With the hustle and bustle of life and meetings swirling around us all, it’s a rare occasion that we get to step outside of that pace and reflect on “big issues.” Contemplating an approach for the challenges that face museums given the changes in popular culture can make the difference between an organization that significantly impacts its community for good, and those that simply succeed at keeping the doors open.  Given the economic challenges many museums are encountering, keeping the doors open is – in and of itself – a challenge.  I’m a firm believer that times of challenge can be the best possible times to seize the opportunities at hand and make big changes.

I’m grateful for an opportunity to join a small group of museum and library experts in Salzburg next week for a meeting at the Salzburg Global Seminar entitled, “Libraries and Museums in an Era of Participatory Culture.”  I’ve agreed to participate and blog about my experiences from my perspective as a museum executive and a technologist.  I thought that in the spirit of “participatory culture,” I could ask a number of my friends and colleagues their opinions about the biggest challenges facing museums and libraries today.  I’ll bring those ideas and insights to Salzburg with me and represent those thoughts in the discussions there.  Please feel free to join the discussion on Twitter (#museumchallenges) or post your thoughts in the comments here.

The responses I’ve received via email and twitter have been pretty amazing! Several of my colleagues pointed out that museums are still adjusting to a perceived shift in our relationships with visitors.  Museums want to engage visitors and provide a variety of deep experiences, but don’t quite know how to sustain those efforts over a long period of time.

Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology from the Brooklyn Museum of Art asks the critical questions about how museums can build consistency in their efforts of engagement.

“How do we create engaging experiences consistently, so that visitors feel participation is part of the overall culture of the institution?  I’ve seen a lot of one-offs, where there’s a burst of activity around one single project, but the challenge is creating a consistency so that valued participation is always part of the museum experience.  In addition, these projects too often just exist online and not within the walls of the institution when people visit. The challenge is creating an overall experience that works both online and off and one that consistently allows visitors to participate in meaningful ways.”

Rich Cherry, Director of the Balboa Park Online Collaborative, points out that this goal of engagement and interaction with visitors both online and in the gallery carries with it some different expectations from public audiences and funding agencies that make planning for sustainability more difficult on the museum.

“Museums are in a difficult transition phase because of changing media consumption.  While young audiences are consuming social media and online content, older audiences are making that transition more slowly.   Unlike past shifts in media, this one is more interactive and limits the ability to simply re-purpose content.  This creates unique staffing and budgetary issues that are compounded by the recent economic downturn.  Funders are pushing museums to engage these new audience behaviors while not recognizing that a significant audience does not use these new methods and [museums] must support a dual track for some time to come.”

Nina Simon, Executive Director of the Museum of Art and History Santa Cruz, makes the point in her book about The Participatory Museum that,

“Participatory projects are like gardens; they require continual tending and cultivation. They may not demand as much capital spending and pre-launch planning as traditional museum projects, but they require ongoing management once they are open to participants. This means shifting a larger percentage of project budgets towards operation, maintenance, and facilitation staff.”

In addition to this fact, when I asked Nina what she saw as the challenges for museums seeking to embrace a participatory culture, she raised an important issue about museums’ strategy for funding these initiatives. Nina asks, “How do [museums] use participatory techniques to support more diverse and equitable use of our resources (as opposed to providing more for the people we already serve well)?”

It was a happy coincidence that Nina also covered a similar topic on her Museum 2.0 blog recently (What are the Most Important Problems in Our Field?, October 3, 2011).  I highly recommend reading through many of the excellent comments in response to that article for more great insight on the topic.

Ed Rodley, from the Museum of Science in Boston echoed some similar thoughts in questioning whether museums have really come to grips with the profound changes that we have all experienced in the rise of digital culture and the ubiquitous access to information afforded by the web.

