Walk the Talk: The Fearless Other Women in St. John's

We're on vacation in Newfoundland, Canada this week and as always, it's been a bit of a busman's holiday with a couple museum visits. My time here also included a great walking tour: The Other Women's Walk, created by Ruth Lawrence and presented/acted by Bridget Wareham, Wendi Smallwood, and Monica Walsh.

I was curious about what this tour would be like after reading about it in a local paper--so I walked down a few blocks from where we're staying and assembled with a group of about twenty.  Over the course of about an hour, we walked in and around Bannerman Park, learning the stories of women from the 1920s--and particularly, learning the stories of women for whom suffrage potentially meant little as they were working so hard to make a living, living on the margins. We met a sex worker, a cook, a factory worker and union activist, an Irish immigrant who found solace in another immigrant--a Chinese laundry worker, a teacher and our guide for the hour, a worker behind a bar.

As someone who thinks a great deal about historic site interpretation, and has been in many conversations about what you can say and what you can't say to visitors, I was struck by the power and frankness of the stories shared.  It was a fearless kind of feminism that I wish I saw more often in museums and historic sites.  I won't recap the whole tour, but here are just a few of the notes I jotted down:

• "I'm in a war every day fighting to stay alive."  A sex worker discussing the governor general's wife's war efforts during World War I as contrasted with her own life.
• In front of the historic Confederation building, the former seat of government "Here is where the laws are made to control us--laws made by men."  The bar worker after sharing a story of her own rape.  As we walked away from the building, she asked us to turn around. "That's stunning, isn't it?  That's [also] repression."
• "They think nothing of one who holds the needle."  Labor organizer, who also reminded us that we can choose where to spend our money.
• At a stop in front of a small monument to Shawnawdithit, the last living member of the Beokuk nation, we were asked to bow our heads in a moment of silence in her honor and "We'd do well to remember that we are guests on native soil."

Each stop was clearly based on research and directly related to a place (and their research is all credited on the project website).   It was a great reminder of how much history is there to be found and that all of our interpretation can go beyond the standard, great white man (and his supportive wife) still too often found in historic houses or the kind of walking tour focused on architecture (as we heard at the start, gently but firmly--if you're interested in those curved windows or the staircase, this is not the tour for you!).

I found it interesting that this was a performance--I'm used to projects like these that really encourage dialogue--and this didn't explicitly do so. Although in eavesdropping on my fellow participants, I found them relating the issues discussed to their own lives.  It didn't really give us a chance to talk to strangers, but I'm guessing many people continued those discussions in different ways after the walk.

The other aspect to the performance, as opposed to a more standard walking tour, is that every single piece of information wasn't included.  The creator, Ruth Lawrence, made sure all the information worked and moved a story forward.  And then three compelling actresses delivered--not just facts, but a sense of real women and real stories.

Kudos to all involved--I'll be thinking about this experience for a long time.

And a small shout-out to where I read about the tour:  The Overcast, Newfoundland's alternative newspaper, picked up at the Rocket Bakery, my absolute favorite place for coffee in St. John's.

What's Better? Surprise or Interpretation?

Last week, two colleagues and I had quite the unexpected experience at--not a museum, but certainly a historic site--that gave us lots of conversation about interpretation, expectations, surprise, and how you feel when you're confused at a site.

Where was I?  I was in Istanbul to do a presentation at the quite amazing Hrant Dink Foundation with Amina  Krvavac of the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Katia Chornik of Cantos Cautivos (by the way, check out all their inspiring, important work).

We had some free time before our presentation, so we decided to visit a hammam--a traditional Turkish bath--something that none of us had ever done.  Our gracious host Nayat Karakose from Hrant Dink sent us here:  Galatasaray Hamam.  We enter, ponder the different fees (ever do that upon entering a museum--I bet you did!).  Finally we decide on a set of services, and just out of curiosity, ask when it opened. "1481" the guy at the front desk tells us. We remove our shoes and discover that no one really speaks much English, but we'll just figure it out, we think.  First, a change of shoes into those disposable slippers.

Upstairs we head, ushered by one of the women workers, into individual small rooms with a Turkish towel on a small bed.  We figure out we're supposed to change into the towels, and undress and do so, emerging, giggling, for inspection by the woman worker.  Evidently not all of our towels are on perfectly, so quick rearranging by her, at which point, mostly naked, we think, "okay, now what?  

From there, into a huge domed room to lay down on a large, heated, marble sort-of podium until we are really, really hot...and then are ushered into the massage room for soapy massage, cold water splash and more.  More general confusion and laughter all the way around (probably us and the workers both) until we emerged, thoroughly buffed and massaged, swaddled in towels, fully relaxed, to have our glasses of tea by the fountain.

