Muse Award Winners in the West

Congratulations to our colleagues in California, Nevada, and Washington who earned recognition for their outstanding achievements in museum media at AAM’s 2010 Muse Awards last night.

The Asian Art Museum (San Francisco, CA) won the top award in the Public Relations and Development category for Raising Spirits.

“Raising Spirits takes our world-renowned collection “on the road” via a plasma screen into private dining rooms of our patrons, while host Kirsten Shilakes—a museum-trained docent—tells tightly woven stories about art, food and wine, taking guests on a multi-sensory aesthetic and culinary journey. The result is a fully-conceived food and wine experience for our patrons that places the Asian Art Museum collection – in its digital form – as the centerpiece.”

The judges said, “…Raising Spirits is a comprehensive public relations package designed to promote a traveling, multimedia art history presentation showcasing the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco’s permanent collection. The package juxtaposes earthy and textured print materials with professionally produced digital content to create a balanced and complete project…very high marks for image quality, design and overall appeal.”

The Nevada Museum of Art (Reno, CA) won the top award in the Video category for Between Grass and Sky.

“Much like visual art, the enduring tradition of cowboy poetry is a rich and vital form of cultural expression in the American West. This film, created and produced for the 2009 exhibition Between Grass & Sky: Rhythms of a Cowboy Poem, is inspired by the widely-celebrated poem Grass, which was written by legendary Texas poet Buck Ramsey. The exhibition featured a selection of historical and contemporary paintings, photographs, and sculptural works combined with the spoken voices of renowned cowboy poets in the film, this unique exhibition offered insight into the varied experiences arising from life in rural and ranching communities.”

The judges said, “An absolutely beautiful video, the Nevada Museum of Art has created a moving piece which effectively transports the viewer right into the West. Really lovely introduction to a genre unfamiliar to many. Stellar editing and beautiful art direction. We loved hearing the three poets collectively recite the work with such genuine passion, and the film made us want to discover more cowboy poets.  This was the only entry where the entire room of jurors sat silent from beginning to end. Though clearly a polished production, it was the power of the readers’ voices combined with the beauty of the poetry that won us over.”

The Washington State History Museum (Tacoma, WA) won silver in the Community category.

“COLUMBIAKids is a free online magazine that features exciting, interesting, and informative articles and stories based in Pacific Northwest history. Our target readers are children up to age 14 who live in the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska, but we are also happy to find that our readers come to us from all over the world. We support family literacy both by working with established children’s authors and by using varied media and formats to help kids explore the amazing people, places, objects, and events in Northwest history.”

The judges said, “…The site should be commended for involving children’s authors and illustrators to work on the content which makes the site more appealling to the young readers. It is a useful resource for teachers. The site has many interesting sections to engage the readers – the jurors especially like CollectionConnundrum which teaches children how to look at objects and podPuzzle.”

The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, CA) won the silver in the Video category for  Making a Spanish Polychrome Sculpture.

“In conjunction with a long-term didactic exhibition on the J. Paul Getty Museum’s sculpture Saint Ginés de la Jara by Luisa Roldán, we produced a video comprised of animation and live action to demonstrate the carving and painting techniques used in Spain hundreds of years ago….Presented in-gallery and distributed online on http://www.getty.edu, ArtBabble, and YouTube, we intentionally approached the subject in a manner that would make it a relevant resource for understanding the methods used to create any Spanish polychrome sculpture.”

The judges said, “This is a fine example of technology effectively used to clearly demonstrate an intricate artistic process. It’s the combination of the digital imagery with the live footage of an artist that makes this video exciting and fascinating for all kinds of audiences.  The entire film really promoted a deeper appreciation of the art form, far beyond what a viewer might get from just seeing the work in a museum. The footage of the artists’ hands creating the pieces was really magical to watch. The computer-generated animations were just the icing on the cake. To see the traditional process put into use in a contemporary is what put this video above typical ‘here’s the process’ videos.”

Letitia Carper Long, a Museum Studies student at John F. Kennedy University (Berkeley, CA) won the bronze in the Student Award category for her video project in partnership with the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco, CA), Emerald Cities: Arts of Siam & Burma: Conserving the Collection.

