Boundary Crossing in Museums

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

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

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

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

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

in museums.

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

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

Using History to Teach Environmental Science

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

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

Coal burning plant with mining in front.  Photo:  Getty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What is more important, convenience or conservation?

Can we have both?”

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

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

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

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

Time Traveling from Present to Past

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How About Some Delicious History? Our Annotated Dinner

I've been thinking about food and museums quite a bit lately.  An article on what museums can learn from the Pickle Project is forthcoming in Museums and Social Issues and I've just been accepted as a participant in the National Council on Public History's Working Group Public History and the Local Food Movement at the 2013 conference in Ottawa, where Cathy Stanton of Tufts University and Michelle Moon of the Peabody Essex Museum have put together a great group to explore ways in which those of us who work in public history can forge stronger connections and deepen conversations with local food producers and those who promote local and regional food.

But this past week I had a tremendous opportunity to see food history, the local food movement, and interpretation all wrapped up into one delicious package at an annotated dinner with the Context Travel staff in London.  Art historian and food scholar Janine Catalano worked with St. John,  one of the premier restaurants in London and a pioneer in reintroducing regional British cooking,  to produce a dinner that helped us understand the history of food in London, in a physical sense (St. John is right by Smithfield Market, a livestock or meat market for 800 years), an intellectual sense, a historical sense and a sense of what's new.

"But what is an annotated dinner?"  you may be thinking.  Exactly what it sounds like.  With each course (and there were many)  Janine (above)  artfully guided us through history, using historic images passed around,  brief readings from primary sources, while also helping us learn about the current state of the local food movement in Britain.

What did we eat? All delicious...

• Radishes and carrots
• Oysters and crabs--wrote Samuel Pepys in 1661, "I entertained them with talk and oysters until one o'clock and then we sat down to dinner." 
• Roast bone marrow and parsley salad
• Pigs head and potato pie--definitely the thing on the menu that sounds the strangest--but absolutely delicious! 
• Roast beef accompanied both by a reproduction of William Hogarth's 1748 painting The Gate of Calais or O, the Roast Beef of Old England and horseradish.
• Brussels sprouts greens and potatos 
• Eccles Cakes and Lancashire Cheese
• Poached Quince and Brioche

 

It struck me that this kind of interpretive effort, in a restaurant, is something that many of us who work in museums could undertake.  I think sometimes we're too often stuck in our own places,  worried about our own lack of kitchens, or what will happen in our historic house.  We were in the simplest of rooms,  with white butcher paper on the table,  so no worries about precious artifacts,  but the history--and current issues--came alive. 

In my conversations with Context docents we've been talking about using all of our senses, not just sight,  to convey the meaning and texture of a physical place.  The salty briny taste of oysters;  the slightly unctuous feel of the pig head and potato pie,  and the crispy sound of a radish bite, all made the heritage of British food come alive.

And what could be better than learning new things while gathered around a table with a group of friends?

Why Am I Thinking About Food?

All of a sudden, it seems, the museum world is thinking more about food.  I don't just mean thinking about what to serve in your cafe,  but about what food means,  if a museum can should have a farmers' market or a community garden,  how food connects to the "Let's Move"initiative, and much more.  It's been interesting to me as, at the same time, my own interest in food has grown as a result of the Pickle Project, an effort I co-founded with Sarah Crow to explore, understand and share the food traditions of the complicated place that is today's Ukraine.

So although I wish I could be at the Feeding the Spirit Symposium sponsored by AAM and other organizations, this week I'm headed back to Ukraine with Sarah,  Caleb Zigas of La Cocina in San Francisco and Rueben Nilsson of Faribault Dairy in Minnesota for a series of four community conversations, in four different Ukrainian cities, about food.

The juxtapositions between American food and Ukrainian food are sometimes startling.  Most Ukrainian villagers grow their own food;  but their city grandchildren rarely cook.   Ukraine has some of the most fertile soil in the world,  yet much farming is scarcely above a subsistence level.  The country's difficult history, with times of great hunger,  mean that Ukrainian cooks, growers and eaters are resourceful in ways most Americans have forgotten.

This summer I've spoken about the Pickle Project to a couple American audiences,  who are full of questions about food safety,  about sustainability, and about a country that most people only identify with in terms of Chernobyl or painted eggs. We have much to learn and share with each other.

This isn't a museum project, but we hope that a traveling exhibition emerges from our work.  We've been interested in how many colleagues have said, "You just started a project?!"  Perhaps that's what the museum field needs more of--projects that don't necessarily have a final product, but spring from a passionate interest in connecting.  But that's a subject for another post.

