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| The Ship of Fools by Hieronymus Bosch, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 |
By Seema Rao and Paul Bowers
I've been living in a wintery wonderland and luxuriating a beachy wonderland in equal turns recently. Last week, Rob Weisberg posted when I was at MCN (sadly as missing him terribly at that conference.)
I'm so glad to have gotten to go to MCN. Museum Computer Network has become my Shangri-la, in a way. A mirage, I see even when it's not there. I connect with many of those people online and in email. I wrote a bit about my true love for my conference friends last week on Medium. I wrote that post because I had one heck of a conference. So many things that had meant so much to me were coming to fruition, and like a godparent, I had barely anything to do with them. It felt great and also like an out of body experience.
In some ways, museum work has this illusory aspect. Or museum work is like atomic theory perhaps. We all have so many colleagues we rarely meet. And, then you run into each other in life or online, maybe exchange some energy, and like electrons bounce to higher levels.
This idea of bouncing ideas and growing them might be said for my other post of the week, about touching art. I'm pretty open to a number of possibilities in museums. I am most definitely not open on the issues of collection care. The sanctity of the work is paramount. So how do we balance NO Touching policies and messaging against welcoming visitors? I don't have an answer, but would love to increase my energy levels on best solutions with your help. (as always drop by a line in comments or at Twitter @artlust) So in this case, I'm hoping you run into me with your ideas. (I did this illustration on my plane back from MCN that made me feel better though offered few solutions. And yes, it really is 2 Legit 2 Legit to quit. But I couldn't. I just couldn't).
All this meandering introduction, perhaps, is to lead up to this week's guest speaker. I've definitely felt energized by interacting with him, usually online. Paul lives in Australia, and I've had a couple of meals with him at most. I've also had very thoughtful conversations with him and I feel I've found a kindred spirit. So much so, we've presented a paper together on the stage of MuseumNext. I was thrilled he was willing to share some of his thoughts here today. Enjoy.
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Are we one team?
By Paul Bowers
As Seema wrote in the first of the work series, our
sector has been professionalized and reshaped over the past few decades. While
we are enriched by the many professional fields intersecting to create the
contemporary museum workplace, it presents a challenge we rarely talk
about.
In every museum, we find different values, language and work
practices. I want a debrief, you talk about retros; I ask for the budget, you
offer me the ‘P and L’. A successful day for the retail team is not the same as
for the registrars - how do we work together when some people want to make a
profit, and others study provenance? Many workplaces have these complexities,
but I think our sector is unique in the sheer number of different domain
experts - and that means we have to work harder than most at building common
cause.
Lots of low-level workplace frustration can be laid at this
door. I think I could fund my coffee habit if I had a dollar for each complaint
of ‘Jeff from department blah is messing up my project, grrr.’ And there’s
always a Jeff to blame: I’m sure even Jeff has a Jeff.
Before offering some suggestions, it’s important to
emphasize there are a lot of unspoken assumptions of privilege and social
encoding around values and how things should be done: that ‘academic’ is
superior to ‘technical’, for example. We must be mindful, humble and open to
learn about the privilege we may have in the workplace.
That being said, my first suggestion is to slow down: invest
time in being clear what we mean and why we are acting as we are. Expertise
gleaned from years in one sector, understood easily with your department
colleagues, doesn’t automatically feel valid to someone without this
experience. Deploying authority to win is easy but doesn’t help in the long
run. We build trust and social capital by taking the time to explain - and
explaining our reasoning can often assist in clarifying our thinking.
Overt your values, rationale and motivations. When passing
on a piece of work, be clear, ‘I did it like this because _____.’ An exhibition
team of mine was in conflict with the functions and events team - it was
resolved when that department head said ‘I love doing two things at work:
making money and supporting the arts. When I make money, it pays for
exhibitions. That’s why I want to make more money.’ Written here, it looks
patronizing - but in that moment, the direct simplicity brought clarity and
drained conflict from the conversations.
My second suggestion is to remember that no-one comes to
work to do a terrible job or annoy their co-workers. So when someone seems
frustrating, work really hard at assuming good intent. Reflect on ‘how do they
think they are creating a positive impact in this conversation?’ Find a way to
ask - can you explain a bit more about how this way of working moves us
forward? Usually, there is an excellent reason!
The legal team in a previous museum frustrated me - they
were excruciatingly slow. And then a mutual colleague explained how it looked
from their perspective - slowing me down and checking the detail was their job,
to protect the organization against the existential threat of a huge legal cost
in the future. This helped me see their contribution as a positive thing.
My final suggestion is to be more intentional about purpose,
and who owns it. We can often unintentionally create micro-empires around tiny
tasks, rather than cohesive language around a shared endeavor. Stating ‘I will
select the artworks, you will prepare and document them, they will install
them’ may be factually accurate, but it is so much better to say ‘let’s work
together on getting this exhibition looking great, let’s agree how we’ll get it
done, how about this: …’ before that statement. Use collective language in
every situation, unless talking about your own direct accountability.
I’m sure there are many more ways to create and maintain
common cause with the different professionals who make up our workforce. The
goal isn’t to make everyone work the same - I’d be a terrible legal counsel! -
but if we can reduce friction and create more harmony, the rewards for us as
workers (including Jeff!), and eventually for our audiences, will be great.
Paul Bowers is a museum professional in Melbourne,
Australia, who usually blogs at