Last weekend I had my first real-life demonstration of Layar. It was pretty impressive and it occured to me that you just can’t appreciate how it works as you move the phone, when viewing a demo of it on a computer monitor. Listening to KCRW’s Design and Archtecture podcast, I hit on the begininnings of an idea. They reviewed the film (500) Days of Summer which has an architecture driven plot. The film’s co-writer, Scott Neustadter talked about filming in Los Angeles, using only pre-1940 buildings as a backdrop. The premise for this was that the main character ‘…sees beauty and meaning only in the past.’
41c Angelus Temple by Kansas_Sebastian. Used under Creative Commons.
So, say he has a phone with Layar on it. It might work best for him by showing him information not about what is there currently, but was was there in the past. A museum of information through time and space. If you think about it, this is what Google Street View will become. Their 2008/2009 images of the world are a snapshot; an archive of a moment.How often will they update them? What will they do with the old ones? I hope they keep the images available and build onto them.
Could museums and archives use old photographs, plans and title deeds of places to construct this kind of historical augmented reality treasure trove? It would be a massive undertaking admittedly, but I would love to see it.
Incidentally, on the same podcast there is an interesting interview with architect Richard Best. In a gamble to be proactive in the recession he went on a reality TV show with a real estate theme. And won. It paid off for him, but the thought of reality tv makes me shudder.
Sony’s Reader Daily Edition was critiqued by APM’s Future Tense. They postulated that it might overtake the market leader, Amazon’s Kindle. It will be able to facilitate wireless downloading of books, has a touch screen and will be able to read pdf files and google books. The most interesting thing for me is that Sony are linking with a scheme for borrowing library books in e-form. The loan will then expire in three weeks, like a normal library return. This seems like a great idea. Especially as buying e-books has not always meant that you got to keep them. This type of loaning service seems indicative of a point made in JISC’s recent documentary Libraries of the Future. That ‘…technology is adapting to meet the needs of users’.
Lastly, a great video from New Scientist showing how new laboratory techniques can be used to make you feel as if you are your virtual avatar by inducing an ‘out of body experience’. I don’t know how this might be used in museums and galleries, but I do like it. Enter, stranger.
Following on from my love letter to Augmented Reality, there’s something I touched on at the end that looks like something worth following up. Almost at the same time I was thinking about it, I watched another keynote speech by Bruce Sterling to the guys at the Layar Augmented reality browser launch event. (For those who don’t know, Layar is a great little app for Android smartphones). About halfway through the speech, Sterling gave a very interesting suggestion for the AR industry to combat the inevitable lowbrow/downmarket uses by being involved in museum culture.
How exactly is that going to work?
I’ve alluded to this many times; AR would allow for more information to be “connected” to an object, and I left it at that. You could take a painting or an archaeological treasure and surround it with extra bits of media, floating text boxes, video or maybe a ghostly hyperlink to a collection database entry (if you’re unimaginative).
Stuff that you could do on paper and screens, ultimately. Oh, you could design a better UI to hold the information. Historically, museums aren’t interested in that. Something like AR that smells a bit like an “optical Internet” (a phrase Bruce Sterling rightfully sneers at), it’s most likely going to be a bought product or outsourced to a freelancer. Few museums will want to get involved with designing that architecture. They’ll want to buy something they can fill. So what can AR do for collections management?
I pull this image from Marieke Guy’s Rambling of a Remote Worker. It’s the Gartner Hype Cycle, a graphic to show where a lot of new technologies are and where they’re going and predictions about how long it will take. What’s right next to Augmented Reality in the Technology Trigger phase, heading towards the Peak of Inflated Expectations?
So, we have two emerging technologies, one that can make all kinds of information or 3D images dance before our eyes, and another that can print out 3D objects. Remind me again why museums are still Draconian over photographs? Whether it’s holding onto increasingly meaningless intangible assets or holding onto an ultra-materialistic purpose of controlling access, we are rapidly heading towards a cultural state where it won’t matter. Your photographs and image protection will almost seem quaint. Best thing to do would be to open it up and get it all out there like some museums are doing, getting some interest in them and some use out of them because otherwise it will look like you’re desperately protecting your own handful of sand.
3D printers and 3D overlays. You’d think that some serious 3D scanning equipment is going to be needed soon, right? I can’t imagine we will entirely rely upon 3D modellers and 3D animators to deliver this. I doubt people are going to pay someone to sit down and create thousands of models with Sketchup.
This will be the next step in digitising collections.
It’s going to be a pain. I doubt everyone has got around to photographing their entire collections yet, and now we have to give each one something akin to an MRI? Where are we going to get a scanner big enough to go around our twelve foot high statue? And do we really have to scan in every single archaeological fragment and splinter?
