keynote speaker at the Association of Midwest Museums conference in Minneapolis.  I got to meet tons of great people, share some ideas on creativity and innovation, hear other great ideas, eat some amazing food and see the American Swedish Institute's beautiful new building and their historic house (plus, a chance to walk my creativity walk with some on-the-fly, totally unserious, historic house tour-giving.)  I also got a chance to catch up with Barb Wieser, an American friend from Ukraine and attend an event at the Ukrainian Cultural Center.  A big shout-out to the fabulous Paige Dansiger who captured me (above) and other speakers with her great on-the-spot sketches.

In between, and during travel, I'm catching up on emails, attempting to write blog posts, checking in with various clients, and thinking about new work including writing proposals that may or may not come to fruition. Hopefully each trip home includes a bank deposit, but not always.  See risk, below. Plus of course, finding time to enjoy summer in the Catskills--it's beautiful up here.

A relatively quick turn-around and I was off to Concord, MA, where I'm working on re-interpretation of The Old Manse for the Trustees.  The Old Manse is an historic house with a fascinating complex story, and this trip was to begin the prototyping process.  I did a training session with interpreters and some actual prototyping. It's always energizing to get feedback from visitors directly. Whether prototypes are successful or not, it's a process worth embarking on to deepen our thinking and challenge our assumptions.  On that same trip, one dinner with Rainey Tisdale, planning for a trip to Columbus, as well as catching up on everythin; and another dinner with a former Fulbrighter to Ukraine.  On the way home, I visited Fruitlands, a museum I'd heard about forever but had never been to.  If you're interested in museums I visit, I actually, and nerdily, maintain a Google map of those visits.

Again, a quick turn-around at home, enjoying summer, my husband, and a homemade music festival (thanks Gohorels!); also working to line up three international museums for my Johns Hopkins course, International Experiments in Museum Engagement, starting this week. Stay tuned for more on that.  I also agreed to serve as a Fulbright reviewer and Rainey and I began work on a journal article together.  Farmers' markets, walks in the cool evenings, and appreciating other people's gardens, all a part of home.  Plus of course, bills and invoices, emails, and other writing, and a conference call or two.

Off to the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center with a day-long review of our work together over the last several years, an appearance on public radio talking historic houses with Shannon Burke and Cindy Cormier, and making final plans for the exciting new visitor experience next year. Back home again after three days.  The week at home included work on the Old Manse, writing final text and reviewing designs for the Constabulary exhibit, JHU course prep, and prepping for a one-day workshop at the Ohio History Connection with Rainey. Plus a small bit of work for my ongoing client, Context Travel, commenting on a Paris walk framework and and a phone call about a possible speaking engagement.

That week also brought the start of an exciting new project.  With Lithuanian colleague Vaiva Lankeliene I am conducting an assessment of cultural heritage needs in Ukraine for the British Council/European Cultural Foundation.  There's much to dig in on and plans to make for a research visit in October. Thanks heavens for Google Translate, also getting used as I try to read French materials for another project possibility.

That Sunday we had an all-too infrequent Take 5 meeting here at my house.  Carolyn Macuga made the trek up a day early, so we jampacked Saturday with the Bovina Farm and Studio Tour and the Delaware County Fair.  Take 5 is always a wonderful time to reflect on our work, individually and collectively. Haven't checked out our website or signed up for the newsletter?  I hope you'll find them both useful and thought-provoking.  We talked ethics, book projects, SEOs, interpretation, and as always, ended with an infused vodka toast (this time, sour cherry, cucumber and basil, or blueberry).

An early morning departure once again (coupled with the desire that I could both live in a beautiful place and close to an airport), off to Columbus, Ohio,  A meet-up with Rainey and a fascinating tour of the Columbus Museum of Art, a place that has embraced creativity as a key part of their mission, followed by dinner with Megan Wood, one of my former mentees. The next day, two half-day workshops at the Ohio History Connection, trying out Creativity Karaoke (amazing job, all of you!), and some deep dives into embedding creativity into an institutional culture.

