Every Day Surprises

At an AAM session last week, newly-minted director Nina Simon talked about wanting to offer free admission--some of the time--to her museum so those who came on that particular day would view it as something special--not an everyday thing, but a real surprise (and by the way, love the idea of seeking sponsorships for one day--what a great birthday gift for the person who has everything!)

And then today I came across this review of an exhibition at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.  Holland Cotter begins his review,

On a recent nothing-special weekday afternoon, I walked into the Asian Art Museum here and found a Balinese gamelan concert in progress: clanging gongs, pulsing drums, jazzy flutes, the whole real heavenly thing, with musicians settled cross-legged on a fabric-draped platform and a rapt crowd of museumgoers, many quite young, on benches, folding chairs and the floor.

Another surprise.  There's something I like about walking into a museum that's familiar to me--it's the idea of an old friend--but I'm also really intrigued by how we can make places that are surprising every day.  Not just surprising in the big permanent exhibit as spectacle way,  but surprising in the little ways that museums can connect with visitors.  One answer of course, is visitor-created content.  But I wonder what other answers there are. 

Could you put different single object in a case in your lobby each week?  Could you have pop-up curators giving impromptu talks?  And of course, here's Improv Everywhere's King Philip autograph signing at the Met.   Could your admissions person hand each visitor a page from a historical diary,  written that week decades ago, to read aloud and share?  Could you offer a free cookie, or at a history museum, a taste of a cooling historic drink (long ago, I remember making switchel for an event)?   How about a free return ticket?  What else could museums do?

What Can You Do Besides Start a Museum?

Last week, my co-presenter and I had a great conversation about our session at the AASLH conference in Richmond this fall about whether local historical societies are dinosaurs.  I've volunteered to take the position in our debate that they are rapidly becoming so.  As a result, I've been trying to find alternative models--and hope to highlight examples that have come across my desk.

In Tompkins County, NY,  a local group, spear-headed by county historian Carol Kammen (known to many readers of History News for her regular column) has established scholarships at the local community college to honor four local Civil War nurses.   It would have been easy to say, "oh,  we should have a museum of nursing, or a museum of civil war nursing!"  Then a non-profit would have been established,  a board of directors established, a building donated,  a small group of objects obtained, and then...and then what?  It would join the dozens of other small organizations that are struggling to find adequate financial resources,  volunteers,  and community interest.

Instead,  the proposed $80,000 scholarship fund (of which more than half has already been raised)  will provide support for nurses and "reminds us of the sacrifices made by many - both past and present. Your support creates scholarships, rewards those seeking an education, aids faculty with their own professional development, and strengthens the quality of life for all"  (from the college website).

Susan Emily Hall of Ulysses,  Sarah Graham Parker of Enfield, Sophronia Bucklin of Auburn and Julia Cook--names that otherwise might have been forgotten will be remembered through acts,  not just through a static display.

 If you have examples of ways in which we can engage our communities in history outside the framework of a historical society--please let me know!

Image:  Sophronia Bucklin, via the Tompkins History Center

Walk the Walk, not Just Talk the Talk

A colleague (thanks Linda KM!)  passed along a recent article by Carol Sanford in the Stanford Social Innovation Review about a new process by which the New Mexico Grantmakers Association is exploring whether--and how--philanthropic support meets the goals set out, or whether grantmaking sometimes produces unintended consequences,  just the opposite of real, responsible change.  The grantmakers group is looking at their work within a framework of five guidelines (quoted directly below):

1. Consider and fund with an eye to nested, whole systems rather than fixes for specific issues or problems.
2. Find “nodes of leverage”—conditions that can be changed with little effort in order to produce big results—rather than shotgun or priority-setting approaches.
3. Focus on developing personal agency by supporting the efforts of individuals to take accountability for their own lives, and to exercise entrepreneurship in creating businesses and in serving their communities
4. Measure effectiveness by how well systems change, not by the efforts made in pursuit of change.
5. Ensure foundations have integrity in all of their activities (for example, by fostering personal agency within their staffs).

I first read this thinking about different kinds of support for projects in Ukraine--watching international aid programs from a closer perspective has been a fascinating process.  But then I read it again--and realized that these five guidelines provide a road map, not just for funding, but for the development of a thoughtful, engaged museum.  Let's take a look.

