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I've been in several conversations about outreach lately, a word that seems perhaps a bit outdated--sort of colonialistic, I think.   But the idea of getting outside your museum doors to reach visitors is never outdated--and a project I worked on in Kyiv this past month reminded me that sometimes connecting with visitors doesn't necessarily require the bells and whistles of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

Click: Natural History Museum, Kyiv

This week I wandered into the Natural History Museum in Kyiv--it's a place I'd been by many times, but had never gotten around to entering.  And inside,  I found both a time capsule of natural history presentation, but also the most lively museum-goers I've seen in Ukraine.   What was in the time capsule?

Cases, lots of cases.

Dioramas,  lots of dioramas,  including my favorite,  of this scene of trolley buses crossing the Dnieper River here in Kyiv.

Specimens and taxidermied animals, lots of specimens and taxidermied animals.  But what I was most struck by were the beautiful illustrations and graphics, showing a hand-done style that is almost gone from museums now that we use computers for illustration.  In the dioramas and in graphics throughout the cases,  there were many illustrations, all hand-done,  in numerous different styles, from these black and white stylized graphics to more formal botanical illustrations.

And it wouldn't be an old-school museum here in Ukraine without at least one really long label and portraits of distinguished scientists.

And of course, the natural habitat of the museum guard.

But, and this is the part that fascinated me,  people were really engaged in this museum.  Kids shared things with other kids;  parents and grandparents talked with children--more than anywhere I've seen here.  So--why?  Is it that the natural world is inherently more interesting than art or history for children?   Is it the contextual material--ie,  do dioramas really help us imagine worlds we don't know?  Or is there another reason entirely?   Your thoughts, readers?  For any reason, it was a pleasure to spend an hour or two watching museum-goers enjoy themselves.

 These two boys were my favorites--they looked at and talked about everything!

From Conference to Change

Last week I had the honor of being the plenary speaker at a conference, The Reform of Museum Management and Marketing, in Kyiv, Ukraine, sponsored by the Anti-Crisis Humanitarian Program of the International Renaissance Foundation, the Ukrainian Center for Museum Development of the Ukraine 3000 Foundation, and the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation for the Development of Ukraine (who generously sponsored my appearance here).   I joined a group of distinguished speakers from Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and of course, Ukraine itself, to consider how museums can change and adapt to the 21st century.   Attending the conference were more than 120 museum professionals from all over Ukraine.  The conference's sponsors made particular efforts to reach out to museums in the regions, rather than just in Kyiv.  It was great to see old friends and colleagues--and to meet new ones as well.

But the conference raised the same issues for me that much training in the US does.  How do we encourage museums to really embrace what they've learned, to make change and reflection a part of daily work?  Since I began coming to Ukraine two years ago,  I do see signs of change--but I also see a willingness to attend workshops (and for organizations and embassies to present workshops)  but not so much readiness to make real change in an institution.   I'm pleased that this conference opened up some conversations about creating real change in organizations.

I'm far from having any real answers to this,  but a few thoughts (and by the way, I think the same issues exist for many American museums).

Marketing is not the first step
I often think that museums think that if they just produce the latest four-color brochure or have more money to allocate for advertising,  then people will flock to their museum.  It's much harder to get the point across that your product (a word I know that will meet some resistance here in Ukraine) needs to be better--your exhibits more interesting,  your programs more engaging,  your lobby staff friendlier--BEFORE new marketing commences.

Practice, not theory
I have pretty clear ideas about the process of exhibit development--but I also know that talking about it doesn't generate the best understanding.  Museum colleagues here can see my slides of interactive, hands-on exhibits, but until people have the opportunity to actually work on a project that involves, for instance, thinking about a big idea for an exhibition, writing engaging exhibit labels, and developing a creative installation,  those theoretical new ideas just stay theory.

I think some of the next steps in Ukraine are about beginning to integrate real practice into training to follow upon theoretical experiences--and I'd love the opportunity to work with colleagues here on the practical applications.  Some of my best memories here come from the start of those practical discussions in some organizations and a real hands-on project at the National Museum of Books and Printing in 2009 where I taught staff simple paper and book-making activities that are now offered on a weekly basis.

Interested in what audiences think?  The same thing holds true.  We need to find ways to move the discussion from talking about talking to audiences to actually talking TO audiences.   Recently, in the US I did some community conversations with an organization who had been a little resistant about doing them--but afterwards, said a staff member, "I'm a convert--these were great!"  There's the old saying,

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

 

We need to move from giving the fish of pure information to actually providing museums with a rod, a hook and a worm,  and sitting on the bank with them as they learn to fish.  Then, I think, real learning will occur.   And the museum with its own efforts,  will sustain its community--and its community, in return, will help sustain the museum.

Change comes from the top and from the bottom

As Ludmyla Gubianuri,  director of the Bulgakov Museum here in Kyiv, said during her presentation, "if you want to have a great museum,  give people creative freedom."  Many directors everywhere guard their prerogatives closely and resist change.  For real change, systematic change, to happen in an organization, the director (and board of directors, or department heads if appropriate) need to believe in the idea of change--and learn to not be threatened by it.  I told the conference audience that I come from a family of enthusiastic learners (not scholars, perhaps, but learners) and that for us, lifelong learning in our careers and in the rest of our lives is something that gives us all great joy--I hope all directors could consider it the same.   And Ludmyla also reminded all of us that the public doesn't really care about your problems, they care about their experience at the museum.