For now, however, thanks to support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding and our community partners in Ukraine, these conversations will be the next steps.  If you're in Kyiv, Donetsk, Odessa, or L'viv over the next couple weeks, we'd love to see you at a conversation--check out the Pickle Project blog for the dates and locations, or find us on Facebook--to keep up with the conversations from afar.

Will the Crowd Fund Our Project? A Kickstarter Story

Crowdsourcing--that's outsourcing your tasks to a large, unknown group of people presents a range of opportunities for museums--citizen science, mapping, identifying photo collections. But in a way, crowdsourcing of fundraising is one thing that I think small museums in particular may find very useful.  My colleague Sarah Crow and I have begun a project on Kickstarter and I'll use a series of entries on this blog to reflect on what we're learning in the hopes that it may be useful to others.

What's Kickstarter? 
It is "a new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors."  And it's framed around two core beliefs:  

• A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide.
• A large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement.

What's Our Project?
We're the Pickle Project and you can find us here on Kickstarter and the Pickle Project blog here.   It's a project that sprang from our separate experiences in Ukraine as Fulbright Scholars.  We both love food and bring complementary interests in food--mine around food as cultural expression;  Sarah around issues of sustainability, and both of us in terms of how it shapes communities.   Our long term goal is to create innovative traveling exhibitions in Ukraine and here in the US that encourage community conversations about food, culture and sustainability. 

Why Kickstarter?
The great thing about Kickstarter is that you don't need to be a non-profit to seek funding.  For us, that's perfect.  We're in the earlyish stages of the project and although we will seek a non-profit partner, at this phase, it made great sense to venture out on our own.

How Do You Get People to Pledge?
Kickstarter is all or nothing so we need to raise our goal by February 1 in order to receive any of the money.  Kickstarter is all about your ability to get the word out.  Kickstarter doesn't do that for you, you need to.  How are we getting the word out?  We blog, we tweet, we email friends and encourage them to share it, we have a Facebook fan page, we use our groups on LinkedIn,  we're pursuing traditional media coverage--anything and everything we can think of.

How Could This Work for Small Museums?
There's only been a few museum projects on Kickstarter.  One of the most successful was the Neversink Valley Museum in Narrowsburg, NY and Seth Goldman, their director, was incredibly generous in sharing his lessons learned during the process of successfully raising funds for architectural drawings and other work for a new building.  The World of Witches Museum in Salem raised almost $5000 for exhibits and the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art also raised exhibit funds.  Unsuccessful?  A Teachers Museum and the Museum of Hawaiian Shirts. 

Local history museums already have networks--your members and others in your community.  You also have those people who grew up in your community and moved away and those enthusiastic genealogist who email you seeking information.   And don't say that older people don't use the Internet:  an updated Pew Charitable Trust study shows that email is almost ubiquitous, even with those over age 74.   So your audience or network is out there!

What Have We Learned So Far?
Some simple lessons for us and we're only four days into our project.

• Research:  look at other similar and different Kickstarter projects;  find someone who's done Kickstarter before to talk to and share their perspectives;  read Kickstarter's materials and other blogs about what works and what doesn't.

• Ask Before Leaping:  We sent our initial narrative off to about a dozen or so friends and colleagues to read, long before we posted.  (You know who you are--thanks!).  Their thoughtful feedback told us one thing--that we needed to more clearly connect the story of food in Ukraine with people here, today, in the United States.  So we did.

• Make That Video Work:  Neither of us were video experts (even though I have one in the house) but we knew we needed a video to draw visitors into the story.  Thanks to our work and the generosity of friends who have also spent time in Ukraine, we put together a simple slide show with great photos using iMovie.  Looks simple, but took far more time than I expected.  We didn't need it to be perfect--but we did need it to be compelling--take a look and see what you think.

• Cool Premiums:  We also looked at what other successsful projects has offered for premiums and tried to balance the cost and effort of the premium with the amount pledged.  And so, if you, generous reader, pledge $1000 Sarah or I will bring a Ukrainian dinner to your house!

• All or Nothing Means no Messing Around:  Kickstarter is all or nothing.  You set the amount, you set the time frame (up to 90 days) and then, boom!  you launch the project.  You only get the money if you raise the full amount.  We know how much money we have to raise every single day between now and February 1 and that means no coasting, that every single day we'll be out there tweeting, facebooking or otherwise connecting with our networks.  So far, we're on target.

And finally, Don't be Shy!
As any fundraising professional knows, you don't get support if you don't ask.  So here's my ask.
Head on over to Kickstarter and support the Pickle Project because:

• You love food
• You're interested in cross-cultural understanding
• You want to see how it works
• You wish we understood more in this country about how to grow, cook and eat sustainably
• You're interested in Ukraine
• You've had a great time reading this blog this year
• You want to support a passionate project in its emerging state
• and of course, if you love pickles!

