The Uncataloged Museum

Updates!

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Tue, 12 May 2026 18:31:00 +0000

Just a few quick updates after a long absence...

Along with Stacey Garcia, I'll be heading to Kalmar, Sweden to facilitate the workshop Climate, Heritage, and Policy: Dialogues in Learning at Linneaus University in Kalmar. I've tacked on some extra days at the end in Copenhagen, so look forward to visiting museums there! Suggestions welcomed!

I'm also pleased to announce that I will be a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Latvia in fall, 2026. I'll be teaching at the Latvian Academy of Culture as well as doing workshops and other projects with colleagues there. The city of Riga and the country of Latvia are fascinating places and I know it will be a time of great learning for me.

More to come on both! Not the least of which Sweden, Denmark and Latvia all seem to have incredible cafes and bakeries!

Braver Together: Join Us to Build Our Collective Strength

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 18:53:00 +0000

“Relationships grow out of the realization of mutual benefit, the creation of shared value, and the commitment to a shared future." Marshall Ganz

I've recently written three blog posts about brave museums (here, here, and here) and I've had many conversations lately about how museum and cultural colleagues can be braver in support of our communities--and I don't just mean braver about advocating for our own financial support. That's vital I know, and the past few months have been shocking as IMLS, NEA, NEH, and so many other federal supports have been kicked away.

But we have other jobs too, as community members and citizens. Sometimes it's hard to know how to support others in the most effective way possible, at a time when our own bravery seems hard. I'm lucky enough to have two incredible colleagues, Braden Paynter and Stacey Garcia-- together we've spent a great deal of time pondering how we can be helpful. It seems clear to us that bravery is best done as a collective effort, so we've put our collective heads together from our home bases in Maine, upstate New York and California and have come up with this webinar for all of you.

Please plan to join us for

BRAVER TOGETHER: Strengthening Civil and Human Rights

Tuesday, June 17 · 1:30 - 3pm EDT

Strengthening civic structures and supporting civil and human rights takes bravery. Individual acts of heroism can be inspiring, but movements and consistent change are built through collective bravery. This interactive virtual session will draw on experiences from across the country and around the world to offer tools and frameworks for cultural workers to ignite bravery around themselves and be forces for positive change. It's a pay-what-you-can event (suggested $10) with all proceeds going to the food banks in our respective communities.

What will we do? It's an interactive webinar--we'll build our collective bravery together, with resources and lots of opportunities, in small groups and large, to ponder questions such as:

What's bravery to you?
How do we create a brave space with our colleagues?
What change do we want most at this moment? (you have to know what you’re fighting for– something that’s bigger than yourself/your institution)
How can we turn what we have (resources) into what we need (power) to get what we want (change)?

We'll share examples from museums and cultural heritage organizations from around the world and will follow up with some useful worksheets. It's a great chance to meet and connect with colleagues, building solidarity together. Space is limited, so register now!

Brave Museums Part 3: The Legacy Museum

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Fri, 09 May 2025 15:32:00 +0000

As I get back to regular blogging, I want to begin each one, when I can, calling out museums that are brave in challenging times. Today, check out this New York Times article featuring a number of sites and museums dedicated to telling the full story of American life, including the story of African Americans and the legacies of enslavement. In the article, Ashley Rogers, director of Whitney Plantation, reminds readers, “a wound doesn’t get better if you ignore it. It just festers.”

This week, thousands of museum folks are gathering for the American Alliance of Museums annual conference in Los Angeles where I'm sure so many issues about history, funding, and more will be discussed. I miss Twitter for conference sessions and hope someone will find Threads or some other way to share for those of us not there. Please share other brave museums you learn about!

But, on to another brave museum. Some museums become brave, like the Valentine that I wrote about last time (and as an aside, some start as brave and become less so). But others are born brave--their very founding is a call for us to remember and to be brave about facing both past and future. A few weeks ago I spent a day at the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Created by Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit law office. The goals and inspiration of the Legacy Project are described on their website: "Seeing firsthand how excessive punishment, racial discrimination, and inequality are deeply rooted in America’s history of racial injustice inspired us to create the Legacy Sites. By offering these unique spaces for people to gather, learn, and reflect on our history and its legacy, we hope to foster a new era of truth and justice in America."

No pictures are allowed in the museum and I didn't take notes, partly because of the nonstop conversations Dina Bailey and I were having along the way. As a result, I have no pictures of label texts, so this post is more reflective of the experience overall. As you enter, you encounter a very large video of waves, crashing forward, which served to me as both a representation of the journey of the middle passage and of the journey the exhibition would take us through. The museum has almost no objects and in the early history, stays away, for the most part, from the images that are so familiar. Instead, there were hand-drawn videos (with the hands shown at work) sharing parts of the story and as well, concepts and historical facts that may be unfamiliar to many. We didn't take time to watch the installations in the small theater spaces, but I can imagine they are equally powerful.

The label text is unsparing--when is the last time you saw the phrase "racial terrorism," to describe our history? The amount of graphics with words: runaway slave ads, legal notices, newspaper headlines, all in black and white, feels a bit overwhelming. As we read the labels though, it struck us that this is very much an exhibit developed by folks with legal minds. They assemble the evidence--so much evidence--and then make an impassioned argument. The exhibit demands our attention to the evidence.

Photo: EJI

There's also a subtle shift in perspective. Earlier in the exhibition, you walk on the outside of cells where you can hear re-created audio of enslaved African Americans--but you're on the outside, listening in, still at some remove. But at the end of the exhibition, visitors can sit and listen, face-to-face with death row inmates, making sure that visitors understand that this is not history, that this is not past, and that the legacy of enslavement and racism continues forward.

Photo: EJI

But then, at the end of the exhibition, we entered a space that I found so beautiful and moving. It's a very large gallery, that is floor-to-ceiling portrait images, faces only of African Americans of achievement in every field. The space is copper/gold colored and is the place where the importance of Black imagination, passion and knowledge are made gloriously clear. We sat in this space for quite a while, talking, but also watching people as they walked through, stopping at images they recognized or sitting like us, for a moment to take it all in.

From there, we went to what's commonly known as the Lynching Memorial (also, by the way, the admission cost for all three legacy sites was $5 and the tickets are good forever if you don't make it to all three in a day). There's been a great deal written about this memorial (for instance, here, here and here) and I hope all of you who can will make your way to Montgomery. As we approached the memorial, there's a large, pristine green lawn between us and the memorial itself. As we wound our way up the path, the large iron shapes, each delineating a county and its lynchings, come closer and closer. And then, all of a sudden, we found ourselves looking at counties and wondering. Wondering about the people named, wondering about all of the unknowns, wondering about why the lynchings happened when they did--sometimes a county had quite a few in a year, and then none. We walked among these pillars, slowly making our way down the ramp until these are hanging over us, as lynching victims would have been. You could feel the deep pressure and pain.

I particularly appreciated the way this national memorial focused on the local. By creating this county-by-county memorial, it makes it hyper-local. Visitors, including us, think about counties we know, or have been to. But it also, after the memorial, let's us know that we can make change. All of the county pillars have duplicates, lined up on the ground for counties to take home once some sort of reconciliation process has taken place. There are still lots of them left--but then, down a bit, are versions of familiar shaped historic markers for those counties who have actually done the work, a clear message that there is much work still to be done.

"Hopelessness is the enemy of Justice."
~ Bryan Stevenson

(thanks Paul Orselli of Exhibit Tricks for pointing me to this interview and quote that I found

when I was writing this post)

Brave Museums Part 2: The Valentine

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 19:36:00 +0000

Before I talk about a brave museum I've visited, I wanted to shout out all those brave museum colleagues in the United States (and librarians too!) who have pushed back against the current administration's executive orders. In particular, check out, if you haven't already:

Lonnie Bunch's statement on the Smithsonian
Ashley Rogers of Whitney Plantation discussing cancellation of IMLS funds
Japanese American National Museum statement on DEI

and of course, so many others of you--keep it up!

The Valentine Museum is in Richmond, Virginia, once the capital of the Confederacy. It was founded in the late 19th century and its first president was sculptor Edward Valentine whose studio was relocated to the museum grounds. Pretty straightforward, right?

Not to the talented folks who took on the task of rethinking Valentine's work, including co-curators Christina Vida and Josh Epperson. Valentine was perhaps the best-known sculptor of Confederate memorials. An exhibit, opened in 2024, seeks to understand, not the work, but what it stood for, why it was created, and most importantly, what legacies it has left us today, to still grapple with. The museum describes it as an "exhibition that examines how the Lost Cause myth was spread through centers of power, like media, education, politics, money, religion, and violence."

Interestingly, like the museum I wrote about last time, there's lots of text. Both museums seem to believe deeply that visitors are up for challenging topics, which often need lots of text. No dumbing down here! A thoughtful three-year process involved surveys, focus groups, conversations and programming. This serves as a reminder to all of us--it's not the length of the text, it's the quality of ideas and language. This exhibit used tough questions to bring folks into the topic (and effective, clear yet compelling design). For instance,

You're involved in the label conversation, you're not just a passive consumer. They want you to consider past and present in a city where the past and present are inextricably intertwined. Valentine's sculptures are still on show, but behind a scrim, with the sense that they are ever-present, yet perhaps receding in a city where the White House of the Confederacy is just down the street.

I've been lucky enough to work with the team twice on developing dialogic approaches for working with groups, both adults and young people as part of my role at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. This is a challenging exhibition and the team has been dedicated to dialogue, really embracing it as a tool for individual and collective learning. Below, two pictures from a 2024 workshop and an image sharing what the group was proud of, one year later.

Two other notes on this museum: first, there is an extensive list of resources on their website, including lesson plans for students. Second, in its permanent exhibit, the Valentine shows the statue of Jefferson Davis, covered in paint, and lain on its side. Visitors can post comments next to the statue which does inspire some strong reactions. According to the staff, the museum's director, Bill Martin, is always willing to come down and speak with visitors about the statue, the exhibit, or anything else on their minds. A willingness to engage with difficult issues, to work with communities to understand complex histories, to stand our ground and not obey in advance, is needed now more than ever. Thanks to all of you who do.

What Makes a Brave Museum? Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 20:33:00 +0000

After a very long break, I've felt the urge to blog again, but felt I had little to add to the many voices that have so eloquently and usefully written about the threats to American democracy--the shuttering of agencies from AID to IMLS and everywhere in between. Thanks to all of you who have shared perspectives and useful tools (including, but not limited to: many resources from AAM here, this this thoughtful conversation with Devon Akmon, and the American Library Association statement on the proposed elimination of IMLS).

Instead, this is the first in a series about brave museums I've encountered over the last year or two. What do I mean when I say brave? They are places that take on challenging histories, with multiple narratives, that encourage visitors to really think about past, present, and future. They are also places that leap thoughtfully into innovative ways of exhibition development (with, admittedly, a bias of my own against intensive technology).

I'll begin with a museum in Estonia that I visited last fall: the Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom in Tallinn. The permanent exhibit looks at during and after the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Estonia but importantly, as the website says, The focus on restoring and preserving freedom is central to Vabamu. Somewhat reluctantly I took an audio tour, which turned out to be fabulous, tremendously engaging, but also giving you the written text, so you could read if you didn't want to listen. As you'll see below, I took lots of photos of the text itself, to help me remember!

