Stories and Conversations: Some Thoughts on the University of the Arts MEP+D@25 Symposium

For over a quarter of century, the MFA program in Museum Exhibition Planning + Design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia has produced change agents in the museum field. Recently the MEP+D program held a symposium, and I was pleased and honored to be an invited provocateur for the occasion.

My takeaways from two days in Philadelphia involved the ways that "stories" and "conversations" are pointing the way toward the next 25 years of the museum business.

Marsha Semmel gave an excellent keynote speech on Thursday evening that touched on the changes in museum exhibitions over the past twenty-five years.  She highlighted influential exhibitions such as 1988's "ART/artifact."  

One side note: it became clear from Marsha's remarks, and also the statements from honorees Jane and Ed Bedno that the museum world has done a terrible job of documenting our own history! Marsha was unable to provide adequate images of many of the seminal exhibitions she discussed during her talk.  Even though sites like ExhibitFiles exist, we, as a profession, need to do a much better job of capturing the stories of exhibition development and design.

Marsha also pointed toward continuing exhibition issues that the profession will continue to grapple with in the future:

• How to maximize the use of story in exhibitions

• Listening-feedback loops between visitors and museums

• Museums having increased comfort with ambiguity (not having all the answers)

• Exhibitions as conversations

For my part of the symposium, I led discussions on Making and Participation as Inclusion with Peggy Monahan.

Some of the topics that came up in our groups were:

• How to create Museum "Fans"?  

Fandom really equals identity for many museum visitors, and a way to share and participate in stories at the museum.

• How best to measure success?

The way that many, if not most, museums gauge success is through quantitative measures like annual attendance or admissions numbers.  But are there qualitative ways to measure museum success?  Like happiness or connectedness of museum visitors.

The UArts MEP+D@25 Symposium was a great opportunity to think about ways to increase inclusion in museums through the use of stories in exhibitions and by changing the voice of authority in cultural institutions.

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What Are Your Favorite Museum "Easter Eggs" ?

In honor of the season, we repeat our homage/post to museum "Easter Eggs."  Enjoy!

Museum designers often add "Easter Eggs" to their work.  But not the brightly dyed or chocolate-y varieties --- these are more akin to the hidden "Easter Eggs" that you may stumble across (or deliberately search out) inside video games, crossword puzzles, or DVDs.

For visitors, it's fun to feel like you've found a little "secret" inside a museum building or exhibition, and for designers it's a little "trick" to reward visitors for carefully observing and examining things inside the museum.

"Exhibits as advent calendars" as Dan Spock has observed (to mix religious holiday metaphors a bit!)  So here are a few of my favorite museum easter eggs:

• The Hidden Cat: Starting with the picture at the top of this posting is the "cat" hidden in the atrium of the Science Discovery Museum in Acton, MA.  It's fun to point out to visitors, and it really reflects the playful nature of the building and exhibits inside.


• Secret Elves at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science: Artist Kent R. Pendleton worked on many of the Museum's dioramas, but supposedly he wasn't allowed to sign his name to his work.  Instead, Pendleton included little "elfin" figures hidden throughout many of the displays.  There's a great blog posting (with video) about Pendleton's retro easter eggs!

• The Magic House Mouse:  The "Magic House" Children's Museum outside St. Louis has some wonderful exhibits, but one of my favorite "hidden gems" is the tiny decorated mouse hole near the baseboards in one of the galleries.  If you were just whizzing around you might not ever see it, but if you're willing to get down on your hands and knees you might see (as in the photo below) a "presidential" mouse:

• The "Hidden Tunnel" at Casa Loma:  Casa Loma is a gigantic historic house outside Toronto that is filled with enough crazy details to keep even little kids interested during the self-guided tours.  One  of the things I remember from a family visit (nearly 40 years ago!) was the cool secret tunnel, nearly 100 feet long, that was hidden behind a pivoting wall section (just like in all those scary movies --- but this was real!)  that led to the Casa's underground wine cellar:

Of course some museums, like The City Museum, also in St. Louis, or the Museum of Jurassic Technology in L.A., are practically interlocking collections of "easter eggs" or in-jokes, but that's certainly one aspect that makes them so popular.

