What Next? A Month of Reflection

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

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

Museums Can Be Essential

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

Support and Action

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

Serious Play

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

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

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

Read More

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

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

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

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

Talk More, Listen Even More

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

Advice from the 20th Century

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

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

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

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

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

Museum people, we have work to do.

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

What Do These Five Places Have in Common?

This week,  16 graduate students clicked open their courses in the Museum Studies Program online at Johns Hopkins University and found that they'll be getting to know museums in these five places around the globe.  Those students, five museums and I are embarked on a course I'm teaching called International Experiments in Community Engagement.  In the course I hope we'll explore the how and why of community engagement but also gain deeper understandings about working collaboratively across cultures (and time zones!) in creative ways.  I hope to share our learning with you here during this semester.

I get asked often about international work and definitely my own international path is a bit unusual, but I've learned a few lessons in addition to becoming a skilled suitcase packer. The first one is about the importance of connecting.  It's definitely a bonus that colleagues anywhere can find me here, or on Twitter, or LinkedIn.  But those initial connections are only a start--it's the building of them that matters.  So, to begin my own reflection on this experiment, I thought I'd share how I came to meet the five great colleagues and their museums that are joining in.

Eugene Chervony, National Museum of Folk Architecture and Life, L'viv, Ukraine.  Regular readers of the blog have probably already met Eugene here and seen his museum, which I most recently visited this spring.  I meet Eugene in 2010 when he came to a two day workshop on visitor-friendly museums I did in his city; after the first day he admits thinking I was nuts, but he returned the next day, and we've been friends and colleagues ever since,  doing everything from cheese-maker visits in the Carpathians to speaking at AAM in Seattle.

Jane Severs, Colony of Avalon,  Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.  I met Jane when I somewhat randomly submitted a bid to the Association of Heritage Industries in Newfoundland and Labrador to do a series of workshops, mostly because I thought it would be great to get to know Newfoundland.  I got the bid, did the workshops, have presented at NCPH with Jane and most recently, had dinner with her just a few weeks ago.  Jane's a board member of the Colony, but also an interpretive planner and we always have much to talk about! We're even hatching a new project.

Lisa Gay Bostwick, Midt-Troms Museum, Norway.  Lisa found me.  She's an American working in far north (above the Arctic Circle) Norway and responded to a post seeking participants on Facebook. She's been a commenter and liker of FB posts so she and her museums' work was a bit familiar to me. It was exciting to have her volunteer!

Marco Columbier, Casa de la Literatura Peruana, Lima, Peru.  I wanted to have museums from everywhere, not just Europe,  but my own connections weren't strong in several parts of the world. My own Facebook feed showed that Fabiana Chiu-Rinaldi, a New York colleague and friend had just finished facilitating some of the presentations at the Peruvian parts of this year's Smithsonian Folklife Festival.  She must have connections, I thought, and she did--introducing me via email to Marco and his museum.

Kenji Saitome, Suita City Museum, Japan.   Interestingly, the connection to Kenji came from two different directions.  I reached out to AAM for connections and Adam Johnson of their international programs reached out to ICOM-Japan for me, and at the same time, I asked Katrin Hieke of Germany, active in ICOM for suggestions and she also suggested Kenji.  (for those of you who believe social media produces only weak ties, Katrin and I first met when I responded to a tweet, which has resulted in many great conversations, in person and online!)

What are the take-aways from creating our far-flung experiment?  First, seek out opportunities.  I met Eugene because I applied for a Fulbright to come to Ukraine; I met Jane because I submitted a long-shot bid.  Second, maintain those connections.  It's really easy to say, oh, I don't have time to be on email or Facebook or whatever.  For me, I make that time.  I try to keep up on the news (both museum news and generally)  from Newfoundland and Ukraine (and lots of other places) and to connect directly on a semi-regular basis.  Next, be generous.  If someone asks for advice or a connection, I do my best to make that happen.  And I always appreciate the generosity of others (these five particularly!) Lastly, remember that connections are always a broadening circle.  (if in doubt, remember Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon). That broadening circle now also includes those 16 students, who bring their own knowledge, communities and expertise to the experiment.  Special thanks also go to Phyllis Hecht and Sarah Chicone of JHU for their advice, help, and willingness to move this experiment forward as a course.  So we begin!