Thanks to all those who have already stepped up to the plate (the dinner plate perhaps) and supported us.  I'll continue to post our lessons learned--if you have specific questions, please comment away.  You can track our progress on the widget to the right and of course, we look forward to seeing you as a supporter!

Photos, top to bottom:
Market vendor, Opishne
At a Crimean Tatar feast.  photo by Barb Weiser
Milking in the Carpathian Mountains, photo by Christie Nold
Strawberry picking,  photo by Grace Eickmeyer
Women at the pottery festival, Opishne
Riding home from school in Crimea, photo by Grace Eickmeyer

Are County Historical Societies Dinosaurs?

I began my museum career at age 14 as a volunteer at a county historical society;  volunteered at a different county historical society all through college;  and became director of yet a different county historical society after finishing graduate school.   These are places I've spent lots of time in and I'm beginning to wonder whether they are, as a class of museums, in danger of going the way of the dinosaur.   The signs are all around.   Here are some headlines from a quick search:

Rensselaer County Historical Society may Close
Ceiling Portion Collapses at Oneida Historical Society
County Historical Society Struggles to Perform Mission
Wayne County (Pennsylvania) Historical Society Museum Closes Until April 15 Due to Budget Cuts

There's no question that part of the problem is the current financial crisis affecting all non-profits.  But the crisis revealed weaknesses that already existed.   Every organization and every community is different, but here's a list of six factors that many have in common.

Owning a building
Historic buildings are enormously expensive and historical societies found themselves caught in two scenarios.  Either completing a huge capital project put them in a financial hole because optimistic projections said that the new building would generate new income or the buildings are at substantial risk because of decades of deferred maintenance.   Could you do more if you weren't burdened by the place you own?  And by the way,  how interesting to the larger community is the story represented by that particular building?

The inability to say no
To say no to objects.  Local historical societies are sinking in objects that have no provenance but were donated by someone because someone at the society couldn't say no.  Without a collecting plan,  the random rusty sad irons and white petticoats keep coming,  barely cataloged and jammed into storage.  Another inability--to say no to the people who say, "we've always done it this way" as a way of hindering progress.

The inability to say yes
To new ideas that is.   Just the other day, I heard a complaint about how hard it is to find new board members--but this is for an organization where nothing is happening.  That same board member who complained then told me that she had just accepted an additional board position--one with an organization with a clear sense of mission and vision.  The inability to say yes to community members, to collaborative efforts with other organizations, to new ideas--that's a death knell.

Few connections between professional training and county historical societies
There are more and more graduates of museum training programs--but it seems like county historical societies are run by fewer and fewer of them.  Part of the issue, it goes without saying, is the ability of a county historical society under financial pressure to pay a decent salary to a new MA with student loans, but I think there's sometimes a sense that local societies don't "need" staff with training.   I think graduate programs need to see these places as important, potentially vital places;  boards need to see young graduates as great resources and pay them a living wage.

No sense of urgency
I just looked at the websites of several different county historical societies.  On one, the latest news was from 2008;  on another,  under recent events, the most recent event listed was Winter Recess 2009.  Does that make me think I've landed upon the site of a vital, forward looking organization that I might want to be involved with?   Is the largest part of your museum taken up with a permanent exhibit that hasn't been changed in decades while changing exhibits are relegated to a grim room in the inaccessible basement?

A disconnect?
There seems to be a disconnection between community history and local historical societies.  As interest in being involved in a local museum appears to decline,  virtual interest increases.  I'm a Facebook fan of a group dedicated to my hometown and there's lively discussion and memories.  Is it that we're more interested in nostalgia than history?  Or does it mean that so few of us live where we grew up that we seek those connections online rather than in person?  What can county historical societies do about it?  How can we be about meaning and relevance in an increasingly global world?

My friend and colleague Anne Ackerson has written several posts over at Leading by Design recently about the signs of trouble for failing organizations and a scalable way to clamber back into success.  Well worth reading.

There's not a single answer but unless each county historical society takes a clear, cold, hard look at the issues they will become extinct.   My thoughts in this post were framed primarily by my experience with New York State museums--and this coming week I'm headed off to the American Association for State and Local History annual conference in Oklahoma City.   I look forward to some lively conversations about how organizations in other parts of the country are addressing these dilemmas.  I hope my next few posts both here and as a guest blogger for AASLH will highlight some solutions.   Going to be at AASLH and want to chat about this issue (or others) in person?  Just email me!

And of course, I want to hear from all of you--is your organization a dinosaur or a nimble adapter (bees, birds, cockroaches, for instance)  and why?

Dead end dinosaur sign from Animal World 
Sorry we're closed by threelittlecupcakes on Flickr

When Should You Close Down Your Historic House?