Back home again, to a day full of phone calls (not as common as it once was thanks to emails): brainstorming ideas with a potential new client; talking to a professional considering career changes; catching up on prototyping at the Old Manse with Caren Ponty, one of last year's JHU students who is helping out with the project;  and trying to puzzle out the laws of Ukraine regarding museums with Vaiva. I juggled scheduling video interviews long-distance  for the Constabulary exhibit and trying to plan a few blog posts. Ended the day in a Newfoundland way by trying out one of the recipes for the Colony of Avalon's Colonial Cookoff--reasonable success with apple fritters.

What's the point of this crazy narrative?

First, if you want to be a freelancer, think about what risks you really are comfortable with.  Everyone does it differently, but for me, it means serious multi-tasking (hence why I find typos in these blog posts!)  and more than a bit of risk. There's risk in bidding new projects, and continual uncertainty in a financial sense.  I love the challenge of all that, but it's not for everyone.

Second, reflect. I've spent more time this year reflecting on my own process and the ways in which I connect with clients and audiences.  The better I understand my own process, the better I can present my work to clients.

Third, gratitude.  My career has been a complicated, sometimes surprising and circuitous line of choices, but along the way, Drew and Anna, mentors, mentees,  Rainey, my Gang of Five, other colleagues, and clients have all helped me think more deeply about the work I do, how we might do it together and what risks we might take.  I try and pass my own experiences and knowledge forward, when people ask, but I will say, honestly, the thank-yous really matter.  I'm always willing to find time for coffee or a drink to meet new people, but I've been surprised this year when I made time for a couple young professionals who never followed up with a thank-you email.  Gratitude does matter.

Fourth, network, but gently.  I don't want to be in your face or in your social media feed constantly, but I do want you to think that I'm around, that I'm doing interesting things and that you might have a good project for us together. There's a ton of advice out there about your social media presence--I just blunder my own way and I know fellow consultants who have none, but make your own decisions about it.

Fifth, keep learning.  My work is predicated on my ability to learn new things:  new tools to help me work efficiently (hello, Slack), new ways of thinking about our work (on a regular basis, hello Nina Simon),  new places to understand (hello, Latvia),  new perspectives (hello #museumsrespondto Ferguson tweetchat) and new challenges (hello, Ukrainian cultural policy).  I still think of myself as an Emerging Museum Professional, because I always think I have more to learn.

If you're interested in working with me or pondering through a new project together, be in touch!

Surprise! Looking Back at 2015

Like most bloggers, I spent the last few weeks contemplating my year-end post. So much time, in fact, that the year ended! I was lucky enough to ring in the new with Drew, Anna and thousands of Romans and visitors to Rome overlooking the Coliseum. But now, time for some reflection. I visit lots of museums, so many in fact that I keep track on a google map (2014 and 2015 combined). I realized that the one thing I wanted most in a museum or historic site visit was to be surprised. So here, in roughly chronological order, are the museums, exhibits and historic places that surprised me or made me feel a sense of joy and importance in our work. I've written about some of these, but others are thought of and shared often in person but I just didn't find the time to write about.

Sherlock Holmes at the Museum of London
One of the smartest, most clever exhibits I'd seen in a long time, as befits the master detective. I loved the way historic objects and images were used to tell the story of Holmes in London. The place became real, but so did those 19th shoes used to explain Holmes' observation skills, and of course, that blue coat worn by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Dennis Severs House, London
Like magic. Entering at night, by candlelight, visiting in silence, voices rustle away as you enter a room. What is going on in this 18th century house? It was thrilling to see a historic house as an artistic creation by a single individual, with the ability to transport us to a different time with no more bells and whistles than candlelight, a room in disarray and a subtle sound track.

