I call lots of museums.  I have become fascinated by the telephone systems of different museums, some museum telephone systems are easy to navigate and some are nerve racking and frustrating.

Exhibitions are a form of communication and the culture of the museum offers the “voice” to that communication.  Is the “voice” a friend? A teacher? An older relative?  It is fascinating the different voices that are communicated for exhibitions.  I like thinking in analogies, often I learn more about the culture of a museum from their phone system than I do from their organizational chart.  Is the phone system user friendly?  Easy to navigate? Helpful?  Able to connect me with the information in the way I want to connect?

Think about your own museum phone system and try calling as a teacher wanting to book a school trip.  Try calling as a mother wanting directions, try calling as the vendor who works on the air conditioning, for each call were your needs met?  Could you connect with the appropriate person?

In many ways a phone system is like a museum, callers are contacting the museum for information tailored to them in a welcoming fashion at their own level, a tall order, but try calling American Express and see how you feel or call Fidelity Investments and see how you feel.  Information tailored to the visitor in a pleasant and efficient manner, it can be done!

Gever Tulley founder of the Tinkering School talk from TED on “5 dangerous things for kids”.

Photo and project posted to Make Projects by Sean Michael Ragan

By Mark Walhimer
Bangkok, Thailand

On Monday I posted an Open Letter about the creating an online database of Science Center exhibits.  The more I think about the issue the more I realize that there is already an existing model; Maker Projects.  I continue to believe the future of Science Centers is creating a Maker Faire like attitude.  Maker Projects is an online listing of projects, the projects are submitted to Make Magazine and the editors select the projects to post.  One thought would be to create a partnership with Make Magazine for the data base, it could be a win-win.

When we were working on the opening of Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, California we visited approximately 15 other Science Centers to get ideas for the types of exhibits that we would like to include.  We then planned on contracting with a design firm to design the exhibits.  Most design firms charge 20% of the exhibits budget to design the exhibits.  After talking to several Directors of other recently opened Science Centers we realized that using the approach of hiring a design firm and paying 20% was no guarantee of success.  In fact many of the recently opened Centers had higher failure rates of exhibits with exhibition design firm exhibits than centers that bought “off the shelf exhibits” (exhibits built by other science centers).  We also realized that although our team visited 15 Science Centers most visitors don’t, so having the same exhibits as other Science Centers didn’t really matter.  Using a formula of 1/3 exhibits purchased from other science centers, 1/3 purchased from other science centers and modified and 1/3 unique to the science center.  We opened Discovery Science Center in 1998 at less than half the cost of other science centers and a much higher success rate.

I purpose that Make Magazine create a database of exhibit ideas edited by a group of science center experts.  The database will then be accessible to science teachers, museum professionals and hackers everywhere.  WIth an online freely accessible database, everyone can develop, design, build exhibits.  There will be a learning curve, but by opening up the entire process everyone wins.  With approximately 450 Science Centers world wide all can contribute and use the ideas from the database.

Why don’t we have standards in Science Centers?

In my opinion it is fear.  Although science centers say that we are trying to “demystify science”, we also believe that science is too complex for the general public and only certain people can really understand.  In 1997 Joe Ansel lead a session at ASTC called “Who’s Idea is it anyway” as far as I know the field of Science Centers has not moved forward on this issue one bit.  Thanks to Jim Spadaccini of Ideum we now have Exhibit Files as a data base to review exhibits.  But, as far as I know there is no freely accessible data base for exhibit ideas.  How is this possible?  In scientific research, you do your research, gather your information, write your bibliography (crediting your sources) and publish your research.  With the science community model, others can then build on your research and there is a trail of crediting your sources along the way.  Why doesn’t the Science Center community work in the same fashion?  Joe Ansel recommended this in 1997 and as far as I know there has been no movement in this area.

I know of several sources that are working towards the end of a freely shared data base

* Nina Simon of Museum 2.0
* Cheap Exhibit Ideas by Paul Orselli
* Exploratorium Cookbooks

But none of the sources offer a  Wikipedia style data base of exhibit ideas.