The Emerald Cities exhibition was composed entirely of objects from the museum’s permanent collection. Most objects date from the 19th century, and quite a few had been damaged or deteriorated over time. Art conservators worked some 7,500 hours to prepare the objects for the exhibition. The video, which was shown on a loop in one of the galleries throughout the exhibition’s duration, needed to tell three stories:

• The principal story is a “behind-the-scenes” view of the process, procedures, and methodology of art conservation.
• The video also provides a brief introduction to the art and culture of 19th-century Siam and Burma, and tells a key story of Buddhism, which is the theme of the artwork presented.
• Finally, because some 70 percent of the objects came from the collection of the late Doris Duke, the video also delves briefly into her story as a collector of Southeast Asian artwork.

The judge said, “Overall, I believe this video to have greatly enhanced the corresponding exhibit. So many times, you visit a gallery and see the objects and read the labels, but with this video, you get to look behind the scenes. The quality of the video is outstanding– both in content and appearance.”

Congratulations again to all our colleagues!

You can find more information and photos about AAM’s 2010 Muse Awards on the Media and Technology Committee’s website.

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Lydia Johnson

Happy New Year!: Physician, Heal Thyself

By James G. Leventhal

Panel on Innovation at WMA09 San Diego: Lori Fogarty, Director, Oakland Museum of California; Douglas Fogle, Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs at the Hammer; Ted Russell, Senior Program Officer for the Arts, James Irvine Foundation; and Angelina Russo, Associate Professor, Faculty of Design, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

Please join for an amble through some issues of interest…  (The last time I did this here it was about technology issues and museums.  This time it is about a couple of things that have arisen about the state of museums generally.)

A very important conversation just happened here on the radio this week, and we want to be sure to help further both the broadcast and the on-going, necessary exchange through westmuse.

Scott Shafer hosted a dialogue on KQED’s Forum entitled Museums in Recession. KQED notes:

The number of adults attending arts and cultural events in the U.S. has dropped to its lowest level since 1982, when the National Endowment for the Arts began tracking it. While there is some good news – California ranked near the top among states for art museum attendance – the study found the decline to be especially prominent among Latinos. We discuss the role of museums in a changing demographic.

Those whom KQED’s Forum engaged included:

• Elizabeth Merritt, director of the Center for the Future of Museums
• Gregory Rodriguez, op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times and founder and executive director of Zocalo Public Square (see Allyson Lazar’s recent westmuse post “Sit Up and Take Note”)
• Jim DeMersman, president of the California Association of Museums (check out their gorgeous, new site http://calmuseums.org/) and director of the Amador-Livermore Valley Historical Society
• Lori Fogarty, executive director of the Oakland Museum of California

To listen now click here.

These are scary times, friends.  The Claremont Museum of Art is closing. “Two and a half years after bursting into life in a historic, former fruit packing plant, the Claremont Museum of Art is on death’s door,” writes Suzanne Muchnic on the LA Times blog Culture Monster.

In Fresno, CA an “..exhibitor pulled 65 etchings by Marc Chagall over the weekend fearing the Metropolitan Museum is about to shut for good...[being]  more afraid that he’d be unable to retrieve the art if the faltering museum padlocks its doors.”

On the other hand:

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs completed its run at the Dallas Museum of Art as the most popular exhibition in the Museum’s history, drawing in 664,000 ticketholders since its October 2008 opening. Additionally, the Museum reached a historic high in attendance, welcoming for the first time more than one million visitors to date in the 2009 fiscal year.  The King Tut exhibition, which was accompanied by more than 500 special programs, brought in thousands of first-time visitors from throughout the region and nearly 110,000 students to experience the Museum and its encyclopedic collections.

And with King Tut’s present reign at the de Young in San Fransisco, the museum is now reported to be one of the few museums in the country that is able to remain in-the-black based on admissions income, a phenomenal even unheard-of accomplishment for anyone who has tracked a museum’s bottom line.

One of our nation’s finest museum leaders Ron Chew had some thoughts posted this week for the Center for the Future of Museums blog:

I’ve been thinking about what I learned in China, and the little exchange with the tour guide and the driver. Sad to say, they were right. The most memorable and engaging places were not the museums – the air-conditioned enclosures with objects protected behind glass and neat little labels – but the living spaces: restored temples, rustic gardens, village courtyards, public squares, orphanages, and outdoor and indoor markets. These well-trafficked spaces – where daily life is lived and lots of things just sort of happen – were the places where I learned the most and found the greatest inspiration.

What do we do as museum professionals, when industry thought leaders like Ron Chew fundamentally question what museums contribute to a tourist’s understanding of another culture?  Having been to China recently, I do not really agree with Chew’s assessment of museums there.