But what did I think about this terms of interpretation and museums?  In a way, it was great to be surprised as we went along and that was made so much better by being with friends so we could look at each other with puzzled looks and laugh.  It would have been very strange as a solo experience. But equally, a bit of explanation have been useful (interestingly, I found an explanation of the experience on their website just as I was writing this.) 

But...and it's the caveat that museums and historic sites should be pondering.  Despite the barriers of language, the people working there were very kind.  And, to be clear, we came with the privilege of being tourists in a city that sees not as many tourists these days.  

Is your museum kind to everyone? Do you know that your museum treats everyone who comes in the door with the same sense of welcome?  I once watched the front desk manager (!) at a museum make a young couple spit their gum into a Kleenex she thrust forward as she lectured them about no gum in a museum.  I bet those visitors were really reluctant to return, as they were treated as misbehaving schoolkids.  You want to treat all your visitors with the same sense of hospitality--not just the ones with whatever privilege you value (explicitly or implicitly). Don't tell me that you know how people are treated at your museum unless you are regularly spending time at the front desk and in the galleries.

My personal takeaways:  

• ending up with adventurous, funny, compassionate co-panelists is the best
• it's a good thing to go outside your own comfort zone and be surprised
• kindness always matters

If you've had an experience not in a museum that made you think about the value of interpretation--please share away!

No Bells, No Whistles: When Design and Content Marry Perfectly

Perhaps it's it's not surprising that a design museum would have good design.  It was lovely to visit the Cooper-Hewitt Museum a few weeks ago and discover an interactive exhibit that relied only on great design along with pencils and paper (plus stickers) to create a compelling visitor experience.  Yes, I got to try out their pen--but honestly, I enjoyed this more.

The goal of the exhibit was to engage visitors in thinking about how our creative efforts in design can help solve problems.  Incredibly clear, the exhibit began with a start here and then an overview of the process of visiting the exhibit.

 

 

Then it led you step-by-step through the design process, beginning with finding a value (interesting, right?  museums don't often talk about values as drivers of behavior).

Then you moved to a question. They were broad enough to encourage creative thinking, yet I began to see the constraints that encourage creativity being put into place.

You're asked to reflect on both question and value.

So far, it's been the incubation step in the creative process. We learn what the process  is, and we begin to gather information.  But the process still needs more information.  Because visitors might not be designers, we're given a hand, with a group of design tactics.  Will you use a stage, social media, a public bath or a police station to, say, increase access to healthy food?

 We're reminded that creative combining is a great way to find solutions.  That's why we're asked to pick two cards.  We've designed our solutions--but that's not the end.  We see real-live designers sharing their projects and we see other visitors sharing their solutions. A physician reminds us that "less is more" is often true in medicine as it is in architecture.

Finally, you get to place your project where you think, physically, where it belongs.  Does it work in a parking lot?  on a roof?  in a warehouse?  Helping to remind us that the city itself is a living laboratory for all kinds of creative experiments (as a rural dweller myself, it's the same thing with different vocabulary).

And although it seemed a bit of an afterthought, I loved this cartoon about successful and unsuccessful community design processes, a reminder that community engagement makes all things better.

Thanks Cooper Hewitt for providing us all with the reminder that pens and pencils combined with ideas are a place where creativity lives.  When it comes time to develop your next exhibit, consider all the alternatives.

PS  I did use the pen, but did not look up my saved works when I arrived home.

Building a Learning Culture: Food Included

A few weeks ago, I spent two days working with board and staff at the American Swedish Institute (ASI) in Minneapolis, MN.  Since that visit,  I've been deep in learning about my own new job, but I find myself thinking about those days and about how collaborative learning cultures are built. I first visited ASI this summer, when I keynoted the Association of Midwest Museums conference. I was unexpectedly impressed (truth be told) with a place I pictured as a sleepy place with folk dancing and woodworking.  But I found a museum that was humming with invention. At a reception there, an ASI board member spoke about how the museum had shifted its mission as the community around it changed: now the museum was not just about the Swedish experience, but about the immigrant experience (particularly the Somali and Hmong communities) for many, past and present; through the lens of Sweden and the other Nordic countries.  As a result, I was thrilled when Bruce Karstadt, President & CEO, asked me back to talk creative practice in the context of strategic and interpretive planning.

What made ASI a learning organization?