“The digital challenge is that we are still conflicted about how to be citizens of a global information network. When all digital content has the capacity to reach people all over the planet, why are we still building websites based on the 1995 paradigm of “make a virtual simulacrum of the building”? The sway museums could have in this ecosystem is vast, given the breadth and depth of content we sit on.
…
Digital is ceasing to be a separate thing, and is becoming (if it hasn’t already become) part of the information ecosystem that our visitors use daily. [Museum] practice certainly doesn’t reflect this yet. How can we re-imagine ourselves in such a way that museums not just recognize, but embrace the online and the digital in ways that remain true to our core competencies as repositories for authentic experiences with culture?”

I was curious about what the potential overlap between these issues might be for libraries and museums.  In many ways it seems that some of the challenges addressed here are similar for both kinds of institutions and others are more unique.  I asked Martin Kalfatovic, Associate Director for the Digital Services Division of the Smithsonian Libraries for questions he would like to ask at the forum.  Martin asks,

“How can libraries, museums, and archives more effectively collaborate to cross-pollinate their collections? (i.e. a museum object with the associated printed text and archival materials that led to its collection). Can participatory culture (crowdsourcing) be used to help make links or show relationships that are not otherwise possible?

He raises an interesting issue about potential areas of collaboration that exist between these organizations that are as yet, unexploited.  These institutions have recognized relatively recently that many of the challenges faced by one kind of organization are faced in some way by all the others.  Collectively these “memory institutions” face questions about the changing role of authority, scholarship, and access in an age that offers vast amounts of information at the click of a button.  As Martin points out,

“How does the role of the museum library, particularly in the area of reference, change when museums begin to bring in crowdsourced content? Can the library play a knowledge management role for this content and perform the same information curation that is done with traditional print and archival sources?”

Rodley also touches on the new challenges of being source of authority in our current culture.

“Participatory culture doesn’t do away with the need for authority, but it will privilege a different kind of authority, a more transparent, more engaged one.  I believe people still want a trusted voice they can listen to, particularly in the digital realm.

… [Museums] must be less like the Great Oz, hiding behind our artifice and erudition. That doesn’t mean that we abandon our position, but it means we have make being questioned, being challenged, being called out, even being heckled part of what it means to be a museum. To be an authority in the current century will require a level of engagement that we can scarcely imagine.”

The pervasive nature of the web and information changes the game for museums and libraries. What is the relevance of an object in our collection, or a book in the stacks, if the information about that artifact can be accessed from the phone in my pocket?  This is not a trumped up argument about whether or not people will come to museums if we put great images of our collection online, but a more substantial concern about the pipeline of knowledge management that defines the collections we care about.

Kalfatovic continues,

As increasing amounts of library content becomes information online, where will the museum of artifacts and the museum of books as artifacts merge/overlap?”

It seems that the very nature of the artifact, or the object that is collected is changing.  What will this mean for museums and libraries who – in addition to creating new knowledge – are dedicated to preserving artifacts of history and culture?  Cherry points out an interesting conundrum,

“The changes we are witnessing in technology and culture are the ways cultural institutions work together. One seemingly benign artifact of this current age is going to cause enormous headaches in the years to come: email.  30 years ago when a museum director, or curator worked with an artist/collector/dealer/estate on an exhibition; that correspondence was captured on paper and was likely to be physically archived.  Today that correspondence is taking place in email and is unlikely to be archived effectively, if at all. The amount of information that is lost in that process is terrible for future researchers.  Museums and libraries need to research this problem on two fronts:  1) finding cheap effective ways for museums to create long term archives of electronic messages and 2) developing software capable of mining these messages to collate information about significant events in an organizations historical record.”

A litany of challenges to be sure! Ultimately, there seemed to be consensus among everyone I talked to that the place in our culture reserved for museums and libraries is changing to be one that is more integrated and important to the lives of the communities we live in.

Rodley,

“Making museums places that you go to in order to be an active citizen is something I’d love to see more museums attempt. That means making space available, making time available, and making our ears available to hear what matters to our constituents. Rephrased as a question, I’d say ‘How can we re-shape our buildings, staffs, and offerings in ways that support our local communities, not as temples where visitors come to consume culture, but more like agoras – meeting-places where our visitors can come to exchange ideas and culture?’”

