Interactivate

The Queensland Museum on South Bank has just re-opened after being closed for refurbishment for a few months. Since I happened to be in town, I thought I’d drop by and have a look. More on the museum as a whole in a later post – for this one I’ll concentrate on the Bouncing Back from Disaster exhibition about the Queensland floods, which devastated many parts of the state just over a year ago.

As the one-year anniversary has only just passed, it is a very recent event that’s still fresh in everyone’s memories. The exhibition focused not just on what happened, but the resilience of the people who picked up the pieces and moved on in the wake of the disaster. Australians who followed the event on the news will remember this resilience embodied in Queensland Premier Anna Bligh’s emotional “We are Queenslanders” speech:

And in the exhibition we get to see a facsimile of her handwritten notes from that day:

Graphic about resilience including Anna Bligh's notes from her famous "We are Queenslanders" speech.

This is very much a story-led, not an object-led exhibition. There is a great selection of images and dramatic footage of rescue efforts. The relatively few objects are everyday items that had been retrieved during the clean-up. I found that there was an understated power to these objects:

A mud-caked record player retrieved from the wreckage

A sizeable portion of the exhibition is dedicated to a space where visitors (many of whom would have been directly affected by the floods) are able to share their stories (I blogged about the role of museums in sharing these kinds of community memories at the time):

Part of the wall that people could stick up their own experiences of the floods. Note the exhibition has only been opened for a couple of days and there are already a considerable number of contributions. The writing table is to the right and the wall continues to the left of this image.

A poignant personal story of survival and loss

The design of the exhibition is evocative of the ‘rebuilding’ theme – the exhibition panels are mostly bare plywood attached to vertical timber supports, with construction fencing and plastic sheeting used to enclose certain spaces (see above). The design of the graphics (white text and straight lines on a blue background) looks like it is intended to represent the blueprints of a rebuilding project – but this is just a guess on my part. Overall the design fits in well with the story being told.

However, I found the exhibition sections that attempted to put the flood disaster into broader scientific context (i.e., natural disasters across geological timeframes) a bit out of place. For me this was primarily a story of human experience and this alone was strong enough – it didn’t need to be placed in a planetary context. I wonder what the rationale for including this additional content was:  To show that this was not an extraordinary event in the global scheme of things? That life on Earth has adapted and responded in the face of disaster since time immemorial? Maybe something a little less remote from living memory and human experience may have been a better choice if this was the interpretive intent (e.g., the cleanup of the 1974 floods in Brisbane).

One absent story (assuming I didn’t miss it) was the experience of the museum itself during the flood – the South Bank precinct was certainly affected and the museum presumably had to make efforts to ensure collections weren’t damaged or lost. Perhaps this ‘inside story’ was more of interest to people like me and my visiting companion (another museum person of sorts). But even so, making the museum part of the story (instead of just the reporter of it) may have added another dimension to the exhibition – the museum is as much a part of the community as any other public institution. As such, it shares our achievements and challenges.

If you’re wondering just how big those blockbuster crowds are, then the annual summaries published by the Art Newspaper are a great place to start.

These comprehensive lists show both overall and daily attendance figures for (predominantly) art exhibitions around the world, ranging from the 10,000+ daily visitors to the mega-blockbusters to far more modest ventures. There are also top ten list by category, such as “Decorative Arts” or “Impressionists” or “Antiquities”.

There are several years of data available online, going back to 2003 (links posted below):

• 2010
• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
• 2003

That represents a fair data set for spotting longer term trends or changes over time. Looking at this data, I was interested to see how often exhibitions in Japan top the list, with exhibitions in Tokyo and elsewhere often dominating the top ten. This is in contrast to the most visited museums overall, which are predominantly the big institutions in London, Paris, New York and Washington.

Looking at the Australian scene, the top exhibition for 2010 was the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial at Queensland Art Gallery (34th overall).  Both Queensland Art Gallery and its sister institution, GoMA, managed more than one entry in the top 100 as well as additional entries under specific categories.  Other Australian exhibitions to make the list were Masterpieces from Paris at the National Gallery of Australia and the Tim Burton exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial attracted some 4,400 people a day. That sounds like quite a crowd, until you compare it to the top exhibition overall - Hasegawa Tohaku at the Tokyo National Museum – which attracted over 12,000 people per day!