On Monday I posted an Open Letter about the creating an online database of Science Center exhibits.  The more I think about the issue the more I realize that there is already an existing model; Maker Projects.  I continue to believe the future of Science Centers is creating a Maker Faire like attitude.  Maker Projects is an online listing of projects, the projects are submitted to Make Magazine and the editors select the projects to post.  One thought would be to create a partnership with Make Magazine for the data base, it could be a win-win.

From Wikipedia:
“The concept of gross national happiness is an attempt to define quality of life in more holistic and psychological terms than gross national product.

The term was coined in 1972 by Bhutan’s former King Jigme Sigme Wangchuck, who has opened up Bhutan to the age of modernization, soon after the demise of his father, King Jigme Dorji Wangchuk. It signaled his commitment to building an economy that would serve Bhutan’s unique culture based on Buddhist spiritual values. Like many moral goals, it is somewhat easier to state than to define. Nonetheless, it serves as a unifying vision for Bhutan’s five-year planning process and all the derived planning documents that guide the economic and development plans of the country.”

So what.

I get off the plane in Bangkok from Vietnam and I am immediately disappointed, Something is different, why aren’t people smiling? I spent last night and this morning thinking about it, then I remember “the Happy Planet Index“. So low and behold, Vietnam is number #5 in the world ranking of happiness, while Thailand is #41 (USA is #141). There seems to be no Bangkok left in Bangkok, it is Starbucks and Thailand made plastic. I immediately miss Vietnam, how can this be? A country much wealthier and yet they are not nearly as happy (you can see it on their faces).

So what does this have to do with Museums?

I love the “Experience Economy” philosophy, but stepping off the plane I realize that the experience needs to genuine.  I can feel that this is not a genuine experience and it shows up in the Happy Planet Index and it shows up on the faces of the people.  Too often we try to manufacture an experience without the culture to support the experience and the feeling falls flat.  I know it is a stretch comparing a Museum to Bangkok, but then I consider the path that Bhutan and Costa Rica have taken, they both have made a decision to save their culture, because that is why people visit the country.  Without the culture there is nothing to experience.

• Interviews with visitors
• Mapping of the visitor experience
• Review of exhibition lighting
• Suggestions for changes to visitor flow
• Review of graphics
• Review of wayfinding
• Review of audio visual systems
• Review of exhibition media
• Review of exhibit maintenance and repair program
• A review of the mix of types of exhibit, static, highly interactive, simple manipulatives
• A written report containing, recommendations for changes

If you are interested in a $1000 objective exhibition audit send me an email;

Mark’s Email

for a copy of a sample exhibition audit.

Khokana Museum, Khokana, Nepal

I am in Nepal, visiting the village of Khokana a small village listed on the Unesco list of world heritage sites. The village is in the Kathmandu Valley, Kathmandu is known as the home of the Kumari Devi.

I came for Durga Puja, an annual Hindu festival that celebrates worship of Hindu goddess Durga.   Here in Khokana they sacrifice three Water Buffalo on the first day of the holiday.  While waiting for the start of the celebration I visited the Khokana Museum.

Visiting the museum got my head spinning, here I am in one of the poorest countries in the world, at a museum with no money, and I am having one of the richest experiences I have ever had at any museum.  The visit got me thinking of so many questions, “What is a Museum”? “What is World Class”?, “Who is your museum staff”, “How far do the “walls” of the museum extend”.  At first they seem to be simple questions, yet here I am in a Museum, this is living history, the celebration going on outside of the doors of the museum is real.  Can a museum be collection of the objects of a culture while the culture is currently active?  My answer is yes, the Directors of the museum a husband and wife who live in the museum, are able to interpret, preserve and collect the artifacts and customs as they participate in the culture.

“World Class”.  I can’t count how many meetings I have gone to, where “World Class” is used as a goal for a museum project.  This museum is lived in by the museum directors and this is a world class experience.  I am fully immersed in this culture, I have learned of their customs and objects, but the house only has four working lights and three working electrical outlets.

Khokana Museum Directors

“Museum Staff”

Outside of the Museum is the village square where the sacrifice will happen.  I am surrounded by kids all telling me of the happenings of the festival.  The boys are telling me the importance of the blood as an offering and that no one can touch the man that will transport the blood to the temple.

“It’s about the story”

Most importantly the Khokana Museum has reminded me that the exhibits of a museum are there to tell the story of the museum.  Too often we display the objects as if the objects are the story, instead of placing the emphasis on the story being told.

