The Uncataloged Museum

Opening Up

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:05:00 +0000

When I was director of the Upstate History Alliance, I spent time in many extended conversations about small organizations--and particularly about how to encourage small organizations to strive for best practices. And not surprisingly, my conclusion about organizations is the same conclusion that every good teacher probably comes to in a classroom--that if you're not ready to learn, you won't. For small museums and historical societies to move forward, there has to be not only a spark, but a willingness to fan that spark into a full-fledged flame of change.

Professional development should provide the spark. I think it's important to learn skills, but I think it's critical for staff and volunteers to understand the "so what" of what we do--and to understand what Stephen Weil called the shift in museums from being about something to being for somebody. Although I don't think about professional development in quite the same way now that I'm working as a consultant, it's still an important part of my work. Some days I spend with organizations where I can see they are just not quite ready to make change. They applied for a planning grant because someone told them they needed to; they think writing a plan will automatically help them get money; they have a crisis and want to fix the immediate crisis but not the larger problem; they have a million reasons why change can't happen. Those sessions are always a bit discouraging.

This fall, though, I've had a couple days with organizations where I can almost see the wheels in people's brains begin to spin as they contemplate new ideas. Last week, I did a MAP Institutional Assessment at a small museum in northern Colorado. Over a great pot-luck dinner, the board lit up with enthusiasm as they thought about the ways in which they could consider a step forward, moving from an organization whose job was to collect and catalog, to one who shared the stories that those objects represented with the community--and to find ways to invite the community into that sharing process.

Earlier this fall, at a session at Woodchuck Lodge, the home of literary naturalist John Burroughs, the board benchmarked the homes of other writers -- but then our conversation moved to ways of interpreting the house. One board member had found the novel, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England (now on my own reading list) with a great quote about the meaning of a writer's things vs. a writer's words. That led us to a discussion about how to include Burroughs' words in more concrete ways--so yes, the guide could read his words; then yes, visitors could be asked to read words; then yes, we could give a card with the quotes read to each visitor to take home.

Of course, it's easy to have enthusiasm in a meeting--and the challenge then comes into putting those great conversations into practice. But that excitement of discovering new ideas is a first step that will take an organization down that creative path. And as each museum considers new board or staff members, finding ones that exhibit that spark can be a critical next step as well.

And by the way, that spark of learning holds true for me as well--so on my Colorado visit I learned a bit about elk hunting, sheep wagons with solar panels, ditches with boards of directors, saddle-making, ranching, and that Thursday is Burrito Day at the Hi-Way Bar (pretty good ones, as it happens!)

What I Learned about Museums from my Seat in the Jury Box

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:43:00 +0000

I spent this past week performing a duty I'd never done before--I served on a jury. I did pay attention, I promise, but in some of those long pauses for one thing or another, I realized that the court had some lessons for me about how visitors might think about our museums.

What did I learn?

It's a hard thing to be a first-timer. You're not quite sure where to go, what to do, and who all the other people are. And of course, there are guards--a little intimidating to be sure. First-time museum visitors must feel the same. But it's awfully nice to have to perform my civic duty in a beautiful, historic space--the Delaware County courthouse (above), where the courtroom feels not very different than its original 19th century self.
Facts do not a compelling story make. It's pretty challenging, particularly when you aren't allowed to take notes, to make sense of a sea of small details. Every detail seems the same size. Ever visit an exhibit like that?
It's hard not to have choices. In the courtroom, you're at the mercy of the judge. He or she decides when you come, when you leave, what you can hear. Think about the last guided tour you took.
But it helps to have a thoughtful guide. Our judge was pretty good about explaining things (although we all still want to know how court stenography automatically turns into plain text on the computer). Not too much talking, but enough that we understood our purpose and responsibilities--the big idea as it were.
It really is a place that brings different people together for a common purpose--perhaps the original crowd-sourcing. There we were, a museum person, a stay-at-home mom back in school, a magazine editor, a hairdresser, a contractor, a salesman, a retired dispatcher and others. In the in-between times, we talked about our jobs, whether mountain lions really exist here in the Catskills, why our villages are dying and how that might be reversed, the growth of the Slow Food movement, and everything in between. It made me realize how rarely we really spend time just talking with people different than ourselves--and how museums could work to encourage that in so many different ways. Many museum interactions are designed to be among people who already know each other and one hesitation about audio tours of any type is that it diminishes conversation. How can we design interactions that encourage real conversation (see the Lower East Side Tenement Museum's Kitchen Conversations for one example)?

Nina Simon just wrote a great post about facilitating brainstorming sessions. That, combined with my courtroom stint, made me wonder what we would get if we tried problem-solving or brainstorming the same way juries do--putting people into situations where they listened, without notes, and were asked not to discuss the problem or idea with their colleagues until the end of the process. And in fact, we were repeatedly asked not to form an opinion, even in the privacy of our own mind--until the entire information-gathering process was completed. What would the result be? In this case, I can't tell you the results of this particular deliberation--the defendants accepted a plea bargain after four days of court. But I'd love to try this in a different situation.

And one final thing--from the selection of the jury to the end of the trial, the judge made it very clear that, although we didn't have much control, we were the most important part of the process. So much so, that as he dismissed us, he offered to meet us back in the jury room to answer any questions and hear any feedback from us about the process. We took him up on the offer and learned a bit more about the system and felt free to share our opinions. When was the last time you saw a busy director do that with visitors?

Although this was a busy week for me, juggling grant applications, reports and a pile of other work, thanks to my fellow jurors and Judge Becker, I learned to think in new ways, in the most unexpected place. Thanks!

Demographic Digging

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:16:00 +0000

I'm not necessarily a numbers person (okay, almost every museum person I've ever met says the same thing) but I've found myself increasingly interested in both demographic data and information that can be gained from relatively informal online surveys done by small organizations. Earlier in my career I spent lots of time with manuscript censuses from the 19th century--looking for information like how many barrels of apples did a farm produce, or how many mills were in a community. But now my emphasis has changed.

When doing strategic and interpretive planning, I work with organizations to gain a fuller understanding of their own communities--and I've found that many of us don't actually understand our communities that well. We tend to have our own perspectives and to operate within our own social groups. To combat that, a trip online to the US Census is a great thing.