For many of you that work in the field of museums, libraries, and archives, I’m sure that much of what I’m saying is repeating a familiar refrain.  I’m very impressed by the level of conversation that I encounter from my peers when we talk about these topics.  With very few exceptions, most of my colleagues understand that museums and libraries face a relevance issue to demonstrate the continued and enduring value of what we do in the face of changing cultural norms and expectations. The inherent value of museum and library collections is not a sure thing.  As Nina points out, it’s a garden that we tend through lots of hard work towards a set of common goals.

The key question then, is whether or not we are ready to do that hard work of authentic engagement? Or, are we instead seeking the ‘quick-hit’ payoffs to be gleaned from the current crop of cultural fads? Nancy Proctor is Head of Mobile Strategy and Initiatives for the Smithsonian Institution and puts the question in context:

“The move towards a more participatory culture in museums has been underway for a couple of decades now, and seems finally to be impacting daily practice among museum professionals on a wide scale. However even as we achieve greater openness, transparency, and collaboration among museums and “the people formerly known as the audience,” I am increasingly wondering if we are truly changing the fundamental structure of museums within society, or simply putting new faces into power in the old system? It won’t take us far if, to use a simplistic shorthand of stereotypes, “old guard” academics, curators, directors and other power-holders in the existing hegemony are simply swapped out for perhaps younger, more social media-savvy, museum “rock stars.” This may offer a temporary “revolution,” but is not a truly sustainable radical museum practice and will last only until the next group of upstarts overturns the establishment in their own turn. Modernism and capitalism of course depend on this kind of illusion of “progress” through revolution, because each depends on a constant supply of fresh “innovation” to fuel the markets. But I think we need to be very suspicious of the fetishization of the new in this period where there is a constant stream of shiny new toys to dazzle us with the promise of starting over in a Brave New World. Let’s make sure we don’t deceive ourselves, like Columbus discovering America, but rather undertake the much harder, less sexy, but ultimately more sustainable task of radically restructuring our museums and practices even as we work within those very institutions.”

Thanks to all my friends and colleagues for chiming in on the topic!  I’m very much looking forward to continuing the conversation with you all in the comments, on Twitter (#museumchallenges), and in Salzburg next week. Stay tuned for new posts and insights as the conversation progresses!

Top 10 lists are actually one of my guilty pleasures of the New Year, especially when the list pertains to popular culture. After a visit to Google Analytics, I pulled the top 10 most read IMA Blog posts of the past year (according to pageviews). Some of these were actually written before 2010, but our readers kept them popular. So, in case you missed any of the original posts, here are the favorites of the past year…

10.  We’ll count ‘em down starting at number 10 with a post by Noelle. Searching for those wonderful interns we adore, Noelle posted a WANTED ad for Spring 2010 interns. As a former IMA intern, I can say the experience gained at the IMA is above and beyond most other internship programs. If you’re interested in the Indianapolis Museum of Art Internship Program, applications for the Summer Session are due next Friday, January 7.

9. At number 9, Rob gave 5 Reasons Why TAP should be Your Museum’s Next Mobile Platform. From first-class content management to open-sourced and community owned, this post is one to revisit for those interested in the technical aspects of the IMA’s TAP tours.

8. Rolling in at number 8 is an IMA TV episode filmed in 100 Acres Art and Nature Park. IMA TV chats with Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Sarah Green, while installing Atelier van Lieshout’s Funky Bone Benches in 100 Acres. (Bonus shot of little baby Henry Green included.)

7. Lucky number 7 is another IMA TV episode from 100 Acres. Watch Laurie Gilbert discuss how the IMA Design Team used creative methods to establish the maps and way finding signs in 100 Acres. A group of visitors were asked to find about 7 landmarks using the signage provided (no map) to help the Design team better understand if the signs were working and where people might be getting lost.

6. Posted just last week, the number 6 most read post of the year comes from Ed. It seems that many of you were interested in learning how to level up your lingo, as Ed shares some of the modern tools he uses to brush up on foreign languages.