A key element of the exhibition is testimony from Estonians themselves, who were usually shown full size--so you really met them. I think of this museum as brave, because it embraces all of the grays of past, present, and future. For instance:

The exhibit also acknowledges the complexity of remembering Soviet times--that for many, there is also a complicated kind of nostalgia that plays in different ways for different memories.

The exhibit ends with contemporary testimonies and a chance to take a quiz to find out what kind of political person you would be in a newly independent Estonia--and you hear from people that represent all those perspectives.

Today, as I go back and read these texts that I saw last fall, they have so much resonance in our current place here in the United States. It's clear that we all have choices to make, but they may all be different. But we need to be asking these questions!

Special thanks to Martin Vaino, Curator and Head of Exhibitions who introduced us to the museum's work, and appreciation for this small exhibit on Ukraine, that used a dialogic format to encourage Estonians to reflect on their role in this conflict. Thanks also to the US Embassy in Estonia who supported my attendance at the ICOM-Exhibition conference and this museum visit.

Next?

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 17:52:00 +0000

During a conference break in Taiwan, 2023

It's been more than a year since I've posted. I continue to work with museums, historic sites, and other organizations in my role at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (six continents in 2023, though no so many planned for 2024). Russia's war on Ukraine continues and I continue to stand in awe of the bravery of colleagues and friends there. I continue to visit museums all over, and a continued joy is meeting new people and seeing new places.

But I haven't blogged in more than a year! Am I all the way done, as many bloggers I admire are? Do I have anything else to say? I decided to back up all my blog posts, all 605 of them with more than a million views overall. That's alot of something, though I'm not sure quite what! Should I move to a newsletter or something else? I'll try to spend some time in the next few months contemplating all this.

Thoughts for me? Share away.

The Power of a Single Voice and the Power of Our Collective Voices

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 16:29:00 +0000

This week, it's been one full year since Russia launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine, a country I love deeply. I've been in awe of the courage of the Ukrainian people--both the people I know, wherever they are, and the people I read about in the news. It's clear that in addition to fighting on the battlefield, there are also battles being fought about culture and cultural heritage. In this grab-bag post, I just wanted to highlight some work I admire (there is so much more too!).

First, the power of a single voice. Nadia Parfan was a student of mine the very first year I went to Ukraine (2009). She also was good enough to serve as my translator sometimes when I returned to Ukraine. For some reason, I have such a clear memory of her attempting to explain post-Soviet museum culture to me as we walked up a set of steps. Not an easy explanation, for sure!

Her new short film, "I Did Not Want to Make a War Film," has just been featured on the New Yorker's website so it's gotten loads of attention already in the United States: you may have already come across it. If you haven't seen it yet, please take a watch. This is such a personal story, using the tools of filmmaking, friends, and family to help all of us understand, at least a small bit, about the ways in which the war is affecting everyone in Ukraine, not just on the battlefield. From her grandmother's prayers to the joy of returning to Kyiv, the city she loves, to that tamarind plant, it's just one story of the millions about this year of war.

Dozens of Ukrainian scholars have opened new conversations about Russia as a colonial power and about the ways in which that colonial power has meant that Ukrainian artists and artworks have been ignored, misnamed, or minimized in European and American museums. Last week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, I found at least two re-written labels on artworks, due, I feel sure, to the pressure of those scholars and journalists.

Artwork and labels from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My own not-very-good photos.

I wish the Met had actually owned up to what the previous labels had said, as a way to open up a broader discussion, but at least the change was made. To learn more about Ukrainian art history and decolonization efforts, follow Oksana Semenik on Twitter at @ukr_arthistory, and for fascinating and important threads on Russia as a colonial power, follow Maxim Eristavi on Twitter @maximeristavi. Many, many more folks are doing this work as well.

Individual actions are joined by collective actions. ICOM-Ukraine, the national committee of the International Council of Museums, has actively worked to have ICOM take a strong stand. This past week ICOM-Germany did just that. ICOM-Germany is the largest national committee so this stand takes a significant message to the larger museum community. In a statement (read in full here) the committee said,

With immediate effect, ICOM Germany is boycotting the Russian National Committee as the national association under the Russian flag. In principle, the German National Committee will neither cooperate with ICOM Russia nor participate in events at which representatives of ICOM Russia or Russian museum colleagues are present. ICOM Germany is also demanding that the Russian National Committee be suspended at international level. To this end, talks with other ICOM committees and ICOM International are being intensified. The aim is to completely stop working with ICOM Russia and to exclude the Russian National Committee from the world association until further notice.

The board of ICOM Germany shows solidarity with all democratic, progressive and liberal institutions and people in Russia. It is aware that the exclusion will also affect employees in Russian museums who work for peace and justice. However, the cultural sector must not permanently claim a special role or postulate a general impression of innocence. The systematic looting of Ukrainian museums, which according to current knowledge is supported by Russian museum actors and is an example of ethical transgression, should no longer go uncommented. The reports and pictures from Ukrainian museums speak a clear language.

Fire extinguishers being delivered by HERI

So what can you, with your single voice do?

Listen, watch, read, and think critically.
Amplify good work being done. If you're a member of ICOM, can you encourage your national committee to join Germany? Can you take a look at your own collections?
Contribute financially if you are able. It seems as if local organizations/individuals on the ground are able to quickly deliver aid of all sorts than the big international ones (in my mind, World Central Kitchen is a notable exception and one I support for their work everywhere). In the museum world, there's the Museum Crisis Center, founded and run by Ukrainian museum workers which is supporting both institutions and individuals. The Heritage Emergency Response Initiative (HERI), also founded and run by Ukrainians, has focused on a wide range of support, much of it practical (generators and fire extinguishers, for instance). HERI is now broadening its work to consideration of what post-war recovery efforts will look like for the cultural heritage sections. All sorts of private citizens are raising funds to support both military and civilian needs. For instance, The poet/musician Sergey Zhadan raises funds for drones, trucks, and other equipment for the army--so far, more than 100 vehicles.

Zhadan, upon receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade last fall gave a speech on language and war (full text in English here). And he ends with the future:

Like it or not, we will have to renew our sense of time, perspective, and continuity. We are fated to have a future. Moreover, we bear responsibility for it. Now, it is shaped by our visions, our convictions, our willingness to take responsibility. We will work at returning our sense of the future, since there’s just so much in our memories that demands our involvement tomorrow. We are all linked by this current that carries us, that won’t let us go, that unites us. We are all linked by our language. Even if, at a certain moment, its capabilities seem limited or insufficient. Nevertheless, we will be forced to return to it and its capabilities which give us hope that, in the future, there will not be any misunderstandings or anything left unsaid.

Dear Ukrainian colleagues and friends, the new visions, convictions, and willingness to take responsbility that Zhadan mentions, will surely bring a new peaceful future.

Maria Primachenko, A Dove Has Spread Her Wings and Asks for Peace.

My Top Museum/Heritage Experiences of 2022

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 14:30:00 +0000

2022 meant back to travel, which meant that I got to meet incredible people and see incredible places in person. Here, in no particular order are some experiences that surprised, inspired and moved me. But the most important is the final one, so please read on!

Difficult stories in Czechia

Last spring, I spent an incredible week out and about in the Czech Republic, in three very different locations, presenting workshops on telling difficult stories. Stepan Cernousek and Petra Černoušková of Gulag.cz, joined by interpretation specialists Kristýna Pinkrová and Ladislav Ptáček identified three places with challenging histories. The five of us loaded into a van and set off. The plan for the week was to arrive at a place, give me a chance to learn about it, by meeting with local historians and others, and then do a workshop the following day. From socialist industrial history to the oft-ignored history and persecution of the Roma people, to the Sudentenland, I learned so much and understood more about how past shapes the present. The workshops were wonderful, but what I remember more are the conversations--over breakfast, over dinner, and in the van, up and down roads across the country with four amazing folks, willing to answer all my questions, and help me ponder my own work and how we can make a difference. Here's some reflections from the team.

Mammoth Dialogues in Texas

When the Waco Mammoth National Monument in Texas requested dialogue training from our team at Sites of Conscience, I really wondered how in the world I could train in dialogue around mammoths! I didn't know anything about mammoths, and to be honest, not much about Texas. But, off I went. The great team at the site, including some really thoughtful interns, had backgrounds very different than mine--archaeologists and paleontologists mostly. But, at the end of several days, the group, working together, had found so many interesting and important dialogues to consider using with their visitors. Climate change--fossils help us understand that. Evolution--absolutely. How do we value and understand science and expertise? Absolutely again. I appreciated the willingness of this team to embrace new ways of working as they helped me learn too.

In Conversation with Clint Smith

I first learned about Clint Smith when my husband said, "I just listened to this guy on Fresh Air that I think you'd really be interested in. I then devoured his book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, recommending it to everyone I knew. As you can imagine, I was thrilled and honored when Amy Hufnagel from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center asked me to be in conversation with Clint as a part of their Stowe Prize ceremony. which recognizes a distinguished book of general adult fiction or non-fiction that illuminates a critical social justice issue in contemporary society in the United States. In the book, he shares his visits to historic sites and the related conversations with visitors and staff, and his own reflections on those experiences, from Confederate graveyards to Monticello.

“Across the United States, and abroad, there are places whose histories are inextricably tied to the story of human bondage. Many of these places directly confront and reflect on their relationship to that history; many of these places do not. But in order for our country to collectively move forward, it is not enough to have a patchwork of places that are honest about this history while being surrounded by other spaces that undermine it. It must be a collective endeavor to learn and confront the story of slavery and how it has shaped the world we live in today.”

In a wide-ranging conversation, we talked about when he first knew he could be a writer (a third-grade poem), how history interpreters can be leaders in the needed conversations in this country, and how he views his work--and our work--as something that is not done for our generation, but for the generations to come. You can watch the full conversation here.

The Tenement Museum in New York City

In October, I joined my Sites of Conscience colleagues on a visit to the Tenement Museum. 97 Orchard Street, the tenement itself, is temporarily closed, but we saw an exhibition/installation about garment workers that I had not seen. But my big takeaway here was not interpretation (though it was great), it was about what visionaries can accomplish. Ruth Abram, the founder of the Tenement Museum was also the founder of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. In a 2014 interview, she spoke about a key question for her work:

"Most of my life there's been a single question hanging over each thing I've done, whether in the women's movement or the civil rights movement, and it's how are we going to be one nation and at the same time appreciate, enjoy, and not be afraid of the sometimes profound differences we bring to the table based on our backgrounds?"

This was not, of course, what historic houses were doing in 1992. But over the last decades, the worldwide museum field (including the new definition) has moved closer to Abram's vision of museums and historic sites as places where we can "appreciate, enjoy and not be afraid."

Hadrian's Wall, United Kingdom

On a glorious November day, historian Joanne Sayner and her family took me off on a walk to the highest point of Hadrian's wall in the north of England. What made this memorable? It was a reminder of how large the Roman Empire was (just a month earlier I had been looking at Roman walls in the subway station in Sofia, Bulgaria). But it also was a chance to consider history outdoors, to see not only the wall, but also the varied landscape, altered over centuries. It was a reminder that joy and history can find places to work together. (a shout-out also to the very nice interpretive center, with its dialogic questions in an exhibit!)

