Welcome!

Last week, at a workshop with twenty five Connecticut organizations who are part of the StEPs CT program, I began the day by asking participants to share a time they felt really welcome at an museum or historic site--and the group shared a wide range of answers that really expressed the many ways in which visitors want to interact with us  (and, by the way,  it was a great way to shift the day's dynamic from museum worker to museum visitor).

Here's some ways visitors felt welcomed:

• Getting a special peek behind the scenes.
• A tour guide or docent who really engaged and spent time with them.
• A tour guide or staff who really left the visitor alone to explore.
• Knowledgeable docents.
• Front desk people who looked happy to see you,  who looked up when you came in.
• Staff who worked to find out your knowledge and interests.
• Labels that worked at many different levels (although in general, welcoming museums are characterized by people, not labels).
• Labels and lighting big enough and bright enough

But there was one story that I'll paraphrase here that really struck me as important.  One of the participants, a board member at a volunteer organization,  choose to describe a long-ago museum visit.   She remembers walking home from the swimming pool one day when she was a kid, with a few friends, in their swim suits, carrying their towels and for some reason, which she can't now remember, they decided they wanted to visit the historic house they passed on the way.  Marching up to the door,  they rang the door bell.  She doesn't remember paying any admission and thinks the woman working there just let them in for free,  in their swimsuits.   She still remembers what she saw that day, and how exciting it was when the guide took a foot warmer down, opened it up, and let them look inside.  She had a great smile on her face decades on as she shared the story.

Over a great dinner in Minneapolis,  Susie Wilkening and I had a long conversation about engagement with objects and about whether objects really matter.  This story, with the simplest of objects and the most welcoming of museum workers, reinforced for me the power of both people and objects.  It's the combination together that makes museums compelling, unique places.  What's your welcoming story?

Memorials, Museums, and Each of Us

At the AAM conference this year I was privileged to be a member of a panel in a session, Interpreting Human Tragedy:  In Memoriam,  which sprang from last fall's issue of Exhibitionist on the same topic for which we had all written. Stacey Mann of Night Kitchen Interactive took the lead in organizing our session.  I joined Stacey,   Danny M. Cohen, Ph. D. of Northwestern University, School of Education and Social Policy; Ian Kerrigan, Assistant Director of Exhibition Development at the National September 11 Memorial Museum and Wendy Aibel-Weiss, Director of Exhibits and Education, Tribute WTC Visitors Center.

We really wanted this session to be a conversation,  so Stacey encouraged us to take a leap of faith and not do any sort of formal papers or presentations.  In several conference calls, we brainstormed questions that were interesting to us, and we hoped interesting to an audience.  Stacey began with a brief framing of the issues-which included an invitation to the audience to ask questions at any time--and turned to us,  squished together on the tiny stage, and began asking questions.    

It was so gratifying to have people come up to the microphone and ask such thoughtful questions, and to feel that our own thinking out loud, pondering responses, perhaps provides a better model for our work than the reading of papers.  So here, a recap of key ideas/questions and comments,  as they came forth in the session.  It's a long post,  but I hope worth reading.   Please continue the conversation by sharing your comments below and many, many thanks to Stacey, Ian,  Danny,  Wendy, and all of you who participated (and shared via your tweets.)

We talked about how memorials can tell stories...but importantly,  as Ian mentioned, that these museums take memories combined with,  as he put it,  "agreed-upon facts."  But those agreed-upon facts often feel a burden, as it is becomes a way of codifying history.  The challenge in the 9/11 museum, opening later this year, is to share, to audiences, the event that changed the world as we know it.  And with a changing world, how to design for future audiences and events.  But Danny reminded us,  that "ownership" of events often leads to definitions that may exclude other groups and other narratives.

Place really matters...the fact that an event, whatever it is, happened here.  So Holocaust museums in the United States or elsewhere outside Europe, or in my own experience, the Chernobyl Museum in Kyiv vs. actually visiting Chernobyl,  are entirely different experiences and mean entirely different things to visitors.  Place is powerful.

That discussion of place led to a consideration of these places of tragedy as sacred spaces--and the struggle many have with cell phone pictures,  teenagers giggling and the like.  Danny, whose deep experience in Holocaust education brought a broad perspective to our conversation, mentioned two important responses to what some seem as inappropriate behavior. One, that many survivors comment that they're okay with the noisy groups of young people--that those young people are alive, representing the future denied so many;  that it can be seen as almost a joyful affirmation/antidote to the tragedy.  Second,  he reminded us that these are often traumatizing sites or exhibits and what seem to be inappropriate responses are really coping mechanisms.