5. Capping off the top 5 is a post by Kate titled, MTV “Covers” Reality TV, Indie, and New Media. While the post was actually written in 2009, it still takes honors in the number of pageviews it received in 2010. Kate previews a new MTV series called $5 Cover. As MTV takes steps to add more relevant programming, the show promised a ‘fascinating experiment in new media storytelling, combining the unabashed narcissism of reality TV with the raw, rough edges of indie cinema.’ Some critics are now saying this isn’t exactly what the show delivered.

4. Number 4 is another blast from the past (posted in 2008) and comes from guest blogger Patrick Smith – an airline pilot, author, and air travel columnist. In his post, The Jetliner as Art, Smith exemplifies his fascination with and insurmountable knowledge on aircraft design. Starting in the mid-60s and fast forwarding to current times, the post describes aircraft transformations in both design and functionality.

3. The number 3 most read IMA Blog post of 2010 is by Charlie. In Capitalizing on Perception, Charlie discusses the resurgence of 3D in the movie theaters and other media outlets. After reading this post, I was curious to see which 3D film has scored the highest Box Office numbers. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, Avatar tops the list, which isn’t too surprising. It is pretty remarkable though that the film has grossed almost double the number 2 film (Toy Story 3).

2. The number 1 and number 2 posts tell us that our readers LOVE to participate. We asked you to vote for your favorite Project IMA: Fashion Unbound Designer and you answered our call. It was a very close race, but our readers crowned Amanda Helmsing winner with 29% of the vote.

And finally…

1. Here it is – the most read IMA Blog post of 2010 – a Vote for the IMA’s Next Top Blogger. The IMA called out to those interested in sharing their opinions, musings, and perspectives as a guest writer for the IMA blog. Katie Neville won the crown as the IMA’s Next Top Blogger, and has since written 4 posts for us.

Well, there you have it – the top 10 of 2010. Anyone want to take bets for 2011?

Benjamin and Gaston gave a talk at the Museum after the install, where they showcased both their knowledge of architecture and commitment to their process as well as their wicked senses of humor. In case you missed it, here is the lecture. And if you haven’t seen Gravity’s Loom, get to the Museum as soon as you can!

In 2009, the IMA was awarded the prestigious Medal of Honor from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. In order to offer a more personalized view of each institution receiving the award, IMLS partnered with a non-profit group called StoryCorps. If you’ve tuned into WFYI in the mornings, you may have heard some of the three minute interview segments that have been recorded by StoryCorps staff across the country.

The idea behind the StoryCorps project is to capture interviews between people—any people, anywhere—and archive them in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. This creates a firsthand account of contemporary American life, as told through the voices that make up our country. The range of topics is infinite, from tales about first loves and last moments, friendships and romances, memories of childhood and the bittersweet effects of aging.

In order to create a narrative of our own IMA history, we chose 18 people who have made an impact within the museum’s community. This group was but a small cross-section of individuals who have enriched our lives and our institution. Each person chose a companion to be their interviewer, and they came in, sat down, and started talking.

We didn’t want to stifle anyone’s creativity and dictate what the conversations should focus on, but being an art museum, we did ask that the sessions start with some account of a moment or event in the life of the interviewee in which art had a significant impact. Art was already the common thread shared by each of the 18 people who sat down to talk, so it wasn’t difficult to keep art as a central topic.

One example came from Dr. Jeffery Rothenberg and his wife, Joani. Jeff is an OB/GYN by profession but an artist by nature. He spoke of how his wife and family’s support helped him decide which role more importantly defines him.

Download audio file (jeff_rothenberg.mp3)
(audio clip courtesy of Long Haul Productions and StoryCorps)

Joani & Jeff Rothenberg

The payoff for me came each time a pair of people walked out of the recording “booth”. What I heard more than anything from these smiling and laughing pairs of friends, spouses, colleagues, mentors, and parents with their children, was that the chance to just sit and talk with one another was truly a gift.