Everybody in the museum field knows a historic house that's struggling--one where the attendance has dropped, the maintenance and restoration costs are rising, and there's an increasing sense that it may no longer be sustainable.  It's a rare thing when you see an organization take the difficult step of deciding to go out of the museum business.  The Landmark Society of Western New York, in Rochester, has announced:

On February 8, 2010, The Landmark Society Board of Trustees approved a motion to cease museum operations at the Campbell-Whittlesey house on July 1, 2010, and to begin active marketing of the property in August.  The decision to close the house museum at Campbell-Whittlesey is the end result of over five years of strategic planning and in-depth studies of opportunities for the property’s use.


We’re holding a public meeting to welcome ideas for adaptive re-use of the site.  It’s important to note that we all remain committed to the exploration of viable options that support the proper stewardship and the maintenance of the integrity of this historic treasure.

Cindy Boyer, Director of Museums and Education at the Landmark Society wrote in a message to her colleagues on the Upstate History Alliance list-serv:

As my colleagues can imagine, this is a time of very mixed feelings  for me.  I am committed to seeing this through in a professional manner, and all involved are supportive of following the legal, ethical and professional guidelines.  It is an unequivocal sign of our changing times, and sad to see a museum that has been in operation since the late 1930’s close its museum services. But I also see opportunity to strengthen our mission and our service to the community.

What's critical in both the official statement and Cindy's comment?  It's a clear understanding of the important of mission.  The mission of the Landmark Society is to "protect the unique architectural heritage of our region and promote preservation and planning practices that foster healthy, livable, and sustainable communities."   Does that mean operating a museum?  Not necessarily--and not really.  

I read Cindy's email as I'm returning from the Small Museum Association conference--and the collision is stunning.   There are more and more new museums, small ones, all volunteer ones and big ones.  Many do great work...but at our session on grant-writing, we answered questions about finding grants to do basic inventory and cataloging, to care for your collection, to pay operating expenses--to do, in fact, the basic work of museums. For some, there seemed to be a lack of understanding that core museum functions are yours, as an organization, to support.

When an organization as large and well-respected as the Landmark Society (Campbell-Whittlesey House has been a museum since the 1930s) can't sustain a museum operation, it should make every history organization that operates a historic house think twice--in a good way.   Some questions you might ask your organization:

• Are there other historic houses nearby?  Are they really that different?  (I mean really different, not just kind of different, owned by a different white industrialist in your community)
• What sort of historic documentation exists for your house?
• Could you ever, even if you had the documentation, afford to acquire the furnishings to furnish the house appropriately?  And what would those authentic furnishings gain you?
• Who will come to this historic house?  Why?
• Are there other, better, more engaging ways to share history with your community?
• And most important, I think,  is the big SO WHAT?  If there's not a compelling story to tell and audience to connect with--if  in fact your goal is preserving an old house, consider some other way to do it, as the Landmark Society is doing.

It appears that the board and staff at Landmark Society have made hard choices in a thoughtful process, driven by mission.   They should be applauded.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Last week, we spent three days in the Lake District in Great Britain. It's been a tourist area for more than 200 years. In 1844 William Wordsworth campaigned against a proposed railway saying that to make the region accessible would ruin its scenic beauty. During our cold, snowy (but sunny!) days there, we found the region incredibly beautiful. The Lake District National Park clearly works incredibly hard to maintain the region's identity. Villages and small towns maintain much of their character in the centres (most designated as Conservation Areas), working farms still spot the landscape (though many also operate as B and B's), and clearly development is restricted along the lakes themselves.



But...8.3 million visitors a year come to the region--89% by private car. And it's not a big national park from an American perspective: only 34 miles wide. In comparison, the much larger Yellowstone National Park gets just over 3 million visitors a year. Our B and B host told us that in the summer she rarely even goes out on the roads--too crowded. She and her family are some of the only 42,000 or so people who live in the District full-time. It was easy to imagine bumper-to-bumper traffic on these tiny roads and lanes during the summer months. Even between Christmas and New Year's, the streets were crowded with walkers (usually in full gear) heading out to the hills.



It's the eternal dilemma isn't it? We want people to visit our museums, our historic sites, our no-longer industrial communities--but success brings more challenges than we imagine. As I checked out the Lake District National Park website, several things struck me as they dealt with the challenges of success. First, that information--public hearings, downloadable documents, up-to-date and clear web info--is key in making both residents and visitors partners in the process of preserving and appreciating this unique place. In the planning section of the website there's even a section called, "Unraveling the jargon." Third, the park, a governmental agency, clearly understands that it's work won't be possible without multiple, committed, community partners. Third, it's planning that makes the difference. The park has a clearly articulated vision for the next twenty years and a downloadable plan for how it will be achieved.