And then the questions really began from the audience.   One asked about the inclusion of images of dead bodies in an exhibit on the Armenian genocide.  Should the images be shown in a way that you have to make a choice to see, as at the Holocaust Museum in DC?  Are there other approaches?   The purpose of these images may be only to shock or provoke, and as a learning scientist,  Danny feels strongly that provocation is harmful to a real learning process.  The goal, in a thoughtful, reflective museum, should be to move a visitor from a purely emotional response to an intellectual, reflective, analytical response.  Mere shock never does that.

A staff member from a military museum asked about issues of including the enemy,  particularly in exhibitions about recent US wars--and how to depict the enemy.  Danny asked how often, for instance,  exhibitions about the Holocaust show Nazis in any way but in uniform.  He reminded us that these were people, with families, with emotions--that by showing them only in uniform, we may wiggle out of the consideration of our own human responsibility. 

A question about interpreting the site of a Native American massacre brought conversation--and many shared ideas from the audience-- about  the responsibility of the victors, whoever they may be, in interpreting history--a museum's responsibility of balance to create an exhibition that really provides, through the active involvement of communities affected,  multiple perspectives.  From a 19th century event in the American West to African revolutions...for an exhibit about social media and African revolutions,  the question, "can we trust social media to properly document revolution?"   From someone on our panel (ah, my note-taking fails me),  the idea that we have to trust that our visitors are capable of the same question--and of thinking about the answers.  Perhaps those questions can be asked of the exhibit's visitors.

And a question for us about what the take-away message of memorials and memorial museums could or should be.  As a group, we tried to puzzle out an answer.  The first phase of a project might be memorialization, often driven by what the victims feel is appropriate.  The second might be education--just that our audiences gain basic knowledge and facts.  But the third stage is how we inspire action,  how to ensure that we, as individuals, as I somewhat inelegantly phrased it,  make a decision about whether we are Oskar Schindler or wimps. 

I'd been procrastinating about writing this post, worried about doing justice to the thoughtful panelists and audience members, but today I was reminded how important this work can be when I read this NY Times article about the extremely ad hoc, personal,  dangerous, underground--and inspiring-- efforts underway by Syrian citizens to provide food, shelter, medical care and other support to Syrian communities under attack by their own government.  Said one university student involved in the work, “All our lives we were raised to be afraid. But you get to a point where you realize you are strong because you can speak and do.”    

And of course, as museums, we have powerful voices to raise. We can also be strong because we can speak and do.

Image:  Memorial gate, where people from all over the world have left momentos to honor the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist hijacking of Flight 93. Shanksville, Pennsylvania by Carol Highsmith,  Library of Congress collection

Love Those Minnesotan Labels!

Can labels be creative?  Not what's said in them,  but what they look like?  When I say the word "label"  what comes into your head?  A white piece of mat-board with text, mounted on the wall?  At the Minnesota History Center and Mill City Museum (both part of the Minnesota Historical Society)  I saw more inventive, ingenious label installations than I'd ever seen before in a single place.  Over and over again,  text was displayed in surprising ways,  that encouraged me to read more,  to explore, and to appreciate the sense of humor and playfulness that the exhibit teams brought to projects.

Here's just a few examples from several different exhibits.  Above, visitors could hand-crank reproduction sausage through a grinder,  reading a memory of sausage-making as the links spooled along.  Below left,  census information is printed on a (I'm sure) reproduction piece of clothing.  Below right, a silhouette and a informational pillow represent one of the house's earliest residents.

 

Everyone seemed to love this installation in the Greatest Generation exhibit.  Oral histories and photos were printed on paper dry-cleaner bags, and visitors could move the rack around to read. Below, more food story labels, on bread and cans.

And a few more food-related ones--a dining table with signs on the back of chairs,  text on plates, and the simplest of fake food--hand-sewn potatos and wooden carrots.  You could open the oven--and there's the turkey, basted with oral histories.

I watched several families gingerly sit, below, on a bed,  and listen and laugh as their weight triggers an audio segment.

