Edifice Complex and Museums

Here's a quick museum business quiz --- answer true or false.

1) A museum can be too big.

2) A museum can be totally"self-supporting" financially.

Depending on your answers to those questions, you may or may not believe that museums (especially in the U.S.) have a serious "edifice complex."

That is, the blind belief that somehow merely constructing a GIGANTIC building, funded through a combination of hopelessly over-optimistic attendance projections and/or slightly dubious loan arrangements, will create a successful, sustainable museum.

Part of what brings this all to mind is the sad and distressing news out of Miami, concerning the Frost Museum of Science — a signature project at the heart of the new Museum Park downtown that has run out of cash before construction can be finished.  The Frost is not merely a project "too big to fail" but "too big to finish."

In an eleventh hour move, the Frost project will be finished, but at a wrenching emotional price to the museum --- the museum's namesake funders — Phillip and Patricia Frost — announced that they're going to bail out the museum with a bridge loan to keep construction going. But they also exacted very tough terms: they’ve effectively “fired" the entire current 41-person board of the science museum.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose.  Full disclosure: I consulted on the Frost project up until late 2015 and I really admire the creative team there.  I sincerely hope they can move forward and open the museum in a positive and sustainable way.

Unfortunately, Miami's Frost Museum is hardly the exception to the museum edifice complex.  Here's a short list of news story links to ponder in a similar vein:


Newseum

Museum of Jewish Heritage

Exploratorium (here and here)

MOSI (Tampa)

Science City and Prariefire  (A geographically-related pairing in my view)

Please Touch Museum (here and here)

The National Children's Museum

Chattanooga History Museum

All museums with problems that could be reasonably tied to their (overly?) large new facilities or expansion plans.


I offer these links and examples not merely as a litany of pain, or a map to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, but as a plea to museum and civic leaders:  If you think it is difficult to build a new museum, it is much, much, much, more difficult to create a thriving and sustainable cultural institution that is responsive to the communities surrounding it.

Maybe there is something ingrained in the American psyche and in the mindset of wealthy philanthropists that prevents modest, truly sustainable projects from moving forward when more grandiose alternatives always seem to be waiting in the wings.

Before completely despairing for the museum business, I'll offer the example of COSI in Columbus, Ohio as an example of an institution saddled (for a variety of political reasons) with a new building that was too large and unsustainable from the day it opened in 1999, that has managed to claw its way back (over the past 16+ years!) through, for example, a variety of community partnerships that involved sharing and leasing unused space inside COSI.  (You can read more about COSI's institutional evolution here and here.)


Like most addictions, edifice complex is probably best kicked if it's never started in the first place, but, lacking that, I hope museums will continue to be smarter (and smaller!) with their facilities and financial projections in the future --- especially given the changing demographics and expectations of cultural consumers.




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Dear New Museum Director

Now that you've been open nearly a year, and the "puff pieces" in the local media have died down,  I'm sorry to tell you that most of your visitors find the new digs, and the exhibits and programs inside, pretty underwhelming.

I'm even sorrier to say that you also paid way too much for your "architectural envelope" and "master planning" and "experience designers" at the expense of real exhibit prototyping, a thoughtful staffing and programmatic plan, and an ongoing remediation program.

Surprise!  The hucksters who shook you down for every last dime (and then vacated the premises right after they took all the photos for their portfolios) left you with the impression that the soaring spaces they created, and the flashy technology they scattered around the joint would leave every visitor quivering with excitement, and anxious to visit again and again with at least two new friends every time.

Even though the horse is out of the barn, I could tell you why** you ended up where you are now, but honestly, as an exhibits guy (who has helped open several new museums) and for your visitors' sake, I'm more interested in sharing the one main way of fixing your problems and moving forward.

But it's going to take a commitment from you and your board to make some long term investments in ... PEOPLE.

Yes, people --- that's the way to transform a shiny palace of mediocrity into a humming, active, responsive museum that your local communities will genuinely feel pride and a sense of ownership in.

As your admission numbers start to dip below the "iron clad" projections you were given, you'll start to panic and look for flashy, expensive band aids: a new 3D IMAX mind-blower that has nothing whatsoever to do with your mission or content, ditto on expensive traveling shows that have more interesting marketing materials than exhibits. But really you should be looking for ways to invest in PEOPLE.

Yes, people --- and the tools and resources they need to be happy doing their jobs and interacting with the folks who come into the museum.  However, it's not going to be easy to build a strong, responsive staff (especially since so many of the players who were involved in the development of the new museum have been let go, or just ... left.)

So, are you thinking about ways for recruiting and hiring enthusiastic front desk and floor staff who are empowered to make and implement improvements in the ways visitors experience the museum?  What about creative (maybe even a little kooky and risk-taking) educators who love working with people (instead of viewing visitor interactions as a "chore") and don't forget about a group of dedicated tinkerers to fix and improve your existing exhibits, but just as importantly, to help create new exhibits. (You do have an exhibits workshop, don't you?)