11 Questions to a Museum Blogger on the Day After

Jamie Glavic, one of the co-organizers of Museum Blogs Day yesterday tagged me with 11 Questions for a Museum Blogger (you can see her responses here on her blog Museum Minute) that originally came from Blogstockchen).  I didn't quite make my answers in time for the day, but here they are.  I loved learning about blogs to keep an eye on, and thanks to Jamie and Jenni Fuchs at Museums140 for a great day.

1.  Who are you and what do you like about blogging?

I’m Linda Norris, and despite a pretty considerable amount of time in the field, still think of myself as an emerging museum professional.  I live in a tiny village in upstate New York and have done everything in museums, from working at a children's museum, giving tours at a wine museum, running a small historical society, developing exhibits and interpretation, heading up a museum service agency, and now working independently. I blog as a way of keeping conversations going.  Sometimes those conversations are just with myself, sometimes with museums I’ve visited, with ideas, and most of all, with you, my colleagues.  It’s been incredible when those conversations (like with Jasper Visser last month) have turned into in-person ones.  I love it when blog readers come up at conferences and introduce themselves to talk. In our book, Rainey Tisdale and I talk about creative people being open, generous and connected--the blog lets me be all that.  I also like that I can do it in my pajamas.

2.  What is the most popular post on your blog?

The most popular posts often seem to be those where I’m just an observant museum visitor, reporting on what I see and learn from big places. Recently a post about the Rijksmuseum’s great labels and handouts got great traffic, as have posts on the Minnesota Historical Society’s inventive labels and a wonderful docent at the Getty Museum.

3. And which post on your blog is your personal favorite?

I’ve been blogging a long time (since 2007) so picking one favorite is hard as so much of my blogging is so tied up with my own memories and experiences.  But as I look back, my favorite ones are from my first months in Ukraine as a Fulbright Scholar, where now, I can really see myself trying to puzzle my way through an entirely different culture and way of thinking about museums.  You can find those in January-May, 2009 if you’re interested.

  

4.  If you had a whole week just to blog: which subject would you like to thoroughly research and write about?

I am just a ditherer, with so many things I’d like to spend more time on. Currently these questions on my short list:

• Are museum studies programs producing the next generation of great, creative museum professionals?  And if not, why not?
• How can service organizations inspire their member museums in addition to serving as a place for information and resources?
• And the really big one—how can museums be more meaningful in their communities, particularly in communities undergoing rapid change or disruption?

5. If you could ask anyone at all to write a guest post for your blog (you can be as utopian as you like), who would you chose and what would you ask them to write about?

Hmmm…I think I’d ask some great storytellers to write about narrative.  I’d love Hilary Mantel or Adam Johnson, both of whose books enthralled me;  or alternatively, Wes Anderson, about how he creates entire visual worlds in his films and how that might relate to what we do.

6. What has been your most memorable museum experience? 

Definitely impossible to choose. 

7. What was the last museum you visited and how was it?

Fascinating, unexpected, slightly impenetrable—my last museum visit was to the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul.  I’m still pondering on how to write a blog post about it.

8. Share your favorite photo with us that you took at a museum.
A couple different ones (do you get the sense I have a hard time making choices?)  At the top of the post, boys on a school trip at the Louvre filling out worksheets on nudes;  and center, someone role-playing at the DDR Museum in Berlin.  I still remember Katrin whispering to me upon seeing him, "Look, he makes himself physically like a bureaucrat on the phone!"  Totally immersed, solitary, in the moment.  

9.  If time and money were not an issue, which museum in the world would you most like to visit?

I’ve been really lucky that my work life over the last couple years has led me to so many amazing places around the world—but the museum I would most like to visit is one that surprises me—so I won’t know until I stumble across it.

