8 Takeaways for Museums from Tiktok

Here are 8 things I learned after spending the last three months posting about art and museums of my personal Tiktok. With 50K followers, 34 Million videos, and 3.4 Million likes, I’ve learned some things.

1. People are interested in art, but they want the information to be served up in an interesting way. I rarely post videos longer than 30 seconds. And when I do them I think of all the “well actually” folks who work at museums. I mean the people who’d tell me I’ve “dumbed it down.” And I’ve absolutely simplified things. But I work hard to make sure I’m factual. And I’ve learned if you make it enjoyable, people will watch. I think the “dumb it down” contingent don’t know how to hit an entertaining tone, and are not able to see the merit it entertainment. 

2. Again! People are interested in art. I’ve had scores and scores of people commenting on items as vast as ancient Indian art to Liza Lou’s kitchen. I’ve gotten as much positive feedback about abstraction as decorative arts. When you don’t talk down to people, they are willing to listen.

3. People trust people to tell them about art. While I only recently put my real name, I’ve often had people say they like my approach to talking about art. I’d previously done Tiktoks for a museum account, and I never had as much pick up on videos. I think people want to hear from an authentic human voice rather than a brand. 

4. Learn their language rather than making them learn ours. My whole challenge is finding analogies between other Tiktok videos and art. If you’re not familiar with Tiktok, you might not know about duets. People reshare other peoples videos with that commentary. I used that popular format but to share ideas about art. Sure, I could have done short traditional videos about artworks. But that is less popular on Tiktok. Why try to get people to my ideas in a way they are less likely to like? 

5. Remember people want to learn about art for fun. They are not doing it because it’s good for them. So don’t make it a chore for them. It might be our job, but it’s their time off. 

6. Even if people like art, they don’t have much scaffolding. I have a core group of art lovers who know about art. The vast majority of commenters have basic questions or thank me for discussing basic elements. Schools teach less art, and so our visitors have taken less. It makes them no less interested. But it does mean we need to remember that when communicating about art.

7. People don’t care about museums, just the stuff inside them. Museum people, particularly boards, think visitors are excited by museums themselves. Sure, storage, art theft, removing varnish are interesting, but that’s because they look cool. Very few people are jazzed at hearing about the history of your museum. 

8. And some people don’t care and won’t care. For most of my museum life, donors and boards have asked, how do we bring in non-visitors? The thing they should be thinking is how do we bring in more people like the people who visit or how do we change to bring in new visitors. If you stay the same, the people who don’t come, won’t. That said if you change, the old people might stop visiting. Each organization needs to decide what is the right call for them. And after all of that, some people still will not care. That is okay. Do your best for the people who you want to come

Beyond the Walls: A Post Museum Career

 I asked my friend, Paul Bowers, to share some of his thoughts about leaving museums. If you have thoughts about leaving museums or why you're staying, reach out. I'd love to share your thoughts here.

This post is so good. Give it a slow read. Or if you're me, tear through it and then read it slowly later. Also note, Paul is a Brit living in Australia. He spells things that way. Allow for the s instead of z. 

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Beyond the walls – a post-museum career

There’s a lot of talk about people leaving their museums jobs – if you’re thinking that way, this might help. I did 20 years in museums, then left four years ago, and since then I’ve run a sustainability organisation, consulted for a library, mentored a for-purpose founder and been the Interim COO for a large cemeteries trust. I’ve learnt a few things along the way and while you might not want my destination/s, I hope you’ll find this helpful as you look before leaping.

Caveats of course that my experience is singular, and contains some dimensions of privilege.

Everything everywhere all at once

Museums are complicated. Nowhere else I’ve seen has all the functions of academia, retail, logistics, customer service, volunteers, digital, marketing, specialist facilities, education; and the complexity of external relationships that comes with all of these. Working in this environment makes you super-skilled. I’m not saying you have to have worked in all these departments. But getting anything done in a museum means you have to work with all these departments. 