Some of a culture of learning comes in an organization's DNA. It's hard to identify exactly where it comes from and hard to see from the outside (that's ASI on a gray January day, above).  For the board meeting, I shared a reading list before coming. It wasn't focused on strategic planning as a task, but readings that touched on the values of ASI: stewardship, hospitality, learning, innovation and sustainability and the museum's key themes of culture, migration, the environment and the arts. We know that our creativity is enhanced when we take in a broad range of information.  On the list were articles, Ted talks and podcasts, ranging from Theaster Gates' Ted Talk “How to Revive a Neighborhood with Imagination, Beauty and Art," the New York Times series on welcoming Syrian immigrants to Canada, Dr. Fari Nzinga's “Public Trust and Art Museums,” on The Incluseum Blog and a tech article on why Sweden is a great place for innovation. It was a broad list and I was surprised that everyone at the meeting had done the readings and were anxious to dive into conversation about the relevance to the museum.  Boards bring a wealth of experiences to their board service and finding time for them to think big picture is one of the most important things a leader can do.  Bruce Karstadt encouraged that conversation which I'm sure will bear fruit as the planning continues.  

Lesson 1:  Good ideas come from everywhere. Cast a wide net in your information sources and share.

The next day, the staff convened for a day and a half of thinking and planning. ASI is large enough that not all the staff know each other well, so the chance to learn more about each other was an important part of this process. Everyone, including senior staff, put aside time to participate in the process.

Lesson 2:  Make time to think together.  Every time there's a conversation about community engagement, people ask where they should start. My answer is always the same.  Get out there:  go to different, new places in your community.  Meet people, talk, listen, learn, repeat.  We divided up into groups and headed over to Midtown Global Market, walking distance away, with food, crafts and more from vendors serving food from their home countries, hipster foodies, and more.  The groups' assignment was simple:  observe everything you could about how a market experience could help shape a new interpretive experience in the museum's historic Turnblad Mansion.  And of course, we all needed to eat--so we each went armed with $10 to get a great lunch.

Lesson 3: Get out there and listen. What did we learn at the Market? One, the way different stall owners introduced new information to us about food. They were interpreters, in the museum sense of the word, but so friendly and always starting where we were, not where they thought we should be. We found one restaurant that gave you a discount if you did a Bollywood move or two--and even provided the instructions. We realized that the audience for the museum and the users of the market had very little intersection. How could that be changed?  The museum already has some collaborations underway with different communities--but this visit gave the team ideas about new collaborations and how to deepen other partnerships.

Lesson 4: Lead by doing. That's Bruce Karstadt, ASI President and CEO, at left, with other staff members in the photo above. Leaders who don't participate send the message that others don't need to either. Bruce, Peggy Korsmo-Kennan and other senior staff were enthusiastic participants for all the time I was there. It makes an enormous difference when your staff knows that your leadership believes in what's happening--and wants to hear from all of you.

Lesson 5: Have fun. After our market visits, the groups were tasked with coming up with new interpretive experiences in the house. Those were serious experiences, but we had a great time planning and sharing them.

Lesson 6:  Communicate, communicate, communicate.  The time spent together built new understandings of the staff dynamics. At the end of the visit, the entire team dedicated some time to talking about how to streamline communication (those long email chains?  everyone everywhere hates them) and how to design ways for creative ideas to thrive throughout the whole museum.  

The museum also had 2 elements already established that you might consider adopting at your organization:  first, the annual Elsie Pederson (I think I have her name right) Day, named after a dedicated, tidy volunteer. The day is devoted, once a year, to cleaning up and refreshing staff offices. It's that time to get rid of those old brochures, the flip chart notes, the whatever.  The second is a regularly scheduled staff fika, drawing on the Swedish tradition of a coffee break, with baked goods, to take time out of a busy day and connect.

One brief side note:  I was moved by their current exhibit, "Where the Children Sleep - Photographs by Magnus Wennman,"  memories of which returned to me when I watched the Oscar-nominated short documentary, 4.1 Miles, about a Greek coast guard captain  going out, every day, to save thousands of refugees at sea.  Look at the photos; watch the documentary.

Westworld, Museum Collecting, and the 2016 Election

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still Good? A Museum Re-Visit

Have you ever visited a museum again after a number of years, wondering if it will still be as interesting or exciting as you thought it once was? A couple weeks ago I had the chance to revisit Plimoth Plantation, somewhere I had last visited probably twenty years ago.  The memory of that long-ago visit was a lovely one, around Thanksgiving, with my big extended family.  Our kids, now all grown-up, fully engaged with the interpreters, and I still remember how the way one wowed my nephew, who described himself as living beyond the Hudson, by switching to speaking in Dutch.

