AAM 2012: “Debaucherous Museuming” at its Best

Guest post by Zerah Jakub, Visitor Services and Program Assistant at Old South Meeting House

AAM’s Annual Meeting is akin to an initiation ceremony for museum professionals. Navigating the hundreds of sessions, numerous networking events, and finding time to visit the cultural institutions of the host city requires shameful amounts of caffeine and true dedication to all things museums.

I arrived for AAM’s Annual Meeting with an impressive 18 point check-in on foursquare and my last paper of graduate school to write; luckily, I also arrived two days early and had plenty of time to finish that paper.  Over the next five days I attended 7 sessions, focused mostly on mobile interpretation; visited 6 museums; rode the roller coasters at the Mall of America; attended networking events all over Minneapolis; and even made it an old fashioned kegger and silent auction fundraiser hosted by the team at Museum-Ed.  It was a busy week and it took a few days to mentally get over the information overload upon my return to Boston.  When I finally sorted out the benefits of attending the conference a few key take-aways emerged:

“You Look Digitally Familiar” – Networking does not have to begin with a face to face interaction.  I started networking before I even showed up in Minneapolis using Facebook and Twitter.  This provided me with ample opportunities to have much more meaningful conversations with people I was meeting for the first time in person, but had interacted with digitally, and garner introductions to others which expanded my network tremendously.

Gustav, Paul, and Babe the Blue Ox – Every city has its must see museums and Minneapolis is no exception.  Along with finding my way to the Walker Art Center, Mill City Museum, Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, and the Minnesota History Center I also found time to go to a few out of the way places and it really paid off.  Both the American Swedish Institute and the Paul Bunyan Logging Camp Museum (which required a road trip to Wisconsin) had amazing interactive exhibits ranging from a Dala Horse you could ride for a quarter to Paul Bunyan’s snack skillet you could grease with bacon “skates”.  The time spent away from the conference was just as effective as the time I spent sitting in sessions, and in some cases more so.

Platforms of Exchange – The conference as a whole was an experience in effectively exchanging ideas.  Whether this was done in a session, with a Tweet, in a museum, or over a pint at the local watering hole, the opportunity to speak to a wide array of museum professionals was an extraordinary way to find new approaches to what we do in the museum field.  I attended sessions armed with my iPhone, iPad, and an extra battery – no pen and paper for me.  My mode of communication was Twitter and I found the experience to be more immersive than passively taking notes.  Friends unable to attend sessions were able to participate in the conference in real time, and those in other sessions were able to connect themes they were hearing about to ones I was.

AAM’s Annual Meeting allowed me to expand my business card collection, gain 30 more followers on Twitter, and add 6 museums to my lifer list, so now what?  Maybe it’s time I write a proposal for next year’s AAM in Baltimore…..

Click.

Guest post by Michelle Cheng, Director of Education, New Haven Historical Society

 

Once an innocuous sound, the click now conjures up images of computer mice, computer screens and websites. Our technology and world are constantly changing now, and so must our museums. Though adopting the newest technology is important, doing it well is of far greater importance. The question is: what does adopting new technology well look like? Right now, we are seeing how social media can build a community, how crowdsourcing can change fundraising and how digitized collections showcase an organization as a vital resource. This year’s NEMA conference theme, Pushing the Envelope: Innovation and the Future of Museums, furthers the discussion.

In an increasingly wirelessly connected world, we are driven more than ever to seek a sense of place, a sense of belonging, be it within a city, a historic site, or on social media. It’s just that we now have more ways of connecting. We seek a sense of place to ground ourselves, searching for connections through the built environment, art history and science, for example. The projects common now are ones that break down the walls of the museums, sometimes literally, as new structures like the Arts of the Americas wing at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Isabella Stewart Gardner’s new wing are built.

When the opportunity to be a part of the 2012 Conference Program Committee for NEMA, I couldn’t say no. I was humbled to be invited to be a part of a committee of esteemed individuals from the museum and art worlds.

With 98 proposals, the most ever, the theme for the 2012 NEMA conference clearly generated great interest within the museum community in New England. Some of the current hot topics include emergency planning, crowdsourcing, addressing audiences with special needs, from Alzheimer’s to autism to vision impairment, and developing a coherent plan for social media.

