Engagement, Distraction, and the Puzzle of the Puzzle

Note: Thanks to Lisa Hochstein for allowing me to quote her emails in this post. She is a fabulous and thoughtful artist. You can learn more about her work here.

Two weeks ago, we inaugurated a Creativity Lounge on the third floor of our museum. It's a little living room in a lobby area that invites people to lounge on comfortable chairs, leaf through magazines and books related to art and Santa Cruz history, and generally hang out.

The area that houses the Creativity Lounge also shows art. The same day we opened the Creativity Lounge, we opened new exhibitions throughout the building, including a paper collage show in the 3rd floor lobby by local artist Lisa Hochstein. Lisa was thrilled that her work was on display at the museum. She was less thrilled about the Creativity Lounge--or very specifically, the art jigsaw puzzle in the middle of the coffee table.

Lisa emailed me to ask us to remove the puzzle, commenting:

It seems to me that there's a fine line between something that is inviting versus something that is distracting, and for me this falls into the latter category. I think it also sends a message that you don't trust the exhibits to engage the public and that, instead, you will bring in something else to entertain them.

I disagreed, and the puzzle stayed. We started a pretty fascinating (and yes, a little frustrating) dialogue about the puzzle and the question of what constitutes desired engagement in the museum.

Lisa and I have fundamentally different ideas of what a "good" museum experience is. For Lisa, the goal is for people to engage with the exhibitions. For me, the goal is for people to have an enjoyable, educational, cultural, social experience. That includes exhibitions, but it is not limited to them. I consider visitor experiences successful if people walk out inspired by art, stimulated by history, and eager to come back and share more with friends and family. I think it takes a diverse range of components to provide these outcomes, and I see the museum as a holistic experience comprising these components.

But for obvious reasons, Lisa cares about the experience people have with her exhibition specifically. When Lisa and I first discussed this, I argued that increased dwell time in the area and increased visitor comfort would likely lead to people spending more time looking at her work than would otherwise occur. But Lisa questioned this. Would visitors remember the puzzle or the exhibition around it? Is a contact high really sufficient when it comes to exhibition engagement?

This is a version of what I call "the petting zoo problem." An unnamed art museum once created an incredible interactive and participatory installation related to a temporary exhibition. This installation was a big hit by exhibition evaluation standards--high dwell time, high engagement, high satisfaction. But some people on staff at the museum questioned the validity of the installation, saying, "Of course people like it--it's a petting zoo. People love petting zoos."

To Lisa, the jigsaw puzzle is a petting zoo. Interestingly, she sees art and history books as more sympatico with the goals and intent of a museum, and she feels positively about people perusing them. I don't see the puzzle as different from the books--both are tools that offer people alternative activities, and I don't see one as more absorbing or distracting than the other. From my perspective, if one part's a petting zoo, it's all a petting zoo. But it's an on-mission petting zoo--and that's what matters to me.

There's no question that the Creativity Lounge (and the puzzle) is a hit with visitors. We've received several positive comments about it, and we've observed a major increase in dwell time and repeat use of the third floor lobby since the installation has gone up. Families who used to zip through in under a minute are now spending thirty minutes working on the puzzle and looking around. Teenagers are curling up with art magazines. One woman worked on the puzzle for two hours last week--when I asked, she said her teenage daughter was out shopping and she decided to come play in the museum while she waited.

To me, this is all good news. It demonstrates that we're on our way to becoming the "thriving, central gathering place" in our strategic plan. But it doesn't necessarily mean that more people are engaging with Lisa's exhibition more deeply. In the future, I'd love to make custom puzzles based on work in our collection (like the Columbus Museum of Art does) so that people can engage more deeply with those specific works. But I'll always also feel great about opportunities for people to engage with each other around culture in ways that are not exhibition- or collection-driven, because that's our mission too.

Now, two weeks later, I contacted Lisa again to ask if her opinion had changed after spending time in the space. Lisa wrote:

I do see a value in creating a space where people like to spend time and where they feel comfortable to just unwind and be. It's good for the museum to become important in more peoples' lives, thereby assuring (hopefully) its longer-term viability. If attendance and membership go up as you add more of the types of features that I would consider distractions, then maybe they're a good thing. Personally, it's a bit of a disappointment to me to think that the displays in the museum aren't sufficient to accomplish those goals, but I recognize that my own biases are just one piece of a much larger picture (or puzzle).

Kudos to Lisa for being open to a thoughtful dialogue about these issues. It's interesting to me that she talks about the displays not being "sufficient to accomplish those goals." I don't think of exhibitions as the be-all end-all of the museum experience, and so I don't think they should be sufficient on their own to accomplish our visitor experience goals. I don't think I'm devaluing exhibitions by adding the puzzle--I see it as an "and" that makes the whole museum a more desirable place to be.

I'm curious if you've dealt with similar debates at your own museums--either with external partners like Lisa or internally with other staff. What's your experience, and how have you resolved issues like this?

Open Thread: How Do You Feel About Music in Museums?

Should museums play music - in public spaces and or in galleries? If so, how should they determine what to play?

I asked this question on Facebook and Twitter, and the responses have been varied and fascinating. So I thought I'd open it up to the Museum 2.0 community, in hopes that we'll get some juicy international perspectives.

I'm conflicted on this issue.

Pros for music:

• Music helps designers frame the atmosphere for the intended experience at the museum. You can pick music that helps people get into a reflective, active, or social mood--whatever you are trying to achieve.
• A totally quiet, empty space can feel uncomfortable. Many visitors to our small museum have commented that they wish there was some music playing, and I assume that they believe it would help them have a more enjoyable experience.
• A low level of sound (music and or speaking) can provide a hum that helps people feel relaxed about talking in the museum. If it's not silent by design, people are more likely to override their "shussh!" expectations and talk.

Cons for music:

• While silence can be oppressive, music can be distracting.
• You can't please everyone. One person's favorite song makes another person want to stab themselves in the eye with a pencil. Most museums are trying to please everyone. They're not comfortable tailoring to an audience and saying "we're a jazz kind of place," or "we're a punk kind of place" the way a retail establishment would.
• Licensing fees. This shouldn't be a show stopper for a small institution that flies under the radar, but it's certainly worth considering.
• Repetitive music annoys staff. While I'm sensitive to this issue, I do not think it should be a serious factor in making a decision about this.

Lots of people online have weighed in with their "love it"s and "hate it"s. What I'd love to hear more of are reflections based on research and also clever ideas for HOW to use music if at all. Some of my favorite ideas that people have mentioned:

• having a sound curator and commissioning soundscapes for exhibitions (the City Museum in Arhus does this)
• inviting visitors to curate the tracklist
• sound installations in unusual places, like the elevator
• an experiment on how "incongruous" music might impact a viewing experience - i.e. techno in the art museum. I could imagine the same piece with a wildly varied soundtrack and asking people to talk about their response based on the song played.
• and of course, who could forget Machine Project's charming "personal audio tour" in which a visitor plugs his/her headphones into a guy with an electric guitar who follows the visitor around?

How have you seen music used effectively or disastrously in museums? What experiments or ideas would you like to try?

Empowering Staff to Take Creative Risks

What kind of support do you need to be confident about taking a risk in your work? What are you willing to risk to pursue your professional dreams?

Last week, at the annual meeting of the American Association of Museums in Houston, I was honored to chair a fabulous panel on empowering museum staff to take creative risks (slides here). This is a topic of particular fascination for me as someone who has worked as an external consultant/provocateur/risk-encourager and is now in the director's seat for the first time.

I was joined by Lori Fogarty (ED of the Oakland Museum of California), Adam Lerner (ED and Chief Animator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver), and Beck Tench (Director for Innovation and Digital Engagement at the Museum of Life and Science).

I learned three big things from this panel:

1. Risk-takers need space-makers.
2. Risk-takers and space-makers are different kinds of leaders.
3. Risk-takers often don't see their choices as risky.

Here's a bit more on each of these.

Risk-takers need "space-makers" to provide them with the support, the creative license, and the encouragement to try new things, fail, and get up again.

Beck beautifully described her entry into museum work. She was told from day one that her director would be disappointed in her if she "didn't fall flat on her face." At first, she was excited, but it took time and trust for her to really believe her supervisors and start to pursue challenging goals. Over time, she transitioned from being a risk-taker to also being a space-maker for others in her organization, holding their hands and cheerleading them through the beginning of a process that would eventually end with a hand-off in which the new risk-takers would take total ownership of their new projects.

