Category: Conferences

Because they are hard… Reflections on #MCN2019

Last week, around 500 museum digital practitioners were thrown together in a resort in San Diego for MCN 2019. This was my eighth MCN, and it was the first one since I first attended in 2011 that I had absolutely no hand in shaping. When I first went to MCN, I was both a scholarship recipient and a member of the program committee. By 2015, I was a program co-chair. In 2016, I added to my co-chair responsibilities and joined the board and the executive committee, before becoming MCN President at the end of the following year. It is no exaggeration to say that I have been intimately involved with the conference and MCN more broadly as long as I have been in the museum tech community, so it was with great joy that I was able to attend the conference as an attendee rather than a creator. I had a lovely time, and wanted to share some reflections of that experience. It’s a while since I’ve fired off the ol’ blog for some post-conference discussion, so forgive me if I’m a little rusty.

Following along from a distance via the Twitter conversations, Seb Chan commented in his newsletter (which you should subscribe to) that the conference seemed exhausting, “like a ‘Museum Support Network’ for workers struggling to keep their heads above water.” Rachel Ropiek has also noted that in written years, the “conference tone also shifted — especially in the last two years — away from all that joy toward a desperation-tinged need to support each other through difficult times.” Dana Allen-Griel put it this way…

Part of this shifting experience of the conference might be because, as Jeremy suggested, MCN seems to be torn between its identities as a tech conference (look! shiny new thing!) and “a social justice oriented conference that primarily examines museums through the lens of tech.” I think he’s giving voice to a really interesting tension. But it’s a tension that, for the first time in a while, I found hugely productive.

For me, MCN2019 was filled with people interrogating, reframing and reexamining their work and the practices of their peers within the sector in light of changing understanding about the technological, political and cultural environment. There were more questions raised than solutions offered, which might have been uncomfortable for some. However, I left MCN more optimistic than I was when I arrived, because it felt like the scale and complexity of the challenges we’re facing, as individuals and institutions, as a country and even globally, were being taken seriously, without slipping to the glib, superficial or easy response. The deep, ongoing engagement with difficult conversations, whether about machine learning, white supremacy culture and its manifestations, the toxic hell-hole that social media has become and what that means for our communities and our staff, or about data governance, ethics and privacy, suggests that our sector is taking seriously both the daily concerns of the job and our long-term, collective responsibilities to our many communities and publics. As Nik Honeysett reminded us, “We do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Because they are hard.

Engaging with these kinds of conversations and speaking out comes at a cost (particularly for people of colour and other marginalised people who bear the burden of driving so much change in our institutions). But multiple times, I witnessed people who were clearly grappling with challenging topics speak about them. For instance, I was hugely moved in Kate Haley Goldman‘s session on How Human-Centered Design Fails Museums, in which she argued that the processes that HCD uses are fundamentally reductionist and othering, minimising the complexity of users in ways that are deeply concerning. She asked us to consider, “What are the unintended downstream effects of our work? How and where are we retraumatising people?” Kate was clearly grappling both with her own understanding of complex problems and what it might mean to question the strategies and approaches that the sector has adopted. But she was speaking out even when it was uncomfortable. And I think that, for me, was part of the point. The conversations about our complicity in algorithmic discrimination and surveillance capitalism and what we might do about it felt like an enormous leap from conversations I had only a few years ago.

Of course, it’s not just the conference that has evolved. I have changed over those years, too (haven’t we all?! America often feels like a year passes in each week). That’s one reason why Seema’s love letter to her conference friends, in which she spoke about the importance of “normalizing real emotions”, resonated with me. This year in the classroom, I have regularly tried to show my emotions to demonstrate to my students that, like them, I am a whole person for whom teaching is merely one aspect of my job (also recognising that discomfort with emotions or feelings is a characteristic of white supremacy culture). Similarly, at MCN this year, I ended up crying or on the verge of tears at least four or five times. Being emotionally open and experiencing those emotions even when it meant crying in a hallway rather than trying to keep it all together might have contributed to the way I felt in leaving San Diego.

As MCN wrapped up, Aaron Cope forward me a link to a Tweet from Deb Chachra, in which she wrote about how she was recently asked, “how I stay optimistic when I am spending my days thinking about infrastructure (and thus climate change, resilience, social justice , etc.).”

And maybe that’s what it felt like, like we were all working as if we lived in the early days of a better nation (and a better museum sector) or a distributed, slow-motion apocalypse.

A huge thank you and congratulations to everyone who worked so hard to put this conference together – particularly Andrea, Andrea and Eric.

An ode to small change

I’m sitting in my office in Washington, DC, following the Tweets from the annual Museums and the Web conference. The keynote speaker is Tim Phillips from Beyond Conflict, who’s tackling the topic, Building More Inclusive Communities: Lessons From 25 Years On The Front Lines Of Peace. 

