Book Review: Jay Kirk's Kingdom Under Glass

I finished this book a few weeks ago, and keep forgetting to write it up.  On a scale of 1 to 5, I would give Kingdom Under Glass a 3.5.  

Photo borrowed from Mike Ansel from his blog "Hunting with Mike".  It was way too good to resist!

 

It was an engaging read, but it was a touch too novelistic for my tastes.  Kirk understands this flaw, and goes to some lengths in his afterward to describe how he came to the conclusions he did regarding Carl and Delia Akeley's thought processes and motivations.  He makes some valid points, but I simply don't agree that a book that presumes to know what a little girl on a street car in the early 1900s thought about Carl Akeley's arms should be classified as non-fiction.  

Now, on the flip side, this very engaging style of writing made the book much more readable than a traditional biography, and I tore through it.  I deeply appreciated that Kirk told the story of the Akeley's from both Carl and Delia's perspectives, especially when it would have been so easy to dismiss Delia as paranoid or unstable.  Again, I think Kirk got a little too far into what he thought these long-dead taxidermists were thinking, but it was a wise choice to split the focus of the book between them both.

My only other issue with Kingdom Under Glass is that I wanted more of it to be about the dioramas and museum work they they both did so well.  A large portion of the latter half of Kirk's book is extensive descriptions of the African safaris on which the Akeleys collected their specimens, which is fascinating, but not what I had hoped for.  On the other hand, the focus on the safari and the hunting of great African mammals just as conservation of species and habitat was beginning to become a concern is a nice echo of current worries and sentiments, and a good reminder to modern readers.  I suppose I can't really fault the book for not being exactly what I wanted, since it was so good at being what it was: a highly stylized and novelistic, but incredibly readable biography of two fascinating people who lived during a fascinating time.

In the end, I would definitely recommend that museum lovers read this book--but save your money and check it out from the library.

My Museum Booklist

I've recently finished Jay Kirk's Kingdom Under Glass (review to follow soon), and it's made me want to read up more on the history of history museums.  Here's the book list I'm working on right now--recommendations would be lovely!

Still Life:Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom.

   -Inspired directly by Kirk's book, I'm eager to learn more about the art that featured so prominently in America's first museums.

The Species Seekers: heroes, fools, and the mad pursuit of life on earth by Richard Conniff

   -A gentleman I knew at the Field Museum had a species of bird named after him not too long ago, the Laniarius willardi, and this selection is in honor of him.  I love the idea of these people who purposely seek out the unknown; they're the engine behind museum research and also a little bit crazy--sounds like the perfect combo to me!

The Participatory Museum by Nina Simon

  -I really enjoy Nina's Museum 2.0 blog (though I have to limit my reading of it in order to keep this space from being a complete carbon copy of her), and I'm excited to read her thoughts in a more extended form.

Dry Storeroom #1: the secret life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey

 -I tend to gravitate towards novelistic histories, and this seems to fit the bill as an engaging history of museums. 

What are you reading about Museums?  I'd love some suggestions to expand my reading list!

Why I'm thankful for Museums.

Tomorrow Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving, and I'm taking the occasion to reflect on why I'm thankful for museums.

(c) the incomparable Bill Watterson

1. Dinosaurs.  I was never the kid who knew all the prehistoric periods and could spell  "Pachycephalosaurus" before I could spell my own name, but I fricking love those kids.  The kids who vibrate with excitement when they come in the door, the kids who have T.rex rainboots and stegosaurus mittens, the kids think that coming to the natural history museum is THE best thing ever--those kids make my day.  They make my job worthwhile.  They run across marble floors and yell with excitement when adults talk in low moderated tones, and just generally remind museum visitors that science and history is something that you really should be excited about.  I'm so grateful for the enthusiasm and passion that dinosaurs evoke in kids.  Also, dinosaurs were giant lizards.  Some of them slammed their heads into one another, some of them sat on nests, some of them had feathers, and some of them weighed 100 tons...how can you not be grateful to live in the same world where these mind-blowing monstrosities used to walk?

Plant cells.  (c) me and my fancy-pants camera

2. Quiet corners.  This might seem odd, but one of my favorite things to do in a museum is to try to find some quiet corner that most visitors avoid.  At the Field Museum it was the Hall of Plants, tucked away in a corner of the balcony.  It was an older hall, and lacking the flash of the dinos and Ancient Egypt, most visitors didn't even notice it.  That's their loss, because it's a gorgeous hall with displays that are a testament to the ingenuity of the model-makers.  I loved sneaking up there on busy days and soaking up the beauty and the quiet; it felt like it was all made just for me.  I find a lot of museums have those halls.  Some are less renovated, some are overshadowed by more exciting neighbors, some are just plain out of the way, but to me they seem extra special because they're so lonely. Who will remember and love those artifacts if I don't take the time to do it?  I'm serious--the next time you're in a big museum, try walking in the opposite direction of the crowds and see what you discover.