And finally, this one from Mill City.  Because as clever as these labels are,  if they didn't help us towards a "so what?" understanding, then they would just be design tricks.  Instead, each one made the museum feel friendly--like they wanted to sit down and share a compelling story with you or encourage you to consider something new.  After my few days in Minneapolis,  the labels seem to embody Minnesotans--very Minnesota-friendly!   For more information about the Minnesota Historical Society's work on the Open House: If These Walls Could Talk exhibit, where many of these images come from,  be sure and check out Letting Go?: Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World, edited by Bill Adair, Benjamin Filene and Laura Koloski.

Bridging Distances: The View from Belarus

I have a number of blog posts in my thinking queue as a result of my time at the AAM conference and in Minneapolis' great museums,  but I'm very pleased to share this post by Katrin Hieke (kontakt[at]katrinhieke.de) of Bonn, Germany, about her experience in Belarus.  It's partly a tale of social media, as I saw her tweet that she was going, we connected, and through some Ukrainian and Fulbright friends and colleagues, the network expanded.

Now, where at all is Minsk? In February 2012 and rather surprisingly, I received an invitation to travel to Minsk in Belarus. Even for Europeans, this land seems to be very, very far away - in many ways. 

This year, over the course of several months, the Goethe Institute in Minsk is holding a training series for museum staff, historians and didactics in basic fields of museum management. It is meant to serve as a starting point for the discussion of specific issues and tasks of the Belarusian museums as well as to stimulate developments. The programme has been designed by Dr. Kristiane Janeke of Tradicia History Service (who is both an expert in museum management als well as of the Eastern European museum scene) in cooperation with ICOM Belarus & ICOM Germany.

My part there was to conduct a one-day seminar on “Museum marketing as an instrument of a systematic management process”– something I have done quite a few times before and felt safe at.

But as soon as I started preparations I realized, that this would indeed be a very special job. To begin with, information about the museum scene in Belarus is very rare. In the information age, where it feels that all information is readily available on the Internet, this feels strange. Only lately Kristiane Janeke published a (German) article about the museum landscape of Belarus (Kristine Janeke: Die Museumslandschaft in Belarus. Belarus-Analysen 4, 22.11.2011, page 6-12) So I extended my research to other channels and networks and thanks to Twitter, Linda learned of my plans and  put me in touch with Christi Anne, who lived in Ukraine for several years and is now in Minsk studying Russian, and Alla Stashkevich, the ICOM chairperson in Belarus, who also attended the seminars. Thanks to all these sources, I felt my way up to the questions of the current situations of the museums in Belarus, virulent issues as well as everyday life in Minsk.

For my seminar, of course, the question of the perception of marketing as part of the museum management was particularly interesting; how marketing could at all work in a very regulated and controlled country without a significant "market" as such; where marketing might be under the general suspicion of selling out and the commercialization of culture, reduced to advertising, not affiliated with the museum's goals and mission of the museum (which actually still is the case in some places in western Europe and beyond).

The second challenge in addition to the unusual setting was a very practical one: how to run a seminar in which I do not speak the language of the participants? Natalja Ilkewitsch from the Goethe Institute did not only a lot of the necessary organization and preparation, she also translated my slides in advance as well as my talk and the contributions of the participants. You did a brilliant job, Natalja! 

It became somewhat difficult as soon as discussions started among the participants themselves. Knowing that a lively network among the museum professionals is only just emerging and absolutely vital for the development of the museum scene, I found it difficult to weigh this and the need to move forward in the seminar; and also, since unable to follow all remarks and comments, to distinguish the important objections, understanding issues and problems from the cursory whispering. The participants showed a lot of patience, because they too had to wait for the translation of their many brilliant, sometimes quite critical questions. Definitely I was inspired by the overwhelming enthusiasm and curiosity of those 25 museum directors, officers, scholars, educators and curators from university up to cultural institutions from all over Belarus and of all ages. 

So in the end, they made me reflect a great deal on the German and Western European museum marketing approach.  My Belarusian colleagues where thinking about what to learn from that, but absolutely not in ways of unquestioned adoptions. 

  

In some seminars or customer meetings in Western Europe marketing ideas are lightly dismissed as unrealistic. But here, although the initial situation is much more difficult and the possibility of achieving it so much smaller, there is a tremendous motivation and ongoing considerations as to what might be implemented and how this could somehow be achieved. This is particularly surprising  when I learned that sometimes the producing of an ordinary museum flyer must be approved by the authorities; that there is almost no campaign budget and generally a vast dependency on governmental funding and thus externally fixed targets and tasks. There is no real link to the international museum world or access to comprehensive literature and training opportunities, let alone the option of visiting or even cooperating with other countries and their museums. And in addition, there are of course all the many problems and challenges that museums face all over the world: deficiencies in the infrastructure, lack of programs or offers for the target groups or too few staff, to name just a few.

