Stories are universal. We all read, watch and listen to them. We all tell them. Stories are part of what makes us human. In fact, stories are so ubiquitous, we often don’t think about what makes a good story, or question why stories matter in the first place.
Why stories matter to museums
Museums are often thought of as places that collect, care for, display and interpret objects. While valid in many ways, this view omits the human element of museums. An alternative approach is to think of museums as places that collate and share human experiences. This is the view put forward by Salvador Salort-Pons, Director of the Detroit Institute or Art in a recent article. More fundamentally, Salort-Pons describes museums as spaces for empathy and “a bonding medium for our society”. Salort-Pons might as well have been writing about stories. Stories share personal experiences in an authentic and easily accessible form. They feel familiar, yet enable us to step into the shoes of others. They are full of detail, but leave space for us to insert our own thoughts, feelings and memories. We use stories to make sense of the world. While we see ourselves in them, it is through stories that we encounter new perspectives that change how we think and feel. At their core, stories make us care. They connect us with people and places, even stimulating the release of a hormone usually expressed during intense bonding experiences, like childbirth, breastfeeding and sex. This emotional connection is the reason stories are so powerful. As any advertiser knows, stories drive people to take action, whether that’s buying a product, gifting a donation or making a difference in the world. From a marketing perspective, stories can help museums raise funds, encourage visits and trigger sales. For instance, when the Tenement Museum in New York wrote about former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in a fundraising mailing it told a story about Roosevelt’s work in the local area. By connecting the teenage Roosevelt’s story with the Museum’s education programmes, the call to action was obvious: donate money and you could inspire a new generation of young Eleanor Roosevelts. Looking beyond the museum itself, stories help organisations drive change in society. The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH), once a place for art and history, now a place that uses art and history to build a strong community, puts stories centre stage. The Museum’s mission statement makes this clear: ‘we find, spark, preserve, and trade stories, ideas, and elements of creativity drawn from people across Santa Cruz County’. Stories are how MAH ignite shared experiences and unexpected connections.
How to find a story
Finding potential stories isn’t usually a problem. There are stories are everywhere. Look inside a museum and you’ll find stories about the foundation of the institution, the history of the building, the collection, individual objects and the people who made, used, sold or owned them. Museums are also full of people, who bring their own stories with them, from researchers and other visitors to staff and volunteers. There is never just one story to tell. The myriad options can make finding one single story to focus on feel overwhelming. The sphere in which museum stories live, undiscovered or untold, is vast. Like a marble slab waiting for the sculptor’s chisel, the possibilities are endless. Finding the right stories is less about looking for them and more about thinking through what you need. You need to know who you are as an institution, what matters to your audiences and what you want your stories to achieve. Armed with this knowledge, you can start to make decisions about the sort of stories you want to tell. These six questions can help you make smart choices as you develop stories for exhibitions, programming, fundraising and social media.
I regularly work with museums to improve their use of technology to open up their collections, attract more visitors and build better relationships and the discussion usually turns to the impact of technology on museum content. How can a museum’s online content contribute to the wider aims of the museum and how the online museum content can fit within the broader museum definition. We normally end up asking more questions than we answer. Can a museum ever be solely online? Can online content improve conservation efforts? Is a visit to an online museums ever an acceptable replacement for physical visit? When we get into the detail of the argument surrounding online museums there is always a lot of questions around what ‘really’ constitutes a museum. So to start we need to ask the biggest question of all – “how do you define a museum?” and, as you would expect, the more people you ask the more complex and diverse the answers.
Is an online museum really a museum?