The Battlefields of the First World War, France
I would not have believed you if you told me one of my memorable historic site visits this year would be a visit to battlefields, on a chartered bus guided tour with college students, but it was. Why? First, a good, lively guide, with good knowledge and ability to judge his audience. Second, the people I was with. Watching students take in the enormity and waste of war in direct ways. Third, the physical places themselves. To walk in a trench now softened and green, to see a bomb crater, to read the names and names and names at a memorial. And lastly, to have a bit of meaning-making come full circle. We stopped at the Beaumont-Hamel Memorial, commemorating the first day of the Battle of the Somme when an entire Newfoundland regiment was virtually wiped out. The centennial is approaching and there are many commemorative efforts underway in Newfoundland. This summer, at a small outport town. I happened to have a conversation about visiting there. "You did?" said an older man, "my father lost an arm there." All of a sudden that battle was even more real, echoing down the years.

Museum Karel Zeman Prague
"Why do I make movies? I'm looking for terra incognita, a land on which no filmmaker has yet set foot, a planet where no director has planted his flag of conquest, a world that exists only in fairy tales." Karel Zeman

Pure joy. Just steps away from the Charles Bridge, the museum focuses on the work of pioneering Czech animator Karel Zeman. Using the hand-drawn early 20th century animations as a design starting point, combined with hands-on activities that explain the special effects, this museum turned our group of serious adults into a group deep into serious play. A perfect match of creative content, design and interpretation.

Context Travel Walks in Berlin, Prague and Budapest
Context Travel has been a great client for three years now and as result I've been on a number of their scholar-led small group deep dives into art and history. With them I've learned about art in the Vatican, Revolutionary Paris, the Golden Age of Amsterdam and even the food of Istanbul. But this year, four walks in these three Central European cities really stood out for me. The walks were on Jewish history and the Berlin Wall in Berlin, and the Communist era in both Budapest and Prague for three main reasons: a strong sense of place, even when some of the elements of a particular place had vanished. As I stood at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, a great docent helped us understand that the site had once been surrounded by the buildings in which the bureaucratic apparatus of Fascism functioned as a killing machine. Two, a sense of real people's history.

It was on the same walk that I first encountered artist Gunter Demnig's Stolpersteins, or stumbling blocks. The size of a cobblestone, these brass plaques are installed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims with just a simple name and date. You can now find them in many European cities-I saw them most recently in Rome last week.

But the most important factor in making these walks memorable were the docents' own stories. It always a fine line to work between over sharing and just right, but I'll long remember the story of one docent's brother participating in the 1968 protests, another sharing his story of being brought up in West Berlin when it seemed the height of teenage rebellion to go piss on the wall after a night of drinking. In Budapest, our docent, raised in Romania, helped us compare personal lives under regimes.

National Art Museum, Kyiv, Ukraine

Two exceptionally smart exhibits here last spring demonstrated the value of deep thinking about museum collections and the history of how museums have thought about the objects they hold. Heroes looked at art in the museum collection categorized as "hero" from Lenin to poets to heroic workers while another exhibit examined those works that had been blacklisted by various regimes and the roles (sometimes heroic and sometimes not) that museum staff played in categorizing and sometimes safeguarding such works. We have much to learn from examining our own histories. The museum's innovative director, Maria Zhadorzha, departed at the end of 2015; I only hope the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture has the initiative to name an equally talented director to lead the museum's exceptional team.

The Exploratorium, San Francisco and The Oakland Museum, Oakland
Paired together for two reasons: one, the same trip west, but two, places whose reputation precedes them. It's great to see that places you read about live up to their reputations. Great experiences both places but at the Exploratorium the surprises were how welcoming the exhibits were to adult experimentation and play and how they're expanding beyond the physical sciences to take on more complicated topics. In Oakland, the talk-back labels were genius, and visiting on a Friday community night showed that museums can attract broad segments of visitors, if they really make an effort.

The New Founde Land pageant, Trinity, Newfoundland
This seemed possibly hokey to me, and parts of it were. But the other hand, a musical theater production that moves the audience from place to place within a historic village while providing us all with a bit of Newfoundland's complicated history, proved unexpectedly moving.