What can you learn here? Whether the population of your county or city is increasing or decreasing; whether you have a higher percentage of people over 65 than in the rest of your state; that half of the children in your county live below the poverty line; that a substantial number of your community members speak something other than English as their first language. All of those numbers--and many more--can have significant implications for how you think about your museum. What kinds of implications: do you need to put an emphasis on free programming to draw families and children who might not be regular museum visitors? Those over 65 are different than they used to be--but with a big group, it suggests both audience and volunteers. English as a second language speakers: consider how to integrate their history and traditions into your work. If you're a board member or director, set aside some time at a board meeting to really explore the information about the place you live and work.

Where else to look for information? Check out your local tourist agency. They may be able to provide you with visitation statistics from other organizations and the kinds of queries that visitors pose to them. Online surveys reveal attitudes but also some fascinating information. I've had people say that older people will never take an online survey; but in one survey, 92% of the members responding were over 50. Good news for reaching people online; perhaps not such good news for long-term membership growth. Still looking: economic development agencies, school districts and more have loads of information online.

And don't forget--everyone can learn about your organization as well. Guidestar has virtually every recent tax return for virtually every non-profit organization in the United States. What does the 990 tell you? In brief, how an organization makes and spends the money your donors give you.

Image: 1950 census taker, courtesy of the US Census Bureau

Whipped Cream and a Cherry on Top

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:42:00 +0000

This week brought a convergence of ideas. Yesterday, at the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums conference, in a session on sustainability, Elizabeth Merritt of AAM's Center for the Future of Museums spoke long-distance in a session on sustainability. She spoke about a number of trends, but then encouraged us all to consider a game-changer. Some change in the future that would change everything--and she suggested that the "what if?" could be "what if there was a revolution in education?" a total change in the way we educated our citizens.

Today, Thomas Friedman's op-ed piece in the New York Times suggested just why we might want to do that. He writes:

As the Harvard University labor expert Lawrence Katz explains it: “If you think about the labor market today, the top half of the college market, those with the high-end analytical and problem-solving skills who can compete on the world market or game the financial system or deal with new government regulations, have done great. But the bottom half of the top, those engineers and programmers working on more routine tasks and not actively engaged in developing new ideas or recombining existing technologies or thinking about what new customers want, have done poorly. They’ve been much more exposed to global competitors that make them easily substitutable.”
Those at the high end of the bottom half — high school grads in construction or manufacturing — have been clobbered by global competition and immigration, added Katz. “But those who have some interpersonal skills — the salesperson who can deal with customers face to face or the home contractor who can help you redesign your kitchen without going to an architect — have done well.”
Just being an average accountant, lawyer, contractor or assembly-line worker is not the ticket it used to be. As Daniel Pink, the author of “A Whole New Mind,” puts it: In a world in which more and more average work can be done by a computer, robot or talented foreigner faster, cheaper “and just as well,” vanilla doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s all about what chocolate sauce, whipped cream and cherry you can put on top. So our schools have a doubly hard task now — not just improving reading, writing and arithmetic but entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity.

Think about it. Are you a "plain vanilla" museum worker? Or even more critically, are you responsible for a "plain vanilla" museum? What makes you plain vanilla? In my book, there's one striking factor that seems to characterize these institutions and people--a reluctance not just to think outside the box, but even to look outside the box. I'm always surprised when I talk with people who don't read museum publications, blogs, or even take the time to visit other museums. And that's not even counting all the other places we can draw inspiration and ideas from.

And one more convergence--in his talk at MAAM, AAM president mentioned that AAM has (finally, in my opinion) opened full participation to those of us who work in museums but not as staff members. I see a growing number of creative, interesting people who have chosen to work outside a single institution. Every day I use skills, knowledge and perspectives I gained in my work as a museum and service organization director. But...the opportunity to put the chocolate sauce on top...is that easier to do from my perch as a independent museum person? For me, at least, the answer is yes, but it does pose some interesting questions for the future of the field.

Photo: Macs, in Penn Yan, photo by Drew Harty

Stuck for Ideas?

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:37:00 +0000

Where do exhibit ideas come from? Sometimes they're collection driven, sometimes the project is driven by a donor's ideas, sometimes it's driven by a desire to spotlight a previously ignored part of community history. I believe that almost anything can be made into an interesting exhibit, given enough thoughtful discussion in the planning process. Here's two recent exhibits--one online and one not, that demonstrate that idea.

First, the real world exhibit--the National Building Museum has just opened an exhibit called "House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage." The exhibit's big idea is right up front on the website description:

Cars. We imagine them always in motion, but they spend most of their time at rest.

We have all spent time in parking garages, but we rarely stop to think about what they have meant for our cities and ourselves.

I'm interested that the exhibit concludes with the question, "What does the future hold for parking?" although I might be more interested in the question, "what would the US look like without the need for parking?" And as an aside, I love that the parking garage in Rockville Town Center uses historic photos to "decorate" their parking spaces. I've put this on my visit list the next time I'm in Washington so I can see what an exhibit about parking looks like (somehow I envision punching a button to get a ticket to enter).

The second exhibit is a collaborative, online one. The Collections Australia Network is building a national collections database (and by the way, how about the US doing the same thing?) by developing thematic stories. Their first project, Not So Innocent Objects is below. The video was made using free software: IMovie and Google Earth and the result is an surprisingly compelling tour through crime and punishment as shown through the objects and images in Australian museums.

A compelling look at crime, but also a compelling case for sharing collections online. I came across this on Museum 3.0, a great place to learn what colleagues worldwide are thinking and working on.

More Fun, Less Text

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:14:00 +0000

Have you ever been in a conversation about changing behavior in a museum or exhibition? Questions like How can we get people to start an exhibit in a particular direction? how can we get them to participate in interactives, what if they touch they objects? are usually a part of that conversation. And too often the answer turns out to be some sort of text.

Thanks to my friend Sarah Crow, here's a video from the Copenhagen subway. Perhaps the solution to all these dilemmas is more fun, without label text!

Ten Ways to be Better

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:31:00 +0000

I was a bit cranky in my last post about museums and change, without offering many useful suggestions. So here's a quick list of ten easy cheap (or free!) things any small history museum could do to create change in their organization.