Ukrainian Museum Colleagues

Here's the most important museum/heritage experience of 2022. As most readers know, I have a long deep experience in Ukraine, beginning as a Fulbright Scholar fourteen years ago this month. Until the pandemic, I had been able to return almost every year for one project or another, and have had the opportunity to travel all over the country, doing workshops, meeting colleagues, and learning a great deal. I have not been able to visit this year, of course, but I am in awe of the work that Ukrainian museum workers have done, showing courage and resilience under circumstances that few of us can even imagine. They have packed collections away, they have repaired damaged buildings, they have continued to do programming, in courtyards or subway stations underground, they have supported their colleagues in more dire need, they have shared their work to the world, working to decolonize narratives, they have asked for accountability from our international organizations. All this while they are working to keep themselves and their families safe. They are true heroes. At the ICOM meeting in Prague, I had the chance to catch up with some Ukrainians in person (above, here we are at lunch) so this photo stands in for the thousands of colleagues doing challenging, difficult, meaningful work.

I want to encourage those of you who are able to contribute to supporting Ukrainian museums and museum colleagues. These are two locally-organized endeavors doing great work in Ukraine:

What did I Learn this Year?

As I look back and reflect on these experiences (and many more) there are a few important takeaways for me.

First, curiosity. I want to learn about places, about people, about the past, about where to eat the best local food (fabulous barbeque outside Waco!), the best beer (okay, all over Czechia), what different building styles mean and so much more. Accompanying curiosity is a willingness to ask questions and to acknowledge what it is that you don't know. I don't necessarily think of myself as a humble person, but it's true, curiosity is a kind of humbleness.

Second, believe that change is possible. From Ruth Abram's vision to Clint Smith's hope for the future, from tough conversations in rural Czechia to the work of Ukrainian colleagues--they all demonstrate that change is possible, but it requires not just hope, but also work.

Third, it's people that matter to me. It's not only objects or buildings that created the memories, although they are a part of all these experiences. It's the chance to have conversations--in a van heading across Czechia, under a big tent with Clint Smith, and even on Zoom calls with colleagues (though thankfully fewer of those these days!). A particular shout-out to the best work conversation person for me, Braden Paynter. We laugh that we start from two different ends (he's theory, I'm practice) to get to some really interesting conversations about ways to approach our work, almost always meeting in the middle! I've learned about the value of silence from him, and he's learned, I think, about the value of jumping in from me. A lucky, deeply meaningful work pairing.

An informal fourth: try to eat local food wherever you are! Check out the end of the post for some of what I ate this year from Texas barbeque to Italian gelato to Czech dumplings to a giant Scottish breakfast. If you're interested in general travel plus photos, in addition to museums, follow me on Instagram

And what else?
So many other experiences this year--too many to write about, so my intention for 2023 is to do more writing, more immediately, about what I see and learn. Deep appreciation to all those of you who I met along the way. Stay tuned for 2023.

Exhibition Layers: Small but Mighty in Prague

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 23 Oct 2022 23:55:00 +0000

I've spent more hours than I could possibly imagine working on how to tell complex stories in exhibitions: how to layer a story, how to draw people in, how to include multiple perspectives, and most of all, how to make it something where people want to look, to read text labels, and something where visitors walk away talking about it. As those of you who also do this work know, it's really hard!

So when I see an exhibit that really is layered, that really draws people in, and is the first exhibit produced by an organization, I really want to share it.

This summer in Prague, I had a chance to see the exhibit "Sandarmokh – Where the Trees Have Faces" produced by Gulag.cz, an organization dedicated to documenting gulag sites of the former Soviet Union (and elsewhere). Gulag.cz was also the sponsor of a series of workshops I did in the Czech Republic this spring--their work is tremendous on many levels.

What were the layers? First, the exhibit is the story of Sandermokh, "a distant place in Russia’s Karelia, close to the Finnish border, and the scene of a massacre that was meant to be forgotten. As the Stalin repressions peaked in 1937–1938, more than 6,000 people of 56 nationalities were executed there. In addition to many Russians, Karelians, Finns, Ukrainians and the members of other European and Soviet nationalities."

Second, it's the story of historian Yuri Dmitriev from the Memorial association in Russia. Dmitriev and colleagues from the St. Petersburg Memorial office located Sandarmokh precisely in 1997, and they found and documented the names of the majority of those executed in the years that followed. But the official attitude of this work has changed greatly over the decades. Dmitriev was unjustly arrested, tried three times, and finally sentenced by the Russian Federation's Supreme Court. He is now serving a sentence of 15 years in a Russian penal colony.

The third part of the story is that of Memorial International, a co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize but also an organization that Russia considers a direct threat and which has faced repeated challenges to its work in Russia and has been disbanded there (though it continues its work elsewhere).

And the final part of the story: Gulag.cz issued an open call for art relating to the topic. More than seventy artists responded with an astonishing variety of work. When I saw the exhibit in Prague, just a few of the works were on exhibition, with others to be shown at each location. Once the tour is completed, the works will be auctioned off to benefit humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

What made all these stories, all these layers, work together in a small-scale panel exhibition when we often see layering attempts in big, expensive exhibits that fail? Here's the elements that I thin made it work.

People-centered. This exhibit is about people, about Yuri Dmitriev and his work, about others at Memorial, about those killed in the forest, and the artist statements give us an entirely other group of people to consider. No matter where you are in the exhibit, people are at the center. The goal of Stalin was to eliminate people and in every way, this exhibit reinforces that these people, and these stories matter. It's particularly relevant as Stalin's tools are returning every day in Ukraine.

Different ways of learning. You can look at the artwork--some of it easily accessible and some of it more challenging. You can read the labels. You can look at a recreation of Yuri's desk. You can look at historic photos of those who were killed and more recent, yet historic photos of memorial ceremonies at the site.

Really well-written labels. I was lucky enough to visit the exhibit with Stepan Cernousek and Petra Černoušková of Gulag.cz. When I mentioned how well-written--brief and compelling--the labels were, Stepan laughed and said, "oh, that was all Kristýna! She kept telling us that we had to use less text!" A big shout-out to Kristýna Pinkrová, a tremendous museum colleague who I also got to know this spring.

Simple, low-budget design. The exhibit is traveling, so the design needed to be affordable and adaptable to many different spaces. It was a modern, window-filled space in Prague and it looks like a vaulted brick-ceiling space in Brno. But the design works both places.

And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, tell stories that matter. There are important, vital stories to tell in every community, no matter where you are in the world. You don't need to do another display of wedding dresses or the chronological history of your town. If you don't think those stories exist, you aren't listening.

At the Prague opening, Dmitriev himself was able to speak by phone from the penal colony where he is currently unjustly incarcerated and delivered the following thoughts:

"I immensely appreciate your hard work which you do to preserve the memory. However, I think we've done less than we could. At least, those who were engaged in the preservation of memory in the Soviet Union and in Russia. Maybe that's why we live in such difficult times now. Complicated and tragic times. Nevertheless, I don't think we should give up for we must continue to deal with what we have dealt with, to talk about what has happened and what is happening now. For there is a direct connection between the past and the present. That's probably all I wanted to say to everyone here. Good luck.“

These are my own photos--you can see many more, and much better ones on Gulag.cz's site. Many, many thanks to Stepan, Petra, Kristýna, and all those who worked on the exhibition. I am so proud to know you and inspired by your work!

Manifesta 14: The Stories in Pristina

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 25 Sep 2022 15:13:00 +0000

In late August, my colleague and friend Annemarie DeWildt and I set off (see previous post) to Pristina, Kosovo to explore the art at Manifesta 14.

Manifesta, headquartered in Amsterdam, describes this year's event:

rethink[ing] the relation between culture and civic society, investigating and instigating positive social change through contemporary culture in response to, and in close dialogue with, the social sphere of the Host City and its communities. Manifesta has consistently chosen unexpected host locations that reflect Europe’s ever-changing DNA to shed light on a world defined by changing ethical and aesthetic imperatives. Manifesta, as a recurring event, has transformed itself into a multilayered and inclusive instrument of civic engagement projects. In 2022, Manifesta 14 Prishtina will take place in Prishtina, Kosovo. Manifesta 14 aims to support the citizens of Kosovo in their ambition to reclaim public space and to rewrite the future of their capital as an open-minded metropolis in the Balkans and in Europe through the development of a new cultural institution.

I had encountered bits and pieces of a previous Manifest, in 2014 in St. Petersburg, Russia, and needless to say, this was quite a different experience. Kosovo is a young country, having declared its independence from Serbia only in 2008, and is now formally recognized by more than a hundred countries, although not Serbia, Russia, or China. The wars of the Balkans, too complicated to explain in this blog post, shaped a great deal of what we saw in Pristina as it continues to echo into and shape the lives of Kosovans and others in the region.

The art was all over the city, and in just over two days, we visited as many places as possible, which helped us understand one goal of Manifesta, to "support the citizens of Kosovo in their ambition to reclaim public space." Ir's not a large city, and by walking everywhere, we got a sense of the city itself, encountering artworks and public spaces along the way, creating as it were, our own narrative of this place. For both of us, I think, we found the works that explored the complex past, present and future of the region most compelling and often found ourselves, as history museum people, talking about the many ways that the artists used narratives in their work--and sometimes wondering about who gets to use whose narratives and who tells what stories. My understanding of contemporary art is really that of an interested observer--so context, other artistic inspirations, movements and the like are absent for me.

Here's just a sampling of some of the works I'll long remember (and as I write this, so many others return to me--so please explore them all here).

photo: Manifesta 14

Marta Popivoda's Yugoslavia, How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body   looked at the ways in which Yugoslavia's collective body, as shown primarily in found footage of youth festivals, changed over time, from an idea of a collective solidarity, leading to the question she poses, "Why, did citizens so readily abandon the maxim of brotherhood and unity in favour of nationalism, individualism and capitalism? Was there, is there not something to be salvaged from socialism? " When my daughter was in middle-school, she came home one day having learned about Communism for the first time. "I don't get it, she said, "it seems like a good idea." Marta took that sense of a good idea and by brilliant editing and narrative, brought a sense of the collective body and of the possibilities, than then fell away. The narrative in this was both collective and intensely personal.

Artan Hajrullahu's beautiful small-scale works, done on brown packing paper, are the most personal of narratives, showing images of everyday life in detail that is both realistic and dream-like. They drew you into imagined lives, where you could both sense his story and create your own narratives.

I find myself often looking at hands and feet in portraits, and Alije Vokshi's work intrigued me. After becoming fascinated with a laborer's hands, she began putting those large hands, those hands, she says, as “a signifier of hard work and diligence.” She makes seen the unseen narratives of hard work done by many,

And of course, I have to mention a story that includes pickles! Fahrije Hoti and the Women of Krushë e Madhe is an incredible narrative, one not often seen in art exhibitions. 243 men and boys were taken from the village in 1999, now presumed killed by Serbian forces. Those devastating losses also had economic impact. In 2005, Hoti, along with other war widows, founded a company to sell ajvar and pickles, despite cultural prejudice against women in business The company now employs 50 women and their products can be found all over the country. I wanted to know more of the stories in the installation, but the inclusion alone in Manifesta told a particular narrative of feminism and resilience.