You’ll have had days where you’ve gone straight from a front of house meeting to a curatorial meeting, you’ll have dealt with some weird thing to do with fire exit routes, then had to help transport a precious object. Oh, and there’s that volunteer upstairs you’re supervising, too. All this means you’re flexible, you work well with others, you can grasp multiple perspectives and be professional with this huge range of people. Very few careers give you that.

And underneath all the practicalities is the complexity of the ‘mission’. Outside museums, the world is often driven by just one or two ‘why?’ questions: Money for shareholders; Save the dolphins. And everything else is a ‘how’. But museums preserve, study, display and educate. Each of those is a distinct purpose, and they sometimes contradict – the balancing act between conservation and display, for example. And that leads to many more complex ‘how’ skills: multiple dimensions of fundraising for example.

And you work within such complex constraints! All the regulatory and legal issues, the politics of Boards and Funders, the ever-changing building regulations, the whims of the geniuses, the egos of the politicians, the sheer complexity of best practice (eg, preserving mixed media artworks).

You’re flexible with time horizons. You can work fast (it opens next week!) and slow (5-year digitisation project, anyone?). You’ve achieved miracles with nearly no money. And you’re flexible with… well… challenging people. That manager, artist, academic, designer, volunteer... You’ve all got stuff done despite that insufferable someone.

So again: you’re skilled in working with a complexity of purpose, of professional areas, of limitations, of time, of difficult people, with balancing multiple demands. That’s uncommon.

Now you can’t just say all this and walk into a cool new job in a new sector. But you need to hold close to your heart that you are skilled, you are valuable. You will be a fabulous employee for someone else. You need to resist the urge to think that you’re ‘just’ a museum worker, that your skills are so specific. 

Example. I’m working in a huge cemetery trust right now. Information control (of bodies, or rights of internment) is pretty much identical to the governance of object provenance and transport. I feel like a duck that’s waddled lost across concrete and suddenly discovered a completely different pond. This is so familiar, I can just jump in, paddle my feet and I’m a useful employee somewhere else.

Identity is all

Identity can feel permanent, fixed and immutable. And when it’s been built around museums (after investing decades of study, volunteering and insecure contract work) it can feel impossible to break: I’ve worked so hard for this, so it’s who I am.

After two decades in museums, it had become such a strong part of my identity that when I left I didn’t know who I was – professionally and personally. I hadn’t known this would happen and I felt uprooted, lost and confused. 

Then I learnt. A good friend pushed me towards Herminia Ibarra’s Working Identities, and recently I discovered this Invisibilia podcast – I commend them both to you (though some caveats over little-explored privilege in the book). To simplify, the idea of personality as a stable construct is a myth. We are what we do, a product of actions and environment. When we change that environment, we change our selves. 

Ibarra’s central idea is to experiment with new working lives. Try them on for size, see how they fit. Do you like the reflection in the mirror? Ibarra recommends you don’t buy the whole outfit at once. Just try the shoes, or the shirt. Let it settle on you – let the personality shifts catch up.

She suggests you volunteer on the weekend, or spin out a craft hobby for a bit. Even getting an internal secondment to an unexpected part of the museum might give some clues. Remember, one person’s beautiful ballgown is another person’s double denim. But whether you like the dress or the jeans, go forth proudly.

You’ll also have to confront the perceptions of others. Their identity is partly built around having this version of you in their lives. If you feel weirdness, reflect on whether they’re here for you, or for their version of you. Those who truly care will cheer you on. Some others might need to get relegated lower down the friends-and-family rankings. 

And your self image is important here. How flexible are you allowing yourself to be? A rising museum pro once told me she’d be perfectly fine scrubbing a kitchen floor if it meant she could provide for her family. And that inner strength – no self-definition by title or employer prestige – gave her the confidence to risk challenging the career narrative and she made a change. She’s doing very well now, six years on.