This concept of space-making resonated with the rest of us, and it also got me thinking about healthy and unhealthy ways to do it. I've talked with many directors who say, "I tell my staff to take risks, but they don't." I suspect those directors are not following up their words with actions that demonstrate their trust and willingness to make space for experimentation and failure.

It's not easy to get this right. When I worked at The Tech Museum, I employed an less-evolved mode of space-making: the "blame me" approach. Whenever my team got worried that we were taking a risk and might get in trouble, I'd always say, "blame me." Yes, my willingness to take the heat helped us execute a risky project during tough times, but it didn't necessarily empower people to take risks on their own. Beck's approach, in which staff empower each other, is much better for an organization overall. It's one of the things that impresses me most about the Ruru Revolution project at Puke Ariki in New Zealand--it's a fabulous example of staff members making space for each other to take risks together.

It's also something I've seen work well in a workshop setting. When an external trainer gives everyone specific instructions to be silly or try something odd, everyone gets to go through the stress, excitement, and positive outcome that comes with healthy risk-taking. Over my time as a consultant, I shifted from planning risky projects with clients to spending much more time just experimenting with them, getting everyone to play and model what it would be like to make a larger risk possible.

Some directors are highly effective at empowering risk-taking by being supreme space-makers, whereas others lead by example as supreme creative risk-takers themselves. The outcome is very different.

At one point, Adam Lerner commented that Lori is the ultimate space-maker, supporting creative risk-takers throughout her organization, whereas Adam is more like the art director of a design firm, a risk-taker whose creative vision steers the boat. Both models work; the Oakland Museum of California (where Lori works) is an incredible example of a large, bureaucratic organization undergoing a radical, whole institution redesign, whereas the MCA Denver (Adam's museum) is a small, focused fount of creative expression and ingenuity.

Which kind of leader do you want to be? Which one can you be? Lori is a master of complex leadership, with an incredible strategic vision for how to support a diverse staff of risk-takers, fence-sitters, and in-betweeners. Adam is a creative genius who attracts and cultivates a risk-taking team that develops truly original programming with a consistent voice.

Both of these models are prone to dangers; space-makers like Lori can fall short in creating the right structure for risk-taking, and risk-takers like Adam can overly constrict the creative direction of an institution. If Lori is too gentle, her staff might not go far enough out of their comfort zones. If Adam is too wild, his staff could spend all their time being zany and not enough getting their jobs done.

I'm still figuring out who I want to be as a leader in my own organization. I've been seen for a long time as a creative risk-taker, but I honestly get the most value out of hearing from people who have run with ideas I've shared and done mind-blowing projects based on them. I think it's easy to undervalue the Loris and overvalue the Adams in this world. I know from where I sit, I feel like I have a lot more to learn about space-making for my staff, volunteers, and participants.

Ultimately, risk-takers are people for whom there is no other option. They take risks because they are driven to accomplish their dreams above all else.

When preparing this panel discussion, we spent some time wrangling as a group about the difference between "being creative" and "taking risks." None of us, especially Beck, Adam, and I, who all identify as creative risk-takers, could really parse out what was and wasn't a risk.

This became obvious when Adam told the story of how he ended up leaving the Denver Art Museum to start The Lab at Belmar (which merged two years ago with MCA Denver when he became director). Adam told us he would make these crazy powerpoint presentations with ideas for art events that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he would present these to his bosses at the Denver Art Museum. His supervisors kept saying no, nicely, and he kept making his powerpoints. Eventually, when a donor came to the Museum managers looking for someone to help him start an experimental art center in the Belmar shopping center, they introduced him to Adam.

What drove Adam to keep making these presentations? What drove me to volunteer for new tasks at the Spy Museum despite my boss kicking me under the table to try to dissuade me? What drives anyone who applies for a job they aren't qualified for or asks someone they've just met out on a date? I suspect none of these people would say they are taking a risk. They would say they are doing what they have to do to pursue their dreams.

When people tell me they work at an institution where the management doesn't provide the support to take risks, I ask why they stay. I know there are a hundred reasons why people do jobs that aren't entirely fulfilling, but for me personally, that issue is a deal-breaker. I've always been willing to risk my job to do what I thought was right/exciting/necessary, and I never felt like it was a risk. I felt like it was a reasonable tradeoff to do what I needed to do.

This leads to the funny problem of answering the questions at the top of this post. Risk-takers might be the worst at understanding what kind of space-making is necessary to help others feel confident and able to take risks themselves. What are you willing to risk to pursue your dreams? What advice would you give someone like me who doesn't wholly understand what is and isn't necessary to make risk-taking possible?

Guest Post: The Convivial Museum Photo Essay

I asked Wendy Pollock and Kathleen McLean, authors of the new book The Convivial Museum, to share a guest post about the book. They collaborated on this photo essay that demonstrates the simplicity and power of their vision and showcases a few images from the book.

At first glance, our new book, The Convivial Museum, is about the most simple ideas. Museums should make people feel welcomed and comfortable, be gracious and generous, design for a diversity of interests and needs, create situations that increase the likelihood of having a good conversation, and allow the time and space to let people reflect and imagine. "Nothing new here!" readers might say.

But while the ideas are simple, and they aren't new, how often are these basic acts of civility really put into practice? Why do visitors still report discomfort, confusion, elitism, exclusion? As we say in the book, "The phenomenon of 'visitor fatigue' was identified in studies carried out a hundred years ago. Why, then, has it taken so long to offer people a seat?"

We found one of our favorite photos on Flickr, taken by Austrian photographer Thom Trauner, who captures the essence of the issue.

What a contrast with this image by Darcie Fohrman.

Or this one by Lacey Criswell, of Bike Night at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

The quality of aliveness we see in these images is what we call conviviality. We chose the word "convivial" for several reasons. Its roots—together and being alive—characterize what we think is a major role and responsibility of museums: to be places where people can share their common humanity and to offer opportunities not only for learning and social engagement, but also for reflection and solitude in the presence of others.

While there are contrasts—like the utter fatigue of the first image and the animated delight in the next two—there are also many shades of gray.
Take these beautiful images by California photographer Jeff Voorhees, for example.

There's no "this, not that," no bullet list of rules to follow. But there is a community of thought that goes way back that we can draw on in our own daily practice. And that's where this book comes in.

That's why we've included so many voices and perspectives in this book. To acknowledge those who struggled to shape these ideas about what a museum should be at a time when they were not necessarily popular as well as those working toward conviviality today. And to reflect in this collage of images and quotations the gritty realities of daily practice.

The book is organized around five main ideas:

• Conviviality is what it means to "be alive together." In a recent post, Nina quoted Neil Postman's description of a museum as "an answer to a fundamental question: what does it mean to be a human being?" While that idea may not be "helpful" in Nina's words, we believe this shared humanity is what has kept museums alive over the centuries.
• People who work in museums must feel an authentic sense of welcome toward their visitors, and make that welcome evident—from a distance, on the steps and stairs, at the entryways, and throughout the orientation.
• As Beverly Serrell says, ". . . comfort opens the door to other positive experiences. Lack of comfort prevents them."
• Being alive together takes many shapes—from participation and social engagement, to being alone and taking time out.
• Convivial practice is simple, but it is not always easy.

We both know from our own experiences that societal, cultural, and organizational constraints make convivial practice difficult. But while some constraints are all too real, others may seem to loom larger than they really are. We hope that at the very least, The Convivial Museum will encourage people who work in museums to remember what they already know and to challenge their assumptions about what is possible and within their reach. As one of Wendy's t'ai chi teachers says, "You know it. Why don't you do it?"

This image of opening night at the Oakland Museum of California, April 2010, is by photographer Daniel Kokin.

In Praise of Tiny Failures

Everyone always talks about the learning value of failure. It's hard, it's painful, but you gain more than you lose--at least, that's how the story goes. In reality, we all spend most of our time trying to avoid failure, because the unpleasantness can have significant repercussions we may not want to trade for a shiny life lesson. Few people lose their savings, their job, or a relationship willingly.

