Solution Series: The Resilient Museum Part One

The greatest financial threat to museums and their workers was the global financial meltdown. The shock to the global system sent the museum industries into a freefall regardless of nationality. Museums based on a model of philanthropic support found the rich were giving less. Local government institutions have had budgets slashed. Everyone found their investments suffering. The final outcomes are identical regardless of the route: there’s a lot less money going around and culture is often the first to be cut. I imagine there was a second shock to many museums when they found there was a globalised system that they were just as much a part of as multinational banks.

There was never a problem when times were rich. The recent manifesto calling for culture to be at the centre of economic recovery is the old method of bolting culture onto other budgets. Another shock and it is back to square one.

Whenever I think about new systems of survival within globalisation, I am always lead to John Robb. This time, I’m drawn to his interest in the Resilient Community. The Community is taken as the smallest unit of support as the nation-state fails to do so. This approach will hopefully tackle the problem of the museum industry having very low average wages. This is a revolutionary approach with many high risks and many obstacles that would required much more thought than this blog post. Museums that like their current situation and feel secure need not change and this revolution is not for them. For the sake of this exercise, this is an act against the slow rot and mothballing of museums and hopefully create something sustainable.

This article continues over at Museos Unite

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