Scandale:  Vice, Crime and Morality, 1940-1960,  at the Montreal History Center
This shouldn't have been a surprise to me because the exhibit Scandale was curated by one of my 2014 mentees, Catherine Charlebois, and our conversations that year often ranged widely over the issues of developing creative exhibitions. The exhibit uses oral histories as a framework, installed in all sorts of ways: a nightclub tables, in mug shots, at a card game. There were not many objects in the exhibit so, purposefully so, the oral histories and photographs do the storytelling work. Most surprising: walking in a recreation of a prostitute's room and seeing a downward video projection of a couple on the bed!

Lessons Learned
The lessons for me in all these surprises? Experimentation, a sense of humor, a deep commitment to place, and most of all, the sense in exhibit and historic site interpretation that our complicated human natures can make almost every story compelling and moving. I'm grateful to my clients, old and new, who embrace our creative process together.

What will surprise me in 2016? I've already got a few museum visits already completed this year and it's only the first week of January, so I know there will be surprises coming. In your work, consider making a resolution that surprise and joy are a part of your next project. Surprise me! What could you do differently?

(And please forgive the somewhat wonky posting and formatting. There's a learning curve on my new iPad!)

Posted with Blogsy

Reflections: Moving Forward

We rarely take time to deeply reflect on our own museum experiences.  In this post, 2015 mentee Susan Fohr of the Textile Museum of Canada shares the impact of an exhibition in Western Canada. Her reflections are a great reminder of both the importance of regularly immersing ourselves as visitors and equally, the challenge of evaluating the meaningful experiences of our visitors.  After all, if Susan had not written this post, how would the Art Gallery she visited know of the deep impact the show made?

The longer I work as a museum professional, the less time I seem to dedicate to being a museum visitor.

As a museum educator engrossed in thinking about interpretation and pedagogy, I find that too often I spend my time at other institutions employing my critical eye, trying to understand the motivation for certain interpretive choices rather than enjoying an exhibition in its own right. As museum professionals, visiting other museums and questioning other institution's practices is an important part of our professional development; however, it can be refreshing to visit an exhibition and enjoy it in its own right and be open to the unexpected conversations to which it invites you to participate. These can often be the experiences that resonate with us the longest, as happened to me this past spring.

In April, I traveled to Regina to participate in the Canadian Art Gallery Educators annual symposium. The symposium was hosted by the Mackenzie Art Gallery to take advantage of opportunities to discuss Indigenous representation and engagement, a conversation that the gallery was cultivating through its current project Moving Forward, Never Forgetting.

"Moving Forward, Never Forgetting creates a space for intercultural dialogue and storytelling. The exhibition and related events encourage sharing, empathy, and deeper understanding of what it means for Indigenous and non-Indigenous to co-reside in these territories.... Presenting the personal expression of Indigenous artists alongside collaborations with non-Indigenous friends who share this territory, the exhibition addresses our complex histories in a spirit of creative conciliation. In addition, Moving Forward, Never Forgetting offers a gathering place where people of different backgrounds can meet to gain a better understanding of each other through art-making and conversation."

Having already heard much about the exhibition and its related programming from a colleague at the Mackenzie Art Gallery, I had already had a sense that this exhibition could be challenging and transformative.  I felt it was important to experience the exhibition on my own before we began our conversations as part of the symposium, ensuring a personal rather than an intellectual response to the works of art. The first day of the symposium concluded with an invitation to attend a performance of music and spoken word by Métis artists, but first I decided to spend some time in the exhibition, which was located on the same floor of the museum as the performance. Although rounds of applause could be heard from the adjacent gallery and there was additional traffic in the exhibition due to the special event, I did feel that I had the time and space to contemplate each work of art while also feeling like I was participating in a larger project of building dialogue and community.