The Forbidden City may be one of the world’s largest and finest museums.  As Chew concedes “In Beijing, the Forbidden Palace is called a museum.”  Then he questions it after his visit, “Was all of that a museum?”

Terra Cotta Warrior Museum, Xi'an, China -- talk about inspiring awe and wonder.

But what greater re-purposed, repossessed, once-limited access stately collection has been so transformative?  Isn’t that one of the fundamental definitions of a type of  museum à la the Louvre?  And isn’t the Eastern reverence for the object something to which museums should aspire?

In fact, I was quite struck by how much the word “museum” was adopted in China, perhaps or, um, of course to attract tourism.  But is that bad for our industry?  Our cultures?  Our globe-spanning societies?  One of the world’s great mind-boggling experiences is to visit the Qin Shi Huang Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum in Xian.

And even the traditional “air-conditioned enclosure” model-type museum in Xian — the Shanxi History Museum — as desolate, large and new-though-musty as it was…was a really important time-space experience for me and my wife in our understanding and appreciation of our shared experience in China, our shared humanity.

Now, I might imagine Ron’s piece for the Center for the Future of Museums was mainly anecdotal.  He might generally agree with me in more direct dialogue.  I also find it interesting that Chew may have been so successful in his life’s work to help the museum field to fathom better the transcendent power of museums.  I see the term “museum” as a meaningful catchall that invites and inspires.  He may still find the word limiting, or more something to excel beyond.

Where are we?  Is a retrenchment necessary?  Are we diluted by audience-focused missions?  Or not diverse and relevant enough?!

As part of a dialogue on Museums 3.0 called Museum as Soup Kitchen Elaine Heumann Gurian asks for feedback as she posits, “It is clear to me that museums could be much more helpful and timely by changing hours, job retraining, health care information and all manner of social service.”

And one of America’s great chroniclers of this nation’s history of museum’s Marjorie Schwarzer responds in a comment that captures an inspired and spontaneous spirit:

HI Elaine, I am in the middle of writing an article for Museum News on how museums responded in the 1930s (before the WPA) and have spent two days digging through archives from 1929 – 1934. The results are fascinating! As expected, museums were slow to react in the 1930s, since no one really knew what was going on or how deep the impact would be. We have the gift of history, archives and insight to help guide us and that’s a lot! But here are some things that they did do that are noteworthy: a) they looked at new technologies (in this case, it was radio broadcasts!); b) they re-focussed their collecting on American-made items; c) there was a huge effort to document and archive; c) they began to advocate for employee benefits (in those days, that meant pensions for retiring folks); d) they began to develop and evaluate games (!!); e) there was an enormous push toward educational activities and adult education — including free re-training for “unemployeed persons”. And this was all before the WPA was enacted and occured organically.

To read Scharwzer’s fascinating, above-referenced article Bringing it to the People/Depression in its published state at the AAM archive on line click here.

As we explore these questions collectively and continue to face international financial and political disruptions, 2010 promises to be a big year for museums.

For one thing, all eyes are and will be on the Oakland Museum of California:

In May 2010, the Museum will welcome back visitors and introduce the reconfigured History and Art Galleries. The new galleries will include digital and interactive features to encourage visitors to experience California’s many stories and voices, and add their own. Much of the signage and exhibit copy will be in Spanish and Chinese, as well as English. Californians can expect to see their history and culture represented throughout the Museum.

There’s lost of upside here, people.  Despite the bad news, we’ re hanging strong in fact.  In the KQED Forum discussion Elizabeth Merrit says,  “One of the great things about America is that anyone can start a museum, and often does…”  Thanks, Dan Spock, for pointing out to me that The Big House, The Allman Brothers Band Museum finally just opened in Macon, GA.

Cultural Transcendence at the Wing Luke

The bottom line is that museums can make a difference.  Ron Chew taught us with his brain seeds, his Wing Luke Asian Museum, an industry standard bearer for community-driven, identity-based institutions.

And it is this very, present exploration being led by those within the field that proves the ability and perhaps the need for museums to continue to innovate in meaningful ways.

Join the conversation!  Give your feedback here.  And be a part of WMA in Portland 2010 for #wmaportland75.  Session proposals are being accepted now on-line.

If you would like to participate by submitting a session proposal, please first read the guidelines here; then download the submission form,; fill it out, and email it to the Program Committee co-Chairs, Jacqueline Cabrera and Merritt Price at wmaportland2010@gmail.com by January 15, 2010.