Get help

There’s two kinds of help you need. First, those cheerleaders can give you more than encouragement. Ask them for advice. Ask them to describe you. They’ll see some things you don’t – qualities, skills, memories of a what if? conversation at the karaoke bar. If they’ve moved sector, all the better.

But remember – beyond their insights, those closest to you are the least practical help in actually moving on. You need to reach people on the edge of your network – simply because they’re further away. Ask for introductions. Have coffees with people. First off, describing yourself to others helps you find your story. Second, you never know who, in a few month’s time, will need some help and will remember that person with relevant skills who was so interesting at that café months ago…

Also, get help from professionals who aren’t in your friendship circles, framing it within a methodology. (It’s not a coffee, it’s a ‘self-coaching exercise’, very pro.) For example, you can ask current peers to do a Johari’s Window exercise with you (this is a good how-to). 

I was fortunate enough to be able to work with a career coach. Kate Richardson was extremely helpful for me, and her website has great resources too. As you’d expect, she brought all the career coaching skills but in addition she brought two things I didn’t know I needed. Her process included structure – it held me to account for making progress, and also forced me to consider discrete elements in sequence, rather than tackle everything at once in a terrifying blancmange of panic: considering values separate from strengths, for example. But most importantly, my questioning, insecurities and fears were just normal to her. It didn’t faze her, she just worked through them with me. You know that feeling when a doctor looks at something and says ‘oh, that’s nothing to worry about, you just need this medicine and you’ll be fine’, and a weight you didn’t know you were holding falls off your shoulders. Well, she made me feel like that. You may be able to find a great coach. But a fabulous manager, friend or ally in the sector could do this for you too.

The last thing is that people really want to help if they can. Most people are nice, most people remember when they needed a helping hand. And it’s flattering to be asked. You won’t believe it when you start asking, but more people will offer their time to help you than will ignore you. I didn’t believe it, I often still don’t believe it, but when I have pushed through and made the call, people have been lovely.

At first, you flirt.

Think of this career experimentation like dating. Maybe the first date tells you this person isn’t for you. Maybe you realise that after a few months. Or maybe they become a life-love for the rest of your time. All are possible outcomes. But they all start with a first date, and flirting with a possibility. 

The cultural ideas around career route are just like the ideas around marriage: incredibly linear. We’ve imbibed our parents and teachers, and all the books and films, that told us a career means going steadily up a ladder: Junior, Middle, Senior, to CEO or Lecturer, Assoc Professor, to Professor. Breaking this needs bravery in disruption.

And finding the right thing is really tough, practically and emotionally. Partly because as you shape your world, the world shapes you. I’m still no closer to finding the ‘right’ answer for me and maybe that’s the point. There isn’t a ‘right’, there’s just different. It’s OK to try something, discover it’s a dead end, then move on.

Focus on values and outcomes, not skills and history

Museum sector biases strongly to ‘stuff I know’ – technical skills. And the boomer resumé structure taught us to frame ourselves as merely a career history list of facts. This was prestige gatekeeping in action; don’t replicate it.

I learnt to talk about my strengths, then what impact that had in the world, then follow that with evidence. Like this…

I am great at making risotto, and so my family enjoy a great meal. My teenage kids have even invited friends round to taste it. I’m so glad I got to learn this from my neighbour, an Italian nonna.

… is a completely different and more compelling narrative than 

2007. Studied risotto-making from a neighbour

2009-13. Made over fifty five risottos for friends and family

Which chef would you hire? 

