Finding Diamonds

As 2020 draws to a close, I keep thinking about the quote attributed to Thomas Carlyle:

"No pressure, no diamonds."

This past year was undoubtedly filled with stresses and pressures, but I will still take some "diamonds" (perhaps some still in the rough) with me into 2021.

Here are some ideas and projects (with links) drawn from this past year's blog posts that have stuck with me:

Motoi Yamamoto's "Saltworks"  It's always fascinating to me how humble materials (like salt)  can often yield works of great beauty and elegance.

Finding Inspiration Outside (While Trapped Inside)  I found much solace, and much to appreciate, in the outdoors this year.

Reading Recommendations  Looking for and finding new ideas and inspiration in a wide range of books ...

Pandemic Diversions  There were lots of great things to find streaming online and on TV, too.

"Feets-On" Museums?  It was written as a tongue-in-cheek response to the backward notion of "touchless museums" but there's still something there, not least of which the accessibility piece ...

And last, but not least, my "Pandemic Project" -- the Museum FAQ Conversations on YouTube with museum colleagues from all around the world.  Worth another look and listen, if I do say so myself. And COMING IN 2021 -- Museum FAQ 2.0!  Let me know about a topic or person (including yourself!) that I should include in the next batch of Museum FAQ videos.

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Revisiting 10 Principles of Good Design

The work of industrial designer Dieter Rams deftly spans both the 20th and 21st centuries. (You can see his influence on designers like Jony Ive at Apple, for example.) 

I've kept bumping into articles and books (like the excellent As Little Design As Possible) about Rams recently, so I thought I'd revisit his 10 Principles of Good Design below.  The 10 Principles certainly are an excellent reference as we think about design work in museum (and non-museum!) settings.

Dieter Rams Ten Principles of “Good Design”

Good Design Is Innovative: The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.

Good Design Makes a Product Useful: A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product while disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

Good Design Is Aesthetic: The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products are used every day and have an effect on people and their well-being. Only well-executed objects can be beautiful. 

Good Design Makes A Product Understandable: It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition. At best, it is self-explanatory. 

Good Design Is Unobtrusive: Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.

Good Design Is Honest: It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept

Good Design Is Long-lasting: It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.

Good Design Is Thorough Down to the Last Detail: Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the consumer.

Good Design Is Environmentally Friendly: Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.

Good Design Is as Little Design as Possible: Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Design Site Rabbithole: Impeccable IP

Who knew that seeing the latest design patent images could be so compelling?

I suspect patent attorney Elizabeth R. Kendall did when she set up the website Impeccable IP.

Impeccable IP provides a slideshow of all the designs that were granted patents during the past week -- and an archive of design patent images from recent weeks and years as well.

When you click on an image, a PDF of the actual patent application pops up.

That's it. That's Impeccable IP. You should check it out.

There's a lot to glean from those design patent images -- future design trends, current fads, maybe even exhibit ideas?

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Can Museums REALLY Change?

In the midst of an ongoing worldwide pandemic, many museum workers are wondering if cultural institutions can make the changes needed to move into the post-COVID era.

I recently wrote an article entitled, "Can Museums Really Change?" published in the Informal Learning Review that seeks to tease out some of the issues at hand. 

You can access the entire article for free here, but I'll touch on some of the key challenges (and possible solutions) in this excerpt.

I'll pose the same question here that I used to start my article, 

"If someone you knew and cared about (like a relative or mentee) asked whether they should pursue a career in museums right now, what would you say?"

What are the things museums and other cultural institutions need to focus on to become stronger, more equitable, and more community-centered organizations?

Here are five things that I've been thinking about:

1) Staff > Stuff

One of the first ways museums could begin to become more genuinely people-centered (instead of merely talking about it via their social media accounts) is to clearly prioritize staff over “stuff.” This requires museum management and boards and museum organizations to act as if they care more for the people working at a museum than museum collections or buildings. (Of course, you need trained staff to care for collections and facilities properly, but that’s an entirely different story).

Pay continues to be the most significant ongoing issue in the museum world. It is wrong, if not downright immoral, to hire someone for full-time work at a museum and to knowingly pay them less than a living wage. And many museum workers are woefully and deliberately underpaid. Let’s pause here to acknowledge that many museum administrators are master rationalizers and can spin stories to justify some of their staff needing to work one (or more!) jobs in addition to their full-time museum employment to make ends meet. 

