Tell her she’s dreaming (or why my dangerous idea might never be more than fantasy)

All right. It’s time to get real.

My last post was pretty idealistic. It painted what I’d love to see for the sector in coming years – a confident, collaborative, energised sector. A sector that works together, in order to build something bigger and stronger than any individual institution can. Sounds great, right?! And while there might be some countries where this vision can come true (maybe your country already has this?), for the most part, I suspect its nothing more than a pipe dream in many cases. But why? This post is an attempt to answer the question Lori Phillips asks, when she writes:

I think what you’re describing is an environment of increased charitability and transparency between institutions; an environment in which we brag on one another’s successes more and act like competitive silos less… It’s a win, win, win. So why aren’t we doing more of it?

Why aren’t we doing more of it? Here are some of the reasons I can think of. No doubt there are many more too – let’s work out what they are.

Funding models, incentives, and the zero-sum game
Museums are competitive. They fight each other for funds, for audiences, for kudos. I don’t know if there are any countries in the world where financial resources for museums are effectively unlimited, and if they exist, they certainly aren’t common. Whether the main funding pool for museums in your country is private or public, chances are that there are lots of competitors for a pool that always seems a little smaller than it needs to be – particularly if it has been shrinking. Such limitations on resources creates the impression that museums are playing a zero-sum game. And it’s not just with money either. Access to other things is often limited (or perceived to be) too, such regional or state-wide tourism support (read Robert Connolly’s discussion on this issue here). So even when museums don’t seem to be in direct competition for a single audience, for instance, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t competing.

If there is only limited access to resources, to a pie that will be sliced up between museums within a particular geographic area, there is a great disincentive to being too proactive in your support of another organisation. What if doing so means that they get more of the pie than you do?! Why should we boast of the success of others? No doubt the divergent sizes/priorities between institutions comes into play here too. (As an aside, I think the perception of a zero-sum game around resources is also a reason why internal institutional silos are so often hard to break down.)

Seb Chan’s observations on the US system from his first year in NYC are telling. He writes:

The primary funding model (private philanthropists, foundations and big endowments) isn’t conducive to broad collaboration or ‘national-scale‘ efforts. Instead it entrenches institutional competition and counterproductive secrecy. A lot of wheels get reinvented unnecessarily.

My idealism aside, funding models and limited resources can create very real barriers to sharing, openness, and collaboration. What real incentive does a museum have to share its own resources (including time, knowledge, or staff) with another museum – or the whole sector – unless collaboration is linked to grants and funding or enabled by infrastructure organisations like the Collections Trust? Basically, unless collaboration is incentivised and simplified, there isn’t necessarily a persuasive business case for adopting it as a practice. Why help the ‘competition’?

Intellectual property
So this is an aspect of transparency that I hadn’t really thought about until recently, but it’s a big one and a real barrier to the open sharing that I often hear people wistfully call for. People are protective of their ideas. They don’t want them “stolen” by releasing them too early, as might be required in a truly collaborative setting. This is something that Maxwell Anderson discusses when asked his thoughts on people being transparent with their thought-processes in the question/response section of this talk on museums and internet-based transparency (about 1:14:00). Here, possibly the most vocal advocate for museum transparency hesitates, which says something significant.

There is something scary about sharing ideas – even with friends, sometimes – when you aren’t yet ready to act on them or share them more widely. I know that it’s something I haven’t yet overcome, and I’ve been thinking in public for 20 months. It is much more scary making them available to a competitor. Getting to a place where institutions feel comfortable sharing their ideas when still in conceptual stages, and trusting that doing so won’t lead to exploitation, is still probably a long way off. It may never happen.

Time
I was somewhat surprised at INTERCOM 2012 when I heard more than one museum director mention that the real resource shortage in their museum was not in money, but was instead in “days in the year, and space.” Time and available space are two of the biggest things that prevent museums achieving all that they might want to. And guess what? Collaboration takes time out of the day, and long-term strategies take time (as in, years). And in both cases, that means that working collaboratively is harder to prioritise, particularly when we are talking about sector-level collaboration that could take a number of years to achieve real results for the sector. The short-term time demands quite naturally end up taking precedence over longer-term idealism.

Sometimes it’s personal.
We all know of times when museum directors compete against one another for reasons that have very little to do with their institutions, and everything to do with their own personal histories and temperaments. It’s not glamorous, but it happens. Collaboration, working together and sharing resources occurs for all kinds of reasons. But it is less likely to happen when there are personal clashes between the people who can make the collaboration possible. And as we know, there is a strong link between the personal and the political.

