My first Pecha Kucha night, enjoyed from the squishy goodness of a giant red comfy sack in The Toby, was  like no other PowerPoint presentation I’ve been to. I left feeling inspired and liberated (since profanities could be shouted or whispered freely at any point). I’m definitely experiencing culture these days, maybe due to a motivating post by Meg. It’s true–as a marketer, and as a resident of Indy–we should all be experiencing the amazing galleries, games, plays, concerts, trails, architecture and exhibits offered by our friends. But why not also ask ourselves how as individuals we can create culture?

Matthew Hale, life-long resident of Indianapolis and graduate of Herron School of Art & Design, pitched his idea to make Indy a cultural landmark at the recent Pecha Kucha Night. “Letteracks: A 3D map for Indianapolis” is a coordinated system of 26 giant letter bikeracks, one for each letter of the alphabet, designed for the regional center of Indianapolis. The options for the use of these letteracks are endless–from field trip and jogging destinations to wayfinding and photo ops. Letteracks would add a unique system of nationally recognized landmarks to our city and increase the cultural language so-to-speak of the people in our city.

"Letteracks: A 3D map for Indianapolis"

While Matt didn’t win the $10k PK prize (in my opinion, he should have), his idea speaks to the idea of creating culture on a large scale. On a much smaller scale, as a child, I was a ballet dancer, I painted Tiger Lillies by the mailbox, I played the piano, I wrote poems and stories, I sang “Billy Boy” on the swing set, I planted mounds of pumpkin seeds and sunflowers in my garden, I took portfolios of pictures after a heavy snowfall, I read. Today, I rarely make time for these renewing acts or share them. What would Indy be like, if we each brought our own light and talents to our family, neighbors and city? What if we didn’t passively absorb culture, but actively created and shared it?

I heard an artist speak on the topic about a year ago in a sun-drenched gym on the Old Northside. “Do you have a picture to paint? A book to write? A dance class to take? Are you needed by someone?”

We should all have our day in the comfy sack, but I’m going try to make more time to create, converse and inspire.

Wilber in his comfy sack

]]> http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2009/11/18/creating-culture/feed/ 4 http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2009/11/17/transparency-and-museums-part-3-institutional-culture/ http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2009/11/17/transparency-and-museums-part-3-institutional-culture/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:34:41 +0000 Rob Stein http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/?p=9602 Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the 2009 Museum Computer Network Conference in Portland, OR.  While Portland was rainy and cold all week, I found the conference to be both engaging and thought provoking.  While the sessions were great, the thing that keeps me coming back for more is the community.

Community – the culture of this gathering – is where the real diffusion and impact occur.  Although the speakers and panelists were great and a good trigger for conversation, the value really took hold in the hallways over coffee or in some of Portland’s great pubs over a beer.

In thinking about this next post on transparency, it struck me that the same is true about our own museums as well.  The culture of our institution – the hallway and cafe conversations that happen between colleagues – is where much of the success and innovation will come from.

At the MCN conference we heard some great conversations about strategy and innovation.  But I think all would realize, the harder part of strategy is finding a way for it to take hold and become REAL.

As a final salvo offering reasons why your museum should adopt open and transparent practices around institutional performance, let’s talk a bit more about the impact this choice can have on the culture of your museum.

If you’re just joining the conversation, here are links to parts 1 and 2 of this series. (Part 1 – Walking the Talk) (Part 2 – Reasons for Transparency)  Please join the conversation in the comments and tell us what you think! A little virtual water cooler would help us all.

Reasons For Transparency: Impact on Institutional Culture

“The organizations that will be truly successful in this environment are those that have integrated Transparency as part of their organizational culture and not just their communications strategy. To the extent that the two are inter-related, the communications strategist has a substantial role to play here.”

