Category Archives: Museums

At the Frontier: Conference Wrap Part 2

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John Holden and the “Circular Logic” of culture

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John Holden from UK thinktank Demos gave the opening keynote of the conference.  He described three main forms of culture:

  1. “High” culture – this category includes the fine arts, opera and other cultural pursuits that are considered the pinnacle of cultural expression. They rely on patronage (either philanthropic or government), as their relatively limited audiences are not large enough to make them self-sustaining. However, this lack of broad appeal is worn like a badge of honour by proponents of High culture. As soon as something becomes too popular, there are accusations of ‘selling out’ or ‘dumbing down’ – thus by its own circular logic, High culture can never be popular culture.  (As Holden said, this would be like BMW saying “our last car was too popular – what did we do wrong?”)   High culture has gatekeepers, “experts” who act as arbiters of taste.
  2. “Commercial” culture – popular culture which is self-funded commercially, such as television, movies and pop music. They depend on attracting large enough audiences to fund their production and dissemination. By the assumptions of the High Culturists, commercial culture will always be of inferior quality, although this distinction is not necessarily drawn by audiences. They will find quality in any medium. Holden asks – is a popular drama such as the West Wing automatically inferior to an obscure stage production with a limited audience? Similarly to High culture though, Commercial culture has gatekeepers too – someone has to provide the initial capital investment to commission the program or award the recording contract, or else it never gets made.
  3. “Home made” culture – the culture we produce ourselves in our own homes and communities: creating our own music, crafts and performances for sharing among our peers. This is the oldest form of culture. Since it relies on our own initiative and creativity rather than money, there are no central gatekeepers deciding who makes or does what. In the 20th century, home made culture was somewhat marginalised by the explosion of commercial culture. However, the internet and social media has since lowered the cost and complexity of sharing and disseminating home made culture (Holden observed, “everyone I know under 25 is in a band”). In fact, the rise of home made culture is threatening the traditional gatekeeper role of the commercial culture producers, most notably in the music industry where the traditional record company’s business model is in terminal decline.
Holden observed how the boundaries between the three cultural types were being blurred and redefined. He challenged the cultural sector to acknowledge and respond to this change in relationship between ‘expert’ and ‘audience’. Holden predicted that while the traditional music megastore may be a thing of the past, soon in its place will emerge niche music stores that essentially ‘curate’ the mass of material being circulated in cyberspace. This example is a good one to ponder for museums who wonder what the changing landscape means for the role of curatorial expertise. It occurs to me that the time of the ‘expert’ isn’t dead, but that the role will evolve from being one of Gatekeepers to one of Guides.

Memories and stories

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The following session had three keynotes, from Dr Viv Golding, Gail Richard, and Sam Walsh. They were all broadly about the role of memory and stories in our communities and bringing life to museum collections, albeit from very different perspectives (Viv is a museum studies academic; Gail is an interpretive trainer and Sam is from the mining sector).

Speaking to delegates afterwards, it appears these talks divided opinion somewhat. From my own perspective, I thought a lot of what Viv Golding talked about (the role of multisensory experiences in evoking memory and incorporating multiple voices in exhibition spaces) were things that exhibition designers and planners were doing already. She spoke about her work with a Carribbean Women’s group in a museum, but it was not apparent how this project subsequently influenced the design or implementation of exhibitions or programs in the museum (which is where my interest lies).

Gail Richard discussed cultural differences in communication, broadly dividing cultures into “low context” and “high context” communicators. Low context cultures, such as Western cultures, rely more heavily on explicit language and clearly articulated procedures in the way they conduct business. Directness is valued because it gets to the point and doesn’t waste people’s time. Conversely, in high context cultures, what is actually said is less significant than its nuances. There is more emphasis placed on non-verbal communication and building relationships gradually. Directness can be taken as rude or aggressive. She offered tips for bridging the gap between high and low culture communicators. I thought it was interesting, and the Twitter feed was positive, however I spoke to someone else who felt that the low context vs. high context model was an oversimplification bordering on stereotype. Another difference in communication styles perhaps?

Hat tip to the other conference bloggers

Some other blog articles I’ve found from the At the Frontier conference – I’ll post more if I become aware of them:

Thornypebble’s Pond – Day 1 and Day 2

The Contemporary Museum – At the Frontier

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At the Frontier: Conference Wrap Part 1

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Last week I went to Perth to attend a national conference jointly organised by Museums Australia and Interpretation Australia – At the Frontier.

