A Tiny Sampling: Museums in China

Big, bigger;  new, newer.  What does it mean for museums?  For communities?  China is building and opening new museums at an unprecedented rate.  A New York Times article from earlier this year says 390 new museums were opened in 2011, and the same pace is continuing.  I got to spend a week or so in Shanghai and Beijing earlier this month and squeezed time in to visit just three museums and wanted to share a bit of my observations (but I hope readers understanding that these are three tiny pinpoint perspectives on a huge phenomenon).

My first visit was to a museum not yet open, but with big plans.  Through a series of connections (be nice to those interns!) I had the opportunity to do a brief presentation about museums and creative practice to the staff at the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology in Beijing.  They're in the early stages of planning a new museum to be located near the Olympic site and will be making a series of visits to ethnographic museums in Europe and the United States to learn more about how cultures are presented.  They were particularly interested in the National Museum of the American Indian and we had a fascinating conversation about the ways in which different cultural groups take agency in their own portrayal.   We talked about how museums as a whole can be more creative and about understanding and developing individual creative practice.  I'll be fascinated to watch as plans for this museum develop.

In Shanghai,  I got the chance to re-connect with Jolie Zhu,  who I met when I served as her ambassador at this year's AAM meeting (and by the way, a great reason to do such things).  Along with another colleague, we spent the afternoon at the Shanghai Museum.  Architecturally undistinguished, with an interior that is reminiscent of 1980s hotels,  the collections are stunning.  I was impressed with English language labeling,  but definitely wished for more context, particularly in the ethnographic collections.  But I'll long remember the ceramics, jade and scroll paintings for their breathtaking beauty.   The museum is evidently expanding its partnerships outside China as a banner heralded a coming exhibition in partnership with the Clark Institute and a traveling show about Impressionism.  Visitors at the museum on a weekday afternoon were a mix:  of western tourists, of families with small children (for which there were no activities),  and others, perhaps locals or Chinese tourists.  

At the same time I was in Shanghai, I was also reading Death and Life in Shanghai by Nien Cheng,  the story of her imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution and eventual release,  including the details of the destruction of much of her collection of ceramics and the eventual donation of the remaining parts of her collection to the museum.  The book served as a reminder that those beautiful objects we see in museums everywhere around the world usually have complicated, sometimes dark stories to go along with them.  

Another day I ventured out to the new Shanghai Film Museum, opened just earlier this year at--and by-- the Shanghai Film Studios, a bustling commercial area that seemed off the beaten path for tourists and Westerners.  This was a place where I got a taste of the ambitions of new Chinese museums in terms of exhibitry.  There was plenty of high-tech to go around.  A river of touch screens, a giant wall-size touch screen with interpreter to explain its use,  lots of video installations (not surprising given the topic) and even a chance to watch real animators and newscasters at work.   It was a theatrical experience--beginning with your entrance as the star on a red carpet (top image).  

The museum's primary focus seemed a combination of nostalgia and technology.  I saw lots of older visitors pointing, remembering and talking about their favorite film stars while technological advances were highlighted throughout.  But there was very little, as far as I could tell, about the use of film as a political tool and how that use may have changed over time.   It's a museum that left me curious, wanting more, so I suppose that's a good thing.  If you want to see more photos from Chinese museums, I've uploaded a larger selection over on The Uncataloged Museum's Facebook page.

What did I learn from my tiny sampling?  Mostly that there's a lot more to learn.  I hope it's not my last visit to China and look forward to further connections with colleagues there.  If you're interested in museum buildings,  you may want to check out the soon-to-be-available book New Museums in China by Clare Jacobsen. The architecture of some of these new museum buildings, located throughout this enormous country,  is worth a look.  And I'll watch with interest to see if museums can move beyond their great architecture to deeper ways to engage audiences and communities.

One additional takeaway?  Building your network matters, and you can find connections everywhere.  I've hardly met a museum colleague who wasn't interested in conversation.  Many thanks to Sarah Burnham,  Jolie Zhu (below, while we enjoy a post-museum snack), AAM's Ambassador Program,  Nancy Pan, Jerry Yu and the entire staff at the National Museum of Ethnology.

