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.

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.

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? 

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!