I had originally authored this as a paper to be published in print form, but I think it will actually work better in a blog format like this one.  I’ve really appreciated the feedback and input readers have contributed to my last few posts, and would love your thoughts on this text as well.

Perhaps the most prevalent concern shared by peers about adopting similar approaches to transparency is a latent fear of the unknown, or a feeling that sharing the gritty details with the public will be too overwhelming and therefore misconstrued.  I’m happy to say that the wheels haven’t fallen off the IMA’s apple cart yet, hopefully this series will illuminate some of the benefits we’ve seen from taking these steps.

Walking the Talk – Part 1

The concept of Transparency has received significant attention in the media and online recently.  This attention comes at a time when public doubt in corporations, government and corporate executives is at an all-time high. High profile failures of some of the nation’s largest and most trusted institutions have shaken our assumptions about what had always seemed to be untouchable industries. Museums have always jealously guarded their trusted place in the public’s perception, but is there a risk that this trust will someday be lost?  As caretakers of this trust, what is the best way to foster open communication about the challenges and opportunities that face us as we try to achieve the mission of our museums?  As comprehensive and easy access to operational information becomes the norm, how can museums embrace this as an opportunity and confront internal fears about sharing their performance metrics with the public?

A Working Definition of Transparency

To begin, we must first come to a common understanding about Transparency. Institutional Transparency is a concept that is notoriously difficult to define precisely.  Principally, Transparency can be defined as the open sharing of information regarding a museum’s operations and performance.  But questions soon arise regarding what to share, when to share, and how to share it. These issues are much more significant for museums to consider when crafting an organizational stance about Transparency.

Museums and museum staff members are always striving for the best. We craft strategies that seek to make our program offerings vital and engaging to our community.  We seek to build our collections by acquiring important works of art.  We take extensive measures to protect and preserve the works in our care. We attempt to run more and more efficient operations by carefully crafting our budgets while, at the same time, seeking to increase our earned and contributed income so that we can continue to be effective in fulfilling our mission. If we’re honest, we would all agree that we succeed in some of these areas and fail in others.  We are not afraid to admit among ourselves that we are not yet the perfect museum which we strive to be, yet we seldom talk about these challenges to our constituents and donors.  We share a common fear that exposing these negative facts about our museums will result in condemnation from the press, a loss of respect in the community, and perhaps most significantly financial loss from decreasing membership or donor revenue.  As a result, our staff works hard to control the flow of information and shield the museum from negative consequences, crafting careful rationalizations which attempt to address and make up for our short comings.

Transparency in our institutions has a goal of counteracting these tendencies | realities with a type of radical authenticity.  Our culture values authenticity and looks for it in our public officials and the institutions we trust. For a museum, authenticity means sharing both the good and the bad in addition to the reasons, circumstances, context and challenges that face us everyday. Transparency then, is the ongoing discipline of practicing radical authenticity and demonstrating to the public whatever degree of integrity and operational excellence our museum possesses at the time.

This notion flies in the face of the conventional wisdom of our public relations and marketing departments who for years have sought to protect us from negative public sentiment and donor frustration. Some express concern that too much Transparency would be a bad thing.  Like any tool or technique, too much of a good thing can indeed be harmful.  When considering issues of Transparency we must do so thoughtfully and carefully, with a goal of maintaining an institutional integrity which is beyond reproach and at the same time, maintain a commitment to an open and authentic relationship with our constituents.

Several common challenges will help illustrate these issues. Museums must consider carefully, for example, their stance on sharing the purchase price of works of art in their collections.  Does doing so, enhance or harm the public’s understanding and relationship with these works of art?  Will sharing this information allow the museum to evaluate or improve its performance in some areas?  What impact, if any, would this action have upon the broader practice of art collecting? At the IMA, we have chosen NOT to share the purchase price or valuation of accessioned works of art in our collection. In addition, we have chosen that we WILL share the valuation of works slated for deaccessioning as well as the prices realized from their sale at auction and then listing the ways these proceeds are used towards the acquisition of new art for the collection.

Deaccessioned Artworks from the IMA's Website

Museums often depend on catering and space rental revenues to contribute to their operating budgets. To make a blanket statement saying that we will always share comprehensive financial information for all of our departments would mean that we would reveal financial information which would damage our competitive advantage against other catering and rental operations. Obviously, doing so is not in the best interests of the institution.