Look Closely

One of the hallmarks of a creative person's life is that they take the time to look closely.  I've been in China and now Japan for the last ten days or so,  and it's provided an incredible opportunity to look at everyday details:  brooms, food,  how we transport things,  stores, and more, with new eyes so I just thought I'd share some of those images with you.  But of course, you don't need to cross the ocean to put your observational skills to work.  Take a walk in your neighborhood, around the block or across the fields and look, really look.

And of course, get ready to purchase your copy of Creativity in Museum Practice, by Rainey Tisdale and me, coming this fall from Left Coast Press!

What's Your Institutional Voice?

August has been a slow month,  deep in book edits,  travel prep and other projects.  But I'm in Los Angeles for a couple days and visited the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles yesterday.  I was struck by the strong, but varied, institutional voice in play in their new exhibitions and other areas.  The old institutional voice is what you might have expected.  Here's a look at the introductory panel to an exhibit about California history (from the '80s from the look of it--and partially closed and perhaps headed towards extinction). Omniscient,  one might say even a little boring.  You get a sense that this institution might be really good and numbering and filing things.

But here are some images--with some new kinds of voices from their new exhibitions.  At the top of the post,  a sign post in the outdoor interpretive space.  Inviting, informal,  inspiring curiousity (and sometimes, just below) a sense of humor.

The new institutional voice makes clear that there are curious, passionate people who work at the museum.  The Nature Lab features cartoon sort of mind-maps of a number of scientists,  telling their own stories of growing up and loving nature in LA.

I mean who doesn't love a guy who loves to look at birds, every day, dead or alive?  But it's not just the natural science people.  In the new dinosaur exhibit,  the palentologists share their work--but not just in dry scientific terms.

And those voices help us with questions.  Some are questions we might already have,  but some might be ones we'd never thought of.  Food on teeth?  who knew?

 

But vitally, the museum's institutional voice isn't just all all about them.  In so many places it makes it clear that we all can participate in the work of observing nature, of analyzing, of finding out new things.   Here's a big label about a budding scientist:

Here's what you can do to help learn more about LA's wildlife, organized by what you want to do.

And,  in the Mammal exhibit,  an ask for you to think big.  You, that's you.

When was the last time you thought about what your institutional voice was?  Not just what you said,  but what the tone and approach are.  There are still so many museums holding on to a single voice, at a time when we've all become used to a wide variety of choices for our information.  By creating a sensibility,  but opening it up to--and encouraging--all kinds of different voices in ways that go beyond Post-It response boards,  this museum inspired me.  Where have you heard a great museum voice(s)?

Imagine: Can Your Visitor Do It? Not Unless You Try

As I work with the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center on the re-interpretation of Stowe House, I continue to be compelled and surprised by what we're finding (you can read earlier observations here and here).  On my last visit, I was struck by how willing people are to take imaginative leaps in the service of telling a moving story.   And of course, it reminded me how rarely we do this.

In earlier audience conversations, we found that an enormous percentage of visitors, when queried what question they would ask Stowe herself,  wanted to know how and where she found the courage to write Uncle Tom's Cabin.  So that framework served as the framework for our next iteration of the planning process.  The staff invited diverse groups of participants to community conversations.  These were people who knew the Stowe Center in some way but in general were far more familiar with the Center's innovative programs than the house itself.  An interpreter provided a half-hour tour of the house, and then we sat down to chat.  And as always, my thanks go to the great interpretive planning team of Shannon Burke, Beth Burgess and Brian Co-Francesco for their willingness and passion for experimentation!

In these conversations, we tried yet another experiment.  After some talk about what surprised them and what was memorable, I divided them into groups of two or three,  gave each group a room, and asked them, in ten minutes or so, to design an experience in that room that would carry the idea of courage forward for visitors to the house.   In our forthcoming book about creativity, Rainey Tisdale and I talk about the idea of constraints helping to drive creativity--and this proved absolutely true.  Our constraints here were the room and the idea of courage;  but all the rest of the framework was wide open.