So rather than relying on someone’s rosy notion of what a “living wage” means in different parts of the country, why not use a common yardstick? Fortunately, MIT has developed a free Web-based Living Wage Calculator (https://livingwage.mit.edu/) that anyone can use to determine what a living wage means in different parts of the U.S. All museums should commit to offering their employees a living wage. 

2) Flatten the Org Chart!

The traditional “top-down” hierarchical business structures of most museums contribute to the isolation of museum departments and functions. Instead of creating collaborators moving toward common goals, most museum org charts create multi-level “silos” that compete for limited resources – often pulling in different directions. Front-line and public-facing museum workers often feel that decisions handed down from the “higher-ups” are arbitrary or “out of touch” with the operational realities of running the museum.

Worse yet, museum employees facing severe issues such as the reported instances of sexual harassment or even physical abuse(!) from managers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art were routinely ignored or dismissed, (https://hyperallergic.com/579531/philadelphia-museum-of-art-concludes-workplace assessment-after-allegations-of-abuse/). The museum management hierarchy simply sought to protect itself. 

Hierarchical structures in museums also contribute to pay inequities across departments. Shouldn’t the roles of Education, Exhibits, and Development departments be viewed as equally important to museums’ purpose and function, and therefore compensated equitably? Museums can systemically change staffing and management approaches by “flattening” their org charts and promoting workers’ and departments’ true interdependency.

What would a museum system built on self-organization principles look like in practice? At its core, “self-management” means knowing what you are responsible for and having the freedom to meet those expectations however you think is best. “Self-organization” is being able to make changes to improve things - beyond what is required of you. Simple in theory, but everyone has to truly commit for it to work!

Examples from the for-profit world include the company Zappos, which details the approach it took in successfully changing to a form of a self-organizing structure called a “Holacracy” in this Web article: https://www.zapposinsights.com/about/holacracy.

3) Communities as True Creative Partners

Whose stories are museums telling, and who is visiting museums to experience the exhibits, programs, and events related to those stories? As researchers like Susie Wilkening have shown (http://www.wilkeningconsulting.com/data-stories.html), museum visitors are concerned about a broad range of issues, but can museums provide what their communities want and need – and in a timely way?There are large groups of people that museums are simply not reaching. Visitors to cultural arts organizations, including museums, continue to trend older and whiter than the demographic directions the U.S. general population is heading.

How can museums counteract the notion that “museums are not for me”? I would contend that rather than trying only to present stories, museums also need to engage with their communities as real creative partners. That way, museums no longer become the only authorities and sole judges of the value of certain stories over others. This systemic shift to co-creation with communities may well upset museums with a “Curators Uber Alles” approach, but the realities of demographics point in a different direction.

An excellent example of a museum that sought to reinvent itself with a more community and visitor-centric approach is the Oakland Museum of California (https://museumca.org/). A free PDF of a book outlining their work, “How Visitors Changed Our Museum” is available through the OMCA website: https://museumca.org/files/HowVisitorsChangedOurMuseumBook.pdf.

Another way museums could become more community-minded is to foster more cooperation and resource-sharing between museums in the same geographic area. A great example of exactly this kind of local cooperation is the Chattanooga Museums Collaborative: https://www.nten.org/article/sharing-back-offices-in-the-cloud-the-case-of-the-chattanooga-museums-collaborative/.

4) Money Changes Everything

Given the continuing mismatch between cultural institutions’ operational needs and the available funding sources; the COVID-19 crisis has made even more evident the weak financial positions of so many museums.

This raises a sort of “museum lifeboat” question – should unsustainable museums be allowed (or even encouraged) to go out of business so they don’t take away limited resources from more vital institutions?

This is a tricky proposition since many museums really can’t survive without constant (if erratic) infusions of cash from both private and governmental sources. The long-term systemic solution here is to create reliable public funding streams for all museums through political pressure, both at the local and national levels. We should support and vote for politicians that view museums as necessary to civic life as libraries, police stations, or garbage trucks. A politician that continually tries to eliminate organizations like IMLS, NEH, and NEA is no friend to museums.