All of the above works were in the Grand Hotel, built in the 1970s and including, in an of itself, numerous narratives. Half of most of the floors were stripped back to the concrete and used for exhibitions, but in the other half, the hallways and rooms remained. We got a glimpse of Tito's restored apartment (both creepy and cheesy) there and learned about the art that had once been on its walls.

The work of Alevtina Kakhidze from Ukraine, "Invasion, 2022" shared a different kind of narrative. Her drawings and botanical samples combine to help us understand more about Ukraine's vibrant agricultural life--and at the same time, those plants, she proposes, can be examples for us, spreading around the world. Plants, she says, "are pacifists as much as possible on this planet. They don't kill each other in an instant; they don't run away either in case of danger." Plants as storytellers!

At a historic hammam, Chiharu Shiota created a work of narratives that I found both beautiful and frustrating. This installation is composed of hundreds of handwritten memories about the Kosovan war. But whose are they? How are they collected? How are decisions made about their use? Is the goal (does art need a goal?) for us just to consider that memories are always a cascade together?

And finally, the Hertica Schoolhouse and its many narratives provided the most memorable experiences of the trip. It was the only place we had to take a taxi to, with the driver questioning why we would even want to go there. In the 1990s, ethnic Albanians set up more than 400 schools in homes, essentially creating a parallel school system to teach in Albanian, which was banned in schools. Mehmet Aliu-Hertica offered his home for high school students who met there for more than nine years, with classes running in shifts all day long. The house was damaged by fire and now stands empty. We were lucky enough to have Aliu-Hertica's daughter (above,right) join the mediator on our tour to share her own memories and stories. The future of this building is unclear, but I was struck by the power of this kind of fighting against oppression--not with guns and bombs, but rather with the power of knowledge.

I saw so many other artists' works I was intrigued by, admired, or in some cases didn't understand at all. I was particularly drawn to those works that helped me understand more about the city, the country and the region even though so many questions still remain.

As we traveled around the city, we talked about often how these works, using narratives, can inform the work of history museums. Are we too concerned with only the factual truth? What is the role of emotions in our work? At the same time, can we do something that artists cannot?

Yesterday on Twitter I came across this from writer Hilary Mantel, as part of tributes to her unexpected passing that somehow helped me connect artists and historical narratives. In a 2017 Reith Lecture, she wrote:

Evidence is always partial. Facts are not truth, though they are part of it – information is not knowledge. And history is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record. It’s the plan of the positions taken, when we to stop the dance to note them down. It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it – a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth. It is no more “the past” than a birth certificate is a birth, or a script is a performance, or a map is a journey. It is the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them. It’s no more than the best we can do, and often it falls short of that.

In Pristina, many artists turned those scraps of history, personal and collective into something new, and for me, helped turn history from just a map, just a scrap, into a journey. Here's just some other bits and pieces (I notice that I am also attracted to artwork that uses text!)

[Special thanks to Annemarie for asking me along on this adventure and to the many terrific young mediators at every venue.]

Back to Blogging? On the Road Again

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 17:20:00 +0000

For more than a decade, I blogged regularly--I aimed for once a week. But, since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, I have managed a measly total of 8 posts, with absolutely no posts since May 2021. Every once in a while, I think about it, and don't quite manage it. It's been a time of change for sure--I shifted to a new position at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience in November 2020 and last year, undertook my non-travel personal project of driving every road in the county I live in--something that proved unexpectedly joyous. But I think I should jump back in. I certainly can't promise every week, and for sure, it seems that blogging may be out of style. Is it? Should I be making Tik-Tok videos? Doing a newsletter? But blogging it is--and I'm jumping back in with a travel post.

In August, I joined friend and colleague Annemarie DeWildt for a road trip through the Balkans to Manifesta 14 in Pristina, Kosovo and then on to the ICOM Triennial meeting in Prague. Manifesta is a roving contemporary art exhibition, held, I think, every two years. Believe it or not, I saw an earlier iteration in St. Petersburg, Russia, which seems a lifetime ago. I'll come to Manifesta and ICOM in later posts but will start with the road trip.

Annemarie and I flew separately to Dubrovnik, Croatia, and took a taxi to Trebinje in Bosnia and Herzegovina (first border crossed). We overnighted in Trebinje and met the guy who was renting us his car. Off we went, a bit bumpy at first. Our first stop was an artist residency in, literally, the middle of nowhere, to the artists' residency Kamen run Kostana Banovic, a friend of Annemarie's. The residency on the shores of a man-made lake and when we arrived, much back and forthing to set up a screen directly on the shores of the lake to show a film by Vita Soul Wilmering. In some ways, this lovely and moving film set the tone for the rest of the trip. Vita uses Dutch tourist films of the former Yugoslavia overlaid with narration by a local man, observing what he says--they are not from here, he says, they are from here, he says about another shot. Who's from here, who's not from here, who belongs and who doesn't were thoughts that continued to resonate as we crossed more borders (Bosnia/Montenegro; Montenegro/Albania; and Albania/Kosovo) in a single day's drive. We drove along, up and down mountains, alongside lakes and broad fields, passing roadside watermelons for sale, over and over (and even spotted a watermelon on the walls of a mosque).

We made a stop for lunch in Prizren, Kosovo, which was full, full full of tourists. But we came upon a quiet corner with a mosque--and a shaded courtyard of kids, including girls, playing soccer and dashing in and out of the mosque, respectfully putting their shoes on and off each time. It made a tourist-filled city seemed like a real place, the place that people lived and cared about. At another stop at a church, we couldn't enter, but the guards, once they learned Annemarie was Dutch, wanted to chat about Dutch footballers from earlier eras.

It wouldn't be a road trip without a little car trouble, and we put-putted into Pristina under much-diminished power. Luckily, our Airbnb host recommended the Volkswagon/Mercedes dealer for repairs to our VW Gulf. In the morning we arrived at the dealer's and explained the issue, with the help of another customer, who, as it happened, had gone to school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After a bit, they come out with the news. The car was twenty (!) years old and this shiny new dealership didn't carry parts that old, but they made a temporary fix.

Manifesta in the next post, but some observations about travel these days. We found Pristina to have the nicest people of almost anywhere I've been. Someone asked me not long ago how I managed in countries where I didn't speak the language (which, to be honest, is pretty much everywhere). I still remember, pre-smartphones, all the maps that people had to draw me my first year in Kyiv, to do the simplest things! Pristina had, it seemed, a large number of English speakers, and that, combined with their friendliness, made it really easy. Annemarie and I were sitting outdoors at dinner one night, trying to figure out why to order from an Albanian-language menu. The woman at the next table leans over, and says, "can we help you?" She and her husband explain all the dishes, explain which ones are mostly local, pulls up pictures on her phone so we can see what they look like, and as well, tells us that her mother, sitting with them, makes some of the dishes the best. It's lovely to be back traveling again, and this trip reinforced for me that it's not the big destinations or sights that make it worthwhile, it's the kids in the mosque courtyard or the friendly family next to us at dinner.

This is an immensely complex part of the world, with the former Yugoslavia now divided into seven countries. For centuries differences have been exploited, often by those outside the region, and wars are within living memory of most people. But at a time when the world seems ever more fractious and despite the many borders we crossed, this trip was a hopeful reminder that there might just be more things that bring us together than we think. (And oh yes, we made the round trip safely back to Trebinje).

For those map-lovers among you, here's the route we drove.

Most Useful: Community Engagement

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 23 May 2021 20:26:00 +0000

I've just wrapped up another semester of the course, International Experiments in Community Engagement for the Johns Hopkins Museum Studies Program. It's a bit of an unusual course, in which students each semester work in teams with a museum from somewhere in the world that is not the United States to develop community engagement plans for that museum. So to begin this post, many many thanks to the staff at the four museums who worked with us this semester:

Baia Mare Artistic Centre Art Museum, Baia Mare, Romania

Memorial Museum of E. Veidenbaums “Kalāči”, Liepa Parish, Latvia

QUAD, Derby City Museums, United Kingdom

Herrnhut Ethnographic Museum, Leipzig, Germany

Four very different museums, four very different places, four very different resources and connections. But together, they give students the chance to step outside their own country-specific knowledge to push the boundaries of their learning! And another big shout-out to all of my students this semester, who persevered, despite illnesses, a new baby, layoffs, and much more to all graduate!

I work to update the assigned readings every semester and rely heavily on sources that are not in journals or otherwise hard to access. At the end of each course I ask students to tell me about the readings/videos they found most useful. I thought perhaps some of you readers might also find this useful. I try and stay up-to-date, but one video and one reading get mentioned every year.

Angela Blanchard's 2011 Tedx Talk gets mentioned every year by students. This year, one student wrote, "Her ideas about working from the existing assets of a group, and using these to then build community engagement were quite formative, both in my individual work and the ways in which the Baia Mare team approached our shared projects. Though this video is now 10 years old, I believe her ideas and the questions she asks (“What works? What do you have? What are your strengths?”) have really stood the test of time."

An oft-divisive reading but one I still continue to assign is Sherry Arnstein's Ladder of Participation (1969!) because of student comments like this: "It really pushed the limits of my understanding for how institutions should collaborate with their communities. Even my most ambitious ideas still only reached partway up her ladder, and it made me realize how much my imagination has been unconsciously foreshortened. Although the article is dated in many ways, it still struck me as one of the most visionary and bracingly uncompromising guideposts in the semester."

Many students were appreciative of the thoughtful ways in which writers/activists/thinkers/fellow colleagues held museums to account and projected different futures. Useful readings (and reasons why):

" "We Don't Need New Models, We Need A New Mindset" by Karina Mangu-Ward

challenged how we approach our museum work and the models we've relied on that no longer suit the complex problems we face today."

"I also think that Porchia Moore’s article, “Cartography: A Black Woman’s Response to Museums in The Time of Racial Uprising,” was incredibly useful and important. I think it should be included every semester, because she brings up a lot of important points about how BIPOC, particularly Black women navigate the museum world and we (especially White people) need to be aware of how experiences can vary based on race, gender, etc. and how they intersect."

Although it is from 1988, this piece is still setting the table for conversation! "Elaine Gurian's The Museum as a Socially Responsible Institution because it really opened up a great discussion on to what different kinds of museums should be doing to both support and care for their audiences."

Readings that focused on the practical also got some recognition. "The Community Building Workbook is a useful and practical tool for planning community-based programs. I know I’ll be referring to the worksheets and templates for future planning." Said another, "Week 5’s 2020 survey posters developed by Susie Wilkening are crucial in understanding our polarized society and how museums can use this information to inform decisions regarding programming and exhibits."

I do ask students to read the first chapter of Rainey Tisdale and my book Creativity in Museum Practice because I continue to believe that we all need to understand and develop our creative practice to shape better museums and to be in greater service to our communities. It's great to hear that they continue to find it useful!

Duds this semester? I tried teaching logic models for the first time to really get at issues of impact. Big fail on my end, so if you have some great reading about logic models, please share. One reading I'll be dropping because it feels like the field may have moved on is Judith Dorbryzinski's negative take on crowd-sourcing museum exhibitions from 2016.