But think how cool it would be. Download a 3D model to your phone and spin it around, look underneath it, look really closely if the resolution is good enough. Look at it as an X-Ray, infrared or something similar (then spin it around again). Hell, if 3D printers get into homes, why can’t I print out one inch-high paper models of my favourite museum objects? Or download 3D models onto your own AR museum layout, moving around bits of QR coded paper as your webcam tells you how you’re repositioning Roman pottery. Maybe even a little AR curator could follow you around and belittle your efforts of exhibition design or grasp of Art History.
AR people need a good cultural foundation. Museums have a big resource to make it happen.
D’aaaaw, isn’t that cute? A six year old applied to be “Diwector” of the National Railway Museum in York. He was only offered the new position of “Director of Fun” and obviously happy to accept the lesser appointment due to the economic situation.
Sam Pointon, I hope this whole exercise is a lot of fun for you and get to enjoy yourself.
But I’m going to talk about how this makes me sick to my stomach. First, watch the video in the BBC article. Now watch this.
You see, not only are they exploiting the cutesy factor of a six year old boy to act as the brand-padding to their “child-friendly” image, it’s not even an original marketing ploy.
And this gets down to the crux of the issue for me. Any of you who thought, “That’s so nice of the museum to do that” or “That museum is so child friendly”. Stop. This is what they want you to think. Is it nice for a museum to use a child to get column inches? We normally think these actions appalling when a celebrity does it, pushing their children around in the vain hope that it will get their picture in the glossy magazines.
Is the museum “child friendly”? Personally, I’m beginning to despise the term. But this story tells you nothing -- nothing -- about the policy, design or ethic that make this a child-friendly place. If it is being geared towards access for children, it’s more likely because there are 4 or 5 curators or education officers working damned hard to make it so.
You know what alerted me? How many six year olds do you know that post letters? This report may give the whole idea that it was the kid’s “application”, but come on, there are adults behind this. An adult would help him write it, and adult would have given him the stamp and told him how to address is (if this even happened at all), and adult read this and passed it onto someone who saw the marketing potential and an adult arranged the press releases.
From Culture 24: (Do you think Sam honestly had anything to do with this?)
Sam is taking his new appointment particularly seriously and is already canvassing the public for suggestions on how the NRM could be made more fun. If you have a suggestion for Sam and his team then you can fill in the online comments card.
Not so cute now, huh?
And one kid, just one, gets to act as poster child for a museum’s excellence with children and you all go “Awwww”. Suckers. You’ve allowed yourself to be completely taken in by a highly orchestrated event masked as a spur-of-the-moment altruistic occurrence. They didn’t show you the education officer dealing with 100 kids a day and getting industry based awards. They could have the best child-access-policy-whatever in the country that’s been made completely inauthentic because they showed you a kid in a tie being told to act like an advert.
There’s no such thing as “harmless PR”. I accept that every one of us at some point will tow the line or promote our bosses or say the marketing spiel to sell a little bit of our souls for the sake of hopefully benefiting the whole rather than the individual, but can we wait until they’re reaching voting age before you single one out to be your branding puppet? The misdirection was good in this but I can still see the strings. This boy is being used to increase visitor numbers.
I find that sad. Museumchausen by proxy.
I wonder who was behind this. I wonder if it was more a “marketing” person than a “museum” person. I would think the former because a marketing person is more likely to have the contacts/abilities to get BBC News to cover the story and I like to think a museum person wouldn’t be insensitive to the thousands of under-threat or laid-off museum workers by showing that a cute/marketable six year old can get job when you can’t.
Hopefully, Sam will get the authority of governance to remove someone when they’re not being fun enough.
I was asked a while back why I’m so interested in Augmented Reality. To me, it’s the polar opposite of a computer “kiosk”, something I’ve hated on several times regardless of touch/multi-touch capabilities. Is comes down to a question of design intent or, more specifically, platform. Brooklyn Museum’s Shelley Berstein has written a blog post about kiosks, so I want to share some thoughts.
First, a story.
I’ll keep the name of this particular museum hidden. I use them as an example for my criticism, not to negatively criticise that particular institution. At the time, they had just gone through a massive renovation. Everything was now behind steel-framed reinforced glass and proper lighting. So the space looked good.
There was quite a large amount of objects on display. More than I would have thought necessary. Rows upon shelves of them with only very small one sentence descriptions on labels. I was no expert on the subjects and felt a little overwhelmed by what I was supposed to be looking at.
I asked a question of the people on the desk. Admittedly, I don’t think they were curators but I only asked if they had a particular object. They took me to a computer. It was broken. They took me to a another computer. That was broken as well. They told me to go home and look at the database online. I did, and found the object I was looking for as well as plenty of other information.