(c) http://timbrown.smugmug.com

3. People watching.  My favorite thing to do in art museums is to watch the people looking at the art work.  I love looking at the art, too, but I feel like my reactions are heightened by absorbing the delight and wonder of the other people are sharing the experience with me.  I once had the great good fortune of being in the gallery when a group of high schoolers were introduced to Georges Seurat's Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and it was one of the best experiences I've ever had at the Art Institute.  They were so excited, but having never seen or known much of the painting before walking in the door, they also had the most honest and candid reactions to a painting I've ever seen.  And whether it's a teenager curious about color choices or an elderly gentleman sitting in quiet wonder, looking at people looking at artifacts is half the fun of museum-going.

So that's my short list--what museum-y things are you grateful for?

Aaaaand we're back!

Okay, I'm done fighting with the internets, and a million apologies for the more-intermittent-than-usual posting these last few weeks.  Let's pick up where we left off last week.

So after reading this article the question I have is whether a capital investment in exhibits is the right choice for small museums that are struggling, and as usual, I don't have any real answers.  I certainly agree that interactive and immersive exhibits are more appealing and educational for the general public, and it's time for many of the older static diorama-type exhibits to be retired.  They were brilliant in their day, introducing museum-goers to lands and ideas they couldn't imagine, but that era has been blown away by the age of internet.  People today need more than manikin soldiers in French-Indian War uniforms to be engaged in the history of a region, and the folks at Fort William Henry are definitely on the right track with that concept.

What I'm less certain about is whether those improvements are the right choice all of the time.  And I'm working through this in my head as I type, so forgive any incoherence, but part of me really wonders if updated digital exhibits is really going to bring visitors in the door of those tiny out-of-the-way museums.  I'm at war with myself on this, because I want people to go and enjoy those tucked away historical  sites, I really do.  But knowing how hard it is to get visitors into shiny new high-profile museums I worry that there's very little that will induce them to go into the older museums that have less excitement surrounding them.  The pessimist in me thinks that visitors will look at updated exhibits in an older smaller museum as a lipstick-on-a-pig solution; touchscreens and new recordings might not be enough to convince people who visited in the past that it's worth checking out again.  We've talked about what it takes to get people in the door in the past, and the Debbie Downer part of me worries a lot at updated exhibits just aren't enough.

But when I step back, reread the article, and think about what other solutions there might be, I have to admit that I think updating exhibits is probably the most important thing a smaller and older museum can do.  You can have an amazing ad campaign, brilliant membership offerings, and the most dedicated team out there--but getting people in the door won't matter if they never want to come back again.  New exhibits are not a silver bullet--they aren't going to magically bring in new visitors--but they are an incredibly important step in the revitalization of a museum.  I still firmly believe that museums need the whole package of history, innovation, and community, but the more I think about it, the more I think that exciting and updated exhibits are the first link in that chain.

Selling History

AP Photo/Mike Groll, File

I know there are a lot of museum folk out there who would take issue with that title--for many museums aim to share history and not to sell it.  But even if you're not focused on earning money, a museum still has to sell the idea of its collections to potential visitors.  With that in mind, here is today's suggested reading.  Class will reconvene on Wednesday for discussion.

Question.

So far I've been going off on my own tangents every few dayswithout any clear agenda--just writing about facets of the museum world that effect or interest me.  What do YOU want to be reading about and discussing?

SO. JEALOUS.

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but now that he's built up a decent blog of his own I don't have any excuses:

Image probably (c) MSI Chicago at www.msichicago.com

This is Kevin.  [As full disclosure he's a friend of a friend, but we've never met.]  Kevin is the lucky son of a gun who won the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago's Month at the Museum competition, and he's spending a month living every day in the walls of MSI.  This is the second year the Museum of Science and Industry has held this contest, and I LOVE it.  I love it more that I can really say, because it does exactly what I think all museums should strive for: it makes adults look at museum collections with renewed wonder.

To enter the contest, people have to submit essays and videos, meet with staff and go to demonstrations at the museum, all with the point of  convincing the decisions-makers that they would be the best possible ambassador for MSI.  (And we all remember how I feel about museum ambassadors, no?)  So basically a bunch of grown-ups spend the contest trying to prove how awesome learning is and how much they love museums and want to share that love with other people.  The sharing is a BIG component--Kevin's home base is a plexiglass cube in the middle of the main hall and he spends his days interacting with visitors.  He chronicles his adventures in his blog, facebook, and twitter feeds, and is basically a giant PR windfall for MSI.  Kevin gets to spend his days doing awesome and unusual things, getting excited, and then telling everyone about it.  His adventures take a place that everyone in Chicago thought they knew and turn it into something new and exciting that they want to go see again.  THAT is what every museum needs to be doing. 

