C’mon, I’ve got to add Matt Held to the ArtFriday list, haven’t I?
I first mentioned Matt back in February when I first heard about his brilliant facebook group. It had about 300+ members then. That number’s about 4600 now and he’s now up to 52 portraits. None of them are me, before you ask.
I’ve chosen these three portraits because of (a) It’s a mighty beard (b) It’s kinda how I feel right now and (c) It’s the ever lovely An Xiao.
From the responses of my twitter followers and blog comments, I made a list and made a Wordle that turned out to be quite popular.
Earlier this month, Bruce Sterling linked to it and almost melted my servers, but also brought a whole bunch of new readers.
I want to ask the question again. When I first did it, I had about 400 twitter followers. Now, I’m pushing 1800. I figure it’s time to update the Wordle diagram, this time with more people adding to it. It would help if this was RT’d a bit.
@ reply on twitter or drop a comment here. You don’t have to do it again if you gave an answer first time around, I plan to put them all together. Hashtag for this is #musefunct. Put that at the end of your answers.
Think about what defining skills make up the professional museum world. I don’t mean the people who are marketing, finance etc. No disrespect meant. I know that they provide excellent and necessary services that require a lot of knowledge about museums, but I believe that a good cultural marketing person would be a good marketing person anywhere. These people provide structure, not definition.
Which basically leaves the various guises and aspects of the “curatorial” staff. What were these people trained in? How do these people define themselves? I will make a generalised statement: most of them what fit into the following categories; archaeologists, historians (art or otherwise), conservators and what I tentatively call “educators”. There are some qualifications I’ve purposefully left out. Probably to the chagrin to many people I know, I purposefully left out things like “designers”. It’s a position I don’t believe many museums have, can afford or don’t delegate around the staff anyway. I imagine there are many other types I’ve forgotten.
But let’s look at the list. Conservators… well, it’s a pretty strictly defined role. Part scientist, part engineer and in some cases part artist. “Educators” I realise is a cop-out “Misc” category. But let’s get down to the crux of the issue: when it comes to the curatorial process of museums, how has it become dominated by archaeologists and (…I stick my neck out here) art historians?
This is where I come to explain the title of this article, a play on the title of Frank O’Hara’s poem, “Why I Am Not a Painter“. I feel I have to explain these literary references. The last time I did it as a pun on a Roland Barthes essay, people thought I was calling for an end of curators.
frank o'hara by m kasahara, Used under Creative Commons.
O’Hara’s poem describes the interaction between him and artist Mike Goldberg and the differences between their respective art forms. Years after I first discovered O’Hara, I found out he worked on the front desk at MoMA and eventually an assistant curator (some sources say he was an “associate curator”. I don’t know the difference).
I said a few times on here that curators need to come out of the shadows and offices and get there names and faces attached to the work they do. Then I think of Frank, more famous for his poetry than his work at MoMA.
Was there a better person suited to a New York contemporary art museum than New York’s finest contemporary poet? He – more than anyone – understood the human condition of 1960s New York, hammering out poems on his typewriter, trying to capture the Present Moment knowing that the act of writing has put the moment already in the past. That’s why he used a typewriter; for speed.
So then I think, “Why aren’t there more Frank O’Hara’s” in the museum world?”
There are two things this is not a call for. This is not a call for a mass replacement of archaeologists and art historians in order to combat inertia. This is also not a call for more artist-curators, a term I don’t understand because of the very fuzzy definition. I can’t help but feel there are many artist-curators who are artists who project-manage their own exhibitions. Maybe involving some of their artist friends. What I’m talking about goes a bit further than that and not necessarily into art but definitely including it. A poet is an artist, true. But Frank was a very different artist to the artists he was curating. This was only to his benefit.
Who knows the power of meaning and interpretation of movement than a dancer? Who knows the effect of theatre and mise-en-scène better than an actor? Hell, who understands the forward-pushing narrative of one-thing-after-another than a comic book writer?
If you don’t have these people on your staff, then train them. This is professional development and possibly more fun than usual development courses. This is augmenting your staff’s creativity and innovation. Lord knows we need that now. This may be a very UK-centric statement now, but I just don’t believe we will get that by trying to force our museums workers into being part-time teachers.
Who understands the transfer of meaning within information than a journalist? Who understand argument better than a lawyer or a philosopher?