There is some great discussion surrounding this keynote, including a wonderful thread on institutional transformation. This Tweet stood out to me.

This is so important. When we talk about holistic systematic overall, radical change, or completely rethinking our institutions, the size and complexity of the problem is, honestly, beyond comprehension. Institutions are incredibly complex, built upon tradition and legacies, filled with people of competing perspectives, and deeply enmeshed within other systems and institutions. All of this means that the kind of systematic overhaul that sees them change completely (and quickly) is unlikely without true revolution (which is, itself, highly destructive).

We can all make change and impact that helps address systemic issues, and build in deep and ongoing shifts in our institutions. As nikhil suggests, the personal is an important starting point. Much of the time, those changes will be small and hyperlocal, rather than the dramatic overhaul that we might impatiently demand. Yet if everyone who wants to see museums that are, say, more inclusive and equitable makes small, persistent changes in every aspect of their work that they can impact, the effects will be real. This might mean changing the recruiting structures and processes for a program or position you’re involved with (or looking for someone with different qualities, skills, and experiences from what you’ve looked for in the past). It could mean ensuring that your organisation’s job applications work well on mobile. It could involve instituting a training program for junior staff (especially your guards, cleaners, and visitor services staff), to better grow their knowledge and professional skills, and intentionally creating an internal pipeline for those staff into other roles. Invite someone to a meeting who wouldn’t normally be included. Borrow a wheelchair and test out each of your exhibitions to see how and where the experience is less rewarding for those visitors in a wheelchair, and then act on that knowledge to make change. Use your budget differently.

These ideas might be simplistic, but they’re also concrete, and they shift the domain of accountability from the nebulousness of “we”, to the specificity of “me”. The rhetoric, demands, and expectations of revolutionary, transformational change can be self-defeating, and overwhelming. To argue for small change feels counter-intuitive, as though I’m abandoning the cause. But what a call for small, persistent change makes possible is accountability. We can all be accountable (to ourselves, to our peers) for small change in ways that is close to impossible at an institutional level. We can all ask ourselves, at the end of a week or year, what did I do that made things better?

What do you think? Could this approach help you reimagine how to make an impact and make change? What have you achieved this year that you feel proud of for its positive impact on the way your institution or community works? What positive change have your helped bring into existence? 

Making a conference (+ a book club!)

The MCN conference is only a couple of weeks away now, and I’m finally starting to relax and enjoy the run up to the event. The program is off to the printers, the timetable is locked down, and we’re putting on the finishing touches. This is the second year that I’ve been a Program Co-Chair, and it’s the last that I’ll have this level of involvement. Last year we implemented a two-year cycle for Program Co-Chairs that includes recruitment, training, and handing over the reins for the conference, so although I’ve loved working on the Program, it’s almost time for me to let it go. My current Co-Chairs––Jennifer Foley and Trish Oxford––will now take it over and shape its next iteration.

The conference team has achieved a lot over the last couple of years, and I wanted to share a few of the things I’m most proud of. In 2015, we affirmed our commitment to ensuring a positive and constructive experience for all participants with the introduction of our Friendly Space Policy. We also worked to better integrate networking throughout the program so that people had plenty of informal time as well as session-based learning opportunities. That conference was our biggest MCN, and it was a great pleasure to work with my then Co-Chairs Ed Rodley and Morgan Holzer making it come to life.

This year, we wanted to increase transparency about how the conference is put together, and improve communication with speakers–both of which I think we’ve achieved. We’ve asked all speakers to help us improve the accessibility of the conference by being mindful of accessibility when creating presentations. We’re also trying to be more thoughtful about scaffolding the experience for for first time attendees. In any given year, up to 50% of the people at MCN are new to the conference, so we’re offering a first timer’s orientation to help newbies have a great experience. If this is your first MCN, make sure you join Elissa Frankle for her wonderful, creative introduction to MCN. She’s taking your questions now to tailor her content to your needs. Our scholars now have a voice at the conference, too, with all 15 presenting lightning talks on their work.

I think our theme this year, which is focussed on the human-centered museum, has prompted some really interesting sessions this year (props to the Program Committee for that). Some that I’m most excited about are: The Intersections of Social Media, Race, and Social Justice for Programming; Museums & Incubators / Accelerators; True Stories: Learning from Storytellers Inside and Outside the Museum Field; Sleep Stories at Wellcome Collection: manifesting digitally submitted stories through an embroidered quilt and translating that back online; Creating Anti-Oppressive Spaces On-line; and, of course, our keynote with Catherine Bracy, a pioneer in civic technology and digital democracy who has led organizations such as Code for America and the TechEquity Collaborative. Check out our big ideas playlist to get excited.