More systemic public funding of cultural organizations would also reduce the dependence of museums on wealthy donors and reduce the systemic and ethical dilemmas caused by balancing selling objects from the collections versus preventing the firing of staff -- which brings us back to “staff versus stuff” again. Although in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, “stuff” seems to be winning the battle -- if you consider examples such as the Museum of Modern Art (with an endowment of over one billion dollars) terminating every single contract of all 85 of its freelance educators in April 2020 or the Royal Academy in the U.K. that is refusing to sell one Michelangelo statue to save the jobs of nearly 150 museum workers in September 2020.

5) Leaving the "Numbers Game" Behind

Ultimately, to change the current museum “system,” we need to leave the “numbers game” behind. The notion that admissions numbers are an accurate measure of a museum’s worth or a way to measure the value of a museum visit to a visitor may be a more severe sickness impacting the museum world than even COVID-19.

Randi Korn’s book, Intentional Practice for Museums: A Guide for Maximizing Impact, offers meaningful alternatives to the museum admissions figures “numbers game.” Many museum leaders and boards continue to be deluded by an “edifice complex.” The reckless rush to build larger and grander new museums without considering whether we can sustain those new buildings has to stop. If we cannot sustain (parse that word in as many ways as you like) existing museums worldwide, should we really be adding to the number of new museums?

Final Thoughts

All of the challenges and possible systemic solutions highlighted above bring us back to the original question: Can Museums Really Change?

Can we bring the required sense of urgency and the necessary hard decisions to the tasks ahead? Museums have talked a great game for years (even decades!) about systemic inequities and failings in the museum field – often with little, if any, real change. The current moment requires not just talk but timely, and creative, actions.

Are we prepared to leave people behind (whether directors, board members, or staff) who cannot evolve and adapt to the changes needed in the museum field? No matter how much you like an individual personally, or how well they may have fit their role in the past, sometimes folks just don’t grow along with your organization. And then it only deepens the pain to delay conversations about moving on.

Perhaps everyone in the museum field should take a lesson from the dinosaur skeletons on display in so many of our institutions – if you don’t adapt, you will surely become extinct!

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Rewind: Are Exhibit Timelines So Boring Because of the Lines?

I've been thinking about time a lot these days -- how to display it, how to put events in perspective, and in context, with each other.  So I thought I would share an "encore" version of this post about exhibit timelines, one of the ExhibiTricks blog's most popular posts from 2019. Enjoy!

A while back I wrote a post asking for examples of interesting timelines in museum exhibitions.  Since then I've been wondering if the negative impressions so many visitors (and exhibit designers!) seem to have about timelines are actually a function of the flat, straight lines themselves.

Think about how daunting a seemingly endless line of jam-packed text and images seems when you are standing at the beginning point.  And now with the use of ever-cheaper screens and digital storage devices, there is a proliferation of what one designer called "the promise of the infinite label" (as if that was a GOOD thing!)

So here are four different ways (with images) of rethinking, or replacing, the standard linear "encyclopedia pages on the wall" approach to exhibit timelines.

SPREAD OUT!

Instead of marching tons of text and images in a line across the wall, why not break the information into manageable chunks and spread it out around the space?

A hub-and-spoke approach to spreading out information.

Movable "thought bubble" units.
Provocation on one side visitor response on the other?

Spreading out information with a map motif.

LISTEN UP!

Could we engage other senses (like hearing) in information-dense exhibits?

Historic figures speak.

Listen Up! Text and sound.

LOOK UP!

How can we use all the space to have visitors look for information in unexpected ways and places?

Cubes -- look up and all around to approach text/images in non-linear ways.

Changing the space to change visitor expectations.

Look up -- and around!

EXCHANGE

Are there ways to exchange information by encouraging communication between visitors and the museum or interchange between visitors?  How can visitors change the information or the physical exhibit elements?

Exchanging information through flash drives.

Color-coded talk tubes to discuss different subjects?

Visitor-changeable low-tech data display

Hopefully, this ExhibiTricks post has given you some inspiration to scribble outside the (time)lines a bit.

Do you have some other ideas or images/links to share that don't follow the typical timeline?  Let us know in the "Comments" section below!

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.

Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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The Power of Memories -- A Guest Post about the "our nyc journeys" Project

Hi there!

My name is Chang Lee and just like Paul, I have the same passion for the world of museums and specifically exhibition and experience design. Today, I would like to talk about the power of memories to connect a very diverse audience.