I began my exploration of the exhibition in a large open gallery with a high ceiling; many of the artworks shared this same open space, whether they were hanging from the ceiling, arranged on the floor or more traditionally displayed on the wall. Smaller rooms were carved out of this larger space to house specific artworks. Three adjacent more narrow galleries housed additionally works of art. One of these galleries offered space for visitors to process and reflect what they had already experienced in the exhibition; tea and cookies were available, as well as books and catalogues for further research. Story keepers, a new position created by the art gallery, were present to assist visitors in learning about the stories behind the art works, and to collect stories from visitors. This was also a programming space during many of the participatory programs that were an important part of the project. The artworks that resonated with me the most reflect the range of approaches and voices that were included in the project. Illuminatis/Inabe (2013) by JaimieIsaac consisted of a series of light boxes of archival photographs from a residential school attended by the artist's relatives. One image featured a group of Catholic nuns accompanied by First Nations children holding knitting needles. This work forced me to acknowledge the role in which positive forces within my own life – my faith tradition and a hobby I practice to unwind – have been used as a tool of assimilation and destruction.

The dimly lit room that featured Adrian Stimson’s Sick and Tired (2004) was a space that was difficult to remain in when one learned that the metal bed frame and windows that made up the installation came from a residential school; this piece  brought to mind stories of residential school abuse from the news (in particular through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission) and contemporary Canadian literature. These works were an important acknowledgement of the difficult history of the country of which I am proud to be a citizen, a history very different from my own experience of what it means to live in this place.Other works moved me in other ways. Leah Decter and Jaimie Isaac's official denial (trade value in progress, 2010) invites visitors to comment on two statements made by former prime minister Stephen Harper. In June of 2008, he issued an official “Statement of apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools;” the following year, he stated in a speech at the G20  that Canada has "no history of Colonialism.” These comments are then stitched onto Hudson's Bay blankets at a series of Sewing Actions, a means of empowerment which resonated with my own personal interests in textiles.  

In Skeena Reece’s video Touch Me (2013), an Aboriginal woman (the artist), bathes a non-Aboriginal woman (another artist whose work is featured in the exhibition). The intimacy and emotion displayed by the two women was deeply moving, and exemplified that message of conciliation that was a key message of the exhibition. The use of the word conciliation rather than reconciliation is an important distinction.  As co-curator David Garneau writes elsewhere, conciliation is motivated by a desire to bring into harmony while acknowledging  and living with irreconcilable histories.

The opportunity to tour the exhibition with David Garneau and co-curator Michelle LaVallee, the conversations about the exhibition with colleagues at the conference and further reading I have done since the conference on Indigenous history and experience in Canada have contributed to the deeper impact that this exhibition has had on me. However, I do think the personal connections I made to art in the exhibition provided the key motivation for exploring the ideas presented by the exhibition in greater depth. I am still unpacking the implications of this experience on my identity as both a Canadian citizen and a museum educator, but I am excited to see how my investigations unfold over time.

Top photo credit:  Don Hall

Re-Engaging Your Community

Today's post is from another of my mentees this year, Shakia Gullette.  Here, she shares her experiences in the work of rebuilding her museum's community connections.

Over the last two years, my museum,  the Banneker- Douglass Museum,  located in the heart of Annapolis, Maryland, has made great strides in creating an atmosphere that reconnects the museum with the community in which we serve. Unlike most museums, we share a unique bond to a local grassroots movement that united a group of dedicated individuals who fought tirelessly to save our current location from demolition.Together the groups underwent petitions, picket lines, and court battles in order to save the historic building. In Annapolis and its surrounding areas, it was common to see the “Save Mount Moriah” t-shirts, bumper stickers, and posters produced by this mighty collation who demonstrated their dedication to the cause through unity in numbers. During the early years of the museum, community members continued to show support by hosting bake sales, meetings of support and essentially made the museum the nucleus for operations.

Over the years, a great deal of changes have been made. Some of the dedicated community leaders have since passed away and the museum lost its community based appeal. In response to this issue, we began our transition to re-assert ourselves as a community based organization during our 30th anniversary in 2014. For us, this has been a task that we had to approach delicately. Our first step in creating a community engaged atmosphere was to create exhibitions that involve the community directly. The last two exhibitions that we have created have relied on the use of items that belong to community participants. In order to gain the trust of the community once more, we had to make a conscious effort to display exhibitions that the community really wanted to see.

