What Would Michael Bay Do?
Posted in Presentism on 10. Mar, 2009
Awesome.
Nina Simon (awesome) has this great quote:
…non-profits, museums are built to survive, not to succeed. Unlike startups and rock stars, museums aren’t structured to shoot for the moon and burn up trying. They’re made to plod along. Maybe it’s time to change that.
The Michael Bay approach to Museum is making awesomeness the primary function over the desire for indefinite existence. Michael Bay won’t ever direct a classic like the Godfather and will often direct films like Pearl Harbour. But every once in a while, he’ll direct another Transformers: not a classic, but will make an incredible amount of money/success. Mainly based on a target audience’s opinion of awesome (in Transformers case, 28+ year old man-children with a love of explosions and the original toys).
Now, the issue with Bay-ising museums is the trade: how much awesomeness for how much failure? Michael Bay seems to be running at a 1:4 ratio. Can the museum industry deal with that kind of failure? As Nina points out, Elizabeth Merritt says 20% of museums should be allowed to “fail”.
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