-Mark Hannah, “Transparency as a Principle not a Tactic”, PBS.org, January 7, 2009

The infusion of an attitude of Transparency and an institutional understanding of strategy will allow our museums to continue to mature steadily and continuously over time, but these goals require a cultural shift for our staff. One organization which understands the impact of Transparency and the role of company culture is the internet shoe company, Zappos (recently acquired by Amazon). As illustrated by Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh,

“It’s a very different world today. With the Internet connecting everyone together, companies are becoming more and more transparent whether they like it or not. An unhappy customer or a disgruntled employee can blog about a bad experience with a company, and the story can spread like wildfire by email or with tools like Twitter.

The good news is that the reverse is true as well. A great experience with a company can be read by millions of people almost instantaneously as well.

The fundamental problem is that you can’t possibly anticipate every possible touch-point that could influence the perception of your company’s brand.”

-Tony Hsieh, “Your Culture is Your Brand”, Zappos CEO Blog, January 3, 2009

Hsieh makes an important point that museums should observe as well. In order to remain culturally relevant, museums must address this inevitable and global cultural shift towards ubiquitous information and user experience or risk being sidelined both online as well as in our communities.

Putting Transparency into practice in an institution has a number of consequences which can offer significant benefits to museums. The act of publishing information for public scrutiny always elevates the attention that is given to that effort.  Whereas staff members may have been apt to forget about tracking performance in a key area, a commitment to publish that information pushes professional staff members to pay more attention regarding how that information will be perceived outside the walls of the museum.  Ideally these are features museums want and need to be tracking anyway, but the reality is that when no one is looking, it’s easy to pay less attention. Transparency then, is an effective mechanism for generating this external motivation which can result in measurable improvements for the museum.

When these key metrics are tracked, organizations will be able to easily identify and develop trends and forecasts for these mission critical pieces of information. Since institutions are committed to a timely publishing of this information they will also benefit from more timely and accurate disclosure of problem areas not only to the public but also to internal constituencies. Indicators of success and poor performance can help management teams identify areas which need more attention or resources without simply sweeping the problem under the carpet.  Measuring which areas are succeeding can help museums better optimize how much effort is required to continue performing well in that area.  Perhaps staff can spend half as much time or money and achieve the same results?  Mission-critical information such as this is a crucial underpinning that will allow management teams to execute good decision-making based on fact and not opinion.  These steps can facilitate not only cost savings, but time savings over the long term as well.

Next week, we’ll begin to look more practically at how the Indianapolis Museum of Art put some of these theories into practice and what kind of impact / experience we’ve seen since doing so.  Again, I’ve really enjoyed some of the comments offered to these posts… but understand that there are several shy ones among you!  Don’t Fear!  Pipe up with your thoughts… I’ve generally found our little blog community to be very open to opinions of all different stripes!  -Rob

Every good rally has a chant, right? There’s the infamous “Hell no, we won’t go!” Or how about, “Say it aint’ so, Joe.”

Although the Indy Culture Matters Rally in downtown Indianapolis Monday didn’t have a memorable chant, it had music, influential speakers and a crowd of about 2,000 with a whole lot of heart. I only wish IMA Director Max Anderson would’ve emailed us his post-rally thoughts earlier to use as a pre-rally chant – “Culture counts and we need to be counted!”

How this Movement got off the Ground
Here are the basics: A movement started with conversations among leaders of cultural organizations throughout Central Indiana. Not long after, the movement started popping up on the Web via Twitter, Facebook, eblasts and on the newly created Web site indyculturematters.org. A logo was designed and t-shirts were ordered (IMA members got one free). The rally on Monument Circle was an opportunity for Central Indiana’s cultural institutions, and anyone who believes that Indy culture matters, to make some noise! We demonstrated that Indy Culture matters in our lives, our economy and to the future of Indianapolis.