But what am I missing? When you think about museums and community engagement, what readings or videos inspire you? Let me know in the comments!

Looking at Layers

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sat, 10 Apr 2021 15:10:00 +0000

It's been a full year at home--which for me is a small hamlet in Delaware County, NY in the northwestern Catskills. I've been able to spend it here, zooming away, socially distancing with a tiny group of friends, and trying to get out for walks every day (okay, not in the deepest winter!). But as spring approached this year, for some reason I decided to take on a new project. This spring (until June 21) I am working on driving every single road in this very large county of 1467 miles.

It's a county where I used to drive a great deal. At the start of my museum career, I was director of the local historical association and went everywhere--speaking at a Masonic Lodge in Hancock, going to hearings about watershed protection, driving down dirt roads to look at an artifact for donation, undertaking a project of mapping barns in towns, and spending a week at our tent at the Walton Fair. But my career path has taken me far away from this so I thought it might be both fun and interesting to do a bit of exploring (if you're interested in regular updates, follow me on Instagram at @lindabnorris).

As you can see from this map, I've got lots to do. I'm appreciating having a paper map and am marking roads driven as I go. And, as you can see, I am less than systematic about it! It's a beautiful place. Despite being only a few hours outside New York City, it is a really rural place. Those 1467 square miles only contain about 44,000 people. We tried to count stoplights in the county the other day, and I think there are less than ten. With rolling farmland, the branches of the Delaware River, and small towns, there is always something to appreciate.

But what am I am really appreciating is how many layers I can see as I look (also making me appreciate my time at the historical association). Probably the last eel weir on the Delaware River down near Hancock combined with streams with great trout fishing demonstrate the ongoing importance of water to the local community while a tiny cemetery up on a hill near the Pepaction Reservoir demonstrates how important that water is to others. The cemetery contains the graves from cemeteries relocated when the reservoir, which provides water to New York City, was built. That reservoir is not far from Andes, the epicenter of the Anti-Rent Wars of the 1840s, a rebellion against large Hudson Valley landowners.

It's also the time of year when all of your senses can be engaged: with the car windows open, I've driven through the sweet steam of a sugar shack and the spreading of manure (not a bad smell, it's a sign of farming!) the peepers (take a listen) are out full force every time I drive by a pond, and when I get out of the car to check out a stone wall or a stream, the leaves crunch beneath my feet and I gently touch the lichen on the top of the stone wall.

There are still some dairy farms in the county, but far fewer than their heyday and many farmers maintain those barns with a great deal of pride. At the same time, new growers and makers are coming to the county, bringing change once again. This tiny milkhouse was a place where milk was picked up, for transport to a creamery, and eventual transport by rail to the city. The stone walls up in the woods and places like the abandoned farmstead we found at the end of a dead-end road, dotted with daffodils, all represent the multi-layered place I continue to see as I drive. Road names and names on a map that are now often just a house at a crossroads testify to the multi-layered of industry and community: Steam Mill Road, Deposit, Blue School Road, and many more.

The landscape also shows me the complex web of economic relationships and income disparity. Delaware County's per capita income is $27,201 compared to the average US per capita income of $59,279. For more than a century, well-off New Yorkers have been coming here for rest and relaxation. Although grand hotels no longer exist (see this sad example below), there are many big new houses on back roads, built by second-home owners. The pandemic has meant that real estate is booming--but what does that mean for those locals starting out who would like to own a home? Can new businesses opened by newcomers boost the economy in a permanent way? Are there ways to bridge economic and political differences?

But this project isn't about finding answers. Instead, I'm finding both more questions and a great deal of joy as spring arrives up and down these hills and valleys.

Meet the 2021 Mentees!

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 18:17:00 +0000

I'm already several months into great conversations with the 2021 mentees, so it's long past time for me to share them. To begin. however, my deep thanks go to all of you who took the time to apply. It's wonderful to read about your work, your hopes, and ways you're going to change the museum field--and the world. Thank you all! The choice is always very difficult, but here are the folks I'm in conversation with this year.

Anna Stratton is completing her MA in History Museum Studies at the Cooperstown Graduate Program this semester. She comes to museum work from a bit of a surprising place--the cooperative grocery industry. We've already had some great chats about the ways in which that work--focused on together, the public, the workers, and the mission--can translate into museum work. Although she was first attracted to the museum field through textile conservation, as a maker herself, she found a shift underway in her thinking. When I asked applicants to respond to the question, "What are you passioante about?" she responded:

I am passionate about many things, but it’s no coincidence that I am embarking on a career in the museum world just as conversations about racial justice abound. I am most passionate about racial equity. As a mixed white and Latina woman who grew up in a diverse city, I have always been keenly aware of racial differences, maybe due to the regular “What are you?” question directed at me throughout my life. I have straddled the uncomfortable grey area of being a person of color with a lot of white privilege for as long as I can remember....to be honest I didn’t realize what a non-negotiable this type of advocacy was for me until a few years ago, perhaps coinciding with…ahem…an emboldened white supremacist state. My reaffirmed commitment to antiracism blossomed simultaneously with a deep understanding that I needed to change careers.

Needless to say, it's a tough time to be finishing up graduate school from home and job hunting at the same time. Anna's interested in development work and is currently interning remotely with Eastern State Penitentiary, along with working on a virtual exhibit on sugar cane workers in Puerto Rico as part of her coursework. What's the change she's working towards in the field? "It seems so clear and unambiguous to me what museums must do, but first they must outgrow the idea that they are essentially separate from their communities. There might be a lot of problematic history to uncover, but this, too, must be museum work."

From a mentee who's going to school less than an hour from my house, to one much further away. Anais Walsdorf is currently based in London. What is she passionate about?

I’m most passionate about amplifying voices and histories that have been and continue to be silenced, especially colonial histories and their present-day iterations and legacies. I spent most of my childhood growing up on a small island in the Philippines. In the past two decades, I’ve watched how tourism and development have caused immense damage to the environment and the local and indigenous communities. From an early age I was aware of this and the role of money and power in how quickly my home was changing.

Anais is a Visitor Experience Assistant at the Wellcome Collection, a position that has maintained throughout the pandemic lockdowns. She's worked on a new label putting Napoleon's toothbrush in the context of colonialism as part of a larger project of rethinking permanent exhibits and is also working on team crafting guidelines for supporting researchers using collections related to trauma. Pre-lockdown, she was also a Gallery Supervisor at the Migration Museum in London and a volunteer with the Museum of British Colonialism.

What would Anias jettison from museums? "we absolutely need to abandon traditional understandings of what a museum is, and any arguments keeping Western museums from beginning processes of repatriation and restitution." Another focus of her interest is that the pandemic laid bare, as it did for so many, "the precarious position of Front of House workers, contractors, and cleaners, despite their being essential to the working of institutions and being the most high-risk."

In her application, Anais mentioned how much she missed the ways in which teamwork, those informal conversations, really lead to creative ideas and actions. Me too. And every year, this small mentor program provides me with new ideas and inspiration, widening my circle of colleagues. Thanks Anna and Anais!

Hate Group Projects? You're Not Alone. Here's Help

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 15:00:00 +0000

“People are people. And people are problems. But – and this is a very big but – people who are practiced in collaboration will do better than those who insist on their individuality.”

Twyla Tharp

To be honest, I love group projects. If you've ever worked with me, you know I love puzzling out how to work together, how to work with thinkers very different than me (shout-outs to Rainey Tisdale and Braden Paynter here), the luxury of celebrating together when an exhibit's done No team project is ever perfect, but I like the process and try to learn something every time. Don't get me wrong--I've had some big team failures too! Once, lawyers had to negotiate a credit label in an exhibition.

To begin the year, I wanted to share some lessons learned from my students this past semester. I teach in the online Museum Studies and Cultural Heritage programs at Johns Hopkins University. The program is almost entirely online, so not much pivot was needed over the past year, except for an increased understanding of the pressures students (many with full-time jobs and children) were facing. This past semester though, many students had originally planned to take the in-person seminar in exciting places which were, of course, canceled.

My courses always involve a group project, where a team of 3-4 works together over the entire semester. This past semester they worked in teams as "consultants" to ARCH, a non-profit organization working to preserve a synagogue and shrine in Iraq, to develop interpretive plans Neither the students nor I had much knowledge about this site or about the culture and history of Iraq when we began.

At the end of every semester, I ask students to write a reflection about their learning path in the course, and how they would use those learnings moving forward. This semester, students wrote extensively about the process of group work, many admitting that they approached a semester-long group project with a great deal of trepidation. Wrote one,

"Reflecting on previous group assignments, during my previous degrees and professional life, I was concerned about potential clashing of personalities, uneven workloads, poor time management, and more. With all of these concerns, I entered into this course rather anxious. Yet, I remained hopeful."

Another student wrote, "My disappointment [of no in-person seminar] turned to concern when I learned that the course replacing the seminar would be largely based on group work, something I have not had a great experience with in this program."

How did teams get over that uncertainty that so many felt? Here are a couple approaches that they found that may be useful to each of you.

What kind of team member are you?

Students were asked to read this article on team member styles. This slightly different approach would work as well. Pre-class, students took then a survey that asked about their team style, along with their backgrounds and interests. I assigned teams primarily on the kind of team player they said they were, building groups with different types. I didn't specifically ask them to discuss the type of team member they were, but sooner or later, they all did.

Consider a contract

Said one student, "I believe that a major contributing factor in this was our group contract. I had never considered creating a contract for a team project before, but I will certainly do so moving forward. The contract allowed us to establish expectations and understand each other’s working style and skillsets early on in the process. Based on this information, our team decided to designate each member as the leader of a project component, with the explicit understanding that all teammates would contribute to all elements. While these roles evolved as we solidified our project format, this exercise encouraged us to address many potential stumbling blocks before they occurred."

Spend time to listen

In the first week, students are assigned readings from Creativity in Museum Practice and asked to respond to a discussion question about their own creative practice. On one team, one team member took the initiative to spend the first week carefully reading over the creativity responses and looking and the teams' likes and dislikes to try to determine who might best fit each role in the project. This resulted in a team member asked to take on a role that she was really unsure about --but, she wrote -- "So it turned out that Samantha had been able to identify a strength of mine that I didn’t even really consider a strength, and she and the rest of the team encouraged me to go out exploring and see what I could find. Because I had this freedom, I was able to really push out of my comfort zone and find things I wasn’t expecting to find."

Be generous (and accountable)

I have never had a group of students write so generously about their fellow team members. But in sum, as one student wrote, "Although we had challenges regarding the assignments and making sure that we were on the right path to success, as a team, we felt confident that no matter what, our team could handle it. We never used ‘inadequacy’ as a framework in challenging each other’s choices or ideas. We were kind, considerate of everyone’s opinions, respectful to allow everyone’s voice heard, and because of this, we worked together exceptionally well. I never felt ‘dread’ to go into a weekly meeting."

One team did struggle a bit, but at the end, one of those team members still wrote, "The course also really reinforced my belief that the depth and quality of what can be achieved when museum colleagues collaborate around common goals will always transcend what can be done by one individual with a singular creative vision."