A little while ago I was discussing training with my Interpretation Australia colleagues. Unlike some professions, there are no real rules regarding who can call themselves an interpreter, and what specific skills and qualifications these people can have.

While there are tertiary-level courses in interpretation, and some organisations offer accreditation programs, these are not ‘gatekeeper’ qualifications and pretty much anyone can say they do interpretation, regardless of how much knowledge and experience they actually have.

This can make it difficult for experienced interpreters to have their skills recognised and valued in the way that (say) architects and designers can. While the lack of rigid qualifications is not necessarily a bad thing, it can lead to interpretation being relegated behind other (more clearly defined) specialisms, particularly on large capital projects where the people in charge of the purse strings may not really appreciate what interpretation is.

Unlike some professions (neurosurgery springs to mind), interpretation comprises skills that are not necessarily unique to interpreters. I’ve been working in interpretation-related positions for over a decade, but I don’t have any formal qualifications (although I’d argue that my Grad Dip in Science Communication covered many of the skills that interpreters need).  And not all interpretation jobs are the same: if we were to create a one-size-fits-all training and accreditation model for interpreters, how big would it have to be?

Number three of Freeman Tilden’s six principles of interpretation states:

“Interpretation is an art, which combines many arts, whether the materials presented are scientific, historical or architectural. Any art is in some degree teachable.”

My response to Tilden would be that art (like interpretation) can be hard to define. What is art? One person’s masterpiece can be another’s monstrosity! And that’s before you get to the “my four year old could do better” school of art criticism. Thus I would extend Tilden’s definition to incorporate science and craft as well as art:

• Science: the theories of interpretation (what we know through research and applying theories from education, psychology and the social sciences to the interpretation context);
• Craft: the skills of interpretation (for instance practical performance or public speaking skills, or learning how to write good interpretive text);
• Art: the intuition of interpretation (the bit that is hardest to teach – how to instinctively read your audience and know how to hook them in and keep them engaged).

Thinking about interpretation skills this way might make the training requirements for different interpretation tasks easier to conceptualise. We should be able to define the knowledge (science) and skills (craft) that we want interpreters to have.

However (and this is the tricky bit!) it is probably the “art” part that separates the merely competent interpreters from the truly inspirational ones. 

Back in August, en route to the UK on holiday, we broke up the journey with a couple of days in Singapore. A new addition to the landscape since last time I was there (early 2009) was the ArtScience museum, which is part of the Marina Bay Sands development.

Marina Bay Sands complex with the ArtScience Museum in foreground (image from homedit.com)

It’s a landmark building by celebrity architecht Moshe Safdie, which opened in February 2011 (so still pretty new when we visited). The design was inspired by a lotus flower but it also gets called ‘the welcoming hand of Singapore’, with a total of 10 ‘fingers’ extending from the centre.

Regular readers will know that I have my doubts about ‘statement’ museum architecture. And I was wondering if this one was going to be a navigational nightmare. But surprisingly, it isn’t – mostly because the majority of exhibition space is actually below the lotus / finger structure, essentially at basement level. But before I get into the exhibitions, I’ll give an overview of the museum building itself.

Like several other Singaporean attractions (the Singapore Flyer springs to mind), the building seems geared up for high-throughput crowds. (Given our Singapore stopovers seem to always have us visiting attractions in the middle of a weekday, I have no idea the extent to which these crowds actually materialise.) Operationally it feels more of an ‘attraction’ than a ‘museum’ too – your entry ticket is priced according to the number of temporary exhibitions you decide to visit, and your ticket only gets you into each exhibition once.

The intended visitor flow is ‘waterfall’ style – i.e., you are encouraged to start at the top and work your way down through the 50,000 sq.ft. of exhibition space. At the top is the smallest level with only three gallery spaces; immediately below that is the Upper Galleries that run in a loop through all the 10 ‘fingers’. Each of the 10 spaces link together like pearls on a string. It’s one-way traffic and you enter and leave at the same point, limiting disorientation (and it doesn’t feel unduly constraining but it would depend on the exhibition I imagine). Two floors below the Upper Galleries are the main exhibition spaces and the museum shop (the lobby is sandwiched between these two levels).