To do so, I will share the most recent project of 'by xx collective', the team which I have the luck to lead. Our NYC-based, experimental design collective combines experimental language and strategic tools to create collective experiences for the audience.

"Our nyc journeys"(www.ournycjourneys.com), is an online platform where New Yorkers from all walks of life connect by documenting their location-specific memories. It is dedicated to the people who were once new to the City and moved in from another place, either within or outside of the US.

It all started in the pro-COVID days when we joined the competition of LMCC (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council). Last March, it was announced that we had won the grant in Creative Engagement to build what was, in the beginning, a physical installation designed to spark social interaction. As COVID cases were rising, we worked strategically to accelerate our design and create something that was appropriate for the times. The project moved to the virtual world but the goal remains. 

Our mission is to provide a chance for New Yorkers to reflect upon the adventurous journey that the city gave them and to connect with each other. Our vision is to create an inclusive community that bonds over the emotions that the city has evoked in them. In such an overwhelming environment, it is as crucial, as it is necessary, for one to recognize that they’re not alone. 

A collection of memories can perfectly showcase how the diverse NYC population shares similar experiences. By turning the city map into a collage of interwoven individual journeys, our participants see beyond the elements that set them apart. This subjective map creates an alternative urban geography, revealing the emotional dimension of a human city. Our nyc journeys highlights New York City as a unifier that brings together a disconnected audience.

The concept is based on the theory of culture shock; a series of emotions that newcomers often experience. Culture shock defines the 4 stages that a person goes through when adjusting to a new environment. We turned the culture shock stages into NYC-themed chapters. Our 4+ chapters compose a person’s NYC journey and our participants are invited to match their memories to a chapter and a NYC location.

As social distancing is required, if not imposed, people are trying to find new ways to stay connected with each other. "By xx" has been working on creating an antidote to the social isolation that many may have experienced. Our nyc journeys has the power to connect New Yorkers who walk the same streets and share similar day-to-day adventures. Our future members stand next to each other at traffic lights, in the same Uber, or in the same Trader Joe's checkout line without realizing how much they have in common. Through our website, we want to turn NYC into a place where they feel like they belong.

I am very excited for the opportunity to share this project on ExhibiTricks! I encourage you to check out the our nyc journeys website, share your memories, and connect with other New Yorkers - just like you! 

Chang Lee is an architect and an experience designer. He studied in the Exhibition and Experience Design Master’s Degree program at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Currently, Chang works for Gallagher & Associates, an interdisciplinary design studio. 

Chang has a Bachelor's Degree in Architecture from Yonsei University in Seoul. He worked in the Japanese architectural studios of Kengo Kuma and Toyo Ito, contributing to various projects with commitment and creativity. Chang also worked as a space designer in the Branding Department of Hyundai Card Company, where he discovered the power of spatial storytelling, something that led him to New York to enrich his knowledge of experience design.

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.

Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Pandemic Pause: Mondo Mascots

It's nice to take a "pandemic pause" now and then.

One way I take a break from thinking about COVID-19 (and everything associated with it)  is to check out the wacky and wonderful world of Japanese mascots via the "Mondo Mascots" sites. (There is a Mondo Mascots website, but I really think the Twitter and Instagram accounts give you more distilled mascot-y goodness.)

Ecogaru the shopping bag kangaroo encourages
citizens of Miyazaki, Japan, to reuse their bags.

So, through the Mondo Mascot sites, I've come to find out that there are mascots wearing amazingly intricate (and sometimes surrealistic) costumes in cities and neighborhoods all over Japan.

The official (and unofficial!) mascots represent such things as sports teams, regional vegetables and foods, trains, utility companies, and even archaeological sites.  

Hanna the green elephant mascot
of Hanasaku Life Insurance

Somehow these disparate ideas move from concept sketches to full-blown three-dimensional costumes worn by non-claustrophobic (and I imagine, somewhat sweaty) individuals dancing around fairs, train stations, and supermarkets.

Yahata Inu, the mascot of Kai City, Japan, looks
like a cat but is actually a mix of a potato and a dog

Honestly, every time I visit a Mondo Mascots site, I want to visit Japan even more!

Check out Mondo Mascots via their website, Twitter, or Instagram.

Kan-chan the curious and playful liver is a
mascot who fights liver disease in Saga, Japan.