Make time and have a plan

These students used so many different methods of working together: Zoom calls, What's app, text messages. Groups held weekly meetings and although each team approached the meetings differently, the regular meetings were important unifying forces. One team began meetings by each sharing something about themselves--I can't remember the specific question but I know in one meeting I sat in, one student's answer was The Golden Girls. You need to know people as people before you can work together effectively--particularly important as many of us continue to work virtually.

Look inside

Effective teamwork means that you have to know yourself, and to be open to learning new things--about yourself and others. "Recognizing my own privilege, as a person who researches and writes from the comfort and safety of my home, was an imperative daily ritual task that informed how I approached the intricacies of interpretation on this project," wrote one student. Another observed, about the challenge of working on a site we all knew little about, "While this [a particular topic] was a challenge, I understand that it also reflects real-world circumstances: perfect, deliverable data sets are rare no matter what field you operate in!"

Take Satisfaction and Find Joy

"Bluntly, what I was craving was action and conversation, and perhaps, personal affirmation that I had not traveled the wrong road. Having arrived at the conclusion of the course, and simultaneously my degree program, I can say with certainty that the Museum Projects course has been the most beneficial educational experience of my graduate career."

"However, this semester turned out so much better than I ever could have anticipated and now I feel quite silly for spending so much brainpower and time worrying about it."

"It was wonderful being a part of something that felt a lot like that creative museum I’d read about in the first week of class."

I'm far from a perfect teacher: Blackboard bedevils me, I hate formatting, sometimes I make big leaps or assumptions that are hard to follow. But this semester brought much joy as I watched these students find joy as they grew in their personal and professional capabilities. I hope some of you will try out these strategies in the new year--bravo to all my students!

What a Year! Need a Mentor for 2021?

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 13 Dec 2020 16:16:00 +0000

For seven years, I posted an annual call inviting applications for someone in the museum/archives/preservation fields to work with me in a year-long mentorship. It was an incredible privilege to get to know one or two new people each year. The mentees have been graduate students, young professionals, mid-career professionals; educators, curators, directors, archivists, and more. I'm so happy that I'm still in touch with many of them. This year alone one got back in touch with book publishing news; another to ask a question about approaching a particular job and another to share her own progress at her museums. During their mentorship year, they lived or worked all over the world: Cambodia, Denmark, the UK, New Zealand, and of course the United States. (Shout-out to all of you!)

Tania Said, a mentee in 2017, shared her reflections from the perspective of a few years:

Having a year of structured mentoring with Linda Norris was a window into seeing what I didn't know. It was a chance to more closely examine the contrast in the museum field and the many shades of grey in between. She helped me become more intentional in my museum practice while preparing me for my next chapter. Our monthly conversations helped me grow in my work and kept me grounded at the same time; in fact, I attribute my career change to the seeds we sowed. Even today, Linda continues to be a supportive and trusted colleague.

Last year I took the year off. I didn't have a particular reason but just felt it was time for a break. 2020 had surprises in store for all of us. After some reflection time, I'm happy to announce the return of my small mentorship program for 2021. It seems like a great time for all of us to expand our networks, think together, and plan for change. I hope a chance to sit down, virtually speaking, with me once a month might be of use to some of you. It’s a two-way street for me--from mentees I have learned to look at museum work from different perspectives; I have learned about specific work in different contexts; and about the ways each of us approach challenges and opportunities and think about next chapters.

About Me

I've been a sporadic blogger this year, so for those of you who might be coming here for the first time--here's a bit more about me. I’m a white-cis-gender woman--I use she/her/hers. Currently, I am Senior Specialist, Methodology and Practice at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience where I have worked for four years. In addition, I teach in the online Museum Studies and Cultural Heritage Programs at Johns Hopkins University. Before joining Sites of Conscience, I spent a considerable amount of time as an independent museum professional, working with museums and historic sites in the United States and Canada. More than a decade ago, I was a Fulbright Scholar to Ukraine, a place that continues to engage me on so many levels as history is made and re-thought. With my dear colleague Rainey Tisdale, I'm a co-author of Creativity in Museum Practice and work to embed creative practice in museum work every day. If you want to do more than read about me, you can watch my interview with Paul Orselli or listen to me chat about Sites of Conscience with Dan Snow at History Hit. And of course, check out previous entries here.

What Does the Mentorship Look Like?

We'll schedule monthly conversations at times convenient for us both. You can apply for the mentorship no matter where you live or work or what stage of your career you're in. I'll expect you to be both a good listener and a good questioner--and be willing to look at yourself deeply. I'll ask for one or two blog posts over the year on deadlines we mutually set and of course, I also expect active participation and questioning when we talk. In addition to the monthly conversations, I'll provide feedback, introductions as I can, and loads and loads of opinions!

What Makes a Good Mentee?

I'm interested in people who have entered the field from different directions and who bring different perspectives to the work. I particularly want to encourage BIPOC students and colleagues to apply. The cultural field has deep work to do to ensure that our work is equitable, inclusive, and just and one of my goals is to contribute. For colleagues outside the US, sadly, I only speak English, but you can be from anywhere in the world because we can always work out the time zones! I know that many of you may be out of work and trying to figure out what's next. You do not have to be working in the field right now to apply. Applicants should be curious and willing to engage in conversations that are sometimes challenging (for both of us). If you want to learn a specific skill--say, how to be a consultant, or how to catalog an object, this is probably not the opportunity for you. But if you work, or want to work, in any aspect of museums, cultural heritage, archives, historic preservation or memory work, consider applying.

Okay, I'm In! How do I Apply?

If you're interested, send me an email (linda at lindabnorris.com) with the subject line "mentorship: [lastname]" by January 6, 2021, that includes two attachments: your resume and answers to the following questions:

What are you passionate about?
What questions would you like to discuss with me during the year?
What was an early creative act? (I mean, not in work, but early, as in childhood)
In terms of your work life or studies, what learnings will you take forward from 2020 and what aspect of museum or cultural heritage work could be jettisoned?

How Do I Decide?

Because this is my own individual project, I get to make my own decisions, sometimes with the counsel of a few trusted colleagues. For instance, I'm probably not very interested in you if your key questions are about becoming a consultant. I want to be challenged and intrigued, I don't care about your Meyers-Briggs type or your grades in graduate school. I appreciate people who don't take themselves too seriously. I love curious people. I want to get off that Zoom call every month ready to think more about your work and my work and the ways we can make change together. Museums have a larger role to play in this complex world--but only if we dig in and get at it.

Special thanks to Mia Jackson for her thoughts on this post.

A Cog in the Process: Election Day, 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 15:32:00 +0000

For the first time, I was an election inspector here in my small town in the Catskills of upstate New York. In conversations with people, I've discovered that most of us, including me, never gave much thought to the process--we would show up, chat with people behind the table, sign a book, vote and leave. That's a privilege that white Americans have been able to exercise without much thought. But this year has taught us all that it's good--and vitally important--that we understand the process, exercise our rights, and ensure that everyone's rights are protected. So I thought I'd just share my particular experience as an election inspector.

I'd been interested in serving as an election inspector for a while--but I was often traveling and it didn't seem practical. But this year I had seen press coverage that many places needed election inspectors as many who usually worked were older and concerned about exposure to Covid-19. I looked up my county board of elections, called them in September, and participated in the training (mandatory every year). It was very clear in the training that the goal was to have every vote cast and counted appropriately.

Election Day is a long day--every inspector works the full time that the polls are open, and in New York, that is 6:00 am-9:00 pm. I left my house in the dark and arrived at the town hall. My town has three election districts, but they all vote in the same space. We all wore masks, and plenty of hand sanitizer was on hand. Each district had four inspectors, two Democrats and two Republicans (someone asked me about Independents--I don't know!). What this meant is that there is confidentiality about your vote, but that the process of voting is fully transparent, if that makes sense. You come in, give your name. A Republican looks it up and you sign; a Democrat asks your name and confirms; a Republican says "she will give you the ballot" and a Democrat hands you your ballot. And those positions are switched every hour.

As a voter, head off to your little voting stand (I still miss the voting machines with curtains), mark your ballot, and feed it into the machine. Sometimes it gets stuck or takes a moment and then one of the election inspectors (often me as I was often closest) gets up and advises you to give it another try. Upon occasion, we chased people after they'd already gone out the door to have them submit again to make sure it was counted. My apologies to the woman named Marge who I made come back inside only to find out that it wasn't her ballot that had come back out!

That day, it was a steady stream of voters all day long. My town has farmers, lawyers, new transplants from New York City, artists, seniors, young people (and a majority Republican town). My favorite voters were the 18-year-old first-time voters, sometimes pushed forward by a proud parent saying, "It's his first time," and sometimes shyly saying, "I've never done this before." Some provisional ballots were cast, when the voting status was unclear. Calls were made to the board of elections to clarify voting status or to answer questions.

It's sad to me that a decreasing number of people distrust the results of elections in this country. Part of what seemed to make that day work was a level of trust between all of us working, no matter what party we were from. We were joined together, with our thermoses and our bag lunches, with our masks and conversation, in a collective effort that mattered. Just after 9:00 PM, with the last voter gone, all of us gathered around while two folks (again, one Republican, one Democrat) opened the machine and ran the total. While two folks stayed until the machine was picked up, the rest of us headed out into the night.

I know there is not a nation-wide system of voting and that my experience does not represent the whole. For a clear analysis of the national changes that would make the entire system more accountable read Zeynep Tufecki's piece in the New York Times today. She writes, "We have well-studied methods that are effective, and there is nothing more urgent than making sure our elections work — everything else a government can try to do depends on that."

And what does this have to do with museum work? First, I got to participate in a civic, history-making process. Second, the more museum folk participate in the civic life of the places where we live and work, the more we understand about our communities and the ways museums can actually matter to everyone.

If you worked elections, please share your experiences in the comments below. I'd love to hear them.

Images: Washington Square Park, New York City, when the election was called and the end of the day at my polling location.

Blogging, What Blogging?

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sat, 24 Oct 2020 23:45:00 +0000

I last wrote a blog post on May 31st of this year. That's just about five months ago. I've blogged for more than a decade and have never gone more than a month without writing a post. My goal used to be a post every week. But I have struggled to find what it is I want to say. Travel fueled my thinking about museums--meeting colleagues, visiting museums, and sharing what I learned along the way. So that's left a hole in my thinking--and writing.

But more importantly, I've struggled to think that I have anything useful to add to the deep and important conversations around museum change happening now. I am in awe of those bloggers who have continued to write--not just to write but to write important words that we should all be listening to--and acting upon. Like many of you, I've also been overwhelmed by the amount of great content in terms of webinars and online conversations.

I wanted to share some of the writing--and watching--that has resonated with me. Here goes:

Porchia Moore, everywhere she appears: in particular, Cartography: A Black Woman's Response to Museums in the Time of Racial Uprising and Reflexive Cartography: Or a Ritual for the Dhying Museum Landscape--the Socio-Political Impact of Change in Museums, both on the Incluseum. These posts made me think in entirely new ways.

The ongoing work of Mass Action, in particular the Readiness Assessment.

Joan Baldwin's weekly posts (and I am in awe of that!) at Leadership Matters. where she often takes a broader societal issue that's emerged that week and encourages us to consider in our museum context.