This is what Shelley calls a “Lose” situation; the website in a kiosk. I go a bit further and say its the “Not Better Than the Internet” situation. I went home and got something better than what the museum was offering. Even if the kiosks were working, what was I gaining from turning my head and looking at the objects?
What museums do well is material Reality. They have that sussed. Objects as authenticity is almost intrinsic to the definition of what a museum is. Even when “Intangible Heritage” was the vogue, it was still in terms of the actions surrounding objects. (This seemed to mean the conservation of dance, theatre and skills in Third World or Far East countries to stave off the impending “Western” Monoculture, if UNESCO is anything to go by).
The treatment of technology in museums is still in this materialistic Real way: The Kiosk, just another object on display. A monitor with touchscreen or a keyboard, bolted to a wall or given its own plinth, technology on display just like any other object.
Before I get hundreds of suggestion of good kiosks, I will admit that Shelley’s comment book computer is a sensible idea, so there would be good and bad kiosks just as there is good and bad AR. The point I’m trying to make is about design and, as always, the future. A kiosk approach to technology in the museum concentrates that platform into a limited space, which was fine many years ago when that was cutting edge. Without meaning to sound like a post-cyberpunk novel, but technology is now a homogenised aspect of our everyday lives.
To put it simply, my phone is better than your kiosk is ever going to be.
A kiosk also breeds a bad habit I’ve noticed in museum. They get installed somewhere then forgotten about. They are never updated and ignored until they break. This may be why I think they always look so dated. They’re as static as the objects next to them. I imagine there are kiosk-types that do update with use, like the comment book computer, if the comments are viewable by all. I admit that’s acceptable. At least it’s doing something. I think about the use of kiosks at the Mattress Factory, but I like to think they have the right idea of it being a node of technology within their overall technology overlay.
Overlay. I can stand anywhere in a museum and use my phone and get information. I could get artist’s biographies, historical articles, even news about what’s in front of me. But that’s still contained within a device. Okay, a far more mobile one that I have total control over and with less limitations. It’s still a concentrated device connected to the Other Place known as the Intarwubs. What excites me about Augmented Reality is how it can fill the gap between the superabundance of information out there and our actual lives. Updating Apps could associate huge amounts of updating information right in front of the objects the museum wants us to give a damn about. And we would be able to control it… or at least keep asking for more and ask for it in a language that won’t completely offend your intelligence.
Look at this and look at the possible future an Augmented Reality platform in museums has. What’s the latest advancement in kiosk? Now, you can use more than one finger.
Maybe Augmented Reality won’t stay on phones and we’ll have goggles or visors or contact lenses and control our infomation hallucinations with Pranav Mistry’s Sixth Sense technology (four fingers!). Maybe, crazy idea, the Augmented Reality platform could perform actions to the objects…
I spoke about Cross Reality before. The use of sensors to bridge Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. Again, more possibilities being tested because technology is permeating every fabric of our lives and culture and dragging that funny universe on our computers into this Reality. I wonder if, through this and the increasing complexity of fabricators, the next phase of museum digitisation will be scanning of objects into 3D models.
God knows what that will do to our authentic Museum Reality.
Since listening to theMuseum of Science, Bostonpodcast about vaccines a couple of weeks ago, I have been mulling over ideas. They discussed developments in cancer innoculations, but I have been considering the concept that museum visits could be prescribed as defence against aspects of the human condition.
‘Visits as vaccines!
Don’t end up complacant, bigoted or bored: attend your local gallery now!’
A vaccine introduces a little of the disease into your system to produce antibodies against it. How could this work in a museum situation? Could visiting the slavery exhibits and education sessions at the Royal Naval Museum help to vaccinate against bullying? Too harsh? What about a prescription to view some Gilbert and George to dissuade homophobia? Could it be a way for museum education to branch out in the future?
Of course, these visits could also be prescribed as alleviators of existing symtoms. Tate Britain did this with leaflets a couple of years ago. They were pretty good, as I remember but I think it could go further than ‘maybe go and see this if you like cheerful yellow’.
I watched a wine podcast this week. I came away from it all gung-ho for trying out some red wine, and frankly I don’t even like it all that much. The point is that the presenter was really enthusiastic about his subject. I’d love museums to be that ebullient about their objects sometimes too. With some thought, this could work alongside the visits as vaccines idea.