Inviting a houseguest (museumguest?) to spend a month in your building is certainly not the right answer for every institution, but MSI has really tapped into something with this project.  The response they've gotten has been huge, and that gives me hope--there are lot of people out there leading grown up lives and secretly dreaming of blowing things up, sleeping on submarines, and getting to share that excitement with everyone  they meet.  They just don't realize it until they have the chance.

Art + Museums + Cultural Sensitivity = Great Things

Continuing on Monday’s idea of the Artist in Residence at the Field Museum, I did a little more poking around to see what other similar programs existed in other museums.  There are a lot of wonderful programs out there bringing art into museums in new and exciting ways, but I was most struck by the Natural History Museum in London’s new response to some old images in its collections.

The Natural History Museum houses the John Reeves Collection, a collection of nearly 2,000 scientific illustrations John Reeves commissioned from local artisans while he was stationed in Canton (now Guangzhou) in the early 1800s.  The prints are gorgeous, and at a time when Europeans could not travel freely in China they introduced Westerners to the amazing flora and fauna of Asia.  The Natural History Museum has chosen to use these images as the basis for their first international artist-in-residence program, and invited artist Hu Yun to London from Shanghai.

Artist unknown. Image (c) Natural Museum of History

The residence program is loosely structured, and while Hu Yun spends much of his day in the thick of the Reeves Collection the artwork he produces does not have to draw from any specific theme or style.  The general idea is that by immersing himself in the collection—and I have to tell you that I’m super-jealous of the access he has to those prints and the library stacks in general—anyway, the idea is that the style and feeling of the Reeves drawings will infiltrate anything Hu Yun creates, so all of his art will be an indirect response to the originals.

There are many things I love about this, but my favorite part of this program is the way it gently addresses some of the colonial issues at the heart of the collection.  These prints are named for the man from England who collected them, but none of the artists who actually created them are credited at all.  We don’t even know their names.  Inviting a Chinese artist to bring his cultural understanding to bear on images that were so thoroughly co-opted by an agent of the British East India Company is incredibly thoughtful (and I mean that in the “full of considered thought” sense of the word, not the Miss Manners etiquette sense).  More than thoughtful, having learned that this program exists it immediately seemed necessary to me—there needs to be more conversation around the way artifacts in many natural history museums were obtained in the past and this seems like a beautiful and sensitive way to begin that discussion.

And now my real question is not about the artwork that Hu Yun will produce or the kind of grants NHM applied for or whether the discussion this project engenders will truly address the issues of colonial influence in museum collections.  The question I’m left is, “Why on earth aren’t more museums doing something like this?”

Art /Artifact take 2

Today I want to introduce you to Peggy Macnamara, the Field Museum’s artist in residence.  Though I only knew her in passing while I worked there, I am an ardent fan of her work.  (I also adore how sneakily her pieces are displayed in the halls of the Museum, just up on a wall mixed in with the specimens hanging out and giving you a totally new perspective on that dead lizard you’ve just passed.)

What I love about Peggy’s work is not just that it’s beautiful and intricate and articulate, but that it’s scientific.  These are not impressions of animals, but deep rich renderings of them, accurate and true.  The subjects of Peggy’s paintings have personality, and I feel like looking at her paintings gives you a perspective and appreciation that you don't always get from the specimen itself.

To me, these vibrant watercolors are the reverse side of Terry Evans’s work.  Terry’s photographs take the specimens at the Field Museum and emphasize their stillness and timelessness.  They are very definitely pictures of dead animals and plants, and the images take that death and make it something remarkable.  Peggy’s paintings take those same specimens and give them life and color and vibrancy and a movement that’s really remarkable.

When I am rich, I shall have an office with Terry Evans photos on one wall and Peggy Macnamara paintings on the facing wall, mirror images of the same thing.

[UPDATE: Maybe it’s a good thing Blogger decided not to post anything last week.  WBEZ, the public radio station in Chicago just did a profile on Peggy Macnamara, which you can listen to here.]