Photo: Librado Romero/The New York Times

New Home For Chinese Experience In America

New York Times, July 8, 2009

By Larry Rohter

“The newly expanded, newly relocated Museum of Chinese in America has chosen to open the doors of its new home on the edge of Chinatown quietly and gradually as it settles in over the summer. But it aims to make a big statement once it’s fully moved in about the role that Chinese immigrants and their descendants have played in constructing American society.

“The long-term goal is to create a national museum that will also be a cultural anchor” for Chinatown, said S. Alice Mong, the museum’s just-hired director. “There is a lot to do, we have many stories to tell, but we begin with this new building, which will allow us to have the programs to go along with what we envision.”

That building, a converted industrial machine repair shop at 211-215 Centre Street, was designed by Maya Lin, who also designed the Vietnam Memorial in Washington and is a member of the museum’s board. With about 12,000 square feet spread over two floors, the Centre Street building is nearly six times larger than the museum’s current home, and cost $8.1 million to revamp. In the lobby Ms. Lin has created an art installation called “The Journey Wall,” which consists of bronze tiles that link Chinese-American families’ names and places of origin in China with the towns or cities where they settled in America.

She has created two entrances for the building, which are meant to symbolize the museum’s twin missions: helping Americans to understand the Chinese world better, and vice versa.

“Sometimes Chinese history is seen as unchanging, and put into a lacquered box,” said Cynthia Lee, the museum’s chief curator. “There is also a notion that Chinese isolate themselves into that box and don’t want to interact with the rest of society. We want to get away from that and show our history as a living, dynamic thing.”

The Museum of Chinese in America began nearly 30 years ago as the Chinatown History Project, and has amassed a large collection of documents and objects that register the history and culture of Chinese immigrants in America. But before the move to the new site the museum was confined to 2,000 square feet on the second floor of a building at 70 Mulberry Street, in the heart of Chinatown, that it shared with numerous other community groups.

The Centre Street location opened without fanfare late last month, and many of the artifacts collected over the years are still in transit from one building to the other. On Sept. 22 the museum is scheduled to hold a grand opening ceremony at the new building, when its permanent “core collection” will be unveiled, along with an exhibition of art combining the work of Chinese-American artists and Chinese artists living in the United States.

Ms. Mong, who formally assumes her new duties next week, comes to the museum from the Committee of 100, a Chinese-American leadership group whose founders include I. M. Pei and Yo-Yo Ma. Born in Taiwan and raised in Virginia and Ohio, she said she envisioned the expanded version of the museum as a place that would attract not just Chinatown residents and non-Chinese New Yorkers but also “tourists from Tennessee and Qingdao.”

Sam Quan Krueger, the museum’s chief operating officer, said: “The Committee of 100 is known as a network of prominent Chinese-Americans, the movers and shakers. So Alice’s coming here is a boon to our ability to raise individual capital while tapping into the vibrancy of the Chinese-American community.”

In this initial phase, with most exhibits still being installed, the museum is open only on Thursdays, with no admission charged. After the formal inauguration ceremonies it will be open Thursday through Monday, with an admission charge of $7 for adults and $4 for students and those 65 and over.

The new museum’s first public offering is the Chinatown Film Project, which began last week and will continue on Thursdays throughout the summer. Ten directors based in New York City, some of them of Chinese descent but most not, were commissioned to make short films, less than 10 minutes long, focusing on some aspect of daily life in Chinatown.

The results include impressionistic, plotless efforts like Wayne Wang and Richard Wong’s “Tuesday” and Jem Cohen’s “New York Night Scene” as well as story-driven shorts like Rose Troche’s “Sunday at 6” and Cary Fukunaga’s “Kiwi Lotion.” Once the museum has opened fully, the films will be shown in rotation throughout the day until year’s end.

Karin Chien, the film project’s producer and curator, said she hoped the new, larger museum and the chance it offers to showcase Chinese-American or Asian-American films and performers, from spoken word artists to musicians, would “facilitate a huge renaissance for Chinatown.”

“In the same way that the museum is expanding physically,” she added, “it wants to expand the scope of the media and artists it works with and the audience it attracts, and this seemed a good way to start.”