It was the first time these two organisations had jointly staged a conference, with over 500 delegates attending from around Australia (and a few overseas). Whereas there was a reasonable contingent of people, like me, who are members of both organisations, I would guess that the majority of delegates would have been more clearly from either the “Interpretation” or “Museums” camp, and may not have had much to do with the other organisation previously. This led to some interesting cross-fertilisation, and for me brought into sharp focus where the similarities (and differences!) between the two organisational cultures lie.

Although I wasn’t presenting any papers I had a pretty hectic schedule – in my capacity as Interpretation Australia’s Vice President I chaired a few sessions (including chairing a Plenary – a first for me!). I’m also on the organising committee of next year’s Museums Australia conference in Adelaide and so was busy spreading the word for that too.

Thus, while some others have been far more quick off the mark with their blogging on the conference, I’m still collecting my thoughts (not helped by the fact that I managed to lose my notebook on the last day of the conference!). Fortunately, I have the Twitter archive to fall back on, which given I was tweeting from two accounts in addition to my own (@InterpretAu and @MA_SA2012) is probably more or less a good summary of my notes anyway.

I’ll trawl through them and give my perspective over the next few days.

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Recommended: Exhibit Files

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Exhibit Files is a website designed for exhibition designers and developers to share their experiences, mostly though posting case studies of exhibition projects they’ve worked on, or reviews of exhibitions they’ve seen.

It’s been running for about 4 or 5 years now, and while originally there was a strong science centre focus (it was developed under the auspices of the Association of Science-Technology Centers or ASTC), there are now case studies and reviews of a range of different exhibit types. For instance, I recently added a version of my Saatchi Gallery review on the site.

There are nearly 400 case studies and exhibition reviews on Exhibit Files to date. Anyone can register and add their own case studies and reviews to the collection. The case studies are particularly helpful as it’s a rare forum for exhibition developers to share the lessons they’ve learned from past projects (with the hope that others won’t make the same mistakes!). The reviews are also a great armchair ride of exhibitions from around the world, that we’re unlikely to all get a chance to see.

To the exhibition developers among you, I encourage you to sign up and share your expertise and experiences.

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Review: Saatchi Gallery in Adelaide

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A couple of weeks ago I finally made the time to check out the Saatchi Gallery in Adelaide: British Art Now exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The Art Gallery has turned over some 70% of its total exhibition space to the display of items from the famous (infamous?) Saatchi Gallery in London.

I’m not going to pretend to know or understand anything about contemporary art – I’m not sure if ‘understanding’ is even the point of the particularly iconoclastic and challenging brand of art that Saatchi seemingly favours – so I’m not going to contribute to the ongoing ‘is this really art?’ debate that surrounds these kinds of works.  Rather, I’ll share some general impressions and pieces I found interesting.

Firstly, particularly given my recent post on the issue, I should observe that there were no obvious restrictions on photography without flash, making experiences like this possible:

Photography seemingly *is* allowed when it's contemporary art on display. This makes me seriously question the logic of "copyright" claimed by other museums. If it's not an issue for works where the artist is still living, why is it an issue for the old masters?

I don’t go to contemporary art exhibitions expecting an overall theme or ‘interpretive message’ to emerge as I might expect at a science or history exhibition. But one thing I did notice about a lot of the art on display was that it seemed to be as much about the process of making art as it was about the finished piece itself. This is exemplified by Juliana Cerqueira Leite’s three works Up, Down and Oh.

Leite’s work “Oh”

The label for “Oh” describes the painstaking process of creating the clay mould for the balloon structure:

A similar process was used to create the works “Up” and “Down” by hand-digging into a large block of clay, either from the bottom up or top down, and then casting the form created in plaster. “Up” is black to represent the increasing darkness of boring up into the clay block. “Down” in particular shows numerous indentations from the artists hands and knees as she excavates the clay.

"Up" (left) and "Down" (right)

Probably one of the most well known and controversial works on display was “My Bed” by Tracy Emin. I was living in the UK the year this work was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and I remember the media and political outcry it caused at the time.