Museum Review: South Florida Museum

Last week I drove down to Bradenton to visit the South Florida Museum--which also houses the Parker Manatee Aquarium and the Bishop Planetarium.  I was excited about the visit, which I'd been meaning to do for a long time, but I was also super-excited because I made it there in time for Snooty's 1pm feeding, and I am a huge sucker for manatees.  [ed note: do not mock!  They are most closely related to elephants, they feel like a wet football when you touch them, they have no natural predators, and they can eat a head of romaine lettuce in one gulp.  Pretty much the best sea mammal out there.]

While I was there for the manatee aquarium, I was also excited to see the rest of the museum's collections, which are pretty eclectic.  So I paid my admission and walked into the main hall, where I was excited to see a huge replica mastodon skeleton dominating the room, with a nice diorama of hunters and bison in the background.  It was a really nice first impression of the museum, but it didn't last all the way through.  I really loved the feel of that first hall, but my impression of the rest of the museum isn't quite as favorable.

Okay, dioramas are cool, and giant shark jaws are cool, but they just don't quite go together...

I think my issue with the the South Florida Museum was not its collections, nor the way they were displayed.  I think what was lacking was a sense of cohesion.  As you stepped from one hall to the next, there didn't seem to be a rhyme or reason as to what came next, and there was no obvious path through the exhibits that would allow a visitor to see everything easily.  Okay, to be fair, the map they handed me with my ticket has a suggested route, but I don't think it was very intuitive.  At one point you walk past the gallery of first peoples' artifact through a door that looks like an exit in a courtyard that was, at the time of my visit, completely deserted.  The courtyard is the home of Snooty's underwater viewing tank, though, so I had a good few minutes watching the manatees--and then realized I was late for the feeding and ran upstairs to catch the remainder of the manatee talk.  This left me upstairs in a kind of mishmash of galleries--a river diorama, drawers of random portions of the collections (cleverly labeled "Visible Storage," which I quite liked), and then through an interesting series of galleries with old medical equipment.  I completely missed the 1500s Spanish House and Chapel, largely because I thought they were storage spaces when I saw them outside in the abandoned courtyard.  I wish there had been some clearer signage alerting visitors what was through those doors.

And you know, this visit made me realize how totally subjective museums are.  Because the South Florida Museum isn't really doing anything wrong.  Their collections are a mishmash because they're a relatively small facility and had most of their exhibits donated.  So while giant shark jaws and old ether bottles don't really go together, no museum is going to say "No" to a donation of either one.  And you know, if I'd followed the map they gave me instead of shoving it in my camera bag I would have seen more of the exhibits--but I would have missed learning that Snooty's favorite treat is apples, so there would have been a trade-off.  I love the idea of putting a rotating display of random items from collections on display to the public, and I think that exhibit could have been really successful if there had been a bit more signage and a couple fewer artifacts--it was sort of overwhelming to look at everything in that big case and I found myself glossing over lots of it.  it wasn't until I looked over my museum map to write this post that I even realized what the intent of that case was.  But the idea of that case is ingenious, and with some clearer labels it could really be the type of display that visitors get involved with.

In the end, I enjoyed myself at the South Florida Museum, for all that there were somethings that I would do differently.  It was an interesting exercise to visit another small local museum of which I had no prior knowledge.  There's not a lot they could do to change their collections or displays, and as a result the South Florida Museum is a good illustration of a lot of the challenges smaller museums face.  (Perhaps more museums should house awesomely personable manatees?  Just a thought...)

For me, this visit brings two issues into focus for me.  The first is how museums can better communicate to their guests.  This means communicating how best to see the collections, what to expect, and what events are going on that day.  The second issue is labeling and text panels.  I am a HUGE proponent of interpretive text that informs the visitor without talking down to them.  Had there been a clear sign by the Visible Storage case explaining the purpose, and labels for each of the items, I would have spent my whole day there.  It will be an interesting exercise to look at how these same issues play out in my own museum, and try to look at our displays from the perspective of a visitor who doesn't know what she's walking into.

Overheard

at the South Florida Museum in Bradenton:

"I've been to George Washington's home more often than to many of my friends' houses.  Probably had a better time there, too."

Francis Jukes' painting of Mount Vernon

...only at a history museum, folks.

A present for your weekend

Go here, and then follow every darn one of them (especially @SUEtheTrex, I have to show some hometown pride).  Then go here: #MuseumMascot and here: #tweetmuseumexhibs.  

You're welcome.

What's the main goal of a museum?

This seems like a simple enough question, but it has hidden layers.  For some museums (Banana Club Museum, I'm lookin' at you...) the aim is simple: collect items around a central theme and display them.  They are not on the cutting edge of banana research, they are not preserving important banana artifacts that would otherwise be destroyed, they're not making the public aware of the long cultural traditions of the banana.  They're just collecting banana stuff, putting it on display, and inviting people to come take a look.  It's not a bad thing by any stretch--those little museums can be a lot of fun.  But it allows them to skirt some of the deeper, more existential issues other museums can get caught up in.