For the Collins dictionary the definition is short and sweet “A museum is a building where a large number of interesting and valuable objects, such as works of art or historical items, are kept, studied, and displayed to the public.” Whereas the UK Museums Association take a slightly more precise view and defines a museum under these criteria “’Museums enable people to explore collections for inspiration, learning and enjoyment. They are institutions that collect, safeguard and make accessible artefacts and specimens, which they hold in trust for society. This definition includes art galleries with collections of works of art, as well as museums with historical collections of objects.” You may think there isn’t much difference between the two definitions but there is one vital difference that, for me, gets to the heart of it. “A museum is a building” the dictionary proclaims but yet there are many institutions of learning, collections of artefacts and repositories of valuable and interesting objects that don’t require a physical space to define them. If we look at both definitions I am sure we can find numerous examples that fit the criteria but don’t demand a physical space. As the UK Museums Association says we are looking for “institutions that collect, safeguard and make accessible” and one thing that a physical building can sometimes limit is accessibility. An Online museum could actually improve access to the collections the museum is caring for, allowing people to find exhibitions that truly speak to them regardless of location and make links between artefacts held by museums and galleries on opposite sides of the world. So let’s put down aside our dictionary definition which requires a physical space and let’s look at what can be achieved if we are open to providing online museum content alongside our physical collections or in addition to the location-based services museums offer.
Behind the scenes! Assembly of the exhibition “The Factory of Tales”
Once upon a time… Each of us knows stories beginning with those four words. From Finland to Greece, from Spain to the Alps, stories are part of our common heritage. It is this universe, at once very familiar and completely fantastical, that MEG explores in its new exhibition. When crossing the threshold, the public finds itself projected into a surprising atmosphere, where stories are lived as a sensory experience.
Hilltop fires, smartphones and cyborgs. More direct access than ever before: besides interactive displays, surprising objects and large-scale video screens, visitors to the Museum of Communication will now also be introduced to the fascinating world of communication by people made of flesh and blood, by our communicators.
A stagecoach, microchip implants or an original getaway car used in the robbery of the century? The new core exhibition examines all forms of communication, which has always connected human beings. But why do we communicate? And who do we communicate with? What is required for us to understand each other? The exhibition explores these fundamental questions in a playful manner whilst calling on its visitors to contribute their expert thoughts. Numerous newly developed points of adventure await you. You can take part in a game of film karaoke and re-enact famous scenes, you can breach your opponent’s firewall in a hacking game or you can have a go at seeing through the data octopus’s game – you can try something different every time you visit the museum. At some point in the 2000 square metres of the exhibition you will surely meet one of our communicators. They will make each visit a personal and individual experience. How? Let us surprise you!
‚Scenography is a creative design philosophy that translates
conceptional and material contents into three-dimensional, narrative,
themed spaces.‘ | ‚Die Szenografie ist eine kreative
Gestaltungsphilosophie, die konzeptionelle und materielle Inhalte in
dreidimensionale, narrative Erlebnisräume übersetzt.‘ (Quote from the book ‚Scenography 2 – Staging the space‘ | ‚Szenografie 2 – Der inszenierte Raum‘. Basel 2019, p. 153)
In today’s uncertain times, museums can act as an anchor in the storm. To those who aren’t as passionate about the power of museums as readers of this blog, it can often seem that such institutions are merely places where forgotten objects go to enjoy their final years. But despite this, there’s a strong case to be made that the museum is more relevant today than it has ever been. From addressing key social issues to transforming how we see the future, the humble museum has the power to reflect and shape our society. Here are five reasons why we need museums now more than ever.
Learning from the past
Bringing communities together
Standing firm in the face of adversity
Digitalisation, innovation and interaction
Educating future generations
Learning from the past First and foremost, museums and galleries provide an insight into the history of humankind. And while no museum can claim to provide a complete picture, the lessons we can learn from past events, wonders and tragedies are priceless. This is especially true in times of turmoil. Today, it’s impossible to ignore the escalating tensions between nations, between political parties and between different cultural groups. Instead of finding common ground it seems that issues of class, race, gender and environmentalism are becoming ever more polarised. To help the public re-establish this common ground and learn to build bridges rather than breed division, many believe that museums have a role to play in giving us perspective – be it through intellectual exercises or merely holding up mistakes of the past as evidence of where such behaviour will lead us once more. Last year, the Museum of Oxford launched its Queering Spires exhibition to celebrate the ‘hidden history’ of Oxford’s LGBTQIA+ community. Speaking at the time, co-founder of the project Richard Howlett said that Oxford has a “queer history to be proud of.” But, Howlett went on, it’s a “history hidden in people’s attics, filing cabinets and memories. We look forward to helping bring it to life through this exhibition.” This exhibition came at a time when it was reported that hate crimes in England and Wales doubled in just five years, with four out of five anti-LGBT+ hate crimes going unreported. Through exhibitions like Queering Spires, museums can help individuals and groups celebrate what makes them unique, spreading the word that’s it okay to fall outside the box despite the continued intolerance of some. In the face of hatred and ignorance, knowledge and understanding are often the best weapons. This is what the museum has the power to showcase.