It would have been nice if the high-priced geniuses who sold you on all the other stuff your museum "needed" would have been more realistic about the "people" part of the equation.  But let's face it, would you really have paid attention?

So there you are.  There's lots of unrealized potential in your new museum, but you can't just hope to drift into that potential.  It's not going to be easy (or quick) to help shift the course of this ocean liner you've set into motion.  But you can do it ... with the right people.  Bon Voyage!


** (The "why" of how you ended up here?  First off, you're not a "museum person" or you're so far removed from what it takes to build exhibits, interact with the public, or present programs, that you got sold a slick "bill of goods" from your architects/designers/master planners. 

Don't feel too bad.  Part of the "skill" attached to the firms that live off these giant-sized new museum projects is in presenting a super slick, and expensive, package of services.  But shame on you, considering the dollars involved, for not digging a little deeper and going beyond the prepared list of references they presented.  I hope if you stay in the museum biz long enough, and get the chance to open another new building, you'll do it a little differently next time.)


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Museum Design: Where's Your Workshop?

It used to be that every museum had an "exhibits workshop." An unsettling trend (to me at least) is the continuing wave of museums that have deliberately left exhibit workshops (staff access, not visitor access spaces) out of the mix.

Can any museum that features interactive exhibits, or really any type of exhibits, ever become great (as opposed to just good) without some sort of workshop?

Let me be clear, I don't think every museum needs a full cabinet-making workshop with full welding capabilities and paint booth. But if you don't have at least one place with a bench and basic tools to tinker, to prototype, or to just pull busted exhibits off the floor while you repair them, can your museum's exhibit program ever be living up to its full potential? Workshop spaces build and increase your museum's internal exhibit development capacity and create a tremendous staff feeling of "ownership." Especially as it relates to "we built that here" exhibits and the entire exhibit development process.

I'm afraid that if you don't have a funky space to create, and explore exhibit ideas, your museum will inevitably cede some (or all!) of this important exhibit development process and skill-set to outsiders. And outsiders, including many architects with exhibit developer aspirations, are often the ones most responsible for eliminating workshop spaces from new building plans. If your designers and architects don't give you a workshop space with convenient loading/unloading access to the outdoors they are starting you and your museum off at a disadvantage.

I'll never forget a visit a few years ago to a beautiful new children's museum. After walking around the space with the Director of Exhibits, I innocently asked to see the "exhibits workshop." He ushered me into a small rectangular office with a desk and chair wedged into the far end. One entire remaining length of wall was lined with deep shelves holding the cans for the 26(or more!) different colors of paint that the architect had used throughout the building. I was dumbfounded. I asked, "Where do you build new exhibits?" The answer: "We don't build new exhibits. We just hire other people to build them for us." Then I asked, "What happens if an exhibit breaks?" The answer: "Most of the time, we just put an "OUT OF ORDER" sign on the exhibit and call somebody to come and fix it." I worried then, and I worry now, about what the long-term effects of "workshopless" museums will be --- both for visitors and the museum field itself.

How do you handle exhibit workshop space(s) in your museum or in museum projects you've helped create? Are workshop spaces a neccessity, or am I just hopelessly "old school"? Let us know in the "Comments Section" below.

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The Myth That Museums Support Themselves

Martin Filler wrote an excellent article in Architectural Record,
entitled " Debunking a myth about museums that pay for themselves."

Mr. Filler raises several excellent points, but one main takeaway for me was that museum boards, in their quest for the next "Bilbao" oftentimes sacrifice important, if not essential, aspects of buildings like on-site storage.

Creating a new museum building clearly shows the values that the institution's stakeholders hold dear. Does form truly follow function, or do the design stylings of a "starchitect" reign supreme? Does your new museum serve as a gateway to your community or a playground for the elites?

Unfortunately, monumental architecture does not have a great track record for engendering ongoing community support. Mr. Filler highlights recent projects in Toronto, Milwaukee, and Denver that failed to live up to the promise of creating "economic engines" for their respective regions.

An unfortunate corollary to this "edifice complex" in the museum community is the notion of architects serving as both building designers and exhibit designers for new projects. This is generally a bad idea, especially when it comes to museums with high numbers of interactive exhibits. You wouldn't hire an exhibit developer to design a new building (would you?) So why do some museums hire architects to design interactive experiences? Instead of a blending of architecture and experience design, most museums with architect-designed exhibits seem like the interactive equivalent of "LegoLand" with mini-buildings or "design statements" inside a larger shell.

Of course, the economic realities of starting up and maintaining a museum have always been with us. But in the end, true passion, not ego, not finances, is what drives excellent institutions. To paraphrase Mr. Filler, "Do what you love...if you make a profit, good for you. If not, good for you, too, because you’ll have been enriched by living with a thing of beauty."