Lost Neighbourhoods: Can Oral History be the Center of an Exhibit?

Catherine Charlebois, from the Centre d'histoire de Montreal (Montreal's History Center) is one of my mentees for 2014. Her first blog post shares the background of an exhibit project that ended up transforming both the work of the museum and of her own professional practice. It's a great example of how uncertainty is an integral part of any creative process. This is part one of two, so stay tuned for the follow-up.

In June 2011, the Centre d’histoire de Montréal (Montreal’s History Center) launched its new temporary exhibition: Lost Neighbourhoods. The idea: bring back to life three working-class neighbourhoods and explain their disappearance. The objective: have the individuals who went through the events tell the story. The result: A new museum approach where oral histories are the primary sources and videotaped interviews, the main artifacts. For the first time, former residents who were uprooted had a public voice and told their stories, while planners active during the events and present-day experts explained the issues of the period and evaluated their legacy.

The Centre d’histoire de Montréal
 
I think it is important that I share the institution’s history to understand why it became so important for the CHM to create a major oral history-based exhibition.

The Centre d’histoire de Montréal, created in 1983, is a city-operated museum located in a former fire station, a unique heritage site. It drew inspiration from the ideas behind US National Park Service orientation centers. It was simply a place where visitors could get a brief overview of the history of the city through one permanent exhibition. Over the years, the Centre accumulated the other activities traditional to museums: temporary exhibitions, programs and collections.
 

By the early years of 2000, the Center got more and more interested in finding ways to include the many « voices » of its citizens in its interpretation activities, especially those under-represented in the more official storyline, such as the underprivileged and ethnic communities. We became interested in documenting groups that are also usually totally absent or under-represented in more traditional museums' collections and interpretation. The staff discovered and rapidly adopted the collection of memories and personal commentaries of historical significance. Montrealers sharing their memories through recorded interviews helped to create exhibitions and educational programming that would really feature their presence in the city’s history. In brief, oral history had officially made its entrance at the Centre d’histoire de Montreal and would become, over the years, an important part of its organizational identity.

The seeds of change...
 
After experimenting, developing and creating different oral history projects and programs for almost 10 years, the CHM decided, in 2009, that it was time to think seriously about doing a major exhibition in which the voices and memories of Montrealers would play a central part.
 
The Lost Neighbourhoods exhibition project was born with the discovery of a collection in the City Archives of more than 6400 photographs of buildings slated for demolition in older working-class neighbourhoods surrounding downtown Montreal in the 1950s and 1960s. Like other North American cities during the 1950s up to the 1970s, Montreal was transformed by major urban renewal projects. A modern city emerged, but only through the expropriation and displacement of more than 25,000 people from older inner-city neighbourhoods. The demolition of the three neighbourhoods presented in the exhibition, the Red Light district, the Fauboug à m’lasse (Molasse Borough) and Goose Village, resulted in the displacement of more than 12,000 people.
 
The City undertook the daunting task of systematically numbering and photographing the exterior facades (and sometimes interior rooms) of the thousands of residences condemned for demolition. It is believed that these photographic archives were created to facilitate the appraisal of building value in order to compensate owners. With basic information on the building and images in hand, the city’s real estate appraisers could simply do their job at their desk without having to pace up and down streets and back alleys.

In the presence of this extraordinary visual account of vanished neighbourhoods and with all the experience we had acquired with oral history it became clear to us that it was the perfect project to combine both: An history museum exhibition based on a corpus of historical photographs mixed with personal testimonies of people who had lived in these neighbourhoods and gone through the displacement process.

Aiming toward another type of exhibition...

We were pumped, excited and deeply motivated by this idea. We knew somehow that it would work, that it would propel us toward something different. But, to be completely honest, we had no idea about how to do it exactly or what would be the end result. But we knew somehow, that to fully embrace this new way of doing an history exhibition in an history museum we had to let go some of our old habits and beliefs and embrace new methods--get even more creative.

On the other hand, the CHM’s agenda for this project was very clear from the start :

• showcase, in innovative manner, of a vast photography collection from the municipal archives. a collection mostly unknown to the public .
• re-position the institution by prioritizing the memories of Montrealers making the CHM a leading curator and promoter of our own citizens history and memory.
• and above all, place oral history at the heart of the interpretation and exhibition design. By placing oral history at the center, we had three subgoals:
• present, in a non-confrontational manner, the different viewpoints of the residents/citizens and those of urban planners and historians.
• make oral history the principal resource in interpretation and interaction with museum visitors, limiting images and, especially, texts to a discreet supporting role when appropriate.
• better understand this watershed moment in Montreal’s history by revealing the human face of urban renewal.

