What is a High Quality Museum?

How would you define "High Quality" in the context of museums?  It's a slippery term (like "World Class" which we've written about before here on ExhibiTricks.)  Every museum wants to be described as "High Quality" and "World Class" but what do those terms actually mean, in a practical sense, and how do you know when you truly have become a high quality organization?

What does high quality mean to you, or to the museums you work in, or visit?  

I was asked to contribute a short article (excerpted below) to the Association of Children Museums journal, Hand to Hand, about just this topic.  In fact, all the articles in the entire issue are focused on the notion of "High Quality."  The current issue of Hand to Hand is available as a free PDF, so click on over to the ACM website to check it out.  (And enjoy my "high quality" thoughts below!)



High Quality = Internal Capacity  by Paul Orselli

“High quality” to me means something of lasting value, something special that is meaningful over time and across generations.  And children’s museums—any museums, really—that can be described consistently as high quality are quite uncommon.

As a practical matter, the way to develop a truly high-quality children’s museum experience means having a clear sense of what you want your museum to look like two, three or more years in the future—not just two months after opening! That means investing for the long-term in thoughtful experiences, materials, staff, and expertise.

In my exhibit design and development practice, I ask museum collaborators two simple questions: How will you (the staff inside your museum, not contractors orconsultants) 1) fix things that break or don’t work? and 2) transform great new ideas into real exhibits and programs? If you can’t come up with credible answers to both questions, I’m afraid that not only will you be constantly racing to “put out fires” in the form of problems that could have been anticipated (as opposed to the many un-anticipated ones you’ll encounter) but your bright, shiny museum will soon become dingy and boring, not only physically, but in its intellectual and emotional spirit as well.

Creating a strong institutional culture of internal capacity is the key difference between a great museum and a mediocre one. Building and investing in this strong institutional capacity doesn’t mean that you work in isolation.  On the contrary, carefully understanding the strengths and weaknesses across your institution makes it clear when and where you need to invest time and resources. Those investments in time and/or resources can involve seeking out expertise in your local communities, sending staff to national or regional conferences or local professional development opportunities, or (gasp!) bringing in consultants to help build up internal capacity in other areas of institutional need. There are many choices.

What is not a choice is doing nothing. Because doing nothing will surely begin the slide from “high quality” to “who cares?” And is that the kind of museum you want to be part of?




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Creative Design Toolbox: PAINT!

Paint is often an underutilized creative tool, so here's a round-up of four interesting types of paint that you can incorporate into some of your next design projects:


ALBEDO 100 PAINT
Albedo 100 paint is a series of four different sprays that are essentially invisible in daylight, but become highly-reflective in low-light conditions.  The manufacturer has created formulations suitable for metals, textiles, concrete, wood, and even horses and pets!  (For example, here's a BBC report about reindeer herders in Finland coating the antlers of their reindeer with Albedo paint so they don't get hit by cars at night.)

Albedo paints could be just the thing for outdoor exhibit areas or low-light areas around planetariums or art installations, not to mention the possibilities around Halloween!  You can find out more by clicking over to the Albedo 100 website.



CHALKBOARD PAINT
You may have encountered chalkboard paint before, but to me the real design opportunity lies not only in flat walls, but in dimensional (aka 3D) opportunities, like the car done up in chalkboard paint at the top of this post (the vehicle of one of our local public school art teachers!) or the play table below.

Imagine chalkboard-painted furniture in a Maker's Space or an Art Studio, or chalkboard-painted objects in a math or topology exhibition!

Chalkboard paint is available from Amazon, or from large hardware stores like Home Depot.  I think Krylon brand works the best, and it comes in different colors, as well as in brush-on or spray-on forms.




HYDROPHOBIC PAINT
A wonderful introduction to the possibilities of "hydrophopic" (literally water-fearing, or water-resistant) paints are through the website or videos of Seattle-based artist Peregrine Church.  

Church has turned the rainy weather of Seattle to artistic advantage by creating "Rainworks" (sidewalk-based artworks that only appear when wet, due to the hydroscopic nature of the stencil-based designs he and his co-conspirators create.) 

Check out his Rainworks YouTube video below:




Hydrophobic paint comes in many formulations, but Rust-Oleum's "Never Wet" brand seems to be most accessible for consumers, either at Amazon or hardware or paint stores.   Hydrophobic paints seem like a great opportunity to enliven the sidewalks and walls around any sort of museum, gallery, or cultural venue.