Miscellaneous CV and interview fails for career shifters:

• Outside the museum sector, few care about publications and conferences. That you are an influencer in your field, respected for your insight, is valuable. But say it like that, don’t write a page of chapters and conference names
• Jargon and acronyms. Careful, you might be so used to them that they creep through
• Give qualitative and quantitative data to support your achievements. Customer service ratings went up by what percentage? Your peers say what about you? I’ve seen many museum staffs’ resumés full of qual information, but with no meaty numbers. Other orgs want to see the results like that, and they also want to be reassured you’re savvy enough to know that quant matters
• People who don’t state their values. The museum sector largely assumes common values (Look after stuff. Be accessible. Decolonise.) But you have to say so, outside the field. What do you believe in, what do you care about? How do you want to change the world?
• People who don’t convey their continuous learning mindset. It is amazing to be able to tell a story of when a director threw you a curveball and you had to learn rapidly while doing. Building a plane while flying the plane is something every museum person I know can do, and it’s a talent worth hiring for
• People who don’t convey they can develop then apply rules consistently and fairly, and know what to do when they find a grey area. Again, especially for those in any form of conservation or acquisition roles, this feels too obvious to mention. But in the wider professional world this is a real talent and sought after. Healthcare, government, insurance and more.
• Proofread. Please. Do not be the person proclaiming they’ve run successful pubic programs.

Apply like a straight white man. By that I mean research has shown marginalised people typically wait until they are certain they tick every box before applying; the stale male applies when they’ve kinda got most of the requirements. I’ve written countless Position Descriptions, and I always ask for more than I know exists – always try to hire the unicorn. But no-one ever has 100% on every requirement. What I’m always looking for is ‘most and learns’ – the person who can begin pretty strong on day one and with support and training will become the unicorn. (oh, and anyone who has 100% on everything should be applying for the next job up!)

Lastly, in making a good CV, remember that sectors and countries have different standards and expectations. Some hirers like a resume, some like a long ‘how I meet the criteria’ letter. Find out the rules of engagement before engaging. 

Confronting recruiter prejudice

You’ll have to gently confront attitudes about museums. External hirers fall for the cultural beliefs (dusty shelves!) too. And they won’t know what programmers or conservators do. So you must explain what you do clearly. If you’ve constructed a program and campaign that brought in a hundred marginalised people who’d never been before… that’s amazing and you have to explain it. Describe how you did it and quote the feedback they gave you. Worked with an international object loan? That’s cross-cultural competency, negotiation skills, regulatory competence. Say that, don’t just drop ‘worked on blah with blah’.

Some recruiters simply won’t have the imagination to see the transferable skills. Some hire for safety (they’ve done this before!) not for potential (their skills mean they could be the best at this role in six months). That’s their loss. Take the feedback, decide to accept it if it feels right (reject it if it feels like garbage), and move on. You’ll apply for lots before you find the next stepping stone, and along the way you’ll get rejections. Call a friend, have them remind you how great you are, then maintain your course.

In summary

I found that museum work can narrow your perception of what’s possible – in the world of work, and in yourself. The foundational career narrative is that museums are unique and you can’t get in the door without brandishing a Museum MA and five years of volunteering. The multiple dimensions of nonsense here is for another blog, but exiting museums is made as hard as entering by this lie that museums are just so special. 

Where did I land? I’m still working it out. I do know it’ll centre on aligning organisations around purpose through microtweaks to their culture and process, and it’ll always be purpose-beyond-profit. I’m going to have to keep experimenting for ever, and my main takeaway after four years is to be at ease with that.

For you? That’ll be a new and unique journey. The hardest part is breaking out of the bubble of myths. So, keep these truths close by; write them on page one of your career change notebook:

Museums are great but they aren’t the whole world

• In Museums, I have become uniquely talented
• People will help me with advice
• People will help me with cheerleading
• People will help me with introductions
• I am amazing
• I will experiment
• I will thrive

If I can help, I will. DM me on twitter (@paulrbowers) or find me on LinkedIn

Good luck.

How do I get out of Museums?

 I think half of the work problems in museums come from the fact that most staff feel trapped. And if you don’t want to move and you don’t live in a huge metropolis, you basically have very few choices. 

So what’s to do? One option is to leave the field. Listen, I’m just a few moments out. So, I’m not sure how good it is. 

But, I’d like to share my thoughts on how I got out. 