OR

If you prefer to submit your session via an online form, please CLICK HERE!

Fishing for Fresh Ideas in San Diego

Rachael Faust is a JFKU museum studies graduate student. Previous to her academic studies, Rachael worked at the University Art Gallery at UCSD and at the Portland Art Museum. Since moving to the Bay Area, she has volunteered at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and has been an intern at SFMOMA and the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle.

By Rachael Faust

After completing my first year at John F. Kennedy University, I spent the summer coping with the fact that I would soon be faced with the daunting task of undertaking a thesis project. Summer came and went, and at the end, I found myself without a revelation of what this dynamic topic would be.

As fall quarter quickly approached and as people began to inquire about my amazingly innovative thesis topic, I quickly devised plan B: crashing the 2009 Western Museums Association annual conference in San Diego where I hoped to find a veritable assortment of fresh ideas and topics just waiting for further exploration. Plan B turned out to be far more effective than plan A (waiting for a revelation). I encourage my fellow grads who are still on plan A to stop waiting and quickly sign up for a museum conference.

Of all the conferences I could attend, I chose WMA because of the interesting and diverse session topics and the manageable size and length of the conference (the student discount price was also rather alluring). A preconference workshop titled, “Navigating New Media In Collections without Going Adrift,” caught my attention because my current studies focus on collections management and I have become particularly interested in the care and preservation of time-based media works.

San Diego. Image courtesy of Lydia Johnson.

The presenters for this session included registrars from MOMA and LACMA as well as LA MOCA’s media exhibition technician and an LA based freelance media specialist. I hoped that the information they presented in this session as well as the questions raised by the museum professionals in attendance would point to areas that needed further investigation (read: my fingers were crossed in hopes that they had an extraordinary thesis topic for me).

The preconference workshop not only gave me a handful of possible areas to research that could lead to relevant thesis topics, but also gave me an opportunity to test out a few of my own ideas.

• Is it possible for museums to share or loan exhibition media equipment to one another?
• How are museum staff being trained to handle, install, preserve, and repair media works and their related equipment?
• What happens when artists don’t want to migrate their media-based artwork to newer formats? The work will eventually die. Should museums collect works with such short life spans? Do museums continue to store the remains of the dead artwork?

I was able to ask these questions and others to a captive, knowledgeable audience that I may not have had access to otherwise; the dialogue I enjoyed with museum professionals at WMA could not have been easily facilitated on my own.

In the proceeding days at the conference, I ran into several of the speakers, and they all went out of their way to stop me and say, “hey, I was thinking about your questions and….” Everyone I introduced myself to at the conference was excited that I was a student and was eager to learn about my potential thesis work.

The WMA conference exposed me to new ideas, expanded ideas I had already been tinkering with, and provided access to museum professionals from a diverse range of museums. I left the conference with a direction for my thesis work and at least a dozen business cards of museum people who said they would be more than happy for me to contact them in the future.

Engaging Diverse Audiences

Margaret Kadoyama's thirty years in the museum profession embrace extensive experience in audience development, community involvement and education strategic planning.

by Margaret Kadoyama

I was fortunate enough to attend the recent WMA conference in San Diego.   The conference provided at least one significant outcome for me — the discovery of a new report on engaging diverse audiences from the Japanese American National Museum, published in August 2009.

I attended a session on programming for Latino audiences.  The session, Museum Mission and Audience: Tips from Collaborations with Latino Communities, was moderated by Elizabeth Morin from Youth Arts and Education for the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

The presenters were Lisa Sasaki from the Japanese American National Museum, Lorraine Yglesias from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and David J. de la Torre from La Plaza de Cultura y Artes.   The session provided many great tools and tips for engaging Latino audiences, from David de la Torre’s articulate and compelling list of strategic issues (focus on mission, diversification of board and staff, marginalization, and cultural insensitivity, among others) to Lorraine Yglesias’s focus on marketing.

Lorraine shared some great resources, including the tip to subscribe to email reports from www.mediapost.com, which provides current information on marketing for different audience segments, including Latino audiences.

Lisa Sasaki shared tips from the JANM’s Boyle Heights project, and included information on museum attendance before, during and after the project.  Lisa also shared information about a white paper that JANM recently published called The Cultural Museum 2.0: Engaging Diverse Audiences in America.  It is available to download at http://www.janm.org/projects/innovation/.