After you’ve been training your staff in the basics of various humanities they’ve never approach before, the other part to this idea is to use the museum as an outlet for their new skills. Talk about assigning emotional value to objects! Your staff write, direct and perform a play using the museum objects as stimulus (or… props?), you could reach new depths with all kinds of new audiences… if done right. As far as I can tell, the world of Frank O’Hara the poet and the world Frank O’Hara the museum worker barely overlapped despite him often writing poetry in his office. O’Hara went the usual route of publishing poetry. Today, we have far more scope in our museums to act as outlets for the staff’s abilities. The museum would almost become a production house of activity which could maybe bring out the poet in all of us.
Two things I have to reward: patience and initiative. Initiative, because Libby emailed me with pictures of her artwork and I do like receiving things like that. It brightens things up no end to know that you are a person somebody wants to show their art to. Patience, because Libby emailed me ages ago just as I had given up on ArtFriday V2, so I feel I owe it to her.
My Lord, what a selection to choose from. I decided to go for four of her paintings over her photographs or collages for the simple reason that I feel they are her main works and I should show them. You, however, should go check them out yourself.
As to why I chose these painting: Everybody, every once in a while, should indulge in epic uses of colour. It’s good for soul.
Thinking back to the Standing Orders of John Robb, there was one that I struggled with and almost dismissed as being particular for a rising insurgency and not a reasonable guideline for museums.
Standing Order 2 – Grow Black Economies.
I focused on the outcome above the methods, that aiming for financial (and therefore, structural/political) autonomy was the reason for doing it. Museums aren’t going to go into organised crime and protection rackets. Also, the deaccessioning stalemate wouldn’t allow for such a reason, rejecting it with “selling art to pay the bills is abominable”. Regular economies introduced to the museum industry – such as cafés, bookshops, merchandise – only offer small percentages to the overall income.
A solution can come from “black economy” that aims to sidestep outright deaccessioning of public-trusted collections. But I’ve found to be rules against it already.
8.14 Dealing in Natural or Cultural Heritage Members of the museum profession should not participate directly or indirectly in dealing (buying or selling for profit), in the natural or cultural heritage.
2.15 Avoid all activities that could be construed as trading or dealing in cultural property unless authorised in advance by the governing body. Refuse to deal in any material covered by the museum’s acquisition policy,
to engage in private collecting in competition with the museum or to use a connection with the museum to promote private collecting. Refuse to acquire any items from collections that the museum has disposed of.
Having looked over the AAM’s Code of Ethics, I can’t find anything exactly like the above. There are several mentions of “public good rather than individual financial gain“, which sounds like loopholes within loopholes when a museum’s mission of public good is threatened by a real lack of financial gain.
If these rules were removed or rewritten to ensure ethical integrity of what I’m about to suggest, then museums could open up to a new realm of financial security without even touching the precious deaccessioning gospels.
Museums could create private side-collections. Objects not officially pushed into a collection for the public good, but bought as an investment. Museum professional then get to rely on the skills they already have: the knowledge in determining the value of an object or the skills to restore an object to a new found glory. The process means designating objects as being an “investment” before the sale. This would also call for a separate financial entity to avoid blurring what money is for investments and paying bills and what object are designated as such, but we’re talking about a standard audit trail here.
I imagine a problem (or criticism) being that such a change in ethics would turn museums into nothing more than private investors neglecting public good, apparently because ethics prevent all museum staffers turning into embezzling career criminals. Then the ethical guidelines can reflect the problem. Instead of these two rules, have them say that “investment collections” cannot exceed more than 10% of a museum’s collection in number or value and budgets for museum investing cannot be more than 10% of the overall budget. Or numbers to that effect. The Actual-Museum-Collection is still protected and held in the public trust. Museums get to build little nest eggs that when a five year economic downturn appears they can cash in to pay their staff.
The beauty in this is that it calls upon what museums already excel at: knowledge in material culture. Instead, the few museums that are lucky to have various investments have to rely upon systems that, I assure you, have damn fewer ethical standards!
This week on ArtFriday, I want to show you the photography of Christi Nielsen. I have chosen three images from her I’m Just About to Get Skinny series, a highly sensitised and personal analysis of body image. What keeps me returning to Christi work is the way she manages to orchestrate a sense of empathy that isn’t sickening. Something that I find difficult with most artists when the bare their entire soul in a work is the nagging feeling that maybe I just wouldn’t like this person. Christi Nielsen does not have this problem. (It may be because Christi is also hilarious.)