Bringing communities together Museums have the power to create unity on both a social and political level, but also on a local one. Local museums are able to provide a sense of community and place by celebrating a collective heritage, offering a great way to get to know the history of a particular area. There are endless examples of local museums in the UK. One such institution is the Hove Museum and Art Gallery, located in Hove near Brighton. Housed in an Italianate Victorian villa near the seafront, this local abode was once home to a wealthy widow before housing German prisoners of war during World War II. The home is filled with a variety of local historical treasures, including dolls, rocking horses, prints, paintings and sculptures. From prehistoric times to the pioneering 20th century filmmaking that occurred in the area, this museum offers a comprehensive history of Hove. Similarly, the Discovery Museum in Newcastle Upon Tyne celebrates the Northern Powerhouse – long before this phrase was coined in recent years. In centuries past, the region led the way in engineering and entire communities flourished on the back of innovation. The eclectic mix of exhibits at the Discovery Museum are all tactile and hands-on, encouraging interaction from visitors, while the lightbulb exhibition details how Joseph Swan unveiled his invention for the first time in Newcastle. As technology and digitalisation sees us becoming more and more globalised, institutions such as these offer a welcome reminder of the achievements and discoveries located closer to home, bringing communities together. Museums can also bring people together in a more literal way, through public events, workshops and lectures. The British Museum, for example, works with community organisations and charities to explore, research and respond to projects. Their past projects have included working with schools, young people, creative arts partnerships and the local LGBTQIA+ community. Meanwhile, some museums like the Museum of Street Culture in Dallas, Texas create exhibitions designed to support vulnerable local people. The Museum of Street Culture recently launched a project designed to engage the public in dialogue with people experiencing homelessness, challenging stigma and increasing awareness. Exhibits like this couldn’t come at a better time, with recent reports confirming that the levels of homelessness are actually five times higher than previously thought.
Standing firm in the face of adversity Of course, taking a stand often means that a museum exposes itself to criticism from those who disagree with their exhibits. And in some cases, criticism can boil over into something much worse. For a stark example of this we need only look back to 2017 and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, D.C. Here, tourists found a noose purposefully left at the museum – one of several hate incidents that followed the 2016 election result. In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Centre reported more than 1,300 hate incidents between November 2016 and early February 2017. Former Director Lonnie G. Bunch III described the leaving of the noose as a sickening “symbol of extreme violence for African Americans,” one which immediately evokes Jim Crow-era lynching and white-on-black violence. But surely the incident only serves to highlight the importance of institutions like the NMAAHC. While such fervent hatred exist, it makes the need for African American stories to be told even clearer.
Digitalisation, innovation and interaction Thanks to the rise in technology over the last two decades, what it means to be a museum is being questioned and challenged. Modern tech is transforming museums from spaces of looking and learning to spaces of interaction, participation and engagement. This is evident in major institutions around the world, including the Detroit Institute of Arts. The museum’s Lumin AR Tour uses augmented reality to improve both the educational and the practical aspects of the museum experience. The tour, introduced in 2017, can be implemented on a handheld device available inside the building. When the device is pointed at certain sculptures, artefacts or paintings, more information about them is made available. Pop-up snippets, detailed descriptions and additional photography are just a few examples of what the devices offer, increasing the average time visitors spend engaging with items inside the collection. One of the most interesting and popular options is the ability to ‘x-ray’ an ancient mummy, allowing visitors the chance to experience the interior as well as the exterior of this fascinating find. Similarly, the ArtLens Interactive Studio at the Cleveland Museum of Art contains a variety of screen-based activities that require physical movement and interaction from the viewer in order to operate. Just some of the activities visitors can expect to enjoy include: virtual painting and virtual collaging (using items found throughout the gallery’s collection); researching and learning about various featured artists and mediums using portable devices; front camera self-portraiture; virtual pottery; and matching shapes to items in the gallery. Examples such as these show the changing faces of museums, as curators begin to think outside the box and develop more immersive, social and collaborative ways of learning for visitors. Advances in technology have also made museums more accessible than ever. For those who might struggle to attend an institution in person, museums and galleries are increasingly sharing their collections online. Virtual reality, digital guides, downloads, apps and digital trails are all becoming increasingly available to anyone and everyone. We need museums because their future is so full of possibility and opportunity – and more people than ever can access them.
