ExhibiTricks Vs. The Ed Techie

No, this isn’t another blog war. This is me remixing two blog posts a la Jason Nevins Vs. Run DMC.

I found these two blog posts at roughly the same time and was intrigued at the sense they made when put into other/wider contexts. This is partly an experiment, and party because whenever I see two lists (especially two lists of criticism!) I want to see if I can make a… critical matrix!

Paul Orselli’s ExhibiTricks said Five Things that make grocery store exhibits bad. I’m going to summarise and turn them into fundamental statements about the wider aspects of museum design, therefore museum intent. You have to read the original blog post for a greater explanation. But this is five bad design

1. “Anti-Green Design”

2. “Inefficient”

3. “Creatively lazy”

4. Unintended Messages

5. Fundraising ploys

Martin Weller of The Ed Techie made a list of Four Assumptions of the Publishing Apocalypse. These Four Things came from the criticisms of journal publishing’s outdated referencing guidelines concerning digital content. Again, go and read to see where I’m going with this. I feel there is a lot in common with journal publishing and museums, especially the academia, the resistance to digital and the fact that both are media and follow media methodologies.

A. The assumption of power

B. The assumption of quality

C. The assumption of immutability

D. The assumption of proprietary

Now, lets see if these 5 and 4 statements can make 20 pearls of wisdom. I apologise for the epic length of this article.

A1. The resistance over eco-digitisation - I’m going to take this as a statement about materials and museum’s failing ability to be eco-giants. Just think about the amount of paper a museum uses and wastes. Now, I want to believe that every single leaflet a museum produces is worth keeping, but its not the case. How much can be digital? Why isn’t every museum leading the eco-way? Solution: You only have to look at what the Mattress Factory is doing.

A2. Ignoring digital efficiency – I’m going to interpret Pauls’ statement as "wasting staff time" and I think about all the other ways staff are locked into old fashioned practices. Solution: Too many to count but one example is a registrar using RFID tags to provide a better collection management. I think there needs to be new training to get over this issue.

A3. Stifling Creativity –  I think this is a matter of trusting staff. Look at what Google do with encouraging side projects in order to tap into their staff’s abilities. The issue here could be the result of losing too many creative people to other industries. Solution: I would say the venture culturalist model in some form could help.

A4. Wrong participation -  Well, I can completely delegate this to Nina Simon. Solution: Nina’s well timed post about personalised entry points.

A5. Money Priorities – An ugly realisation that may be above my pay grade to solve. We’re all suffering in one way or another recently and museums have taken a kicking financially despite numbers increasing. Solution: If you come up with one, I’m sure we’d all like to know. The Museum Bailout idea on a grand scale (like national organisation level) could have done something, I’m sure. Everyone working together to improve membership numbers. Also, Maryann Devine spoke about a For-profit model for the arts which could be considered but would take a massive change in industry thinking.

B1. Green Quality - What is best for the museum should be what is best for the planet. I don’t mean this to be a puritan statement against extravagance, but as Paul said, is there a need for an overabundance of plastics? Yes, it is nice to have a giant molded cartoon character in an exhibition The other side of this is touring exhibitions. What is the carbon footprint of flying art from China? It would be a shame if it couldn’t happen. Solution: Greater ethical guidelines produced. Does there need to be a change in how we view materialism? Would people accept a rapid-prototype of the same object on the other side of the world?

B2. Inappropriate ideologies – Martin talks about quality as elitism and Paul talks about entropy. I’m going to take this as the stagnation of new people into the field. Solution: Go waaaaaay back to my article on museum HR to find all kinds of talking points.

B3. Lack of new ideas – There definitely needs to be a modernising process that say that something done 100 times doesn’t make it good. This is were the authority needs to be relaxed and inspiration needs to come from other sources, especially with online/technology. Solution: (and a great example of what I mean) The Brooklyn Museum released an API and someone made an iPhone app. Its time to tap that massive developer community out there and trust that they are not random amateurs.

B4. Narrow Meanings – Bit of a paradox to hold authority over quality yet make mixed connotations and contexts. But it happens. I think the problem here is overcoming bias. Solution: I fully believe that people can handle an incredible amount of information, why stop at labels and information boards? Send them down paths, let them explore the data themselves, give them everything you have on a subject in a manageable format. This must work otherwise wikipedia would never have become so big. 

B5. Marketable Standards – Tricky, because if something work and makes money, why change it? But are you trying to “sell chunks of museum real estate”? This is where the US and UK differ. In the UK, it’s not so much a preoccupation with sponsorship but a concentration on under-16 education to receive funding. It either case, it can skew a museum plan into unsustainability in a long term ie. Young single males aren’t going to go to a place overrun by children.  Solution: Don’t let it dominate your path. More variety of… products. (Ug.)

C1. Eco-Denial – THE PLANET IS DYING. Solution: SAVE THE PLANET.

C2. Comfortably Slum – There’s no excuse for inefficiency, especially with a financial crisis. Solution: Time for an audit. Hell, get some strategists in. I can recommend one.

C3. Repetition, Repetition, Repetition – You know what happens when you don’t change a stuck record? People get annoyed. To me, this is again an area of stagnation that would take a huge effort to overcome. Solution: More graduate programs, more internships, anything to hike new thinkers into the museum society. Government’s should really pay for this.

C4. Stay the course – I am of the opinion that individuals can consume information much faster than ever. Look at how viral marketing works and how it’s the only game in town. Cultural flashes before being replaced by the next meme. I think museums need to speed up their turnaround of content before people tire of them. Solution: I touched on this a bit in my Make Museums Like Magazines article.

C5. Knife-Edge Finance – What happens when there’s a financial crisis and there an over-reliance upon so few reliable income streams? Google “museum” and “crisis”. So much is broken, I don’t know where to start. Saving museum workers jobs would be good. Without them, there’s no museum. Just a room of stuff. Solution: Hate to say it, but can we rewrite deaccessioning ethics yet? You know, without dragging reputations through the mud. There must be some way to protect the public’s trust AND museums without flat refusals. I would prefer thinner museums than no museums.

D1. Ignore the problem – Yeah, without wholesale change the problem is going to get fixed. Solution: Need more Museum Eco-activists.

D2. No Other Models – I think you’ll find this changing quite fast. See any post of mine about museum expansionism. Solution: Adapt. Invent new systems. The Commons.

D3. Cultural Black Hole – Again, there’s a risk of losing good interested people to other industries. Again, I think of newspapers like I did in Death of the Curator. What happens when there are thousands of people who can work in a newspaper? They start blogs. Solution: Diversify, jump on bandwagons, find any new outlet and dominate it before it turns on you (eg. the music industry and mp3).

D4. Signal & Noise – Maybe more of the same, but museums shouldn’t talk about “authority” or “authenticity”; like they’re a given. They are things to be earned and they can vanish pretty quickly so its pretty dangerous ground to describe yourself in such ways. Today’s media is a lot of noise over signal and boasting isn’t going to help. Solution: Add to the production. Take Artbabble for instance. Those videos feel like documentaries made by experts… mostly. There’s something more that just showing or curating but producing something else. (This point isn’t 100% clear and may need further thinking).

D5. We own museums – Sponsorship can go somewhere else or dry up, people vote with their feet and imagine if all the big companies started their own museums rather than normal philanthropy. There is very little freedom for museums to combat this when you think about it. Solution: ?

 

There. 20 thoughts over 1500 words for you to ponder over the weekend. I apologise for any grammatical errors but it is quite late. If anyone has anything to add, like a different interpretation or a different solution, add them to the comments with the (letter)(number) reference at the beginning.