The objectives too, in addition to resolving the major problems mentioned above, can easily be compared with those of other museums worldwide. Often mentioned in the course of the seminar was the wish to reach more children (besides school trips), young people and families; to connect the museums to the tourism sector (though this is a totally different challenge in itself), open up to multimedia and social media, develop a brand and so forth.

I very much hope that the training series will, despite the political situation, strengthen the skills and the creativity of the museum professionals and help to carry the apparent will of networking and shaping their museums of the future into the daily museum work to finally develop modern, socially relevant museums within an independent museum scene in Belarus. 

For me, Belarus is now a lot closer. And I truly wish all the many energetic, motivated people I've met there, that the country will eventually be able to join the worldwide network of museum people, putting Belarus back on the international museum map. 

Images, from top:

Lenin statue in Minsk, photo by Katrin Hieke

Street scene, Minsk, photo by Katrin Hieke

Seminar participants, photo by Yana Rovdo

At the seminar:  left to right, Kristiane Janeke, Katrin and Natalja, photo by Yana Rovdo

Touring the National History Museum in Minsk with Eugene Chervony from the Natural History Museum in Lviv (Ukraine) and Christi Anne Hofland whom I had the great pleasure to meet and spent a day in Minsk. Both are not unknown to readers of this blog!  Photo by Katrin Hieke

The National Art Museum in Minsk, photo by Katrin Hieke

Museums & Creative Practice

I'm pleased to announce the start of a new book project with my colleague Rainey Tisdale.  Museums & Creative Practice is a our effort to understand how we can be more creative museum workers--how we can embed creative practice in all aspects of our work.  Rainey,  an independent curator and blogger at CityStories,  has been actively thinking about creativity for some time,  and over the last year or so, we've begun a lively long-distance conversation about the creative process  and how it can be applied to museum practices.

We both believe that creative work can—and should-- be a part of every part of a museum’s efforts, from the gallery attendant’s work to the director’s.  As both of us travel and visit museums far and near,  we see that the innovative, compelling museums—of whatever size and discipline,  are ones where the creative process is embraced on many levels. 

We’re curious about how creativity is encouraged and nurtured;  how visitors respond to expanded creative efforts;   and how creative efforts take form in different types of museums—from art to science to history.

This is a joint project between Rainey and I because we both believe creativity flourishes with collaboration.  And that’s where you come in as well—we hope many of you will become our colleagues, sharing your perspectives, your great creative finds, and of course, your creative ideas.  Here’s where you can find us:

New Blog

Our work will result in a book, but we have several starting points that we hope become a part of.  First, a new blog, Museums & Creative Practice.  We'll use this space to update our work, to share resources we find, and of course, to hear back from all of you.

Survey

We want your thoughts on what makes you creative (or not);  on the most creative museums you know;  and about what you'd like us to think about in the course of this project.  The survey is short (!) and you can take it here.

Talk

We'll both be at the American Association of Museums conference in Minneapolis next week (yes, this year's conference theme is "Creative Community") and we are hoping to talk there with as many colleagues as possible about this project. We're holding two informal Museums & Creative Practice meet-ups.

• Monday, April 30, 12:30-2:00. Grab a takeaway lunch and meet us at the cafe seating in the lobby of the convention center, near Dunn Bros Coffee
• Tuesday, May 1, 6:00-7:30. Join us for a drinks and discussion at The Local, 931 Nicollet Mall, a few blocks north of the convention center. The reservation is under Rainey; we'll be at "Arthur's Table."

Can’t join us in person but want to share your thoughts? Please comment here, or on the new blog.  We look forward to hearing your thoughts and sharing our progress with you.

The Power of Paper

I'm always packing up paper to take to various workshops. Just today, I put together my paper, markers and scissors for a session at next week's Museums in Conversation conference in Albany.  So I'm used to watching people write on big pieces of brown paper,  stick up Post-It notes and piece together three-dimensional interactive prototypes from construction paper.

But this week, at the Corning Museum of Glass, I was struck by how powerful paper can be when you ask visitors or participants to make use of it.  I was at Corning to hold some visitor conversations around a re-doing of a section of their innovation exhibit,  the section focusing on advances in glass bottle-making.  The staff had known that the section, now more than a decade old,  just didn't quite do it anymore and they've been working with my colleague Christopher Clarke to re-shape the interpretive effort.   He suggested that it might prove illuminating to talk to some visitors about both the current gallery and the proposed re-designs--that's where I came in.