Consider and fund with an eye to nested, whole systems rather than fixes for specific issues or problems.
I remember reviewing a long-ago grant application where a museum requested funding to purchase reproduction costumes--but it was clear that the site lacked substantive research and planning to even establish a time period.   I think of these projects as band-aids.   Because I work on the interpretive side of things,  I always hope that institutions will put everything on the table when we begin a conversation about new tours and other elements so they can make the kind of systematic change needed to create more engaging institutions.   I'm sure my collections colleagues would agree--conserving one object has to be balanced against system-wide efforts to improve environmental conditions.    And we're all familiar with those new outreach programs that exist for a year, due to funding,  and then disappear.   Thinking holistically and sustainably make a big difference--and of course, that's what planning is for.   A clear strategic plan, that's understood by all and referenced often can help ensure that change, not band-aids becomes the way forward.

Find “nodes of leverage”—conditions that can be changed with little effort in order to produce big results—rather than shotgun or priority-setting approaches. 
When I read this I thought first about museum entrances--both virtual and real. Those are the places that your audiences first encounter you--they are "nodes of leverage" and often changes take little effort.  Updating your website calendar or news.  Just a few weeks ago I went to look for something on a service organization's website and found their latest news--from 2007!  Make your entrance friendly,  have your open hours posted,  and train your staff and volunteers to be friendly greeters.  Huge differences in public perception could ensue. Then,  keep going with the changes.   This has to go hand-in-hand with the whole systems approach above.   It's a version of thinking globally (whole systems) and acting locally (those nodes of leverage).

Focus on developing personal agency by supporting the efforts of individuals to take accountability for their own lives, and to exercise entrepreneurship in creating businesses and in serving their communities
If you're a museum leader,  do you regularly say "no" to your staff's ideas?  Do you insist on micro-managing every decision (I know one museum where the director has to approve every single Facebook post)?  Or do you encourage, mentor and facilitate new ideas and accomplishments by staff, no matter what their position?  Can you make staff meetings places to share ideas and new approaches?   Despite tight budget conditions, is there still some funding and commitment to professional development?
 
Measure effectiveness by how well systems change, not by the efforts made in pursuit of change.
Ensure foundations have integrity in all of their activities (for example, by fostering personal agency within their staffs). 
I've had  some conversations lately with colleagues about what values are embedded in museums.  I don't just mean the ones that your values statement says, if you have one.  I mean the ones that are sneakier,  hidden in your history and organizational structure.  Do you divvy up your jobs into a number of part-time positions so you don't have to pay benefits?  That's a value judgment about your employees and their value.  If you're a director, do you hoard information from both your board and your staff?  That embodies a value.  Do you actively seek out collaborations and partnerships.  That's also a value in action.   I think we tend to think about values as warm, fuzzy things, when in fact, all values are not positive ones--and it's the not-so-positive ones we sweep under the carpet.

Do you work hard to attract family audiences and make your workplace family-friendly for your staff?  Recently I had a conversation with a colleague who remarked about how much she hated strategic planning,  because often it seemed all thunder and lightning--in pursuit of change--rather than actual change.  That's where a plan that has accountability and benchmarks really comes in--you need to be able to measure real change.

What five guidelines would you propose for a healthy, responsible organization?

Whose Story?

I've been working on my presentation for a session on narrative at the upcoming AAM conference.  Ken Yellis, Deborah Trout-Smith, Susie Wilkening and I will be coming at the topic from different perspectives.  I'm working on thinking about how narrative worked in Soviet museums,  how post-Soviet museums in Ukraine have maintained, adapted or jettisoned that structure, and what thinking about how a different place and culture view narrative might mean for my own work.    Big thoughts all, and not yet in a cohesive place (if you're at AAM,  please join us at our session, Imagining the Past Remembering the Future: The Role of Narrative in Museums on Sunday, May 22 from 4:15-5:30 for some thoughtful conversation around the topic.)

But narrative...I thought of it today as I went through the focus group notes for a local history museum I'm working with.  It happens to be a community I know well,  and I was struck by how many narratives had emerged.  Participants shared hints of compelling narratives about first jobs and first dates;  about teen tragedies and loss;  about the things you did that your parents wouldn't have approved of;  about the influence of well-loved teachers and coaches;  and about how bicycles opened the world to you when you were a kid.  