Speakers at the rally included:

• Superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools Dr. Eugene White
• Community member Pam Davidson
• CEO of Central Indiana Corporate Partnership Mark Miles
• President and CEO of WellPoint, Inc. Angela Braly
• CEO of Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association Don Welsh
• Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard
• Arts Patron Frank Basile

How do we keep the momentum of this movement?
Here’s what you can you do to demonstrate that Indy Culture Matters:

1. Visit our cultural destinations
2. Introduce new audiences to Indy Culture
3. Tell your elected representatives that Indy Culture Matters
4. Join the Facebook group and upload your own images from the rally!
5. Check indyculturematters.org for updated information and stats

Being part of a rally was a first in my lifetime, and to speak on behalf of all the IMA staff, we’re proud to be part of Indy culture with so many other amazing cultural organizations. Everywhere I looked, I knew the friendly, talented and richly-spirited faces in the crowd. The only disappointment of the day was that most of us didn’t bike there because of pre-rally rain and cold. Regardless…

“Hell no, Indy culture won’t go unnoticed!”

[Submit your best Indy culture rally chant or tell us why Indy culture matters to you below.]

“This is really cool,” he said timidly, referring to the space. Daniel showed him the new animated trailer for ArtBabble, to which he replied, “That was not cool…I mean that was not long enough.” 

Another visitor asked if he could take a nap in the corner because he found the furniture and atmosphere so relaxing. It was a pleasure to watch kids, teens, parents and docents use the computers and ArtBabble video Web site as tools for learning and for fun.

This leads me to a larger question I’ve been asking myself (and some of you): What are the pros and cons of interactive games in art museums, and how far should we go with the concept? The Davis LAB doesn’t include games per se, but getting on a computer and exploring ArtBabble is, like a game, a lot of fun. For the purpose of this post, I’ll classify interactivity as anything from paper scavenger hunts to computer kiosks in the galleries. All these activities turn upside down the traditional museum experience of walking through galleries and looking at the art on the walls with an element of relational interactivity between the visitor and the art.

NPR recently explored the topic in a piece called “Interactive Games Make Museums a Play to Play”, by Elizabeth Blair, which highlighted the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Luce Foundation Center for an alternative reality game they created. A teacher I know testified that interactive games in museums prompted her students to look more closely at the artwork. NPR noted happiness, clear instructions, feedback, shared experience and being part of something bigger as benefits to interactivity.

I wonder if some museum visitors find interactive games disruptive or cause them to focus less on the physical art as they attempt to check off a work they just found through the interactive game and rush off to the next masterpiece. Should museums use interactive technology like video or audio tours as a revenue generator at the risk of taking attention away from the physical piece of art? Or is it our duty as museum professionals to ensure that the technology only enhances the connection? Are games a marketing tool to woo new audiences to art, or are they the future of art? I have heard the argument that “high brow” art clashes with “low brow” games. Do we need to be entertained at an art museum by something else, or do we go to let the art entertain us?

The book Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thorton is another excellent find. “A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton’s entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture,” according to the book’s publisher. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s at the top of my wish-list. Read a review from The Washington Post.

Those are my two finds. I’m leaving the rest up to you. Your prime shopping date: Friday, December 5 – “First Friday” offers your best bet to buy art at the local galleries. Share your finds below…

In introducing the evening’s program, Mr. Lin noted Tan Dun’s frequent mention of shamanism when discussing his work. Theater historian David Goodman has written about the ancient roots of theater art in ritual performances at shrines. During such sacred performances, the audience witnessed a transformation of one or more of the characters on stage. Goodman argues that this element – the witnessing of a transformation – remains at the core of many theater traditions. When the audience watches as the performer changes, the people experience a kind of sacred catharsis. An audience member cannot transform into a ghostly spirit, or become the essence of unbridled rage or grotesque regret – but the actor can. In this sense the shaman and the actor are one in the same. Both have the ability to journey to painful and dangerous spiritual places, and to return to the ordinary human world we recognize as “reality.” Though Goodman writes specifically about Japanese theater, last night’s performance with Chinese cultural references brought his ideas to mind. Ghost Opera is a daring expression of the composer’s understanding of the shamanistic function of the performing art.