Vision:

"Working together for a prosperous economy, vibrant communities and world class visitor experiences - and all sustaining the spectacular landscape."

The Lake District National Park will be an inspirational example of sustainable development in action.

A place where its prosperous economy, world class visitor experiences and vibrant communities come together to sustain the spectacular landscape, its wildlife and cultural heritage.

Local people, visitors, and the many organisations working in the National Park or have a contribution to make to it, must be united in achieving this.

What will it actually look like in 2030?

A prosperous economy - Businesses will locate in the National Park because they value the quality of opportunity, environment and lifestyle it offers - many will draw on a strong connection to the landscape. Entrepreneurial spirit will be nurtured across all sectors and traditional industries maintained to ensure a diverse economy.

World class visitor experiences - High quality and unique experiences for visitors within a stunning and globally significant landscape. Experiences that compete with the best in the international market.

Vibrant communities - People successfully living, working and relaxing within upland, valley and lakeside places where distinctive local character is maintained and celebrated.

A spectacular landscape - A landscape which provides an irreplaceable source of inspiration, whose benefits to people and wildlife are valued and improved. A landscape whose natural and cultural resources are assets to be managed and used wisely for future generations.

Could I see this as a visitor? Actually, yes, in many ways. Our B and B served eggs and bacon from a family farm; local products are found throughout the stores (we brought home great looking mugs from Herdy); brochures encourage you to "give the driver a break," by taking buses, trains, or boats; and the landscape is spectacular and at the same time, lived-in and homey.

Plans aren't worth anything unless they're put to work--and have community buy-in. I want to try and keep an eye on the Lake District as the region's plans move forward. What will it be like in 2030? I hope there will still be a chance to be a solitary walker (or three of us) going down a country lane to be met by a flock of Herdwick sheep.

Meet the Pickle Project

Check out a new project that I'm working on--The Pickle Project. My colleague Sarah Crow and I hope to document and present a wide range of traditional foodways in Ukraine. Ukraine was the "Bread Basket" of Europe, but it's far from a uniform place but rather a nation composed of distinct eco-systems and a diverse population. Starting with the blog, and hopefully continuing to "foodcasts" online and exhibitions in both Ukraine and the US, we'll engage audiences in an exploration of the cultural significance of food and sustainability in the context of social and ecological change.

Today, Ukraine's various regions are under intense pressure from economic transition, changing population dynamics, new food and land management policies, political instability and globalization. Such significant change can have lasting impacts on traditional cultures and landscapes.

Based on our own experiences in Ukraine and elsewhere (Sarah spent last year in western Ukraine as a Fulbright Scholar working on issues of sustainability and forest resources) we'll begin by thinking about questions such as:

• How is knowledge about foodways maintained and transmitted to younger generations among Ukraine's diverse ethnic groups?
• How have economic and social changes affected lives and foodways in Ukraine?
• How have environmental conditions affected the ability of local residents to be self-sufficient in terms of food?
• How are objects and traditional knowledge used in the food production and preservation process?
• What are the social institutions that support food production in Ukraine?

And why did we call it The Pickle Project? To us, pickled everything somehow symbolizes Ukraine. Pickling, food preservation, and the collection of wild foods such as mushrooms and berries, are ways to eat through the winter, sometimes provide much-needed family income, and connect to rural agricultural traditions.

You can become a fan of The Pickle Project on Facebook or follow the blog. And if you have photos or stories to share, people we should meet, or villages to visit, please let us know. Special thanks to Irina Leonenko for her great photos for this post!

Whipped Cream and a Cherry on Top

This week brought a convergence of ideas. Yesterday, at the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums conference, in a session on sustainability, Elizabeth Merritt of AAM's Center for the Future of Museums spoke long-distance in a session on sustainability. She spoke about a number of trends, but then encouraged us all to consider a game-changer. Some change in the future that would change everything--and she suggested that the "what if?" could be "what if there was a revolution in education?" a total change in the way we educated our citizens.

Today, Thomas Friedman's op-ed piece in the New York Times suggested just why we might want to do that. He writes:

As the Harvard University labor expert Lawrence Katz explains it: “If you think about the labor market today, the top half of the college market, those with the high-end analytical and problem-solving skills who can compete on the world market or game the financial system or deal with new government regulations, have done great. But the bottom half of the top, those engineers and programmers working on more routine tasks and not actively engaged in developing new ideas or recombining existing technologies or thinking about what new customers want, have done poorly. They’ve been much more exposed to global competitors that make them easily substitutable.”

Those at the high end of the bottom half — high school grads in construction or manufacturing — have been clobbered by global competition and immigration, added Katz. “But those who have some interpersonal skills — the salesperson who can deal with customers face to face or the home contractor who can help you redesign your kitchen without going to an architect — have done well.”