John Robb scares me. Not through any kind of intimidation, but the fact that his blog Global Guerrillas is such a treasure trove of articles analysing the future. Robb’s focus is the future of military and warfare, but mainly how a massive bureaucratic money pit of a nation’s army can be brought to stalemate by a loose organisation of insurgents with a fraction of the budget. This is what terrifies me most: the movement into the next generation of doing things, in this case, war.
Robb has put up 11 (I’m sure they’ll increase) Standing Orders for the modern insurgency. Let’s ignore that the ultimate end of these insurgents are death and destruction and opposition of “freedom”. Those are the ideological extras. When you look at these Standing Orders, you notice that these are just models of management. This list could have come from a silicon valley analyst. Through simple translations into other languages of industry, you have a very powerful list of actions. This is the new way of Doing Things. You see how this interests me in relation to Metrocurators, but also the way museums will struggle using old methods of structure.
Here are John Robb’s Standing Orders, I suggest looking at the original link for background because I’ll be strictly talking about this is terms of museums. (I also don’t want to plague John Robb’s blog with museum related links)
1. Break Networks – Not communication networks. This means getting in between people and their closed systems. What does this have to do with museums? Well, how many people in the industry got jobs through people they know? How much is the industry lacking innovation because people haven’t been allowed in? Think about what has the most influence in museums and whether they are still fully deserving of such a position. Just how progressive are those giant membership organisations?
2. Grow Black Economies – Originally meant to fund insurgency through organised crime, the reasons for doing so are noteworthy: independence. Now, museums are going to be running protection rackets, but the idea of finding new income sources to obtain autonomy has to be a priority. This would allow much greater freedoms in innovation. Things like Giuliani punishing Brooklyn museum by cutting off funding. Or the Cambridge museum losing funding by refusing to splatter a logo over everything. Museums are currently slaves to too many outside influences. There needs to be a growth in Museum Economies in order for growth in Museum Thinking.
3. Virtualize Your Organization – Not so much about greater use of IT (although that may help)this is about having a greater flexibility and possibly a modular approach to organisation: “They do the job and go away”. Could an entire museum be run be freelancers? I’ve seen it done with some collections. I also wonder about the motivation is could cause. A person sitting on the same job for 20 years isn’t going to have the same hunger as a freelancer who has to hustle every day. Robb’s say that a specialisation of skill sets emerge in a short time because of this. Also, I must say, I’ve found more interesting things come out of the blogs of museum freelancers than anyone else. This is because freelancers have equal amounts of having to be employable and being innovative with an added extra of not having to “follow the rules” (a plus from being self-employed).
4. Repetition is more important than Scale – I wish this was true in museums, where the trend is for several-month long blockbuster exhibitions rather than weekly changes of new things. “Simple, low cost, easy, and repeatable… are both sustainable and generate the greatest potential returns.
5. Coopetition not Competition – Museums have systems already in place (mostly) to share information but are used in rather narrow parameters. This could be run parallel to great transparency in museums. This is about working towards common goals by using the same things. To me, this is the difference between ArtBabble and Creative Spaces. ArtBabble is a platform run by IMA, but they’re working hard to have the involvement of other museums to create content. Creative Spaces had too much singular interest that, I think, removed its greater purpose. To quote Robb, “rivals sharing common platforms… reduce costs… widen variety, increase flexibility, etc. For example, coopetition is the basis for Internet standards and the Web“. You want to be like the Internet, don’t you?
6. Don’t Fork (the Insurgency) – This one’s a bit harder to translate, but I take this to mean not being on the offensive against your fellow museums/staffers. Such as the amount of criticism against museums “breaking taboo” (see: Prissy Fatwas). I think this also means resisting internationalism/global issues for the sake of being a “local museum”.
7. Minimalist rule sets work best – Oh God Yes. There’s no point replacing the old systems with carbon-copies of them. For museums, this is about policy and ethics. I remember one museum’s collection policy that defined OS Gridlines, for God’s sake. What was more ridiculous was they ignored them anyway, often accepting objects from 40 miles away. Let’s remember that the reason Neil MacGregor became so important and rescued the British Museum was his adherence to a founding principle from 1753.
8. Self-replicate – Create other versions of yourself, in short. This is related to all the other Standing Orders, in that nothing will work unless it spreads to other organisations, possibly third-parties. Even if you don’t find the idea of becoming something like a metrocurator, you have to imagine this is the best way to advance whatever your goals are. Whatever the priorities are, they will be helped with similar satellite organisations. I think means more than just outreach and education programs. You want to be copied, not just learnt from.