And so I'd like to extoll a humble kind of failure: the small one that makes you laugh, learn, and move on to the next thing. Last week, I prototyped four exhibit ideas with the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Three were hits. One was a total dud. It was exhilarating at the end of the first day of testing to point to the poor performer, wag a finger, and dump it. We'd spent about 20 hours in development of each idea, and it felt just fine to trade that time for the things we learned in the process. Since it was just one of four prototypes, it didn't feel like our time was wasted; the failure helped us sort out what was working and what wasn't.

Four good things about this kind of failure:

1. It confirmed that there was a difference in visitor response to different facilitated activities. The fact that visitors hated one made their enjoyment of others seem more valid.
2. It suggested that we had designed a sufficiently risky set of experiments and were trying hard enough to find new and interesting ways to connect with visitors.
3. Practically, it let us focus on the other three prototypes and spend more time thinking about whether and how to scale them up.
4. The parallel approach softened the emotional blow of failing. I felt proud of all four of these ideas going into testing, but I was able to let the one that failed go easily, bolstered by the knowledge that the other three worked. I think in the future I'll try to always test several things in parallel--it was a good experience both for the ego and for the part of my brain that can make better judgments of things in comparison to each other than in isolation.

When I practice rock climbing at an indoor gym, I take the same approach. I know I'm going to climb multiple walls in one session, and as long as I'm being safe, my perspective is that I should fall at least once every time. If I'm not falling, I'm not pushing myself. It's not a life or death failure--it's a momentary, incremental test that helps me learn something and compare my current skills to the past. It also helps me prepare for outdoor climbing, where the stakes of failure are much higher.

And this is the final thing I think is beneficial about small failures; they help us have perspective about the range of impacts that failure can make. A friend recently sent me an interview with Google's head of research, Peter Norvig, in which he said:

If you're a politician, admitting you're wrong is a weakness, but if you're an engineer, you essentially want to be wrong half the time. If you do experiments and you're always right, then you aren't getting enough information out of those experiments. You want your experiment to be like the flip of a coin: You have no idea if it is going to come up heads or tails. You want to not know what the results are going to be.

He noted again and again that at Google, failure is always an option because the work they are doing is not life or death. Throughout the interview, he compared Google to other businesses--banks, NASA, surgeons--for whom a small error or an experimental approach might indeed cause very big problems.

Cultural professionals are, for the most part, not dealing with situations that could cause monumental, life-altering trauma. We need to be able to put our failures into perspective--the big and the small. And at least for me, that starts with trying multiple things at once. At the end of the day, you can toast the good and give a hearty Bronx cheer to the bad, without regret or self-judgment.

How do you cultivate and deal with failure in your work?

Take a Seat: Beautiful, Casual Areas at the Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts

When I was in Taiwan, I heard again and again from museum professionals: "We are very conservative in Taiwanese museums. We're not doing innovative things with visitor participation or Web 2.0. Everyone is so focused on everything looking perfect and the curator's voice only."

This may be true. I didn't see a single comment book on my trip. But I did see something that inspired me quite a lot: a gorgeous, innovative setting for visitors to sit, chat, explore art, and rest.

This post is a photo essay focusing on an area at the Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts called the Digiark. The Digiark is a connected but separate building that showcases media art.

The Digiark is big--about 4000 square feet--and designed with a meandering, casual experience in mind. I was told that media-based art is fairly new to Taiwanese people and that the museum wanted to introduce visitors to it in a relaxed, friendly setting. The space was sparsely attended during the couple of days when I visited, and primarily by teenagers and families. I think its distance from the main building affected its attendance; a shame considering everything it had to offer.

Walking in, you are not bombarded with art. The current show was about "hyper perception," but the five (quite good) new media pieces were dwarfed by the space itself. Instead of a traditional gallery, you see plywood benches, recycled water jugs, whimsical light fixtures, and lots of nooks where you can explore books, computers, and projection-based artworks. The look blends funkiness with clean lines, industrial space with natural light.

The nooks have lovely seating areas with views out the window to the beautiful garden plaza that separates the main building from the Digiark. In this image, you can see part of a sound installation that winds throughout the whole space. Put your ears to an orange tube and you will hear the sounds of people throughout the gallery, echoed and time-delayed. It's a form of "hyper perception"--the theme of the current exhibition.

It's not all perfect-looking, intentionally. While the nooks were designed to showcase clean lines and natural materials, they don't hide the parts that make the technology work. I liked being able to sit on a couch and "spy" on the kids using the computer on the other side of the wall. Overall, the low walls, slatted wood, and open nooks invited intimacy with the work without closing people off from each other--good for socializing and chaperoning.

The Digiark was also designed cleverly for flexible use. Most of the walls have a swinging apparatus that allows them to lock into at least two different positions. This is especially useful given that many times they have to enclose projection works of different sizes into darker nooks. It also has a nice aesthetic, contributing both to the industrial feel and creating a sense that the walls are floating.

There were signs telling people not to sleep, but some still found the time to kick back and enjoy a restful break between exhibitions.

And with a view like this, who can blame them?

The whole Digiark experience was permeated by a sense of leisure, of slowing down. It reminded me of the restorative feeling of being at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art north of Copenhagen, and it made me wonder: how many kinds of artwork would be more fruitfully enjoyed in a relaxed setting with couches and natural light? I find it fascinating that the Digiark is focused on media art--work that is often placed in the blackest of black boxes, and is often more full of multi-sensory, active stimulation than works produced with more traditional media. I would love to explore traditional artworks in this kind of environment as well. Relax, enjoy, learn, think, talk, relax. Leave refreshed instead of wiped out. Maybe this is why people love sculpture gardens so much.

What do you think?

What Does it Really Mean to Serve "Underserved" Audiences?

Let's say you work at an organization that mostly caters to a middle and upper-class, white audience. Let's say you have a sincere interest in reaching and working with more ethnically, racially, and economically diverse audiences. What does it take to make that happen?

Last week, I had the honor and pleasure of giving a talk at an institution I've long admired: the Taylor Community Science Resource Center at the St. Louis Science Center. Besides having the longest name on the planet, the Taylor Center is one of my greatest inspirations when it comes to an institution authentically and whole-heartedly making a difference in the lives of underserved community members.

The Taylor Center is run by Diane Miller, who launched its award-winning Youth Exploring Science program in 1997. Diane is both visionary and no-nonsense about deconstructing the barriers that many low-income and non-white teenagers and families face when entering a museum. Most large American museums are reflections of white culture. There are expectations around what people wear, what they can and can't do, and how they relate to each other that may be comfortable for whites while feeling alien for people who don't grow up in a white culture. I'm white, and several of the things Diane told me about are things I don't notice because I'm part of the majority culture. Guards staring at black teens and grumbling about their clothes. People who feel pressured to sit quietly through a film when they've grown up in theaters that encourage vocal participation with the show.

When Diane started running community partnerships at the Science Center in the 1990s, she decided not to start with programs to bring more black and economically-disadvantaged families to the museum as visitors. Instead, she went out into local neighborhoods with low-income families and lousy schools and asked parents how they felt about their kids' science education. The parents told her they felt okay about what their kids were learning but were concerned about their children's job prospects as adults. So Diane asked them, "What if I hire your kids and pay them to learn science, teach it to other people, and gain professional skills?"

This is the root of the Youth Exploring Science (YES) program. Most teenagers join the program at fourteen and stay through their high school years. During the school year, they spend one day per week at the Taylor Center working on science projects and leading science programs for young children, seniors, and other community groups. In the summer, they spend 8 weeks working full-time at the Taylor Center learning and facilitating public programs. What started with 15 students in 1997 has grown to support 200 students per year. The program is rigorous, engaging students in serious scientific projects as well as personal and professional development workshops.

YES students defy expectations. They graduate high school in record numbers and the majority go on to post-secondary education. Diane told me several stories about teens who came in thinking of themselves as dumb but changed their perspective as their confidence grew in two areas they associated with intelligence--knowing science and being able to teach. If you can teach science, how can you be stupid? Diane told me about one young man who raised his grade point average in a single school year from 1.0 to 3.0. She asked him, "How did you do this? I don't understand what happened." And he said, "It's easy. I was misdiagnosed." Many of these kids come in mis- or self-diagnosed as dumb or incapable. YES changes that.