Would it still be good?  Would there be interactive media everywhere?  Do people still suspend belief at a living history site?  What would I think?  Here's the good news:  I still found it compelling, and found some additional changes that deepened the experience even more.  The better news:  the things that matter are those that any organization can do.  Ask deep questions, seek answers, care about the visitors, and be unafraid to shake things up.

Some of what I saw:

The biggest change is that your first stop in the 17th century is the Wampanoag village.  When I visited before, the village seemed an afterthought to all those Pilgrims.  Now Native people, rightly, are who you encounter first.  But you didn't encounter them without any guidance.  This large clear label, addressing directly, the misconceptions a visitor might have and what is considered respectful behavior, was read by almost everyone as they walked down the path.  The label begins, "Do you have a picture in mind from movies or books of what 'Indian' looks like?"   The change in approach--both physical and conceptual--helped to shift your perspective.

And something I saw over and over again, throughout the visit, was how skilled the interpreters were at meeting visitors where they were.  Here's a conversation about deer hunting, with a tourist from the midwest.  They chatted about bow hunting, about the return of deer to suburban neighborhoods, about recipes using venison, and more.

And here's an interpreter talking to students.  I only heard part of the conversation, when a boy asked if the interpreter gave someone a butt-whipping.  "I killed him,"  said the man, to somewhat stunned silences from the group.  He continued to explain and engage, but the sense that this was no easy place, came through loud and clear.  Below that, a visitor from the UK has a long conversation about where she's from, and where the character the interpreter is playing is from.  Just down the road, as it happens.

A question about a interpreter's bandaged finger, deftly handled, led to a broader discussion about the different kinds of religious beliefs at the Plantation, all the while the multi-tasking women continued their daily chores.

Every single interpreter I met, listened to, or eavesdropped on, was thoughtful, kind, and exceptionally responsive to visitors.  It's the end of the busy summer season and I'm sure loads of those questions (and bad visitor jokes) were ones they had heard many times before.  But they never seemed that way.  I want to know more about their training!

There were some new elements.  Down at the bottom of the road was "America's first test kitchen."  In a house no longer considered accurate, an uncostumed interpreter was testing recipes, on the day I visited, using quince.  The signage outside, her dress, and the printed-out recipe, all easily transitioned you back to a contemporary space and let you easily shift your conversational focus.  A new crafts building outside the village allowed close-up looks at the production of pottery, flies for fishing,  bread and textiles.

As you can see, it was a beautiful day with great light, so I was also struck with the messiness and everydayness of the site.  Reproductions allow the visitors to fully embrace the site:  to see the messy bed, the dirty fireplace, the wrinkled clothes hung up rather than the original draped artfully over the bed. There's no preciousness of artifacts here.

I ended my visit with a colonial meal--that's a peas cod (a sort of handpie),  squash, and some cucumber pickles and left feeling refreshed and rejuvenated in all sorts of ways, not least about the ways in which we can, when we work hard enough, connect with our visitors.

Reflective Power

Last week I got to do something I rarely get to do--and I find few museums do either.  Over the course of two days, amidst bits and pieces of the ongoing project, the core staff at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and I got a chance to reflect on our journey through the reinterpretation of the house, now at the three year mark and nearing completion next year.

I've written often about our work at the Center often, and I know it has resonated with many of you. We've made progress and had great wins, but we also had places where we would have done things differently.  I'll share more specifics about what we learned later, but this is just a post to encourage everyone to squeeze out that time to be reflective about your work, with your colleagues.  How to start? We tried to think about the path of the project which involved diving back into computer files saying, "when was that meeting?" and saying, "Remember when we thought that was a good idea?"

We began the process just with individual note-taking but then decided that a big flip chart map (above, just one piece of what we finally created) was the way to go, helping us think visually about the path, the lessons learned and what we might do differently.

Doing this before the full end of the project meant that it served as a bit of a reward--a chance to appreciate our work together, and to gather our energies for the final push.  If there's one lesson I learned, it's that a thoughtful, creative, interpretive planning process has the potential to transform an organization.  That transformation is not just the story we tell to visitors, but in this case, it has contributed to creating a culture of ongoing learning, of creative problem-solving and one of engaging visitors in a continuous feedback and evaluation loop.

If you want to hear a bit more about the re-interpretation you can listen to Shannon Burke, Cindy Cormier and me on WNPR's "Where We Live." 

A giant bouquet of appreciation to all my colleagues at Stowe!  Below, Shannon, Emily, and Maura embrace our continuous learning over lunch last week, and get a lesson in Pokemon Go from Charlotte, age 9.