10. There are many big and famous museums, but which is your personal favourite ‘hidden gem’?

At the moment, Museum of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles and Teyler's Museum, in Haarlem, the Netherlands.

11. Do you have any insider tips on any of the museums you have visited or blogged about?

Here’s a tip I learned from my colleagues at Context Travel who provide in-depth walks of many of the world’s great museums.  Go the opposite direction from everyone else.  Sounds silly, but it’s amazing how often you can find galleries with a bit of space for solitary reflection when you reverse against the crowd.  And the second:  if you travel at all, an ICOM membership is a fabulous thing—admits you free almost everywhere. (and it’s also great to be a part of that world-wide community).

And passing it forward, I'm tagging three more bloggers I admire:  Gretchen Jennings, Anne Ackerson and Nicole Deufel in the hopes they'll respond as well.  Here's your task: 

• Answer the eleven questions – you can adapt them a little to fit your blog, if you like.
• Include the BEST BLOG image in your post, and link back to the person who nominated you (that would be me, by the way, or more specifically, this blog post).
• Devise eleven new questions – or feel free to keep any of these ones here if you like them – and pass them on to how ever many bloggers you would like to.

Here's my questions for you. 

1. Who are you and what do you like about blogging?
2. What search terms lead people to your blog?
3. Which post on your blog is your personal favorite?
4. If you had a whole week just to blog: which subject would you like to thoroughly research and write about?
5. If you could ask anyone at all to write a guest post for your blog (you can be as utopian as you like), who would you chose and what would you ask them to write about?
6. What was your first museum job?
7. What was the last museum you visited and how was it?
8. Share your favorite photo with us that you took at a museum or historic site.
9. If time and money were not an issue, which museum in the world would you most like to visit?
10. What's the biggest lesson you learned from a failure?
11. If you could work anywhere, what museum would you like to work in?
    
     

Join the Conversation: Museums, Politics and Power

This week, amidst plans for both Thanksgiving turkey and IMLS grant applications, I'm very pleased to announce the launch of a new project I'm involved in:  the blog, Museums, Politics and Power.  Katrin Hieke and Kristiane Janeke from Germany and Irina Chuvilova from Russia,  and I have initiated this blog with support of the ICOM committees in Russia, the U.S. and Germany as a run-up to the tri-national conference, Museums & Power in St. Petersburg, Russia in September, 2014.

Our plan is to use it together with you, our colleagues around the world, for networking and conversation about issues that concern all of us. We imagine and hope that the blog will be useful both to conference participants and to those whose attendance at the meeting is not possible for any reason, still want to creatively participate, spur ideas forward, and use the virtual networking opportunities.   Guest bloggers on any related topic are enthusiastically invited, and you can submit a blog post in English, German or Russian.   Have an idea for a session proposal?  (some travel funding may be available) --the blog can be a place to share your initial thoughts for feedback from colleagues?  Can't attend the conference but have an issue in your museum or nation that you want to discuss in this forum?  Please do.

You will also find us on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #museumspolitics. We're looking forward to the conversation!

What I've Learned from Working with a For-Profit Company

Tomorrow, I head off for another trip to Rome working with Context Travel, a company that's been a client for the past year.  It seems like a great time to share what I've learned from working with them.  Context is based in Philadelphia and they "provide an in-depth alternative to traditional tours. We are a network of architects, historians, art historians, and other specialists who organize walks in 21 cities around the world—and counting."  Actually, I think the number is at 25 or so by now,  all of which except the newest, Amsterdam, I've visited in the past year.  (and by the way, if you're traveling, check out their walks!)

My consulting with them has been framed around ways to develop and share tools for better walks for both docent managers and docents (the scholars who give the walks).   But as you might expect, although the work--professional development--has many similarities to the work I do with museums,  I think the way the company operates provides some useful lessons for all of us in the non-profit world.  Here, in no particular order,  a few things I've learned from the owners, Paul Bennett and Lani Bevacqua, and their tremendous staff working in Philadelphia,  London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Istanbul and Shanghai.