I’d really thought I wanted to stay in museums, but then the level of ridiculousness got too much. I decided I needed to look at other things. I would say this is the first step. You need to want to leave. 

But desire is pretty lonely if you don’t have any place to use it. I honestly couldn’t see where I could go. I felt like my skills wouldn’t be translatable. And here in is the next step. Ask for help. Call a friend doing work you might like to do. Hear how they got there.

Most museum pros can research anything. And these skills really came in handy in my job search. I spent time reading job descriptions and matching my resume to their needs.

We have so many useful skills. Project management, public speaking, and writing are three big ones. Many of us have spent years wrangling databases and organizing editorial schedules. I spent a good amount of time tallying my skills against those needed in the business world.

After that, I updated my LinkedIn and turned the light on (set it to show that I’m looking for work.) I did use the pro version for a month. I did the easy apply version for everything remote that was related to UX research and writing, since most of my work has been evaluation and interpretation. I got a lot of no thanks and many interviews. People were very receptive. No one was surprised I was leaving nonprofit. 

Now I’ve just left, so I can’t say how it is. But I am excited that I wasn’t trapped. I have options. You have options too. 

Knowledge is Power

 Knowledge is power, they say. This is certainly true in many workplaces. Think of the three types of people you find in many office settings: the gossip, the hoarder, and the source. 

The source is the go-to person, who knows the locations of things and the ways to do things. People who are the source can be in any tier, but usually got a start in an administrative role. In other words, they got all those deets through hard work. These people are often happy to share their info. 

The gossip, again, can come from any tier, but the difference is that their knowledge doesn’t need to be gained or even true. Gossips revel in sharing, or even better, barely sharing. In many organizations, these are people near the highest in the hierarchy.

Finally, the hoarders…this is where I really want to focus. In many organizations, many people in power choose to horde knowledge as a means to exacting power. This behavior can be people at middle and upper tiers of management. Often knowledge does have to be held. Think about restructuring. There is a moment where some people in the organization know before others. The hoarders however parse out knowledge about everything. 

What does all this have to do with museums? Museums are knowledge organizations and these behaviors are rampant. Hoarding of knowledge is one of the biggest complaints I hear of museum leaders. In organizations without profit and loss margins and stock growth, there isn’t so much concrete proof of success. Even visitor numbers and donations are done as group activities. So, individuals horde information to maintain power. In this way, the gossips are the same. They don’t have ultimate power in the organization, so they find another means to gain it. 

But, this type of behavior is ultimately ephemeral. Once the knowledge is out, it has no power. And if hoarding that knowledge made accomplishing the goal harder, you paid for your intellectual greediness. 

Good leaders learn how and when to share. They also learn to lean on the people who are the source and avoid the gossips. Knowledge is useful and powerful when shared. It proliferates and propagates. Sharing knowledge will ultimately make the leaders work easier and better. 

Do we really want people to visit?

These days, like many extroverts, I feel the ache of loneliness. I’ve been thinking about planning to connect with people again. Imagine if despite my great need to see people, I set up the hours when they’re usually at work and also made them feel like they needed to study up before meeting me. How likely are my friends to show up? And is it my friends’ fault? Or mine? In many ways, we’re setting up the same problem. 

A couple weeks ago, I asked people on Twitter what is one thing they’d like to change to make museums better. Many people focused on improving amenities. One person, however,  suggested that we should educate people about the norms of museums. The funny thing is that many people full well understand. After getting yelled at by guards on a field trip as a kid, they get that museums aren’t for them. Or even worse, they live in a place where only a small, privileged group go to museums. 

The thing is people don’t need museums. We don’t need to exist. Society would continue without us. And we’re not age-old. Theater has millennia of history. Music probably existed in the caves of prehistory. Literature is also old. So, as a new phenomena, and also one that isn’t a necessary amenity, I find it surprising that we’re not more focused as a field on survival. 