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Creative Resource: Reading Design

Looking for creative writing about design? 

Reading Design (R/D) is an online collection of critical writing about design. The website contains interesting entries dating from the first century BC right up to current times.

R/D gathers papers, articles, lecture transcripts, essays, photo essays, and blog posts all in one place to build an outstanding resource for anyone engaged in, or interested in, design.  I especially enjoyed some offbeat writings gathered from lectures by Oscar Wilde.  

Whatever your interest in design, Reading Design is a website well worth exploring.

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Design Inspiration: Motoi Yamamoto's "Saltworks"

Motoi Yamamoto is a Japanese artist known for creating art with salt. 

His precise large-scale installations are often created in memory of his deceased sister. 

The "saltworks" are an effort by Yamamoto to preserve memories of his sister. 

As you can see from the images here and on the artist's website, the work is both admirable for its sensual design and for its ability to evoke deep feelings from such humble materials.

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.

Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Intentional Practice: An Interview with Randi Korn

Randi Korn is a noted writer, evaluator, and intentional practice leader who has worked in, and with, museums for many years.

To be honest, Randi and I tried (twice!) to have a video conversation via Zoom as part of my Museum FAQ series on the POW! YouTube channel, but technology let us down.  So instead, we have created this hybrid interview that tries to capture the flavor of our previous conversations and also includes a short video (below) of Randi and myself modeling an exercise from her recent book, Intentional Practice for Museums: A Guide for Maximizing Impact.

Enjoy!

What’s your educational background? 

I have a BFA and focused on design while in undergraduate school.  I thought I was going to be a painter or a potter, but after taking a design class, I was intrigued by the problem-solving approach design offered.  I found it intellectually rigorous.  I always viewed design as a communication tool, and exhibition design was no different.  In practice, though, I wondered why some design solutions attracted people and others did not.  To satisfy my curiosity, I enrolled in a museum studies graduate program specifically designed for people who didn’t want to stop working (now there are several of those, but back then, there was one).  The program was at a big university so I had access to professors from many disciplines.  I chose to focus my studies on educational research methodologies that I could then apply to a museum environment.  For my thesis, I did original research that tested two interpretation strategies in a botanic garden—where I happen to be working at the time.

What got you interested in Museums?

Ahhh.  Great story!  I wanted to leave undergraduate school after my second year to see if what I was learning was at all useful in the real world.  A professor told me that he looked forward to working with me next year (what was to be my junior year), and I told him that I wasn’t returning.  When he asked what I was going to do, I answered him honestly; I had no idea.  He wrote someone’s name and phone number on a piece of paper and told me to call this person because she might need someone like me.  Of course, I did what most 19-year-olds did with such a suggestion: I made a mental note and then discarded the piece of paper.  

A month later I went to visit a filmmaker friend who needed a poster designed for his new film.  I had my portfolio with me, and visiting him was another friend of his.  So, both of them looked at my portfolio, and his friend said, “you should really call my boss; we are looking for someone with your skillset.”  She wrote down the name of her boss, and it was the same name that the professor gave me!  This time I thought, “Okay, don’t be an idiot; just call this lady”—who happened to work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the (now defunct) Department of Urban Outreach.  She had just received an NEH grant to collaborate with five ethnic communities in Philadelphia to develop and design an exhibition about each community’s rites of passage.  I was hired to photographically document Jewish rites of passage for the Jewish community in Philadelphia and work with the designer to create the exhibition.  That experience changed my life.

  

What prompted you to start your own business?  

Before I moved from California to DC in 1989, I had been employed by at least half-a-dozen museums around the country.  I had held diverse positions ranging from executive director, to evaluator, to designer, to interpretive program manager.  I loved each and every job!  Like a lot of people between jobs, I started working on projects independently when I arrived in DC.  I was having fun working on a lot of different projects—so much fun that I turned down a job that Kathy McLean offered me when she was at the Maryland Science Center.  Crazy, I know!  Kathy was understanding, as she too had worked on her own intermittently.  She said, “Well, can I hire you as a consultant?”  One thing led to another.  I worked by myself for two years, then I hired someone to assist, and the business grew slowly from there.

 

Can you tell us more about your recent book, Intentional Practice for Museums?