The 'finger' structures in the Upper Galleries offer some unusual display opportunities.

Running through the centre of the whole building is the ‘Rain Oculus’, which collects rainwater from the curve roof and channeling it into a pool that is used as the water supply for the rest rooms. Water flows fairly constantly (before I figured out what was going on I thought it was raining outside).

The top floor, inside the tips of the tallest ‘fingers’, is the only permanent exhibition space: Art Science – a journey through creativity. This is divided into three separate spaces: Curiosity, Inspiration and Expression. The exhibition is intended as an introduction to the concept of ArtScience showing it as a manifestation of human creativity. The spaces are sparsely populated and, writing this several months later, my lasting impression is of gobos, lighting effects and projections, along with a couple of touchscreen interactives. Because it sets itself up as an introductory space, I was expecting these concepts to be more explicitly linked to in the rest of the exhibition spaces. However, this didn’t really happen as the rest of the gallery spaces are essentially given over to hosting touring exhibitions brought in from elsewhere (this is what is on now).

Unfortunately, the museum website seems to live in an eternal present and does not link in any obvious way to information about past exhibitions – thankfully, Wikipedia has stepped in to fill this gap. When we visited there were three touring exhibitions: Dali – Mind of a Genius; Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds; and Van Gogh Alive.

Dali – Mind of a Genius

I’ve been to Dali exhibitions before (Liquid Desire at NGV in 2009 and as part of a Surrealism exhibition in the Pompidou Centre in 2002), so I thought I was familiar with his work – in particular his paintings and films/animation. So for me, the surprising part of this exhibition was the number of bronzes on display (an element of Dali’s work I hadn’t seen before) as well as his forays into furniture design and the decorative arts.

One of Dali's bronzes

There were several versions of the infamous  ’Melting Clock’ motif (if anything a bit too much really!) although I thought this use of a wall of regular clocks distorted by fairground mirrors was a cute touch to finish off the exhibition:

Regular clocks rendered Dali-esque by fairground mirrors

Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds

This exhibition was about the mysteries surrounding the wreck of a ninth century Arab trading dhow, found in the Java Sea. Laden with Chinese ceramics, the wreck is proof of a maritime trade route between China and the Middle East from the era of the tale of Sindbad the Sailor.

The scope and significance of what was found on the wreck was interpreted well, along with the concept that such a find inevitably raises just as many questions as it answers. The exhibition was quite dark so I don’t have any good photos, but the website linked to above is very comprehensive. It says that the exhibition is set to tour until 2015, but no additional venues are advertised yet.

Van Gogh Alive

I was expecting this to be a fairly conventional exhibition of Van Gogh’s works (perhaps a tour from the Van Gogh Museum I’d visited in 2000) so at first I was a bit taken aback to be in a large space surrounded by tall projector screens showing Van Gogh’s work and photographs all synchronised to a classical soundtrack. But once I got over that I was able to enjoy this immersive experience (that is hard to describe but maybe these still renderings and this Youtube video gives you a bit of an idea):

It was an exhibition space you moved in rather than through – you could sit anywhere in the space and have essentially the same experience. For some reason, on the day we visited it looked like they were using the usual exit door for both entrance and exit, so it means we didn’t see the interpretive panels explaining the concept until we were just about to leave (and we almost missed it entirely).

So in conclusion? It was a pleasant and interesting way to pass 2-3 hours away from the heat and humidity of mid-day Singapore. Given the unconventional shape, the building is not as visitor-unfriendly as you’d first expect. However, at the moment at least, it feels more like a sophisticated exhibition hall than a museum with its own mission and identity.

If you’re interested in which museum is doing what in social media, then you must check out Museum Analytics.

It describes itself as “an online platform for sharing and discussing information about museums and their audiences”. So far there is data for over 3000 museums, including some of the world’s most famous such as MoMA, the Louvre, Tate, and the Smithsonian. (But it’s not just the big global museum brands – I counted at least 20 Australian museums, ranging from the major institutions to a wide range of small and regional ones).

