Museum Techmuse

Houston Museum of Natural Science: swarming the appetizers

A natural science behavior observed at tonight's AAM event: swarming the appetizers. At some point we realized this was going to be a "passed appetizers only" event.  No table from which to scoop a spoon of a little something. So we swarmed as the appetizers came out the door.  (Next year, events should note in the description, if applicable, "Not much food will be served at this event.")

Aside from that, my main reaction was awe at the extraordinary display of minerals and gems. I kept wanting to go back to see them again. I want to go back even now, as I type this, when I'm miles away at night and the building is closed.

It's a stunning display.  Talking with one of the interpretive staff, I gather the display was designed intentionally focusing on the visual over the interpretive. In fact, I don't remember any labels at all, except for the bare names of the minerals. It is up to the staff in the space to provide interpretation. And that works for me.  I ate some leftover pie when I got back to my room, and now I want to go back and see the minerals again.

Art Car Parade in Houston

I skipped out of sessions (and booth setup) at the AAM conference to catch the Art Car Parade in Houston today. Glad I did! The Art Car Parade is a massive spectacle -- an hour and a half or more of artistic, folksy, id-driven primal creativity focused on radical transformation of the car.

There were a lot of cars with gnashing teeth, some fuzzy/furry ones, protest cars with poetry readings, blues bands, some extraordinary metallic glitter surfaces, and an inexplicable one with a hundred or more mechanical fish and lobsters that moved their tails in unison accompanied by Handel's Messiah. Oh, and both a urinal car and port-o-potty car.

A huge family turnout for the event. Extraordinary, community-wide, multigenerational audience celebrating artistic expression. What more could a museum want?

iPad apps at Children's Museum of Houston

Enjoyed visiting the Children's Museum of Houston at AAM/ACM and seeing what Keith Ostfeld and team are up to with iPad apps. Here's the scoop: rather than creating their own iPad apps for exhibits, something many museums are grappling with, they are scouting out and using existing free and low cost apps on the exhibit floor with staff.

The key: they are focusing on staff-facilitated models to make this work.  Keith showed an app they are using demonstrating air flow over user-designed surfaces. Staff use this app with visitors in the Invention Convention workshop exhibit, at the section where visitors are designing their own real-world structures to test in wind tubes. In a sense, it's not different than having interpretive staff pull out an illustrative photo to explain concepts to visitors, just that this photo happens to be an app.

The museum is also in the process of testing iPad usage among families in exhibits. With a multiple year grant from IMLS to explore this, will be good to keep an eye on what they're learning.

 

Museums and the Web Day 2

Here I sit, end of day 2 of Museums and the Web. I could just say "my brain is fried" and crawl into bed, which would be very satisfying. But here I am, my favorite conference for expanding thinking about our work, and want to at least capture a few phrases and images before they slip away. So, looking through my notes:

• "Ecosystem":  the title of the demo from the team at Museum Victoria (congrats on their award) was "the iOS Ecosystem", and it struck me we really are talking increasingly about an ecosystem of media in our work.  Not just a web page, not just a Facebook page, but the ways they relate to each other. (Or don't relate -- as Seb Chan noted, Facebook tends to be a "walled garden" and people tend not to click out on links)
• "Organizational change": any session having to do with organizational change was filled -- it's not just the technology, but the organization. There's a natural tension here. Social media tends to be developed and fostered by people who are in a category that is new to the traditional hierarchy in museums (and "hierarchy" is a loaded word).
• "Radical trust": this phrase that I first heart at the AASLH conference emerges again as institutions grapple with the uncontrolled voices of their visitors.
• Marketing: Or, as Allegra Burnette from MOMA put it, "getting the word out," if marketing feels a bit tainted as a word.  When I started in the field in the late 80's there was absolutely no connection between exhibits and marketing during the development of the exhibit. Marketing came after, by some other department. No longer the case.  At all.
• "Explode the old model" as Peter Samis put it -- things that used to be produced out of house are now being produce in a new case by case way with combination inhouse/out of house. A natural result of the development of social media tools which are best used inhouse.

OK. What did I miss? Fried and crawling into bed now.

Quick Spin on Google Art Project

Just took a spin around a few museums using Google Art Project, including the Rijksmuseum and MOMA.  At first it seemed like the same old concept: "virtual tours" of galleries. Pan around the room, zoom in on particular paintings. Ok, we've seen that sort of thing a few times before. Never really felt like it had much energy.

But, when Google decides to do something as a platform for museums, good to pay attention.  I stayed with it another ten minutes and really started to like it.  It uses the familiar (for many people) Street View technology, so it presents a standardized interface across museums.  It allows a pretty amazing zoom into selected works (I think I discovered a hair in the moon of van Gough's Starry Night). You can play media created by the museum alongside the painting.

At the Rijksmuseum I noticed they included the gift shop in the tour. Interesting.  I wondered if I could also see the cafe.  Would it look like a nice place to eat?  What's on the menu?  I didn't find these, but these thoughts did whet the appetite for a real experience, a real visit, to the museum. I wonder if I would be able to find a hair in the moon of The Starry Night at MOMA?  Or if they would let me get close enough to see.