Storytelling matters in every aspect of work that engages the public.  Like museums, Context walks are, at their best,  magnetic experiences.  That means it's not just a litany of facts, but a clear, compelling story.  But it's not just the walks that are stories--it's every part of the work. Everyone on staff is asked to be a storyteller, in all sorts of ways--from tweet-sized storytelling to longer blog posts.  What would happen if we asked everyone in our museums to think the same way?

Everybody can pitch in but everybody can solve problems.  From the rotating 24 hour emergency phone to too many other tasks to mention,  staff feel free to ask, across the globe, for help when they need it.  But everyone also knows that they are empowered to solve problems as they arise.

Make a decision and move forward.  My first real work was at the staff retreat last year and at dinner the first night, Lani asked what I thought of it.  I ventured some suggestions that I thought would help focus the work.  The next day those were tried out.  Not the next month, not after a committee studied them,  not the next fiscal year.  The next day.  It's been great to work with a client who listens to an idea (some considerably more complicated than meeting management) and says, "okay.  let's do it."

Always be scanning for the newest, free technologies that can make your life easier. When I began with the company, we Skyped;  now it's Google Hangout.  Why the change?  I suspect it's because it's easier to put in the calendar and click right through.  Still free.  But if a new tool doesn't work for you, move on.  Don't continue to invest time and money (remember, the tool is free--don't make it costly).

Focus on what really matters.  The company pays attention to lots of metrics,  but the one that impresses me the most is client happiness.  I'd love to see more museums think about not just what our visitors and our communities might be learning,  but how happy--not just satisfied, but how happy-- we make them.

And finally, as befits the company's Roman roots,  I've learned that any meeting is made better by beginning with espresso or ending with an aperitivo.  Thanks Paul, Lani, Carolyn, Whitney, Sara, Liz, Petulia, Lily, Courtney, Genevieve, Sophie, Ceylan, Ramona, Natalie, Jessica and Martina for a great year of learning around the globe!

A Tiny Sampling: Museums in China

Big, bigger;  new, newer.  What does it mean for museums?  For communities?  China is building and opening new museums at an unprecedented rate.  A New York Times article from earlier this year says 390 new museums were opened in 2011, and the same pace is continuing.  I got to spend a week or so in Shanghai and Beijing earlier this month and squeezed time in to visit just three museums and wanted to share a bit of my observations (but I hope readers understanding that these are three tiny pinpoint perspectives on a huge phenomenon).

My first visit was to a museum not yet open, but with big plans.  Through a series of connections (be nice to those interns!) I had the opportunity to do a brief presentation about museums and creative practice to the staff at the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology in Beijing.  They're in the early stages of planning a new museum to be located near the Olympic site and will be making a series of visits to ethnographic museums in Europe and the United States to learn more about how cultures are presented.  They were particularly interested in the National Museum of the American Indian and we had a fascinating conversation about the ways in which different cultural groups take agency in their own portrayal.   We talked about how museums as a whole can be more creative and about understanding and developing individual creative practice.  I'll be fascinated to watch as plans for this museum develop.

In Shanghai,  I got the chance to re-connect with Jolie Zhu,  who I met when I served as her ambassador at this year's AAM meeting (and by the way, a great reason to do such things).  Along with another colleague, we spent the afternoon at the Shanghai Museum.  Architecturally undistinguished, with an interior that is reminiscent of 1980s hotels,  the collections are stunning.  I was impressed with English language labeling,  but definitely wished for more context, particularly in the ethnographic collections.  But I'll long remember the ceramics, jade and scroll paintings for their breathtaking beauty.   The museum is evidently expanding its partnerships outside China as a banner heralded a coming exhibition in partnership with the Clark Institute and a traveling show about Impressionism.  Visitors at the museum on a weekday afternoon were a mix:  of western tourists, of families with small children (for which there were no activities),  and others, perhaps locals or Chinese tourists.  