These were the initial goals and moreover they acted as guidelines to develop the project since we did not have models to rely on or similar previous exhibition experience of that kind and of that scale. They were not written down but came over and over in our conversations, meetings and official presentations of the project. Despite the lack of written "plans" these goals did not undergo revision throughout the process. They were clearly stated and understood, they were the official institutional positions and oriented the project from day one.

Using Oral History to Tell the Human Side of the Story 

With these goals in mind plus the objective to bring back to life these three working-class neighbourhoods we knew we could not do things only in a traditional way. We had to venture ourselves toward other fields and techniques. On one hand, we of course had to include field research, finding and collecting testimonies. On the other, we had to think on how to include this type of information and media in an exhibition that would be really engaging and entertaining to the audience.

We put in parallel motion traditional documentary research done in preparation to any exhibition project and an oral history collecting campaign. For nine months, the field team interviewed former residents and also City of Montreal officials and other actors involved in the demolitions. We also interviewed professionals and researchers who could give us an appreciation and a better comprehension of what happened at the time.

Ten binders of research materials, 43 filmed interviews involving 55 participants and more than 75 hours of interview footage later we had to make sense of all of this. We still had the challenge to materialize this wild idea of creating an orally-based history museum exhibition. The ultimate objective being that the interviews, the oral history aspect of the project, would be the basis for the historical interpretation of the events and not the artifacts or the archival documents. From day one, people’s voices would be the center of this story.

But the question was still how? How could we establish a clear, efficient and engaging dialogue between the design of exhibition spaces, the more traditional historical documents, including the vast collection of photographs, and the taped interviews which we wanted at the center?

Of course we knew that the use of oral history in exhibitions was not a new idea. But in general, these personal accounts usually constitute one among several illustrative techniques to facilitate visitors’ understanding of the theme. They also usually are not the principal source of documentation and interpretation within a history museum exhibition and nor are they fully integrated into the design. We wanted to change that. We wanted to go further, go beyond the small television in the corner or the cinema-type room where you happened to go only if you have time... In Lost Neighbourhoods we wanted to place personal testimonies at the centre of the exhibition. But still, how do you do that? Stay tuned for Part 2 to find out how the exhibit was created.

Ukraine in Seattle

I've been going through the AAM conference schedule, trying to figure out how I'm going to make time for all I'd like to do and learn--and I figured Uncataloged readers might be doing the same.  So I wanted to alert you to several chances to meet three of my great Ukrainian colleagues who will be attending the conference so you can mark your own calendars. (and a shout-out to AAM's app developers for creating the feature to add your own schedule in this year!)

Ihor Poshyvailo of the Ivan Honchar Museum, Eugene Chervony of  Shevchenko's Grove, the Museum of Folk Architecture and Life,  and Tania Kochubinska of the Pinchuk Art Centre bring a great variety of museum experiences to Seattle.  Along with Tricia Edwards of the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center, we'll be presenting Can Constraints Make Your More Creative? on Sunday at 2:00 PM.  Ukrainian museums operate under constraints that many of us can barely imagine, and we'll share creative solutions already underway and engage audience members in helping us to think anew about others.

But judging from the response we got from several posts about Ukrainian museums during the conflicts of the last several months, we're guessing that conference-goers might relish the chance to dig deep into the current issues surrounding the conflict and how its affected museums.  Thanks to Dean Phelus at AAM and the sponsorship of US-ICOM, we've squeezed in a special session,  Museums in a Time of Conflict, Monday, May 19, 2:00-3:00 PM in the International Lounge. As the Ukrainian  nation works to find a new path, what do the changes mean for museums?  And how have museums stepped up to meet community needs?  And what's the difference between what we see on the news and what's happening?  (You won't find this session in your program, so make a note!)   And, we'll be attending the ICOM-US lunch on Tuesday, so you can also meet them there.