YES is carefully designed to support opportunities for disadvantaged kids to get involved with science. These kids are different from the mostly middle or upper-class white kids who volunteer at many science centers. Many YES teens don't come in with confidence about their own abilities. Many of them don't have the clothes required to go to a job interview. Many of them continue to be looked at suspiciously on the bus or on the street, even when they are traveling to and from a job site where they do incredible work for their community. Many of them don't come in focused on a particular topic or even science in general. The YES program helps teens not only learn science but learn how to articulate their interests and pursue new passions.

All these disadvantages don't mean that these teenagers can't be competent workers, superlative contributors, and successful learners. It doesn't mean that these teenagers are any less valuable to the St. Louis Science Center or society as a whole than others. But it does mean that they need different scaffolds and support mechanisms to succeed.

Diane pointed out several design features of the Taylor Center that uniquely serve these teenagers. Most of the walls are clear, so the space feels open, welcoming, and safely overseen. YES student projects last for several years, and teens are given dedicated space for their projects. Their work stays up on the walls and they have ownership over their project space for the long term; no one is going to reset everything or give up on them in mid-stream. There is healthy food in the fridge, and this summer, the Taylor Center became part of the city subsidized lunch program, offering a daily meal to local kids who receive free lunch at school but don't have a comparable meal source in the summer.

The Taylor Center is also explicitly not inside the St. Louis Science Center (although there are plans eventually to move to the main campus). The YES teens do most of their work as science educators within the Taylor Center, a place that they know and feel is "their" space. Some YES teens do work in the Science Center itself as well as providing outreach programs to other community centers, but for the most part, the YES program benefits from the controlled, safe environment of the Taylor Center.

The YES program doesn't just benefit the teens who participate and the community groups they serve. The Taylor Center is a testbed for the St. Louis Science Center to think more concretely about how to build successful community partnerships and how to confront internalized biases or obstacles that prevent more diverse involvement. At one point in the discussion last week, someone from the audience asked a question about whether "nontraditional" audiences really need a different kind of mediation than other museum visitors. The questioner noted that visitors have been using museums for their own diverse purposes since the beginning of time. Why can't new visitors do the same?

Diane told an amazing story in response. At one point, some YES teens told her that they thought more people from their communities would enjoy the Science Center and the other museums in St. Louis' Forest Park, which happen to be free. As they put it, "if there's one thing poor families are looking for, it's free things to do on the weekends." So the teens worked with the YES staff to put together a grant proposal in which they would partner with families at St. Louis homeless shelters to introduce them to the local museums.

The proposal was funded, and YES teens partnered up with individual homeless families on monthly outings to museums in Forest Park. The teens had an innate understanding of how it feels to be a new museum visitor, and they crafted the program carefully based on their knowledge. The teens paired up one-on-one with families, so that they could blend in easily and look like individual families instead of like a conspicuous tour group. They helped the families understand what's in the museums, how to approach exhibits, how to figure out when you can use an interactive element--all the cultural secrets that are easy for frequent museum-goers to forget. The YES teens were able to make a connection and design a program in a way that was more culturally appropriate and likely to succeed than traditional museum staff members likely could.

This story illustrates what advocates like Elaine Heumann Gurian have been saying for years: museums need to go to unfamiliar lengths to truly welcome and serve new audiences. You have to be open to listening, open to change, open to confronting unspoken biases about the "right" way to experience or engage with your institution. And you have to find ways to promote diversity, not as a nice to have, but as a must have. In the case of the St. Louis Science Center, YES teens have unique backgrounds, knowledge, expectations, and needs that positively enhance the all staff members' ability to serve wider audiences. Humble thanks to Diane, YES staff, and the teens for generously reminding me how illuminating and necessary it can be to see the world through someone else's eyes.

Guest Post: A Tale of Two University Museums

This guest post was written by Margaret Middleton, a Bay Area-based exhibit developer and fabricator. Margaret shared these thoughts about "museums for use" on her blog, and I asked her to adapt a version for the Museum 2.0 audience.

Should a museum be a destination or a place for everyday use? Nina Simon posed this provocative question at a recent presentation, and it got me thinking about the differences between museum "users" and "visitors." I immediately recalled a phenomenon I witnessed as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

During my time at RISD studying industrial design, I developed relationships with two museums on campus: the Museum of Art and the Nature Lab. The Rhode Island School of Design was established in 1877 alongside its Museum of Art, an important resource for RISD students. The Museum hosts collections directly related to the majors offered at the school, including painting, sculpture, and decorative art and design. The Edna Lawrence Nature Lab was established in 1937, also as a resource for students. Instead of works of art, the Nature Lab offers taxidermy specimens, bones, seed pods, and other natural items. Both buildings are located within whispering distance of one another at the heart of the city-scattered campus. Both are free for students. Both identify themselves museums with curators, a collection, and a similar mission: to inspire and captivate RISD students. And yet, the Museum of Art is often overlooked or dismissed outright by students while the Nature Lab is cherished and spoken of fondly.

It was always obvious to me which was the preferred resource. I worked in the Museum of Art for my four years at RISD and when I'd talk about my tour-guide job there, other students would say, "Oh yeah, I never go there," or sometimes, "I should go there sometime," as if they felt guilty for not visiting. But I never heard the Museum referred to with the same glassy-eyed endearment that the Nature Lab enjoyed. Lack of appreciation for the Museum became even more apparent when it was announced that the Museum would be undergoing a massive renovation and addition. Students talked about the new plans with disgust, insulted that the money was going to the Museum instead of their studios. Museum expansion was the topic of many a heated Student Alliance meeting. Regardless of the fact that the grant was specifically for the Museum and the school did not have the choice of funding studio space instead, clearly students didn't see the expansion as benefiting them.

The Museum attempts to attract students to its impressive 8,000 piece collection with various programs and exhibitions, some more successful than others. The Sitings contest invites students to propose an installation and the two proposals that win each year are awarded grants and displayed in the Museum. Faculty shows tempt students into the Museum to see the work of their professors. The Siskind Center gives students and the public the opportunity to pore over the photography in the Museum's large collection of works on paper. Evening events entice with the promise of music and food. You might think that would be sufficient effort to engage the students, but a quick informal poll suggests otherwise.

The Museum is open the usual 10-5, Tuesday-Sunday. You can't bring in an ink pen without a permit. The evening events attract mostly older community members instead of students. As much as I loved spending time in the Museum, drawing the sculptures, chatting with the docents, giving my friends informal tours, and enjoying bluegrass music in the painting gallery, I knew that not everyone felt so free in the museum environment. They preferred the cluttered, noisier, grittier atmosphere of the Nature Lab. To them, the Nature Lab was much more accessible.

While the Nature Lab does admit the general public, the majority of users are RISD students and the place is nearly always packed. And effortlessly: no programs, no big exhibitions, just old animal skulls and sea shells. The Lab is open late, the visible staff is almost entirely students, and they play mix tapes over the stereo. You don't have to sign up to use wet media, you can touch many of the specimens, and you can even check some of them out. Some of the display cases contain mini-exhibitions curated by students.

Though both are meant for student use, the Museum attracts visitors while the Nature Lab attracts users. If the Museum wants the students to use the Museum the way they use the Nature Lab, it needs to be accessible, work-focused, and have a variety of low-commitment entry points.

Here are a few things I think the Museum could learn from the Nature Lab:

Inviting art-making: Design students will always tell you they can’t go out tonight; they have work to do. Secretly, they want to be socializing once in a while just like anyone else. The Nature Lab is a great way to multitask because it’s a space to create artwork and there’s a built-in social component. If the Museum is a place to visit, students won’t make the time for it, but if it’s a place to use, it becomes a higher priority.

As someone who spent lots of time in the Museum sketching, I know creating artwork in the Museum is permitted. However, it’s understandable that not everyone feels comfortable doing so. With all the signs stating what visitors can’t do in the space and the fact that the space isn’t set up for art-making, there are no visual cues that it’s a safe space to set up an easel without getting a stern look from a guard. Students need to be invited personally: “please come and create art here.” Invitations would need to come in many forms: welcoming signage, actively accommodating docents and desk staff, and easels and drawing benches set up in galleries. Students need familiar charcoal-smudged easels and benches that don’t feel sacred. Not only would it improve the students’ relationship with the museum, it would attract other non-student visitors; anyone who has created artwork in public knows that people absolutely love to see artists at work. It reminds visitors that the art they are looking at was created by a human being and it can inspire them to look at the world around them in new ways and maybe feel less intimidated by the art-making process.