In this post I’ll talk about the first two steps that were taken by my museum in hopes that we can inspire a conversation on what it takes to engage the community in which our museums represent. Community engagement is an art that I have learned takes a great deal of finesse and compromise to achieve the ultimate goal—not just establishing trust or in our case regaining it.

Step One- Test the waters

When it comes to planning programs and exhibitions, sometimes our organizations go with what works and don’t necessarily respond to the needs of the community. I know, some of you have a board to answer to and that sometimes hinders us. What I’ve found helpful is to put out a call for participation to see if there is any interest in your topic. Typically, the call goes out through word of mouth, email blast, or in some cases through the members of your board. Your call for participation should be very clear and concise. Your mission statement might be your starting point in a call for objects for a temporary exhibition. For example, my museum is the state of Maryland’s official repository of African American history and culture, my guidelines will always be 1.) something which highlights African American Marylanders and 2.) whether or not he/she is or was a Maryland state resident. Testing the waters also lets the community know that you value their opinions and welcome their participation.

Step Two- Accept or Reject

For some of us, step two is very similar to the process of selecting a piece of art for a juried art show. A juried art show involves a panel of judges who select a piece of art to be showcased in an exhibit based on an their application entry. Step two was an important step for me because this was my first opportunity to meet an interested community member. The initial meeting is crucial as it sets the stage for the beginning of a potential lending relationship. Here, I always try to assure the person that I am grateful for their participation and that I respect their object and its significance to the topic. For example, when we put together a community art show, we not only invited artists but we also solicited the participation of collectors. One of our community collectors collected an array of different objects including vintage lunch boxes, baseball cards, dolls, books and a lot of cool items. This participant was an older woman and I made the trip to her house to see the objects that she wanted to display. I was very interested in the lunch boxes, as those were the first things that she showed me. I guess she figured if I was willing to accept the lunch boxes into the show she would be able to trust me with a different set of objects that she felt comfortable with. To my surprise, a few days later she called me and described to me two first edition Readers Digest magazines which showcased the beginning of Alex Hayley’s epic novel Roots: The Saga of An American Family. If I hadn’t shown all of her items respect, there was a possibility that she would have never felt comfortable enough to mention that she was sitting on a gold mine! In the end it worked out for us and for our community lender. We were able to reconnect the legacy of Alex Hayley and Kunte Kinte with the city of Annapolis and for those newcomers our community lender’s objects started a new conversation. 

These two steps were just the tip of the iceberg for a process that will take time to finalize. As I reflect on these two steps I would like to hear from you. What steps have you taken to engage your community in either exhibitions or programs at your institution? What were some of your pitfalls? Lets talk about it and see how our experiences can help one another.

Who's Your Hero? Where's the Power?

This past week, in Kyiv, Ukraine, I had the opportunity to walk through two quite incredible exhibits at the National Art Museum of Ukraine, with deputy director Yuliya Vaganova.  I'll combine the two into this one post but both deserve deep attention on their own.

Heroes:  An Inventory is a project that began several years ago, supported by the Goethe Institute of Germany, with the curatorial staff at the museum working with German curator Michael Fehr.  The project began in the simplest of ways:  the staff took an inventory, in every department, of every piece of art that was classified as "hero."  More than 650 works had some identification as “hero”, “saint”, “martyr”, or “heroic deeds."  180 of those works were selected for the exhibition.   Although this project was begun before the Maidan protests began; the revolution, annexation of Crimea and the war in the East, have made heroes a topic of significant conversation again.  The exhibition's thoughtful text labels (hooray, in English as well!) encourage that conversation.  In part, the introductory label says,

For us, therefore, this exhibition is much more than a self-reflection; it is an experiment which results will have a significant impact on the reorganization of the permanent collection and also might push the community to reflection.