The result:  some of the responses were stunning, poetic and surprising.  There were approaches we had never thought of.  The small groups buzzed with conversation and several weeks after the get-together, a staff member happened to speak with one of the participants, who was still pumped up about the process.   A few examples:

In thinking about Harriet Beecher Stowe's bedroom, which has plenty of natural light and plants, per her and her sister's advice in The American Women's Home, one group played off those ideas in terms of both her writing and activism to create metaphors. The sunlight represented how she shed light on injustice, and the plants, the ways in which she nurtured her own creativity. 

In that same conversation, our notes show a deep interest in the kinds of topics rarely addressed in historic house:

What were her “visions” around Uncle Tom's Cabin – visions while in prayer? While walking? Thoughts she referred to as visions? – What was the depth of her thinking in relation to the topic she “courageously” brought forward? The values through which we perceive reality and make decisions – as people move through the house, give them context of the general consciousness of the period, world view, Christianity, compassion, empathy – what is this all about, and what brought her to speak out? Interested in one person’s consciousness changing the consciousness of many.

In a the next day's conversation, one participant noted about the bedroom,

[It was a] sanctuary, her escape…if she had doubts, misgivings, or was in any situations in her public life that made her uncomfortable, that this would be the space where she could release all of that without being judged or could share that with her husband and get reassurance.

When was the last time you got to delve that deeply into a historic figure's thoughts?  But the ideas weren't limited to a single room.  Another group took the dining room experience somewhere surprising to us.  Their advice was to not have it be the dining room of this house, but rather, to present the dining room as the dining room in the Litchfield house where Harriet grew up in a lively, passionate, engaged big family, and that visitors would, as Harriet did as a child every evening, have the chance to sit down and talk about the big issues of the day, ask questions and learn how to take action to make a better world.  This group's work reminded me that  often we're afraid to think outside the box, to think that visitors will not get rooms of a different period, or be interested in big ideas.

But we're finding pretty clear evidence at Stowe that experimentation is what visitors want. That many long for an experience that requires imagination.  One participant noted that the room-by-room interpretation felt particularly frustrating in talking about ideas, in getting inside Stowe's head.  So when we think about courage at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, we're trying to be courageous ourselves in the new interpretive efforts,  courage we gain by listening to current and potential audiences.

A few other quick notes on historic house tours based on what we're learning:

• Play down what brings the obvious questions.  Harriet was also a hobbyist painter, like many educated women of her time.  People are surprised at that, and ask about it, but it's a bit of a distraction from the ideas we're working on. We experimented with how the paintings are approached.  When the first painting is encountered,  the interpreter mentions that she painted, as did many women of her time, and then the paintings are not highlighted in every room. This gives space for other topics and other ways to engage visitors, rather than just talking about pretty paintings.  Visitors have more, better questions when we provide more and better ways to ask those questions.

• Interpersonal relationships matter.   The current tour talks a fair amount about Harriet's marriage and about her large family, but just mentions that she had servants.  Many of our conversation participants wanted to know more about those servants and the relationship she had with them, about the way that her work as a writer was made possible by other women who did the household work.  Research has already begun to further expand our understanding of everyone in the household.

• And of course, no surprise that individual meaning-making is always important.  Many women are particularly interested in Stowe's perspective on feminism;  those from Hartford want to know more about her relationship with the city;  reflective readers want to sit on the front porch and peruse a book.   We'll continue to puzzle out the challenge of different ways to engage all of the site's visitors.

But imagine.  Ask your visitors to do the same.  When I began writing this post, I googled and watched John Lennon's Imagine,  so I'll end with that video.  Imagine what your historic house could be and invite your visitors to do the same.  Imagine.

Innovation, Around the World Edition

This year, at the American Alliance of Museums conference, I heard a couple incredible presentations from international colleagues and followed up with a conversation with Dean Phelus and Greg Stevens of AAM about the ways in which all of us can learn from each other, by expanding the global perspectives presented at the meeting.  So here, international colleagues, is your chance to share your perspectives, your stories, your challenges and your innovations.  The online session proposal form for next year's conference, to be held in Seattle, Washington, is now open through August 26.  In this online format you can post ideas and look for feedback and co-presenters.