Display techniques: It’s risky to set up an art museum in the curio-cabinet style of the Nature Lab. But a more packed-in display can feel less static and lead to a more permissive atmosphere that invites dialogue and (hopefully) art-making. It’s something that’s already starting to happen at the RISD Museum. An excellent example of unconventional display techniques is the controversial salon-style make-over the main painting gallery underwent. Once a traditionally hung, neutral-walled gallery of oil on canvas, the main painting gallery has become an overwhelming space, chock-full of artwork from floor to ceiling with deep blue walls setting off the gold frames. There's an energy in that space that invites a bit more discussion of the artwork, even if it might sometimes be a discussion about how difficult it is to get a good look at the top paintings. And some of the new galleries in the Chace Center are set up in a more packed-in, cluttered way that feels more energetic and stimulating. As long as the over-stuffed galleries have room for students to sketch comfortably, I think this is the right direction.

Ownership: Students feel like they own the Nature Lab because their peers run the front desk and play music for them. There are no chaperones standing in the corner, and they have opportunities to customize the space with mini-exhibitions. Even just seeing a casually-dressed classmate behind the front desk at the Museum of Art would increase a sense of ownership.

Programming: I don’t think that the Museum needs more programming. We artists and designers love our cheese-cube-and-wine-fueled Gallery Nights and those should stay. The same goes for the Museum’s very successful Music Fridays and other nightlife events. However, these special occasion draws are not the community-building tradition-creating experiences that students get from on-campus hangouts. The Nature Lab is successful because its big draw isn't reliant on programming. It relies entirely on the collection and the atmosphere of the space.

I don't think that all art museums need to be like this model I suggest. There's definitely a place for white-walled museums with quiet, contemplative atmospheres and I'd hate to see places like that disappear. But the RISD Art Museum was not meant to be a traditional museum. Its goal is to provide students with an inspiring collection of objects to use and aid them in their studies. In that respect, the Museum has missed its mark where its younger, quirkier cousin the Nature Lab has filled a need. The Museum could really benefit from a long hard look at itself and its mission and take a few cues from the time-honored, student-approved institution around the corner.

Complicity, Intimacy, Community

At a recent talk, a colleague from the Exploratorium asked me a very simple question. He noted that many institutions I talk about that successfully foster personal relationships with visitors are small places. How, he asked, could a large museum that serves hundreds of thousands of people per year foster the same sense of personal connection and community that a small one can achieve?

I didn't quite know how to answer this question. I think small museums are generally better than large ones at fostering local communities of visitors and members. While there are tools and tricks that large institutions can use to approximate personalization, it's easier to get to know people personally when they number in the hundreds and not in the hundreds of thousands. The sense of intimacy that comes with the relationships you can form in a small place is hard to match in a large one.

But then an exhibit designer, Darcie Fohrman, made a comment that changed my perspective. "You know," she said, "I feel that kind of intimacy in one of my favorite museums and it's a huge institution." Darcie described the Centre Pompidou in Paris as a place where she is surrounded by working artists, where things change frequently, and where she feels as a visitor that anything can happen. She described a certain feeling of goodwill towards other visitors, saying it's a place where she naturally falls into smiles and conversation with strangers.

This got me thinking about the relationship between intimacy and complicity. Darcie was describing was a marvelous sense of complicity she felt with fellow visitors at the Centre Pompidou--a sense that they were in the experience together. It didn't require the staff at the front desk remembering her name or building a personal relationship with her. It required a certain kind of place and feeling that visitors manage (mostly) on their own.

We've all experienced complicity with strangers, whether sharing a knowing smile with someone at an intersection or seeing the gleam in the eyes of a fellow fan at a sports event or concert. Complicity makes big places feel intimate. It makes spontaneous feelings of comfort and community possible.

What makes complicity more common in some large spaces than others? To some extent, complicity is determined by individual attitude. When people are afraid, unsettled, or uncertain of a situation, they may be less likely to see others as complicit partners in a pleasurable experience. When I'm lost in a crowd, I feel the intense loneliness of a sea of strangers, but when I'm confidently striding down the same street, I feel the warmth of those around me who are also enjoying the day.

But there are some places that are designed in ways that make it easier to swing toward complicity and away from fear. Institutions and areas that clearly delineate how the space should be used put people at ease about what they can do (and what others might do in relation to them). For example, standing in line at a movie theater, everyone shares the excitement and energy of the show they are about to see. This sense of complicity is reinforced and supported by the fact that people obey the rules of the line and don't push past each other. When people cut the line, it breaks that implicit community pact and makes the space less pleasant and friendly.

How can cultural professionals encourage feelings of complicity among visitors to our institutions?

• Help visitors understand clearly and in a friendly way what is and isn't allowed. When visitors feel confident about their roles and opportunities, they are more likely to feel able to extend their experience in a social direction. In the best of these situations, visitors are naturally inclined to spontaneously teach others how to use exhibits or share what they see--happily taking on a complicit role of friend and helpmate.
• Where possible, staff should act as friends, partners, and helpers instead of enforcers. I wouldn't be surprised if there is an direct relationship between the tone of security guards in a museum and the amount of complicity felt by visitors. When people feel that they are being watched and monitored for potential transgressions, they start to worry--"Maybe other people aren't following the rules! Maybe I'm not following the rules! Maybe I'm going to get in trouble!" All of these concerns lead to fear and away from community experiences.
• Design galleries and spaces to be used comfortably by large numbers of visitors. When visitors see each other as distracting or preventing them from accessing an exhibit, they are unlikely to see each other as partners in experience. When exhibits support group play, are numerous enough for no one to feel anxiety about "missing out," and accommodate many visitors easily, people are more likely to feel positively inclined toward each other.
• Design exhibits that attract a crowd and invite group play. I've written before about the fact that large, active objects are often natural social objects. When families crowd around to watch a model train traverse its course or a fountain dance in the wind, they often end up pointing things out to strangers, sharing a smile and a special moment. When designers consider sight lines across exhibitions or performance spaces, there are opportunities to promote complicity among visitors who are at a "safe" distance from each other as strangers. Zoos and aquaria are wonderful at this, with many exhibits designed to naturally invite visitors to point things out across distances to each other.

When we encourage complicity in cultural institutions, we encourage shared play and learning. Complicity can make a large place feel intimate and communal. And the community feeling happens in a way that feels natural and visitor-driven.

Do you have a story of a time when complicity with strangers changed your experience? What design elements made that experience possible?

Museums, Church, and Doable Evangelism

I often think museums are like church--passionately loved by staff and devout audiences, irrelevant or off-putting to lapsed or uninterested adults, alien and overwhelming to newcomers. Devotees would like to attract new audiences, but must balance the desire to make newbies feel welcome with authentic demonstration of core values, beliefs, and practices.

What is the appropriate way to evangelize cultural institution use to the unconverted? Is it the "mission" of cultural professionals to help people connect to what we see as positive personal and community outcomes, and if so, how should we go about it?

On Nov. 6, the radio show This American Life included a segment about bait and switch tactics used by Christian evangelicals to entice non-believers onto the path to salvation. The show coupled an uncomfortable ex-evangelical sharing deceitful techniques he had engaged in with a minister named Jim Henderson talking about "doable evangelism," a practice that doesn't rely on what he deemed "acting like jerks."

Jim argued that many pastors overfocus on "conversion-centric evangelism," expending effort on sneaky pitches and highly produced rallies that result in previously non-religious people making statements of faith in Jesus. He suggested that those events are not effective in creating Christians in a meaningful way--the statistics of conversion and continued involvement are abysmal--and that Jesus' instruction to "make disciples" requires much more than making "converts." Instead, Jim and his compatriots focus on being good Christians, connecting with other people in real relationships free of artifice, and hopefully, enriching community members' lives with the evidence of their own faith.

Jim cares more about helping people to the "finish line" of lifelong Christian practice then getting them over the "starting line" via some kind of bait and switch. His techniques sound a lot like model social media practice: listening, being respectful, and encouraging ordinary Christians (not just experts) to act as evangelists. He spends time with non-believers visiting churches and talking about what's persuasive, what's off-putting, and how they think about faith. He does what so many cultural professionals are fearful of or see as a waste of time: "helping Christians see themselves through the eyes of outsiders."