But Ihor, Eugene and Tania are really looking forward to the opportunity to learn more about American museum practices.  In particular,  they have interests in including visitor voices in exhibitions,  branding and marketing,  working with teenagers, and issues surrounding civic engagement.  If you've got a great story or project to share with them, please let me know and I'll put you in touch.  And if you see them in the corridors of the conference, do say hello!  From top to photo in this post, that's Eugene, Tania, and Ihor.

Update:  I neglected one more chance to learn more about Ukraine!  Ihor Poshyvailo will be presenting a case study on the Dynamic Museum Project of the Ivan Honchar Museum in the Lessons from the International Community on Tuesday, May 20 from 8:45-10 a.m.

Our deep gratitude to AAM, the United States Embassy in Ukraine, and the Rinat Akhemetov Foundation for the Development of Ukraine for making this experience possible.

Selling or Sharing?

Last week I spoke to students in a public history course at SUNY Delhi.  These students were not going to become public historians, rather it was an honors course for students majoring in subjects ranging from culinary arts to nursing.  They were a great group and had some really interesting questions about museums, about how history is presented and about my work as, essentially, a small businessperson.  One question has really stuck in my mind.

"In your business,"  said one student, "is it more selling or sharing?"   What an intriguing way to think about what I do.  Every museum consultant works differently and in reflecting on this question I realized how my own approach has evolved over time.  Of course I sell--every freelancer needs to persuade people to hire them.  I blog here, I'm on Linkedin,  I co-wrote a book, you can hear me talk at conferences,  check out my tweets.  That all can be perceived as selling.

But on the other hand, it's also sharing.  I love my work and I think there is potential in any and every museum.  I love sharing ideas from one place to another--I'm sort of a hunter/gatherer/forager of life.  Some of the most-read posts here are simply when I'v closely observed and reported on a visitor experience at museums like the Rosenbach or the Rijksmuseum.

All that blog writing, tweeting, conference-speaking sharing though, isn't what pays the bills.  But when I think about my work directly with museums and history organizations, it's also a process that can be described as sharing.  I believe that great work happens when there's a diversity of opinions and approaches at the table.  My job as a consultant is to find ways to bring great ideas out, experiment with them, fail, experiment again, and keep going.   When I asked one client about why they hired me they said, "You know, you were the one who proposed working with us, not just writing a report."  I'm the consultant with the questions, not with the answers.

But back to selling:  some of my absolutely favorite projects have come from random people emailing me and asking me to talk about a project they have in mind, or sending me an RFP that intrigues me.   If your museum is thinking about engaging communities, or creating an exhibit, or re-interpreting your historic site,  or encouraging your staff to think more creatively, you should be in touch.  And if you want to meet me in person, I'll be at AAM and I'd love to sit down for a chat.  

Selling or sharing?  Selling and sharing.

Can You "Toyota" It? Lessons from the Factory Floor

One hallmark of a creative organization is the ability to look outside your usual realm.  Guest blogger Trevor Jones, Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Kentucky Historical Society, shares his team's learning from the world of automotive manufacturing.  Read this, and consider where your team could go to learn something new:  a plant, a restaurant, a farm, or ?  It's probably right next door, wherever you are.

Have you ever worked on a project and noticed a problem but you were afraid to speak out? Perhaps you were junior team member, or the change would have been expensive, or the boss clearly didn’t want to hear about any flaws.  I’ve been there, and it stinks. Feeling unable to speak out leaves you frustrated and angry and also leaves the organization with a poor project. However, if you worked for Toyota, you would have been expected to speak out and propose a solution.

The Toyota plant in Georgetown, Kentucky is massive. They churn out 500,000 cars a year and you can tour the plant for free. The operation is a well-oiled machine where team members rotate jobs every few hours to avoid fatigue and boredom. As you move through the plant, a worker occasionally notices a problem and pulls a cord running above the production line. This action triggers a pleasant little song and the line stops. A team leader or supervisor runs over to address the issue and then the line starts again. The idea is that workers are expected to find small problems and fix them before they become big ones. Toyota’s entire corporate culture is built around the idea that quality is everyone’s job. Employees are not only encouraged to solve problems, but also discover ways to make the operation more efficient. If you work for Toyota and want to streamline a process, they’ll give you the time to build what they call a “cardboard and duct tape” version to see if it works. This is a low cost prototype to see if your idea actually has merit. The prototype is tested and evaluated, and if it’s successful it becomes standard practice and the person who generated the idea is rewarded with a cash bonus.