“My bed” by Tracy Emin

While I’d seen many pictures, descriptions and criticisms of the work before (so its contents were no surprise), the label accompanying the work gave me a new insight: apparently, the idea of the piece came about after Emin (legendary for her hard living) woke up after a two-day drinking bender, feeling lucky to be alive after all she had drunk. Looking at the squalor of her room, it occurred to her that, had she died, this would have been the setting her body would have been found in. This piece of back story made me look at the work with fresh eyes as a statement on mortality and the legacy we leave.

On reflection though, I think my favourite work in the exhibition is one I almost missed – Tessa Farmer’s “Swarm”. At first glance, it just looks like a display case suspended with dead insects, and I almost walked straight past thinking that was all there was to it:

"Swarm" by Tessa Farmer (photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/appelogen/5179704948/sizes/z/in/photostream/)

However, while in one sense it is indeed a case of dead insects, Farmer has used insect parts to create amazingly intricate sculptures of fairy-like creatures waging battle:

Close-up of 'swarm' showing the army of creatures made from dessicated insect parts.

I could have spent ages looking at all the different pieces and their amazing attention to detail. Although this was getting towards the end of my visit and by this stage my feet were killing me.

This brings me to some final comments about the design and overall experience of the space – the works were well-spaced out, allowing each its own space to ‘breathe’ and allowing viewing from multiple vantage points. There are apparently something like 120 pieces on display, spread over what I’d guess to be at least 2000-3000 square metres of gallery space. However there was precious little seating provided over this large area (I only remember seeing one seating unit), hence my aching feet towards the end.

My other issue is that I could have very easily have missed half of the exhibition: it is spread over two levels, one that is accessed via the main entrance on North Terrace, and another level two floors below (the middle floor is the rear access to the Gallery and includes the cafe and shop). I only realised there was more to see when I joined a guided tour of the exhibition after I thought I’d already ‘seen everything’ and was just curious about what the tour guide would have to say. The two parts of the exhibition were linked by a staircase where there were temporary signs that indicated you needed a ticket to enter. However there was nothing on these signs to suggest that the exhibition continued on another level. Had I decided to bypass the shop or cafe and go back the way I came in, I could have missed the lower level completely.

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Photography not allowed

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Photography is a spectator sport only in most galleries

The “No Photography” sign. It’s so ubiquitous that even when I don’t see a sign, I’m still wary that if I whip my camera out a stern-looking security guard will materialise to have words. ‘No photographs’ is still the default setting in many museums and most galleries, to the extent that when the ban is mostly absent, as it is in GoMA, it brings a markedly different complexion to the exhibition environment.

Not all exhibitions are so censorious of photographic activity – indeed, in one of the first exhibitions I worked on, at the National Space Centre in Leicester, some exhibits were deliberately planned to work as photo opportunities. Generally speaking, hands-on exhibitions and venues that target families seem to welcome photography as an important way for their visitors to record, share and recollect experiences.

A quick tot-up of my ‘Exhibit Photos’ file folder revealed some 3000 images of exhibits and exhibitions, in approximately 20 cities around the world, all taken since I first bought a digital camera back in 2003. For me, this is a valuable repository of all the places I’ve visited; the good, bad and ugly of exhibit ideas; and a way to remember far more than if I’d travelled with just my eyes, ears and unaided memory. Just looking at the pictures brings back the experiences, and I remember far more about what I did, how I felt and what I learned at all the exhibitions I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited. Without these images, most of these experiences would have been lost in the blurry mists of time.

Admittedly, the purpose of my photographic jaunts was primarily professional (and the emphasis of each batch of photos is an inadvertent record of whatever particular kind of exhibition I happened to be researching at the time – it inevitably influenced what was ‘photo-worthy’). Even so, compact digital cameras (and more recently smartphones) have transformed photography from a way of documenting holidays and special occasions to the way we increasingly document and share our day-to-day lives. We see, therefore we photograph. We photograph, therefore we share. These actions help to reinforce our memories and add value to our experiences. But have museums recognised this cultural shift? And are they doing anything to accommodate it?