Just being an average accountant, lawyer, contractor or assembly-line worker is not the ticket it used to be. As Daniel Pink, the author of “A Whole New Mind,” puts it: In a world in which more and more average work can be done by a computer, robot or talented foreigner faster, cheaper “and just as well,” vanilla doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s all about what chocolate sauce, whipped cream and cherry you can put on top. So our schools have a doubly hard task now — not just improving reading, writing and arithmetic but entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity.

Think about it. Are you a "plain vanilla" museum worker? Or even more critically, are you responsible for a "plain vanilla" museum? What makes you plain vanilla? In my book, there's one striking factor that seems to characterize these institutions and people--a reluctance not just to think outside the box, but even to look outside the box. I'm always surprised when I talk with people who don't read museum publications, blogs, or even take the time to visit other museums. And that's not even counting all the other places we can draw inspiration and ideas from.

And one more convergence--in his talk at MAAM, AAM president mentioned that AAM has (finally, in my opinion) opened full participation to those of us who work in museums but not as staff members. I see a growing number of creative, interesting people who have chosen to work outside a single institution. Every day I use skills, knowledge and perspectives I gained in my work as a museum and service organization director. But...the opportunity to put the chocolate sauce on top...is that easier to do from my perch as a independent museum person? For me, at least, the answer is yes, but it does pose some interesting questions for the future of the field.

Photo: Macs, in Penn Yan, photo by Drew Harty

Ten Ways to be Better

I was a bit cranky in my last post about museums and change, without offering many useful suggestions. So here's a quick list of ten easy cheap (or free!) things any small history museum could do to create change in their organization.

1. Start a blog. Blogs are free, incredibly easy to set up, and provide a way for your museum to communicate with your audience on a timely basis. Don't know what to write about? Joanna Church of the Montgomery County (MD) Historical Society has a great object a week blog; and the Alice Miner Museum in tiny Chazy, NY highlights both programs and collections.
2. Change something in your permanent exhibit--anything! At the National Museum of American Art's Luce Center, you get to vote on what piece to place in a case. Let your visitors decide.
   
3. At a board meeting, take time to really walk through your museum, inside and out, and see what you could do to make it more visitor friendly.
4. Change that faded paper sign or label.
5. Make your admission free!
6. Change your open hours to suit your visitors, not your staff.
7. Think about what parts of community history aren't represented in your museum--and then go out and learn about it. Call a community elder and sit down for a conversation.
8. Turn down that unprovenanced object that duplicates something in your collections. You can say no.
9. In developing your budget for next year, squeeze one new program in, even if it means giving up one that you've always done.
10. If you don't have a strategic plan already, start one! And for all organizations, make sure that your vision and mission are not just boilerplate stored in a drawer, but inspirations that guide and shape your work.

And a bonus suggestion: ban the words, "but we've always done it that way" from your organization.

Top: Women assembled at Wheeley's Church, near Gordonton, North Carolina, to clean, 1939. Photograph by Dorothea Lange, FSA/OWI Collection, Library of Congress

Change: The Big Scary Thing on Your Museum's Doorstep

As fall begins, it still seems like the time for new projects, just as it did on those first days of school. As a result, I've spent a fair amount of time the last couple weeks talking to both boards and staff about planning, new projects, and organizational change. And, somewhat to my dismay, I've begun to wonder whether the economic climate is leading organizations, to metaphorically speaking, turn out the lights on the front porch and hide from change.

What does it mean when organizations resist change? The results are easy to identify. Your audience begins to drop; you tell me you just can't ever find any new volunteers, because everyone is too busy; you have a shrinking board because no one will volunteer; your exhibits look dated; your objects go uncataloged but you keep taking irrelevant things because you can't say no; your website is a year out-of-date; and your community walks right past your door. In short, you become less and less relevant to your community--and after all, that community is your reason for being. And then, of course, the cycle becomes self-fulfilling. Yes, no one cares about you because you don't show that you care about them.

I've discovered that this resistance to age isn't a generational one. It's certainly not all young people who embrace change; or older people who resist it. In the museum field, there's sometimes a certain conservatism combined with a sense of superiority, that really hinders us from digging down deep and finding out what our communities need and how we can make a difference.

These are critical, difficult times for many of the places where we work. Some may think that hunkering down and doing as little as possible, or doing the same old thing over and over--just because it costs less or is easier-- are the answers. But I wonder whether, after the recession recedes, if those organizations will be left high and dry as their communities look to more meaningful places to spend their time.