If you’re a management nerd like me you can read any of a dozen books about how Toyota developed this corporate culture and how other companies have tried to copy it. 

But, the real question is how does Toyota apply to the museum world?  The point is not to simply try to copy Toyota’s methods, but rather to use their culture as a springboard to get your staff to think about museum work in new ways. In their book Leadership Matters, Anne Ackerson and Joan Baldwin write that one of the dangerous myths of museum leadership is that “we are the source of our own best ideas.”  Looking outside our industry exposes us to new ways of thinking. My example is Toyota because they have a successful corporate culture and their plant is nearly in our backyard. A couple of years ago I convinced our leadership team to take the entire staff on plant tour so they could see the operation. This was followed by followed by lunch and a meeting with Toyota’s leadership to discuss their corporate culture. 

I’d studied Toyota, and my hope was their concept of “stopping the line” when a problem was spotted would become part of our museum’s culture. Our visit to the plant helped a little with that, but looking back at it a couple of years later, speaking up was not the concept that stuck. Instead, our employees latched onto Toyota’s concept of testing ideas with “cardboard and duct tape.” Our museum culture had been focused on producing polished “professional” products. As an accredited institution, the common belief was that we had to do things perfectly and that sharing something that looked unfinished or cheap was a professional affront.  We produced some really attractive things, but our culture created huge barriers to evaluation. Once you decide that a product is “perfect,” it becomes very hard to change it based on visitor feedback! Touring Toyota changed this view. We started doing “cardboard and duct tape” versions of exhibits and programs. We created draft labels and put them up with pushpins, and created freeform programs that could change easily based on visitor feedback. Our employees began using “Toyota” as a verb – when evaluating a proposal, people would say “That could be a good idea, but let’s Toyota it and see if it works.” 

As with cars, your mileage may vary, but looking outside your industry is a good place to find the catalyst to inspire your teams. Find a company that does something well, expose your staff to those ideas, encourage change and then reward the behaviors you want to see. Museums can rarely give out cash bonuses for good ideas like Toyota can, but we can single people out for praise, reward success with parties (our team likes cupcakes) and encourage people to constantly point out mistakes and suggest new ideas. It seems simple, but the folks at Toyota will tell you that there’s a lot of thought that goes into creating an organization where people feel that everyone has a responsibility to make things better. 

Images:  top, from Toyota.com;  center, temporary prototype labels courtesy of the Kentucky Historical Society, and bottom, Captain America cardboard template via therpf.com.  And just a note, you can't believe what googling cardboard and duct tape turns up!

Break the Rules: Hands-On Tours that Really Do

In our book, Creativity in Museum Practice, Rainey and I highlight an AAM session from several years ago that asked participants to make a list of all the museum rules and then to think about how they could creatively be broken.   What's the biggest museum rule?  The one we tell school children and probably every adult would mention if asked?  Don't touch.

Last week at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, I got a chance to break that big rule, not just with grudging permission, but with enthusiastic encouragement from staff.  The Rosenbach is best known for its incredible manuscript and rare book collection--everything from the manuscript of Joyce's Ulysses to a list of enslaved people written by Thomas Jefferson;  to the entire collection of Maurice Sendak's work to poet Marianne Moore's living room. So you imagine a hushed, white-glove kind of place, where archivists and curators jealously guard access to their precious materials.  Wrong!

The Rosenbach's hands-on tours are not tours with reproductions.  They are small group (less than five people) hands-on tours of the real thing--and the real thing is everything from some of the earliest printings of Shakespeare to Marianne Moore's letters.   The cost is $5 in addition to museum admission and you can sign up in advance or join the tour on the spur of the moment if there's room.
Last Friday, along with other tour participants, I carefully washed my hands, and then Farrar Fitzgerald, The Sunstein Family Assistant Director of Education, led us upstairs, into the Rosenbach brothers' library on the top floor.  It felt secret in a way, and as Farrar unlocked a library cabinet to take out a box, it felt even more special.   Our tour was about the sea, and so we embarked on a journey, both practical and metaphorical.