The photography ban is based on some sound reasoning. However, I want to deconstruct some of this reasoning to see if it still holds in the 21st century, or whether museums and galleries are simply sticking to historical habit to the detriment of the visitor experience:

  • Conservation reasons: Light damages delicate objects like paper and textiles. Their ideal environment from a conservation perspective is complete darkness, so having sensitive objects on public display at all is always a matter of compromise at some level. So banning flash photography makes sense. Non-flash photography may be impractical (although not damaging) as the objects are often displayed in low-light environments. However, while it depends on the objects of course, I wonder if the ‘no flash’ rule is applied more liberally than it needs to be, given that modern camera flashes are nowhere near as UV-intensive as the old-fashioned ones that the rules were presumably designed for?
  • Pointless or disruptive photography: in these circumstances, banning photography makes perfect sense. Other people snapping and flashing away (in the photographic sense) can inhibit the experience of other visitors, particularly during shows or theatrical presentations.  One person’s right to document their day shouldn’t trump the rights of other visitors to enjoy the experience in peace if they so wish. Live animals displays are also an inappropriate subject for flash photography. A final note in this regard, I always have to have a bit of a giggle to myself when I see people attempt to take a flash-photograph of a projection. Do they really not realise that all they are capturing is a blank screen?
  • Copyright reasons: this is the big one. And by far the knottiest. It sounds serious, but at the same time is sufficiently vague that it can seemingly be used as a convenient excuse to point to in order to stick to the comfort zone of the status quo. This is a cynical interpretation, to be sure, but visitors are seldom given any evidence to counter such cynicism. Sometimes it seems as if copyright is too complicated to figure out; that it’s easier for museum and gallery management to just lump everything together into the intellectual property equivalent of the maximum security wing. Looking at society more broadly, the copyright genie is well and truly out of the bottle – attempts to bring it back under old business models seem doomed to failure (the recording industry and rights management is a salutary tale here). In any case, I find it hard to understand how a few iPhone snaps in a gallery pose a serious copyright threat to anyone: people will still want to buy properly produced prints and postcards of the items they really like, and how can the extra publicity generated by the sharing of photos be a bad thing for artists’ careers?
I’m not saying that photography should be a free-for-all by any means. But I think the default should be for museums and galleries to allow photography unless there is a good reason not to (rather than the ban being the norm). Rules with clear reasons (i.e. signs which explain why photography or flash are not permitted in certain areas) are more likely to be respected than blanket bans which appear to treat the public with suspicion.
Some people, because they do not value photography themselves, may not consider it an issue. Going further, some may even consider taking snaps too vulgar or somehow not reverent enough for the gallery environment. But then again, the ‘establishment’ has been complaining about the poor behaviour of  ’the uneducated masses’ in museums for as long as public museums have been in existence. And if photography is done respectfully of objects, their creators and other visitors, where is the harm?
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Quick review: National Museum of Scotland

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On my recent trip to the UK, I managed a quick visit to the newly refurbished National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Our visit was on a Sunday morning at the height of the Fringe season, on our way to meet some friends for lunch. Having somewhere we had to be, combined with the fact that one of our group was only five months old, meant that realistically this was only ever going to be a lightning trip. Consequently, this review will be of first impressions and a critique of what I did get time to see.

According to this blog post by museum commentator Tiffany Jenkins, the refit took three years and £47 million. It’s proved popular, with visitor numbers passing the 100,000 mark less than a week after opening. Exhibition spaces were certainly beginning to fill up by the time we left.

Arrival and Entrance

One of the changes they have made is to the way visitors enter the building – rather than scaling the prominent steps, you now enter via an adjacent street-level door (although once inside the building it feels more like a basement than an entrance statement).

The steps to the original entrance, with signage pointing to the new entrance. (Photo from Tiffany Jenkins' blog, see link above)

In her review Jenkins criticised this move, observing that many visitors gravitated toward the more prominent original entrance and missed the new entrance completely. To be honest I’m still in two minds about what I think about this myself – on the one hand, the street-level entrance was much easier to negotiate with a baby stroller, and I can see the rationale for having an entrance which meets universal access requirements. On the other hand, changes to navigation that go against the grain of usual expectations can be disorienting and counterproductive. It will be interesting to see how this settles in – the photo above shows how the steps have already been adopted as an informal outdoor gathering and relaxation space now that they don’t have to deal with volumes of visitor traffic. If this new purpose settles in and gains currency over time, then the street-level entrance could easily become ‘the new normal’*.