Two other events scheduled for this month also exemplify that approach. On Saturday the museum will be the host of Asian-American ComiCon, an event devoted to the role of Asians and Asian-Americans in comics and graphic fiction, and on July 24 through July 26, part of the 32nd annual Asian American International Film Festival, for years a staple event at the Asia Society, will be held there.

One section of the museum’s permanent exhibition that is already up and running, a multi-media presentation called “core portraits,” focuses on Chinese-Americans who in one way or another “exemplify a particular historical period.” The 10 subjects include a celebrity, the silent film era actress Anna May Wong, but the display also incorporates a restaurateur, a laundryman and the first Chinese graduate of an American university, Yung Wing, who studied at Yale in the mid-19th century.

Each of the video portraits runs three to five minutes and is accompanied by a scripted first-person monologue, delivered in English, that is based on statements made by the subject. Those texts have been written by some of the country’s most prominent Chinese-American literary figures, including David Henry Hwang, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gish Jen and Ha Jin.

“I think this museum can be a way for us to celebrate and investigate the role that Chinese people have played in building this country,” said Mr. Hwang, a playwright whose work includes “M. Butterfly” and “FOB.” “It is important to have an institution that can make the statement that we have always been a critical part of American history and at the same time ask what it really means to be a Chinese-American.”

Until Sept. 22 the Museum of Chinese in America is open on Thursdays, at 211-215 Centre Street, between Howard and Grand Streets, Lower Manhattan, (212) 619-4785, mocanyc.org”

Tutankhamun shabti, © SANDRO VANNINI

From: Nuvo,  “Indy’s Alternative Newspaper”

Posted on July 8, 2009 by Julianna Thibodeaux

Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs, one of the most high-profile blockbusters the city has seen recently, has just opened in unlikely quarters: the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. This local institution, touted as the world’s largest children’s museum, is actually not such a leap: the behemoth building with its newly expanded Welcome Center — two additional dinosaur replicas penetrating the new stories-high wall of windows in a perpetual state of party crashing — has certainly expanded to fill its increasingly large paw prints … but in a measured and strategic way. It is in this sense that Tut is a surprise.

President and CEO Jeffrey Patchen, speaking to me in a telephone interview after I’d toured the exhibition with my three children — ages 14, 4 and 2 — admitted that, while such an awe-inspiring exhibition does fit in with the museum’s mission — “to create extraordinary learning experiences that have the power to transform the lives of children and families” — it is also a departure: At a member rate of $15 for adults and $8 for children (non-members pay $25 and $15, with some discounts available), with prices determined by exhibition organizers, the mere fact of a ticket price separate from regular museum admission is something the museum largely did away with years ago. But as Patchen pointed out, the museum would not have been able to pay the rental fee for such a blockbuster. And this one practically fell in its lap, like a dust shower inside an Egyptian tomb.

The story begins four years ago, when the museum, through the development of another exhibit, first allied itself with Dr. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt — referred to by Patchen as the real Indiana Jones — who invited museum staff to consult with first lady Suzanne Mubarak on the development of a children’s museum in Cairo. Hawass told Patchen, “We’ll work out some sort of thank you that’s appropriate.” And so it was announced, roughly two years later, that this latest Tutankhamun blockbuster would make its second stop (after Atlanta) in Indianapolis.

In order to make the exhibition more accessible, a $2 million grant from the Lilly Endowment was secured to underwrite the cost of free admission for 98,000 Indiana school students. Patchen told me more than 60,000 of these have already been claimed — so teachers reading this should act quickly to reserve their tickets.

While Tut is wonderful for the 8-and-up set (and museum literature promotes it as such), it is best not wasted on the younger ones. Taking my kids through Tut was more of a treat for me (and my 14-year-old) than it was for my younger kids; the beautiful artifacts displayed in moodily-lit galleries, some of which are organized according to what was found in the rooms of Tutankhamun’s tomb, while stunning, were so much statuary to my youngest, who kept trying to clear the security ropes to scale the pharaohs and funerary urns.

