Nonprofit Mergers

It happens in for-profit business all the time, but is something of a novelty in the nonprofit world - mergers. A recent link in the Center for the Future of Museum's weekly newsletter, which I highly recommend subscribing to, revealed the trend of mergers in nonprofits, including museums. Due the economy (and really what isn't anymore?), nonprofits are still looking for ways just to stay afloat. Smaller museums merging with larger, more stable museums could be a way to keep the doors open.

Recently the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, an affiliate of the Smithsonian, merged with the Meadowcroft Museum, the George Westinghouse Museum and the Fort Pitt Museum. The Fort Pitt Museum reports a dramatic increase in attendance from the merger. It's easy to see how the influence of a larger museum, that has higher attendance, could reach out to its current visitors and increase the visitation at an affiliated museum.

Besides the obvious financial benefit, another benefit might include the ability to share staff. While one museum might be able to afford a conservator, another museum might not be able to, but with a merger, the museums might be able to share that conservator and even be able to hire an assistant. Another benefit would be the easy loaning of objects for exhibits. The museums might also be better prepared to plan exhibits that work in conjunction with each museum, creating a cohesive visitor experience.

The list of benefits of merging with another museum could go on and on. But what about merging with non-museum nonprofits? Would this be an effective partnership? Museums already often work with different nonprofits on exhibits, educational programming and sometimes fundraising, but a merger would be a much bigger step.

Can you think of any current museum/nonprofit mergers? What would be the ideal partnership?

The Cost of Doing Business

I am lucky enough to live in a city where five large cultural institutions are supported by tax-payer dollars, which means that most of these institutions charge no admission. However, many museums must charge at least a small, if not cost-prohibitive to some, fee. Without some sort of fee, many museums would be unable to preserve artifacts and offer educational programming. Many would not even be able to keep their doors open.

Anyone in the museum profession will tell you that it's expensive to keep a museum running. Just keeping the power on can be costly to smaller institutions. Preservation, storage and management of collections, at the heart of many art and history museums, can be a challenge to fund. Then there's also educational programs, public programs, group tours, etc, that all cost something to provide. And there's always something else we wish we could do, if we had the money.

The public seems to mainly object to two things: staff salaries and high admission prices at institutions that receive or have received public funding. Neither objection is unreasonable, though much of the public does not know where museum money goes because most of the information is usually not available. Perhaps if a budget displaying where the money goes was shown next to how much it costs to get in, the public would at least have the opportunity to understand how the money is used.

Judging Exhibitions

Today, I had a rare opportunity to give direct feedback on an exhibition. A representative from the museum just happened to buy a membership while I was at my current job and just happened to mention that he worked at said museum. I, of course, piped up that as a project, I had evaluated that exhibition and he was curious as to my group's conclusion.

First, I must point out that we used a specific framework assigned by my professor for the assignment. The framework can be found in Beverly Serrell's Judging Exhibitions: A Framework for Assessing Excellence and a copy of the framework can also be found here. I also must be honest and admit that all the groups in my class spent more time criticizing the framework than we did evaluating the exhibitions we each visited.

As we were explained to by our professor, the purpose of the framework is to evaluate an exhibition based on how a visitor might view it. The issues we found with the framework were not so much that the aspects listed were not important, it was more that we found them limiting and did not appropriately assess how we felt about the exhibition. As I learned in my visitor research course, visitors have a variety of ways of looking at exhibitions and could easily rate an exhibition highly, but still not have enjoyed themselves or vice versa. The framework certainly attempts a more objective way of evaluating exhibitions, but we still found ourselves being subjective. Perhaps this is because museums are essentially meant to be subjectively viewed. With the exhibition we reviewed, we found the exhibits to have poor labels, undefined flow and a creepy mannequin. However, most of us were glad we were able to see the content and explore a new museum.

When I did bump into the employee at this museum, I was able to communicate my assessment of the exhibition, but I think I could have come to the same conclusion without the framework.

Has anyone used this framework? Has anyone attempted another method of similar style evaluation?

Exhibition Spotlight: Extreme Tree Houses

A couple weekends ago, I visited the Missouri Botanical Garden's Extreme Tree Houses exhibition. I was intrigued by the opportunities a botanical garden might have to experiment with exhibitions that museums normally do not have. Botanical gardens are a cross between an art museum and a natural history museum, but outdoors and with living specimens. Like art museums, botanical gardens are places for contemplation, where one can enjoy the bounty of nature in a controlled setting. Like natural history museums, botanical gardens usually offer scientific names of their specimens and opportunities to use hands-on science.