9. Share or copy everything that works – Think about Creative Commons and Open Source. The sharing of ideas, forming them and them kicking them out into the wide world for anyone to pick up. This is related to 5. The idea of hording ideas helps no one. Think about how the entire industry as a whole benefits from an Open idea, which can therefore lead to greater benefits to individual museums. I know several museums are already doing this.
10. Release often and early - I can’t say anymore than how John Robb puts it: “Innovations, from tactics to weapons, should be released as soon and as often as practicable. Perfectionism, sclerotic planning processes, excessive secrecy, risk aversion, and other plagues found in hierarchical organizations are the enemy of success.” Right on.
11. Co-opt, don’t own, basic services - I get there this one is going, but not sure how to translate it into museum practices. I will leave this one up to the comment to help me unpick. What are the “basic services” and who has ownership of them? Part of me thinks about education and schools, but still not sure how it fits. Comments welcome. What do you think?
How would museum staffers do things differently if they were trying to increase the number of museum “fans” instead of “customers” or “guests” or “visitors”?
The examples were the fans of sports teams, Harry Potter and… a hotel. I’m going to dismiss the hotel because anyone could put a list of famous names for branding purposes. It’s no different to them wearing a watch or sipping a cognac. I’ll also dismiss the Harry Potter fan model because they are still customers. Their fandom is part merchandising demographic, part spectacle addict. The reason for queuing up from midnight is to be one of the “first” to experience. I think there are too many differences between the museum and book/film business plan that drawing comparisons are too tricky. For instance, the Harry Potter narrative has invaded four media: Books, films, DVD and television. Museums are pretty much a media in itself that tries to be “open-to-all” instead of “supply-and-demand”. I wouldn’t know how to shift between the two.
So that leaves sports teams. For my own benefit, I’m comparing museums to football (or “soccer” to those who don’t believe in definitions being limited by majority functions). At first I wondered if this was a merchandising thing as well. A football fan would buy the hat, scarf and kit emblazoned with the team logo and buy it every year. But I had misread the original question. How would museum staffers do things differently? The last time I did a “Make Museums Like…“, I had five things inspired by Monocle Magazine. This time in Make Museum Staffers like Football Players, I can only think of two.
1. I have this ongoing joke that David Beckham is the future of museums. Sure, both football clubs and museums are made up of team members that need to function together, but can you honestly say there are curators who people would say are their favourites?
Look at David Beckham, he has a set of skills that’s internationally recognised that got him a celebrity status off the pitch. The difference being is he performs in public. We can watch him do what he does best. Being a fan of David or the team he plays for means something because we hope/want the best performance. If I was a sports fan wanting the same thing from a museum, what have a got to support? The objects on display. They tend to be pretty static. I don’t have any actual people to support, they’re in offices and meetings. So all the museum performance/teamwork/skills on display are hidden and the fan only gets the end product. It’s like a football supporter only being able to support by getting the results. You may feel joyful or depressed by the results but it’s still just a list of numbers.
This is what I saw Nicolas Bourriaud try to do with Altermodernism. The whole exhibition was firmly placed under his name as he gave countless interviews explaining his made-up word. Within Tate Triennial FC, Bourriaud was the captain, the artists were his squad, the other staff were his coaches and Altermodern was his tactic (like Total Football or Long Ball). If only he chose art that more people would have liked rather than the typical alienating/challenging contemporary stuff he probably would have made a bigger impact. Fans want to see goals and wins, they don’t care that much about where they come from.
Who else is there? Neil MacGregor certainly gets a lot of press for what he does, but he doesn’t have David’s hair.
2. Competition. Simple one, that. A fan wants their support to mean something and to celebrate wins. There’s barely any competition in museums, so what is the point in being a fan of one over another? What does a museum staffer got to work towards that would attract a fan base? There’s no league table to decide who’s doing the best. The current crop of museum awards are popularity contests or stamps of quality, things that matter to a “visitor” or a “customer”, but not a fan. Shortlists, judging panels or voting won’t make fans. Football does this sort of thing at the end of the season when all the playing as been done and the silverware has been lifted.
How would you do a museum competition? Based upon what? Visitor numbers? Doesn’t sound in the spirit of things. Or should two museums square off in some kind of challenge in a knock-out competition to be crowned Museum Cup Champions? Some television rights, some decent coverage, some kit sponsors…
Hold on, I’m off to phone a television executive. I have an idea I want to pitch.