The great team at Corning put together full-size graphic mock-ups and recruited three groups of participants, ranging in age from 7 to over 70.  With each group, we met in the lobby where I distributed simple note-pads and pens to everyone; we then trooped upstairs to the current gallery.  I was interested in seeing what an open-ended approach would do, so I just asked them to note down what they saw,  any issues they saw,  what they liked, and didn't like.  And all of a sudden,  that pad and pencil were really important.  They looked deeper, they wrote down sections of the label text,  they drew pictures--no matter what age they were.  They were intensely serious and focused on their task.  I think the pads and pens were empowering in some way.  We really did want to know what they thought!

All of us then adjourned to a conference room to look at the proposed new graphics.  In the first group,  we had a useful conversation, but the second group was composed of kids from 7-17 and I was a little concerned about participation.  Out came the Post-It notes.  Each participant was asked to put a note by one thing they they found interesting and one they found confusing.  Again, the paper and pen were empowering.  They looked really hard,  they read all the labels, they sort of went back and forth between different elements trying to decide.  And then, because the notes gave me a place to start the conversation,  it was easy for that group (and another group as well) to share their ideas. After all, everyone had participated.  The pads and the Post-Its helped everyone in the group feel that their ideas were equally valued, and provided a safe space to think individually and collectively about the exhibit and design.  Perhaps it's really not the paper, but the idea that we really asked--that we did want to know what our audience thought.

But here's my favorite part of my time in Corning.  When we came in the second day,  there were a couple of additional Post-Its up.  Evidently during the morning,  a staff member named Betty came into the empty room,  saw the Post-It comments,  understood that we were looking for interesting and confusing elements,  shared her own observations and signed her name. Thanks Betty, Corning staff, volunteer participants and Christopher for such a great learning experience.  I'll keep those pens and paper handy!

Memorial Museums: Join A Conversation

From the September 11 Memorial and Museum to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum to the Holodomor and Chernobyl Museums in Kyiv and Gulag museums in the former Soviet Union, to Holocaust memorials and museums in Europe and the United States,  interpretation at memorial museums has become a part of our international museum practice--and perhaps more importantly, these museums have become important ways for the public to understand violent, complex and often horrifying aspects of our common history.   As we reframe the idea of museums into a third space, with a community-centered focus,  it's more important than ever to consider the range of questions that these museums provoke in our work.

On Monday, April 30, 9:00-10:15 AM, at the AAM Annual Conference, I'll be joining an talented group of colleagues for an open dialogue exploring the  interpretation at memorials and memorial museums.  Chaired by Stacey Mann, Director of Learning Strategies, Night Kitchen Interactive, Philadelphia, PA (who did an amazing job moving our session from idea to reality), the presenters include Wendy Aibel-Weiss, Director of Programs, Tribute WTC Visitor Center; Danny Cohen, Lecturer, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL;  Ian Kerrigan, Assistant Director of Exhibition Development, National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York, NY and me. The session sprang from all of our contributions to the fall, 2011 issue of Exhibitionist: Museums, Memorials, and Sites of Conscience. 

As a group, we've identified a list of key questions for discussion. A few of the questions on our list:

• How do collective memories of different atrocities and violent events differ across time and between communities? 
• Why do visitors make a pilgrimage to contemporary sites of tragedy?
• In this age of instant global communication, who “owns” an international tragedy?
  
• Are there age-appropriate guidelines to exhibitions that focus on human tragedy? How can museums engage children and younger audiences in these topics?
• How might the marginalization of particular histories impact collective memory and collective action?
• Should memorials and ways of commemorating be designed to change / shift over time?  If so, how?
• How do we balance individual loss and collective stories?
• Who determines the "truth" of a memorial museum?
• What happens when the "truth" presented by an authority changes?  or when the authority changes?

But we've designed this as a conversation (we promise, no endless talking heads)--so we'd like to hear from you, whether or not you'll be at the conference.  What questions do you have about memorials and memorial museums?  What do you want to make sure we share our perspectives on?  What do you wonder about?  What issues do you think memorial museums are frightened of facing?  What do you think the long-term impact of these museums can be?  Please weigh in here in the comments with questions, ideas and perspectives;  plan to join us on the 30th; and of course, check back here for a full report.

Image: Brian Kusler on Flickr