This wine review had certain elements:
A bit about the region, how the wine is made, how much was produced, which were the best vintages, what the soil is like in the vineyard, a little about the owner, the maker, occasions you might drink it, and obviously its bouquet and palate. This would be a great way to talk about an object (well, except for the tasting). In fact it is exactly the way we are taught to look at an object. Hang on…
As I said, I don’t know much about wine and I particularly value the ‘what to eat with it’ part of a review. Its something I don’t yet have the intrinsic judgement for. This could be used to aid cautious museum visitors. How about a ‘what to view next if you liked this, or it made you feel better?’ kind of application for museums? Leaving behind the leaflets of the Tate, augmented reality could really bring this idea into play. How about a trail that could vaccinate against first-date nerves or feeling down? All through viewing objects and learning about them. Imagine a virtual curator asking you what kind of mood you are in and suggesting that you go and view this sculpture because it sounds just right for you. And enthusiastically telling you a bit about why once you got there. In simple terms it would be like one of those flow charts where the answer to a question might lead you in a number of directions. Through the museum? Outside to see some public art? To another museum entirely?
Enthusiasm for a subject can get people to try something new. It might even change their whole outlook and improve their life. Don’t you think museums should try these ideas out?
Twitter – I block spam and snake-oil salesmen. I don’t tend to follow those who I can’t work out. I follow cultural and creative people like artists, museum workers, some designers/architects and the occasional “magazine” twitter. I’m very careful who I follow and who follows me so you can be sure that my twitter circle is a coherent network. I don’t like “Thanks for following” messages that feel automated or empty.
Facebook – I befriend pretty much anyone who looks like a real person. People tend to use this as a way to communicate with me/show me stuff like every comment is a mini-forum, which I’m quite happy with. I think I’ve only unfriended one person who sent constant Send-To-All messages about the most inane things. Invite me to interesting groups. Don’t bother inviting me to events.
Tumblr – Images of interesting stuff I don’t blog but want to make a note of. I’ve made some really interesting connections on there so would like to continue that.
Delicious – A daily reading list/research directory that I DON’T CHARGE YOU FOR. I’ve not yet fully worked out the network features on this, but feel free to “fan”. I like being sent interesting links.
Cafepress Shop – Buy a mug. Buy a t-shirt. What little money I make from this goes into bandwidth costs. I’ll put some more up soon.
Flickr – I use this mainly to search for Creative Commons photos, but if you want to be a contact, go right ahead. I am grabbing that feed of latest photos so I will notice. Maybe, in the future, I’ll take a photo and put it on here.
Last.fm – My listening habits for all to see. This has something of an inner-circle of my social networks so announce who you are if I won’t recognise your username. There is also Radio Newcurator, same rules as twitter.
As always, I am contactable via email pete(at)newcurator.com
You know, I try to appeal to my highbrow side on ArtFridays. I try to find artists to which I can express an understanding about form and colour and interpret accordingly to thematic pursuit.
Shad Nowicki paints a pizza box with Darth Vader wearing a cowboy hat and and the centre of my brain that detects Awesome just popped. Shad has painted a mash-up of my geeky pop icons into a culture-jamming art collection equal to that of artists like Banksy or Fairey.
I’ve chosen these four because of the movie connection but also for the quote-worthiness of the characters.
What were you doing when the Berlin Wall fell? Is it something you remember or just something that you’ve read about in history books? German cultural magazine, Arts.21, is running a series reflecting on the country twenty years after reunification. In their latest videocast they investigated how visitors and residents of Berlin remember the Wall. Surprisingly, on asking the public, people of all ages could not really remember where it had once stood. Although much of has been removed, this really surprised me. It really isn’t that long ago. Do our individual memories really overwrite such a monumental physical change in the cityscape so quickly? I tried to think of some more instances to mention and even investigate, but could not come up with anything on the same scale. Forgetting where the old town hall once stood is one thing; the Berlin Wall seems quite another. The question is, does it matter? The Wall lives on in museums, infilms, as the parts still standing and in souvenir form on mantelpieces the world over. Its significance will not be forgotten, but it seems that its location might.
NPR’s Pop Culture podcast discussed the seminal British TV programmePlaying Shakespeare. In 1984, Ben Kingsley was the only universally known actor featured in the programme but now it appears filled with the greats. However that’s not why I’m recommending that you listen to it. Pop Culture highlights a line from the then little known Sir Ian McKellan about how definitions of acting ‘naturally’ change over time. King Lear was played very differently in the British Empire of the 19th century to how he is interpreted today. The grand certainty of the delivery reflected how the nation was situated in the world. It is an argument that lends itself to museum collections. The interpretation of museum objects depends on the social norms of the time, often causing controversy if it does not. For instance, in the West we generally no longer display galleries of taxidermied stags’ heads as blood sports are less popular. There is discussion and debate about the inclusion of golliwogs in children’s museums. Cases that have not been updated for some time can reflect past racist, sexist, and colonialist attitudes on the part of the museum.
I must ask, is it right to just hide this history of interpretation? Museums reflect the cultural mindset of the times in the same way that theatre does, but we have the chance to tell a further story. Dilemma labels which highlight that which is ‘out of touch’ (often in ethnographic displays) are nothing new, but I suggest using them more often in all kinds of exhibits to provoke debate from visitors and from staff.