Once you pass through the basement you reach the central atrium of the original grand hall – this is where the original entrance would have taken you. This has been left quite open and minimal with only a few key objects – this works well as a space where you can make the psychological transition from ‘street’ mode to ‘museum’ mode. Most of the exhibition spaces run off this central space; this aids visit planning and site orientation. It could do with a bit more seating though:

The central atrium, National Museum Scotland

Exhibitions

We started our visit in the Natural History area, and having a limited time budget this was one of the few galleries I managed to look at properly. (Later I broke away from the group so I could have a whistle-stop tour around more spaces and get more of an overall sense of the place.)

In the animals exhibition, displays were organised by characteristics of animals, eg. flight, adaptation to climate extremes, locomotion, size. This allowed interesting comparison of different animals’ adaptation to their respective environments and ecological niche. These displays were generally well grouped and signposted, so it was clear why certain animals had been placed together.

Overview of the animals exhibition, National Museum Scotland

The introductory signage in each exhibition space gave a good, simple overview of the intended interpretive goal:

Introductory text to "Animal World"

However, while I generally liked the succinct and well-layered interpretive text, I think it erred too much on the side of brevity. For instance, in many cases I was left wondering where certain animals were from, and whether they were extinct or abundant in the wild. Such information was all but absent, which struck me as a real gap (particularly as we are used to thinking about animals in terms of where they are from; the displays were not organised by habitat so there wasn’t any conceptual ‘anchor’ in this respect).

There were a few tactile displays, such as this one which allowed you to feel and compare the difference between horns which were made of bone, tooth or keratin:

Tactile display, National Museum Scotland

Next to the Natural History galleries were the spaces dedicated to World Cultures. These were arranged by theme, allowing you to compare and contrast how different peoples around the world approach common aspects of human experience. I watched an interesting video about different wedding traditions, and found a Ghanaian coffin shaped like a Mercedes Benz both fascinating and disconcerting.

Regrouping in the museum cafe afterwards, my partner expressed disappointment that he had not seen anything particularly Scottish during his visit, given that we were meant to be in the country’s National Museum and all. It’s there, but unfortunately the Scottish history and culture displays are tucked away in an adjacent wing. This extension was probably built in the 80s or 90s, but in the layout of the refurbished museum it is a fair way off the beaten track and it was almost by accident that I found it at all.  I’m not sure what the original intent was, but in its current configuration it is a confusing rabbit-warren of dead-end spaces.

The old 'new' part of the National Museum of Scotland - I wonder if this building was conceived and designed from the facade inwards, leaving a legacy of spaces which are less than ideal as exhibition areas.

Few visitors seemed to make it this far, and there was a noticeable thinning of visitor traffic compared to the galleries surrounding the main atrium.

The interior of the museum extension. From this vantage point I could see more exhibition space than I could figure out how to find.

As I said before, I probably only had an hour or so to look around and I’m sure there’s plenty I missed. Plus I never bothered to pick up a visitor map which may have made the extension easier to navigate.

Has anyone else visited NMS either recently or before the refurbishment? What were your experiences?

*Incidentally, I noticed that the National Gallery in London faces a similar dilemma. They have taken the option of maintaining both the original grand entrance as well as a newer alternative at street level. However, the signage was ambiguous and it wasn’t immediately obvious that the street level entrance actually *was* a proper entrance (as opposed to an entrance just for schools or tour groups),  so we ended up needlessly lugging our suitcases up the main staircase.

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The Big Three

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On my daily commute (OK, a rather pleasant walk across Adelaide’s parklands – I’m one of the lucky ones!) I’ve taken to listening to audiobooks. I find it’s a good way to broaden my reading repertoire when there are precious few hours in the day for non PhD-related reading.  Even though it’s notionally ‘downtime’, I still have a preference for listening to non-fiction and every so often there is a relationship between what I’m listening to and what I’m studying.

I recently finished the audiobook version of “Why we buy: the science of shopping” by Paco Underhill. Underhill and his company Envirosell have spent thousands of hours watching how people behave in retail environments, giving fascinating insights into how store layout, design and staffing can influence shopper behaviour and purchasing patterns. 