The site lists the most visited museum websites (Metropolitan Museum of Art by a fair margin in 2010 it appears) and the top Facebook likes and Twitter follows. Museums are also individually listed and you can see what’s happening closer to home – for instance these are the summaries for Australia and Adelaide respectively. But it’s not just website and social media – the site also has numbers for onsite visitors as well (although it is the data about online activity that makes this site stand out).

On the topic of museum statistics, there has recently been quite a lively discussion on the ICOM Group on LinkedIn (list members only but it’s easy to sign up) about the information and statistics collected by governments and other bodies around the world. If you’re interested in comparing and contrasting museum statistics from around the world (or even comparing which data are collected, by whom, and why), then I suggest you sign up.

One resource I was directed to from the ICOM discussion was a Culture 24′s project about how to evaluate museum success online. You can download a detailed report about the research project as well as tools and metrics for evaluating online and social media presence. It’s a must if you’re getting to grips with tools like Google Analytics or just wondering how best to track your online presence.

In comparison to studies of museum visitors, studies of NON-visitors are much rarer. But, just as we do not consider museum visitors as an amorphous population, it would be wrong to lump all non-visitors into a single group. The reasons people choose not to visit are just as varied and interesting as the reasons behind why people do visit.

The seminal paper in non-visitor studies is “Staying away: why people choose not to visit museums” published in Museum News in 1983 by Marilyn Hood. In a Google search for a link to this paper, I didn’t find it (I’m not sure if it’s available online) but I did find this very helpful summary of non-visitor research (limited as the field is in relation to visitor research).

Hood’s work found that visitors and non-visitors varied in what kinds of experiences they valued in their leisure time, and the extent to which museums offered (or were perceived to offer) these experiences.

I have recently read a paper that offers an interesting complement to Falk’s ‘Identity’ model of Museum Visitors (as described here)  by incorporating categories of non visitors: Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert’s “Museum Perceptual Filters” or MPFs*. Stylianou-Lambert describes the MPFs as ‘spectacles of perception’ that frame the way people think about (art) museums. There are 8 MPFs, five of them relating to visitors and three to non-visitors.  The MPF model emerged independently of Falk’s work, although the author acknowledges the parallels. I’ve related the five visitor MPFs to the nearest Identity in Falk’s model (any error in their allocation is mine):

1. Professional – artists or museum professionals who visit the art museum to inform or inspire their work (Falk’s Professional / Hobbyists)
2. Art-Loving – these visitors valued the aesthetic emotional connection to art rather than increasing their knowledge about it. These are the sort of visitors who stop only at a piece of art that ‘speaks’ to them in some way. (Falk’s Rechargers)
3. Self-exploration – people who come to expand their horizons and learn new things; following a personal and introspective quest (Falk’s Explorers)
4. Cultural Tourism – people who visit art museums mostly on holiday, as part of taking in the cultural offerings of a destination (Falk’s Experience Seekers)
5. Social visitation – visitors who come to the art museum primarily in a social context, particularly in the company of art-loving relatives (Falk’s Facilitators)

Stylianou-Lambert extends the Falk model by characterising three main MPFs of non-visitors:

1. Romantic - people who have a positive view of museums, but for some reason decide that the museum is not for them. This MPF includes people who might feel intimidated by the museum or their lack of knowledge about art.
2. Rejection – people who view the museum in a negative light, as places that are pretentious or snobbish and full of incomprehensible things. By contrast to the Romantics, who placed themselves as being somehow inferior to the museum, Rejecters appeared more self-confident in their dismissive attitude to museum’s importance.
3. Indifference – people who felt that art museums had no personal connection or relevance to their lives. This category is probably the one most closely mirrored in Hood’s work about the disconnect between the leisure expectations of visitors versus non-visitors.

*Reference: Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert (2009): Perceiving the art museum, Museum Management and Curatorship, 24:2, 139-158  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09647770902731783

A good theme puts pictures and ideas in your head. It has action, people, colour, drama . . . get the theme right and the rest will fall into place.