A full day of discussion about the session proposals was not only invigorating, but also very telling of the new ideas emerging within New England museum community. Though we may have some techniques that work well in our respective settings, there is always great interest in seeing what other organizations are doing. After all, change can be good. More importantly, we ask ourselves these questions: What are other organizations doing well? How are they doing it well? How can we adapt these to fit our cultural institution? With ever-changing technology, we are constantly going through the process of observation, adaptation, implementation and evaluation of strategies for teaching and learning, fundraising, and community engagement, just to name a few.

We are living in a truly exciting time, when innovation can mean the beginning of an entirely new way of living, playing, working, learning, teaching, making art and much more. I look forward to continuing to be a part of such a vibrant museum community, and I hope to learn more about what innovation means to you and your museum.

Pushing the Envelope: Innovation and the Future of Museums
November 7-9, 2012
Burlington, Vermont 

2nd Regional Summit brings Cultural Heritage Institutions and Emergency Management Together

Submitted by Martzahl, Veronica, Records Archivist, Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts University

On Friday, March 23, 2012 representatives of multiple Coordinated Statewide Emergency Preparedness (COSTEP) groups in New England had the opportunity to meet with each other and with representatives of both state and federal emergency management agencies. This summit, the second of its kind, was held in conjunction with the New England Archivists Spring Conference (the first summit was held in conjunction with the NEMA conference last fall).

Representatives from Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island were able to share their experiences of reaching out to local cultural heritage institutions at the local level and provide each other with tips and advice regarding their most successful approaches to increasing disaster preparedness amongst this constituency. COSTEP CT has been focusing on collections care and assessment, and will be conducting a workshop at an upcoming Connecticut Library Association meeting. In Massachusetts, COSTEP had been awarded a grant from FEMA to conduct a series of local meetings about hazard mitigation, conduct multiple risk assessment workshops, and work with Regional Planning Agencies to raise awareness of cultural institutions in the process for planning for and mitigating of disasters. COSTEP RI is focusing on a series of trainings in conjunction with the Northeast Document Conservation Center covering disaster planning and preparedness as well as wet book recovery. 

FEMA representatives were available to answer questions, particularly around federal grant money that is available after a disaster declaration for mitigation programs. Additionally, the group heard from special guest Fiona Macalister, a Winston Churchill Traveling Fellow, who is researching various aspects of disaster recovery. Ms. Macalister provided the group with her insights on disaster preparedness from an international perspective.

Each of the COSTEP organizations is actively seeking participants. If you would be interested in getting involved, or if you are just interested in learning more, please contact BJ Larson at 781-641-0013 or bj.larson@nemanet.org and she will direct you to the appropriate state contact.     

Advocacy Day Adventures

By Leslie Howard

The American Association of Museums recently held its fourth annual Museums Advocacy Day in our nation's Capitol. Over 300 people attended the two day event. There were over 20 people representing New England museums. NEMA's executive director, Dan, attended last year and I was excited to be able to attend this year along with my YEPs PAG co-chairs Kate Laurel Burgess-Mac Intosh and Zerah Jakub.

Our first day was a full day of training- learning more about the issues like funding for the Office of Museums Services at IMLS, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and charitable giving. We learned advocacy etiquette, like not to bring your pets with you on your visit to the Hill, and to expect to meet with staff members, not the Members of Congress themselves. We had time to meet with other advocates from our state and districts and plan our strategies.
Monday night we headed to Capitol Hill for a reception where AAM honored members of Congress for their service to museums and the field.

The next morning, we woke early to head back to the Hill for a breakfast with remarks from several members of Congress, and NEMA's own Dan Yaeger. After breakfast we headed off to our meetings.

The Massachusetts advocates met first with Senator John Kerry. We all received calls the night before informing us that our meeting location had changed. Little did we know that, because there were so many of us, we were going to meet with a member of Senator Kerry's staff in the Committee on Foreign Relations hearing room! That was the first cool "wow I am really here doing this" moment of the day. We had a terrific meeting with Megan, snapped a quick picture and we went our separate ways.



New Hampshire was under represented at advocacy day, so Dan offered to visit those offices. Knowing Massachusetts was in good hands, I gladly accepted Dan’s offer to join him visiting New Hampshire's members of Congress. I grew up in New Hampshire and much of my immediate family lives there, so I felt like I was an honorary constituent. We met with staff from Senator Jeanne Shaheen's office and took a picture with Oscar the Moose in Senator Kelly Ayotte's office. After a quick lunch break, Dan and I met up again for a meeting with Representative Charlie Bass. We were both excited for this meeting because our schedule indicated we were going to actually meet with the Congressman himself.