The exhibit begins with a gigantic, non-removable marble statue of Lenin, hidden behind a wall for the decades since independence.  Organized in a number of different categories, from heroes of labor to a room full of Stalin and Lenin (displayed as in a storehouse, in the top picture); to heroes of war; traditional Ukrainian heroes like Cossack Mamai; cultural heroes (the smallest group represented in the collection, Yuliya told me);  religious heroes or saints; of course, poet and writing Taras Shevchenko.   Each gallery included an interpretive text panel as well as an enlarged quote on the topic. The exhibition ends in a three-part way.  The first is the most recent portrait of a hero in the collection:  a Chernobyl liquidator.  Then, a room that's used for programs and conversations--diving deeper into both scholarly and emotional aspects of heroism, and finally, a small wall featuring individual stories of personal heroes (and not surprisingly, moms and dads are important.)

Yuliya shared several important points about the exhibition development process that I think hold lessons for us all.  First, that this was really a collaborative process, working across all the disciplines and collections of the museum, from ancient art to today.  Second, that the collaboration with Michael Fehr was, as she said, the first international project that was not a colonial one, but really a partnership.    Third, in comparison to the way most people visit museums in Ukraine, these were galleries of conversation.  Everyone was talking to their family or friends as they went through the exhibit.   And lastly, that the director of museum education said that it was the first exhibition that the museum had done that really didn't need an excursion with an expert to understand.  That visitors, all visitor, could make their own meaning from the creative, thoughtful text, object selection and installation.

The second exhibition, Spetsfond, curated by Yuliya Lytvynets is a fascinating look at our own profession, within the context of the Soviet Union.  To quote the museum,

In the National Art Museum of Ukraine (then the State Ukrainian Museum) Special secret storage was formed in 1937-1939. It contained works from Kharkiv, Odesa, Kyiv, Poltava and from special storages of Ukrainian art exhibition created by so called enemies of the people. They were formalists, nationalists, those who, according to party ideologists, "distorted reality" and threatened the existence of the "new society". Most of the names and artworks were forgotten for a long time in the history of Ukrainian art. Thus, the works of Oleksandra Ekster, Oleksandr Bohomazov, Davyd Burliuk, Viktor Palmov, Oleksa Hryshchenko, Onufrii Biziukov, Neonila Hrytsenko, Semen Yoffe, and lots of others were transferred to the Special storage of the NAMU.

This special storage was open only to the director and the KGB.  The works were removed from their frames and rolled away.  The exhibition includes not only the works (some of which are head-shakingly normal) but also the records.  Because after all, we are recordkeepers.   A collections book noted the works that were to be stored away; it sometimes noted the fate of their creators ("artist arrested").  Also in the exhibit are some of the paperwork about the "trials" of the artists and the "reasons" for the works censorship.   Interestingly, at one point, a passionate and courageous staff hit upon a solution of classifying the works with a prefix of 0, denoting that the works had no significant artistic merit--which then meant that nobody bothered to look at them to decide if they should be destroyed.  And so they survived.

During my time in Ukraine these last weeks, I had many conversations with my colleagues about the new de-communisation laws passed by the Parliament. The laws are so vague as to be unclear about the impact on museums but they do ban Nazi and Communist symbols and, as I understand, define new heroes for Ukraine's history. As I walked through both exhibits I was incredibly moved and heartened by a museum who, though literally on the frontline of the Revolution last year, continues to build new ways of thinking about the past. History museums could--and should--take a lesson from this art museum's work.

Fundamentally, I realized that these exhibits are both about power.  On the one hand, they both share the horrible power seized and exercised by the Soviet state; a legacy that continues to shape this entire region.  But on the other hand, I see other, more hopeful uses of power here as well:

• the power of collaboration
• the power of storytelling
• the power of visitors, making their own choices and having their own conversations
• the power of documentation
• the power of objects
• the power of museum staff
• and most importantly,  the power of museums to be centers of civic engagement.  

We only need to decide to take the power in our own hands.