I'm not sure what the Botanical Garden's goal was in installing this exhibition, but it does bring attention to an area generally neglected by garden visitors, the trees. From personal observation, most visitors are interested in what's at eye level - bushes, flowers, vegetables, and smaller trees. The Garden does have a beautiful collection of large trees throughout the premises, many of which were planted over 100 years ago.

The houses were all designed by local designers, architects, schools, studios and individuals, without much educational material. However, this does not discredit the merit of this exhibition.

Extreme Tree Houses is more similar to an art exhibition than an educational science exhibition. Since each house was hand-crafted by some type of artisan, each house could easily be considered a work of art. More than that, though, is the child-like wonder each house invites with their whimsical designs and basis in a childhood object. Though I never had a tree house as a child, I can remember wanting one and walking through each house made me feel like a child again, wanting my own tree house. In one I could imagine "playing house:"

While in another I conjured up an image of pretending to be an inventor/scientist and going on epic adventures:

Each house invited an opportunity to imagine another world - pirates, fairytales, magic. Overall, the exhibit was a magical journey I will repeat again.

Museum Travel Programs

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a museum travel program, hosted by the museum where I have been employed. For the last two years, I researched the background information on many of the travel programs, providing a document for participants to refer to before, during and after their trip with basic information, other sources for information and resources for teachers. After all that time learning about the amazing trips the Science Center provides, I was hoping to one day go on a trip myself.

Currently, the Science Center provides four types of trips:

1. Science Around Town: Programs offered in the St. Louis area and often open to children as well as adults. The programs are less expensive than most of the other programs, since there are not usually overnight stays with the Science Around Town programs.
2. Domestic Discoveries - Behind the Scenes: The Science Center usually offer two Behind the Scenes programs each year, one at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and another at the Field Museum in Chicago. These programs often offer a guided tour with an expert in the field and a behind-the-scenes tour with employees of the museum. The tours are always focused on science, usually paleontology since these two museums are famous for their collections.
3. Domestic Discoveries: Most of these programs involve a week-long look at a national park with experts leading the way. The most unique program offered is Paleotrek, a week-long adventure to search for dinosaur fossils in the Hell Creek formation in Montana.
4. International Explorations: One international trip is offered every year and also changes yearly. This year's trip is to Iceland, while next year the Science Center will travel down to Peru.

The trip I attended was the Behind the Scenes at the American Museum of Natural History. I've always loved New York so I jumped at the chance to attend, even though my final papers were due the next week! The trip began with dinner in Little Italy, where the group got to know each other a little better after our flight. The next morning we awoke to meet our paleontology expert who brought us to AMNH for our first tour. He led us through the Hall of Planet Earth as well as the Fossil Halls. Even though I have been working in the paleo lab of my museum, it was great to get more information about paleontology that I could pass onto my coworkers and to observe another museum's gallery to see the difference in their presentation.

Below: Our T. rex

And AMNH's T. rex

While our animatronic T. rex is great and visitors love it, AMNH's exhibits looked far more polished than ours. However, the exhibit did have less hands-on activities.

After our tours of the permanent galleries, we then visited the temporary exhibition The World's Largest Dinosaurs. This exhibition explored the life of the long-necked dinosaurs and offered far more hands-on exhibits than the permanent exhibitions. The exhibition also had an exhibit which used projection onto the belly of the dinosaur to explain digestion and respiration:

Next we were on our own, but later gathered for lunch and our final tour - behind-the-scenes. Though, I can't talk about much of our visit because many of the objects were still being researched, I can tell you that there are thousands more fossils than you see on the floor of this museum. The great thing about the tour was that we were able to talk with people who were conducting the research and see their techniques as well as what the current interests are of those in the field. I was very impressed with how seriously AMNH takes its role as a research institution.

That night we also dined together, but the next day was on our own until our flight. I appreciated the extra half-day to explore on my own some places I've wanted to see including the World Trade Center site, NYU and the Whitney Museum (though I was incredibly disappointed with the visitor services staff, I was impressed with their collection).

Overall, I enjoyed the experience though there things that worked better than others.

Pros:

• Planned entirely by the Science Center - I did not need to come up with my own accommodations.
• Tours with experts - This was an experience I could not get anywhere else, it was informative, entertaining and personal.
• Appeals to a wide audience - It was a good trip for the variety of people who attended from ages 23-to someone in their 70s, as well as teachers and people who had never even been to the Science Center. I think it works for people who enjoy a tour setting, but it also works for people who are looking for a new experience.