For example: is a museum's primary purpose to preserve artifacts, or to educate the public?  Should they focus on conservation, or exhibitions?  Is it better to teach the visitors something new, or to make sure that they enjoy the time they spend at the museum?  Should new research take priority over increased publicity and marketing?

It's a chicken-or-egg conundrum that goes back to some of my earlier questions.  You can't maintain collections without a source of revenue, and you can't bring in enough revenue without appealing to paying visitors (or getting substantial private or government funding).  So how should a museum prioritize all of those important facets?

Personally, I'm torn.  As I mentioned last week, I owe my career and love of museums to a program that many institutions might see as superfluous.  I'm sure if you asked the curator in charge of the hall where I fell asleep in my green sleeping bag after a night of exploration, he would rather have more money for the preservation of the artifacts I was entranced by rather than education programs that allow 6-year-olds to scare themselves silly in mock Egyptian tombs.  But coming (as I do) from a retail and visitor-oriented background, I can't help but seeing the interaction the public has with a museum's collection as equally vital to an institution.  ...Well, maybe not equally vital.  If I was told that an artifact would deteriorate beyond repair if it was put on display, but could be used for research and study if kept in storage, I could accept that.  What I think I couldn't accept would be not making an effort to serve both purposes.

What do you think, small, but apparently loyal readership?  What facets of a museum are the most important?  When tough times hit, what gets cut and what gets saved?  It's only a partially rhetorical question--many institutions face this exact choice right now.

A brief history of my history with history museums

My history with history museums starts with this guy:

My dad bought this figurine for me when I was six years old.  I picked it out from all of the other glass animals in the small little gift shop that is still on the ground floor of the Field Museum several hours before it opened to other patrons after one of the best nights of my life.

My family had always been a museum-going one, and my parents made it a point to take my sister and I to a big museum every time we were in the city.  So I was primed and ready when my dad told us that we--along with a hundred or so other folks--were going to spend the night at the Field Museum.  It was a part of a program called "Dozin' with the Dinos," where parents and children come in to the museum after it closes with sleeping bags and pajamas and do crafts, take tours, and explore the museum late into the night.  Basically it is a little kid's dream come true.

It was almost twenty-five years ago, so a lot of the details a blurry.  I remember going to orientation in the big theater and having a security guard tell me that I wasn't allowed to touch the bronze statue I was touching.  But more than just yelling at me, she took a moment to explain that the reason I couldn't was because the oils on my little hands would damage the metal.  I haven't touched a statue since, scout's honor.  I remember trying to pick the very best spot to lay out my threadbare green sleeping bag, and ending up next to this guy:

At that time the Pawnee Earth Lodge was still in this hall, but it's otherwise unchanged. One of my favorite things when I worked at the Field was when an errand would take me through this hall and I could walk past the same spot I'd set up my sleeping bag so many years ago.  My family set up with a few other families we knew and a bunch of other people we didn't, and then set out to explore the museum.

Looking at the program now, we must have had some workshops, there was dinner and a midnight snack at some point, and we probably made some crafts, but I don't remember any of that.  What I remember was that some time around midnight (an inconceivable time to my tiny mind) they turned off the lights and told us any further exploring would have to be done by flashlight.  My dad armed Sister and I with flashlights and we set off to go through Ancient Egypt.

I don't think I will ever be closer to the feeling a scientist on the verge of a discovery has than I did that night.  It didn't matter that we'd been through that exhibit dozens of times in the well-lit day--every artifact was newly-discovered in the wavering beam of my flashlight.  It was the most terrifying and exhilarating night of my life to that point, and while the details have faded over the years, that thrill of discovery and excitement lingers.  And I've been lost to history museums ever since.

The next morning Dad let me pick out a figurine, and I've kept that little leopard with me ever since.  Every time I look at it on my desk I'm reminded of that night, and it makes me excited to try to bring that same feeling to other little kids.  And while I'm sure that art museums and science centers bring the same joy to others, for me it's always going to be the history museums.  They've been blowing my mind for as long as I can remember.  Seriously: dinosaurs.  mummies.  life-sized adobe pueblos and honest-to-goodness meteorites. lions and tigers and bears and little glass leopards. Oh, my indeed.

Fun Photo...Wednesday

Man, I am not good at planning.  If I were better at alliteration I would have saved this feature for Friday.  Oh well!

As an effort to continue working on my photography and my fancy-pants camera, I'm going to try to feature museum-related pictures I've taken at least once a week.  This week's images are from the Out of This World opening at the Tampa Bay History Center this past weekend.