IdeaPaint
Last, but not least, IdeaPaint  is a coating that transforms ordinary surfaces into dry-erase surfaces.  So imagine all the walls (or all the furniture!) of a room transformed into dry-erase surfaces that can capture drawings, notes, whatever!

IdeaPaint seems like a great opportunity to not only enliven cultural spaces, but corporate spaces as well.  Click on over to the IdeaPaint website for more creative inspiration (or to purchase IdeaPaint products.)


So get out those tarps, brushes, and rollers to start getting creative with PAINT!  Did we miss any of your favorite paint-related creative design tools?  Let us know about them in the "Comments" section below!


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Three Lists

“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men ... "

Robert Burns could have been a museum planner.  Despite the best laid schemes for our museum and exhibit projects, things often do go awry.  Whether it happens during the initial stages of value engineering (often providing neither "value" nor "engineering") or before the opening of a new building or exhibition, the harsh realities of schedules and budgets often squeeze our hopes and dreams like a vise.

In an effort to shake myself out of the funk that often accompanies this part of the exhibit/museum development process, I've taken to creating three lists for myself (at any stage of a project) and suggesting that clients do the same.

What are the titles of those three lists, you ask?  Simple:

• Things that MUST happen before opening

• Things that would be NICE to have happen before opening

• Things that ABSOLUTELY WON'T HAPPEN until after opening

Exactly which specific things you put on your lists will vary from project to project, and situation to situation.  (It's a pretty sure bet your new museum will need working front doors on your first day, but if a few staff office chairs arrive a week late, it's probably not a reason to cancel the opening gala.)  But to proceed otherwise, as if everything on all the punch lists and wish lists and to-do lists will happen before opening, is, at best, a rookie mistake, or at worst, a one-way express train ticket to Looneyville.

So pause a moment to process the bad news you just got from your General Contractor (or Director or Fire Marshall or Lead Designer ...) take a deep breath, and gather your team together to start putting together your three lists.

Your project (not to mention your health and sanity) will be better for it.


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Need some help putting together your project's three lists?  Let's talk! Contact Paul Orselli and POW! today.

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Museums as Magic Places: An Interview with Carol Bossert

Carol Bossert is owner and principal of CB Services, LLC a consulting practice that helps cultural institutions, government agencies and corporations tell their stories in museums, visitor centers and community venues.  She is an interpretive planner, content researcher and writer. CB Services also manages the details of organizing archives, selecting photographs and objects, and coordinating internal and external experts to support exhibition development.

Carol is also the host of Museum Life, a weekly talk show that showcases leaders in the field who provide perspective on current issues as well as creative thinkers who are impacting the future of museums. Join the conversation every Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern time, 7 a.m. Pacific time on the Voice America Variety Channel.

Carol was kind enough to take part in this interview for ExhibiTricks readers:


What is your educational background?  I have a liberal arts education with a bachelor’s of arts degree in zoology from DePauw University and a doctorate in molecular biology from University of Texas-Dallas.  I began my career at The Newark Museum and I attended the Getty’s Museum Management Institute (MMI). 


What got you interested in museums?  I have always thought of museums as magic places. I have great memories of visiting the Field Museum of Natural History and Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago with my mother.  She grew up near Chicago and she wanted to share “her museums” with me. I was nine the first time she took me to Chicago. She was so excited.  I saw my mother transformed into a little girl just like me when she and I looked at Colleen Moore’s doll house together.  That’s magic.

As a family, we also went to national parks, particularly Civil War battlefields. I tromped around the battlefields with my dad as he described the battles and military strategies in enthusiastic detail.  It made me feel special that he wanted to share something he loved with me.  I develop museum exhibits because I want all children to experience that special magic with the adults that love them. 


How can museums become more responsive to their communities? By changing their internal dialogue. The way a museum talks about its community is incredibly revealing.  I recently heard Bill Booth speak to a room full of museum professionals and ask “How are you working with instead of for your community?”  That semantic shift was powerful and stimulated a great discussion.

Working for the community assumes a transactional relationship. It clearly defines the role of museum as provider and community as consumer. This model limits discussion and possibilities.  A museum that sees itself working with its community assumes that the community has something to offer beyond passive consumption.  This changes the nature of the relationship and opens up greater possibilities and opportunities. 