A lot of it is applicable to studying visitor behaviour in museums, but by way of example I’ll pick Underhill’s description of something he calls The Big Three:

  • Design (the store layout and design)
  • Merchandising (what’s put in the store)
  • Operations (what staff do)

Underhill describes how these three aspects are completely interlinked, and that a decision about one will inevitably affect the other two. He cites an example where a drugstore chain’s store designers decided to change the shelving to a wireframe style, which was much cheaper than the more traditional display shelves. Money saved, right? Well, no. It turns out that bottles kept on slipping in the gaps in the sheving, making the displays look untidy and causing staff to spend a considerable portion of the day straightening shelves – somthing they hadn’t previously needed to do. The savings on design were soon wiped out through increased staff costs.

Underhill goes on to describe client meetings where the heads of design, operations and merchandising might all be present. He says that it’s clear that these three are normally ensconced in their own respective silos; they barely know each other; and may regard each other with suspicion – if not outright hostility. Their areas all impact each other, but decisions are not being taken in a joined-up way – leading to missed opportunities and unintended consequences.

Throughout the book, Underhill is somewhat critical of both designers and store management for not spending enough time on the shop floor, seeing how their plans work in practice – and not just and 10am on a Tuesday, but during the 4.45pm rush on the day before an important holiday. It’s this culture that allows the silos to flourish as the knock-on effects of decisions are never seen by the people who make them.

It struck me listening to this that museums have their own (very similar) version of the Big Three:

  • Design (of exhibitions, circulation spaces, etc.)
  • Collections (both exhibits on display and objects in storage)
  • Operations (how many staff, what kind of staff, what kinds of facilities are offered, etc.)

As with the retail example, a decision about one will inevitably affect the other, for instance the following (semi) hypothetical scenarios:

  • An exhibition designed on the assumption that there will be a certain staff complement, only for the staff to be cut back later on in a cost-cutting exercise
  • A museum accepting a large collection from a benefactor, with an attached condition that the collection be displayed in its entirety
  • A museum developing a large new interactive exhibition gallery without taking on staff with the expertise to ensure the exhibits are well maintained and can be fixed when they break down

The lessons?

  1. Be mindful of organisational silos – the decisions you make will have wider ramifications than just your own department
  2. Take time to see the consequences of your decisions – it’s all too easy to be ‘too busy’ to spend time just watching how things are working out on the exhibition floor.
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Exhibition Review: ‘Not Just Ned’

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I visited this temporary exhibition at the National Museum of Australia while visiting Canberra last week and with a free afternoon to kill:

I found the choice of title a little odd: for me at least, Ned Kelly isn’t high up on the list of things that sprint to mind when I think about the Irish in Australia. Perhaps it reflects the extent to which I paid attention (or not) in high school history, but to my mind the Kelly story is primarily an Australian one; the origins of the people involved is an incidental detail. (I wondered if it was a deliberate decision to link into (and then dissociate from) the Kelly story as a marketing ‘hook’, although from what I have since heard this wasn’t the case.)

Given my current research interests, my focus in visiting the exhibition was to think about the overall atmospherics and impressions that the space created rather than to concentrate too much on specifics or details. However, I got the distinct impression that the exhibition was designed with more of a Studier* type of visitor in mind. To be fair, these visitors were not in short supply – one older couple who entered about the same time I did stopped to carefully study every label and object; I tried to keep tabs on them during my visit but by the time I was done (some 20-25 minutes later) they were barely 1/4 of the way through the exhibition. Whether they continuted at this pace throughout the visit or run out of steam will have to remain a mystery. (In general, the exhibition did seem to be attracting an older demographic, although this could be just as much due to the fact it was a weekday afternoon.)

The exhibition’s layout was broadly thematic, with themes presented in a rough chronological order: arriving, settling in, etc., culminating in a display of more recent Irish migrants and the ongoing sense of shared identity with both the old country and the new. There were also displays dedicated to the Irish contributions to different facets of Australian life, such as politics, agriculture, sport, entertainment and so on. Another strong theme, obviously, was the role of Catholicism in shaping the outlooks of Irish migrants, the perception of Irish migrants by other Australians, and attitudes to political events unfolding back in the old country. Certain chapters in Australian history with strong Irish links, such as the Kelly Gang, Burke & Wills exhibition and the Eureka Stockade, had their own dedicated mini-exhibition areas.