That intimate setting gave them a chance to share things they’d never discussed before. How often do we have that opportunity in our daily lives? When was the last time you learned something new about someone to whom you’re already close?

So here is where I get a little teary-eyed, and the real value and meaning of this experience hits home. Among the people who took part in this project was Larry Hurt, a high school art teacher who had an extraordinary ability to connect with and inspire his students. Larry asked Phillip Lynam, a talented local artist and one of our IMA colleagues, to play the role of his interviewer. The two of them talked about how Larry had encouraged his students (Phillip among them) to find and freely express their talents and creativity.

Less than two weeks after they spoke with each other, Larry unexpectedly passed away. The shock of Larry’s death impacted many, many people, and his involvement throughout the Indianapolis community was made even more profound in his absence. Profound, too, was the gift of those 40 minutes that Phillip had to talk with his mentor and friend; to have a permanent record of Larry speaking about what inspired him and how he inspired others serves as a fitting farewell to a talented and beautiful person.

In our fast-paced world, we’re constantly bombarded with bits and pieces of information; rarely are we able to slow down and really listen to someone. For us, being able to welcome these people into our museum and ask them to share their stories was such a privilege. The Medal of Honor from IMLS is a great source of pride for the IMA, but for me, hearing these stories and knowing they will forever represent the heart and spirit of this museum was the real triumph. Pass the Kleenex.

Have you had a chance to see it? What do you think?

Ask us, and well, after last week, we might have to say Felder Rushing. IMA TV stopped to chat with the Southern gentleman in the Oldfields orchard while he was at the IMA for his talk as part of our Planet Indy series. Check out the latest IMA TV episode and you’ll see why we’re crazy for this offbeat gardening guru.

Joep van Lieshout, with his studio Atelier van Lieshout, will present a group of 20 benches with drawings of large bones that will together form the shape of an enormous, stylized human skeleton.

The work grows out of ideas about native heritage and cultural development, with bones iconically referring to artifacts and remains from previous occupants. The artist, who encountered visitors sitting on rocks and other natural perches on his visit to Indianapolis, wanted to create benches as sites for resting in 100 Acres.

This is the second TAP tour we’ve done for an exhibition, and another major accomplishment for the Nugget Factory. NF FTW! As with any project, the second go-around always seems a little smoother. We certainly couldn’t have done it without the collaborative spirit of the contemporary department. Also, big ups to our applications team for some slick interface modifications to the TAP software. Did I mention the entire software development, content production and implementation was done entirely in-house?

Another difference you’ll notice if you took the Sacred Spain tour last winter is that this tour focuses more on the visitor’s interpretation and experience and offers many different perspectives.

You’ll hear voices from curatorial, design, education, and conservation at the IMA. One of those voices is IMA’s Phil Lynam, Manager of Art and Design Education. We hope this sample stop will entice you to TAP into Tara Donovan:Untitled at the IMA. Listen below:

Stay tuned for more exciting news about TAP!

Interview with Oguri

What’s your mission, or hope, as an artist?
Dance. Basically I feel inspired to dance. I began dancing with Body Weather and Tatsumi Hijikata’s  work, but it was not to learn a kind of tradition or to be a ‘dancer’. I was attracted by the spirit and community. Body Weather does not teach one how to move but is an investigation of the body through working with and learning from others and explores the connection of body to space. A lot of people connect Butoh with the atomic bomb and Hiroshima, and I want to make it clear that that is a misunderstanding. Of course that is a very strong human experience and everything is related, but Butoh is not a direct expression for that. Rather the dance is a possibility for human understanding. Butoh is revolutionary, but it just means ‘dance’. Dance doesn’t have a goal. I work between my body and myself.

How did Caddy! Caddy! Caddy! come to be?
Because of my interest in William Faulkner.

How does Caddy! relate to the Japanese performing arts tradition?
I found Faulkner through Japanese literature. Oe and Nakagami  were inspired by him, and if they are like my fathers, I wanted to meet my grandfather. When Faulkner visited Japan in the mid-1950s after World War II, he said I am like you. I come from the south–the losers country. There is physicality in Oe and Nakagami’s work, and for me that is dance.  I find the same thing in Faulkner’s work.