Finally, I’m thrilled that we’ve been able to partner with the Cultural Heritage and Social Change Summit, which will be held in NOLA immediately after MCN. The aim of the Summit is to promote movement building across the cultural heritage sector. Our hope is that it continues the work and conversations we start at MCN. It will definitely be worth sticking around for.

We’ve had an amazing group of people working on the conference over the past couple of years, so if you see or meet any of them, please make sure you thank them for their hard work. Something as complicated as MCN doesn’t come together overnight, and it’s taken a lot of people many, many hours to pull it off. I am so grateful to all the people who’ve worked and volunteered to make it real. Y’all rock.

PS: Ed and I are running an informal book club at MCN. You’ve still got time to join us, so pick up a copy of Post Critical Museology: Theory and Practice in the Art Museum, dip into its goodness, and meet us at there to discuss. We’d love to see you there!

Invisible Architectures

Well, the MCN2015 theme has been posted, and I could not be more excited to share it with you:

MCN 2015: The Invisible Architectures of Connected Museums: Making Meaning with People, Collections, and Information
The world continues to move past the simple physical/digital dialectic towards a more nuanced matrix of architectures uniting digital and material culture. For this year’s MCN conference, we seek submissions that expand the museum experience through the marrying of the physical and the digital, the back office and the visitor, the screen and the vitrine. How will we utilize embodied, digitally responsive, and inclusive methods and approaches to build 21st-century literacies with our audiences?

One thing I love about this theme is that it asks us to think critically about the systems, structures, and rules that impact museum work. What are the existing implicit and explicit architectures and systems that dictate how we do our jobs, and impact how people experience the museum on- and offline? And (how) can increased awareness of those architectures enable us to build upon them differently?

Some of the architectures that immediately come to my mind include: our buildings (physical architectures), our organisational charts (procedural or institutional architectures), the systems created by others (funding and political systems; digital networks and social sites like Facebook that have their own rules), and broad cultural architectures. Then there are the less obvious ones, like language. Jean-Francois Noubel, for instance, explores how:

ontology (our language structures that define our relationship to the world) builds our collective self, and how these invisible architectures often maintain the collective entrapped in predictable social structures that self perpetuate via language.

He continues:

One of these (many) old ontological structures can be seen in our habit to use substantive words that express a function, a social status or state, rather than essence… [An example of this is] a user in the software world, rather than a person (shall we say some day a person interface rather than a user interface?).

How does the language we use to address visitors/users/the public change the way we think about them, or our objects? What is the essence, rather than the function of people who visit? I know many people in this sector have had conversations in recent years about what to call the people who come to the museum. Does changing what we call someone who attends the museum also change the way we think about and address them? And does that have any impact on inclusiveness and designing better experiences? We know that museum taxonomies significantly impact how we think about objects; does the same apply to other aspects of museum work?

In 2011, there was an Invisible Architectures festival in the UK, which sought to expose “layers of the city that would otherwise remain imperceptible.” What I’m hoping is that through this theme, MCN2015 will help us expose layers of the museum and museum work that would otherwise remain imperceptible, too.

There is much more in this theme that I love, and I might write a little more about it in coming weeks. The Call for Proposals will come out in early April, but until then, I’d love to talk more about these ideas, the thoughts that surfaced for me at least in the discussions that led to this theme, and how these might shape a super interesting conference.

Let me know what you think. What are some of the architectures (visible or otherwise) that impact your work? Have you made changes to the language you use to describe [users? visitors? other?], and what impact did that have?

A participatory museum sector? On discussion, debate and transparency.

All right, fair warning. This is a long post.

The annual Museums Australia conference was held in Canberra in mid-May, and covered a range of topics under the broad banner How museums work: people, industry and nation. I had an interesting conference, in part because I was invited to be a speaker in a plenary session on Shaping the Future of Museums. In it, Dr Patrick Greene, David Arnold (NMA), and I all responded to a presentation from Dr Stefan Hajkowicz, Director CSIRO Futures, in which he spelled out six megatrends expected to change the way we live. The session framed much of the conference for me and opened up many conversations about the future of the sector.

For the remainder of the conference, I purposely sat in on sessions outside my usual comfort zone to get the broadest possible insight. There was lots of useful content (the sessions on the public value of museums, and the business of money were unmissable), with many of the discussions pivoting around common themes; about the importance of collaboration; about how we identify and solve the problems that actually matter; about how we enable career development and training right across the sector; and about the benefits that co-creation engenders for all participants.