Culture
Most institutions that I know of don’t have an internal culture of collaboration. There are all kinds of reasons for this, but if we can’t even get people collaborating when they are located in the one building, how can we create a cross-sector culture of collaboration?

Ownership of change
One of the emergent questions that came up many times at INTERCOM in November asked what cumulative or collective impact museums can, should, and do have? How can museums work to ensure their collective impact was greater than their institutional impacts? It was a question that seemed to be universally accepted as important, but we didn’t really spend any time looking for answers. I think that one reason for this was because no one person took ownership of this as a problem. We all agreed this was important, but it was seen as a sector-wide problem, rather than being “my” problem.

Daniel Ben-Horin, who ran Techsoup Global’s Contributor’s Summit, has some interesting thoughts on what does make collaboration possible. He writes:

There are a variety of necessary ingredients, of course. There has to be enough complementarily; identical actors compete more than collaborate. There has to be participant ownership coming in. There has to be dynamic facilitation. There has to be proactive documentation to establish a clear record of commitments. There has to be follow-up.

Mainly, though, there has to be a commitment to the need to take action toward impact… and to do so together (because we can’t get there separately).

Complementarily, participant ownership, dynamic facilitation, proactive documentation of commitments, follow-up, and commitment to the need to take action toward impact. Collaboration doesn’t just happen. It takes invested individuals who own the problem and see it through, because they absolutely believe that it needs a bigger solution than what could be achieved in isolation. And without that, all efforts likely come to naught.

These are some of the reasons why I think we don’t collaborate more as a sector, although I am sure there are plenty of others. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Are there additional barriers? Are these insurmountable? Realistically, without incentives to collaborate, without compelling evidence that the current system is actually broken rather than just less-than-ideal (and I’m not sure we have that), it’s unlikely to change. Is that ok?

What do you think? Do limited resources create a zero-sum game for museums? Will collaboration within the sector always remain the ideal, but only rarely the reality? If not, what needs to change?

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?

Social media + the shifting pace of museum discourse

Ed Rodley has just started the coolest museum blogging project I’ve come across lately. He is asking the museum/blog community to imagine making a museum from scratch.

I thought it would be a fun thought experiment to build a new museum, one with no baggage, no legacy systems, no entrenched staff of Generation ___ who need to understand ____. If you were going to build a museum in 2012, what would it look like? How would it be organized? Who would work there and what would their work lives be like? Want to play along?

The first post is only a few hours old, but already it is bringing to the surface some interesting questions. If somehow you read my blog and don’t already follow Ed’s, I suggest you head over there right now.

This concept of co-building or co-creating an idea-museum together in this way really brings home to me just how powerful social media can be for encouraging really engaged discourse that can reshape our sector in a very fast and dynamic way. Right now, after reading Ed’s post, all I want to do is think about my first steps in making a museum. Those questions and ideas are sure to stick with me for days at the least, and likely much longer. And in response, I am participating in Ed’s discussions, and additionally starting my own over here. And all it takes is a few more people doing the same, and the entire discourse of the field starts to shift.

In the pre-Internet days, new ideas must have taken so much longer to filter through and be engaged with. Print media and conferences would still have allowed new ideas to flourish, but the call-and-response must surely have taken more time. I am curious about what that meant for museums, then, and the way the sector was reshaped through conversation.

The theme for INTERCOM 2012 is #museumchallenges. The brief starts with this statement:

Museums have always operated in times of change, yet the challenges and pace of change over the last five years has been unprecedented. Globalisation, environmental issues and climate change, relationships with Indigenous and creator communities, diversity of audiences, different employee mindsets, new skill sets, new media and technologies and the global financial crisis, have placed increasing pressure on the ways museums are managed and led.

I wonder if it’s not so much that the pace of change has altered, but the pace at which that change is communicated internationally via blogs, Twitter, video-streaming etc. Is it simply that the discourse can now shift within a matter of days, whereas previously it would have taken far longer? Is social media then creating an illusion of unprecedented change, or is it in fact a contributor to that change? And do you think a new museum theorist could be truly impactful on the sector these days without participating in social media?

Social media has been implicated in political revolutions. To what extent do you think it is playing a role in museum revolutions?