What influence has Butoh had on you as a performing artist?
Butoh is respect of Tatsumi Hijikata’s dance. In Japan, there was folkdance, ballet, and modern dance. There was a society where performers presented seven-minute pieces for a classy, sophisticated audience. Hijikata comes along half naked and shines the light in the audience’s eyes. He brought the idea of homosexuality and sex and eroticism on stage. He killed a chicken on stage, and the little girls fainted and he was kicked out. After he was expelled, people sought him out because he seemed so cool, and at the time, many people had the same antiestablishment sense. He did a lot of collaborations and events, but it was very avant-garde, very strong cutting edge work.

This year’s Spirit & Place theme is “Inspiring Places.” Does Caddy! take its sense of place from Faulkner’s writing?
William Faulkner lived his entire life in one small county town. From there he created hundreds of characters and lives full of memories and imagination. He invented a fictional place, Yoknapawtawpha, that the reader feels and travels through. In the dance we carry the spirit of the stories.

Can you describe what it’s like to perform this piece?
I have the opportunity to be in Faulkner’s imagination, to dance his stories in space and explore many different characters and the strength and depth of humanity.

What do you ask of the audience who attends this performance?
If you have a chance, please read Faulkner.

Caddy! Caddy! Caddy! The William Faulkner Dance Project is Saturday, November 7 at 7 pm in The Toby. Tickets are $10 for the public and $7 for IMA members. Purchase tickets online

BONUS: Show any Toby ticket stub and receive half off the ticket price for Caddy!

The exhibition opened Saturday and runs through January 18, 2010 in the IMA’s Star Studio. I spent my Tuesday lunch in the exhibition. The students’ video works and the film documenting the process with Dash drew me in. I was also tempted to add my own daydream to an IMA Flickr set shown in the exhibition as a slideshow. But my stomach was growling so I’ll have to go back.

I was delighted to sit down with Julie for a quick chat earlier this year.

Interview with artist Julie Dash

Was there a recent experience that led to the title for the exhibition, Smuggling Daydreams into Reality?
That’s something that as an artist I’ve been doing all my life and career. It’s not always easy being a visual artist. Creative ideas can be fragile and sometimes you have to protect those ideas at the same time you are developing them. We’re born creative beings. As you get older people demand that you be less creative, less imaginative and more pragmatic so you learn to protect and nurture your imagination. I’ve learned to smuggle my dreams into reality.

What do you hope visitors to the exhibition will take away from their experience?
First, it’s a way of giving a public voice to my students. Second, it’s a way for visitors to see and hear and interact with the students. And for me, it’s a great experiment with teaching and nurturing creativity. This is the first time I’ve worked with students in this way. I was presented with the opportunity and said “I can’t turn this down.” For the students, myself and the community, I hope we will continue this experience on some level.

The exhibition title also serves as a theme for this year’s Museum Apprentice Program. How do you hope the students in the program will be impacted?
I hope they will have fun smuggling their creative ideas, and at the same time they will unmask themselves. Everyone walks around with some mask on. This is the perfect venue to talk about unveiling because you have access to art and experts in one place. The students went into the galleries and looked at African and Asian masks and then video blogged about their experiences.

As a filmmaker, your daydreams would seem to be wonderful breeding ground to explore new stories, plots and characters. How have your daydreams found their way into your craft?
You’ll always see some of my daydreams in my films. If given an assignment or a script, I have to dream it from beginning to end before I make it. Dreaming comes in handy. It’s really just a more romantic way of saying “visualize.”

Are there ways you might recommend people to access and record their banished fantasies or deferred hopes?
Video blogging – it’s private and easily done with a flip camera and tripod. You can sit with yourself and talk about experiences.

Tell me something about yourself you think readers would like to know.
Before a filmmaker, I’m a mother. My daughter just graduated from college. So you could say, first I’m a mommy.

Note: this interview was also published in the fall issue of Previews membership magazine.