As the conference went along, it became apparent to me just how much the questions facing the sector mimic those being played out in our institutions themselves, particularly around questions of participation and collaboration. How does the museum sector become more participatory and allow people right across the sector – regardless of their formal position – contribute to the solving of the problems facing the sector? How to come to terms with the tension between allowing new voices in, whilst simultaneously speaking with a singular voice in order to ensure clarity of communication and vision? How to transition from closed conversations to open ones?

Many of these tensions were readily apparent in an article on the price of climate control and environmental sustainability in Australian museums in The Australian, in which Michaela Boland notes that:

…the structure of the three-day conference — which featured keynote addresses from AGNSW director Michael Brand, West Kowloon Cultural District chief executive Michael Lynch and new Australian War Memorial director Brendan Nelson — did not lend itself to much actual debate. The overall impression was that Australia’s museum industry seems blithely unaware of its own significance and potential.

Not scheduled for discussion… were many issues concerning the industry, among them Australian museums acquiring items from dealers of questionable reputation, the propriety of museum curators writing catalogue notes for art auction houses and complaints by the auction houses that cultural-heritage rules are stymieing sales of Aboriginal art.

In the days before the conference got under way, meetings were held by the Council of Australasian Museum Directors, Museums Australia and the National Cultural Heritage Committee, where these topics were discussed behind closed doors.

One senior figure tells The Australian museum directors think it is unwise to discuss sensitive issues publicly; another says the institutions are scared to air their dirty laundry lest they fall foul of government funders.

Here a journalist writing for national paper picks apart the conference for being closed and failing to have space for debate, concluding that the sector was “blithely unaware of its own significance and potential” as a result. This rankled me a little, because I disagree that a lack of debate indicates a lack of awareness. Instead, I think it’s indicative of real tensions around the problems of if and how a sector can open up to become more participatory and inclusive, whilst still maintaining the capacity to speak to really important issues with a single voice – tensions I see replicated in discussions about institutional voice in an age of social media.

Social media has made it theoretically possible for everyone to have a public voice in any conversation, whether they have relevant knowledge or not. It makes publishing easy, which means that it is very much an “opt-in” activity. But does the reality that every voice can be heard mean that they all should be, or  are some voices and opinions worth more than others? Does every topic need to be open to debate, or are there some we should just trust to the experts?

Late last year, Matt Popke wrote an excellent comment about institutional voice that is valuable here:

It could be that we need to dramatically alter our institutional voice altogether. Instead of focusing on The Museum we could shift more attention to the individual members of the museum team. As more start blogging and otherwise directly engaging people through social media they’re going to become more visible within the organization anyway. As we pull back the curtain more on our internal processes, we’re going to expose more of those people who are individually making our organizational choices. As these people become more visible, their personalities and individual values will start to take the fore more and more in relation to our institutional identity.

When that transition happens there won’t need to be an institutional position on political issues anymore, just the positions of the various individuals within the institution. It will be their choice how visible they want their opinions to be (to a point, it’s becoming less certain how much anybody gets to choose their degree of publicness anymore). The organization simply won’t have the same kind of monolithic “voice” anymore.

I think the more we allow this process to take hold and be visible within our organizations, the easier it will be to draw the public into the discussion and convince them that they actually have some influence over what we do (and the more they actually will have some influence over what we do). We talk a lot about participatory engagement these days, but we have to change internally a lot before that participation will reach any kind of critical mass.

These ideas are picked up by Mairin Kerr in a discussion on digital protectionism in museums. In considering “Why are there gatekeepers?”, Kerr asks:

…do we really need an institutional voice? Or is this us holding onto the past – the single authoritative voice and idea that an institution must stand united for something. Why not show that there are divisions? Why do we need a strong message? Why can’t the message be diversity? Aren’t we supposed to be encouraging multiple voices and perspectives in the new age of museums?

These are important questions. But it’s also important to think about why the unidirectional and opaque “institutional voice” was dominant for so long. I don’t think it was just because that was what the technology enabled. There is real power in having a singular message that is communicated clearly. Consistency of message is critical in showing people what you stand for and enabling them to understand it. While experts can get into hugely nuanced discussions about a topic, based on a shared vocabulary and deep knowledge, most people won’t have the prior learning to engage with the ideas at such a level, and in those cases, clarity is important.

So how do we resolve this paradox? As an insider, I want more opportunities for discussion and debate. I want to be able to take ownership of these issues and make them my own; to feel like I can play a role in shaping the sector. But I also value the power that comes from clarity of vision. Is is possible to have both nuance and simplicity? What happens if the museum directors quoted above are right, and talking about these issues openly makes us vulnerable to political attack? Is that a price worth paying?

Maybe what we’re really looking for – both within our institutions and within the sector – is a kind of “cohesive multivocality” (thanks Ed Rodley!), which allows for multiple perspectives, but all with a shared mission and ultimate goals. And if that’s the case, what are the steps we need to take to enable such a thing to exist?