Start a blog. Blogs are free, incredibly easy to set up, and provide a way for your museum to communicate with your audience on a timely basis. Don't know what to write about? Joanna Church of the Montgomery County (MD) Historical Society has a great object a week blog; and the Alice Miner Museum in tiny Chazy, NY highlights both programs and collections.
Change something in your permanent exhibit--anything! At the National Museum of American Art's Luce Center, you get to vote on what piece to place in a case. Let your visitors decide.
At a board meeting, take time to really walk through your museum, inside and out, and see what you could do to make it more visitor friendly.
Change that faded paper sign or label.
Make your admission free!
Change your open hours to suit your visitors, not your staff.
Think about what parts of community history aren't represented in your museum--and then go out and learn about it. Call a community elder and sit down for a conversation.
Turn down that unprovenanced object that duplicates something in your collections. You can say no.
In developing your budget for next year, squeeze one new program in, even if it means giving up one that you've always done.
If you don't have a strategic plan already, start one! And for all organizations, make sure that your vision and mission are not just boilerplate stored in a drawer, but inspirations that guide and shape your work.

And a bonus suggestion: ban the words, "but we've always done it that way" from your organization.

Top: Women assembled at Wheeley's Church, near Gordonton, North Carolina, to clean, 1939. Photograph by Dorothea Lange, FSA/OWI Collection, Library of Congress

Change: The Big Scary Thing on Your Museum's Doorstep

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:17:00 +0000

As fall begins, it still seems like the time for new projects, just as it did on those first days of school. As a result, I've spent a fair amount of time the last couple weeks talking to both boards and staff about planning, new projects, and organizational change. And, somewhat to my dismay, I've begun to wonder whether the economic climate is leading organizations, to metaphorically speaking, turn out the lights on the front porch and hide from change.

What does it mean when organizations resist change? The results are easy to identify. Your audience begins to drop; you tell me you just can't ever find any new volunteers, because everyone is too busy; you have a shrinking board because no one will volunteer; your exhibits look dated; your objects go uncataloged but you keep taking irrelevant things because you can't say no; your website is a year out-of-date; and your community walks right past your door. In short, you become less and less relevant to your community--and after all, that community is your reason for being. And then, of course, the cycle becomes self-fulfilling. Yes, no one cares about you because you don't show that you care about them.

I've discovered that this resistance to age isn't a generational one. It's certainly not all young people who embrace change; or older people who resist it. In the museum field, there's sometimes a certain conservatism combined with a sense of superiority, that really hinders us from digging down deep and finding out what our communities need and how we can make a difference.

These are critical, difficult times for many of the places where we work. Some may think that hunkering down and doing as little as possible, or doing the same old thing over and over--just because it costs less or is easier-- are the answers. But I wonder whether, after the recession recedes, if those organizations will be left high and dry as their communities look to more meaningful places to spend their time.

No particular answers in this post, but a few examples of hopeful signs from organizations I work with:

A local historical society planning for an exhibit that explores the idea of greed in the community's early settlement. Now there's a topic that will resonate with today's visitors.
The small staff at a another small museum spending half a day to really talk about their current exhibit and how they can improve the next one--and doing it from a visitor-centered perspective.
The surprising comment from a retired board member in an interpretive planning session about new ways to use technology--a way I had never imagined.

I'd love to hear about organizations who are sitting down at budget time, looking at the strategic plan, and saying, "let's try one really great idea," rather than just settling for the day-to-day.
And that, I hope, will keep the goblins from your door.

The Simplest, Most Powerful Interactive of All

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:24:00 +0000

I've been in what seems like hundreds of discussions about designing interactive elements in museums. Should we use technology? Should there be puzzles, or art supplies, or flip books? What do we want to convey to visitors? What age visitors will be interested? How will we evaluate them? What did we learn in the prototyping?

But this week I got to experience a different kind of interactive--an activity that was stunning in its simplicity and incredibly powerful in result. Above is my picture of Henry Greenbaum and Erika Eckstut, volunteers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The interactive was just what the sign says--a chance to speak with these two Holocaust survivors about their experiences. They sit at a desk in the lobby, and talk to any visitor who wants to know more--school children, older people, international visitors. They--and other volunteers throughout the week-- tell their stories. Erika is from Czechoslovakia, survived attacks on Jews in her village, and then her family were forced to settle in the Czernowitz ghetto. Henry was born in Poland, his family forced to move to the Starachowise ghetto and then, to a labor camp, to Auschwitz, and then, a four month death march. Henry, his two brothers and one sister survived the Holocaust--his mother and the other five children all perished.

When I asked Henry why he volunteered, he said, "I am here just for myself." He works every Friday, and when I asked if there was something he particularly wanted young people to take away from a conversation with him, he said, "They should speak out. Don't let it happen to any human being," and referenced the museum's work in speaking out about genocide around the world today.

No touch screen, no flashing lights, just the most powerful interactive of all--conversation between two people.

Reminders of Our Failures

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:58:00 +0000

Finally, back to posting about our session earlier this month at the TICCIH conference. I was privileged to be on a panel with Moulshri Joshi, a member of the architectural team who won the competition award for plans for a memorial at the site of the Union Carbide gas tragedy in Bhopal, India.

In her passionate presentation, she raised some provocative questions:

Can our understanding of heritage be extended to include reminders of our failures as well as tokens of our past glories?
Is the attempt to eradicate symbols of failure and suffering effectively a selective overwriting of history, in order to construct a more appropriate collection identity?
How inclusive are our notions of the collective identity which we seek to preserve and how far such an identity would represent narratives of the marginalized?

The challenges at Bhopal are many. The site is still contaminated and the city is rapidly encroaching. There are competing ideas about how the site should be used: should funds be used to improve the lives of those affected by the tragedy still living in poverty? What should the memorial be like? A park? a monument? And it will probably be years before any scheme is completed. But I found much in common between Bhopal and Chernobyl.

My own talk was framed around the ways in which the disaster at the Chernobyl is interpreted and presented both at Chernobyl itself, at the Chernobyl museum in Kyiv, and at the information center in Slavutich and online at Pripyat.com, a website operated by former residents of Pripyat, the abandoned city near Chernobyl. All of these sites are different, telling different stories. At Chernobyl and in Pripyat itself, it's left to the visitor to make sense of the story. It is a place of highly individualistic meaning-making. At the Chernobyl Museum in Kyiv, it seems to me to be primarily a memorial story; in Slavutich, the city built to replace Pripyat, the story is one of the plant and those who worked there--and a memorial to them as well.