Child psychotherapist Camila Batmanghelidjh suggested an amusing 60 Second Idea to change the world. She believes that skating on rollerblades would make political meetings less boring and generate more creative thinking with faster outcomes to tough problems. She has tried and tested her theory with various physical activities in meetings, including yoyo-ing and reports that it works. Could this be an experiment for museum staff? Would the economy of thought help in curatorial decision making? Let me know if you try it out… if you can get it past a health and safety risk assessment, that is!
Awesome. Kickstarter rules means the money has to be raised within the timeframe or it doesn’t get any of it, so please reach deep and throw a few dollars into pot. There are also rewards for certain donations, so go have a look.
I promised several times to make a better response to the Museos Unite team about unionising. Out of the recent discussions about Museum Studies graduates, they’ve been kicking around the idea of a Museum Studies Graduate Union. They’ve kinda preempted me slightly with this recent post:
Today, that number has dwindled to around 10 percent and there’s little to suggest that a revival is nigh. Although unions remain fairly strong in the blue-collar world, that world is shrinking. (Can you say “technology”?) Consequently, labor unions don’t wield the political clout they used to.
Sums up my feelings towards a union; they ain’t what they used to be. I don’t see the point in forming a system that no longer has that much to offer. They too bureaucratic, too susceptible to influences and more often than not too lost in their way.
I also don’t see the point of another membership-organisation like the Museum Association or the AAM or such like. There are already plenty of those. I think the idea is to do something new. If the goal is to set the target to improve the world for Musuem Studies Graduates, or improve the up-and-coming talents of the museum industry (new curators, heh), then that should be it. There’s no need to make it more complicated than that. There’s no need to create a charter or a constitution or Heaven-forbid a manifesto. These things won’t ultimately help. I think how Museos Unite have been kicking around the idea of an open-source union because it sounds far more flexible than the limited definition or a union.
How does a union work? Basically, large amounts of people make demands to be negotiated with the only real bargaining chip of striking. It’s a big chip that allows for all sorts of political games, but it’s still one chip. A Museum Graduates Union wouldn’t have this ability so would be a bit toothless and may alienate more than negotiate.
But a loose, flexible organisation with few limiting factors and few simply defined goals? That could achieve something. If only there was a different word than “union”. The other writer on Newcurator, August, has recommended I don’t call them Museohideen. Maybe they don’t need any further branding than “Museo Unite” and concentrate on striving to do everything differently.
I would normally point at the article I wrote about John Robb’s Standing Orders, but I think the terrorism/insurgency link may be too much. (See? I know when a joke goes too far).
What would a Museo Unite group have, lacking political clout? They would have skills. That’s the most important resource and should be used to full effect. Time? Certainly more than your average museum chief. Determination/passion and a clear set of goals, check. Also, as interns and volunteers attached to every museum in the world, they would have eyes and ears to a large set of organisations and would form quite the substantial information network. No, I’m not talking about spying! But sharing without prejudice what works in other places, especially in the realms of interns, volunteers and new workers. James Leventhal pointed to me earlier an article by Leslie Madsen-Brooks about social media and professional development. Like I said in the comments, if you could find a way to measure your development through social media’s challenging patterns to make it more than just being a member of a club…
Then you’d have a very strong organisation that takes its strengths through its innovation.
So much has turned up in the discussion about Museum Studies course. I’m glad how the discussion has turned to what the course should do rather than what they can do. There’s too much flying around to keep track of it all so this is going to be in note form.
This discussion has thrown up a lot of associated sub-issues. I said Museum Studies courses should be doing everything in their power to get their students into proper work. This has started conversations about opportunity, wages, volunteering and the reasons for doing the course in the first place.
I’m going to come out with my opinion on the whole “education as its own reward” ideology that isn’t intended to provoke any further discussion. I simply cannot understand why anyone would want to believe this. It seems to be such a lovely way of dismissing greater values of a qualification, and smacks slightly of an education culture that wants you to be a customer for the designated time only. My reasons are because education is so damn expensive. All the scholarships and bursaries won’t make up the fact someone is going to shoulder a huge amount of debt. Is that it’s own reward? No, I believe ruining your credit rating is an investment/risk based upon your future earnings. Who would want to invest £50,000 just to earn £15,000 for the rest of their lives?
If that still is your reasoning, then all the more power to you.
Remember, all this is about improving the Museum Studies course to improve the outcomes for the graduates.
Something I believe in: Graduates are intelligent and mostly resourceful. Give enough time, a graduate will learn what you need them to do. Also, all graduates have their own ideas.