What do you think?

Rethinking why immersive theatre is compelling. It might not be the immersion after all.

On Wednesday night, I went to Sleep No More again. It was the second time I had been to the immersive theatre piece which has inspired so much conversation within the sector, and revisiting it prompted a shift in my thinking. Much like Ed Rodley, I’m pretty sure I’ve been focussing on the wrong aspects of immersive theatre this whole time. I’ve been thinking about the immersion, but I’m not sure that’s the bit that is most interesting.

Every time I meet someone who has been to SNM, I talk to them about it. I want to know if they had a one-on-one experience with an actor (a transformative, intimate experience in which an audience member is pulled into a secret room and participates in a scene alone with one of the SNM characters); I want to know which rooms they saw that I didn’t. I want to hear about which characters they connected with; whether they tasted the lollies in the candy store; what moments they saw and experienced and how they compared to my own moments. What was shared? What wasn’t?

These conversations serve as cultural touchpoints; moments of connection. “Were you there? What was your experience like? Was it like mine?” And with this discussion – which I’ve been having for six months now – I’m beginning to suspect that the reason SNM is so successful may be less that the experience is immersive but the fact that it is complex, compelling, and difficult to understand or complete alone. With 17 hours of content, of which only three can be experienced in a single performance, and more than 90 different rooms in which the action takes place, SNM is a social experience because it needs to be; because the performance cannot make sense without the offered experiences of other people. The story is necessarily incomplete without the pieces that other people can share. And it matters that the story is incomplete.

You see, not only does the play have a plot and a story, but everyone who attends it does too. Everyone who goes to SNM leaves with a narrative of their own experience, whether good or bad. They leave with a story to tell; a reason for a conversation and connection; a piece of cultural currency. And so when I’ve been trying to make sense of the story, I’m simultaneously trying to make sense of my own.

With this, Sleep No More manages to be at once very personal, and highly social. My experiences, my one-on-ones (…of which I have now had four), they felt unique to me. But I can go online and read about how others have been through the same things, and look for small differences or similarities. I can seek out more knowledge about different characters or the set. I can offer up my experiences and find out about yours, and we both gain from the experience of doing so. The disorientation of the play is shared and it is set up to encourage reactions – both reasons why people may feel confident interrogating it further after they leave. I have never had an experience like that in a museum.

When we discussed museums and immersive theatre at Museums and the Web 2013, Seb Chan asked Diane Borger (plenary speaker and producer of the show) about the show’s superfans and how it became possible for the show to remain mysterious and interesting once people were posting every detail of every encounter online. But I’m starting to wonder if those obsessive superfans and their online and offline discussions aren’t kind of the whole point.

In a piece on Sleep No More as an Internet-based augmented reality game, Drew Grant writes:

Yes, this play is an ARG, although it doesn’t have to be; it can start and end with your experience during a performance. But the show does have bonus material that will lead you to real-life encounters with the characters outside of McKittrick Hotel, provided you can figure out how to unlock Punchdrunk’s coded website. There have been location-based clues at Grand Central and IRL meet-ups for those who are as obsessed with solving the seemingly endless mysteries of “Sleep No More.”

The discussion around SNM grows as its NYC season extends; its world extends far beyond the walls of the McKittrick Hotel as stories of the performance and its secrets are shared and dissected by those who have attended it. And yet it hasn’t stopped being interesting. So can museums create this same sense of urgency to know more, to figure out or ‘solve’ a show or a story within the museum? Do we need to create disorienting experiences, experiences full of gaps to do so? Would that even be desirable in a museum context? And if so, can we make the story the visitor tells of their experience as compelling as the stories within the exhibit itself.

What do you think?

MW2013 reflections on emerging and collapsing museum roles

Well I’ve been hanging out in America for the last week with a mind full of thoughts in the aftermath of Museums and the Web 2013… and computer problems. It’s been frustrating, but it also provided the perfect excuse to upgrade my laptop after years of slow technology. Hooray! Truly, a new computer is a pleasure.

Now that I’m back online, I thought I’d start a series of quick posts on the issues that really caught my attention during the conference (a kind of belated version of what Koven Smith was doing in his live-blogging from Portland). In the meantime, if you’re feeling less patient and just want an overall summary of the themes and discussions that came out of the conference, check out the great reads by Danny Birchall, Susan Edwards and Ed Rodley.

So, theme no. 1: the fluctuation of museum jobs, and the impact that has upon the sector
On Day 2 of the conference, Rob Stein and Rich Cherry presented a plenary session that asked what is a museum technologist anyway? During the questions that followed, Liz Neely asked how many people in the room had made up their own job at some point in their career. I was surprised to see  the number of hands waved in response. It was probably close to half the room, all of whom had created a job for themselves.