Sure.  First I’ll explain why I wrote it and then I’ll explain the concept of intentional practice.  There were a few historical moments that were building up in my mind, and collectively, they pushed me.  The first: the result of the 1994 election. It was the first time in 40 years that the republicans seized control of the House and the Senate and Newt Gingrich created the Contract for America (some government workers called it the Contract on America).  There was a chopping block in that Contract and it included IMS (now IMLS), NEH, and NEA.  It was the first time these museum-funding agencies were in danger of disappearing since they were created in the ‘60s.  Remember, back then the Internet was not the powerhouse it is today, so the response from the field was painfully slow, and the museum community started looking for evidence that museums make a difference in people’s lives.  Lo and behold—they found nothing—no reports anywhere!  The second event, so to speak, happened 10 years later—the Wallace Foundation commissioned the Rand Corporation to conduct a thorough review of publications, etc., to report on the value of the arts to communities.  

Gifts of the Muse, published in 2004, is a great read.  There was data about the economic benefits of the arts (to municipalities and business), but scant data on the value of art to people.  One could extrapolate (which the authors did), but that wasn’t quite as good as having concrete data; they and everyone else knew it.  The voice in my head kept saying, “the party is over,” and I distinctly remember saying that on an AAM panel at one point.

The third event, as it were, was the realization that my chosen profession—evaluation—hadn’t produced any reports either. Why was it that I hadn’t conducted any studies on the value of museums to people?  The simple answer was that no one had asked me to.  I started exploring possible funding options and learned that no one was interested in such a study (things have gotten better since then).  Evaluation in museums was driven by exhibits, programs, and funders’ requests, and no one was asking questions about the whole museum.  While evaluation has done a great deal to strengthen individual exhibit and program teams, it had done little to inform museums and others about the effect of the whole museum on people and communities.

As my interest in wanting to help museums measure their impact on people deepened, I realized this: in my work with museums as an evaluator, my colleagues and I ask a lot of questions.  One question we always ask is: what do/did you want to achieve with this exhibition/program?  What is/was your intent?  More times than not, these questions were met with an awkward silence.  If museums stumbled with these questions about a project, I surmised that asking about the intent of the whole museum also would be met with a deafening silence.  That left me with realizing that if I wanted to help museums, I needed to create strategies to help them articulate their value—and intentional practice was born.

So, what is intentional practice exactly?

Intentional practice is a way of thinking and a way of working, and in many ways, it is a philosophy.  A museum’s work towards intentionality is ongoing.  I’ll use The Cycle of Intentional Practice below to explain the components of intentional practice.  While the graphic is neat and tidy, it is a very complicated process.  If I created a cycle that reflected what the process is really like, people would flee.  Like exhibition planning—intentional planning is just plain messy!  

There are five primary elements: Plan, Evaluation, Reflect, and Align, which are placed around a centerpiece—impact.  A museum interested in pursuing intentional practice has to first define its intended impact, and that intended impact becomes the engine that drives all the museum’s work across the quadrants and the gauge of success. Work that ensues—evaluating new strategies, reflecting on the work so staff can learn from their work, and strengthening alignment between the actions and results—should be the only work of the museum. Work that does not help the museum achieve impact, wastes resources, the most valuable of which is staff time.  

Because of the messiness, I tightly facilitate the process; if I didn’t, again, people would flee.  People have told me that the tightly-run workshops are a huge relief to them because then they can focus on the assigned tasks, all of which are hard.  Seats are assigned because workshops are attended by people from across and up and down the museum, and if I left people to their own devices, curators would sit together, educations would sit together, etc.  Working groups are predetermined and we place staff in interdisciplinary groups, often working with people who they do not know.  Interdisciplinary collaboration is one of the seven principles of intentional practice.  

I can’t really explain everything in this post, but I would like to share what comprises an impact statement.  Essentially, the first workshop includes three exercises: a passion exercise (because your passions drive your work and the excellence you put forth every day); identifying the museum’s distinct qualities (so the museum can always play to its strengths); and visioning outcomes for three target audiences (so staff can focus their work on achieving those outcomes [which will lead to achieving impact] on those audiences.  All the exercises I have done as of two years ago when the book was published are in Chapter 5.  I have left nothing out, and my intent is that people will feel inspired to do this work with their museum.

