Museum Catch-Up #2: Rethinking in Amsterdam

I got to spend a very quick weekend in Amsterdam this fall, and saw two museums rethinking in big ways. The Amsterdam Museum's decision to remove the name "Golden Age" from its description of the Netherlands got lots of press around the world.  Thanks to my friend Annemarie de Wildt, a curator at the museum, I got to attend the opening of Dutch Masters Revisited, an installation within the permanent collection at Hermitage Amsterdam.   The permanent exhibit is a huge hall of group Dutch portraits--and the temporary installation is 17 portraits of prominent Dutch citizens depicting a diverse group of people who, based on historical research, are known to have lived in 17th- and 18th-century Netherlands.   Curator Jörgen Tjon A Fong of Urban Myth brought the group of photographers and citizens together for meticulously created shoots. There was a great deal to appreciate (warning:  many label images ahead!)

• the museum explains what it's doing and why.

• the contemporary portraits are really integrated into the gallery itself.  They're not off in another room or small scale.  They have the same grandeur and importance of the historical works

• the museum connects past to present in numerous ways. Although I didn't necessarily love the hallway portraits of today's civic organizations, I did appreciate, that within the exhibit, you were encouraged to donate.

• Labels had provocative titles, asked good questions, asked you to reflect, and provided some surprising info about Amsterdam--without being overlong or info-loaded.

At the opening reception, Margriet Schavemaker, artistic director of the museum, noted publicly that she had recently returned from ICOM in Kyoto, and reaffirmed that although the new museum definition was not approved, it would be the way the Amsterdam Museum is working and will continue to work (for more on that conversation, see this blog post).

Probably five or six years ago I had visited the Tropenmuseum and found it a bit sleepy--a sort of old-fashioned ethnographic museum.  But on this visit, I found it transformed--in approach, in look, in a serious rethinking of their work.  Such a pleasure!  Just a few examples grabbed in a quick visit are below.

Their permanent exhibition, Things that Matter, connected material from around the world with a wide range of contemporary issues--from migration to climate change to the use and misuse of traditional culture by others.  All the issues were framed as questions:

• When do you feel at home?
• When is culture yours?
• What do you believe in?
• What brings back happy memories?
• Is the climate changing your culture?

It was fun to dip in and out, and the large scale video installations really worked in the big space.

I was particularly interested in the exhibit Afterlives of Slavery, described as "an exhibition with a discussion platform that places the stories of the enslaved and their descendants centre stage."  The exhibit looks at both the history of enslaved peoples, but also, how those histories continue to impact the Netherlands today (see ongoing examples of controversy around Zwarte Piet).   I liked the feel of the exhibit, as if it really was an ongoing discussion.

I did wonder though, about the emphasis on the history of enslaved peoples in the Caribbean, as related to the Dutch, and why nothing about the history of the Dutch and slavery in what is now New York State was mentioned.  I'd love to see those connections made.

In both these exhibits, I felt like there must have been many many meetings -- and some prototyping--of questions for visitors.  I loved that these were big questions, without single answers.  They were ones that would encourage conversation among visitors.

At both museums in Amsterdam, I felt a kind of courage paired with necessity:  a sense that it has taken museums far too long to address these issues, and the importance of making change.  Although every museum may not be able to afford beautiful portraits or large-screen videos--it's the thinking that matters here.  And that, of course, comes for free!

What else did I do in Amsterdam in a single weekend?  Why of course, ride a bright red bike with AnneMarie and explore the city!  What could be better than exploring a city with a city museum curator?

Museum Visit Catch-Up #1: The Manga Museum

I've been on the road (or more accurately in airplanes) a huge amount this fall, and have visited a number of thought-provoking exhibits and museums.  I saw things I loved, things I definitely didn't love, and things that raised interesting questions for me.  So now, despite a two-month gap in blogging, I'm going to attempt to catch up with all of it over the next couple weeks.  First up, the Manga Museum in Kyoto, Japan.

After an intense few days at the ICOM meeting, Katrin Hieke and I took an extra couple days to explore Kyoto a bit more--and for some reason we decided that the Kyoto International Manga Museum would be first on our list--and we were so glad we did!

This is a museum where a mission perfectly meshes with an understanding of audience and with exhibition design and content.  For the uninitiated (like me), manga is Japanese comics and cartooning.

The permanent exhibit does a great job in posing--and then answering--all kinds of questions about manga:

It also included a fascinating section on who makes money in manga, something rarely seen when talking about creative work, but a part of all creative work.

The permanent exhibit also explored how a storyline is shaped--which reminded me to go back to Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, a great tool in helping us think about narrative in exhibitions.

In this permanent exhibit section, you were surrounded by manga books--so many of them, and it was delightful just to be able to take them down and read.  Everyone did!

There were different types of temporary exhibitions--including one focusing on a trailblazing woman manga artist.  Another temporary exhibit was sort of a playoff between different types of toys. You could make an appointment to consult with a manga artist about your own work, and even spend a bit of time on a computer (although tech was a very small part of this museum).

But what where mission, design and activities merged together was in the places all over the museum that were for reading.  Everyone felt welcome to pull out a book, sit down, lie down, sprawl out, and read.  There are lots of rules in Japanese society, here it felt like the only rules were to read, to be respectful of others reading, and to enjoy yourself.

There were a few key takeaways for me:

• Understand that your museum attracts both newbies (that was me) and specialists (those who want a deep dive into manga).  Provide opportunities for both.
• Design spaces so people understand what you can do in them.  
• Great label-writing --clear, concise, fun--always matters.
• Make room for passion.  You could see it in the work of the artists, but also in the intense focus of visitors.

