Working on a Museum Board

For most museum professionals, we are the staff, on the ground, day-to-day, doing the everyday work. I'm currently serving as a volunteer on a local Historical Society's Board of Directors, while also serving as the part-time volunteer Archivist. In some ways, I feel as if I'm working backwards. I'm a program planner, an educator. At the historical society, I spend most of my time on fundraisers and in the archives. It's fun and rewarding - especially the new perspective on nonprofits.

The Board is a working Board, which means, we plan the programs, repair the artifacts, etc. We have two part-time, paid staff who book events for our rental space and keep the building open to visitors. The Board meets four times a year to discuss major issues, the budget, etc. Working committees meet on a more regular basis to get the work done.

Our most active committee is our trivia night fundraiser committee. We started this fundraiser as an attempt to jump start our fundraising activities. It was highly successful last year as trivia nights are incredibly popular in our area. This year we were moderately successful though due to changing to a later date, we had fewer tables overall. In my next post, I'll share a detailed plan on running a successful trivia night.

You Can Go Back Home

Contrary to popular belief, cliche or sentiment, I've found that you can go back home. Here I am, back in St. Louis, the most home-like place I've ever lived. It's been a while since I've updated this blog and that's more to do with being overwhelmingly busy than anything else. I have been keeping up with many other museum blogs, continuing to tweet and settling into my new, wonderful job. Before I get started on substantial posts, I want to bring folks up-to-date on my current situation. This will hopefully, give you some perspective on how I will be posting in the future.

• I am no longer working for a museum, instead I'm working for an informal science education outreach non-profit.
• I am serving on the Board of a local Historical Society.
• My new position focuses more on educational program development and evaluation than my last position. 
• Did I mention how much I love my new job?

Some ongoing projects:

• Working with the aforementioned Historical Society to establish educational programming, more fundraising and redesigning the archives. Among other things.
• Established a meetup group called "Nerdy Girls." We're focused on exploring typically "nerdy" things like chess, crafts, historic house tours, etc. 
• Trying to balance all of these things while still managing to wrap presents and have "me" time. 

I'm hoping to talk a little bit in my posts about the challenges of serving on a board, the ups and downs of making significant changes to "how we've always done it," and bridging some of my many activities. Should be a wild ride!

Should I be doing monthly museum links?

It's definitely been more than a week since I posted my "weekly" links. A combo of being busy at work then taking a week-long vacation prevented me from keeping up with my schedule. This week's "weekly" links will cover everything from July 30 to present.

• Here's a great post on finding the "perfect job." Does it really exist?
• If you've ever been to a conference, check out this post on re-thinking conference sessions.
• I have always loved going to the movies and I think this site would be great for a movie exhibit.
• Do you live in a city with an EMP group? I definitely wish I did. EMP did a great post on starting a group from scratch.
• Did you contribute to Museum Minute's twitter conversation yesterday? So why do you work in museums?
• In case you missed it: You can live in a museum! Sort of.
• And here's a shameless plug for my Volunteer Management paper.

Weekly Links: July 23-29

Here's a list of links worth checking out from the week of July 23-29:

• A display of life expectancy and child poverty that shows the discrepencies based on a tube map. Definitely hits home the idea of where you grow up/live determines a lot of things.
• Great online learning resource, Peer2Peer University. I'm taking up a course with the Saylor Foundation on Art History, but Peer2Peer offers much more. Or if you're looking for job skills ALISON is the place to start.
• Commentary tying museum curation to student learning.
• Girl Power! Women changing the face of philanthropy.
• Google just keeps impressing me. Wish I could be in London to see their Web Lab.

That's it for this week. Look for a review of Crystal Bridges soon!

Weekly Links - July 16-22

Yes, I have been terrible at putting these weekly links up. But I'm going to give it another whirl! Here goes:

• Love the creativity of this map. I could see a museum doing something like this with a map of the facility.
• I can't leave Nina Simon's post on increasing attendance off this week's list.

That's it for this week's list. Not much going on. Maybe everyone is on vacation?

Iceberg Ahead!

Titanic Museum Exterior

Over the July 4th holiday, I had the chance to visit two museums in the Ozarks. The first was the Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri. When planning my visit to Branson with my family, I mentioned the possibility of visiting the Titanic Museum to my grandfather. He was incredibly excited at the prospect and I was somewhat intrigued. However, after checking their website, I was slightly concerned about the focus of the museum.  Overall, the museum was reminiscent of a historic site or village. On the other hand, the subject matter was quite morbid to be presented in such a "Disney"-esque manner. I cannot fathom another site that deals with a similar tragedy to present the material in such a way. If the Oklahoma Memorial Museum had used such tactics, I and I'm sure many others would be completely turned off.  