Jim made me think of the recent debate about blockbuster exhibits with tenuous ties to institutional mission, as well as evening events that are more about socializing than content experiences. So many of cultural institutions' efforts are focused on getting people over the starting line--into museums, paying tickets--as opposed to focusing on the long game of connecting people to cultural pursuits in a sustained way. And while first-time attendance may be a good step towards lifelong connection, Jim would argue that if a visitor comes for the first time based on a lie, you are unlikely to build a meaningful relationship with that individual.

How can cultural professionals practice "doable evangelism"--making new visitors feel welcome and encouraged without resorting to activities that are not mission-relevant? A couple ideas:

• Welcome new visitors with genuine affection and interest. Vishnu Ramcharan, who manages the floor staff (called "hosts") at the Ontario Science Centre, has a simple rule for hosts working the lobby: treat every visitor like you are thrilled that he or she has come today. Not excited generally or about the institutional content, but sincerely pleased that that person in particular has arrived. While overenthusiasm can be off-putting, genuine interest is almost always a comforting start to a new experience. Content in non-majority languages, strollers, and other affordances help too.
  
• Help people understand why you do what you do. I'm amazed by the number of museums that don't make it crystal clear that admission tickets help pay for research, education, and outreach activities by the institution. Make it clear that your institution is there to help the community. Encourage staff to share why love their work, the objects on display, and the stories behind them.
• Listen to what visitors and non-believers say about your institution. Two years ago, my dad and I embarked on a podcast project called Museum Hater. The idea was that we would visit museums and talk with each other (and other visitors, and people outside) about what didn't work for them. After getting thrown out of one museum and rejected by others, we aborted the project. Museums saw us as a threat, but we thought we were going to expose the discrepancy between staff and visitors perceptions to mutual benefit of everyone. Even if you don't want my dad and I to come to your institution, consider taking off your badge sometime and engaging in some of these conversations with visitors and other community members.
  
• Thank people for coming, and encourage them to reflect on the visit's outcomes. A good host isn't just happy to see you enter; she also enjoys the goodbye at the end of a satisfying interaction. In his book Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience, John Falk suggests that it is just as important to confirm that visitors have had their needs met and to validate the positive outcome of the visit as it is to provide affordance for those needs in the first place.
  
• Make your core ideals clear in other community venues. Evangelism can mean being present in larger conversations related to your content outside your institution's walls. This can be formal--like children's museum staff getting involved with local parks and school boards--or informal, like science museum staff pitching in on the climate change talk on Twitter.

What do you think? Is "doable evangelism" something we should strive for? Or is the starting line so important that we need to keep focusing on getting people in the door?

Eight Other Ways to "Connect with Community"

Last month, the Christian Science Monitor published an article entitled, "Museums' new mantra: Connect with community." It took me a couple weeks (and various museum blog responses) to realize what bugs me about this article--it treats "connecting with community" as a marketing ploy, a "mantra" rather than a mission. While there is much talk about supporting participation and making museum content relevant, the word "community" hangs like a poorly-defined carrot on a shtick. The article ends with this unfortunate quote from marketing consultant Roger Sametz:

"It's all about making personal, meaningful connections with a community, now."

It sounds as if Mr. Sametz is frantically casing city streets with a heat-seeking metal detector, on the hunt for a miscellaneous batch of confused folks whom he can stun into "connection."

Who is this mysterious and desirable community with whom museums wish to connect? The general public is not a community. Nor is "everyone who doesn't currently visit here." The article suggests that museums have previously served one community--"traditional" museum patrons who are white and elderly--and must now be relevant to several other communities that are diverse in cultural, educational, and socio-economic backgrounds. This seems a little ungenerous to museums; while institutions may bestow more love upon wealthy, elderly donors than the general visiting public, museums have actively courted mass audiences for years. The problem--one which is not addressed in the article--is that museums have not been willing to cater to new target audiences to the exclusion of their traditional patrons. We're always happy for more bodies in the door, but if supporting teens means alienating seniors, there's a problem.

Connecting with communities means making conscious decisions that invite in particular people. It means making some conscious choices that push your institution towards being more of a "third place." The article references connecting with young people via social media, at-risk youth via exhibit co-creation, and urban creatives via public art installations. But it skips some of the fundamental design and operational choices that separate community centers from the rest of the civic and cultural landscape.

And so I'd like to suggest a few other ways to "connect with community." In most cases, they are less flashy than those covered in the CS Monitor, but that doesn't diminish their utility (or the challenges inherent in making them happen).

1. Pick a specific community (or two). Don't say that your institution will be a "town square for the community." Which community? The Filipino community? The student community? The homeless community? Pick a group of people to whom you would like to be relevant, and work with them to deliver programs that meet their needs. When their needs conflict with other pre-existing communities' needs, make a choice. Prioritizing a community demonstrates that you care about them and are willing to defend their needs. The Brooklyn Museum allows skateboarders to use their public outdoor space, much to the chagrin of some locals. But they stick by the skateboarders as a community of value.
2. Be free, nearly free, often free, or free for locals. Community centers don't ask you to cough up a $20 every time you come to hang out. While free admission has not been shown to shift the overall demographics of museum visitors on its own, it sets an expectation that this is a place you can use whenever you like, for as long as you like. It's not a recreational destination you visit once a year. It's a place you can use.
   
3. Be open at times that your "community" is likely to come. I was at San Diego's Balboa Park two weeks ago for a workshop and spent a glorious evening wandering the gardens, outdoor concert halls, and sports fields. There were thousands of people in the park for plays, free music, and beautiful scenery. And none of the museums in the park was open. Extending museum hours makes it easier for people to integrate museum-going into their evening recreational time and diminishes the prepare-to-visit-destination behavior.
   
4. Open your doors really wide. Lots of museums look like fortresses against the streetscape. They are protected by expansive parking lots or metal gates. The more museums can be porous to the outdoor environment and continuous with other neighborhood venues and businesses, the more easily people can flow into them as part of their day.
   
5. Make time for staff to hang out with visitors. There are many museums that require all staff to spend an hour a week working the floor or the front desk of the museum. These programs are usually used to help staff have a better sense of front-line needs and challenges, but they're also an obvious way to help all staff literally "connect" with visitors. Recently, I've been talking with one art center about turning their "floor hour" into an "art hour" where staff can do whatever creative activity appeals to them and might help them relate to visitors. Not all staff want to actively lead tours or programs, but if "connecting with community" is a core part of your mission, then all staff should have some aspect of their performance evaluation tied to making nice.
6. Appreciate regulars. Is a big corporation like Starbucks really better at promoting a sense of community than museums? If a barista can remember your double soy latte, why can't museums give special treatment to members and frequent visitors? I've been writing a lot about regulars and loyalty recently. There's no way we can serve a "community" if we act like amnesiacs every time they come back through the door. Museums need to develop ways to track frequency of use, whether with technology or otherwise As David Gilman commented, "How can we be friends if I not only keep forgetting things about you, but never learn them to begin with?"
7. Make food and drink and comfy chairs available. In Ray Oldenberg's list of hallmarks of a "third place," food and drink ranks as not essential but very important. Museums are fatiguing. People like to sit down and drink a cup of coffee or a beer. Even better is the opportunity to drink a beer while checking out an exhibit--most museums separate food and comfort from the exhibit experience, creating a false dichotomy between the place where you hang out and the place where you engage with museum content. The ideal situation is one like that at El Rio, a bar in San Francisco that lets you bring your own food and also offers free barbecues and oysters every week. Nothing says community like free bbq on the patio.
   
8. Consider operating a storefront in the community. If you want to reach out to a community that is not within walking distance of your institution, why not open a satellite in their neighborhood? One of the reasons that 826 Valencia is so successful as a tutoring center is its location right in the middle of a busy mixed-use urban neighborhood. The "community" doesn't have to leave their block to get there. Commercial real estate is cheap right now (and getting cheaper). The Denver Community Museum was an entire institution in a little storefront. Imagine what a big museum could do with a little space.
   

I'd like to close with a few words from the "About Us" section of El Rio's website. This bar ("El Rio: Your Dive") may be humble, but it "connects with community" with flying colors. Their About Us section is mostly not about them, but about the ways they want to connect with you, their potential community.

Check out the way that they welcome in different particular communities...