My colleague Braden Paynter at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience facilitates weekly webinar shorts, 30 minutes of great conversation on everything from Definitions of Justice to Finding Joy to Facilitating Digital Dialogue. The webinars are all recorded--and they are free for all to attend. Check them out!

The Instagram account @changethemuseum, important, heartbreaking and infuriating in equal measure. We--particularly us of an older generation in the museum field--have a great deal of reckoning, listening, and changing to do.

Andrea Jones of Peak Experience Lab (and now at the Anacostia Museum) has only written one blog post during the pandemic, but it really mattered: Empathetic Audience Engagement During the Apocalypse

Death to Museums online presentations and discussions on everything from calling out racism at specific institutions, to exorcising ghosts of the Confederacy. Also, more of Dr. Moore!

Upcoming, I'll be reading Dan Hicks' new book The Brutish Museums The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. Dan was kind enough to respond to a Twitter stranger and meet me for a lively conversation when I was in the UK in February (remember travel?). For Dan's perspective on the UK culture wars these days, check out his recent piece in the Guardian.

And I would be remiss not to mention the incredible effort of Paula Santos and others for the Museum Workers Relief Fund. As all of you know, museum workers, particularly front-line workers and museum educators have been devastated by the pandemic and museum closures while, in some cases, billionaire board members have refused to step up and support the museum they ostensibly serve. In the meantime, almost 1000 donors (including me) have donated $68,000 to support laid-off museum workers.

What else have I done during the pandemic? participated in many, many zoom calls, in multiple languages, and appreciated the changing seasons in the place I live, the Catskills of upstate New York. I can't wait to travel again, but I'll see if this simple post gets me back blogging. In the meantime, deep gratitude to all of you who write, speak, and inspire.

If I Ran a Museum in the US Right Now

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 00:39:00 +0000

It's been months since my last blog post--as my Gang of Five told me, "when you're ready to write again, you will." I had an idea a week or so ago that I never got to, but today I realized that I needed to reflect publicly on the events of the last few days here in the United States.

On December 1, 2013, I wrote a post called "If I Ran a Museum in Kyiv Right Now." I had (and still have) a deep affection for Ukraine, its people and its possibilities and December 1 was the day that student protests morphed into something bigger and different, leading to many deaths, a revolution and a war in the East of Ukraine with Russia that continues to this day. My dear friend and colleague Ihor Poshyvailo read that post late at night, and he's been generous in saying that it inspired him to go to Maidan and begin collecting the stories and objects. He's now the director of the Museum of the Revolution of Dignity, the museum that emerged from those days. But in fact, friends, colleagues and former students immediately began doing so many things: they were on the barricades, they served as medics, they made and delivered food--they supported each other and their community.

As I watched my social media feeds over the last few days I was struck by what seemed to be a lack of action and support from US museums. Marilia Bonas, a Brazilian colleague asked on Twitter, "Waiting to see more and more american museums public statements against racism. EUA (USA) had a strong position in defence of the new museum definition in Kyoto. Where are you guys?"

So when directors spoke up, it really stood out:

Lori Fogarty of the Oakland Museum wrote, in a museum tweeted signed directly by her not just about support, but about action: "Members of our staff are engaging in brave and authentic dialogue about this moment...We will also be exploring ways for the Muaseum as an organization to respond, continue the vital work of equity and inclusion and insure that we give voice to the cry for an end to violence against black people, people of color and other brothers, sisters and siblings who feel the impact of marginalization and inhumanity."

Jorge Zamanillo, Executive Director of History Miami sent a direct message to his community in the Instagram post below, directly assuming responsibility for the harm that museums have caused in the continuing legacy of racism.

If I were the director of a US museum right now, I would speak out. But equally importantly, I would see what actions we, as a museum, could take. It's no secret that museums are financially hurting right now, just as members of our community are.

So what can you do? Begin by asking some of these questions.

Can your museum serve as a safe haven for those who feel unsafe from the police? What kind of direct aid can you give? I saw somewhere today (who can help find info?) that staff from a museum in New York were outside with masks, milk, and other supplies for protestors.
How can your museum begin dialogues? with whom?
Have you looked deeply at your collections, your hiring policies, and the ways in which you welcome visitors?
Have you joined the protests in your city?
How are legacies of racism embedded in all of those--and how can you change them?
If you're a director, have you had a frank conversation with your board about expectations for their behavior and support of anti-racist work?

In 2013, I suggested that Ukrainians might want to begin collecting objects. To be honest, I can't decide if that's something museums should be doing right now. We should not be doing that unless we address the larger systemic issues of society and our institutions at the same time. The answer to addressing those issues will be different in every community--but every museum--from the smallest historical society to the Smithsonian can play a part (see the National Museum of African American History and Culture's new web portal Talking About Race or check out the work of the many Sites of Conscience in the United States and around the globe addressing the difficult work of reconciliation--we have many lessons to learn from elsewhere).

If you want more suggestions, check out this blog post from Museum Education Roundtable for specific suggestions to support your community and to make change within your organization. It should be no surprise that the quickest professional organization to respond was one comprised of museum educators--hardest hit by Covid-related unemployment yet most connected to community.

A year or so after I published that post about Ukraine, I was one of a number of bloggers who jointly shared the post, #MuseumsRespondtoFerguson. It's deeply saddening to realize how true that post still rings:

There is hardly a community in the U.S. that is untouched by the reverberations emanating from Ferguson and its aftermath. Therefore we believe that museums everywhere should get involved. What should be our role--as institutions that claim to conduct their activities for the public benefit--in the face of ongoing struggles for greater social justice both at the local and national level?

We urge museums to consider these questions by first looking within. Is there equity and diversity in your policy and practice regarding staff, volunteers, and Board members? Are staff members talking about Ferguson and the deeper issues it raises? How do these issues relate to the mission and audience of your museum? Do you have volunteers? What are they thinking and saying? How can the museum help volunteers and partners address their own questions about race, violence, and community?

I wish I had more answers than questions, but I want to end by expressing my particular appreciation for young colleagues who have been far braver than I ever was at the start of my career: Aleia Brown and Adrianne Russell, who spearheaded the #MuseumsRespondtoFerguson effort along with Gretchen Jennings, and whose regular tweet chats on the topic gave shape to new approaches; other bloggers and activists, and the many colleagues now working for fair and equitable treatment through the formation of unions at their museums. I am in your debt.

Top photo: Photo by Fibonacci Blue/Flickr

A Wellcoming Power of Ten in London

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sat, 29 Feb 2020 22:55:00 +0000

Years ago, Rainey Tisdale introduced me to the concept of the power of ten, developed by the Project for Public Spaces--the idea that public places need more than one reason to be there--preferably ten! So in a park, for instance, you might walk, birdwatch, eat, play with your dog--you get the idea. Museums have gotten better at this, but many still have a long way to go.

I was reminded vividly of that concept when I visited the Wellcome Collection a few weeks ago in London--the entire museum had loads to do--but in particular, I found the Reading Room to be one of the most welcoming (sorry, no pun intended), fascinating, friendly museum/library spaces I had visited in a very long time.

First, it's a beautiful space, so the first thing you might do would be just to enjoy the space (above, photo from the Wellcome Collection website) But what else did I see people doing?

Read--there all kinds of books on the shelves, just ready for you to dive in.

Draw your self-portrait--and share it with others.

Play board games--and another complicated game I never quite figured out!

Look at art.

Build things with giant foam blocks--with your family or with perfect strangers--and the prompt was to imagine what abstract ideas might look like in physical form.

Share a drawing of what you eat to feel better.

Join in a facilitated conversation--for all ages-- about toys that represent all of us.

Send a postcard (oh yes, postcards free for the taking)

And also, dream, chat, connect, wonder, and more. There were things you could do by yourself, there were things you could do with people you came with, and there were things that you could do with people you'd never met. You could learn new things, or visit books that were old-friends. You could use your physical self; your emotional self; your connected self. And importantly, I don't remember one piece one piece of digital technology (although there was lots in other parts of the museum, deployed in some interesting ways).

The Reading Room felt both the most old-fashioned place and the place of the future--where we learn to deeply connect. Thanks Wellcome Collection, for making a rainy London afternoon so memorable!

Museum-Catch Up #3: No Labels Needed

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 21:24:00 +0000

We went to Mexico City for Christmas and visited lots of museums--a lot! This is just a quick post about the National Museum of Anthropology. The collections here are tremendous--I learned a great deal about cultures I knew little about. Objects were beautifully displayed, labels were useful, and I loved the way the museum used both indoor and outdoor space.

But there was one place where a label wasn't needed--the objects themselves made an impact on me. You can see it at the top of the post. After going through all of the exhibition galleries on the ground floor with the evidence of sophisticated cultures, this two objects are displayed side-by-side: a simple wooden cross, evidence of European colonialism and a stone statue with the features destroyed, a visible symbol of the Spaniards' efforts to destroy existing cultures.

It was a great juxtaposition and one I'll long remember. #MuseumsAreNotNeutral.

And, just because, some other images from the museum below.

Changes for 2020: Mentoring and Take 5

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 17:37:00 +0000

Seven years ago, I posted my first call offering an annual mentorship. I decided to do so because I wanted some control over any influence I could have in the future of the field. I'd gotten several conference session proposals rejected--ones I thought were great--and I came up with the idea and thought I'd float it and see what would happen.

The result: over those seven years, hundreds of you have applied, and I've had the chance to spend time each year working with one or two incredible colleagues at different stages in their careers. I always felt I learned as much--if not more-- from our monthly calls as the mentees did. Here's looking at all of you--I have loved talking with you once a month, meeting you in person when I can, hearing your career updates--every bit of it! Giant bouquets of flowers to Alicia, Tania, Catherine, Claire, Megan, Tadia, Amanda, Susan, Shakia, Doreen, Hannah, and David for your enthusiasm, commitment and energy. Some mentees dropped away, and that's okay too (aside from the ghosting thing)--our lives are all complicated and it may have been not the right thing.

But I've decided to not do a mentorship call for 2020. As all of you may have noticed, I blog much less these days--and that's partly because my job at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience is consuming in all good ways, but leaves me less band-width for other things. I'll be back, I hope, in 2021 looking for new mentees to connect with.

At the same time, there are also changes coming to Take 5, the monthly newsletter of ideas produced by our Gang of Five, five colleagues who initially came together to share and support our own work. The years together have been so important as sources of support and inspiration. Again, it's primarily a question of time for me, and I'm so pleased to announce that the incredible Anne Ackerson will continue to produce it--so if you don't receive it already, do subscribe here!

My first 2020 goal? Catching up on blog posts about museum visits in 2019. And after that, to blog more regularly. Stay tuned.

My second goal? Convincing more of you to be mentors. The Getty Leadership Institute will soon be launching Polaris, described as "a new online mentoring program that will be available to museum professionals across the U.S. Those working in or with museums can develop leadership skills and collegial relationships by being mentored or by mentoring others," supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

My third goal? to continue to connect with and learn from museum colleagues, social justice activists, artists, and everyone working to make a better world. If you're any of those type of people and want to have an informal conversation about those issues--be in touch. I do love, to be honest, random conversations.

I'll end this post with deep gratitude to my Take 5 gang: Anne, Marianne, Carolyn, and Gwen (and another member of the original group, Christopher) and all my mentees. You're the best!