The exhibition was very object-rich and while some of the objects were organised to illustrate specific stories or reflect the life of a certain key personality, there was no obvious logic to the juxtaposition of other displays. I gather this was a deliberate choice, but sometimes this approach a little unnerving as I’m not sure if there is meant to be some broader message that I’m somehow failing to ‘get’.

There was a seating area roughly in the middle of the exhibtion area with four comfy swivel chairs, each with an iPad (built into a rigid frame) allowing you to select different music, audio recordings, letters home and so forth (a good use of off-the-shelf technology). Speakers embedded into the chairs worked well, providing good sound but not interfering with other seated users. I liked that the swivel chairs meant you could choose which part of the gallery you wished to overlook while you listened. One downside was that the chairs were definitely a single-user experience – fine as a solo visitor like me, but I noticed couples having to either take turns or with one person standing leaning over the chair to be in aural range of the speakers. Maybe it would have been a good idea to make one of the chairs  double-width to allow shared listening.

As I mentioned before, I was primarily looking at the exhibition from an atmospheric perspective, and the thing that struck me was how dark the space was**. The ceiling and walls of the NMA’s temporary exhibition space are painted black, enveloping the space in a sense of gloom which is only penetrated by strategically placed track lighting (in a ceiling which is probably about 4-5 metres in height).

I find such spaces inherently fatiguing and a bit claustrophobic, making it difficult for me to focus on the displays and ensuring I’m ready to call it a day after about 20-30 minutes. (Other people I’ve spoken to are less bothered by low light levels- I’d be interested to find out whether I’m in the majority or minority on this one.) On a more practical level, the fact that the graphics are lit from a single source sometimes meant that you have to be careful not to cast a shadow on the bit you’re trying to read. This was a particular problem for graphics on any horizontal or near-horizontal surface.

Also, looking from an atmospheric perspective, there was (with some exceptions) little clear visual signposting of different thematic areas which you could determine at a glance if you were looking to dip in and out of content rather than go through the exhibition systematically. In some areas it wasn’t immediately apparent where one theme stopped and another started.  I would have preferred a bit more of a content hierarchy with a few more intermediate level take-home messages, and suspect that such an approach might even have encouraged me to look closer at the objects. In other words, a bit of  a top-down approach (i.e. higher level, big-picture messages to hook you in), to balance the object-led approach which is more bottom-up.

At the end of the exhibition was a large reading area and facility for tracing your Irish roots. Plus of course the obligatory gift shop. But by this stage, having no Irish ancestry that I know of, my visit was done and I made a welcome return to the Canberra afternoon sunshine.

*Studier in the sense of the ‘Streaker, Stroller and Studier’ characterisation of different kinds of visitors.

**Someone will probably point out that the low light levels are for conservation purposes. However, I wonder how many of the objects in this particular exhibition are really so light sensitive as to warrant this approach, particularly given it is a temporary exhibition. Conservators may be horrified at the thought, but I do think it is time to revisit the evidence concerning light levels and object care, to see if we’re getting the balance right in this regard.

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More on museums and social media

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When I wrote yesterday’s blog post about Museum Next’s survey about attitudes to social media, I didn’t realise that the study was just one of a series of that Museum Next had recently completed. (As a testament to the value of social media, I was  very quickly made aware of these additional studies when I posted a link to my blog on Twitter.)

There are in fact four surveys:

  • What do people want from museums on Facebook? (results of an online survey)
  • What do museums think Twitter is for? (responses from 361 museum professionals)
  • Museums on Twitter (results of an online survey from non museum professionals)
  • Social Media Audiences and the museum (which was the subject of yesterday’s post)

There are interesting similarities and differences between the results of the different surveys.

Whereas the social media audience survey appears to be of a random sample of UK residents, it looks like the other survey samples were more opportunistic. Thus the age spread does not reflect different age groups’ social media usage (as reported in the first survey), and women outnumber men by nearly 2 to 1! (I’m not sure if this means women are more interested in museums, more inclined to social media, or that they are more likely to complete online surveys, but I digress . . .)

Of the sample, 82% of respondents ‘like’ at least one museum on Facebook and nearly 90% follow at least one Museum on Twitter, with most following several (i.e. This survey population is clearly different from the social media audience survey, where only 10% of respondents were fans or followers. By contrast, this sample is highly aware and engaged, and findings should be considered in light of this).