Educating future generations Speaking of the future, museums and other cultural institutions will always have a role to play in the education of future generations. From creating exhibitions targeted towards children to teaching children in a quasi-classroom environment, institutions around the world are doing their bit to pass down knowledge. Back in 1990, Semper described a museum as “an educational country fair” – and this is more true today than ever. In the United States alone, around 80% of museums provide educational programmes for children, and spend more than $2 billion per year on educational activities, according to the American Alliance of Museums. Museums for children have been a staple part of museum culture for decades. From Eureka in Halifax, West Yorkshire, to the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum (both located in London), there are endless institutions designed to help children engage with and enjoy learning. What’s more, traditional museum spaces are also offering interactive exhibitions and opportunities for children. The Tate in London offers a dedicated website for children about art – Tate Kids – which allows children to play games and quizzes, watch videos about art and be inspired to make their own creations at home. They can also share their creation with other children around the world via the site’s online gallery. Museums are just as important to the future as the future is to museums. Not only can our museums bring history to life, but they can also shine a light on both our present and our future – a light which can be hard to find elsewhere.
MuseumNext (www.museumnext.com) is a Global Conference series on the future of museums. Since 2009, our events have acted as a catalyst for inspiration, innovation and collaboration, bringing together those who are shaping the museum sector. These films share presentations from our conferences.
Jim Broughton, Head of International Engagement, The Natural History Museum London Jim talked about the decisions museums must make in order to identify new areas for expanding their revenue-generating activities, without compromising either credibility or core purpose. He shared how the Natural History Museum had developed a strategic approach to evaluating and cultivating opportunities in order to accrue benefits that support its mission to challenge the way society thinks about its relationship with the natural world as much as they contribute funding towards its operations, programmes and research.
MICRO’s fleet of six-foot-tall museums are installed in high-impact public spaces from Rockefeller Center to NYC’s busiest public hospitals, reaching new audiences who would not otherwise have access to traditional museums. The world’s first physically distributed museum, MICRO is a museum for everyone, everywhere. MICRO’s co-founder Charles Phillipp will share insights from MICRO’s unique approach to museum storytelling and design for new audiences in public spaces, an approach that ensures visitors of all ages and backgrounds can engage with complex topics from biology to physics, engineering and beyond.
https://youtu.be/X4OCUQRjcEw
Adam Reed Rozan, Director, Programs & Audience Development, National Museum of American History Cultural organizations have historically shied away from taking on complex social issues through their collections and the stories they tell, choosing the safer path instead. But can they still afford to take the safer path? Many are choosing not to. In this talk, Adam Rozan explores how cultural institutions are either preparing for or dealing with drastic, global changes. He highlights specific examples, particularly from the corporate world, and the lessons that all organizations can glean about what’s working or not.
https://youtu.be/LL8ZW3Vk-PA
Peter Gorgels, Internet Manager at Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam will share everything you always wanted to know about Rijkmuseum digital strategy and Rijksstudio, but were afraid to ask. This session will deep dive into some of the most successful projects on the digital side of museums, sharing the lessons that Peter and his team have learned along the way.
https://youtu.be/0Y1odsRw_BI
Lynda Kelly is Head of Web and Audience Research at the Australian Museum, Sydney. She has published widely in audience research and writes the popular blog ‘Audience Research’.
Painter, writer, inventor of “Art Brut”, Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) was a major figure on the 20th century art scene. This exhibition shows how Jean Dubuffet combines his painting and writing activities with the research he has devoted to what he calls Art Brut. It presents his artistic production in all its diversity, with a particular emphasis on showing objects and documents resulting from the explorations he has carried out by visiting museums of ethnography or popular art, as well as various collections dedicated to the “art of the mad”.