No special techniques, just a fun behind the scenes image

The blurred people surrounding the Storm Trooper were an accident caused by the low lighting in the gallery, but I really love this image.

Blurrier than I'd like (again, really low lighting in the gallery and I don't have a tripod yet), but I think this captures some of the wide-eyed wonder that I love to see in museums.

This blur actually was on purpose in an effort to make a static gallery appear a little more dynamic.  I think it turned out well.

Again, no photographic skill, just my very favorite image of the whole day.  A happy Imperial family heading home.

Mission: failed :(

This last Saturday the Tampa Bay History Center opened its new exhibit, Out of this World: Extraordinary Costumes from Film and Television.  The opening event included an 'invasion' by brilliantly-costumed Star Wars re-enactors (...can you re-enact a war that didn't really happen?), a brave defense by the outnumbered Rebel forces, and some Ghostbusters thrown in for good measure.  It was an unusual event for the History Center, but meant to bring in visitors who might not normally be interested in a regional history center.  I thought it was the perfect opportunity to continue my ambassadorial project of bringing new people into museums.  The History Center did okay, but I failed utterly.  None of the friends I contacted about the parade and exhibit made an appearance.

Okay, so I only contacted three friends, it's not like I was abandoned by everyone I every met, but I was still sorry they didn't make it.  And a big part of the reason I was sorry was that it was such a fun day.  It was an amateur production, sure, but everyone was having a great time, and the exhibit has some great costumes that I think my friends--big Star Wars and sci-fi fans all-would have been really stoked to see.  (Darth Vader's helmet!  Indiana Jones's jacket!  Burt Ward's Robin costume!  Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch of the West hat!)  I had hoped--much like the History Center probably hopes--that these artifacts of pop culture would have lured in visitors who are less interested in the artifacts of Florida's early people, but apparently not even a real honest-to-goodness working life-sized R2D2 was enough to make it happen this time around.

 

Which sort of begs the question, what does it take to get these reluctant museum-goers in the door? 

An awesome new look at Membership

A posting on a museum message board pointed me in the direction of the Whitney's new membership program, Curate Your Own Membership, and I think I'm in love.  There is so much awesomeness here, let's just dive right in.

This membership program is based on the five main reasons patrons have given for becoming museum members: Social, Insider, Learning, Family, and Philanthropy, and developed special benefits geared toward each section.  Each section gets the same core benefits, but also adds specific perks based on interest.  Insiders get more behind-the-scenes access, and Families get stroller discounts and kid-friendly activities.  It's a great way to target benefits and really let people tailor the way they experience their museum.  Even better, the memberships aren't mutually exclusive--even if you're most interested in insider access, you can add the Family benefits to your membership for an additional fee (or the Learning benefits, or Philanthropy, or all of them).  The rates are all competitive, and the tagline, "Curate Your Own Membership" is pithy, museumy, and appropriate.  This is so much win.

Thinking like this is exactly what more museums need--taking a look at a solid museum institution like the Membership Department and rethinking it in a way that is fresh and new without devaluing the product or getting too far from your core constituents.  Separating out the benefits into these different series allows the Whitney to offer more a more comprehensive list of member benefits without losing money on the deal, and keeps the museum relevant in the public eye.

When I shared this link with a colleague today, the response I got was, "Oh, I wish we could do things like this here," and that thinking is exactly the problem a lot of museums have.  They have wonderful collections, dedicated staff and good programs, but they can't break out from the mold they've always occupied.  And perhaps this is an inherent fault with our profession, especially when it comes to history-based museums; we're so busy preserving the past that we aren't always able to look to the future.  The Whitney has definitely broken that mold with this membership offering, and I'm hopeful that more institutions will follow their lead.

I'm always late to the party...

So I was listening to this past weekend's podcast of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and there was a passing reference to a 'dinosaur skull' for which Nicholas Cage outbid Leonardo DiCaprio.  And this got me thinking about the strange double-standard in how we think about people who own artifacts versus people who own art.

The news of Mr Cage's dinosaur skull broke in 2009 in conjunction with stories about his troubles with the IRS.  At the time it was presented as evidence of his out-of-control spending, and it's referenced in a number of pop-culture stories.  That Nic Cage, he's so crazy!  Except that if he had spent that $276,000 on a painting, or a sculpture, no one would think twice.  He wouldn't be crazy, he'd be an art lover, which is much more acceptable.

