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.