At the same time I was in Shanghai, I was also reading Death and Life in Shanghai by Nien Cheng,  the story of her imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution and eventual release,  including the details of the destruction of much of her collection of ceramics and the eventual donation of the remaining parts of her collection to the museum.  The book served as a reminder that those beautiful objects we see in museums everywhere around the world usually have complicated, sometimes dark stories to go along with them.  

Another day I ventured out to the new Shanghai Film Museum, opened just earlier this year at--and by-- the Shanghai Film Studios, a bustling commercial area that seemed off the beaten path for tourists and Westerners.  This was a place where I got a taste of the ambitions of new Chinese museums in terms of exhibitry.  There was plenty of high-tech to go around.  A river of touch screens, a giant wall-size touch screen with interpreter to explain its use,  lots of video installations (not surprising given the topic) and even a chance to watch real animators and newscasters at work.   It was a theatrical experience--beginning with your entrance as the star on a red carpet (top image).  

The museum's primary focus seemed a combination of nostalgia and technology.  I saw lots of older visitors pointing, remembering and talking about their favorite film stars while technological advances were highlighted throughout.  But there was very little, as far as I could tell, about the use of film as a political tool and how that use may have changed over time.   It's a museum that left me curious, wanting more, so I suppose that's a good thing.  If you want to see more photos from Chinese museums, I've uploaded a larger selection over on The Uncataloged Museum's Facebook page.

What did I learn from my tiny sampling?  Mostly that there's a lot more to learn.  I hope it's not my last visit to China and look forward to further connections with colleagues there.  If you're interested in museum buildings,  you may want to check out the soon-to-be-available book New Museums in China by Clare Jacobsen. The architecture of some of these new museum buildings, located throughout this enormous country,  is worth a look.  And I'll watch with interest to see if museums can move beyond their great architecture to deeper ways to engage audiences and communities.

One additional takeaway?  Building your network matters, and you can find connections everywhere.  I've hardly met a museum colleague who wasn't interested in conversation.  Many thanks to Sarah Burnham,  Jolie Zhu (below, while we enjoy a post-museum snack), AAM's Ambassador Program,  Nancy Pan, Jerry Yu and the entire staff at the National Museum of Ethnology.

Innovation, Around the World Edition

This year, at the American Alliance of Museums conference, I heard a couple incredible presentations from international colleagues and followed up with a conversation with Dean Phelus and Greg Stevens of AAM about the ways in which all of us can learn from each other, by expanding the global perspectives presented at the meeting.  So here, international colleagues, is your chance to share your perspectives, your stories, your challenges and your innovations.  The online session proposal form for next year's conference, to be held in Seattle, Washington, is now open through August 26.  In this online format you can post ideas and look for feedback and co-presenters.

AAM describes this year's conference theme, The Innovation Edge:

Innovation is a defining quality of our time. Creating the new, reimagining the old, adapting the present to changing needs have become the goals of the best and the brightest among us. To go from the seed of an idea to universally adopted reality seems to take mere weeks—reading books on our phones, wearing a computer, printing three-dimensional objects in our own homes.

Innovation takes many different forms--and it's definitely not just about Googleglasses and 3-d printers.   It can be creative ways to engage your visitors in real time and in person,  or innovative ways to reach out to donors;  or create new understandings of complicated histories.   

At the 2013 meeting,  I did a brief fill-in presentation about my Ukrainian experiences just after Silvia Alderoqui of the Museum of the Schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina spoke about her museum's work.  I didn't necessarily expect to find echoes of my work in an Argentinian museum, but I did as she described a current challenge, the need "to be critical, participatory and poetic at the same time."   International participation at AAM  is important not just because it provides international participants with access to a big group of enthusiastic professionals, but more importantly, to me, because it provides Americans with new access to ideas, perspectives and ways of thinking.

International colleagues, I hope you'll consider submitting a proposal to share your innovative ideas in any area of museum operations.  If you'd like advice or guidance, please feel free to ask questions here, or to contact Dean Phelus, Senior Director, International Programs and Events at AAM,  dphelus@aam-us.org.