AAM describes this year's conference theme, The Innovation Edge:

Innovation is a defining quality of our time. Creating the new, reimagining the old, adapting the present to changing needs have become the goals of the best and the brightest among us. To go from the seed of an idea to universally adopted reality seems to take mere weeks—reading books on our phones, wearing a computer, printing three-dimensional objects in our own homes.

Innovation takes many different forms--and it's definitely not just about Googleglasses and 3-d printers.   It can be creative ways to engage your visitors in real time and in person,  or innovative ways to reach out to donors;  or create new understandings of complicated histories.   

At the 2013 meeting,  I did a brief fill-in presentation about my Ukrainian experiences just after Silvia Alderoqui of the Museum of the Schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina spoke about her museum's work.  I didn't necessarily expect to find echoes of my work in an Argentinian museum, but I did as she described a current challenge, the need "to be critical, participatory and poetic at the same time."   International participation at AAM  is important not just because it provides international participants with access to a big group of enthusiastic professionals, but more importantly, to me, because it provides Americans with new access to ideas, perspectives and ways of thinking.

International colleagues, I hope you'll consider submitting a proposal to share your innovative ideas in any area of museum operations.  If you'd like advice or guidance, please feel free to ask questions here, or to contact Dean Phelus, Senior Director, International Programs and Events at AAM,  dphelus@aam-us.org.

The Diversity Conundrum: Which Came First—The Teacher or the Learner?

My mentee for the year, Alicia Akins, continues her thinking on diversity with this guest blog post. Don't miss her first post, and continue the conversation in the comments below.

While the furor over the need to diversify the arts continues, it remains unclear exactly who we need to target, and how we will know when we’ve gotten it right.  Even the question of how to go about it is shrouded in mystery and approached with apprehension. Is the golden ticket the mere presence of more people of color?  If we can just identify and recruit underrepresented people to join our institutions and charge them with the task of increasing diversity will we have begun to find our way?  Unfortunately, it takes more than a one-man diversity and inclusion department to build a culture of true openness.  It cannot be a contrivance to win funding or increase numbers, where “others” get brain space during work hours and then we return home to our monochromatic neighborhoods and friend circles. 

I recently came across the post “White, Low Affect, Respectful” and was shocked by the suggestion that perhaps if the symphony ran on CP time, it might attract more African-Americans.  I was also immediately put off by the "respect" label, because of the implications for non-white groups—our mores are not less respectful, simply different in a way that members of the majority may find disrespectful or uncomfortable. There are dangers to changing the essence of the cultural experience to draw a different demographic.  As a classically trained musician who loves attending the symphony, making them as Ms. Lee suggests would dampen the experience for me as well.  But at the same time, I never know when to applaud or cheer at street battles, in opera (which I've played in pit orchestras) its okay to have intermittent applause.  Education is critical. The education shouldn't merely be focused on cultural connoisseurship, as one of the comments on my previous post suggested, however. It should be based on early wide exposure and careful, unbiased explanation of the proper conduct for different occasions.  Language is critical here though so we don't end up raising cultural snobs who think elitism is ok (a point I will get back to). This is not simply about being politically correct either. In describing classical music concert requirements where one must come on time and not disturb others by talking, it sets up the alternatives already as lesser. Those are experiences, by contrast, where "lateness" (a negative) is ok as is “disruptive” (another negative) behavior.  But instead, if you are taught that at classical concerts its important to show up at the beginning to get the full experience, but at other kinds of events you can show up whenever you would like or that at classical concerts outside sound competes with the music whereas at a jazz show or a gospel concert participation enhances the experience and is not rude, but expected, then you honor the traditions of each.  I'm sure everyone has had that concert experience where a person (usually white in my experience) starts clapping between movements, or even worse before the end of the piece and it comes from unfamiliarity and lack of education (which **gasp** afflicts white people as well).  But the solution is not just to teach young people how to behave at the opera, but to present both the full range of behaviors acceptable at varying events and to present the full range of artistic complexity and expression found in many kinds of arts not just the elite Western ones.