I had no doubt in my mind who I wanted to exhibit for the new ArtFriday. I’ve been wanting to put Tiffany Horan’s stuff on here for a while. She was part of the ArtFriday social network but went to Bahrain before she could submit anything.
The other reason for wanting to display Tiffany’s art is that she is still a student and we’re all about the future here at Newcurator. When she’s a successful artist, I want to be able to say she was on ArtFriday. And she will be successful.
Considering the variety of things Tiffany has turned her hand to; photography, sculpture, drawing, video art, it’s rare to see the development of such a mature sense of direction and style in one so young. In each piece she does, you can see her crafting the simplicity of a powerful statement without resorting to alienating cheap tricks that I see so often in young artists. I doesn’t surprise me that Tiffany also describes herself as a writer.
You can find Tiffany Horan at her blog, her twitter, and her flickr.
This is the third time I’m trying out ArtFriday. The first one was just an open call that took ages as I unpicked emails and twitter direct messages. The second ArtFriday was based around a social network that was bulky and burnt bandwidth like no tomorrow.
I’m going to try something different this time. Instead of making the call out on the social networks, I’m going to dive into them and see what I find. ArtFriday from now on is completely my choice instead of compiling submissions. The focus is going to be on one artist from now on. They then get put into the ArtFriday Alumni in the sidebar.
Don’t go emailing me saying you want to be on ArtFriday. They’ll be ignored. To improve your chances, follow me on twitter, facebook or tumblr and make lots of good art that’ll I’ll notice.
I’ll try to email you beforehand. I’ll also have to hotlink. Sorry, but I’d rather not have “bandwidth exceeded” every month.
With that, I’ll do the first 3rd Generation ArtFriday in a few moments.
Metrocurators is the term I used to describe a new generation of curator that’s lightweight, deals in very little bureaucracy, has a DIY attitude because of very limited funds and basically is running all over a city pushing small outbreaks of museums into public spaces. The motivation and the survival of a Metrocurator is based upon creativity. The former models of big established institutions look too slow and lumbering.
If you want comparisons, it’s like the graffiti writer versus the council clean up crews. It’s like innovative start-ups in Silicon Valley versus the big companies like Microsoft or IBM. If you care to ignore politics, its like Hamas compared to the American army.
I said in the original post, there’s “museum-y things” to be considered. I think I’ve found two missing pieces.
Public Collectors consists of informal agreements where collectors allow the contents of their collection to be published and permit those who are curious to directly experience the objects in person.
So ordinary people spend some time cataloging their personal collections and allow people to come have a look. So far, most of the collections are based in Chicago and made of books, films and vinyl (and the originator’s extensive collection of porn’n’ gore comics from Mexico).
This would be a valuable resource to the Metrocurator, who hasn’t got the ability to store, conserve or build collections of their own. Think about the numbers of personal collections in one city. It’s the Metrocurator’s job to recruit these people into lending a few objects as well as assisting in the correct cataloging and consulting on storage. That would take care of providing collections for the Metrocurator to use as opposed to having to rely on artist contacts to commission site-specific pieces.
The other missing jigsaw piece is funding. Sure, the Metrocurator could go through the usual channels of applying to grant giving organisations (or even find a venture culturalist). Or use “Crowd funding” like Kickstarter.com (found via Intelligent Naivety). Kickstarter (I’m so glad they kept the E) works like micro-philanthropy (as opposed to micro-credit) with people funding individual creative projects with pledges (I’d call them micro-grants). They also have a whole set of guidelines in place.
This may be a good way to fund the “building” each individual mini museum, especially when it comes to security. Or even finding the small amounts of funds for exhibitions.
With a bit of work, you can have exhibition space, collections and funding. I’m now trying to think of what else a Metrocurator needs in terms of infrastructure?
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 interpretPauls’ 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.
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.
As part of my daily routine, I check where traffic is coming from and where it’s going (so if you could allow google analytics if you have a javascript blocker, it would really help). This time, I checked who’s been saving newcurator links on delicious.com. It was this one that caught my eye.
Shockingly bad blog that features even worse art
Shockingly bad? Possibly, in places, I’d admit that. But even worse art? I appreciate every one’s efforts who submitted to ArtFriday. Everyone who was part of ArtFriday came from making links via twitter and I value every acquaintance.