But fascinatingly,  the narratives from high school students were very different--more circumscribed in some ways.  They felt that there was not much ethnicity in the community (despite the fact that the census tells me residents claim more than two dozen ethnicities in their heritage).   One student  thought immigrants, to his definition, were only from Latin America;  and another thought immigrants just weren't relevant!  Narratives about ethnicity seemed absent from the students' mindsets,  but narratives about economic status seemed much more front and center; and some ideas about race were couched in those economic terms. Of course, it may just be that teenagers don't see very far beyond their own immediate concerns.  In a diverse adult focus group,  participants were much more willing to share their own narratives about race, discrimination, economic status and change.    One of the participants commented about residents who lived in a different part of the city, "You hated them...because they had everything and I had nothing.  I didn't even know them but I didn't like them."  

So how does all this connect to my thinking about post-Soviet narratives?  This local history museum's soon-to-be-redone and outdated permanent exhibit tells a single, straightforward narrative, from settlement forward.   The Soviet system mandated the single narrative approach;  many American museums arrived at single narrative without any dictate from a ministry of culture.   But this museum, like so many others, now has a tremendous opportunity to reach out into the community;  to listen to those stories, to find those narratives, and to, as one participant said, "Open the front door and be bold!" 

That's an opportunity no matter where you are.

Images:  FSA/OWI Collection, Library of Congress.  From a single small farming community, top to bottom:  Mr.and Mrs. Ben Harris, Mr. Miller, Mr. D'Annunzio, Mr. Mirki.

#gallery fsa2000022964/PP

Leave Your Desk Behind: Thoughts on Outdoor Exhibits

I've been in several conversations about outreach lately, a word that seems perhaps a bit outdated--sort of colonialistic, I think.   But the idea of getting outside your museum doors to reach visitors is never outdated--and a project I worked on in Kyiv this past month reminded me that sometimes connecting with visitors doesn't necessarily require the bells and whistles of mobile apps,  hugely expensive permanent signage or the like.

I collaborated on the outdoor exhibit of Borderlands,  a project of fellow Fulbrighter Olga Trusova.  The exhibit, supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine,  was mounted in Shevchenko Park, a beautiful park in the center of the city.   Borderlands is a comic book that tells 7 stories of human trafficking--you can read more here.   The use of the comic book format (drawn by Dan Archer) is an unusual way to tell compelling, important human stories, and equally unusual to then convert it to an exhibit.

So on a cold, misty morning in early April,  we installed the exhibit frameworks--and then, amazing things began to happen.  People walk by;  they're busy;  but something in the exhibit catches their eye.  Someone stops, reads a panel, walks around the corner of the framework, reads the next panel,  then goes to the next.   Another couple read, and turn and talk to each other,  pointing at a panel.  Those passersby are an audience who might never visit a museum,  might never think about human trafficking.  By choosing a public location (as we did for an earlier project, about Chernobyl in 2009) we help ensure that we reach, not just those dedicated free-choice learners,  but a cross-section of the community that uses this park.   (and, by the way,  I highly recommend Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud as a great way to expand thinking about exhibits and what we do).   I'm enough of a museum nerd that I find it incredibly exciting to watch people stop and read and think about what we do.

Over the last two years, with the support of the Institute for Museum and Library Services, I've worked with the Montgomery County Historical Society in Rockville, MD on a project that also got history out into the community.  Montgomery Connections uses banners,  bus stop ads,  and a website to engage, in three different languages,  non-yet museum visitors in the history of the county.  Using the tag line,  Did You Ever Wonder?  the print materials introduced visitors to authentic characters from county history and invited them to call a phone number to learn a bit more.  In our formative evaluation, we learned some surprising things about what interested who. 

But a voice message (after listening to the audio, callers were invited to leave a comment) reinforced for me how important it is that we get out of our offices, out of our museums, and out into the community.   After listening to an audio about the first Chinese immigrant to the county in the early 20th century,  a Spanish-speaking listener commented (this is a rough paraphrase) "I am here in this country alone--and listening to this has given me hope for my future." 

Think history doesn't matter?  Think again.

What's the Story? A Straight Line?

While in Kyiv, I decided to try an experiment.  My Ukrainian language skills are still very weak and I wanted to see what I could learn about history by just looking at objects in a museum exhibition.  After all, we all know that many museum visitors don't bother to read labels.  With English labels,  I automatically read them,  but with labels written in Cyrillic,  it's a different story.  So I went off to the National History Museum,  just down the block from my apartment,  to see what I could learn.  Like many museum visitors, I had a broad outline of Ukraine's history already,  but certainly not many details.  What did I discover? 