In thinking about my presentation, I drew on the work of the International Coalition of Historic Sites of Conscience, to consider the ways in which these sites of tragedy--of failure, as Moulshri notes--could provide a place for discussion and conversation about not just the past, but the future. These sites are everything but easy. The Coalition's work addresses questions such as:

How can sites like these both acknowledge private experiences and encourage public participation?
What reactions do sites like these engender: memory, horror, voyeurism, fear, action?
Can museums or sites that encourage discussion be state-run or must they be independent?
How, and should, multiple perspectives be shown at these sites?
How will these memorials involve new generations who have no memory of the event?

When I worked with photographer Michael Forster Rothbart on his Chernobyl exhibit in Kyiv Kyiv last spring, we conducted visitor evaluations. Some results from our (admittedly unscientific) survey (and special thanks to Natasha and all the volunteers for all their work on collecting and translating these). One question--before you visited this exhibit, what thoughts came to mind? Some of the answers:

Radiation
Sad, frightening and hopeful
Danger
The place of lost technologies
Nothing good, ecological catastrophe
I was there, nothing good
Suffering of the whole world
Ukraine is not Chernobyl

Think of the challenges of developing a museum, exhibit or memorial around visitor reactions like that. It's very unusual in Ukraine for audiences to be asked what they would like to see in an exhibit. When we asked about what other information viewers would like presented in an exhibit (particularly to foreigners), here's some of the answers:

That it might affect people right now
To remind us of what we already know all the time.
We know enough [visitor from Italy]
More truthful information, all the information available
Show foreigners that Ukraine is not the country of freaks
The info is shown from one side, but there was a lot of horror as well
Information about people who died protecting others. Foreigners should know the truth
Everything, the more the better

That last comment, "the more the better," is the take-away for me from this conference session and my talented colleagues. The more we share, talk, discuss, and debate both our successes and failures, whether it's industrial history or any other kind of history, the greater the chances are for understanding and change. Museums and historic sites have unique opportunities to be this kind of space. A space where transparency matters.

Top: Union Carbide plant, Bhopal, from jphangoo on Flickr.
Center and bottom: Pripyat, Ukraine

International Public History Working Group

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:18:00 +0000

At the TICCIH conference in Freiberg, Germany, I met Anna Adamek, Curator of Natural Resources and Industrial Design at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. She's active in the National Council on Public History, which focuses primarily on North America. After our return, she shared this call for participation in a working group at NCPH's 2010 meeting in Portland, Oregon which will explore the ways in which public history discussions could be considered worldwide--hoping that I could help connect her to colleagues in Ukraine and elsewhere. So below, the call for participation.

This International Public History working group is part of an initiative by the NCPH International Task Force to provide a forum for a dialogue among public historians worldwide. Over the last three decades public history has been proliferating in North America. The Task Force would like to explore the state of public history around the world, and opportunities for greater international cooperation in the field. Is there a need for an international organization in public history, for universal standards, and a strong global lobby? How can the NCPH and the Public Historian serve the international community?

The facilitators invite the participation of public history professionals from around the world in the working group on internationalization of public history. Through a moderated discussion, the contributors will explore the need for and benefits of formal international cooperation in the field. Each participant will be asked to outline the state of public history in their country, and present examples of the best practices or model institutions from their home countries. Next, the participant will be asked to present their views on bringing public history professionals across the globe together. The working group will then put forward a list of non-binding recommendations for the International Task Force.

If you're interested in participating in Portland, or from afar, please contact me and I'll put you in touch with Anna. Our session at TICCIH discussed the need to expand our global perspectives in industrial history--and I'm looking forward to the ways in which NCPH might consider global perspectives as well.

Destroying A Place of Memory

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:32:00 +0000

Earlier this year, after my return from Ukraine, I wrote about the challenges of interpreting history in Ukraine, framed around my visit to Babi Yar, the ravine where Nazis murdered thousands of Jews and other Ukrainians.

This past week, the Kyiv city government announced a plan to build a hotel on the site of the massacre. A sad, thoughtless, greedy plan that I hope never comes to be.

You can read more at the BBC and the Kyiv Post.

UPDATE: Late this week, the Kyiv City government, under pressure, announced that the hotel would not be built in this location.

Above: The monument at Babi Yar

Calling All Volunteers

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 01:23:00 +0000

I can't even remember how many conversations I've had about small museums and the lack of volunteers. "No one wants to volunteer," "People just won't commit," "Women are all working," and more are the common complaints.

In the past several weeks I've come across an event, a blog, and a newsletter that make me think that perhaps the problem is not with those busy non-volunteers, but in the way we connect and deal with them.

First the event. The photos in this post are from the New Kingston Film Festival, in tiny New Kingston, NY. The day-long film festival is held in a barn (bring your own blankets) and featured an eclectic group of films. But what's important is why the festival exists, according to their website,

We moved to the hamlet of New Kingston from the borough of Brooklyn in 2007. When we got here we said to each other, "this place is perfect! It's got nice people, stunning views, a post office....it's all we ever wanted!" we thought some more and then said to each other, "actually maybe there is ONE thing that New Kingston lacks...A Film Festival!"

So, these volunteers (because it's clear nobody's making any money from the festival), got to work: found films, did promotion, borrowed chairs from the church, got a restaurant to provide food, make coffee and popcorn, got a port-a-john, hung the lights, made sure the projector was working. And then, did it all again for the second year. All of these are tasks that most small museums would love volunteers to do. Why did they do it?

Next up on my volunteer notice list: A blog from the Montezuma Historical Society about their Erie Canal related archaeological dig this summer. Cheryl Longyear, town historian, created the blog about their adventures--and in a thank-you to volunteers, wrote,

What an amazing group of volunteers we had for our August 29 and 30 dig. You took volunteerism to a whole new level. We survived the weekend with heavy rain, mud, mosquitoes and lots of hard work. But wait; there's more....they even said they would come back again in two weeks to close out the three plots we worked on all weekend.

Under the expert guidance and direction of David Babson, we now are expert novices at plotting, digging, sifting, and documenting artifacts found on the Four Canals Historic site in Montezuma. As soon as available we will post details, photos and video of this amazing weekend.

Thank you, thank you, volunteers. YOU ARE THE GREATEST!!! In spite of the challenging weather conditions, I'm thrilled with the teamwork and all that was accomplished.

What made these volunteers give up a summer weekend to the mud, mosquitos and hard work?