Javanese music obeys laws of counterpoint that make Palestrina seem like child’s play and if one listens to it without being prejudiced by one’s European ears, one will find a percussive charm that forces one to admit that our own music is not much more than a barbarous kind of noise more fit for a traveling circus.
                            Claude Debussy 

And how might something like that happen?  With great difficulty given that most music education and arts education programs require only one non-Western course requirement.  If students are required to go to concerts (as I was) or exhibits, they usually seek out what is familiar already, not something new and difficult to understand. If future teachers shy away from learning about arts of different cultures and classes then their students don't stand a chance. If teachers don't know about gamelan or about jazz or about funk—or mixing beats—then how will they teach it? Professional credit is given for attending courses and conferences for teachers, but are they encouraged or even required and given credit for learning about the full spectrum of arts represented within their communities?  Do most teachers feel that if there are no minorities in their classes they can skip doing the whole diversity thing since they don't have to worry about anyone feeling left out?  

This comes back to a point I made in my previous post: white people need their understanding of the arts to be diversified as much as minorities or other underrepresented groups.   White people (and even black people as well) feel cultured enough if they can parrot off a list of famous European artists or composers.  There is much greatness missing from that list, much of the human experience not found in their canon, and many important voices silenced. Greatness unobserved does not cease to be great.  The Traditionalist commented on the need to recognize and not dilute greatness and I couldn't agree more, but to imply that one must simply look to the high arts to find it is both arrogant and egregious in my opinion. High art in many cases is designated as such by those in a privileged position.  I agree fully with the second commenter that the arts are human which is why they cannot possibly be restricted to the European works (and others based on the European aesthetic) which a privileged minority have declared exceptional.  Greatness, in my opinion, lies in complexity and inspiration, and I've been fortunate enough to find it in street battles, black spirituals, and Bruckner. Education certainly is needed to those who would argue that the Golden Gate of Kiev is more inspiring than an individual’s search for eternity.  In my own experience, my appreciation for music from all times and places has not diminished my appreciation of classical music only strengthened my appreciation for music in general. And despite finding myself working in a museum now, I have spent considerable time thinking about how an interest in one might feed the other.

How might we go about making the changes, personal and institutional, needed to orient ourselves to changing demographics and the threat of irrelevance?

Learning a new language

In many ways, learning to diversify is like learning a new language. There’s dissonance, misunderstandings, and it's a process of minor continual improvements with the understanding that you won’t ever really get it perfect just better. You can express more and be better understood. Your words will always be yours, you’ll just be able to direct them toward more people.

Trial and error:  Everything is hard in the beginning. Not everything will come out right. But with each attempt, you hopefully improve.  For example, my roommate has been in Laos for half as long as I have but is far more comfortable speaking with people than I am.  She arrived and started using everything she knew, even if it wasn’t perfect.  I, on the other hand, refrained from speaking until I was certain that I had it right. She made far more mistakes than I did, but also learned far more quickly. Diversity is likely to be an issue we will stumble through, but one that my kids will have gotten a handle on and my grandkids will take for granted. Change takes time and happens in small steps.

Change of thinking: It would be nice if in any language all I had to do was learn the new words and plug them in to sentences in place of their English equivalents, but this isn’t true. Its not just about getting the vocabulary right, there’s a system that dictates what words go where and the correct timing and register of words.  These systems have deep roots that you may not understand, but can still adapt to.  In Japanese, it kills me to put off talking action until the end of a sentence, but Japanese grammar does not allow for anything else.  What dynamics are at play—particularly ones of power—that may work against the words you’re saying? Your message doesn’t exist in a vacuum, think about systems at work, too.

Improves with quality of relationships: People can tell when you’re being fake with them.  I remember when I was living in China, I had learned a few Chinese “oldies” that I could sing at karaoke with friends and also took lessons on a traditional Chinese instrument.  I had done both of those things simply out of genuine curiosity but the fact that I had taken the time to go beyond talking points in my knowledge of China earned me a lot of respect.  Learning new cultures and forms of expression is never easy.  But the same cultural dissonance you feel when you enter the worlds of people whose education, opportunities, and culture have led them to a set of interests different than your own is the same dissonance that you’re asking them to overcome. If the cultural distance seems uncomfortably far for you, chances are its uncomfortably far for them, too.

