How can we make museum artifacts more like dogs? On @Ninaksimon and participation

I've been a big fan of Nina Simon since reading her book, The Participatory Museum (read it for free online!) It had a big impact on how I envisioned the possibilities for museums as social spaces. If you're interested in anything pertaining to public participation, cultural organizations, and community dialogue, you definitely should read her book. But if not, this TED Talk is a great, 15-minute distillation of a lot of the ideas she promotes. 

“A friend from the Smithsonian said, “I know a lot of people who work at art museums who would recoil in horror at being inundated with ‘Sunday Painters.’” But if people who paint on Sundays are not the core audience for an art museum, I don’t know who is!”
— Nina Simon

Some of my favorite thoughts:

  • Don't dismiss participatory opportunities because you've seen it fail. When you show people you value their thoughts by giving them beautiful or interesting tools, they will respond in kind. Meaningful design translates to meaningful responses. 
  • Emphasizing participation does not mean objects aren't important. Museum objects can be powerful social catalysts. She cites the example of dogs, who can inspire conversations and connections between strangers. Leading to the HCW challenge...
“How can we make museum artifacts more like dogs? How can we make them into opportunities for conversations that otherwise wouldn’t happen?”
— Nina Simon

I love #MuseumSelfie day, and I don't care who knows it

#MuseumSelfie Day invites visitors, staff (even animals and objects themselves) to post selfies from museums around the world. 

#MuseumCat

#MuseumCat

Selfies have never been a universally appreciated medium, but this fauxliday in particular has become a polarizing force in the museum world. You either think selfies are a scourge or a fun expressive tool. 

While many conscientious selfie objectors do so on the basis of vanity*, I think this boils down to a general debate on meaning-making in museums. Cultural conservatives** would define experiences with art through the traditional lens of art history, while other voices argue that the interpretation of art should be more personal and subjective.   

“There is inherent value to all points of view and backgrounds. Every person has the right to equal access to aesthetic encounters with art and to museums in a meaningful and independent way.”
— Patricia Lannes, Director of CALTA 21

I'm a fully biased visitor experience advocate and not an art historian, but like the proverbial tree falling in an empty woods, I think art is given meaning by its reception. People encounter art and historical objects with a wide range of personal knowledge and associations. Exploring the artists' intentions, historical context, and technique, etc. provide layers to enrich an understanding of a piece, but if someone has a genuine emotional response to something that clashes with those facts, it does not make their response invalid. 

At the end of the day, selfies foster personal connections with museum collections and get people sharing their experience with social networks. And I'd say that's worth a few blurry duck-faces.  

Enjoy the twitter feed : )

*In which case, do you really think these people did this to look attractive?

** Conservative like "seeks to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity" not like this. 

On Big Data and Museums

I just read something that aggravated me. While this is a thoroughly uncommon experience while scavenging the internet, I felt it merited a response. 

The article argues that museums are integrating big data tools into museums in order to become more profitable and shift decision-making responsibilities from curators to visitor data. Not only are these assertions extremely flawed, but the underlying assumptions the author makes about the role of museums in society and the types of questions big data can answer show a lack of concern for underserved visitors and and inexperience using data to inform decisions.  

1. MUSEUMS ARE NOT THE CULTURE POLICE

Museums should not be in the business of dictating "the appropriate" way to experience art. The use of technology in our daily lives is inevitable. Instead of becoming increasingly dogmatic about how and when people can use these tools and chastising common behaviors like googling a term or taking selfies, museums should support visitors' desires to make exhibits informative and memorable. Visitors should have the right to experience museums and make-meaning on their own terms. 

2. THE TRADITIONAL "QUIET, CONTEMPLATIVE VISIT" DOES NOT WORK FOR EVERYONE

While there certainly are people who benefit from quiet, contemplative visits, that type of experience requires familiarity and comfort with art museums. Those people are typically well-educated adults. Art museum visitation, more so than that of other public institutions, skews heavily towards people with college or advanced degrees. 

Museum Educational Attainment.png

It's not wrong to appeal towards a more academic crowd, but it's important to be aware of who can feel intimated or excluded. Audio tours, integrated technology, and yes, the "dreaded" screens do not only exist for museums to lure visitors into their gift stores; they provide necessary tools to make museums more inclusive of traditionally underserved audiences. Families, people with disabilities, non-English speakers, and less experienced museum-goers are just some of the groups that benefit from additional interpretive tools.  

If museums are only designed to support well-educated, affluent adults without children, they are undermining their missions and doing a serious injustice to people who stand to benefit the most from their presence.

3. "BIG DATA" IS NEITHER DEMON NOR PANACEA

As a new and trendy idea, "big data" is a concept that is either painted as a miracle fount of innovation or an early warning sign of inevitable robot take-over. 

The author seems to fear than an accurate understanding of visitation patterns will corrupt the curatorial process and turn art museums into profit mongers. I am not a quantitative researcher or statistician, so I'm not fully informed on the methods or modes of analysis the article referenced. But from my experience in visitor studies, I know that no amount of data can replace the creative process. It can answer certain kinds of questions about visitor behavior, but data alone cannot tell you how to design intuitive, meaningful experiences with art.

At its best, data can help museums ask better questions and identify meaningful opportunities for improvement. For example, if visitation data showed that visitors rarely spend time in a specific gallery, it does not mean the museum should eliminate it, it simply means they need to explore why this gallery is less successful and how it could be improved. If a survey on visitor demographics revealed that Hispanic visitors are disproportionately underrepresented, the museum could explore why that is and try to improve their relationship with those visitors. Or, if data revealed that an exhibit of an artist who used multi-sensory mediums was really well received by the autism community, the museum could explore setting aside special hours in the exhibit for families with autistic children or curate other experiences that serve those visitors' needs. 

Ultimately, big data and technology are value-neutral tools whose opportunities for improving visitor experience far outweigh their potential for exploiting profit. Access to new types of information cannot corrupt the hearts of museum employees. Museums exist first and foremost to inform, inspire, and preserve our cultural legacy. Data, no matter how big, will never change that. 

A systems approach to environmental design

I really appreciated this TEDTalk from Leyla Acaroglu. She dispells common myths about environmental designs by approaching it from a full product life cycle perspective. Assessing impact is not as simple as using "eco-friendly" materials because impact occurs on a systems level, as the by-product of production, transportation, consumption, use, and disposal. Each stage of this life cycle is full opportunities to innovate and transform the impact of a product. 

This talk reminded me of a prezi I put together before a GlobeMed rummage sale to explain how used clothing has relevance to global health. This prezi takes a tour through the production stages of a cotton t-shirt, highlighting important questions to ask about how this item is made, used, and disposed of from both an environmental and human rights perspective.