That was my attempt at developing a ‘theme’ for Susan Cross’s “writing with power, precision and passion” training workshop I attended last week. I won’t try to distill all of the day (hard to do when a lot of it was hands-on practice), but I will talk about themes, as these are the cornerstone of good interpretive writing (good interpretation full stop really).

In interpretation-speak, a theme is a core message or ‘big idea’. The purpose of the theme is to act as a bridge between significance (why you think something is important) and relevance (a way for the visitor to connect to it). It’s the main thing you want to leave your visitors thinking about. Themes can branch out into a series sub-themes, although all the sub-themes should in some way support and illustrate the top-level theme.

People tend to confuse themes with topics. A topic is a subject – for instance ‘local bird species’ is a topic not a theme. To turn that topic into a theme, you would need to spell out what exactly you want to say about local bird species, and put it in familiar, conversational language.

Why bother?

Thinking about themes helps to sharpen your focus when you are writing. It acts as a filter for muddled concepts. Crafting a good theme makes you think carefully about what you want to say to your visitors and why. A strong theme will be succinct and use active verbs to bring people into the place and the story. It will usually stick to one key idea.

The theme also sets the tone of what you will eventually write – formal language begets stuffy writing; conversational language sets you on track for a friendlier tone.

Susan gave us plenty of examples on the day and showed how we could turn the dull into the dynamic. It was a good reminder of the centrality of the theme – a tip I’ll be using in my future writing projects.

People who know me will be aware that I wear a lot of hats (and this has nothing to do with my bio picture!).

Taking just my Australian memberships, I’m a member of Interpretation Australia, Museums Australia and Australian Science Communicators. In the past I have also been an active member of the British Interactive Group and Visitor Studies Group; and a regular presence at European Science Centres conferences.

While I like this variety and the diversity of people this allows me to meet – I sometimes feel that none of my many hats is a true fit. I always feel a bit of an outsider. To illustrate my point I’ll need to bring in some stereotypes (or are they archetypes?); in any case bear with me:

• I’m not a real Science Communicator because science communicators are people who spend their entire working days evangelising about the importance and benefits of science to our lives.
• I’m not a real Museum Professional because I don’t have a specific subject or collection about which I’m particularly knowledgeable; furthermore I’ve never actually worked in an operating museum.
• I’m not a real Interpreter because interpreters are outdoorsy types who love spending all their time in national parks and getting people excited about the value of nature.

By definition, Interpretation is about communicating with the public (especially visitors). Thus interpretation will attract people who are visitor-focused and genuinely interested in how visitors think, act and react. Museums, on the other hand, have many staff whose roles do not bring them into direct contact with the visiting public. They may not even be particularly interested in that aspect of the museum’s operations. At a museums conference, there will always be a mix of ‘back of house’ and ‘front of house’ interests. This is less so in the interpretation world, and I wonder if this difference was why some of my interpretation colleagues expressed frustration at some museum professionals not ‘getting it’ when it came to interpretive concepts such as themes and narrative.

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Some final thoughts and observations