Immersion works best: When I learned Chinese, from the second day of class on instruction was in Chinese and as expected in the beginning I understood nothing.  But I learned far more quickly than those who tried to learn from the comfort of their own home environment. One of my best friends is one of the most diverse people I know which incidentally has made me more diverse.  When I talk to her about things from black culture, I’m often surprised that she knows even more about them than I do even though she’s Asian American.  She learned from having a diverse group of friends she met during a summer spent living with other minorities as part of a program for future diplomats.

Where does diversity come from?

Diversity isn’t icing on the cake, you can’t throw it on top of a finished product. It must be worked in early in the process.  You also don’t necessarily get a more diverse organization just by diversifying the kinds of people working there or visiting, but by having people with a diversity of experiences that can more easily tease out latent connections between people, ideas, and cultures. Both the personnel and the programming need to be intrinsically and inherently diverse.

What if museums looked to recruit staff who themselves were diverse and had broad exposure to different cultures and ideas rather than just those that would make their hallways a more colorful place but otherwise fit the same profile as the rest of the staff? Because of personal experience, I don’t assume that just because someone is a minority that they are diverse. I look at their friends. 

What does success look like?

I think the answer to how diverse is diverse enough depends in part on the organization. How will we know when we have got it right?  I offer a few suggestions on ways organizations may be able to gauge if they moving in the right direction.

• Diversity should be organic. There should be less resistance and resentment over the need to be more inclusive coming from within the organization and there should be widespread buy-in. Initial changes should be internal, not just in the recruiting of underrepresented staff or adding new programming. Ideas should come from across the institution not just from diversity and inclusion departments.

• When businesses want to be truly innovative they have policies that support that.  There should be increasing institutional support for diversity education for all staff.  Whether that means sending them to different kinds of conferences, giving all staff 10% of their work time to investigate a new culture outside the mainstream, or forming strategic partnerships where everyone must be involved, policies—not just staff and programming—should support the goal of being more diverse.

• Do your research.  If you have an event or program where you’re reaching out to a certain group, be sure to talk to them about why they came, what they thought and what connections they made.  Have dedicated evaluators get rich feedback that can be used to improve future planning. Understanding the real barriers is key to overcoming them.

• Think long term with partnerships. No high culture hit and runs. Follow up and realize that engagement is a two way street.

• Build advocates not just audience.  Who is your target audience already listening to and influenced by how can you build a relationship with them?

• Learn—not just about how to do the diversity thing to stay afloat, but about being diverse.

Shanghai Points of View

At the American Alliance for Museums meeting in May,  I served as an ambassador to three young  Ph.D students from Fudan University in Shanghai: Jolie Zhu, Cherry Li and Erica Fang. This was their first trip to the United States and they also found time to visits museums in New York City and Washington DC.  I was interested in their perspectives on US museums and the conference, so they were good enough to sit down with me on our last day in Baltimore.  And finally, a minute from me to get the post up!

Jolie’s research focus on is on museum education and particularly in lifelong learning.  Erica wanted to understand exhibition assessment and learn about the exhibition  awards and Cherry was interested in learning more about various museum assessment programs.  Overall, at the conference and in their museum visits, they were impressed by American museums commitment to informal learning—that they think about education, independently, as a way to attract visitors.  They found museums and museum colleagues here open-minded, and wanting to communicate in a casual way.

In Washington,  they made a tour of almost all the Smithsonian museums and enjoyed all the ways it was possible to interact in a museum—from the butterfly house at Natural History, where butterflies soared around them,  to Air and Space,  where audience members got the chance to simulate flying a plane.

Most memorable perhaps though, was the ceremony at American History where visitors of all ages participate in folding a reproduction of the Star Spangled Banner.  “So very many students and so very moving.”

And  one of the best parts about my new colleagues?  I’ll be in Shanghai in September and get to see them again!  I look forward to learning from them about their city's museums. I love being an ambassador at the conference and As AAM continues to expand an international presence at the conference, it's a great opportunity for US professionals to delve deeper into other approaches and points of view to our common work.