As someone who has never known where I would fit within existing career paths in this sector, I was pretty excited by this. But then I started thinking further on the implications. When a job is created for someone, rather than created to fill a particular pre-identified need or purpose, then that job will be necessarily built around their individual strengths and weaknesses, maybe even more than the institution’s actual needs. So what happens when that person leaves the organisation? Does the museum then look to fill that position, or to craft another one in concert with the person who comes next into the role? I know I’ve created at least one job for myself in this sector, and it’s now something my museum will always need to have someone doing… but the opportunity came up because I identified the gap, not because they did. How often does this happen?

Sitting next to Michael Parry in one session, I had a discussion about the frequency with which museums should revisit their digital structure and strategy. Given how quickly the technological and work context change, should a museum rewrite its digital strategy and organisational chart regularly? And what are the benefits of doing so very regularly (maybe every three years) versus waiting longer; of making foundational instead incremental change? Two critical issues here become the value of adaptability vs stability, and the potential loss of corporate knowledge (not to mention staff morale… do people want to work in an environment where they position is always up to be questioned?). But it is something worth considering in the frequent discussions we have about writing a digital strategy; getting beyond the how and looking at the when.

These were just some of a series of questions that started to come up about the fluctuation of museum roles. In the session on digital curation that Danny Birchall and I were a part of, Danny looked at different curators who have influenced the sector to show just how diverse the notion of a “curator” is, even in the museum sector in order to demonstrate what museums could teach those who now seek to curate the digital world (one of these being Iris Barry, founder of the film department of the Museum of Modern Art, who herself created her own job based on her own skills and interests), while I looked at what museums could learn from some different types of curators of the digital world. In response to this session, Koven got to the heart of the matter and asked whether the discussion was indicative of the need for a new kind of role within the museum; that of the curator of the digital. Are we witnessing the birth of a new museum profession in these discussions? Do we now need someone who curates the digital world for stories and information as they relate to the collection and/or mission of the museum, in addition to more established curatorial roles?

In the unconference session that followed, Seb Chan pointed out that many museum, archive and library roles were beginning to collapse onto themselves as the differences that defined one from the next became less distinct in the digital realm. All of which makes me start to wonder just which roles within the museum will stand up as they currently are, and which other roles (like digital conservators) will begin to emerge as more and more critical in the coming years? Just how fluid is the museum’s institutional and organisational structure, anyway?

And, finally, what happens if you design yourself out of a job? There is a tension between wanting to create efficiencies and do things better, and wanting to maintain your job and an organisation’s need to employ you. Given that the positions needed in and by this sector appear to fluctuate more than I had previously imagined, I’m interested in how this tension plays out in career paths, and whether institutions can or do support those whose once-essential skills are now only peripherally useful.

This is where my relative newness to the sector starts to really get in the way, because I cannot look back at institutions and their history to know how these kinds of questions play out. But I am sure some of you can.

I’d love to hear more about your experiences and what you’ve seen in your own careers. Do the roles that museums need filled fluctuate significantly over the course of years? And what impact does that have on the museum? How often should a museum actively revisit its structure and strategy to ensure a fit for purpose?

Finding God in Texas

This was supposed to be the first of my post-MW2013 posts, wrapping up the conference and starting to pull together the underlying themes and ideas that emerged for me during the week in Portland. And then I arrived in Texas, and Google brought me God in the form of a thousand search results; an unexpected kind of creeping normalcy that painted the world a different colour to the way I usually see it. So I thought I’d detour from plan and spend a couple of minutes thinking about some of the immediate questions that this raised for me.

When I search on almost any issue back in Australia, I don’t get a lot of religion in my results. I don’t know whether it’s because we are a largely secular country, or because the profile of people whom otherwise “look” like me to Google (ie, using a Mac, female) in Australia aren’t very religious. Therefore, to look into the Google mirror and find the results reflected back at me so distorted from their usual bent, and from my sense of self, was somewhat jarring. In The Filter Bubble Eli Pariser comments that “from within the bubble, it’s nearly impossible to see how biased it is.” (10) What I think I’ve experienced here in Texas is my first real opportunity to look at the search results presented to me from beyond my normal cocooned perspective. The sensation grates.

It also raises interesting questions for me about the idea of a canon of knowledge, because these kinds of personalised results surely make it much harder to form an agreed-upon body of ideas or frame of reference for history, much less the present. (This is something that Danny Birchall and I touched lightly on in our Museums and the Web paper about curating the digital world.)

I am not even close to making sense of what these kinds of distorting lenses mean for us in museums, but here are some first thoughts. We are all now at the mercy of these kinds of algorithms, because they are in some ways a necessary strategy for coping with the scale of non-hierarchical online information; whether we work in museums or not. The information we have access to, then, is rarely going to be everything we might need or want. This is ok, I think. It’s surely always been the case that with so much information in the world only some has been esteemed over others.