Someone recently said to me, “wow, if museums were corporations they’d deserve to fail.” We project exclusion through our hours and our structures. We’re open bank hours. But people will make concessions in their life to get to the bank, because they need them. Now, yes, I think museums offer incredible social good, but many people don’t know this. How much good can we do when people don’t use us? In other words, we must help people see us as valuable. Rather than asking people to bend for us, we must work to meet them. 

Art museums are particularly good at this type of “toxic friendship”. For example, museum benches show people what we really think of them. First, we usually don’t have too many. Stand, damn it! We need more space for collections. Second, we pick uncomfortable ones. If you must be weak enough to sit, we won’t make it enjoyable. If you look at old museum installations, you often see soft seating. So the clean benches of today are an improvement. But for whom? The visitors or the designers? In truth, I suspect what happens is that galleries get designed with the goal of getting a certain intellectual point across. The teams forget that humans will need to enjoy the space to even notice there is a point.

Now, you might want to scream, how dare you suggest we pander? Why focus on snacks when we’re doing the real work of scholarship and curation? Well, my question is for whom do you do this work? If you are deeply committed to scholarship for its sake alone, then why spend the time on galleries. A book is easier to share and it’s timeless. Instead, if your goal is to educate or share, then what’s wrong with investing in amenities? Do you force your friends to stand when you invite them for a four course meal? 

As a field, when we decide that our concerns and our structures supersede the comfort and interests of our audiences, then we’re in trouble. We will eventually find that other types of experiences will be more popular. And is it better to hold fast to old rules or instead to adapt to new audience needs?  

Are We at an Inflection Point as a Field?

There’s been a great deal of sports fanfare in Ohio lately. Bengals went to the Super Bowl and then Cleveland hosted the basketball all-star game. I don’t often think about sports, truthfully. But all the sports made me reflect on our own field, oddly. 

AAM has often noted more people go to museums than sporting events. It’s a good stat, and one I like to trot out when speaking to politicians. But I suspect it’s a false number in a way. Museums are open more often than not. Even with my rudimentary knowledge of professional sports, I know that most pro sports teams have shorter seasons. So, numbers-wise, given there are more museums than sports arenas, as there are more museums than Starbucks, there is an easier chance for museums to beat sport. But there is a bigger issue underlying that stat. I’d wonder how that number would look if you omitted field trips. Many museum-goers are there bc someone else has decided it’s educational or important. Student groups are important, and education underlies the raisin d’etre of the field. But as a child who spent a childhood going to pro-sporting events under duress, I can assure you it doesn’t make for a lifelong habit. 

The recent Culture Track study brought up another important statistic. Many Americans look to arts and culture as a source of fun. Now, I’d love to see that same sample rate the types of arts and culture from fun to not fun. I fear museums would not be near the top. Museums often miss fun altogether, because we fear being seen as dumbing down our educational mission. An interesting finding in the same Culture Track study is that respondents believe meeting the needs of new visitors is important even if it means losing old visitors. In order words, change even if people don’t like it. 

This brings me to the Super Bowl. The halftime show was incredibly enjoyable for some. It’s not surprising. Many people watching are the age of the performers. Gen X and Millenials are now 40 percent of the population. But, there was some backlash, as expected. Boomers, particularly, were not thrilled to have this type of music on the Super Bowl. Boomers are about 20 percent of the population. But they remain in the workforce and they hold an outsized amount of power and wealth. For museums, as they look to change, to meet new needs, they will see some of the same criticism from some of the same forces. Change often shows changes in power and that can make people upset. 

In the next few years, the voice and power of the older museum-goers will continue to decrease. Have we made enough impact on the younger generations? Do they see us as the once a year, "good for you" requirement? Or do they see us as an enjoyable place to visit on their own? 

As people have found plenty to keep them busy at home, we need to really step it up to meet the needs of these audiences. We showed we could be fun on digital in these last few years. Will we revert to our old ways, where we expect people to accept our status quo? Or we will meet this moment with change?