Perhaps I should do the passion exercise with you, Paul, to demonstrate how it could work.  First, to provide context: you would be in a group with 4 or so other people—from a board member, to a community representative, to staff from different departments, and a group member would pose these very simple questions to you and another would volunteer to take notes.  I would collect all the notes when the exercise is complete.  I analyze those notes along with the work from the other two exercises that staff will do to develop a draft impact statement that is vetting and discussed with staff the next time we meet.   

And so embedded below, and here on the POW! YouTube channel you can see a short video of Randi and myself going through the passion exercise featured in Chapter 5 of Intentional Practice for Museums: A Guide for Maximizing Impact.

Why do so many museums place such an emphasis on admissions numbers?

Because most people can count; it is easy, and for whatever reason, many humans take the road most easily traveled.  As we now see in COVID times, numbers are irrelevant—they no longer can be used as a measure of success. Thank goodness!!!  I wrote about this on our blog; in a post titled “Zero.”  I have long argued that numbers are not a measure of success—technically, they are an output, not an outcome. And pragmatically, numbers say nothing about the quality of an experience; they only mean that people came.  AAM and the like enjoy touting that museums contribute to local economies.  They may, but how are they contributing now?  We need measures that will serve us well in good and bad times.  

How can museums become better at measuring what matters?

Ahhh, as you might guess at this point, the first step is that the staff have to clarify what matters to them.  Once there is a clear articulation of what matters, any evaluator worth their salt, should be able to design just the right tools to begin measuring.  However, I almost always urge museums not to measure too soon.  If you have just articulated what matters, then it is quite possible that the museum may need to examine their programs/exhibits to see if those elements, in their current form, can actually deliver. 

Museums often jump right to the measuring part because staff are doers and they want results.  In exhibit design and development, you have the same problem: people can’t wait to start talking about the cool exhibits they want to develop—the “how” part of the work—when they haven’t spent enough time talking about the “what” and “why” parts of the work.  How to measure takes know-how, considerable time, and a willingness to accept what the data say.  In a workshop, before we were about to begin a study, I asked what people’s greatest fears were.  The director responded by saying “That we won’t like what the report says and we’ll blame you and throw the report out.”  It is true, people have to be open to what the data says; they have to be open to the reality that they might need to change a few things if they want the results they envision.

How has intentional practice influenced approaches to evaluation?  

That has been the most interesting and unexpected outcome of this work.  Evaluation methods informed intentional practice; for example, I view part of intentional practice workshops as an evaluation project; that is, —I use them as opportunities to collect data from staff rather than visitors. .  The most significant influence that intentional practice has had on evaluation is that now we include reflection in our evaluation projects.  Reflection is about stepping back and learning from the work.  We assign exercises where staff are asked to refer to the data so they can practice how to use data so they can experience its value as a decision-making tool.  We infuse reflection when needed into client meetings; for example, if we meet regularly via telephone, the agenda will include a 15-minute reflection at the end of the meeting.  I am working with a small nonprofit now, and I start our meetings with a 15-minute reflection and I might end it with asking people to identify a new or different action they will take based on what they have learned.  So intentional practice has helped us strengthen our evaluation work and our clients.

How can intentional practice and evaluation help museums navigate a post-COVID world?

At the end of the day—whether before COVID-19 or now, achieving impact on people is paramount—however the museum defines impact, and along with that definition, staff need to decide whom the museum wants to impact, and “everyone” is not an adequate response.  No doubt, museums are making tough decisions every single day.  An impact statement can be used to determine what the museum should be doing and what it need not do anymore.  Intentional practice is very pragmatic.  Two fundamental, interconnect beliefs are woven throughout intentional practice work to demonstrate its pragmatism: Less is More and Museums can’t be all things to all people and achieve impact.  These hard times require pragmatism. 

What are some of your favorite museums or exhibitions? 

It is really hard to narrow down, but I’ll try.  I used to say, the Picasso Museum in Paris, but they redid it, and I haven’t seen the new iteration.  What I liked about the old one was how the architecture and interior exuded Picasso’s often earthy palette and the use of organic shapes.  But since I know it may not be like that anymore, here is another favorite.  There is a museum in London that blew me away. Sir John Soane's Museum.  It is like the old cabinets of curiosities, except the museum was an enormous cabinet.  Their website has two three-dimensional videos (you can view them here and here.)  