Painting a Picture


Similar to a historic site or village, the Titanic Museum relies heavily on costumed interpreters. Interestingly enough, these interpreters also speak with a British accent, in the middle of the Ozarks. My father also commented that there were a ton of women dressed as First Class maids, but there were only a dozen or so on the voyage itself (this is what my dad read - anyone super interested in the Titanic can definitely do the research if they so desire).


The museum takes great pains to make you feel as if you are on the Titanic. Some areas are more traditional and use gallery spaces to display objects, while other areas focus on recreating the ship. The exterior is just the start. The grand staircase is recreated as well as a First Class Cabin. The communication equipment is displayed as it would have looked on the ship and leads into a recreated command deck. You have the opportunity to sit in a lifeboat as well.


The Good


Despite some of the strange aspects of the museum, it was great at presenting a number of things:

• The "real" experience: When you first enter the museum, you are given a card with a name and story. At the end of the visit, you learn whether the person on your card survived the sinking. I believe this is also used on the touring exhibit. You are able to touch an iceberg - this is actually one of the first activities in the museum and really gives you a sense of horror at the unbearable cold. Later in the exhibit, you can put your hand in 28 degree water and see how long you last. Yes, morbid, but it gets the point across. You're also able to try to climb the deck as it sinks.
• The "real" artifacts: Nearly everything on display is a real object, not a reproduction. For those who are intrigued by the Titanic or like to see the "real" thing, this is a great museum.
• Everything you ever wanted to know: The museum presents everything there is to possibly know about the museum. For me, it was information overload, but I was with a group that read everything and moved slowly. 

The Strange


In a museum about the Titanic, you almost have to expect that it will be morbidly fascinating. The recent 100th anniversary of the event created some strange activities across the US and UK, including memorial cruises and last meals on the Titanic fundraisers. 

• Prices: Like any other museum, the Titanic Museum displayed the prices of things at the time of the sinking. On the other hand, most museums do not display the current price of artifacts were they to go to auction. I found this slightly disconcerting. Why would I, as the visitor, want to know how much an artifact costs today? I'm sure it was expensive to build this museum as many of the artifacts were priced in the six-figures.
• Dogs: In one of the first rooms, live dogs are on display. They are only in the window during certain times, but I found it to be an odd experience. There were dogs on the Titanic, but why would I want to see them in an exhibit? Live dogs!?

Overall, the museum was interesting. I could describe more of the strange things I encountered, but overall, it was a feeling I got when entering the place. After I forked over my $25, I couldn't help but feel I was in an amusement park, waiting for the roller coaster ride to begin. I did not have the same feeling of appreciation for the people on the ship as I had for the people in Murrow bombing. I could not sympathize with the people on the Titanic as much as I wanted to. On leaving the exhibit, we mentioned to a worker that it was somewhat of a sad place. She said something along the lines of we try not to make it sad. Perhaps they missed the lesson of the tragedy entirely.

The Essence of a Gallery Cart

This past week I had the opportunity to work with some of our young volunteers to design a gallery cart for our temporary exhibition. The kids were at first apprehensive about everything, which was strange because they had all been enthusiastic during their interviews. After a couple days, they were all deeply engaged in the process of developing the cart.

As I mentioned in previous posts, I have been inspired by new ideas emerging from activity carts. Currently, I'm working with a student to update all the carts in our galleries. Since we were working with teens, I thought they would come up with some extremely different ideas than what was already available. However, I noticed that at it's essence, gallery carts are really an opportunity to show and tell. The kids were mostly excited to have the opportunity to share their knowledge and they did a great job coming up with talking points.

In some ways, I think we limited them. We had limited time and basic supplies, but also, we provided them with very traditional examples and set parameters based on established ideas. As this was a first try, we have areas to improve upon. We now know the pace of how the teens work. They needed time to get to know one another. We could also have more supplies available or at least have an idea of where to get certain supplies. It would also be nice to work with graphics to make some of our activities look sleek and I think this would help the kids to think of their project as something that "belongs" in the museum.

The most important change will be to change the parameters. Instead of giving them a set of objects and a list of things that must be done, we will provide examples of more innovative carts and lists of ideas for types of activities. The kids were very stuck on certain topics. We will provide more variety in their training.

Next year we have an art exhibit. My idea is to give them an object from one of the animals in the exhibit and ask them to develop an activity or craft and talking points about the animal. This will help to expand the knowledge of the teens and visitors about the animals in the paintings.

Soon I'll be compiling data with my intern and hopefully we'll have more information to help us revise the program!