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.