We are a mixed bar- all sexualities, colors, ages(21+) are encouraged and very welcome.
We are a bar so you must be 21+ to enter. We id folks we don't know.
We welcome people with disabilities. Our entrance and most of the club are wheelchair accessible, including the back deck but not the yard. Our bathrooms are not wheelchair accessible and do not have grab bars (and would not be accessible without assistance). We do not have a parking lot. For more information, please call 415.282.3325 We will do our best to accommodate you!
We have no dress code but a strong preference for tutu's and wigs.

Or how they communicate their values...

We love nice people.
We love kids but can't allow them because of foolish laws.
We love people who clean up after themselves, a lot.
We love this place, it's our home.
We have a pool table, shuffle board, juke box and have been known to have very loud dice games.
We are a work in progress and open to hearing opinions so speak up. See the link to the left.

And a final statement...

And lastly, we are not for everyone but for those of you who feel welcome and at home, we are very, very happy you found us.

What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

It’s true. I went to Wyoming and learned that I am an elitist when it comes to national parks. I like my parks hard to access, sparsely populated, and minimal in services. It’s an uncomfortable truth which is forcing me to examine my arguments for inclusivity, access, and populism in museums.

I visited two parks last week: the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. In the Tetons, I had a highly exclusive, hard to access, fabulous experience. I carried a 40-pound backpack up and down mountains and across snowfields for four days with friends. It’s an experience that requires permits, maps, physical ability, gear—a long list of barriers to entry. Few people go for it. That’s part of why I love it.

Yellowstone, on the other hand, was an access dream—and my nightmare. You could drive right up to the geysers. There were wide, flat, paved paths between the natural features. There were benches to sit on, interpretative signs to read, ice cream to eat, and trinkets to buy. There were people and trashcans everywhere. I hated it.

I realize that I have more frequently advocated for Yellowstone-style museums than Grand Teton-style ones. I believe in lowering barriers to access and creating opportunities for visitors to use museums in diverse ways. On this trip, for the first time, I truly understood the position of people who disagree with me, those who feel that eating and boisterous talking in museums is not only undesirable but violating and painful. For elitists, it’s impossible to ignore the ways others are degrading what is for you an intense aesthetic and emotional experience. I get it now. I felt it at Yellowstone.

Understanding what it feels like to be the elitist jerk helps me have a more nuanced perspective on inclusivity and access. Yes, I am a jerk—but only when it comes to my own experience. I and my outdoor values are in the minority. The national parks do not solely, or even mostly, belong to me and my backpacking friends. They belong to the millions in RVs who make the trek to Yellowstone and Yosemite every year. Providing services to support and encourage their visitation makes good sense. They are the great big public, and giving them comfort and access makes national parks a valid and worthwhile alternative to theme parks and resorts.

And while I may have had a day of frustration, supporting their experiences ultimately doesn't hinder mine. I don’t need Yellowstone; I have hundreds of remote, gorgeous mountains to climb in my life. For the people who will never engage at that level, Yellowstone is a necessary, useful option and an entry point that may inspire a few folks to increase their outdoor prowess and join me off the beaten path.

As an experience consumer, I have the luxury of being a jerk. It’s acceptable for me to only respect the parkgoers and services that reflect my values. But if I were a parks interpreter, an experience provider, that attitude would be reprehensible and highly derogatory towards guests.

And herein lies a reason (one which previously eluded me) inclusivity is looked at skeptically by some museum leaders. They are elitist jerks! Museum directors love museums so deeply and are such sophisticated users of them that they want to protect the kinds of experiences they would choose to have as visitors. I feel fortunate that when it comes to museums, I am more similar to the bewildered, skeptical public than the sophisticated few. I don’t feel the pain elitists feel—I feel the pain that the vast majority of visitors feel.

And so I look back on the thousands of people who streamed by me in the Yellowstone parking lot with revulsion—as a jerk. But I also identify with them and look at them with hope and excitement. They are at the park. They didn’t have to be there, but they perceived something of value there and they came. They drove thousands of miles, and they deserve to roll along flat paths in their wheelchairs and strollers. They deserve ice cream with their geysers. As an elite park user, I have plenty of resources at my disposal, from maps to rangers to well-maintained backcountry trails. The Yellowstone visitors, who account for a hugely larger percentage of park visitors, deserve great resources as well. And it’s okay if I don’t care to use them.

Get on the Bus: How Mass Transit Design Affects Participatory Potential

There's a tag applied to many Museum 2.0 posts called "Unusual Projects and Influences." Posts under that tag tend to examine non-museum things, from malls to games to ad campaigns, and draw some design lessons for museums from their foreignness. Today, we look at a familiar thing: urban mass transit. Specifically, we analyze the relative social behavior of people on buses versus those on trains, and look for clues as to what design elements contribute to different kinds of participatory behavior.

In my highly anecdotal research, the bus is a more social space than the train or subway. The express bus I take most days to get to work feels like a big, slightly uncomfortable family. People talk. The bus driver waves as I bike up. One guy sings. It's on the cusp of personal--any moment the people reading and chatting might spring into action, to make change for someone getting on, offer first aid, or run after someone with his forgotten jacket.

Others have written about the propensity for social engagement (both desired and undesired) on the bus, and one woman I spoke to told me she STOPPED taking the bus because the communal feel of it was overwhelming at a time in the morning when she'd prefer to be left alone. In contrast, the subway is often a sterile world of passing through, a place where people ignore each other studiously. The voices are recorded, the doors perpetually closing.

This post is not intended as a pro-bus manifesto. Instead, I'm interested in the why. What design elements make buses more social than trains? What aspects of that socialness are desirable in museums (and how might we mirror buses or trains to promote them)?
And most of all:

Why do people feel empowered to express themselves and engage strangers on the bus?

Small size, repeat visits. You may take the same train every day, but chances are that train is eight cars long. Even if half of the other people on your train are regulars, the distribution of people throughout the cars means you are unlikely to have a repeat familiarity with many of them (which might open the potential for a casual relationship). On the bus, in contrast, you can see almost everyone, even if it's packed. I take the same bus every day and recognize many of the people on it. Some folks even have "their" seats. The repeat experience is progressively familiar, so I feel like I am entering a space with known faces.

This has its positives and negatives. I'm cheered to see the woman who likes to talk hiking, less so the man who flips through mail-order bride catalogs. The better you know the other folks, the more they set the flavor of the experience. This sounds risky to institutions like museums, where we want to design the experience through exhibits and architecture, not interpersonal exchanges. But in cases where there is interest in promoting more dialog, it's worth thinking about the power and challenge of a cumulative community to create the feel of the place. How does the repeat experience in a museum become progressively (and positively) communal?

The driver provides live facilitation. Bus drivers are welcomers, info-desks, guides, gates, and protectors all rolled into one. I was not surprised that most of the images I found on Flickr related to buses showed an open door and a smiling driver. In a world of increasingly automated commercial exchanges, bus drivers provide a human interface. If I get on the bus without money, the bus driver has the discretion to wave me through. If I'm biking up behind the bus and he sees me, he waits. If someone is being too loud or aggressive, she steps in. And if someone is celebrating, he sings along. I've written before about the power of live facilitators. To me, the opportunity for the bus to feel personal rests largely on the role of the driver/facilitator, whose job is less to drive the bus than to convey passengers safely to their destinations. How can all of your staff become facilitators of people instead of devices?

The bus stops where you want. The train stops where it is scheduled to stop. The bus stops when people on the bus pull a cord or the driver sees someone who wants to get on. Stopping is a human-powered activity. This makes the bus feel friendly, less robotic. Again, this relies on the facilitated element of the driver, but it also gives the individuals getting on and off personal agency (and responsibility) to manage their own experience. I still get a weird thrill when I pull the cord. It feels powerful: I am stopping the bus. Also, the frequency of potential stops means the bus is more likely to get you close to where you want to go. It's reasonable to say "the bus picks me up." Trains, on the other hand, just pass through. How can museums take you where you want to go, from your own personal starting place?

We have childhood memories of social bus rides. Even I, who never rode a school bus, can identify with that cultural experience. We see it on TV. We have memories of idiosyncratic drivers, bullies, and being jammed together like sardines. We expect buses to be rowdy, social spaces. If people have childhood memories of trains, they more likely recall the scenery, the long trip, the feel of moving along the tracks. The things we remember about buses are about people. The things we remember about trains are about transit. What memories do you want people to have about your museum--the people, the architecture, the stuff?