What are some of your most memorable "Museum Easter Eggs"?  Let us know in the "Comments Section" below!



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Creative Inspiration: Chrome Music Lab

Chrome Music Lab is a nifty collection of interactive "experiments" that lets users explore the fundamental elements of music like rhythm, chords, and harmonics.

Google has assembled these collaborations between musicians and coders into one place for anyone with a Web browser to try out.   And best of all,  the Music Lab examples were built with the freely available Web Audio API, so anyone with the time, and some technical know-how, can put together similar interactive explorations into sound and music.

Even as a non-musician, I really enjoyed playing and experimenting with all the Music Lab modules, but two of my favorites were "Voice Spinner" (pictured at the top of this post) and "Rhythm" (pictured below.)

In Voice Spinner, you use your computer's microphone to capture your voice and create "sonic circles"  that can then be played backwards or forwards at different speeds.  Not only is it super fun, but the Voice Spinner interface really lends itself to repeated experimentation.  (I had fun trying to recreate the backward-tracking sections of old Beatles songs!)

The "Rhythm" module lets you choose among sets of different cartoony animal musical combos. Each set of animals plays different percussion instruments that you can then control by clicking or un-clicking dots (like musical notes) onto a set of parallel lines.  Once you set everything into motion the animals play different rhythms in time to the dots you placed.   It's a deceptively simple interface that let's you set up really complex rhythmic patterns!  It's also really fun to use to collaborate with someone else.

So bravo to Google for turning Chrome Music Lab loose into the world!  It's worth clicking over to the website to play with all 12 current modules --- each one of which can easily serve as creative inspiration for museum/exhibit/design folks!



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Looking for fun and innovative ways to integrate technology into your museum? Contact POW! today to discuss how we can turn your good ideas into great exhibits!


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Margaret Middleton on Family Inclusion in Museums

                                                       (Photo Credit: Matthew Clowney)

Margaret Middleton is a Boston-based exhibit developer and designer. A museum geek and queer activist, she has spoken all over the country about the importance of family inclusion in museums. Most recently Margaret produced Mimi's Family: Photography by Matthew Clowney, an art exhibit for children featuring a family with a transgender grandparent.  

We are happy to welcome Margaret back to ExhibiTricks to share her thoughts on making museums more welcoming places for diverse families.

What does family inclusion mean?

Families make up 40% of all museum audiences (American Alliance of Museums, 2006 Museum Financial Information).  “Family” is meant to refer broadly to intergenerational learning groups, but all too often it becomes a code word. We often use “family” to mean a nuclear family with two heterosexual, legally married parents of the same race and their biological children, residing in the same household. 

According to Strong Families, “4 out of 5 people living in the US … do not live behind the picket fence—[their] lives fall outside outdated notions of family, with a mom at home and a dad at work.” Museums who aren’t actively engaging families who don’t fit that codified definition aren’t serving the majority of families.

Family inclusion is about actively welcoming diverse families in museums.

How can museums accommodate a greater diversity of families?

Representation

Just as you strive to incorporate racial diversity in your signage and marketing, make sure that visual depictions of families in your museum are varied. Include single parents, same-sex parents, multi-racial families, and multiple generations. If you have a reading nook, populate it with books that show many kinds of families. This is a good list to start with.

Seating

One of the subtle ways museums signal the type of family they expect is through seating. Instead of fixed benches or square tables with four chairs, try modular seating that is easily moved and reconfigured by visitors to accommodate a variety of families. Make sure to include several seating heights to accommodate visitors of different sizes. Bean bag chairs are fun but they are tough for older folks and anyone with mobility issues. If you use bean bags, make sure there are more accessible options available too.

Bathrooms

Gender inclusive bathrooms can meet the needs of transgender and nonbinary family members or anyone else who may not feel comfortable or safe using gender-segregated restrooms. They are often single-stall and accessible so they can accommodate wheelchairs, strollers, and anyone who needs assistance in the bathroom, including children. They often have changing tables too (which should also be present in both men’s and women’s restrooms).

