The Secret Sauce of High-Quality Museums: Internal Capacity
Here's something I've learned after years in the trenches of exhibit design and development: all truly high-quality museums share one critical characteristic. It's not their flashy architecture, their famous collections, or even their generous budgets. It's something far more fundamental.
High-quality museums have strong internal capacity.
Now, I'm not saying these museums create everything internally—that would be impossible and frankly, unwise. But they can handle many things in-house, and more importantly, they know exactly what those things are. Great museums understand their strengths and double down on them. They also know their weaknesses and where to find the right help.
High Quality = Internal Capacity
The Long Game
Developing genuine museum quality means thinking beyond your opening day celebration. You need a crystal-clear vision of what your institution will look like two, three, or more years down the road—not just two months after you cut the ribbon.
This requires investing in thoughtful experiences, dedicated staff, and deep expertise for the long haul. As Jane Werner wisely puts it: "Invest in staff, not stuff!"
The Two Questions That Matter
In my practice, I often pose two straightforward questions to museum partners:
1) How will you (the staff inside your museum, not contractors or consultants) fix things that break or don't work?
2) How will you transform great new ideas into real exhibits and programs?
If you can't provide credible answers to both questions, you're setting yourself up for trouble. You'll spend your days frantically putting out fires—dealing with problems that could have been anticipated, on top of all the truly unexpected challenges that will inevitably arise.
Even worse? Your bright, shiny museum will inevitably become dingy and boring. And I don't just mean physically—I'm talking about its intellectual and emotional spirit too.
Culture Beats Everything
Creating a robust institutional culture of internal capacity is the defining difference between a great museum and a mediocre one. But here's a crucial point: building strong internal capacity doesn't mean working in isolation.
Quite the opposite, actually.
When you truly understand your institution's strengths and weaknesses, you gain clarity about when and where to invest your precious time and resources. Those investments might involve tapping into local community expertise, sending staff to conferences, pursuing professional development opportunities, or yes—sometimes bringing in consultants to help build internal capacity in areas where you need it most.
You have many choices.
What's not a choice is doing nothing.
Because doing nothing will surely begin the slide from "high quality" to "who cares?" And honestly, is that the kind of museum you want to be part of?
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