And finally on my notice list, the newsletter of the Slate Valley Museum--and their help wanted column. It reported that several positions from the previous newsletter had been filled, including Good Hearted Lawyer, Data Dasher and Shop til You Drop Specialist. They're seeking A Versatile Cool Head, A Publications Sleuth, and a Heavy Lifter. It's been a long time since I've read a museum newsletter with a sense of humor, and these entries made me laugh out loud. But what made the museum's members respond?

So I haven't spoken with any of these volunteers, but here's my long-distance take on what made volunteerism work at all three places.

People volunteer for things they feel passionate about. The Film Festival folks love film, and New Kingston. If there's nothing to be passionate about in your organization, you'll have a tough time finding volunteers.
Volunteers like to make some decisions. The film festival people got to decide what films to show, not just show up to run the projector. I know not every volunteer can take on managing a project, but many can. Try not to micro-manage your volunteers.
Volunteers like to feel they're part of something important. Those archaeology volunteers really felt like they were uncovering something meaningful about the history of their community.
Volunteers like specific tasks. The Slate Valley Museum probably won't ask their Good Hearted Lawyer to shovel the walk (unless he moonlights as the Snowman, also needed). Every job on their list is clear and concise. How much better is that then trying to find people to sit idly at your front desk?
Volunteers like fun. At the film festival, the organizers were obviously having fun--and the archaeology crew definitely, despite the rain, looks like they're having fun too. The Slate Museum's entertaining job descriptions help ensure that those volunteers approach their work in a spirit of fun as well.

So, lighten up, broaden your circle of friends, work as a team, and have fun!

A Productive Exchange of Experiences, Upstate Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:42:00 +0000

What would you want museum colleagues from another country to understand about your museum? What would you want to know about museums in another place?

The past year has been full of amazing opportunities for me to contemplate these questions and this week provided another chance. Ten Ukrainian museum professionals were in the Albany area as part of the US State Department's International Visitors program (and organized by Bonnie Beard of the International Center of the Capital Region). I had the chance to spend a day with them, visiting the Albany Institute of History and Art and Olana, the home of artist Frederic Church. My Ukrainian colleagues, many of whom I had met while in Ukraine, had a host of questions. Just a few:

How long is the exhibit development process? Who is involved in it?
Are your employees unionized?
What is your membership program like?
What do people volunteer and how do you provide oversight of volunteers?
How are decisions made about furnishing Olana?
How does Olana cope with the potential of "overuse" of the site?
Does your museum charge for loans?
How do you make sure your Quadracentennial exhibit is different than other museums?
What partnerships do you develop and how?
What kinds of educational materials are developed--and who is responsible for developing them?
How is, or is not, the local government involved in your work?

The group had already visited Washington and Williamsburg, and will head on to South Dakota, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Chicago as part of their three-week whirlwind tour--but I suspect, based on our conversations, two things in particular will remain memorable for them about this particular day. First, the idea of visible storage at the Institute--although visitors can't visit storage, a large window in a gallery space provides an open view. As one person said, "nothing is secret." And the second is Olana itself on the most beautiful of autumn days. Several people remarked to me that it was both a beautiful and a meditative space, a very special place to think about beauty and the landscape.

And I suspect the biggest take-away will be what one participant already mentioned: that United States museums are all different--that there is no one-size-fits-all model for how we do our work here. There are meditative places, there are noisy, crazy, try anything places; places for art, history and science; big places, small places; innovative places, traditional places. I can't wait to hear more about the rest of their trip!

Top: The view from Olana
Bottom: Vasyl Rozhko, Director, Tustan State Preserve, Lviv; Mykola Skyba, Head, Department of Museums Analysis and Prognosis, Ministry of Culture and Sports, Kyiv; and Tania Poshyvailo, Deputy Director for Science and Education, Ivan Honchar Museum, Kyiv, at the Albany Institute.

Finding Meaning in the Attic

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:51:00 +0000

I was reminded this week of how hard it is to know how museums impact their visitors. It's often very much in the long run--it might take a visitor some time to process that information into their own life experiences. A colleague emailed me asking if I'd seen the installation by Song Dong at the Museum of Modern Art, saying she thought of it when she went up into her attic to look for something. The work, called Waste Not, contains the complete contents of his mother's home in China, including the frame of the house itself, amassed over 50 years, when nothing was wasted.

I had seen the exhibit and had been fascinated both by the array and arrangement of objects and by the way the installation engaged visitors who could walk through and around a lifetime of possessions. But this friend's following email really brought home the sometimes unexpected ways in which meanings can be made:

It kind of hit me over the head when I went up to find something in the attic. Our things are organized by type...all sorted visibly on the floor just like the installation. I stopped in my tracks and had to get my head around it all. Pretty powerful.

Funny, I remember as a child being confused by my Greek grandmother's practice of getting every bit of toothpaste out of the tube...and then she would flatten the tube and cut it with scissors and then scrape the remaining toothpaste out.

I have to say that when I saw the toothpaste tubes in the installation, I had to take a deep breath. I was never close to my grandmother, and she died when I was very young, but I was certainly transported back. It was not until seeing this in the exhibit that I made a connection between the toothpaste tubes and my grandmother's experience in the Turkish war (early 20th c.). I remember her talking about the suffering...and the need for "waste not" ...it all stayed with her until she died.

So from China to Greece to New York, a through thread of toothpaste tubes and family memories thanks to an artist and a museum.

In or Out of the Global Box?

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:42:00 +0000

I've done a whole group of posts about my trip to Germany--but not about the reason I went--which was to present a paper as part of a session called In or Out of the Global Box: Industrial Heritage from Different Perspectives at the TICCIH conference. My next post will be about Chernobyl and Bhopal, but here I wanted to share what my friend, colleague and session organizer, Gyorgyi Nemeth, shared so provocatively with our audience. Gyorgyi is an assistant professor at the University of Miskolc, Hungary, and has done work extensively on industrial history in eastern Hungary.

Although the conference theme was Industrial Heritage, Ecology and Economy, she reminded the group that in reality, this conference, like many others, was perhaps not as committed to multiple perspectives as they might be. Researchers might be interested, in theory, in global perspectives, but such research was usually conducted from a Western European framework.

To support her approach, she conducted an analysis of the industrial sites on UNESCO's World Heritage List. Fully 70% of the industrial/technical sites on the World Heritage List are from Europe--with only 4 sites from Eastern Europe. No sites are preserved on the list that relate to the modern industrial period.