Save their ticket prices for the gift shop. But first hurry them over to Take Me There: Egypt, which reaffirms the museum’s excellence in installation development: Children (and their parents) can enlighten themselves about language and communication, urban and rural living spaces, the marketplace, care of the environment, and visual and performing arts in the country of Egypt, which many will learn for the first time is in Africa. Such a cultural immersion should do much to alleviate prejudice against the predominantly Muslim country, which too many Americans associate with terrorism and the events of Sept. 11.

While Tut is organized by National Geographic, Arts and Exhibitions International and AEG Exhibitions, the museum developed this new permanent but thematically-revolving installation Take Me There (replacing Passport to the World) to coincide with Tut. Take Me There: Egypt, open for the next two years, is free with regular museum admission; and as a companion to Tut, it does for children what Tut cannot: provide the kind of hands-on, interactive experience for which the museum is known.

Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs runs through October 2009. The museum is located at 3000 N. Meridian St. For tickets, visit www.childrensmuseum.org or www.kingtut.org.

There are several conferences where emerging technologies for museums is exhibited:
Association of Science and Technologies
Siggraph
InfoComm
Maker Faire

Natural History Museum London, Photo by DAVID ILIFF

“A museum is a “permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment, for the purposes of education, study, and enjoyment”, as defined by the International Council of Museums.[1] The UK Museums Association definition (adopted 1998)[2] is:

“Museums enable people to explore collections for inspiration, learning and enjoyment. They are institutions that collect, safeguard and make accessible artifacts and specimens, which they hold in trust for society.”

Etymology

The English “museum” comes from the Latin word, and is pluralized as “museums” (or, rarely, “musea”). It is originally from the Greek (Mouseion)[3], which denotes a place or temple dedicated to the Muses (the patron divinities in Greek mythology of the arts), and hence a building set apart for study and the arts,[4] especially the institute for philosophy and research at the Library established at Alexandria by Ptolemy I Soter c280 BCE.[5] The first museum/library considered to be the one of Plato in Athens[6]. However, Pausanias gives another place called “Museum”, namely a small hill in Classical Athens opposite the Akropolis. The hill was called Mouseion after Mousaious, a man who used to sing on the hill and died there of old age and was subsequently buried there as well.[7]

Overview

Museums collect and care for objects of scientific, artistic, or historical importance and make them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities throughout the world and more local ones exist in smaller cities, towns and even the countryside. Many museums offer programs and activities for a range of audiences, including adults, children, and families, as well as those for more specific professions. Programs for the public may consist of lectures or tutorials by the museum faculty or field experts, films, musical or dance performances, and technology demonstrations. Many times, museums concentrate on the host region’s culture. Although most museums do not allow physical contact with the associated artifacts, there are some that are interactive and encourage a more hands-on approach. Modern trends in museology have broadened the range of subject matter and introduced many interactive exhibits, which give the public the opportunity to make choices and engage in activities that may vary the experience from person to person. With the advent of the internet, there are growing numbers of virtual exhibits, i.e. web versions of exhibits showing images and playing recorded sound.

Museums are usually open to the general public, sometimes charging an admission fee. Some museums are publicly funded and have free entrance, either permanently or on special days, e.g. once per week or year.

Museums are usually not run for the purpose of making a profit, unlike private galleries which more often engage in the sale of objects. There are governmental museums, non-governmental or non-profit museums, and privately owned or family museums. Museums can be a reputable and generally trusted source of information about cultures and history.

1. ^ “ICOM Statutes”. INternational Council of Museums. http://icom.museum/statutes.html#2. Retrieved on 2008-04-05.
2. ^ “Frequently asked questions”. Museums Association. http://www.museumsassociation.org/faq. Retrieved on 2008-04-05.
3. ^ Mouseion, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus
4. ^ Findlen, Paula (1989). “The Museum: its classical etymology and renaissance genealogy“. Journal of the History of Collections 1: 59–78. doi:10.1093/jhc/1.1.59 (inactive 2008-06-25). http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/1/1/59. Retrieved on 2008-04-05.
5. ^ “Ptolemy I Soter, The First King of Ancient Egypt’s Ptolemaic Dynasty”. Tour Egypt. http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/ptolemy1.htm. Retrieved on 2008-04-05.
6. ^ Mouseion, def. 3, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus
7. ^ Peter Levi, Pausanias Guide to Greece 1: Central Greece, p. 72-73 (Paus. 1.25.2)