Museum Catch-Up #2: Rethinking in Amsterdam

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 08 Dec 2019 23:09:00 +0000

I got to spend a very quick weekend in Amsterdam this fall, and saw two museums rethinking in big ways. The Amsterdam Museum's decision to remove the name "Golden Age" from its description of the Netherlands got lots of press around the world. Thanks to my friend Annemarie de Wildt, a curator at the museum, I got to attend the opening of Dutch Masters Revisited, an installation within the permanent collection at Hermitage Amsterdam. The permanent exhibit is a huge hall of group Dutch portraits--and the temporary installation is 17 portraits of prominent Dutch citizens depicting a diverse group of people who, based on historical research, are known to have lived in 17th- and 18th-century Netherlands. Curator Jörgen Tjon A Fong of Urban Myth brought the group of photographers and citizens together for meticulously created shoots. There was a great deal to appreciate (warning: many label images ahead!)

the museum explains what it's doing and why.

the contemporary portraits are really integrated into the gallery itself. They're not off in another room or small scale. They have the same grandeur and importance of the historical works

the museum connects past to present in numerous ways. Although I didn't necessarily love the hallway portraits of today's civic organizations, I did appreciate, that within the exhibit, you were encouraged to donate.

Labels had provocative titles, asked good questions, asked you to reflect, and provided some surprising info about Amsterdam--without being overlong or info-loaded.

At the opening reception, Margriet Schavemaker, artistic director of the museum, noted publicly that she had recently returned from ICOM in Kyoto, and reaffirmed that although the new museum definition was not approved, it would be the way the Amsterdam Museum is working and will continue to work (for more on that conversation, see this blog post).

Probably five or six years ago I had visited the Tropenmuseum and found it a bit sleepy--a sort of old-fashioned ethnographic museum. But on this visit, I found it transformed--in approach, in look, in a serious rethinking of their work. Such a pleasure! Just a few examples grabbed in a quick visit are below.

Their permanent exhibition, Things that Matter, connected material from around the world with a wide range of contemporary issues--from migration to climate change to the use and misuse of traditional culture by others. All the issues were framed as questions:

When do you feel at home?
When is culture yours?
What do you believe in?
What brings back happy memories?
Is the climate changing your culture?

It was fun to dip in and out, and the large scale video installations really worked in the big space.

I was particularly interested in the exhibit Afterlives of Slavery, described as "an exhibition with a discussion platform that places the stories of the enslaved and their descendants centre stage." The exhibit looks at both the history of enslaved peoples, but also, how those histories continue to impact the Netherlands today (see ongoing examples of controversy around Zwarte Piet). I liked the feel of the exhibit, as if it really was an ongoing discussion.

I did wonder though, about the emphasis on the history of enslaved peoples in the Caribbean, as related to the Dutch, and why nothing about the history of the Dutch and slavery in what is now New York State was mentioned. I'd love to see those connections made.

In both these exhibits, I felt like there must have been many many meetings -- and some prototyping--of questions for visitors. I loved that these were big questions, without single answers. They were ones that would encourage conversation among visitors.

At both museums in Amsterdam, I felt a kind of courage paired with necessity: a sense that it has taken museums far too long to address these issues, and the importance of making change. Although every museum may not be able to afford beautiful portraits or large-screen videos--it's the thinking that matters here. And that, of course, comes for free!

What else did I do in Amsterdam in a single weekend? Why of course, ride a bright red bike with AnneMarie and explore the city! What could be better than exploring a city with a city museum curator?

Museum Visit Catch-Up #1: The Manga Museum

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 15:30:00 +0000

I've been on the road (or more accurately in airplanes) a huge amount this fall, and have visited a number of thought-provoking exhibits and museums. I saw things I loved, things I definitely didn't love, and things that raised interesting questions for me. So now, despite a two-month gap in blogging, I'm going to attempt to catch up with all of it over the next couple weeks. First up, the Manga Museum in Kyoto, Japan.

After an intense few days at the ICOM meeting, Katrin Hieke and I took an extra couple days to explore Kyoto a bit more--and for some reason we decided that the Kyoto International Manga Museum would be first on our list--and we were so glad we did!

This is a museum where a mission perfectly meshes with an understanding of audience and with exhibition design and content. For the uninitiated (like me), manga is Japanese comics and cartooning.

The permanent exhibit does a great job in posing--and then answering--all kinds of questions about manga:

It also included a fascinating section on who makes money in manga, something rarely seen when talking about creative work, but a part of all creative work.

The permanent exhibit also explored how a storyline is shaped--which reminded me to go back to Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, a great tool in helping us think about narrative in exhibitions.

In this permanent exhibit section, you were surrounded by manga books--so many of them, and it was delightful just to be able to take them down and read. Everyone did!

There were different types of temporary exhibitions--including one focusing on a trailblazing woman manga artist. Another temporary exhibit was sort of a playoff between different types of toys. You could make an appointment to consult with a manga artist about your own work, and even spend a bit of time on a computer (although tech was a very small part of this museum).

But what where mission, design and activities merged together was in the places all over the museum that were for reading. Everyone felt welcome to pull out a book, sit down, lie down, sprawl out, and read. There are lots of rules in Japanese society, here it felt like the only rules were to read, to be respectful of others reading, and to enjoy yourself.

There were a few key takeaways for me:

Understand that your museum attracts both newbies (that was me) and specialists (those who want a deep dive into manga). Provide opportunities for both.
Design spaces so people understand what you can do in them.
Great label-writing --clear, concise, fun--always matters.
Make room for passion. You could see it in the work of the artists, but also in the intense focus of visitors.

In the Room Where It (sorta) Happened: ICOM's Museum Definition

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 14:29:00 +0000

Last week, along with 4,000 or so other museum folks, I was in Kyoto, Japan for the triennial International Council of Museums conference. Both before and after the conference, there has been a great deal of discussion--among museum colleagues and in the public sphere--about a proposed new definition of museums. I tweeted --and retweeted others--pretty extensively during the loooong general assembly about the definition. Now that I've been back a week and had some time to reflect, I wanted to share some thoughts about process and product.

What is ICOM anyway?
To begin, more than a few Americans wondered about why anyone would care about what ICOM did in the first place--and who were those people voting? The US is fortunate to have a strong collection of professional organizations--AAM, AAMD, AASLH and state and regional associations. But in many places in the world, the ICOM national committee might be the sole functioning professional organization. In the same way that many US museums look to AAM for standards and guidance, so do museums around the world look to ICOM.

There are 119 National Committees and 30 International Committees, along with 6 Regional Alliances and a number of affiliated organizations. There is an Executive Committee and a Secretariat, which is based in Paris. Voting is done, not by members, but by these committees, alliances, and affiliates. National committees have the most votes, but, in American terms, it's like the Senate, not the House, with each country having the same number of votes. As I was in Kyoto representing the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, an affiliate, I was able to cast two votes.

If you're a working professional or a student--you can become an ICOM member (link for US membership)-and participate in any international committee. It's a great way to connect with colleagues around the world and, as it happens, an ICOM membership gets you into almost any museum in the world for free. So the "them" is in fact us, if you choose to participate. The conference itself is cheaper than many US conferences. From my perspective, even before I began working for the Coalition, I found it extremely valuable to learn from colleagues around the world--particularly as the US museum system is quite distinct from most other places. ICOM plenary sessions took on important issues: climate change and sustainability and decolonization. It's important that these discussions take place with colleagues from around the world able to participate. Dozens of international committee sessions also explored a wide range of issues.

The Definition
But now, to the proposed new definition and the debate around it. For a comprehensive look at coverage of the definition process, thanks to Anna Marras and Ana Carvalho for gathering all the press coverage and discussion into one place. It keeps growing, so check it out!

During the week, a plenary session was held when those on the definition-writing committee (Museum Definition, Prospects and Potentials Committee) spoke in favor of adopting the definition and space was also given to those who were opposed. The new definition proposed was:

Museums are democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artefacts and specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people.

Museums are not for profit. They are participatory and transparent, and work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collect, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and enhance understandings of the world, aiming to contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing.

And the current definition, adopted in 2007:

A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.

Full disclosure: as a representative of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, an affiliated organization, I was prepared to vote for the definition. I considered it too long and not straightforward enough, but I believe in the ideas it puts forward. However, through a series of maneuvers, not clear to most of us in the room, the vote on the definition was postponed, with 70% voting for postponement.

From my perspective, objections to the new definition vote fell into four categories:

1. Process
Although this was described as the most open process ever at ICOM, many national and international committees felt there was not adequate time to consult with members before the vote. It's important to note, that as far as I know, voting delegates were not bound by the consultations with their members, if they happened. ICOFOM, the international committee focused on museology, took initiative and held a series of roundtables about the museum definition. The summaries are here, but notably, the roundtables were unevenly distributed around the globe (heavily weighted towards Europe) and the approaches were varied.

I'm not sure what the process should be going forward, but I do know that if it is to be a global definition, then the conversation needs to be global. The vast majority of those speaking in the General Assembly were white Europeans or Americans. A more inclusive format needs to be developed and more voices in the conversation.

2. Aspiration or definition? (plus wording)
Do we need a definition? Is this too wordy? Who even uses the word polyphonic? Are museums really this? Is this an aspiration rather than a definition? Some were concerned that the word education was not included, for instance, although to me, it is embedded in the entire definition. I think a definition can be helpful, but I also think that all of you who are doing the work towards real change in our field will keep doing that work no matter what. A definition may or may not matter to you, as you work with communities. But imagine that it might matter to those who are just starting this work, in places where the work of social change is not yet accepted as an effort of museums (that might be specific museums or it might be entire nations).

3. Impact
There were concerns that the ICOM definition is embedded in law in some nations and that a changing definition (for instance, the removal of the word 'permanent') would have critical repercussions. Moving forward, there needs to be clear and substantive analysis of this, and at the same time, ICOM should be prepared to provide advocacy tools and training for countries where this might be an issue.

4. Fear
Although these objections were sometimes couched in the language of the items above, it seemed pretty clear that some of the objections came from those who were afraid of change, afraid of surrendering their institutional power, afraid that museums were becoming too ideological. Of course, museums have always been ideological. In Time magazine, Jette Sandahl, chair of the committee, commented, “We need to work with relevance into the context we live in, and this certainly makes that clearer. There is no apolitical space or point of view. Museums are always political.” I remain hopeful that fear will not win the day.

Is the Controversy Bad for Museums?
I think the press coverage is great. I don't think it makes us look silly or divided. I think it makes us look like a field that is thinking deeply about the work we do. It's hard work and I'm happy to see us doing it. I'm impatient with those who fear this could divide the field permanently. In my work at Sites of Conscience, I see people coming together in reconciliation over far more difficult, life-changing issues than a museum definition. Surely we can do the same.

What's Next?
I assume the ICOM leadership and staff have barely had a moment to take a breath since the end of the conference. So we don't know what's next, but it's my hope that whatever next is truly a global conversation, and that the traditional European powers of ICOM step back and provide some additional space for other voices. Together, we can move museums into the 21st century--and not a moment too soon.

Thanks LaTanya Autry and Mike Murawski, creators of #museumsarenotneutral for providing inspiration--and a T-shirt to wear the day of the definition vote (or non-vote).