I need to think about the idea of a Museum Studies course (or any similar course, thinking about it) acting as a recruitment department for museums. How would that work? A course would act as the interview process. Then many (all?) museums would be attached to it as a “sponsor”. Years of training *for* someone. Of course, this may be limiting: there are many very interesting people in museums who didn’t take this route. We can’t close them out.
Let’s look at volunteers:
I believe their to be two kinds of volunteer. 1) Those doing it primarily as a kind of hobby/social occasion 2) Those doing it as advancing their professional status/CV building. Of course you can do both.
Mia: And FWIW, TV, film and fashion also rely on volunteers or unpaid interns – working for a year unpaid to get your foot in the door is more common than not. (Yes, and look at the major problems with those industries because they’re not dealing with this. TV and film are getting kicked around because they wish to hold onto a status quo, which is often why they blame piracy for everything. I won’t comment on how the fashion industry works since I know so little about it. I guess it’s because there’s a lot of money and very few people. I think sports teams are similar except they spend fortunes on developing youth teams)
From my analysis, people have a problem with the route of Degree>Volunteering>Entry-Level position. It relies too heavily on the middle part for an unequal benefit to the end outcome when the beginning.
A person does a Museum Studies course. Personal Benefit, Professional Benefit, Massive Costs.
A person does volunteering. Some Personal Benefit (if you enjoy it), Professional Benefit (if it’s worthwhile), Massive Costs (travel costs etc. and the fact that you’re not earning).
A person gets an entry level position. Maybe Personal Benefit, Professional Status, Small Reductions towards Debt.
This person’s route has very large costs compared to a standard professional status.
And what about Museums and this route? Massive benefits from Course (creates enormous potential workforce to pick and choose from), Massive Benefits from volunteering (Free work force that’s quite skilled), Only Costs from recruitment.
Well, that’s one way to look at it. And now tell me there’s not a sense of Doom? If there’s a history of personal failures to get into the museum industry, then talented people will write it off. Then where will the Future come from?
Hence why I think reliance on volunteers is unsustainable. imagine the big numbers here.
DICLAIMER, NOT SERIOUS: If we lost all the current museum chiefs, what would happen? They’d be replaced? By the second-in-commands? Now what would happen if we lost all the volunteers? Who’s the most important? Is that sustainable?
The Real Problem: Degree>Volunteering>Entry-Level seems to be the *only* route into museums. We need more Routes. Ideas? I’m thinking Degree>Museum Start-Up.
Paul Orselli great post “Smaller-is-better” (maybe combined with my Metrocurator thoughts) is a very powerful idea in light of these discussions.
Another great post from Colleen Dilenschneider. Yeah, maybe this is consider a “miracle course”, but it’s something to aspire to, right?
One of my favourite outcomes of all this is Museos Unite. They’re doing a much better job at collecting and advancing all this discussion than me. I promised them a proper set of thoughts about Unionising. I’ll hopefully get those thoughts down tonight.
I’ve seen a lot of blog posts recently about the Future of Museum Studies courses. I am infuriated by how the discussion seems to be along a ciriculum basis and that those providing the courses need to make these minute changes in education practices and pray for a long term gain.
You want to have an excellent Museum Studies program? Guarantee jobs.
When someone passes your course, they should be immediately headhunted into a museum. I don’t mean year long internships, I mean proper actual employment with a goddamn living wage.
Call it the same performance indicators as your pass rate. “100% of our students passed”. Every school, college and university aspires to 100% pass rates. If they’re not, then they have a target to aim for. Here’s a new goal: “100% of our student got a job in the museum sector”.
Okay, you can wuss out and say “100% of our students, who passed and *wanted* a job in museum sector, got one”.
This should be actively and aggressively pursued. Not this tinkering with the conceptual. Have some faith that the person you hand a piece of paper with their name and award on it is an intelligent person ready for what museuming can throw at them.
Of course, it’s criminal to take their money, hand them a piece of paper and wish them luck with a handshake. Too many graduates from the full full taxonomy of museum studies courses are having to compete in the job market lottery. And it is a lottery. The most basic entry-level positions into the museum world are now getting TONS of applicants. This is a sad state of affairs.
Maybe this is another performance indicator. Maybe schools shouldn’t be taking the money of these students if the future employment doesn’t exist. Isn’t that the greater problem? Museum’s hardly have a high turnover of staff with people sitting in the same position for umpteen years. We are Wasting the Opportunities of the Talented.
Without going into too much detail about the “how” (someone will undoubtedly bring up costs), I think there are two ways. Turn Museum Studies courses into headhunter networks. Take your students work and CV and cram it up the noses of your contacts. Try not to insult your student body with volunteer work. I’ve seen the answer countless times: “To get into museums, do lots of volunteering and internships”.