Cons:

• Logistics - Many museums would not be able to coordinate such an extensive trip since it requires extra manpower and time.
• Cost - Some of the tours are cost-prohibitive, however some tours have the option of applying for a teacher scholarship.
• Group dynamics - As always, when you travel in a group, you can be disruptive to the natives (New Yorkers especially do not like this) and you can run into personality issues. I personally felt a little uncomfortable since I was the youngest and traveling on my own.

I also want to leave you with a few other museums that offer travel programs:

• Smithsonian Journeys: The Smithsonian offers numerous travel programs domestically and internationally. You can search by destination and tour type (including college study abroad, family programs and by transportation). Each program has an expert accompany the tour. As a history nut, the Footsteps of Patriots tour sounds amazing!
• National WWII Museum: The National WWII Museum offers trips to famous battles including the Invasion of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. Each tour includes a team of experts.
• Field Museum: The Field Museum offers international tours to members-only (what a great incentive to become a member!). This year's journeys are all to Africa.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Met offers multiple trips a year all focused on art, visiting museums and locations where artists lived. All trips are international as well, primarily to Europe.

Augmented Reality

Last year, the 2010 Horizon Report: Museum Edition identified six technologies to watch for their use in museums. One of the technologies they identified was augmented reality. Augmented reality is defined as "blending data with the real world." One website that you're probably familiar with is Yelp, which allows users to rate and review real world places, including restaurants, bars, museums, etc, then later use that information to make decisions about those places - where to go for dinner or which museum to visit on vacation. Museums have also been using augmented reality, such as the Powerhouse Museum's Layar, an app for mobile devices which shows images of what Sydney, Australia looked like 100 years ago when the user walks around the city. The Museum of London also offers a similar app, Streetmuseum.

Apps are not the only way to use augmented reality. One interesting use of augmented reality is the DisplayCabinet, which uses RFID tags placed inside objects to display information on a surface. For example, the keys in the image below tells you the temperature and if the dog is outside.

Photo Credit: Ben Bashford

The creators of the DisplayCabinet also used a wallet and a miniature train to display different information. This information is geared toward daily data that would be important to a person's daily schedule, like the train schedules or traffic issues. The information is presented in a different and fun way. It might even be easier than loading up your computer or unlocking your phone to just throw your keys onto a desk before you leave the house or even leave your essential items on the desk and have information updated in the morning. Even children could easily use the objects.

These objects could hold data that museums could use. Take for example a typical art exhibit.


The information on these labels is static and, at times, not engaging. Perhaps the label only tells a little data about the artist, date, and maybe the medium. Museums also struggle with connecting to all audiences. By using blank spaces and the objects, a museum could create multiple sets of labels related to information that a visitor might be interested in. For example, an exhibit on painted landscapes could have objects with data connected to information on the type of plants in the paintings, the artists, the type of paint, etc. Exhibits could easily be designed to have information geared toward general adult visitors, art students, children, teachers.

It's Been a While

I realize it's been 4 months since I've posted. At this point I probably can't call myself a blogger anymore, but I'm really going to try to keep things up from now on. I could explain away the million reasons why I haven't updated in a while, but suffice it to say, I finally finished my exit project and have graduated. I can't tell you how excited I am that everything is done, but I'm also on the job hunt right now so I'm still very busy.

My exit project turned out to be 50 pages of delightful Archives data, grants and volunteer information. I'm very proud of what I've accomplished, but I'm still interested in continuing my work. The audit is still ongoing, but I just lost my best (and only volunteer). She has a seasonal job with the National Park Service so I'm sure she's having a blast. Luckily, the Archivist just trained three new volunteers that I will be training in the audit this coming Sunday.

I've also been asked to sit on the Board of Directors for the Historical Society! I'm so very honored by this request and I can't wait to get started. Everyone at the Historical Society has been so enthusiastic and I only hope I can continue to bring energy to the Archives and Board.

The job hunt has been slow, as I'm sure it has been for anyone who's graduated in the last 2 or 3 years. I've done all the things people have advised: tell everyone you know you're applying, write specific resumes and cover letters and apply to jobs even if you don't think you're perfectly qualified. All good advice. Right now I'm just hoping for something part-time until I can figure out where I'm going and to hopefully find a job I'm passionate about.

In the meantime, I plan on focusing on the job hunt, continuing to work at the Archives, volunteering at the Missouri History Museum and watching a little bit of Netflix.