Unfortunately, signage for gender inclusive bathrooms often reads “Family Bathroom” and depicts a family like this:

Opt for a more inclusive sign like this:

All-Gender Restroom sign available at: mydoorsign.com 

Family memberships

Make sure your policies fit your expanded definition of “family.” Instead of defining a family membership as a membership for two adults and their children, offer flexible memberships that accommodate families with any number of adults and children and charge accordingly. This makes room for single caregivers and families with more than two adults in them. 

Do away with mandatory gendered honorifics like Ms. and Mr. and instead of “mom,” “dad,” or “parent” categories, simply use the word “adult.” Family memberships should not be limited to “members of a household” so as not to leave out families that live apart like divorced families or families with hired caregivers.

What’s a good place to begin?

Museums are not exactly known for being nimble when it comes to change. If you’re not a top decision maker at your museum, policy and infrastructure changes may be harder for you to influence. One of the easiest (and cheapest!) ways to cultivate an institutional culture of family inclusion is to start expanding your museum’s definition of family through language.

Host a brown bag lunch to discuss the meaning of the word “family.” You can also use the Family Inclusive Language chart I created (below) to talk about the assumptions we make about our visitors and how to avoid embarrassing and even hurtful interactions. The new words you choose will change the way you greet visitors at the admission desk, give tours, write label copy, compose tweets, and update the Facebook page.

These language shifts are simple, but don’t mistake them for being superficial. Words have power. In fact, according to cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky, “Studies have shown that changing how people talk changes how they think.” You actually have the power to challenge your own implicit bias.

A few carefully chosen words can go a long way in helping visitors feel more welcome in your museum. Start with language, and before long it will be even easier to make the case for further change.

You can follow Margaret on Twitter @magmidd. To see Margaret’s work and to learn more about her family inclusion workshops, visit her website. Family Inclusive Language posters can be ordered here: zazzle.com/magmidd 

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Can Social Psychology Predict Successful Museum Project Teams?

Did you ever notice how particular teams or working groups at some museums always seems to produce interesting, successful projects, while other museums filled with equally likeable and intelligent people never quite seem to get their projects to fly?

I kept coming back to memories of successful (and unsuccessful!) museum project teams as I read the fascinating article in the New York Times about the research conducted by the Project Aristotle group at Google, entitled "What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team."

The article is really worth reading for yourself, but I'll give you a bit of the punchline in this post.  (SPOILER ALERT!)

After looking at over a hundred groups at Google, the Project Aristotle researchers determined that the key factor for project teams to become successful was "group norms."

Roughly translated, that means that each group's "culture" determined the outcome of the group's work more than any other factors --- not age, gender, education, experience, even overlap between group members on different teams.

From the article:

"What interested the researchers most, however, was that teams that did well on one assignment usually did well on all the others. Conversely, teams that failed at one thing seemed to fail at everything. The researchers eventually concluded that what distinguished the ‘‘good’’ teams from the dysfunctional groups was how teammates treated one another. The right norms, in other words, could raise a group’s collective intelligence, whereas the wrong norms could hobble a team, even if, individually, all the members were exceptionally bright."


Successful project teams shared two common qualities.  On good teams, members spoke in roughly the same proportion:

"As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well.  But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined."

Secondly, all the good teams had something the Project Aristotle researchers called high "social sensitivity."   Which means that successful team members were skilled at picking up on nonverbal cues --- like tone of voice, or facial expressions, to determine how other team members were feeling.

So given their findings, and Google's strong desire to improve the success of project teams, did the researchers draw up a list of prescriptions for teams to follow?  Not at all!  Rather, the Project Aristotle group shared their data and findings with people and assumed groups and their leaders were smart enough and motivated enough to incorporate the findings into each working group's "culture."

But most importantly, even for a data-driven company like Google, everyone in the organization came to realize that success was not always something that could be "optimized" or driven strictly by some one-size-fits-all business principles.

Again, from the article:

"Project Aristotle is a reminder that when companies try to optimize everything, it’s sometimes easy to forget that success is often built on experiences — like emotional interactions and complicated conversations and discussions of who we want to be and how our teammates make us feel — that can’t really be optimized."

And I think that is what holds tremendous promise for the future of museums and our projects --- that our interactions with each other as museum workers, and our interactions with the people who visit museums, can be grounded in rich (and yes, sometimes complicated) emotional experiences.

Onward!

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