Over the course of the next hour, we looked--and yes, touched!--a handwritten manuscript by Joseph Conrad, a first edition of Moby Dick;  a fine art edition of Joyce's Ulysses with illustrations by Matisse;  and a lovingly hand-printed edition of the Wreck of the Hesperus.   We held the books and manuscripts in our hands, feeling the weight of the paper, the press of the hand-set type, even smelling that old-book smell.  We each read a bit aloud,  and I remember closing my eyes and listening to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, imagining the scene.  Farrar introduced each item, linking it to the sea, and drawing our attention to details.  She carefully handled each object, but didn't hesitate to say, "go ahead, you can pick it up!"

Upon reflection, I was struck not only by the power of objects and the power of words,  but the power of the experience itself, of bonding with a small group of strangers as we embarked upon our own voyage of discovery. 

The best thing for you, museum readers?  It's that every single history museum or historical society, no matter what your size, could do exactly this same program on the same budget--pretty much zero dollars.  I've used literally hundreds of history archives, large and small, well organized and not, and although Joseph Conrad's manuscripts don't exist in every one,  incredible stories do.  So, next Monday morning, go first thing to your archives and consider what stories you can tell, what voyages you can take your community on. 

Why Even Ask the Question if You're Not Listening?

On crime shows like Law and Order, it’s accepted wisdom that a prosecuting attorney should never ask a question of a witness that she or he doesn’t already know the answer to.  But in planning, it’s exactly the opposite.  A few weeks ago, I was asked to participate in a planning focus group, as somewhat of an outside stakeholder,  for a largish organization.  We received materials in advance including a set of four goals.  “Hmm, I thought, I guess they’re farther along in the process than I thought.  They  already have goals in place.”  I go to the meeting, sit in a room with a group of immensely talented people from various arts and humanities disciplines.  We’re introduced to the process by the organization’s outside facilitator who says, in passing, that the organization hasn’t had a strategic plan in almost ten years; but they’re required to by a source of funding support, so now they’re doing it.   I thought, “Hmmm, a bit of a red flag. As a grant reviewer, a statement like this always caused me to look hard at an application.”  The facilitator and the director talk about these focus groups, about an upcoming survey, about delivering a draft, and so on.

The conversation begins, with a note-taker taking notes projected on the screen.  As we near the end of the meeting, we’re asked to react to the four goals.  There’s a silence, and finally I say (they asked for my opinion, right?) that I thought the four goals were old-fashioned, that they sounded like they could have been written ten years ago.   There’s another silence, when I wonder whether I should have spoken up, but then all of sudden the conversation blooms, with questions and lively talk from everyone around the table:   why are goals are already in place at the start of the process?   Do these goals reflect current realities and thinking?  How can the process should be a more open one? 

Great, right?  We were asked for our opinions and perspectives and we delivered them.  I left the meeting thinking that those opinions and perspectives had been recorded, noted (I could seen them projected on the screen)  and perhaps even appreciated.  After all, it was a great, thoughtful group of people in the room.

But, a week or so later, the notes of the meeting were distributed. I’m astonished to see that the entire discussion about the goals has been deleted.  Because we were critical and questioning about the process, it feels like it was taken as a direct challenge to the organization.  Rather than think about the questions we raised, it was easier to just erase them and pretend they didn’t exist.

Every museum evaluator I’ve ever worked with has always reminded me at the beginning of the process of the essential need to embrace the data, to be ready to really listen and be prepared to make change.  That doesn’t mean making every change a focus group suggests;  but to be serious about the process and the learning that occurs.  This organization demonstrated, from start to finish in this part of the process, that these focus groups were just a dog and pony show;  that decisions had already been made.  

Think about your own work.  Are you prepared to listen to the answers, or, like those Law and Order folks, only asking the questions you know the answers to? We’re not district attorneys,  we are, at our best, explorers of arts, of life, of new ideas.  So be prepared to listen.  Otherwise, why even bother to ask the question?

Take a Friday Listen!

Tune in to The Museum Life online tomorrow, Friday, April 4 at 10 AM EST  join host Carol Bossert and me as we talk about building creative cultures in museums.  Museums do creative work, but is creativity relegated to the exhibit designer and art curator? Can the registrar and operations manager be creative in their work? We know what a creative culture looks like at Google and Apple, Inc., but what would a creative culture look like in a museum? How will we know it when we see it?   And how can we build one, from wherever we work in a museum.

Can't make the live show?  It, and other shows with other amazing guests, are always available streaming online.