Tell us a little bit about how your “non-museum” skills/activities inform your exhibit design work?  I was trained as a research scientist and for me this meant learning how to ask good questions.  I ask a lot of questions during a project.  I don’t make assumptions about what I know about a subject, a museum or its community. At the beginning of a project I want to understand everyone’s expectations, concerns and dreams. I want to know about the little known facts or surprising information that will make the exhibit content memorable and I want to understand the museum’s current audience and the audiences the museum wants to engage. I keep asking questions throughout the project to make sure expectations, concerns and dreams are being addressed. Asking questions also promotes dialogue and I'd much rather be talking with people than at them.  


What are some of your favorite online and off line resources that are influencing your thinking about exhibit development?  I have been profoundly affected by Leslie Bedford’s book, The Art of Museum Exhibitions. Leslie identifies imagination as one of the important elements in an exhibit experience. To paraphrase Leslie, “what if” is as important as “what is.” It has reminded me that what takes place within the visitors’s mind is as important as what they see, hear and do in the physical exhibit. I know that my interest in microbiology came from looking through a microscope and using my imagination to construct the life inside a cell.  I have revised some of the tools that I use as an interpretive planner to make sure we leave room for the visitor’s imagination.

As for online resources, I follow ExhibiTricks of course and I have been following the Incluseum where Aletheia Wittman and Rose Paquet Kinsley have created a site to talk openly about the challenges that museums face in terms of being truly inclusive.  


What are the ways in which you think about making your projects accessible to the widest range of visitors?  I think about accessibility in terms of creating a sense of welcome. People want to feel safe and smart in an exhibit, but first they need to feel welcome. Bi- or multi-language labels, orientation and educational materials create that sense of welcome and I’m glad to say that I am working on more projects that use multiple languages.

I have also been influenced by the work of Paul Gabriel and Beth Redmond-Jones who have identified qualities in an exhibit that affect the experience of people with ADHD, dyslexia or who are on the autism-spectrum.  Sometimes it is a matter of creating an accommodation to open the museum early when it isn’t crowded. But I think we could all do a better job of examining our design decisions from graphics to lighting and case layouts to see if we might be able to make the exhibits themselves less distracting and more enjoyable for everyone.  


What do you think is the next frontier for museums?  I’m thinking that the next frontier for museums is to reclaim their unique contribution to society.  Museums are “in the moment” experiences. For a while I think the discussion about the future of museums was shifting away from one of their most distinguishing characteristics—the objects. Many research areas from neuroscience to sociology are pointing to the importance of looking at things in physical space rather than on a screen to foster creativity and well-being.  I don’t think this diminishes the value or impact of online collections and social media opportunities for museums, but I find it exciting to think that museums may finally be acknowledged as places essential for learning in the 21st century.


What are some of your favorite museums or exhibitions?  My favorite museum is the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.  It has a fabulous collection of shoes and it conveys the human desire to make even the most utilitarian things beautiful. I love wandering the halls of the American Museum of Natural History in New York because I always find discover something new and I enjoy finding those out-of-the-way museums when I’m traveling.  


Can you talk about some of your current projects?  I’ve been doing quite a bit of work in Saudi Arabia, including a corporate visitor center, government briefing center, an exhibit promoting environmental literacy, and a children’s exhibit about city planning.  Working across cultures is intriguing and challenging.  It makes me think about all the assumptions I have about audience and interpretation.  As you and I have discussed, we can’t assume that our western approach to exhibit development will work in exactly the same way in another culture.  But I’ve enjoyed my work in Saudi Arabia and have met many people who are committed to increasing transparency through public exhibitions. 


If money was no object, what would your “dream” exhibit project be?  I don’t think it is a matter of money, but I would love to work on an exhibit about the women in science that have won the Nobel Prize.  Each of these women tells a fascinating story, sometimes just because their lives seemed so ordinary yet they made extraordinary contributions to science.  I also think they would serve to put real faces on specific scientific achievements and this would help make science more accessible and interesting to many.


Thanks again to Carol for sharing her thoughts and insights with ExhibiTricks readers!  To find out more about Carol's museum work, click over to the CB Services Web site.  To find out more about the Museum Life radio program, click over to the Voice America Web site.



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)