The reasons respondents gave for liking or following were similar across both Facebook and Twitter, with the top three being: to learn about exhibitions and events (76% Facebook, 98.9% Twitter); to show support for the museum (64% Facebook, 51% Twitter); and to help promote the museum (47% Facebook 35% Twitter). Based on these percentages, people overwhelmingly use Twitter to get information and news about museums, whereas Facebook has a greater promotion / supporting role. This does make intuitive sense given the way that each platform works, in that Twitter is more immediate and open while  Facebook is more about sharing between people you already know. Although interestingly, 93% of people said they would be more likely to visit an exhibition that a friend recommended on Twitter compared to 83% on Facebook, which would seem counter that interpretation.

Roughly half of respondents had visited the museums they liked or followed; a further 35-40% had visited ‘some of them’, indicating that the physical audience and the online audience do not completely overlap. This might mean that a proportion of people are happy to have a purely online relationship with a museum, even if they do not visit in person.  (I would imagine the nonvisiting fans and followers live some distance from the museum, but this could be an incorrect assumption on my part.)

If this is the case, and there is a small but significant proportion of fans and followers who are unlikely to visit in person, this might have interesting implications for museums’ social media strategies – how can social media be used to add value for visitors and non-visitors alike?

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Social Media: Implications for Museums

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I was recently sent a link to the results of a survey of 500 UK residents, investigating their social media habits and awareness of museums on social media.*

The survey, commissioned by Museum Next, explored respondents’ current social media use as well as their awareness and expectations of museums in this realm.

First, one for the social media sceptics: more than three quarters of respondents said they used social media websites (how ‘social media websites’ was defined for the purpose of this research was not made clear, but more on that later).  And while usage declined with age, this drop in use was nowhere near as marked as some people might expect – just over half of the over 64s used social media (compared to 95% of the 18-24s).

However, the over 64s were far less likely to be a fan or follower of brands on social media – 21% compared to 83% of 16-24s (again, the percentages fell for each age bracket). Put another way, 16-24s are four times as likely as over 64s to interact with brands through social media. This potentially points to an interesting generational shift with respect to how people associate with brands and products (or alternatively says something about which brands have a social media presence, and the target markets of these brands).

In keeping with the “what’s in it for me?” principle, the most common reason for following brands was to access promotions or special offers (54%). Other popular responses related to getting advance information about new products or events (37%), or that the brand supplied interesting content for its followers (33%).

So far, so generic. What does all this mean for museums?

Well, for a start, nearly three quarters of the sample said they attended museums and galleries, and this was roughly evenly spread across ALL the age groups. However, only 18% were aware of museums using social media, and only 10% were a fan or a follower of a museum (i.e. roughly half of those who were aware of museums on social media were fans or followers).

Interestingly, the reasons people gave for following museums were different from those given for ‘brands’, with the most common response being a wish to support or promote the museum (47%), followed by a desire to tell friends about an impressive visit (38%).

However, while 83% of respondents said they would be more likely to visit a museum which had been recommended by a friend (the question doesn’t explicitly state ‘recommend by social media’, but this may have been inferred from the context), 66% thought that their friends would be ‘indifferent’ if they became a fan of a museum on Facebook.

A couple of broader observations about the survey:

Firstly, although most of the questions refer to  ‘social media websites’ generically, it’s not clear how (or indeed if) this term was defined for respondents. I know from experience that there are often different understandings about what constitutes a ‘social media website’, so depending on what was said and how that was interpreted this may have affected the results.

Secondly, the only specific social media platform mentioned (at least in the data published on the website) is Facebook. This may have been the scope of the survey, but personally I would have liked to have seen a bit more unpicking of different social media, in particular Twitter. (I must admit I’m a more prolific Tweeter than Facebooker, and so might be a little biased here!) Moreover, museums are having a growing presence on social media beyond the Big Two of Facebook and Twitter, including YouTube channels Flickr groups.

But then again, given the low awareness of museums’ presence on social media at all, getting the word out there in general must be the first step.

[UPDATE: I have since found out that there are more MuseumNext surveys, which are the subject of a later post]

*Thanks to Mel Loe for passing the info on!

 

 

 

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