Rather than attempting to determine which information is eligible to be shared, perhaps the best approach is to instead discuss which sorts of information should not be shared. This would certainly cover sharing information which would break laws, breach contracts, violate trust or compromise privacy. Each of these situations would constitute a loss of integrity on the part of the museum.  This leaves a vast set of information that does not violate these caveats resulting in a freedom to share many different facets of museum operations.

Is it possible for a museum to share too much information? Do we risk placing an inordinate amount of emphasis on the sharing of information without a clear understanding of the expectations of our audience? Blogger Jeff Brooks examines this in his posting about the IMA’s Dashboard.

“It would be easy to say it’s too much, that it’s too arcane, too detailed, too boring for donors to care about.

But remember, one person’s boring factoid is another’s hobby. Or hobbyhorse. By putting it all out there, the Indianapolis Museum is telling its public that anyone who cares is an insider. Is it possible someone will go ballistic about their electricity use, or their ownership of possibly plundered art? Sure. But it’s not likely. And their openness defuses these things — much more effectively than trying to keep secrets.

If the information is too much, nobody will look at it. Even so, the very fact that they’re sharing it makes people respect the museum more. And who knows what info-sated donors might choose to do for an organization they feel trusts and respects them?” - Jeff Brooks, “Museum opens the books to anyone who cares”, Donor Power Blog, December 3, 2007,

Looking at the question from a different perspective raises an interesting rule of thumb. If an investment of staff time and effort will be made measuring certain statistics, then museums should choose to measure those things which will offer insight to change or improve our future performance, and shy away from those measurements that will not impact staff actions no matter what the results.  Perhaps this seems too obvious at first glance, but the careful selection of statistics that matter is part and parcel to operating as a transparent institution.  Creating a needle in the haystack model of information sharing does not result in better information for the public, or museum staff for that matter.

In the coming weeks we’ll continue to look at a variety of issues at play when seeking to implement transparency in practice at your museum.  Next week we’ll focus on the underlying reasons why transparency is a good idea, and one that all museums should seek to adopt.

Again, we’d love to hear your thoughts and reactions to these ideas.  The IMA has a few years of experience in this area, but we still find that we’re learning more and more each day.  I’m sure if you focus hard enough, you’ll find some discrepancies or deficiencies in our efforts… in fact, we hope you do!  At least then we’ll know about them and can take steps to fix them!  Thanks in advance!  -Rob

Thinking about that page led me to think more broadly about IMA’s main website.  Inside the museum, the IMA site is a major topic of conversation amongst the web team.  We’re in the planning stages for a web redesign of imamuseum.org.  This will include a better calendar system, better integration of digital content, a new collection page and lots more bells and whistles I can’t mention right now.  This process has really made me consider one word and one section: Interact.

IMA's Interact Section

What is Interact?  It’s togetherness, it’s action, it’s a mutual or reciprocal action, it’s technology.  Is it?

For the past 18 months, we have placed much of our new media content in a section called Interact.  You can access it directly from the home page and find yourself immediately faced with options like ArtBabble, Facebook, Tagging, iTunes U, Blog and Dashboard.  It’s one stop shopping for those of you interested in technology at the IMA.  But I’m not convinced that Interact is the correct word for this section, or even the right approach to offering this content. Here’s a quick scan of approaches other museums have applied:

Similar to IMA but putting the active in interactive, MoMA’s new site features Multimedia (check it out below.) The cool Walker Art Center has it’s own channel.  And the ever impressive Mattress Factory Art, playfully offers Friendship Version 2.0.

MoMA Multimedia

Front and center. Brooklyn Museum is simply, brooklynmuseum.org (you have at least 10 links on the home page devoted to technology and new/social media projects) and community-based interaction is weaved throughout the site (are you really surprised?):

Brooklyn Museum

Layered within the site, The Tate Modern, has its Tate Player, TateShots and The Great Tate Mod Blog (below).  The Getty Museum has a video gallery, is getting Twitter right and does lots of other tech related projects. There’s no specific section like MoMA and others, is not fully integrated like Brooklyn, but offers superb content.

The Great Tate Mod Blog

Interact: So what to call it and where to place it?  It’s a challenge we face in the coming months to bring you a new site that is interactive, engaging, educational and focused on art.  We can create a dedicated section for technology.  We  can integrate it in all areas of the new site.  Or we can place it in various sections of the site based on a navigation structure.

We’ll be looking at lots of sites online – like the one’s mentioned above, but I would LOVE to hear your input.  What approach do you think is best? What would you do?