Make Welcome: Lessons from an Island

I spent a week in July on Vinalhaven (population 1,165), an island in Maine.  It was at the same time that Vice-President Pence and other Republicans visited the "detention centers" on the US/Mexico border.  The juxtaposition of those two things really made me think about the idea of welcoming. 

Vinalhaven is a small island, reachable only by an hour and 15 minute ferry ride.  So imagine the ferry ride a bit like entering a museum:  where do you go, how do you get in, what does it cost, how do I get in line?  The ferry has all that, but there is also a Facebook group called Ferry Favors.  That's where you post things like: Can anyone pick up my computer in town?  Can you give up your position in line for someone who needs it?  There's a sense of the ferry crossing as a collective enterprise that belongs to everyone (and yes, people do complain about the ferry too!).  On the day we came back to the mainland, the first two ferries of the day did not run because they had had to make an emergency medical run the night before.  Milling around the ferry, I heard very little complaining because there seemed to be a sense that the human need took precedence.

Different parts of the island demonstrate that collective sense of community.  At the library, where there is good wifi a sign asks you not to sit on the steps.  But the same sign suggests that you go around back, where there are benches.  And yes, one morning I sat there doing a call, with a view of the ocean on beautifully painted bench.  There's a Vinalhaven Land Trust who cares for walkable trails all over the island.  There seemed to be a sense here that those in charge, whether at the library or the land trust, generally trusted us to do the right thing.  Think about the museums you've visited where they trusted you.  Not so many.  Our house had a copy of the Town of Vinalhaven's annual report.  For a town of this size, there is an astounding number of committees and the work of so many, mostly volunteers.  Are there lessons we can learn about recruiting volunteers?

As a visitor, you have responsibilities too.  It's custom to wave, at least lifting one hand off the wheel, when you pass another car on the road.  It has the funny effect of making you feel a part of the community.  When I went for coffee one morning, I learned all about the house we were staying in:  someone's uncle had been the plumber;  someone remembered the older women who ran it as a boarding house.  A shopkeeper talked to me about climate change and its effect on the still-thriving lobstering industry here. It's always our job to learn about a place and the people.  How can museums show that same interest in visitors?  And even more importantly, how can we take action on issues like climate change that affect places we love?

These two, right across from each other!)

I am sure that year-round island residents are sometimes happy to see the summer end, to see the island return to its quieter self.  I know we came with the privilege of race and of class. Despite that, every single person we met that week treated us as people--they were welcoming.  That's a lesson for any museum.  But it's not just a museum lesson. Let's go back to that image on the border and the total lack of compassion or understanding demonstrated by those politicians, standing there in their khakis and blazers, staring at people behind a fence.

It's a long way from an island in Maine to the US/Mexico border.  I keep returning to a poem by Warshan Shire that I wish everyone could read and embrace.  Here's an excerpt (and here's the full poem):

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

Museums do have a role to play here, and a huge cheer of appreciation for the Association of Children's Museums' powerful statement on the treatment of migrant children. We all must do more.

Caring for Visitors

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.  It's a former high school that was used as a security prison (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge regime during its murderous rule from 1975-79.  Not surprisingly, it's a tough place to visit:  rooms where torture happened, the photographs of victims (and torturers who often then became victims themselves), and the reminder that only 7 people of the roughly 17,000 imprisoned there survived.

It's an incredibly important story and as with all Sites of Conscience, one all of us need to listen to.  However, I was particularly struck by the gentle care that the museum took to provide space, both mentally and physically, to allow visitors to process these events, which feel like a kind of horrible madness.  The excellent audio tour includes both narrative and historical testimony, including from the trial of the prison chief Duch (who, lest you think this is the distant past, was only convicted in 2010 by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and sentenced to life imprisonment).

Until just a few years ago, the center courtyard was just a paved space.  But now it's green and lovely. Each time you leave a building you have a chance to take a deep breath, sit and reflect.  The tour gives you a heads-up before you come to stops that may be really difficult to hear.  The effective narrative reminds you that it is always humans--committing the genocide, resisting the genocide, and providing the testimony.   Every day there is a dialogue forum with a survivor of the Pol Pot regime and the White Lotus Room provides visitors a chance to meditate in a cool, quiet room and listen to Khmer traditional music.  The audio tour also provides traditional music that you can dip into and out of.

Upcoming on May 20 is the annual Remembrance Day, in memory of the spirits of the victims and when, according to the museum website, "Food and other offerings are made to the monks and as charitable acts to the poor."

The message of the site itself is the most important--as Tuol Sleng's director, Chhay Visoth notes:

My goal is for visitors to understand what happened here so that it never happens again—innocent people, including children, being imprisoned, tortured and killed. I want them to learn about the cruelty of this regime and remember the victims who died here, who were forced to make confessions for things they didn’t do and then put to death without mercy.

But it's constructive for other museum workers to note that the same compassion for victims extends, in a very different way, to a kind of compassion for visitors--and that this compassion is done with such simple tools:  green spaces, cool rooms to rest, music--that have such power, power that helps ensure that visitors will always remember the experience and some of the faces and stories of the victims. It's worth noting that this care, this compassion for visitors comes from victims, as virtually every Cambodian of a certain age was affected, one way or another by the Khmer Rouge's actions. With that remembrance and that care, we can, as we daily remind ourselves at the Coalition of Sites of Conscience, "turn memory into action."

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.