Buses travel familiar landscape. Unlike trains, which depart from dedicated, specific structures and often travel underground through landmark-free tunnels, buses are on the streets where we live and work. They go where cars, bikes, and pedestrians go. They have windows so you can see what you are passing. The first-time bus experience requires much less decoding than the train experience--no special place to start from, no weird machine to dispense tickets, no turnstile. If you get confused, there's a driver to greet and assist you. And while bus schedules and maps are at least as complicated as train maps, you can use familiar locators--known intersections and buildings--to navigate. You don't have to learn a whole new lexicon of stops and related aboveground locations. You're on the sidewalk, then on the bus, then on the sidewalk again. This relates to the frequent discussion on this blog of museums as destinations versus places in the path of daily life. How can museums become part of rather than set away from the everyday?

The bus takes a long time. The frequency of stops and the local windiness of buses makes them downright provincial. As a driver said in this charming article about the glacial pace of NYC buses, "the bus is only as fast as its slowest rider." Social chitchat among strangers is something associated with small towns and areas where people move slowly. It's no surprise the bus can simulate that experience, even in Manhattan. What museum experiences slow you down while simultaneously bringing you in contact with others?


Looking at this list, none of these design elements intrinsically relates to a social or expressive experience. Buses don't employ drivers or operate on city streets to improve the comfort and participatory experience of riding. But a few simple elements--the live facilitation, the small size, the placement of service in a familiar area--have a cumulative effect that makes the whole bus experience more personal, more comfortable, and thus, more conducive to social engagement.

This can be extrapolated to other forms of transit. Elevators are unfacilitated, speedy automatons that are so non-conducive to social behavior that good friend will cease their conversation during the ride. On airplanes, my husband now flies business class and reports more friendliness and conversation with neighbors: more comfortable seats, more personal service, and long hauls may contribute.

What social experiences have you had on mass transit? What lessons do you see that can be extrapolated to experiential spaces like museums?

Trust Me, Know Me, Love Me: Trust in the Participatory Age

Here's something to be proud of. Museums (and libraries) are trusted sources of information. In February 2001, AAM commissioned a study about the trustworthiness of museums and found that "Almost 9 out of 10 Americans (87%) find museums to be one of the most trustworthy or a trustworthy source of information among a wide range of choices. Books are a distant second at 61%, and a majority of Americans find print and broadcast media and the Internet to be not trustworthy." Last month, the IMLS published a report on a survey of 1,700 people, with similar findings about trustworthiness of museums and libraries, and some great added information about how use of the internet benefits both museums (with higher in-person visitation) and visitors (with more ways to find information of interest).

But here's the problem. I don't entirely trust these reports. They were both commissioned by organizations whose purpose is to support museums and libraries. Would you trust a survey report about consumer confidence in meat safety commissioned by the beef industry?

And here's the bigger problem. It's great that museums are a trusted source of information. But is that really our mission? And more practically, is being a trusted source of information a key value proposition? People are not choosing museums over google when they need to find something out, regardless of how trustworthy we are. Trustworthiness is just one factor, alongside availability, quality, and others, that we take into account when we seek out information. And most contemporary museums are not only places for information-seeking. Do we want to be trusted for our ability to provide factual information or our ability to inspire and engage visitors?

Both? No. You can't be equally committed to both. There are trade-offs to each of these. Your friend who tells fascinating, colorful stories may not be the person you turn to for the straight dope. The Presidential candidate with the ironclad principles may not be the one with whom you want to have a beer. We trust different people and institutions in different ways--to be respectful, to keep our secrets, to give us love, to give us information.

And this is where museums' championed trustworthiness starts to hold us back. Being a trusted source of information can be a barrier that keeps us from sharing content with visitors that might be more contemporary, more ambiguous, more contentious--information that may not be trusted. It makes us uncomfortable with opening museum content up to comment, tagging, and alterations by visitors. In short, it limits museums from being places that are trusted as institutions of public engagement and interaction--the places many museums claim they want to be.

How can we transition from people trusting our information to trusting their ability to participate in museums and be respected, safe, and rewarded for doing so?

Museums aren't the only venues facing this question: news outlets, corporate brands, and educators are also grappling with the question of trust in the participatory age. There are some simple things we can do to be more trustworthy on an engagement level, namely:

Be reachable. One of the reasons that thousands of people trust Frank Warren (of Postsecret) with their secrets is the fact that he invites them to send postcards to him at home. Frank doesn't give people some office address behind a generic business name--you are writing to a real person at a real house. I'm not suggesting we publish our home addresses on museum websites. I AM suggesting that we publish complete staff directories with phone numbers and email addresses on websites. How many times have you visited a museum site in search of a phone number or email address and woken up two hours later dizzy from the painful and ultimately unsuccessful phone system nightmare? Yes, this means you will get more random solicitations from 5th graders writing book reports on your content. But it also means that when people feel a need to get in touch with you, they have a way to do so. It's just plain courteous, and if we trust our visitors the way we trust clients or friends, we should make this available.

Make content authorship transparent. When I read the New York Times online, each article's author's name is hotlinked and there is an easy and direct way to contact him/her. Why don't we stand behind our words the way reporters do? When we allow visitors to add their own bits to exhibit labels or react on the web, we often ask them to add their name. Whether on blogs or talk-back walls, people are more conscious about their comments when they know their name will be associated with their work. But this goes both ways. We ask visitors to do us the courtesy of taking responsibility for their words, but we rarely identify ourselves. To paraphrase Elaine Gurian, exhibit messaging can be overt or covert--either way it's still there. I'd like to see exhibits and web content with authorship clearly assigned to a human being who I can contact, so I understand who is the source of the message.

Be honest about mistakes. You may remember the NPR stories in 2007 about changes in the way that doctors acknowledge mistakes and offer apologies. Formerly avoided as a fount for litigation, apologies have now been shown to lead to less litigation and more positive doctor-patient trust relationships. Fortunately, we're not in a life-or-death business, so we should feel even more assured that honesty, not marketing spin, might be the best policy for gaining trust. In the Web 2.0 world, this goes even further with sites launched in beta (before they are finished) and frequent blog updates from the designers about bugs they are fixing and customer complaints they are addressing. Community sites often maintain this back-channel discussion with users after launch, letting them know about scheduled outages and ways they are addressing community concerns (for example, the Second Life blog and community meetings). Of course, this can go too far--if you are always apologizing for mistakes, people might think you have a basic stability problem, which erodes another kind of trust--the kind museums already have locked up.

Find a way to vet non-traditional primary sources. There are two reasons to pursue this: for better accuracy (trusted source of info) and for more diverse inclusion of voices (trusted source of varied social experience). On the accuracy front, sites like Wikipedia have developed methods of community authoring and editing that make them more voluminous AND more accurate than traditional encyclopedic sources. It gets trickier when you move from the encyclopedia to citizen journalism (check out this interesting article from the New Yorker about the rise of Huffington Post, an online hodge podge news source), but there are plenty of techniques, from staff editorial boards (OhMyNews) to popular voting (Digg) used to maintain a certain trusted level of content.

And then there's the value of primary voices for interestingness. Every fifth grader knows that a good report includes at least three primary sources, and yet museum text often reads in a generic wash of academic-speak with few quotations from the folks actually creating, using, or interacting with the objects on display. Citizen journalism, blogs, and talkback walls aren't just interesting because they offer more volume of content. They reflect individual voices and stories, and the more diverse voices are engaged, the more trustworthy a source is as a true "voice of the people."

Be personal. I'm reading a book of essays about how to teach written by teens. It's amazing how much emphasis the students put on reciprocity: you respect me, I'll respect you. It's very relational. They don't talk much about trusting their teacher's information; instead, they focus on teachers' willingness to engage and support them as learners. Many of the teens write, "learn with us. Then we will trust that you care about us learning too." These teens are asking a lot of their teachers emotionally. But gaining visitors' trust doesn't have to require spilling your guts. When the Monterey Bay Aquarium mounted an exhibition about population growth and its implications, they included staff comments on the talk-back wall--not as authorities, but as fellow humans struggling with the issues of overpopulation. These personal voices made the Aquarium staff more trustworthy as engaged participants themselves.


What can you do to gain visitors' trust?