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• “Enjoyment” is just part of the story: in John Holden’s opening keynote, he observed that the three main things that audiences want are to Enjoy, Talk and Do. However, several sessions brought our attention to the fact that we don’t always visit places for “enjoyment” – sometimes it’s to reflect on difficult realities or see things that open our eyes and tell us things we need to hear. The Holocaust Memorial in Andrea Witcomb’s talk, interpreting the complicit role of the English in the Irish Potato Famine (in Susan Cross’ talk), and Brad Manera’s talk about the role of war memorials are just some of the examples that emerged during the conference. Revealing difficult truths (and the way this can be sanitised by Government intervention) was powerfully brought home by Professor Peter Read’s closing keynote about the people who were “disappeared” to meet horrific fates during the Pinochet regime in Chile, and the different ways this had been memorialised subsequently. In light of this talk, during the Q&A it was agreed that “Enjoy” was only part of it – and maybe “Engage” is a better word. We can be “Engaged” in something we find difficult, upsetting or cathartic. We wouldn’t call it Enjoyment, but it’s worthwhile nonetheless.
• “Social Media Schisms” – the new “Digital Divide”? – during the conference there were many sessions showing how museums and cultural organisations of all shapes and sizes are using social media to reach new audiences and interact with existing audiences in new ways. Just some of the examples I saw were Kelly Eijdenberg’s Scavbot project (an iPhone based scavenger hunt through the Tasmanian Botanical Gardens); Andrew Bowman’s work on putting the small WA town of Carnamah on the Social Media map (his paper is online here); and Rod Annear’s armchair ride of social media tools from blogs to Google Goggles (the only presentation I saw all conference using Prezi!). But I noticed that there still seems to be a big gap between the people who ‘get’ social media, and those who still find it all a bit baffly and scary (and maybe a fad that will pass if they ignore it for long enough). Then there is a bit of a middle ground of people who have dipped their toes in the water and haven’t quite figured out what the fuss is all about, but are keen to learn. I noticed during one social media presentation, the person next to me passed a note to their companion along the lines of: “I can barely figure out how to use my personal email account – never mind this stuff!” It’s hard to pitch the same presentation to the skeptics looking for a reason to care, and the converts looking to see who’s using what new tools and gadgets. Hence my term the “Social Media Schism” – which appears to be alive and well in the cultural sector.
• Busting myths about Blockbusters: Carolyn Meehan presented some interesting visitor data from the Melbourne Museum’s last three ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions – Pompeii (2009), Titanic (2010) and Tutankhamun (2011). (Carolyn prefers the term ‘international travelling exhibition’ to ‘blockbuster’, but the latter is catchier.) Contrary to what many people had predicted, the Blockbusters do not seem to ‘steal’ visitors from the rest of the museum for the rest of the year. On the other hand, they do not necessarily bring in a more diverse demographic into the museum. Crowding is the biggest issue, which the Museum is looking at ways to address in the way exhibitions are organised. The three exhibitions each had a different business model: Pompeii was an in-house production using loaned collections; Titanic was an international exhibition that MM modified; and Tutankhamun was a ‘hosted’ international show over which MM had very little creative control. The museum has decided it prefers the former model, and will be pursuing this preferentially in the future. Following Carolyn’s talk, James Dexter reminded us that international exhibitions should not be considered one-way traffic – Australia should seize opportunities to export its own stories as well, such as the AC/DC exhibition (co-produced by WA Museum) currently touring the US.
• Together but apart: as one final reflection, I’ll observe that while there are many similarities between the ‘museums’ and ‘interpretation’ communities, as demonstrated by the synergies in the conference program’s content, the two fields also have very different histories, assumptions and scholarly traditions. This also became clear over the course of the conference. This made me think about my own place in the landscape – in some ways I’m from both communities; in other ways I sometimes feel like I’m neither. But exploring that idea further is a whole new blog post . . . .

More conference blogs

As a final wrap here’s a shout-out to my fellow conference bloggers:

• An Island Art – this is a wonderfully illustrated blog, complete with photographs and caricatures of the keynote speakers. There are posts for Day 1, Day 2 and Day 4.
• A further update from Thornypebble’s pond

Having been to Perth and back since (with much food for thought from that trip), it seems like ages ago that I went to TEDxAdelaide (my preview post is here). But it was less than a fortnight ago (12th November to be precise).

The TEDxAdelaide team have done a speedy job of posting the talks online – see a list here.

If you want to get an overview of the day, try starting with the end – the wrapup poem by Tracy Korsten. While I’m not 100% sure how well it will translate to people who weren’t there, it was a witty and succinct summary of the day – and might give you a hint of which of the other talks might interest you.

My pick of the bunch is Why Things Hurt by Lorimer Moseley. Never has pain been so entertaining! And it was a brilliant example of science communication (I now see the neurobiology of pain in a completely different light). Loads of the other talks had science or technology themes, while scriptwriter Emily Steel got us thinking along the lines of – what is science anyway? What is the story behind the science?

Another one of my favourites was the talk by TACSI’s Brenton Caffin about the disconnect between the kafka-esque bureaucracy of many public services, and the often dedicated individuals who work in them.

I’m sure there are many other pithy observations I could make, but a lot of those would have been based on jottings I made on the day – in that notebook I lost in Perth. Oh well, you’ll just have to watch them for yourself!