Heritance Calendar
Heritance BlogQuotes and thinking about museums...
The citations contained on this page are selected from books and articles which Heritance believes are interesting and useful references for museum professionals and shareholders.
"Museums are no longer their own excuse for being. As the resources they require have become greater and greater so, too, have the expectations of those called upon to provide those resources. What is demanded today is that organizations perform, deliver, and demonstrate their effectiveness."
Weil, S.I. (2003) "Beyond Big and Awesome: outcome-based evaluation",
Museum News Nov/Dec 2003:40-53.
Our definition of a viable museum:
- an object treasure house significant to all local communities
- an agent for physical, economic, cultural and social regeneration
- accessible to all-intellectually, physically, socially, culturally, economically
- relevant to the whole of society, with the community involved in product development and delivery, and with a core purpose of improving people's lives
- a celebrant of diversity
- a promoter of social cohesion and a bridger of social capital
- a promoter of social inclusion
- proactive in supporting neighborhood and community renewal
- proactive in developing new audiences
- proactive in developing, working with and managing pan-agency projects
- a resource for structured educational use
- integral to the learning community
- a community meeting place
- a tourist attraction
- an income generator (Heritance would say "financially sustainable")
- an examplar of quality service provision and value for money
"In the visitation research that's been done for many years, the thing that we hear most is that people want to see something about themselves and that they trust information the museums are giving them even more than they trust what schools are telling them and even the stories their grandmothers are telling them."
"The great advantage museums have is that the objects in their collections can carry so much of a display's meaning. Museums can use the wonderful things in their collections to open windows directly onto fascinating worlds."
"Instead of placing only placing our objects on pedestals, it's time we placed our visitors on pedestals as well."
"Attendance at museums in Australia decreased approximately 3 per cent between 1991 and 1995. Between 1995 and 1999, the decline accelerated a further 9 per cent.. The phenomenon is not specific to Australia. Evidence points to a worldwide trend.."
"Audience development is about breaking down the barriers which hinder access to museums and 'building bridges' with different groups to ensure their specific needs are met. It is a process by which a museum seeks to create access to, and encourage greater use of, its collections and services..
"Fundamental to the realization of social inclusion in museums is the presentation of stories highlighting the diversity of a nation's population, a nation's history from the multiple viewpoints of its citizens and the celebration of people from all walks of life, all stations, all creeds."
"The concept of 'barrier' to access: "The social model identifies barriers within society (versus the person) which create disability for individuals. These can be physical, organizational, attitudinal. Responsibility for solving or removing the barriers is shared by all those involved in any situation or interaction."
"Of all the institutions in the United States that are not schools - and are not paid to be - few try harder than museums to educate the young. They conduct classes, they deliver lectures, train classroom teachers, design teaching materials for classroom use, provide a home base for teachers, often send their own instructors into schoolrooms to teach; and they create numberless programmes - mobile units, special exhibitions, studio classes, even didactic dramas - to 'enrich' the curricula."
"All characteristics of a museum - both as an institution and as a physical space - condition its public image.. The image projected by a museum should not result merely from chance, but should be consciously determined, consistent with the museum's role and directions."
"We know that the single most significant barrier to inclusion is the visitor feeling unwelcome and being embarrassed because they do not know where to go or what to expect."
"Customer service may be the single most distinguishing factor of why visitors go to one museum more often than another.."
"Quality provided is ultimately the subjective perception of planners, managers, and front-line staff. Quality experienced is a matter of visitors' own subjective perceptions. Both 'qualitites' must be assessed in order to monitor and manage the development of a satisfactory heritage 'product', but neither has an independent objective existence."
"To fulfill its complete purpose as a show, a museum must do the needful in both ways. It must arrange its content so that they can be looked at; but also help its average visitor to know what they mean. It must at once install its contents and see to their interpretation."
"(W)e are witnessing a deliberate movement in museum philosophy which aims to create a learning environment; an environment which, being outside the formal educational structure, allows adults to participate at their own speed and in their own way. Unlike school or college, there is no sense of competition. Successes or failures are not measured, so there is nothing threatening in a museum learning experience. Indeed, one could argue that museums provide a near perfect setting for the adult learner."
"Museums are no longer their own excuse for being. As the resources they require have become greater and greater so, too, have the expectations of those called upon to provide those resources. What is demanded today is that organizations perform, deliver, and demonstrate their effectiveness."
"Learning is a process of active engagement with experience. It is what people do when they want to make sense of the world. It may involve increase in skills, knowledge, understanding, values and capacity to reflect. Effective learning leads to change, development and the desire to learn more."
The characteristics, elements and outcomes of exemplary interpretation:
A. Under content, a museum engaged in exemplary interpretation:
- demonstrates knowledge of the subject
- selects content carefully and conscientiously
- reflects the complexities of a changing community
- declares its point of view
- makes content relevant and part of a broader, contemporary dialogue
- engages in important issues.
- has a clear statement that describes the purposes of their interpretation, relates it to the mission and describes its goals and methods
- has evidence of effective interpretive planning
- has broadly stated values
- takes its educational role seriously
- involves its community
- demonstrates internal clarity, agreement and attention to the interpretive philosophy
- views interpretation as an ongoing responsibility
- sets goals for individual interpretive programs
- holds cross-institutional discussions
- employs learning theory and educational research
- uses evaluation
- knows its audiences
- creates a continuing relationship between the museum and its audience(s).
- provides multiple level and points of entry: intellectual, cultural, individual, group, etc.
- has inviting design in the presentation of ideas, concepts and objects
- is guided by the overall interpretive philosophy
- creates a bridge between the audience and the content
- expresses a clear idea, or set of idea, and those ideas are apparent to the audience
- uses interpretive media/activities that are appropriate for the goals, content and audience.