So not matter where you are in the hierarchy,  you can think differently, in large or small ways.

Creating Knowledge Networks
One of the best results of the Dutch-funded MATRA museum training project here in Ukraine was the development of an informal network of colleagues who learned together and continue to share ideas and information.  I have always found the museum field in the US (and now, increasingly, all over the world) incredibly generous with information, ideas and support.  I think an important next step here is building these knowledge networks to share information and ideas in inexpensive ways (I'm not necessarily a fan of expensive publications in this context).

From Contest to Competency
AAM, for instance, and AASLH's Award of Merit program.  But both those programs recognize multiple winners and make the submissions and winners available to the entire field.   I wonder whether resources might be better allocated towards small improvement grants rather than prizes and at the very least, a system developed to clearly share the winning efforts and highlights best practices so others can be inspired.   And that gets back to the whole idea of sharing skills and knowledge, as above.

More posts to come about other lively discussions at the conference--but the best part for me--was, I think,  that most Ukrainian museum professionals now understand that my commitment to them and their work is a increasingly deeper one.   Who would have thought that two years ago!

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamlined House Tour

Last week, I spent a great deal of time on the road, a not unusual occurence,  and in the early morning, I'm always happy to hear Garrison Keillor come through my car radio with the Writers' Almanac.
On March 2 it was Dr. Suess's birthday--but it was also Tom Wolfe's birthday and Keillor shared a bit of Wolfe's essay on journalism, in which he suggested that reporters needed to employ four technical devices more commonly used in fiction to get at the emotional core of any story.   As the story continued, I realized that Wolfe's four rules were exactly in line with what makes a great guided tour (something I've been pondering lately for a couple different organizations, including the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, NY).
So, what did Wolfe, the author of both fiction and non-fiction classics such as Bonfire of the Vanities, The Right Stuff and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby think journalists (and by my extension, historic site tour developers) do to engage their audiences?  It's pretty simple.

1. Construct scenes
2. Dialogue, lots of it
3. Carefully noting social status details everything from dress and furniture to the infinite status clues of one's speech.
4. Point of view in the Henry James' sense of putting the reader inside the mind of someone other than the writer (or tour developer).

Those, said Wolfe, are the devices that give fiction its absorbing, gripping quality, making the reader feel present in the scene described or even inside the skin of a particular character.   I suspect that Wolfe, when he wants a writer to note details such as dress and furniture doesn't mean to imply that those details are the most important part of the narrative, but rather that those details support the larger emotional connection.

Think about the last tour you took and compare it to the last novel you read.  A novel requires a significantly greater investment of time but we stick with it, because the rewards, those emotional connections, may be far greater.  I'd love to hear from readers about tours that made those strong emotional connections--where have you been?

Photos from Flickr
Top by Lachlan Hardy; bottom by Mo Riza

Click: National Zoo

Several weeks ago,  I spent an enjoyable few hours at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.  It had been a long time since I'd visited and I was intrigued by the level of exhibitry I found.   And as I looked,  I realized that the engineering of many of the exhibit elements was substantial--to withstand the outdoors,  repeated use by huge numbers of people, and in one case, a design for a fascinating people/animal interaction.   Here's a bit of what I saw.  First, the elephant exhibit--although we didn't see any actual elephants out that day!

 

A tilt-it, pin-ball like game about dangers in habitats that really encouraged people, even toddlers, to figure out how to work cooperatively in moving a ball through a maze.  

Giant models of dung.  Who wouldn't want to see these! 

I'm not usually a fan of lift-up tabs, but this slider design meant that you had the ability to think about 

 the two choices,  rather than just a random flip-up.  Nice design--and super sturdy.

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I found the cell phone trivia game not very exciting compared to both the animals and all the other interactive elements in this section,  but I could imagine, for certain kinds of learners, particularly a restless kid in a group with others, it might really be intriguing.

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Throughout the zoo, an emphasis on what we can do to help protect the world's wildlife.  I'd love to know if there have been studies that see whether this kind of signage and education really does encourage citizen action.

Now, on to the Think Tank, an indoor exhibit about how, why and if animals think.  There weren't many visitors inside on the sunny day I was there, and I think the exhibit probably is of greatest interest to visitors other than moms with strollers, of which there were many that day.

I loved that in the section on using tools, the designer used bright red tool chests as exhibit furniture.  And those yellow Post-its?  A design element, not real post-its,  but a great element that most visitors understand as a place to look first.  Here's a close-up.

And finally,  one of the most intriguing interactives I've ever seen.  The visitor could sit on something that looked like a rowing machine and play tug-of-war with the great apes who were on the other side of the glass--but it was totally up to the ape whether he or she wanted to play with you.  They weren't interested in playing that day,  but absolutely almost every visitor to the space wanted to try.   It was just a one-person interactive, but it made it possible for others to watch and consider and the uncertainty was a great element.

But of course, you go to the zoo to see animals.  And seeing 7 young lion cubs out to play trumped all the exhibit elements!