But the perniciousness of algorithmic invisibility, that it is next to impossible to understand how and where those non-neutral search engine biases comes from, seems to present museums with both a challenge and an opportunity. By declaring where our own knowledge is drawn from as it relates to the collection or otherwise, or acknowledging when it is missing or known to be incomplete, we gain the opportunity to act as a different voice within the digital space, with different interests and values. In addition, utilising such an approach could enable those who use our resources to both provide other perspectives by knowing where our conclusions were drawn from.

What do you think? Is this an issue that museums need to tackle, and if so, how should it affect their approach to knowledge sharing and gathering?

A post, post travels.

I have been trying for days now to write a post that would sum up everything I took away from my travels in November, but am fast coming to the realisation that it is impossible. There were too many conversations, too many notes, too many museums. Fortunately I just (re)discovered a little impromptu video shout out that I made on my final night in Washington that at least captures some of what I was feeling at the time, which ties in perfectly to one of the takeaways that I had from the last month: that sometimes it’s important to capture the spirit of something, and not just it’s actuality.
I think this little film (despite its general sketchiness), does just that.

I’ll start trying to translate some more of what I took from travelling into blogform in the next few days. But in the meantime, this is just a little note of thank you to all those who helped me travel, and invited me into their homes and workplaces through out November. Special thanks must go to Nancy Proctor and Titus Bicknell for inviting me to stay with them whilst in DC (and additionally to Nancy for letting me shadow her at work), and Seb Chan for putting me up under his roof in NYC (and sending me to see Sleep No More).

Sarah Banks, too, deserves special mention for providing one of my most interesting afternoons at the Smithsonian, setting up meetings for me with Katja Schulz and Jen Hammock from the Encyclopedia of Life; with Maggy Benson and Robert Costello, from the Office of Education & Outreach, talking about Benson’s trip as an embedded educator in Bali, and Costello’s involvement with Smithsonian WILD!, an animal camera trapping project; and with Kelly Carnes from the Public Affairs office, who spoke to me about a cool partnership/initiative with ThirstDC (or, as one of the Tweets in the storify from the Spooktacular special edition put it, “the nerdiest drinking event ever”). Also to Mike Edson who let me pick his brain, and sit in on his meetings; and Elizabeth Merritt took me museuming, and to dinner. All of DC’s museum community need a shout-out, for making me feel entirely welcome.

Finally, thanks to the conference organisers at NDF2012 (especially Matthew Oliver, who has just signed on to take the reigns for NDF2013 too), MCN2012 (Liz Neely, Koven Smith) and INTERCOM (Lynda Kelly, Angelina Russo). And to all of the readers of museum geek who came up and introduced yourself during the various stages of my travels. It was grand to meet you!

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Itinerary
4 November – 11 November: MCN2012 – Seattle, USA ¦ 12 November: NYC w/Seb, Sleep No More ¦ 13-17 November: museumgeek-in-reSIdence @ the Smithsonian Institution ¦ 19-23 November: NDF2012 – Wellington, NZ ¦  25-28 November: INTERCOM – Sydney, AUS

Museums visited: Seattle Art Museum, American Museum of Natural History, National Air and Space Museum, National Museum of the American Indian, Hirshhorn, National Portrait Gallery, Newseum, Spy Museum, the Phillips Collection, the National Archives, Te Papa, Wellington Museum of City & Sea, Wellington Library, Australia Museum, Nicholson Museum, Powerhouse Museum.

The Political Museum Professional

Well, my 2012 world tour of museum conferences is over. After three conferences in three countries in four weeks, plus time at the Smithsonian and visiting plenty of museums, I have aeons of raw mental material for processing and synthesis. But as I begin doing so, I thought I’d start at the end rather than the beginning, with thoughts inspired by the excellent keynote that David Fleming, CEO National Museums of Liverpool, gave at INTERCOM 2012.

Titled The Political Museum, David’s speech considered museums and the myth of neutrality. One of the standout concepts was the idea that “all cultural activity is political, but some is overt and some is covert.” He argued that museums should be overt in their political positions, acknowledging the inherent politicality involved in museum work, and that they should actively take positions on and around issues.

Unsurprisingly, this was a talk I loved. It aligns with my own feelings about institutions. I want passionate museums that take strong positions on things. In fact, I’d love to see museums that riff off each other’s ideas and exhibitions fluidly, as bloggers do. Last year, when I was at the MCA Denver, they had an event called Mediocre Mud as part of their Black Sheep Fridays, which was positioned in direct reference to the Marvelous Mud exhibition on at the Denver Art Museum. What a great way to create interest within a cultural community: exhibition battles! I want museums that position themselves at the centre for debate and discussion, because that is an exceptionally interesting place to be (if, at times, risky).