I did not feel museum fatigue; I was continually mesmerized by everything I saw.  My favorite local DC museum is the Renwick Gallery—the national museum of crafts.  Once a very traditional place, when it reopened after a few years of closure, they outdid themselves!  Every time a visitor came in from out of town, that’s where we went!  The lines were around the block, but they did not deter.  The installations were creative and took the notion of craft to a new level.

If money were no object, what would your “dream” museum project be?

I am very committed to intentional practice.  My dream project is something that I am so fortunate to be involved with, and the only reason I can work on it is that money is no object; I am not being paid, which is very freeing.  I sit on a board of a small nonprofit and I have been working with the staff team since last year.  Originally, I was to help them develop an intentional plan for the next three years, but it has morphed into a full intentional practice project, and I am delighted.  The essence of intentional practice is about learning—personal learning, professional learning, and organizational learning.  What’s so great is that I am learning, too.  I am working with staff to strengthen them as a team so they can achieve their intended impact.  It is a great experience and opportunity to test new intentional practice ideas and approaches.

Thanks again to Randi for sharing her thoughts with ExhibiTricks readers! 

If you'd like to learn more about Randi and her work, just click on over to the RK&A website.

AND NOW FOR A FREE BOOK GIVEAWAY!  

If you would like a chance to win one of two autographed copies of Randi's book, Intentional Practice for Museums: A Guide for Maximizing Impact, here's how to enter the giveaway:  

1) Send an email with the subject line, "I want to win Randi's book!"

OR 

2) Become a new subscriber to the ExhibiTricks blog by clicking on the link near the top right of the ExhibiTricks homepage.

We will randomly choose two winners on Friday, October 9th, 2020 -- one winner from the email entries, and the other winner from the new subscribers.  Good luck!

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.)  Let's work on a project together!   (Please note: when you click on links to books or other products featured on the blog, we may earn a small commission, but you will not incur any increase in price.)

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Finding Inspiration Outside (While Trapped Inside)

As I am spending more and more time inside due to the COVID pandemic, my computer has become even more of a "window to the world" pointing me toward creative work outdoors around the world.

I hope you find inspiration in the works highlighted below.

Monstrum

Why play in a playhouse, if you can play in moon rockets, submarines, giant snail shells, clown heads, or Trojan horses? That's the question that motivates Monstrum, a group of designers and craftspeople creating unique playgrounds from their workshop in Copenhagen.  Click on over to the Monstrum website to see more images of their playful and beautiful work.

WindowSwap

Instead of staring out of your own window, click on over to the WindowSwap website to see views outside the windows of people from around the world. 

Your Rainbow Panorama

Here's a bit of museum/exhibit/design inspiration that evokes light, and the sun, and endless horizons: artist Olafur Eliasson's architectural installation entitled  "Your rainbow panorama."

Situated on top of the ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum art museum in Aarhus, Denmark, Your rainbow panorama invites you to experience the familiar (a city skyline) in unfamiliar ways. Olafur Eliasson's creation consists of a 150-meter-long and three meter-wide circular walkway in glass in all the colors of the spectrum. 

One Day Poem Pavilion

Artist Jiyeon Song has created a sculptural structure that utilizes perforations carefully arranged throughout the top surfaces.  As light shines through the Pavilion's holes at different angles, legible text is created on the sidewalk underneath.  Different lines from a poem appear at different times of the day, due to the position of the sun.  What is super cool is that (again, due to the sun's position) one poem appears during the summer, and a different poem appears in the winter.

Miguel Marquez Outside

Michael Pederson is a street artist and photographer in Sydney, Australia. His blog Miguel Marquez Outside shows, among other projects, signs that Pederson has placed in public. They look official and offer rules, suggestions, and information about the area.

Many of Pederson's signs twist the traditional notion of informational signs (like those found in museums!)  I wonder how we could play with visitors' expectations in outdoor exhibits by using ideas like this?

Wind Map

Wind Map gives a real-time visualization of wind speeds in the U.S. It's like a giant video infographic! A more three-dimensional view of wind around the entire globe is available at the earth website. 

Of course, even during COVID times, the most refreshing and inspirational thing to do right now might be a short stroll around your neighborhood. So why not take a break from your computer and take a walk outside?

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.

Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

If you enjoy the blog, you can help keep it free to read and free from ads by supporting ExhibiTricks through our PayPal "Tip Jar"