And then there was the sound! An exquisitely sad violin solo interrupted by a rude, unexpected squeak. Hisses, whispers, the clack of stones, a shifty sound of paper rubbed or crumpled. As the Ghost Opera unfolded, I began to think that I – and perhaps all humans – continually listen for the sound that signals a crack in the veneer of ordinary reality. On some deep level, perhaps our ear is always cocked for it, vigilant even though not consciously aware of the anticipation. Has a small sound, significant only because it does not make sense, ever caused you to startle? To snap to conscious presence in the instant? Are such sensations harbingers of mental illness? Or are they a neurological symptom? I guess either of these is possible; but last night such eerie sounds came from musicians who transformed, before our very eyes, into shamans who could speak to the spirit world.

One more feature of the evening was notable for me. As I sat in the balcony savoring the visual beauty of the stage design and Tan Dun’s astonishingly post-cultural soundscape, I sensed a strange collapsing of history and time. “Neo-cultural” isn’t a term I’ve heard, but I’ll improvise here and try using it to describe a sense of something human in a primal, ancient sense, but at the same time, something of a future that is just beginning to enter our consciousness. On the one hand “Neo” evokes the term Neolithic, the period when humans moved from hunting/gathering into the life of village farmers. Not that humans didn’t have culture as they wandered for Paleolithic millennia. However, that way of living lightly on the earth has been almost completely erased from the memory of modern humans. We are today the cultural descendants of our Neolithic ancestors. On the other hand, “Neo,” as I’m using it, also represents the sense of glimpsing something new, beyond the multi-cultural phase of human societies today. Tan Dun’s work somehow manages to touch something very ancient in the audience, while at the same time opening a new possibility for being connected with fire, water, stones, and air – with the earth itself.

I am grateful to Glen Kwok, executive director of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, for helping the IMA bring such an extraordinary performance – an performers – to the new theater! May this be the first of many provocative and beautiful artistic events in The Toby!

It’s simple advice and a tip not to be forgotten when exploring unfamiliar cities and towns across the globe: Walk downtown. And while you’re out, scope out the city’s local art museum, no matter its size or popularity.

When traveling to Asheville, NC, last week for a family getaway, neither a stroll downtown nor the art museum were tops on the resort’s list of local attractions. The Biltmore Estate was actually at the top, but we opted not to splurge on the $50 tickets. After a few days of hiking, tennis and movies at the resort, my curiosity motivated me to find out about the history and culture of the area.

First stop, the Asheville Art Museum located in the heart of the downtown. With a population of more than 72,000, Asheville feels like a city but not a big one. The museum reflects just that. Three floors display a permanent collection of 20th and 21st century American art, as well as important works to Western North Carolina’s cultural heritage. Through special exhibitions featuring regional artists and local collectors, such as Let It Pour: Contemporary Craft Pitchers from the James Goode Collection, it was easy to see the importance of specific crafts in the local culture. Contemporary artists exploring issues of time, place and transformation were also on view in an exhibition on contemporary landscape art. Several large scale photographs captured harrowing environmental issues. This gave me a sense that Asheville not only holds a rich history but is also modern and willing to tackle important issues of the age. Large quotes on the wall also created a sense of place.

A walk around downtown Asheville revealed a vibrant, eclectic mix of old and new with a historic general store, folksy art shops, sleek modern galleries, homey used book stores and a plethora of cozy cafes, street musicians and jazzy restaurants. There was also a great mix of public art such as the parking lot mural above.

Perhaps this excerpt from Wikipedia better sums up Asheville: “AmericanStyle magazine called it one of ‘America’s Top 25 Arts Destinations,’ Self magazine labeled it the ‘Happiest City for Women,’ and was proclaimed the ‘New Freak Capital of the U.S.’ by Rolling Stone. Asheville has also been called ‘a New Age Mecca’ by CBS News’ Eye On America, and named the “most vegetarian-friendly” small city in America by PETA.” A few inconsistencies? You bet!

In all, Asheville was a breath of fresh mountain air, even on the downtown city streets. Where ever you find yourself on your next adventure, walk downtown to get a real feel for the place and the people.