No particular answers in this post, but a few examples of hopeful signs from organizations I work with:

• A local historical society planning for an exhibit that explores the idea of greed in the community's early settlement. Now there's a topic that will resonate with today's visitors.
• The small staff at a another small museum spending half a day to really talk about their current exhibit and how they can improve the next one--and doing it from a visitor-centered perspective.
• The surprising comment from a retired board member in an interpretive planning session about new ways to use technology--a way I had never imagined.

I'd love to hear about organizations who are sitting down at budget time, looking at the strategic plan, and saying, "let's try one really great idea," rather than just settling for the day-to-day.
And that, I hope, will keep the goblins from your door.

See in Germany

Last week I presented a session at the International Committee for the Conservation of Industrial Heritage International Congress in Freiberg, Germany. More in a future post about the session itself, but a highlight of the conference was a bus tour of post-industrial sites in this region of former East Germany. The tour involved sites that were all part of two connected projects.

The first was the International Building Exhibition for Furst-Puckler Land (IBA in German). IBA are term-limited projects (in this case ten years) that are designed to find new ideas and solutions to urban development and landscape planning in a particular region. The first IBA took place from 1901 to 1914. Between 2000 and 2010 this project aims to show the ways in which the area of brown coal production in Lusatia can be transformed as 17 opencast mines and other industries were closed down after reunitification. 25 separate projects, divided into eight "landscape islands" show how industrial landscapes and buildings can be converted and re-used.

The second effort, which will continue after 2010 is known as SEE--a branding that is intentionally ambigous. According to the project, "visitors are invited to 'see' beyond the present stage of the transformation of the landscape region and to look forward to the future to see the complete development. The second meaning derives from the word See, German for lake, referring to the new Lusatian lake area that is being created."

What did we see? Four separate sites, representing different levels of tourism experiences. (and by the way, all were denoted by these large blue signage cubes on the landscape--a nice change from your standard roadside signs).



We began and ended at the Plessa Power Plant, a huge brown coal power plant opened in 1927. It became outdated but was difficult to shut down because of the need for power. However, the plan finally closed in 1992 and then efforts to find an alternative use for this "Cathedral of Work" began. Our tour took us through the process from the delivery of brown coal to the production of electricity. Substantial funds from the European Union and the brown coal restoration fund have helped preserve the buildings and work continues to find additional tenants to ensure the site's continued viability. The focus of this tour was the building itself, the main interest of most of the conference participants--I wished for more about the workers themselves and hope that the future museum will not only give me a sense of this majestic place, but of the generations who worked there.



The Bio Towers in Lauchhammer look like a medieval castle, but they are really the sole-surviving remnants of a large coking plant. Treatment for groundwater contamination at the site continues. The experience is limited, although you can go up into a tower, and the community hopes to make the site a place for performances and events--it was inaugurated with a ropewalking act by a famous German acrobatic family.



At the F60 mine, the large overburden conveyor bridge dominates the landscape for miles. This equipment, completed in 1991 and closed down just 13 months later because of a change in energy policy seems to attract visitors interested not only in mining history, but interested in a chance to walk, and even bungee-jump, from this incredibly large steel framework. It's now an anchor point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage. As one can imagine, the issues faced in conserving this structure, in the open landscape, are immense.



Our final stop were the IBA-Terraces, the main visitor center of the IBA project. The large open-cast mine is becoming a lake, and a pier, now on dry land, will eventually connect directly with the water. The sandy, post-mining landscape looks like a desert, not Germany, and already hosts hiking, dirt-biking and other recreational activities. Eventually, this and other mines converted to lakes in the region will allow visitors to enjoy water-based activities as well.



These were all amazing places, and I was glad to have seen them. I was incredibly impressed at the investment of the European community and the German government in these preservation projects and the idea of a project such as IBA--to take ten years to demonstrate new ideas seemed a wonderful thing.

However, it's hard to tell yet whether these projects will thrive as tourist attractions. It appears everywhere that communities hope for museums and heritage sites to rebuild economically. At least in Germany, there appears to be sufficient investment to make that happen, but only time will tell.

Are We Worrying About the Wrong Things?

Two different online posts/queries came across my inbox today which made me think about where museums might be headed. The American Association of Museums posted a Facebook link to a newspaper story about two museums in Fort Worth, the Kimball and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. At the very end of the article, the author shared a tip: how to sneak into the latter museum and avoid the $10 fee. Responses to the article, in general, were about the moral and ethical implications--legitimate concerns, but perhaps masking the real issues. On Museum-L, a query about allowing photography in museums drew numerous responses--most of them in favor of restricting all photographic access.

I'm certainly not condoning sneaking into anywhere, but I think we need to think about why this is. Like many of my museum colleagues, I've worked at the front desk, and have, on occasion, answered the would-be visitor's question, "Is it worth it?" And yes, as a visitor I have stood in front of a museum, wondering if the admission was worth it (but no, I've never asked a front desk person that). Elaine Heumann Gurian has written eloquently about her belief that museums should be free--and that our admission costs are the single biggest barrier to connecting to our communities. In Great Britain, where museums are supported to a much larger degree by public funding, free admission has resulted in millions more museum visitors.