In particular, Gyorgyi talked about a real reluctance to talk about the forced Soviet industrialization of the 20th century--which took place throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. These factories, and their accompanying communities, were planned and centralized structures, meant to reinforce socialism; to keep control of people, and to provide no separation between factory and home. In reality, of course, these places were places of social stress and repression--and with the end of the Soviet Union and the decline of controlled industry, these places have become a type of lost community. As I understand it, none of these communities are preserved, documented, or interpreted.

Gyorgyi's passionate presentation inspired a lively debate:

What stories do these communities tell? To whom? How can we collect these millions of individual stories?
Is it only the West who has the luxury of being post-industrial and thinking of all these structures as monuments?
Although historians have begun, with the end of the Soviet Union, to explore the history of these communities, what sorts of preservation might be undertaken?
What does this Soviet-style history mean to industrial historians who think of a western, relatively straight-line analysis of industrial history and technology?
Who will chose to tell these stories? From my experience in Ukraine, it's hard to imagine that country having the resources or the will to preserve such places.
How can conferences --of any type--welcome and support new participants?
And how, perhaps most importantly, do all of us open up our work to new perspectives, to new people?

And as a side note, my participation in this session was, many years on, the result of a long-ago, AAM-ICOM, International Partnership Among Museums Project, where Gyorgyi and I had the opportunity to work together. My special thanks to Gyorgyi for providing me with such a wonderful learning opportunity this fall (and my apologies for not figuring out how to get the accent marks in her name!) Any errors in the description of her presentation are entirely my own.

Magnitogorsk steel production facility, 1930s
Viktor Kalmikov, Magnitogorsk, 1930 by Max Alpert (Russian 1899-1980)

Hmmm...What would a Museum of Hygiene be Like?

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:29:00 +0000

The whole name seems a bit clinical: The German Hygiene Museum in Dresden. I really didn't know what to expect, but made my way there. It's out of the center city area, and appears to not particularly be on the tourist trail. There weren't huge numbers of visitors on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

But...although I was a bit unmoved by the permanent exhibit and the children's museum part seemed fairly routine, the exhibit Work, Meaning, Care, was one of the most surprising things I'd seen in a very long time. The museum's website describes the ideas driving the exhibit:

In the five sections of this exhibition, fundamental questions are posed about work as it is understood today. How can we properly tell whether work is being done, and how can work and leisure be distinguished from one another? What purpose does work serve in a capitalist society? How do our individual attitudes towards work develop during childhood and at school? What importance does work have beyond power, money and recognition? What are the options available for the world of work tomorrow?

The exhibit made extensive use of video installations, and surprising spaces--somehow a space with a disco ball was pretty unexpected! The exhibit was really designed for adults, although I think older children, accompanied by parents, may have found it interesting as well. There were lots of words (in German and English), but a great deal else to look at as well--I mean, when was the last time you saw a case full of people's security blankets--literally, those blankies and stuffed animals that provide comfort?

I only took a couple photos before I was reprimanded, so here's just a few shots of mine, followed by some from the museum's website.

The outer walls of each section all used black and white graphics to tell a story--but they were really graphics in the sense of being graphical representations of all sorts of information--what time we start work, unemployment, and the like. Statistics made interesting!

There were dozens of videos in many different presentations from a dark room where gigantic videos of people at work (for instance, doing surgery) to mid-sized videos such as these where you heard about topics such as work boredom, to an ending series of videos that used puppets to explore the work of the future.

In spending some time on the museum's website, I found a summary of their work:

It is thus neither a science center nor a special museum devoted to a strictly defined topic area. Its interests center on the biological, social, and cultural dimensions of the human being. As a modern museum of science, it especially reflects what the sciences mean for society of the 21st century. Through its exhibitions and events, the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum offers an independent public forum for the dialogue between science and society.

What did I particularly appreciate about this exhibit?

Really thinking outside the box about design and use of media--my descriptions don't really do justice to the inventiveness at work here
Surprising spaces--dark, light, big, little
It was really about ideas--it took a topic--work--that I can't even imagine how many exhibits I've seen about--and made me think about it in new ways.
and, it integrated a whole host of different perspectives--not as sidebars, but in the conceptual heart of the exhibit.

See in Germany

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:08:00 +0000

Last week I presented a session at the International Committee for the Conservation of Industrial Heritage International Congress in Freiberg, Germany. More in a future post about the session itself, but a highlight of the conference was a bus tour of post-industrial sites in this region of former East Germany. The tour involved sites that were all part of two connected projects.

The first was the International Building Exhibition for Furst-Puckler Land (IBA in German). IBA are term-limited projects (in this case ten years) that are designed to find new ideas and solutions to urban development and landscape planning in a particular region. The first IBA took place from 1901 to 1914. Between 2000 and 2010 this project aims to show the ways in which the area of brown coal production in Lusatia can be transformed as 17 opencast mines and other industries were closed down after reunitification. 25 separate projects, divided into eight "landscape islands" show how industrial landscapes and buildings can be converted and re-used.

The second effort, which will continue after 2010 is known as SEE--a branding that is intentionally ambigous. According to the project, "visitors are invited to 'see' beyond the present stage of the transformation of the landscape region and to look forward to the future to see the complete development. The second meaning derives from the word See, German for lake, referring to the new Lusatian lake area that is being created."

What did we see? Four separate sites, representing different levels of tourism experiences. (and by the way, all were denoted by these large blue signage cubes on the landscape--a nice change from your standard roadside signs).

We began and ended at the Plessa Power Plant, a huge brown coal power plant opened in 1927. It became outdated but was difficult to shut down because of the need for power. However, the plan finally closed in 1992 and then efforts to find an alternative use for this "Cathedral of Work" began. Our tour took us through the process from the delivery of brown coal to the production of electricity. Substantial funds from the European Union and the brown coal restoration fund have helped preserve the buildings and work continues to find additional tenants to ensure the site's continued viability. The focus of this tour was the building itself, the main interest of most of the conference participants--I wished for more about the workers themselves and hope that the future museum will not only give me a sense of this majestic place, but of the generations who worked there.

The Bio Towers in Lauchhammer look like a medieval castle, but they are really the sole-surviving remnants of a large coking plant. Treatment for groundwater contamination at the site continues. The experience is limited, although you can go up into a tower, and the community hopes to make the site a place for performances and events--it was inaugurated with a ropewalking act by a famous German acrobatic family.