"Beech Forest" by Gustav Klimt

I have already revealed that I have a bias towards history museums, so I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that I would absolutely love to have my very own dinosaur skull.  I actually cannot come up with adequate words to explain how much I would love that.  But I don't think I would buy one, even if I had the money.  I wouldn't buy a Klimt if I had the money, either, and not because I wouldn't love to have it on my wall.  It's because (kind of unsurprisingly, given my museum background), I think things like fossils and paintings belong in the public realm.  I think they should be stared at by school kids and studied by scientists and kept in the public domain as much as possible.

I don't think Nicholas Cage is crazy for buying a dinosaur skull--I think all the other rich people out there are crazy for NOT buying dinosaur skulls.  All the same, I'm glad that more of them are ending up in public museums than private collections.

First ambassadorial envoy completed!

Yesterday a friend and I took advantage of a local Groupon and visited the Chihuly collection in St Petersburg, Florida as the first step in my efforts to be a Museum Ambassador.  (I love any excuse to say his name out loud, it's an intensely fun sound: Chihuly, Chihuly, Chihuly!)  Friend is a cultured enough fellow, but doesn't care much for art museums.  He's of a practical frame of mind, and I stopped trying to convince him to visit art museums with me when I got tired of trying to answer when he asked, "why is this art?" But with a glass of wine and after-hours admission to the collection in the offing, I figured it was as good a time as any to make museum-y overtures.

Overall the evening was a success--and I've learned that a glass of wine rarely hurts when trying to make someone more receptive art.  Dale Chihuly's work is truly stunning, and the Morean has done a fantastic job of creating a setting that frames his work well.  The exhibit is truly an immersive experience, and it was a lot of fun to listen to the other folks wandering through the exhibits with us.

photo (c) the Morean Arts Center: www.moreanartscenter.org

My one quibble is just proof that I've spent too long in history museums, but I kept looking for more explanations.  I love knowing the details of a piece, that it took four assistants and six years, or that the model was the painter's dentist, or any little piece of background.  It's a personal thing, I know--many people don't want to know the background if it will ruin their personal interpretation of a piece of art.  I'm a person who likes to know stuff, and as I looked at the chandeliers and boats full of baubles I was astonished and I really really wanted to know how he did it.  It's a personal preference, for sure, but I was disappointed that the wall text was never anything more than the titles of the pieces.

But the good news is that Friend enjoyed himself.  I don't think he'll start frequenting gallery openings on his own, but he's definitely realized that "art" can be more than pictures in frames.  That's a pretty good start for my first mission, right?

Dioramas

I just ordered myself a copy of Kingdom Under Glass, Jay Kirk's well-reviewed biography on master taxidermist Carl Akley, and I am super-excited to get it.  In honor of my purchase, I'm pleased to share with you some photos of dioramas that Carl Akley probably had a hand in.  

I love that if these shot were framed differently you might think you were looking at live animals in the wild.

Hello, your Excellencies.

So here's a question that's been on my mind while thinking about museum marketing: what does it take to get people in the door?  You all are probably not the best audience for this question, as I suspect people who read an amateur museum blog voluntarily are not folks who need a lot of convincing to visit an institution of learning.  But think about your less-erudite friends, or family members who perhaps prefer March Madness to mummies (not that you can't enjoy both, I know).  What have you said to them to get them in the doors to an exhibit you're dying to see?

From my own past experience I can claim success with the 'limited time' argument: and exhibit will only be here a finite amount of time, this is my/our only chance to see it, so we're going.  ("End of discussion," as my mother would say.)  Another tactic goes hand in hand with the unrelated exhibits post from earlier--bringing in a different type of exhibit brings in a different type of patron.  For example, I'm willing to bet that a number of people showed up for the Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago a few years back who have never ridden on the coal mine.  (I don't have hard data to back me up, just a pretty strong hunch.)

Anyway, beyond my general ponderings about museums and marketing and awesome ad campaigns, thinking about this made me realize something kind of important:  You and I and all the museum lovers out there are ambassadors.  

We all have people in our lives who would never walk into a history center or art exhibit on their own, and part of loving museums is introducing others to them.  YOU know that learning about the history or the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes in central Florida is a totally awesome way to spend an afternoon, and I know that learning about the history of the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes in central Florida is an awesome way to spend an afternoon, but too many people out there don't.  And it's time they did, right?

So for the next four weeks I'm proposing a personal cultural exchange program.  I'm going to make an effort to get at least one person, be it friend, family, or stranger, to walk through a museum or exhibit they would not have chosen to see on their own.  In return I am more than willing to sit through baseball games and poker tournaments, because fair is fair, but I am going to make it a personal goal of mine to get more people in my immediate circle into museums to see what they're missing.  Will keep you posted on progress!

More "Exciting" "Developments"!