Authenticity is a Lie

Like anyone who works with historic houses, sooner or later, I find myself in conversations about authenticity.  How do we know how the furniture was arranged? What exactly was that color shown in a black and white photograph?  What did it smell like?  Sound like?  At different times of year?   As insiders, we know those questions and talk about them, as we strive for something that I've now come to believe is a fiction, yet something that our visitors believe is the real deal.  So yes, the "authenicity" that visitors think they are experiencing is often a lie.

Over and over again, I read in visitor surveys or hear visitors comment, "oh, it's just like it was back then,"  when it so clearly to me, seems like it isn't.  This blog post isn't meant in any way to dismiss the work of serious historians and curators who work to know more, all the time, about these inhabited spaces, but rather to suggest that we need to be clearer in owning up to what we know, and what we don't (nor any disrespect to the Seven Gables, pictured above in an early postcard).

There's a few issues that these visitor comments really raise for me.

First, the fact that somehow we, as museum/historic site people are often unwilling to acknowledge the complicated nature of historical practice. As a result, visitors get a shocking lack of complexity in thinking about history.  For instance, do I think 19th century historic houses in the Midwest had needle-pointed bell pulls to cover all of the electric light switches in each room?  Not for a minute. Did visitors think so?  Perhaps, because they were presented as part of the historical furnishings.

Second, our adherence to earlier furnishings efforts leaves out so many people in the story of domestic places. For instance, why are servants and enslaved people only, if at all, present in the kitchen and back spaces? Long ago, participants in the Museum Institute at Great Camp Sagamore were tasked with developing an interpretive interactive that could illustrate how this beautiful great camp in the Adirondack wilderness only ran because of the presence of servants.  One group came up with different colored footprints on the floor to represent servants and Vanderbilts and their guests. The servants' footprints came and went in a dizzying array, all through the course of the day, into a space generally interpreted as a space for the wealthy to relax.

Third, we're not all the same.  Spinning wheels, dresses thrown artfully on beds, children's toys arranged carefully and the fake apple in the kitchen bowl.  How can we get visitors to engage in learning when it feels all the same?  Wasn't anybody a slob in the 18th or 19th century? Weren't some people lovers of technology and others not?  (see Denis Sever House, London, below, for an alternative approaches to the slob question).

Third, can we really know?  And can imagination substitute for knowledge? In houses without specific documentation, we make guesses at what kinds of furnishings would be right, but can we ever really know?  Can we know, as we do in our own homes, the emotional temperature of a space? How it feels happy on a summer evening or Christmas, but a darker emotion on a gloomy November afternoon?  Would it change the way the house was furnished?  When I worked on interpretive planning with the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site in Buffalo, the site where TR was sworn in as president, we experimented (and now made permanent) a changed breakfast table. From a formal setting, we changed it to a chair pushed out, rumpled newspapers, and a coffee cup--all, we hoped, a way of engaging visitors' imagination to wonder about the thoughts of a man completing breakfast as he just learns he's become president.  We learned that those changes helped visitors see TR as a person, rather than an abstraction.

As I'd been thinking about historic houses, I had the chance to see the exhibit Rooms:  Novel Living Concepts at the Milan XXI Triennale.  The exhibit began with an overview of Italian design in domestic spaces (above)  reinforcing the sense that the ideal is often what get's presented in history, Then I encountered an imaginative 11 rooms, designed by artists and architects, asking us conceptually to consider past, present and future. Would we think like a bear if we lived in a bear-shaped space? What do we think the future is?  What would life be like in one of these calm white rooms?  Where would the slobs keep their stuff in some of these places?

Wandering through these rooms, I wondered if we shouldn't be more willing to admit that our period rooms are artistic creations rather than exact recreations of history.  They are certainly expressions of self (and sometimes that self-identity that comes from ancestor veneration), of aesthetic taste and choices, and are designed to convey a message, oft-unspoken.  Relatedly, some recent conversations about historic houses and the nature of interpretation also sent me back to Patricia West's Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America's House Museums; well worth a read if you haven't already.

Rooms ended with a text label that said in part:

Talking about rooms inevitably brings feelings and emotions into play.  Our memories are linked with rooms, not easily described precisely by dint of being too personal.  The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space believed that rooms remain with us, but not just in our memories: they are an assemblage of organic habits and can also lose their shape.

 What's the answer?  Greater transparency about our work, for sure.  And a commitment to experimentation as we find ways to uncover and convey deeper, more inclusive meaning in our interpretive work.

Your period rooms:  sometimes misshapen organic habits, filled with memories.

Brilliant Labels in Dublin: Sweets, Nudes and U2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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