At the F60 mine, the large overburden conveyor bridge dominates the landscape for miles. This equipment, completed in 1991 and closed down just 13 months later because of a change in energy policy seems to attract visitors interested not only in mining history, but interested in a chance to walk, and even bungee-jump, from this incredibly large steel framework. It's now an anchor point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage. As one can imagine, the issues faced in conserving this structure, in the open landscape, are immense.

Our final stop were the IBA-Terraces, the main visitor center of the IBA project. The large open-cast mine is becoming a lake, and a pier, now on dry land, will eventually connect directly with the water. The sandy, post-mining landscape looks like a desert, not Germany, and already hosts hiking, dirt-biking and other recreational activities. Eventually, this and other mines converted to lakes in the region will allow visitors to enjoy water-based activities as well.

These were all amazing places, and I was glad to have seen them. I was incredibly impressed at the investment of the European community and the German government in these preservation projects and the idea of a project such as IBA--to take ten years to demonstrate new ideas seemed a wonderful thing.

However, it's hard to tell yet whether these projects will thrive as tourist attractions. It appears everywhere that communities hope for museums and heritage sites to rebuild economically. At least in Germany, there appears to be sufficient investment to make that happen, but only time will tell.

Eye on the Design in the City

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:20:00 +0000

For the past several years Nina Simon has led a thoughtful, engaging session at AAM's conference where museum people share their perspectives on everything from book drops to ball games that can inspire us to think about museums and exhibits in new ways. For some reason I thought of those sessions as I spent a couple days in Dresden, Germany as a solitary tourist. So here's a small homage to their creative ideas.

How can a city like Dresden inspire exhibits?

Use all the senses
The sound of street musicians and church organs, the rough cobblestone streets and the smooth marble museum floors, the taste of sausage and great desserts, the over-the-top Baroque architecture, and the faint smell of the Elbe all combine together.

Make some surprising places
This square group of trees, trimmed to just above your head, made for a beautiful little shock as you entered it. On the terrace overlooking the river, you entered and it was cooler, quieter (except for the rustle of leaves) and with a totally different cast of light. It made me think about spaces in museums that provide the same quality of surprise.

Provide places for overviews and a chance to look closely at details
The walk around the top of the Zwinger Palace provided an ever-changing chance to do both.

Give visitors a behind-the-scenes look
A 2002 flood devastated Dresden and the Albertinium has been closed for renovation. A banner outside the construction site described how the renovation will build "an ark for art" to avoid future disasters. Another banner at an archaelogical site told visitors what that big hole in the ground might have been--not just what it will be in the future.

Provide different ways to make your way around
In Dresden's case, it was physically---by bike, or pedi-cab, or foot, or carriage, but this can serve as a metaphor for providing varied paths for your visitors to explore the exhibit.

Don't ignore the hard parts
Dresden's rebuilt Frauenkirche uses both the dark stones of the old cathedral destroyed in an Allied bombing during the waning days of World War II intermixed with new stones, and a new synagogue, consecrated in 2001, stands on the same site as the synagogue badly damaged during Kristallnacht and later destroyed. The new synagogue contains a Book of Remembrance documenting the thousands of members of Dresden's Jewish community killed by Nazis.

Provide us with some creative ways to see what creative thinkers have done and seen before us
Canaletto's views of Dresden reside in the Old Masters Picture Gallery here, but these red frames and a simple label make his paintings live outside the museum as we look directly at views he painted.

Have people in costume
Okay, generally I'm not a person who connects deeply to costumed interpeters. But the individually costumed tour guides and street performers somehow made a visual connection to the city itself matter.

And finally, of course, provide lots of places to sit and relax!

What do People do in Museums Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:46:00 +0000

Just couldn't resist one more picture, this time from Dresden, of another museum visitor at the end of what looks like a long visit.

What Is It?

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:11:00 +0000

Reach Advisors, on their blog Museum Audience Insight recently posted a entry about a NY Times article discussing visitor behavior in museums--what commenters to the Times article called "compulsive consumerism." They raised issues about our responsibilities as museum professionals to our audience of picture-snappers.

Last month I saw an exhibit that I thought was a brilliant example of how museums can more directly provide visitors with the information and the perspectives that encourage deep thinking and looking. The Rubin Museum of Art, which focuses on art of the Himalayas has a permanent exhibition called, What is It? And it does just what is says it's going to do. The introductory label says that Himalayan art is "new terrain" for many people and that the exhibit will introduce this "exhilarating cultural landscape." The exhibit accomplishes that through four sections:

Where is it made?
Why is it made?
How is it made?
What's going on?

The introductory section has three objects--and it encourages you to return, after looking at the exhibit, to reconsider the objects. Every label in the exhibit repeats one of these four questions at the top, so it's continually reinforced that this object will help to answer that question. The labels are well-written, clearly by staff with both an understanding of audience and a passion for this particular form of art. Laminated cards provide additional information and then of course, your new knowledge can be put to work throughout the museum.

I think what's particularly important about this exhibition is that I didn't feel condescended to--the material was not "dumbed down" in any way. Rather, the Rubin communicated and shared a joy for learning about these works, something that's perhaps missing from many museums.

It's not just this particular exhibition that conveys that connection with the audience at the Rubin. As I entered a new temporary exhibit, a docent welcomed me, and said, "if you have any questions, please let me know. I'll be circulating around the exhibit and will be back around. Enjoy!" Magnifying glasses, simple but beautifully designed interactives, and video installations that are informative but don't compete with the art all make the Rubin one of my favorite places.

We Can't Change That!

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:14:00 +0000

I'm often reminded that museums are in fact, pretty conservative places. Despite the fact that we show the work of those who broke the rules as artists, or who were game-changers in history, we cling to the way we've always done things. So it was a wonderful surprise in Dresden, in what seemed like one of the most conservative, old-line museums you could imagine--to see things done differently.

The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery) has an incredible collection of Old Masters, just as the name implies. Rembrandt, Raphael, Vermeer, Rubens, Canaletto. But imagine my surprise when I walked in a room and saw a Native American totem pole next to a Rembrandt; and then, throughout the permanent collections, other artifacts from cultures around the world, installed next to these very traditional works of Western art. These weren't shunted off into a separate room, or next to less-than-important works of art. One installation was with Raphael's Sistine Madonna, considered the most important work in the collection.