So we've successfully relocated, and I'm very excited to have started a new museum-y job this past week!  It's a very exciting opportunity, but (as with any new job) there's a lot to learn.  I'll be moving to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday posting schedule for the next several weeks, in an effort to post consistently while still getting my feet under me at the new job.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, kiddos!  Exciting things ahead!

Art/Artifact

image (c) Terry Evans

Terry Evans is a brilliant Chicago photographer, and while I highly recommend that you browse through all of her work, you should look at her Prairie Specimens series right now.  Please also read her project statement, as it is a very thoughtful examination of what it means to document an existing collection and the beauty inherent in each specimen.  I will not try to rephrase it better than she said it, so please just go look.

Image (c) Terry Evans

Okay, I'm behind the times on this one.

Okay, I am miles behind the times with these awesome ads created by Jenny Burrows and Matt Kappler.  I saw them back when they first made the rounds of the internets, and they came to mind again as I struggled with that age-old question, how do you get people in the door?

Museums all over the country are faced with the constant dilemma of how to make a collection that is generally fairly static continuously appealing to an increasing demographic.  More simply, the population can be divided into two categories: people who like to visit museums, and people who don't yet realize how awesome museums are.  The tricky task museum marketing departments face is to make the latter group members of the former.  There's a number of issues tied up in it, but there are two main choices an institution can make: they can bring in an exhibit that is a departure from their general collection to draw in new visitors, or they can take Jenny and Matt's route and use a bold new strategy to make new visitors more interested in the existing collection.

Bringing in a different type of exhibit is usually a successful strategy, but it has its risks.  An institution can alienate its core visitors if it brings in too many exhibits that differ from its main collections, and if the temporary exhibitions continue to vary widely, the museum can lose its identity in an effort to be more popular.  (Not too far different than the plot of that old Patrick Dempsey movie, Can't Buy Me Love, right?)  A bold marketing strategy is probably a better overall plan, as it wins followers for your core collections, but it can be much harder to get right.  A great campaign like the one above can hit just the right notes and make folks who would normally walk past an institution walk inside, but a near miss can end up as an expensive mistake--especially for museums that don't have a lot of money to spend on their ads.

It's easy for museums to seem out-of-date by their very nature; they are buildings full of facts and artifacts and bits of the past.  A really great ad campaign can remind all the people who keep meaning to stop by why they should do it, and ads like the one above can even shift the perspective of regular museum visitors and let them see old collections in a new light.    I wish there were more folks out there like Jenny Burrows and Matt Kappler out there trying to get the public to see old museums with new eyes.

Museum Signage is Awesome

Only in a museum is a sign like this required:

From the Disaterville exhibit at MOSI Tampa

Relocating

After a long drive through the rain, we've finally made it to the Sunshine State.  (And we've figured out our internet connection, which was pretty dicey for a while.)

As big a project as moving felt for us, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what happens when an institution needs to pull up stakes, which happens more frequently than I'd realized.  The Field Museum in Chicago moved five miles north in 1921, from its original location at the site of the 1893 World's Fair to its current home in the South Loop.  The Dali Museum, now in St Petersburg, Florida has moved three times--from its original location in Cleveland in 1982, and to an updated facility in St Pete earlier this year.

Thinking about all of that, I'm pondering the ties between museums and the communities they serve after reading this article in the AAM archives.  It covers a number of different scenarios, but the majority of the article talks about museums dealing with the decision to (and the ramifications of) changing their location and moving out of their original communities.  In some cases, like the Berkely Art Museum, the choice is obvious and the impact fairly minimal.  The original building wasn't seismically sound in a region of the country known for earthquakes and the museum is staying on the U of C campus...nothing is lost.  In other cases, like the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum or the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania, moving the physical location of the museum will have a lasting effect on the communities they leave behind.  The town of Mt Horeb apparently depended on the Mustard Museum for tourism dollars (that's one of those sentences that just looks odd when you take the time to re-read it, no?), but the location was making it hard for the museum to survive.  The Mustard Museum chose its own survival, and no one can blame them for that, but it had a large impact on the town that it left.  Their survival was linked, but not balanced--the museum had to leave to survive and the town needed the revenue that came with the museum staying.

So what does a museum owe to its community?  If the collection brings visitors to an out-of-the way place, there's an intangible sense of obligation, but it isn't necessarily fair to ask an attraction to go down with the ship, so to speak, when a location ceases to be viable for its collection.  Having just packed up and hit the road on myself I'm a a little biased--as much as I value loyalty, there's no use in staying put if it means your collections and displays would go unseen.  Which brings us right back to the Chernobyl Question again...there's no escaping the dichotomy of collections and visitorship around here.