I arrived a few minutes early and waited outside the office for Dan to arrive from his other meeting. Now, to back track a bit, we were warned during training that not all of our meetings will happen the way we think they will. They could be five minutes long, they could be much longer, or they could happen while walking down the hallway while the member of Congress or staff was en route to a vote or another meeting. It was important then, they stressed, that we knew exactly what action we wanted the representative to take. Fast forward, then, to our meeting with Charlie Bass...

...I was minding my own business standing outside his office when I caught a glimpse of him in the hallway. I got a little star struck, I admit it. I overheard that he was in the middle of a meeting. Rep. Bass then walked right up to me and asked if I was waiting to meet with him. I said, "Yes, I am! My name is Leslie Howard and I work for the New England Museum Association. I also grew up in Bedford." He apologized that he was in another meeting, that I would meet with a member of his staff and asked that I sum up why I am here to talk about museums in two minutes.

This was my shot! I had two minutes! What to say?! I said, as clearly and as succinctly as possible that we would like him to sign onto a "Dear Colleague letter" to support funding for the Institute of Museums and Library Services. He said he'd love to take a look at it and he disappeared back into his office.

Just a minute later, I saw Dan walking down the hall, right on time for our 1:30 meeting. I said, "You just missed our meeting with the Congressman!" I explained to him what happened and that we were still going to meet with someone from his office, but our meeting with the Congressman himself happened just outside in the hallway, just like we were warned, and I had to give the quickest presentation that I have ever given.

The rest of the day's meetings went very well. With Neil Gordon of the Discovery Museums and Kate, I visited the office of Rep. Niki Tsongas, representing the 5th Massachusetts district, and my town of Westford. I ended the day at Rep. Frank Guinta's office.

It was whirlwind two day experience that I will never forget. I often found myself singing "oh I'm just a bill..." and played scenes from West Wing and The American President in my head while taking in the sights and sounds of being on Capitol Hill. It was fascinating to see each member's office, the Committee on Foreign Relations Hearing Room, Oscar the Moose, sketches of Jack Kerouac in Rep. Tsongas’ office, and my quick solo meeting with Charlie Bass.

I eat, sleep, and breathe museums and sometimes forget that not everyone else does. I don't think a day goes by when I don't think about or talk about IMLS with my colleagues. It is an acronym we do not have to define when speaking with them and they automatically know how vital the organization is to the field. Of course, I will take away one very, VERY important thing. I was shocked (naively), when we asked during every meeting, if the person knew what IMLS was. Of the New England advocates that we spoke to, only ONE office had ever heard of IMLS before. If we only raised awareness about museums by letting our Congressmen and women know that the language of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act harms museums and that the Institute for Museum and Library Services exists and is the only source of federal funding for museums, I will consider my trip a success. And that is why what we did in Washington, D.C. was so important and why it must continue year round.

Operation Pinterest

by Dan Yaeger

It started with Leslie a few weeks ago, who said that the new social media site Pinterest might be a good tool for NEMA to make connections between its member museums and the general public. Like many things in my life, the suggestion didn’t connect with me right away. So Leslie gave me a gentle reminder about her suggestion last Thursday, and added that, were we start a Pinterest presence, we’d be the first museum association to do so. Again, I was interested in a sort of, kind of, maybe way, but with everything going on in the NEMA world, it was a momentary distraction, momentary being the operative word here.

The next morning, driving in to work, it hit me: What a perfect team-building project for a February Friday! Though I didn’t know Pinterest from patchouli, I decided to lay down a challenge – create a credible NEMA presence there in one day.

0900 hours

The staff gathers for a typical Friday. I tell them we need to meet in five minutes. They look at me suspiciously, wondering if this is one of those corporate end-of-week staff purges. It isn’t.

0905 hours

I unveil the big idea, Pinterest in one day! Still, they eye me suspiciously. Now they aren’t afraid of a staff purge, but that I’ve lost my grip. I’ve gone from luddite to early adopter overnight. Exhilarating!