“I strongly believe in the importance of having physical, embodied experiences. It matters to actually engage with our senses.” Olafur Eliasson
At its centre is a large scale installation created exclusively for Zurich that addresses a key issue of our age: the relationship and interplay between human and non-human actors on Earth. In ‘Symbiotic seeing’, Eliasson tackles themes such as coexistence and symbiosis and aims to bring about a fundamental shift of perspective. The exhibition invites us not only to reflect on climate change – as a consequence of human action – but also to comprehend the human being as part of a larger system. The socially and environmentally committed artist, who was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals by the UN in September 2019, proposes an idea of the world based on coexistence and collaboration rather than competition. Eliasson’s art translates complex theoretical deliberations into spatial works that not only appeal to people rationally but also touch them emotionally and move them physically. He has been working for over twenty years with an interdisciplinary team that includes craftspeople, architects, media specialists and cooks. He is known for space-filling works, light works and sculptures that prompt audiences to reflect on themselves and the world as they experience them. His works often resemble scientific experiments. In contrast to scientists testing speculative hypotheses, however, Eliasson is interested in conjuring uncertainty and raising questions that can provide a space for new ideas, themes and thought experiments. In Eliasson’s art, the viewers or users play an active role. They interact with the works in different ways and, in doing so, they become their co-authors. Many of his works invite the viewers to consider their own position in the room in relationship to the work and other visitors. In a wider sense, this means becoming aware of one’s own role in the world at large. Eliasson’s works therefore also function as models of society and of the relationships between individuals and groups.
Research pin-wall, detail. Studio Olafur Eliasson, 2019, Photo: Studio Olafur Eliasson
“The central theme is the role of the viewer or user. The question is whether their activities or actions are what actually brings the artwork into being. One can say that, without their participation, it has no meaning.” Olafur Eliasson
Installation view Symbiotic seeing, Visualisation by Studio Olafur Eliasson, 2019
One important inspiration for Symbiotic seeing was the research conducted by the American biologist Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) and the chemist James Lovelock. In the 1960s, the two researchers formulated the ‘Gaia hypothesis’. Gaia, from the Greek root meaning ‘Earth’, was the name of the mother goddess who personified the planet. Margulis and Lovelock hypothesized that the planet Earth and the biosphere can be understood as an organism, given that the biosphere (the entirety of all organisms) creates and maintains the conditions not only for life, but also for the evolution of more complex organisms. In her book The Symbiotic Planet (1998), Margulis goes on to explain how symbiosis in the development of life is just as important as the ‘survival of the fittest’ formulated by Charles Darwin. She describes how symbiotic relationships take place at the micro as well as at the macro level: ‘[H]umans are not the work of God but thousands of millions of years of interaction among highly responsive microbes.’ Just like the transition from single-celled to multicellular organisms was based on cooperation, the populating of Earth was only possible thanks to fungi and plants working together. According to Margulis, all lifeforms together regulate the Earth’s temperature and atmosphere – an interesting idea in the era of the Anthropocene, during which the relationship between humans and the Earth has become severely unbalanced. (You can find out more about this topic in the exhibition catalogue.)
We are living in a technology-driven age, and the right digital medium can help museums stay in the loop.
Museums face a lot of competition for people’s attention nowadays, making the challenge of maintaining and increasing visitor numbers all the more difficult. Technology is everything a museum should be: entertaining, educational, and engaging. It is also a powerful storytelling tool, creating new worlds and showing new perspectives with a single click of a button. Of course, storytelling is at the heart of the museum experience as well. They showcase the story of civilisations: of art, music, history, literature and science, using thematic organisation, audio guides, videos, and varied cultural perspectives to enrich the experience for visitors. But interactive digital technology often goes much further, being adaptive to the individual and much more interactive. So what can museums do to compete? Well, as the old saying goes, if you can’t beat them, join them. Increasingly, museums are looking to technology to transform the visitor experience from that of a passive observer to that of an active participant. For one, augmented reality (AR) can make a walk through a museum much more personal and varied, allowing the visitor to interact with museums in a greater number of ways. Some would even argue that such an immersive approach enables appreciation for an exhibition on a deeper level.