In short, something just above slavery. Work hard for an indeterminate amount of time and maybe the industry will maybe reward you. The current model for improving museums through new blood is the same as parents controlling children with Santa.
The other option would be an establishing of a museum milkround. I am told this is a particularly British concept, and I have no idea if this sort of thing happens in the US. A milkround used to be when companies would actively recruit in universities. They would trip over themselves to get graduates. Alas, this was in a time where there were a slight fewer graduates who didn’t have to take on several thousand pounds worth of debt. The system must still be able to work, right? How many museum studies-esque courses are there? How many museums are there? Surely this relationship can be facilitated.
But no. All this got delegated to online job boards and magazine advertising. It created a lottery.
The bitter taste in the museum student’s mouth was that what they thought was professional development is now considered almost useless to their future compared to the gamble of the job market or the gamble of obtaining a useful contact.
The courses should be doing this for them. Not enough of them are.
I’ve read a few things about the skepticism around academia as work training. My Christ, who let in all these Art History and Archaeology PHDs? They’re practically *running* the place and now there’s the hint that a Museum Studies qualification is unnecessary? The one thing these people are being trained in are now possibly not trained? Or not trained enough, as I notice in another comment that museums are made of of too many specialisms. Nonsense. The whole world’s industry is made up of specialisms. This is the sort of thing you’ll learn on the job. You want a task done, get someone with the intelligence to do so. Not mess around trying to find someone with one hundreds years of proven experience
That way leads to stagnation. That way leads to the brightest graduate stars never been given a chance. Train them, teach them, give them your Mark of Cain and get them the chance to perform. They need you.
A recent email told me that the Museums Association is holding a seminar on podcasting. I expect that this will be about the technicalities of recording and producing; content, delivery and publicity. Listening to so many podcasts each week I often consider the pros and cons of each. Consequently I have in my mind my ‘ideal podcast’. Perfect not in subject matter so much as usability.
There is an abundance of cultural podcasts out there, created by museums, galleries, arts organisations and individuals. What makes some stand out from the crowd is not only engaging content but also ease of use. Too often these things seem mutually exclusive. Here are some things that I’ve noted.
Tl;dl With many of the most interesting ones running close to an hour, sometimes the sheer length of podcasts is offputting. Take the chance (given previous form) or skip altogether? A quick introduction always helps to get a feel for the content and its running order. Chicago’s Art Institute Musecast does a good one on their albeit short podcast.
Shownotes and Links Although their podcast is at times rambling, Bad at Sports has good show notes on its website which give an overview of the episode, enabling strategic fast-forwarding if short on listening time. Kansas Historical Society’s Cool Things in the Collection goes a step further with an essay on their featured object and outside links to relevant sites for further research.
Chapters I love chapters. If I’m not all that interested in a particular segment, I can jump to the next and not have to hunt around getting frustrated. It is like the difference between using cassette tapes and CDs. For such a seemingly simple function is available on very few podcasts. The National Gallery, I salute you.
Images While some cultural institutions produce video podcasts, they are in the minority. Images, like chapters are available on enhanced versions of audio podcasts, but again are seldom used. It is particularly frustrating when the recording is a commentary from a slide presentation. The National Archives, for instance could have made much more of their Summer of 69 episode had we been able to see the images of what was even billed in the RSS feed notes as an ‘illustrated talk’.
Update Regularly Please! Or if not, then say that you’re doing a limited run like the Monocle Summer Series and then having a break. Don’t just leave the listener hanging.
Presentation and Content Learning something new and unexpected is always welcome. Like dipping into a magazine, mixing up the presentation or not spending too long on each idea works well in podcasts. Arts.21: The Cultural Magazine‘s videos and Museum of Science, Boston‘s audio podcasts both have this down albeit in differering styles. Having a gimmick can also sometimes work. I’m not sure whether I’d have learned about intelligent search if it wasn’t for Tea with the Economist.
So, my perfect podcast is one which makes available a contents list, is easy to navigate, has images and notes to go with the recording, updates frequently and piques my interest in new areas. All this stuff adds value for me. Makes me subscribe to the RSS feed, recommend it to friends. Basically it makes me come back for more. Isn’t that what it is all about? What do you look for? Are cultural podcasters catering to that? If you are the person who makes your museum or gallery’s podcast, what are your views?
You can contact me at august(at)newcurator(dot)com or leave your thoughts in the comments.
I wanted photography for ArtFriday this week. It’s been ages since we last had photography.
I made a call on twitter and many got in touch, but there was one artist’s work that stood out for me as exactly what I wanted to show. I wanted pictures of people. I wanted something of the magical-realistic characteristics without being over-post-produced. I wanted something to hit my soul.
I then find out that Caroline Blake is an NHS nurse. Where she finds the time to be this good, I don’t know.