But, after they see I’m not dangerous, we settle in for some enthusiastic brainstorming. We go over the basics of Pinterest, the audience, potential “pinboards” we can create. Then I say, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right: we need a consultant. We resolve to conference with the redoubtable social media guru Kate Laurel Burgess Mac Intosh at 1030 hours.

1030 hours

We connect with Kate Laurel Burgess Mac Intosh via teleconference and give her the skinny on what we’re up to. Kate is a font of ideas, almost giddy that NEMA is taking the lead on the latest craze in social media. After helping us devise a list of 25 or so potential pinboards, she advises us to keep it simple for our launch. We agree to create 5 – 10 boards with 15 – 20 “pins” each (pins being a graphic pulled from a web site and inserted onto your pinboard, with a link back to the originating site). We decide to create a pin for each of our member museums and organize them by state – this, we reason, will be the most useful way for the general public to find them. We thank Kate for her wisdom, then get cracking.

1200 – 1530 hours

The NEMA office is like Houston Mission Control. Intensity. Collaboration. Gazes fixed on computer monitors. Focus on a singular objective: a successful launch.

Sample dialogue:

Heather: I have Connecticut done! I’m on to Vermont.

Leslie: That’s great! I’m halfway through Massachusetts and people are already re-pinning us!

Dan: Who wants more pizza?

1530 hours

Our Pinterest site is almost complete. Now we turn our attention to getting the word out. I mean, what’s a social media site for, if not getting the word out? I write some copy for an email and turn it over to Heather.

1600 hours

Five… four… three… two… one. The email’s out. We’re live! Within seconds, we see that our NEMA community has opened their email and clicked through to Pinterest. Just like that, 100+ followers. Immediate gratification never felt so good. It’s been a long, exciting day, but we did it. I give the staff a big pat on the back and tell them I’m proud. Amazing work. NEMA’s the world’s first museum association to engage the world of “Pinheads.” We’ll see where that gets us.

Charting a course to the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center

By Dan Yaeger

It’s been awhile, but we finally got the chance to take another field trip. Actually, when I say “we” I mean “me,” because the rest of the NEMA staff is still digging out of the annual snowbank known as the NEMA Conference. Even though the event itself was history by mid-November, it took months to fully catch up with correspondence, reports, and projects deferred during the run-up to Hartford.

But I digress. As I said, it’s been awhile since my last foray into the field, but when Jan Spitz called to invite me over to the (relatively) new Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library, I hied to Boylston Street quicker than you can say cartography.

Many know that the NBLMCBPL (hereinafter known as the Map Center) dates to 2004, when Mr. Leventhal, developer extraordinaire, donated his renowned map collection to the BPL along with an endowment, resulting in free public access to more than 200,000 maps and atlases.

Up till this past fall, the Map Center was sort of a virtual place, with a web site, school programs, and the occasional exhibition in the stacks of the BPL, but there was no there there. That all changed in October, when Leventhal and Boston Mayor Tom Menino cut the ribbon on a beautiful new first-floor space in the library’s fabled McKim Building. It was this space that I was dying to see for myself, so Jan’s invitation was fortuitous.

And let me tell you the space is fabulous. There, tucked neatly into the marbled passages of the old building, peering out onto the BPL courtyard through neoclassical fenestration, is a neat, purpose-built gallery presenting some of the most unique and compelling maps I ever laid eyes on. Gas station road maps these are not.

Jan took obviously great pleasure showing me her domain, watching my eyes widen ever further as she introduced me to treasure after treasure. First there’s a bird’s-eye map of Boston from the early 19^th century, rendered in the faux-perspective common since the industrial age in maps for tourists which highlight all the hot spots. In this you notice that, while much has changed (barks and schooners once docked near what is now State Street), much has not (the golden dome of the State House still takes center stage).

She ushered me next to a world map from 1719, a fine, hand-colored print depicting all of the planet’s familiar land masses. Only they’re not quite familiar. California here is correctly located on the west coast of North America, but it’s a giant island, separated from all the rest by a wide body of water that looks like a fjord. And the continent we know as Australia is only partially mapped, its southern extremes fading off into colorful nothingness as if waiting for the next expedition to arrive and complete the job.