But of course I respond to these ideas. I personally love discussion (it’s one reason I blog). I want rich intellectual fodder that gives me new angles through which to understand the world and the particular things that are fascinating at any moment. This is the stuff I value.

It’s not what everyone values. During the last month, I have sat in on a lot of conference sessions and meetings. I’ve had discussions with people within our sector, and external to it. I’ve heard people talk passionately, and fervently about all manner of topic. I’ve heard from lots and lots of people who want museums to change – but all in divergent directions. Those who care passionately for the environment want museums to be more politically overt in their messages and actions towards/about the environment. Those who value the object most want museums to acquire the incredible things they come across, and want to opportunity to work with those objects. Those who are progressive and naturally inclined towards innovation and agility want agile museums because such an environment will let them thrive. Those who value safety and stability at work or life want to avoid the uncertainty of change and hold onto existing practice. Those who want to be included value inclusive practices. Those who are natural peacemakers and uncomfortable with conflict try to make everyone happy, but may never take a strong stance on anything. Those for whom race or sexuality has played a definitive role in life will advocate for particular approaches to museum practice as it relates to their experiences and values. And on and on and on it goes.

This is what I’ve learned. Museum work is personal. We all have personal motivations that we bring to work; that inform our practices. At conferences, when we speak to a particular topic, we often try to move people closer to our own positions, arming them with reasons why they should shift from their place to one nearer to ours. We seek leaders and community members who value what we value, or who at least make it possible for us to pursue those values. We all want self-actualisation. We don’t all want it from work necessarily, but work is still where many of these questions come to the fore. So, museum work is always personal. And as Carol Hanisch’s 1969 feminist paper tells us, the personal is political.

With this in mind, I have a series of propositions to make:

1. All museum practice is political (although not necessarily consciously so), but some is overt and some covert.

2. Cultural change is both more possible and more achievable if you can identify individual motivations and values, and provide mechanisms to keep them in tact.
If, for instance, you are trying to get a new digital project up and running in your institution and finding yourself with little support from other staff, try to find out why; what the real cause of their concern or blockage is. Maybe it’s a fear of additional work. Maybe it’s a worry that flashy technologies in the space will overwhelm delicate works of art. Maybe an exhibition designer has a concern about that a mobile app will change visitor flows, and they don’t know how to plan for such things and therefore just need practical support or research about that. Looking to understand the personal motives/values that underlie actions can give insight into the political positions that people are taking, and can help you tackle the root of the problem. If someone is resisting change, it’s because you’ve given them no reason to change in a way that is meaningful to them. (Something we can also apply to museum visitors; if the people who you want to come to your museum aren’t, it’s because you haven’t provided them with a compelling reason to do so.)

3. Strategic concerns are often political concerns.
Museums are not just political entities in their cultural activity, but also in the way they run. Being conscious of how the political and personal intermingle is useful when seeking to convert something you personally value (like, say, digitising collections) into a strategic priority (because it will help support mission). It is all too easy for overt and covert political activity to blend in this space; being consciously aware of an institution’s (or director’s) strategic and political concerns and contexts is important in order to connect the things that you value personally to the things that are important to the institution politically.

The museum is political, as is museum practice. But it’s also personal. We fight for the things we want because they are personally valuable and meaningful to us. It’s both. When considering institutional change, or even just looking to recruit people for a project that you want to do, paying conscious attention to both the personal and political motives at stake is important.

Before I finish, I thought I’d include the final paragraph of Hanisch’s The Personal is Political here. Although it was written specific to another situation, there is still useful perspective that can be gleaned from reading.

One more thing: I think we must listen to what so-called apolitical women have to say – not so we can do a better job of organizing them but because together we are a mass movement. I think we who work full time in the movement tend to become very narrow. What is happening now is that when non-movement women disagree with us, we assume it’s because they are ‘apolitical,’ not because there might be something wrong with our thinking. Women have left the movement in droves. The obvious reasons are that we are tired of being sex slaves and doing shitwork for men whose hypocrisy is so blatant in their political stance of liberation for everybody (else). But there is really a lot more to it than that. I can’t quite articulate it yet. I think ‘apolitical’ women are not in the movement for very good reasons, and as long as we say “you have to think like us and live like us to join the charmed circle,” we will fail. What I am trying to say is that there are things in the consciousness of “apolitical” women (I find them very political) that are as valid as any political consciousness we think we have. We should figure out why many women don’t want to do action. Maybe there is something wrong with the action or something wrong with why we are doing the action or maybe the analysis of why the action is necessary is not clear in our minds.

What do you think?