So perhaps we shouldn't be angry at the author of the article, but continue to think more deeply about how we can encourage all of our communities to either support museums the way they do libraries--free to all--or to ensure that the experiences we offer are valued by those who pay for them.



That photography post? I like to take pictures in museums--I appreciate my colleagues' work and often want to share it with others as inspiration. I like to see how visitors interact, how beautiful spaces can be, and more. Perhaps two years ago, I heard a great session at AAM with a speaker from the Japanese American National Museum. An anime exhibit, designed to attract younger audiences, was curated by an outside curator who insisted that visitors be allowed to take photographs in the exhibition. The staff was initially a bit dubious, but relented. Why did he insist? Because then visitors would blog about it, post their pictures on Facebook, and put cellphone videos on Youtube--and then more people would visit. The result was just as he predicted. More visitors--and more visitors going through the entire museum. And, if you think visitors are obeying that dictate--just do a quick search of "sneak museum photo" on Flickr.



I've been reading several articles about a new book, Free, by Chris Anderson. It's about the online marketplace and the paradox of making money from free things. (and a caveat--I just found an article that shows that some of Anderson's passages are lifted directly from Wikipedia without attribution and Anderson has admitted the mistake) I've not read the book yet, but a brief article in this week's Newsweek provides a summary which makes me want to learn more--and perhaps provides a way for museums to think about their place in the market:

• Win-win freeconomics. Monty Python gave away some free clips on Youtube. The result: their Amazon sales up 23,000 percent.
• The cost of online infotainment is distributed so that it's hidden or so distributed that it's imperceptible.
• Companies trafficking in ideas (that's us, right?) drop prices as the execution of said ideas gets more efficient.
• And perhaps most importantly, says Anderson, "there's no going back." A new generation assumes free access as a given.

In the name of protection do we risk becoming irrelevant?

And by the way, Free can be downloaded for free here.

Top to bottom:
London museum, by Kaustav Bhattacharya on Flickr
Tokyo museum ticket, by kimnchris on Flickr
On exhibition at The Hyde Collection

Repairing Museums

Over the last few weeks, I've had several conversations with colleagues at museums and other cultural organizations who are looking for every way possible to squeeze nickels and dimes out of their operating budget. Stop getting the local paper? No more office supplies and re-using every piece of paper? No more new gift shop merchandise for a time? Giving up the cleaning staff and professional staff cleaning bathrooms? Small museums aren't in the same boat as colleges. A recent NY Times article talked about what colleges were giving up--from cafeteria trays to HBO in the dorms--but small museums never had many of these "luxury" items.

Most small museums already exist on extremely tight budgets. What's left? And of course, for some organizations, what's left has devolved down to the sale of collections. For the most recent occurrences of that phenomenon, read my colleague Anne Ackerson's latest blog post on Leading by Design.

At the same time, I've also noticed that a number of small museums look slightly more unloved than ever. Duct-taped rips in the carpet, not enough storage space so objects living in hallways, and a slight air of decline.

Pretty depressing, yes? But then I came across this Repair Manifesto, a project of the Dutch art collective Platform 21 and felt slightly encouraged. How does it connect to museums? We're creative people--and we also have a vast reservoir of creativity in our collections to inspire us. It can be good for our imagination and our museums can be places where our community puts its imagination to work. We value ingenuity and we're not about the latest fashion.

How could a museum put these ideas to work? For starters, this manifesto would make a great exhibit. A quick search through some online collections databases provides some ideas.







What about if a museum drew upon the skills of its community and hosted repair days? I've worked on several industrial history projects and the knowledge of retired machinists, tool-and-dye makers, locomotive engine makers and others is astounding. Events like this not only repair items, but also honor and acknowledge a community's collective expertise. I know some of these guys could help repair my non-working iron, or broken chair leg, or whatever, and I bet young people could repair some of that current technology that just gives up (or I give up on). And not just machine repair--how about all those mostly lost to many of us needlework skills of mending zippers and the like?

But don't stop there. Museums could go a step further and think about repair in a metaphorical sense. Doing this, you could develop programs that bring diverse parts of your community, the ones who never talk to each other, together to talk. Check out the Living Library program or the Lower East Side Tenement Museum's Kitchen Conversations for inspiration. This is where you can make a real difference--and perhaps do more than just duct-tape your community together.

Feedsack Dress, Smithsonian Institution
Swanson Shoe Repair, Seattle, Photo by Joe Mabel
Tractor Repair, Manzanar Relocation Center, Library of Congress