I chose these four photos for the way they really do pierce without an unpleasant sting. Four picture of people in the middle of their stories of epic grand narratives.
Gather around children, I’m going to tell you a story about British politics.
GET BACK HERE.
This is a story about Doom, something British literature has excelled at. Especially warnings of potential Doom. But this story begins a few years ago and encapsulates a lot about British society and ultimately the effect on a certain class of UK museum.
There are two parts to the British elected government system… Ignore the House of Lords… There are MPs representing the interests of their constituents in the House of Commons and there are local councils, which have a variety of systems I won’t go into but are made up of roughly 50-100 people dependent on population. For the past few years, Labour held the most MP seats, Conservative held pretty much all of the councils. When it comes to local politics, councils make the decisions in the rather limited remit.
A lot of these councils, if not all, have a museum under their stewardship. Local authority museums are offices of the council and receive their budgets from them. Nationals, like the British Museum, get their government money directly from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
Back in the heady days of a few years ago, economy was (artificially?) doing well and Labour was spouting off about Education. They were releasing white-paper after white-paper, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing, about education in those institutes that included museums. Say what you like about it, I still find it social engineering under another name. And they threw money at it. God bless those who have to pick through it and make it work for a living.
At this same time, a lot of the local councils were investing their money in too-good-to-be-true banking schemes. A lot of them in Iceland, it would seem.
Then, well, we got to this point, and you’ll see another amazing facet of British politics: keeping your head below the parapet. The few who can’t do this, namely the front bench, take most of the backlash. Probably the only reason Gordon Brown hasn’t been removed is that nobody wants his job, and he says “global” with a shrug enough times to make it out its not his fault.
Councils do the same, because they’re mostly Conservatives and more than happy for Labour to take the bruises. Yet their investments have also taken a kicking. But councils don’t have a front bench. I doubt a person in any city in the UK could name all their councillors. They could name a few who like to stick their faces in the local paper, but are unlikely to name the full council with their affiliations, doctrines, standpoint or portfolios. It’s quite easy to get your head down.
Here comes the Doom. The Labour government, having or have not messed things up, have only handed the councils a fraction of their usual budgets, say 80-90%. The mostly-Tory councils without any backups are having to stretch things. I can tell you, the one thing punishing councils at the moment are the recycling targets set by the EU. They can’t back out of them, and they have to manage the wastes as to the terms they signed up to. This is less of a problem to those who got it right first time. It is a huge cost and there’s no option for those who faulted. So councils re now turning to all the other offices and demanding belt tightening. They won’t raise council tax, oh no. That puts your neck out. So they restructure.
Some council share Chief Executives, for crying out loud. For those who don’t know, Chief Executives are the top unelected officer of the councils. They enact the councils policy direction. I don’t know how much direction you can get from the top person doing two part-time jobs.
Here’s where I do the hop, skip and Doom-jump into the future. I predict… 18 months. Belt-tightening and restructuring, the officers of the council have to make up the difference or make cuts.
That includes museums.
I’m predicting most local authority museums will suffer it but survive this financial year. What about the next? We saw a few quite small museum face closure, councils unable to find the few thousand to pay the two members of staff. Next year, it’s going to be bigger institutions unable to meet their targets. It’s always “targets”. A wonderful system devised to measure success empirically and without any soul whatsoever.
There isn’t much to cut in a local authority museum. Just staff costs. You know who won’t be first on the block? Those in the education officer’s role. There is no disrespect to you guys, you do a job that brings in money.
This is my prediction of Doom: Local authority museums turn into nothing but extended classrooms with full-time teachers in a part-time school. But I suppose that’s what these white papers wanted in the first place anyway.
Little collections management, next to no conservation and I’ve yet to find a local authority museum that can use it’s temporary exhibition space for British Museum-style blockbusters. The museum would just be another classroom resource, ploughing three classroom a day through it’s doors and meeting that target.
Those museums that get closed? Oh, there will be more sounds and more fury and the council will collective get their one-hundred-plus heads down, the fury will pass over them without anyone to direct it at and they’ll get re-elected again.
This tale, as all good tale do, acts as a warning. I keep reading all this stuff about museums of the future or the future of museums, yet they seem to miss the potential for museums to be brought down to the lowest common denominator. There’s not enough warnings going around. There’s not enough being spoken about the disasters we’re not looking out for. There are many of them. This one, of the political expedience of museums while they try to achieve unattainable targets whilst still delivering the education cash cow, is dependent upon the leadership of the many variables of council officers in a variety of positions. I can’t make that call, I can only point it out and hope people take notice.
If you have a Tale of Museum Doom, a good old fashioned warning to the museum industry about anything at all, email me pete(at)newcurator.com and I’ll put it up here. You can even be anonymous if you like.
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