The future and museums: webcast notes

Enjoyed the webcast sponsored by Emerging Museum Professionals at the NEMA conference (and beyond). Futurist Garry Golden presented a range of ideas impacting museums in the hour and half online session. Highlights from my notes include:

• the social media model has broad impact on museum communications distinct from past broadcast models. (In my mind, the issue becomes: "how do we plant the seeds that people want to communicate about?")
• Web 3.0: linked smart data, cloud computing, learning systems. (An online participant commented that the online Salesforce program might be a model)
• demographics in the next 15-20 years highlight the central role that multi-generational learning and family learning will play
• "Lifelong learning" becomes the new model, distinct from past models apprenticeship learning and teacher based learning
• museums can leverage the power of "third places," finding ways to bring museums to places like coffee shops
• museum experience may include modeling based on "gaming mechanisms" -- structured programs with goals, challenges, and resources such as Weight Watchers. (In my mind, connects with Elaine Gurian's concept of the "essential museum" in which the museum becomes a resource/tool for visitors' goals)
• a challenge: build smart devices for museum learning environments

Very interesting stuff.  I'm reminded of the way children's museums have been focusing for decades on multi-generational family learning and think there is much for the museum community as a whole to learn from children's museums.

Bishop Museum: Culture, Science, and Spirit

Enjoyed the ASTC reception last night at the Bishop Museum -- and how could I not? A Hawaiian luau, with  food (including the mysterious poi, top notch live music both traditional and contemporary, and a few strong mai tais). But what struck me from a museum perspective is how well the institution as a whole integrates the disparate domains of culture, science, and spirit.

The historic building houses the more cultural exhibits (including Hawaiian Hall), and the new Science Adventure Center is a separate building focusing on the natural wonders of Hawaii.  But themes mingle between the two buildings.

I was struck by the Hawaiian Origins Tunnel in the Science Adventure Center. Visitors walk through a dark tunnel with brightly lit images that are key to traditional understandings of Hawaii's origins. It struck me that it would be very hard to do this in the continental U.S., where issues of science, culture, and spirit are much more polarized.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the natural wonders of Hawaii are so abundant, and provide a base of understanding that speaks beyond ideologies. (Note the quote from the scientist and cultural advisor, if you can read it in my blurry photo).

 

AASLH: the view from the exhibit hall

What are the overarching themes emerging from the AASLH (state and local history) conference?  When I was a museum staff member, I would go to sessions to pick up on them.  Now that I'm here in the exhibit hall, tied to my booth, I glean them from conversations with people who stop by. (And find it very helpful to follow AASLH on twitter -- search for hash tag #aaslh10 -- and on the conference blog).

A couple themes that pop out:

1) Serving families in history museums. The new book edited by Lynn McRainey and John Rusick points in that direction, as well as the related conference sessions. Families are such a major audience for museums - how can historical museums tap into that?

2) "Radical trust."  This seems the hotbed issue here this year -- how much do museums trust the process allowing visitors to create content (and relinquish museum control)?  As user-created content continues to evolve this question will only grow, as Jackie Barton notes in the AASLH blog).

What else? Any other themes emerging?

Visitor Stories as the Link to Other Cultures

Here we come to the topic that launched me into this fascinating career: uses of technology that encourage compassionate awareness of other cultures. It's the bridge that carried me from Harvard Ed School to Boston Children's Museum, through the Teen Tokyo and Kids' Bridge exhibits.

Visitor-created media is on the rise -- we're acknowledging as a field that the visitor's own experience is an essential part of the exhibit.  This experience, and the stories that come out of it, I think are the link sought after in so many children's museum cultural exhibits.

For the "Take Me There: Egypt" exhibit at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, we ask visitors to choose a photo from the exhibit and talk about it, emailing their story home or to a friend. And for "Song of Korea" at the Austin Children's Museum, we invited families to sing a song in their native language. One of my all time favorite visitor-recordings was in Playspace at Boston Children's Museum: a mother and pre-school daughter from Taiwan sang a traditional tune together, the daughter spontaneous and free spirited as the mother sang in the background scaffolding her daughter's exploration. Translates well no matter what language you speak...

 

 

AAM10 Notes: Exhibits that Change Lives

Went to the session "Changing Places: Exhibition as a Catalyst for Community Engagement" yesterday. It's something many of us feel and more of us are talking about: we want exhibits to change lives. Not just increase understanding or awareness, but actually result in positive changes in the community served by the museum.

The Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte is a museum that is doing that.Their IMLS funded exhibit focusing on cultural change in an increasingly diverse South is used by local businesses as a training ground for workplace diversity training. Over 110 groups have participated in Dialogues programs facilitated by the exhibit. One visitor was inspired to organize a march for justice and peace.

It's hard to point to a single factor that seems to have led to that success, but the starting point seems to be the museum's stated mission: to use history to build community. I was fortunate to participate in the exhibit developing the story booth used to gather visitor stories, reflected on the museum's YouTube channel and exhibit website. Lots to learn from the exhibit team, including Emily Zimmern, Tom Hanchett, Darcie Forhrman, Pamela Grundy, Holly Andrews and many others...