"I love seating. I could talk about it all day. If you're discussing anything having to do with the needs of human beings, you have to address seating. Air, food, water, shelter, seating - in that order. Before money. Before love. Seating."
"Until about twenty years ago, museums generally developed their exhibitions using a 'linear' or 'curatorial' model. One individual (generally a curator) had a sole responsibility for development and implementation, the exhibition moved sequentially from one support professional to the next.. In the past twenty years, the organizational structures and processes used to create exhibitions have undergone major changes. One result is that . responsibility for exhibition development is now shared among multiple players."
"The most successful museums offer a range of experiences that appeal to different audience segments and reflect the varying needs of individual visitors . successful museums provide multiple experiences: aesthetic and emotional delight, celebration and learning, recreation and sociability."
"The ecomuseum is based on a locality, which can be defined as a plurality of territories 'of a family, educational, professional, associational, political and also imaginary nature'. It is this plurality which should be the key to the success of the ecomuseum. The necessary democratization, or opening, of 'access to the past' should invite contradiction and debate within a community and should contribute to the demise of the stultifying, unitary, linear, didactic narrative."
"Museums then, should be concerned with promoting a sense of place particularly for urban dwellers through a consideration of those processes which have constructed their place. An emphasis should be put on how places are nodal points in networks of production, how places are physically constructed through the exploitation of material resources, from water, clay and stone, to the manipulation of chemicals and their transformation into commodities, from bricks to nuclear power."
"The new museology, as a defined at a meeting in Quebec in October, 1984, ‘is primarily concerned with community development, reflecting the driving forces in social progress and associating them in its plans for future’".
"Convening focus groups is another approach that helps to determine what factors might increase visitation. Asking current visitors to discuss why they came, whether and why they plan to return and the reasons why their friends do not visit the museum can provide valuable information. Focus groups can also suggest issues to explore and other sources of statistical information."
"For the point of view of economic development, a museum is a product - something that attracts visitors. Like any business manager, a museum director must consider how well the product will sell. The director must make sure that people interested in the product know about it and find it easily accessible."
"Having determined the target audiences, the museum can design a marketing plan to attract them. A simple museum marketing plan usually contains five general components: (1) specific goals, (2) objectives, (3) strategies, (4) a timetable, and (5) measurement, also called evaluation. The development of the plan should involve all of the key actors in a museum. Solid marketing, like the tip of an iceberg, rests on a broad and deep institutional base, much of it unseen. Everybody working or volunteering for the museum and its board should be familiar with and have a copy of the final written plan.
Marketing plans also require at least an annual revision. A plan does not have to be long, but it should be written. This avoids or greatly reduces misunderstandings or disagreements that may emerge when projects get underway. Otherwise, problems that surface during program implementation may hurt feelings, erode cooperation, and lead to wrong or inappropriate information being given to individuals or the media."
"The four elements of the traditional marketing plan include product, place, promotion and price. Often, museums have more control over these elements than they realize. To develop a marketing plan, you should understand how to employ and modify each of these elements so that they best support your marketing goals."
"Of particular concern is that many museums now see no other way but to consume their way to survival or prosperity, failing to recognize that this is an outdated economic perspective. This is doubly puzzling in light of the discernment that should accompany the historical legacy of museums as knowledge-based institutions. Nevertheless, most of us remain seduced by the desire for more of everything, and marketplace economics continues to dominate our culture and worldview. This should, however, be a cause for concern among those many museums that have staked their future on attendance figures, earned revenues and culture as entertainment."
'If meaning is to be found in the relationship of the individual to community, and the opportunity this provides to find out who one is, it is axiomatic that museums have a primary role in facilitating this search."
"I brought the lessons of my movement work (civil liberties, civil rights, women's rights) to the Tenement Museum (www.tenement.org). Paramount among them was the belief that to realize its mission, the museum's programming had to be predicated on the idea that everyone could learn, and that everyone would be welcome and engaged, regardless of background in that learning process. The museum would have to be afford every visitor a safe place in which to contemplate his or her opinions about the issues presented. Simply put, to prosper, the museum had to respect the public - all the public."
"All members of the museum's full-time staff, regardless of education, prior training or position, are an integral part of the teaching and learning process. All conduct public tours of the museum's land-marked tenement. All participate in a weekly program, which includes field trips to area organizations and historical or skills training. All participate actively in planning the museum goals and objectives."
"The museum's mission is an expression of the staff's internal codes. 'I can't imagine,' Katherine told me, 'ever again working in a place which is not mission-driven. Otherwise, you have to separate your 'real'self and feelings from your work self. Here (at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum: www.tenement.org) , there is a seamless relationship between my personal and professional goals.'
"I believe that the primary challenge as people who work in museums is to establish the systems and outward-looking approaches to planning and budgeting that will ensure that our museums fulfill social purposes in an on-going fashion. We need to establish methods and mechanisms not dependent on us as individuals, but systematized, because social needs change and evolve, and our museums need to change and evolve equally."
"The public's response, however, would be varied and, in some cases, indifferent to the work museum professionals are so passionate about. Museums can no longer function in a vacuum, unresponsive to public sentiments or independent of the involvement of our diverse communities. Contributing to the need for museums to respond to their varied and diverse publics is the additional challenge of the competitive marketplace in which museums exist. A complex economic environment, increasing leisure time options, changing demographics, new technological advancements, plus more all indicate that museums must become more agile in their response to change. If museums choose not to respond to the changing environment, they will feel the repercussions in declining attendance and diminishing revenue and donations.These realities can be feared or they can be viewed as opportunities for museums to become more relevant and responsive to the world in which we live. The museum profession, like any other profession, must continue to reexamine itself relative to the external environment in order to remain viable. At the center of the institutional assessment is the mission statement. The mission statement is the defining document for the museum."