Jan showed me an upside-down map which vertiginously challenges my northerly biases, an illuminated Dutch celestial map featuring Christian, rather than pagan, constellations, and then she comes to the show stopper: a Ptolemaic world atlas from 1482. If you’re counting, that’s 10 years prior to Columbus’ big adventure, so on this map of the world we don’t even exist. For me, it’s a strangely philosophical moment. But I recovered, thanked Jan for her hospitality, and departed for the wind-swept expanses of Copley Square.

Later I reflected on what an extraordinary place is the Map Center, but how to define it? Clearly it’s a museum (it’s one of NEMA’s newest institutional members, so who am I to argue?), one which embraces art, history, technology, conservation, archives, education, and a whole lot of passion for its unique mission. It’s located within the BPL, but is a separate entity altogether, which surely creates interesting conversations with potential funders. And while it has a strong collection focusing on Boston and New England, its collection – and reputation – is worldwide. One of Jan’s goals, for example, is to create the world’s most comprehensive online cartographic web portal, impressively ambitious for a five-person operation.

The thought occurs to me that today, with satellite GPS so banal it’s part of everyone’s cell phones, maps like those in the NBLMCBPL are truly museum pieces, obsolete as practical tools to get us from one place to another. After all, no one any longer has bundles of road maps stuffed in the glove compartment of the family station wagon.

Maps may be obsolete, but what they represent is very much alive, especially for those of us in the museum field. Maps help us find our way, plan a route, identify key objects along the journey. We need maps for our organizations, strategic plans that guide our collective steps. We need maps for self-improvement, charting out our diets and workout schedules and reading lists and other New Year’s resolutions. Sometimes we need maps for relationships, alerting us to dangerous shoals and nasty terrain that is to be avoided (I can’t believe you forgot our anniversary again!).

January seems to be a good month for us to engage in our own internal cartography. Many thanks to Jan Spitz and the Map Center for the inspiration.

Happy mapping!

Of Treasure Troves & Ephemera

By Dan Yaeger

Just yesterday the NEMA staff took a field trip to the Dedham Historical Society. Our goal was to see the sights and gain insights from its redoubtable director Vicky Kruckeberg.

I was particularly enthused about going because the Dedham Historical Society is one of the older of its breed, founded in 1859 during a time when communities were only just becoming self-aware and realizing that the past is worth preserving.

Sure enough, the DHS has the feel of being an established, valued member of the Dedham community. Its building is a handsome brick Romanesque edifice from 1888 or thereabouts, sited squarely in the center of Dedham’s bustling downtown. I could imagine Dedhamites tackling errands at the Post Office, the bank, maybe grabbing a snack at a Main Street eatery, then popping into the Historical Society for a quick look at the displays before they head home. Part of their everyday life, so to speak.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this is what I love about New England. Virtually any town you visit, you’re likely to encounter a hidden gem of a museum containing some pretty interesting stuff, and sometimes the stuff is more than interesting. It’s world class.

So here’s a sample of what Vicky presented us during our tour. First there’s the Dedham Pottery, produced locally during the Arts & Crafts era and collected worldwide (just look it up on eBay). The DHS exhibits a plethora of examples and, since it holds the trademark on the Dedham Pottery name, continues to produce limited quantities for sale in its gift shop.

An Example of Dedham Pottery, produced 1892 - 1943

Then Vicky walked us over to the oldest American-made chair, an intricately-carved oak “great chair” dated 1652. It’s not every day that you see one of those. Oh, and by the way, take a look above the display case over there and you’ll see a portrait of a local woman done by Gilbert Stuart. Oh, and over there’s a Paul Revere bell, adjacent to a Simon Willard “astronomical shelf clock,” one of only two in existence. It’s a trove of incredible artifacts, right in downtown Dedham.

The Metcalf Chair, c. 1652

But despite its wealth of really significant historical objects, Vicky told us that her focus today is on collecting objects of Dedham’s more recent history. She took us to a case featuring images and ephemera of places like the shoe repair shop, the corner grocery (known as the local “spa”), the downtown hardware store. These are all places that have disappeared from Dedham and, soon enough, from the planet itself.

Here, Vicky is prescient. Collecting the odds and ends of everyday life from not-so-long-ago, exhibiting them to generations that remember the bygone days and to those that should, is gaining in importance. As unique downtowns erode away under the deluge of the CVSs and Walgreens and Subways, it’s up to institutions like historical societies to retain the keys to a community’s identity. For the locals, every visit is like opening a time capsule, and it’s an experience they should enjoy regularly.