First there were people who used stone tools and wore beaded necklaces.  But a map told me where those people might be located.

Then settlements began, in huts, where people hunted animals--but then we got to a settlement that's kind of recognizable--the second photo below is a big diorama of the early settlement of Kyiv.

Then in somewhat rapid succession,  people farmed,  Christianity became important,  factories opened and people had fancy furniture.  But some people still lived in traditional ways.

Then there were wars.

And then, looming on the horizon,  independence.

As I went through the museum, I was struck by how similar a narrative this is to the permanent exhibitions in many history museums anywhere.   I think some museums are still drawn to a straight line narrative of history like this.  Interestingly,  Ukrainian museums almost never use the center of their gallery spaces and the cases you see in some of the photos here are often the same dimensions, so history gets reduced a bit to case-sized bits so the straight line has even a greater emphasis.  Plows, Victorian furniture, military service:  I could be anywhere!   And of course,  without me being able to read labels,  the narrative was reduced to its simplest terms.

The photo at the top of the post,  a bas-relief as you enter the museum,  reminded me of a long-ago comment to a museum colleague.  In teaching fourth graders about primary sources she asked them how they would find out about what something in the past was like.  "I'd go to the historical society,"  said one.  "How would they find it out?"  she asked.  The student's reply, "They look it up in a big book in the back."  To me, this exhibit represents the big book approach to museum-story telling with a straight line narrative that brooks few doubts or questions.

But then I saw an exhibit there that I thought of as not a big book,  but a beautiful little short story.  There was a temporary exhibit on Serge Lifar, one of the great male ballet dancers of the 20th century.  I hadn't known anything about him,  but this small exhibition just had so much life to it in ways that were hard to explain.  Dancing shoes,  tiny models of ballet sets,  wings,  drawings of connections--he felt alive in the room.

So if you work in a history museum or a historic site, try going through your gallery or site without reading labels or a guided tour.  Imagine that you know only what the objects tell you.  Is it a straight line narrative?  or do the objects themselves and the exhibition design allow visitors to consider the twists and turns of history?

Marketing is Not a Dirty Word

In a post last month about creating change,  I wrote that marketing was not the answer.  And marketing has continued in my thoughts.  Jasper Visser commented in response to that post,   "Marketing might be the first step, but then marketing in the sense of building tribes, keeping promises, not in the sense of more flyers and noise (which is not really marketing)."

And at another workshop here in Kyiv,  Vlad Pioro,  director of the Ukrainian Center for Museum Development commented, "Marketing is not a dirty word,"  as he introduced the Ukrainian version of Museum Strategy and Marketing : Designing Missions, Building Audiences, Generating Revenue and Resources by Neil, Philip and Wendy Kotler.   Marketing is particularly problematic in a post-Soviet society:  even the words consumers, marketing, branding,  all smack of capitalism (though of course the Soviets did a pretty good job at staying on message, in the broadest sense).   And although there's plenty of advertising everywhere here,  old habits die hard.

Vlad's comment came on the heels of my presentation about voluntary museum standards in which I referenced both AAM's Standards of Excellence and AASLH's StEPs program and asked my museum colleagues here to consider whether such standards would be useful for Ukrainian museums.    Among the questions and comments that ensured in an open discussion.

• But we have laws on museums here in Ukraine!
• But the laws don't work!
• Preserving collections is our only work, the most important.
• Why is that function (preserving collections) only one among many in these U.S. standards?
• We have particular issues here.
• Who would write them?  How could we agree?
• We need to change,  to look at our museums in the way that the rest of the world looks at theirs.

So how do standards and marketing connect?  Exactly in the way that Jasper reminded me--that we need to build tribes of people (and that includes the ongoing work of building professional organizations here in Ukraine) and that we need to be responsible to our audiences.  If we're opposed to marketing, we need to think about why,  to consider what that says about the values of our organizations.  If we're marketing in terms of "flyers and noise,"  we need to think about how to change that,  how to become more responsible,  not more showy.  

It may be "the government" who is responsible for museums here in Ukraine, but in fact,  the museums, their collections, and their activities belong to the Ukrainian people,  who, as in any country or culture, have a right to access, information, and even sometimes, a little fun when they visit!


Images
Top by Ky_Olsen on Flickr 
Bottom by Pawel Loj on Flickr