Bright green labels provided the explanation and my rudimentary German (their website, and Google Translate) tell me that this is a joint project of the museum and the anthropological museum in Dresden--designed to explore themes that are common in all cultures--the struggle between good and evil, for instance.

I was intrigued by the project, but even more intrigued by the fact that the museum staff let go of things as they've always been (and by the way, you can also check out the museum in Second Life). So my take-away from this visit:

Get over it! Try something new!

And, in my ongoing quest for pictures--also very nice that they let you take photographs.

Does Pricing Change Visitor Behavior? It Did Mine.

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:47:00 +0000

I'm sure there are many studies about this, but a quick tale from my visit to Dresden. As I went into one museum, I thought, oh, perhaps I'll buy the city pass so I can visit lots of museums. I asked about it, and the woman behind the counter suggested I look at the brochure before deciding. I did decide, and then discovered that it made me visit museums, with their free admission, that I wouldn't have otherwise visited. I'm not overly interested in porcelain or armor, but the Porcelain Museum and the Armor Museum were worth a visit--even spectacular. To me, I wouldn't have sought them out, and paid a separate admission, but when I walked by the entrance to each, I thought, why not, it's free!

I compared that to my experience at the Museum of Modern Art last week, where somehow that $20 admission fee made me feel like I had to visit every floor, even though it was crowded, and I was tired.

So at one place, I felt I had to "earn" my money spent and at the other, I felt I got a special bonus. I know most cities, probably including New York, have a city card, but I wouldn't necessarily do it in a place close to home. Maybe promoting these cards is something cities could do for their neighbors, not just their visitors.

What Do Visitors Do at Art Museums?

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:32:00 +0000

Lately, in my museum visits I've been paying attention to what visitors actually do when they're in those exhibits we work so hard on. Below, just a few photos from a recent visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

So what do visitors do?

Mill around the entrance deciding what to do. A little additional signage could be helpful.

Read labels. But in the image below, this group gathered to read the label--but never stepped back to really look at the piece of art. Perhaps labels could encourage more looking. To artists and art historians that goes without saying, but not to everyone.

Crowd around famous works of art (in this case, Starry Night). This is usually accompanied by the taking of photos. Nina Simon's written a great post about photography in museums--and the reasons we should encourage it.

Visitors also seem to decide very quickly that some spaces are just pretty boring and not worth additional exploration. When I look at the above picture I feel like I should be making a dental appointment--this experience could be painful!

Listen to audio--in installations, in audioguides (MoMA's hefty admission was mitigated a bit by the free audio-guides) or on cellphones.

Seek out comfortable seating. This seating accompanies a design exhibit--but it also provided a much needed respite.

Talk to each other. My favorite comment was when a father, leaving the room with the Matisse, (several photos above), turned to his teenage son and said, with a huge smile across his face, "I never dreamed it was so big!" A wonderful demonstration of the power of seeing the real thing, and why people will still go to museums despite the web.

When was the last time you took a look at what people were doing in your museum?

Finding Sites of Conscience

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Norris) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:41:00 +0000

Last week I had the opportunity to meet with Erika Gee and Maxim Novichenko of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. The coalition is a worldwide network of “Sites of Conscience” – historic sites specifically dedicated to remembering past struggles for justice and addressing their contemporary legacies. You can read a recent NY Times article about the coalition here.

In a wide-ranging conversation, we focused on my experience in Ukraine, talking about Chernobyl, Holomodor, and the Holocaust. I had the opportunity to learn about projects of individual sites such as the Gulag Museum at Perm 36 in Russia where events, dialogues, exhibits and programs helping to ensure that the human cost of totalitariansim is never forgotten.

But as I drove home, I thought about the many communities in the US where I have worked--and what sites of conscience might be in each of them.

I realized that almost every community has somewhere that is a place of conscience, whether it's a museum or historic site. We, as history workers, could take the lead in interpreting and telling stories about the fight for wages and worker safety, suffragists, abolitionists, pacifists and environmental activists. Many community museums have begun to tell those stories--but far fewer have begun to tell the more difficult stories of their past--the 1920s anti-nativist movement in upstate New York; the forced removal of Haudenousaunee during General Sullivan's campaign; the ways in which our communities treated the poor and the mentally ill; the inevitable pollution that was a result of industrialization; racial and religious segregation and discrimination; the often casual discrimination where some ethnic groups were slotted into low level jobs, and many more.

How can community museums begin the process of identifying sites and stories in their own communities? First, begin the conversation. Set aside time for your staff and your board to talk about the difficult parts of community history. Take a look at your collections and see if any of these difficult topics are embedded in your objects. One of the most powerful exhibition displays I've ever seen was one where, in its exhibit on slavery, the New-York Historical Society had a group of high-style 18th century objects--mahogany chairs, silver tea pots and the like. And the label? It said, simply, that everything in this case was made or used by slaves. It made those objects have an entirely different meaning for visitors. I haven't yet had a chance to see the Lower East Side Tenement Museum's Kitchen Table Conversations, but they definitely seem to provide a wonderful model for creating community dialogue about contemporary issues.

What else can you do?

Seek out different parts of your community for conversations and dialogue.
Consider who's not represented in your work.
Check out the Coalition's website under resources for models and more information. The coalition works by bringing groups together to share experiences, ideas and perspectives--the same approach will work in your own community.
Take a look at the Living Library, a worldwide project where you're given the opportunity to speak informally with people from diverse backgrounds "on loan" as a way of breaking stereotypes and challenging prejudices.

At a time when communities sometimes seem increasingly fragmented, museums and history organizations can be places where we come together, to consider our shared concerns.

Top to bottom:
Kern County, California. Undernourished cotton picker's child listening to speeches of organizer at strike meeting to raise wages from seventy-five cents to ninety cents a hundred pounds. Strike unsuccessful. Photo by Dorothea Lange, FSA/OWI Collection, Library of Congress

Memorial Park at Perm-36, via Gulag Museum website

Two male workers make sausage casings for Adam Stecher in a cellar located on the edge of the Hudson River at #656 West 41st St., New York City, 1912. Barrels and machinery fill the room, which the investigator described as "excessively hot, humid and foul smelling." Factory Investigating Commission Collection, New York State Archives.

Living Library event in Edinburgh, Scotland