Dear Karen Archey (@findings), you can take your rudeness and elitism with you to artfagcity.com. Here at newcurator, we’re about the future
Paddy Johnson, Art Fag City’s main editor and someone who I’ve personally enjoyed reading and has pride of place in my feed reader, said this.
These are only opinions. The job of artists and curators is to determine the valuable feedback, and ignore the rest.
True. I also believe it’s the curator’s role to defend the artists they represent. Anyway, these were my followers on twitter, not multi-millionaire artists.
And there we have it. I now ask all of you: Does rudeness and elitism have a part to play in the future of art and/or museums? If so, what exactly? I personally think about the lack of elitism that launched hundreds of musicians off a social network like Myspace. I also think about how things like twitter have allowed artists to gain a lot more exposure. I also see how rudeness is replacing honest debate and cheapening the levels of critical theory of culture.
The concept is simple: after curators argue for their proposed acquisitions, collectors, who have ponied up money to participate in the event, vote on what to buy with the pooled funds.
Remember my Death of the Curator article? I was taken by the idea of ”crowdsourcing the curatorial decisions of an exhibition”. What I saw was the potential for pure populism of a large community to supersede an art historians curatorial expertise, amongst other things.
I saw the word “vote”. Maybe it’s not the Death of the Curator, but of the Museum Trustee.
Look at MyFootballClub. A load of people paid membership fees to go into a fund to buy a football (soccer in Yanqui) club. They ended buy acquiring Ebbsfleet United, a small Kent club in the fifth tier and turned it into the first web-community owned football club. As this Guardian article from 2007 states, the plan was to have the new community of owners pick the team and vote on all major decisions like a big crowdsourced game of Football Manager.
As I understand it, that hasn’t panned out exactly to plan. Liam Daish, the manager, still had final say on things like tactics and training. The “Board” was mainly dealing with, wait for it… voting onsigning new players.
I think you see where I’m going with this. A web-community run museum? The director performing whatever the Board decided through majority vote. The curator’s job is safe (ish).
I’m just kicking this idea out there for discussion. Being a trustee of a museum is maybe not as glamourous as running a football club. Trustees tend to be wealthy and well-connected fundraisers, so many museums wouldn’t be supported by a web community. I imagine there would have to be something to make it less… boring? I do quite like the idea of registering my vote to influence an acquisition. Hell, maybe even a deaccessioning. What shape would a collection take if several thousand people were deciding what direction to go into? So much is said about museums being in “the public’s trust”. Well, what would happen if the public were actually trusted?
The advertising agency Mother has opened a gallery space called Downstairs at Mother with the first exhibition being a selection of Peter Blake prints. Alongside the opening is the CCA Art Bus, a London double-decker with art displays up top ad educational facilities on the bottom deck.
There are two quotes I want to pull from the Creative Review article.
“Mother as an agency has always sought to immerse itself in the creative environment that inspires it – not to interrupt but rather contribute to art and popular culture”
What an amazing mission statement. I suppose only an ad agency could have come up with it. These are people whose job is to sell creativity. Think about that when you next see an empty museum.
The second quote:
Because we’re not representing artists and not selling work we can do whatever we fancy
Let’s unpick that a little. They have a space that is not in the professional gallery market so don’t have to work on commissions or agents fees. This exhibition is there for the sole purpose of being inspirational. Doesn’t that sound like it is more like a museum to you? But it isn’t because they can do whatever they want. This is an example of what can happen with a true level of autonomy and independence. Downstairs at Mothers doesn’t have to answer to anyone in the realm of museum ethics. This is a corporate venture subsidised by its own business.
Granted, it doesn’t look like it plans to build a collection and viewings are by appointment only. I’m going to overlook these possibly-financial decisions to make a bigger point. A psuedo-museum (minus having to hustle for funds) can focus entirely on innovation, something the bunch of people Upstairs at Mothers have in spades. They’ve got a fancy bus to drive around London! How many people are going to look at that and say, “Damn, that’s cool”? This model has the Be Awesome factor not through being short term, but by being free to do whatever they please. What will they do next? Who knows?
The reason I’m so interested in this because I try to imagine if this can be/needs to be explanded upon. A corporate autonymous cultural institution without needing to join membership organisations. This is the speculative part of me that has read too many books like Snowcrash or Jennifer Government where big business has taken over. But then I wonder about what would happen if most museums had to close because the government or philanthropists couldn’t fund them, or there was a massive exodus from organisations like the Museum Association or the AAM.
Would the sudden popularity of institutions like Downstairs at Mothers seem so far-fetched?
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