The white paper is the result of a three year project, funded by The James Irvine Foundation, in which JANM was able to holistically reassess itself and its relationship with its audiences.  I read through it and found it articulate and very timely, focusing on the issues that culturally specific museums are grappling with right now.

The section on essential questions was particularly significant.  During the course of the project, the Museum began looking closely at the interests, wants and needs of its potential audiences.  According to the report (pages 12-13), the Museum addressed questions such as:

• To what extent is the visitor experience influenced by cultural or ethnic self-identification?
• What is the relevance of the Museum to younger, multi-ethnic audiences?
• How can the Museum develop programming to engage and sustain these audiences?
• How can the Museum engage new audiences while sustaining and satisfying its current constituency?
• What impact does engaging these audiences have on the ability for the Museum to sustain itself in the future?

These essential questions mirror concerns voiced by many museums, and the report goes on to include the results of the project’s research and recommendations to address these issues.  It is timely and relevant.  I teach the JFKU Museums and Communities course, and this will definitely be required reading for the spring M&C class!

Morning Coffee and On-Line Metrics

By Susan Spero

Susan Spero

As I sit with my cup of coffee this morning and think through yesterday’s tour de force by Seb Chan,  I too realize that like a tweet on #sfmetrix stating that a tornado of ideas was spinning through the tweeter’s mind, mine too feels like it has been hit by a storm.

Tremendous kudos are in order for the organizers for sponsoring a great day:  the National Arts Marketing Project, Theatre Bay Area, American Express, The San Francisco Foundation, the Wallace Foundation,  SFMOMA, AAM Museum and Technology, Museum Computer Network, WMA, along with other organizations and certain individuals.

The star of the day was Seb Chan who literally held the podium for the entire day showing how the team at Powerhouse Museum (http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/) have, through time, built a smart online system.

Their considered online philosophy and care has given them results:  the Powerhouse collection has been pushed to the forefront of their visitor’s online experience. A larger percentage of visitors spend time on pages that have to do with the collection more than with any other offerings.  Their visitors engage and use the collections information available: from the fabric swatches for creating a new issue of the designs or even as insights into objects for an ebay transaction (buying or selling, who knows).  The Powerhouses’s willingness to share incomplete material from their collections data base has even triggered new knowledge about the collection based on interested visitors sharing what they know.

Seb walked us through the choices their producers and in-house developers make as they consider open options for looking at the collection. Simple things like visitor language tags, and statements of significance as to why and object is important help make the objects relevant for an online visitor (scroll down on the link and browse through these amazing book dresses).

Over and over Seb implied that the Powerhouse philosophy is to listen, learn and seek ways to understand how their audience uses and/or wants to use their collection.  The team constantly wonders: What is the relevance of the collection and how can digital tools let us serve that need?

Go to where the audience is already living, is a key phrase for those who promote social software, and the Powerhouse museum understood this idea from the get-go.  They were the first museum on the Flickr Commons, and by putting their Tyrell Collection of  historic photographs of Sydney on board early, they increased awareness of the Powerhouse museum with the community that cares about photography.  What intrigued me is that this intense audience-interest in photography online has had an impact on the curatorial choices the Powerhouse Museum is making; they are going to (or have) hired a curator that can support the photographic collection.

Additionally, Seb noted that, at least in his mind, curators now and in the future need the skill sets to be able to work in the digital realm. In fact as part of their official curatorial responsibilities all  Powerhouse curators blog.  The web is a communication platform and everyone on staff needs to know how to use it to help audiences connect with museum resources.

The afternoon session was a geek’s dream in that it focused on the many metric systems that can be used to analyze just who uses your website and how they use it.  What was most telling though was how Seb admitted up front that many of the numbers tell you nothing when thrown out as just numbers.

Seb Chan, Head of Digital, Social & Emerging Technologies, Powerhouse Museum at the podium at SFMOMA

The key, as with all statistics, is that you know how to read them so they can influence future actions.  Find patterns over time.    So, for example, is there an upward trend when you open an exhibition or open up registrations for summer camps?  Is there a downward trend on holidays (usually, weekends are evidently down for all internet users: guess what we read while we are at work).  And look at how others in your area are doing:  if a competing institution has a sudden spike in their numbers and yours are flat, can you figure out why and how that happens.

You want to know how many people touched your content.  Let the analytics help you understand this.   If not already known, concepts like dwell time, bounce rate, and ISP logs are now a part of the mindset of every listener in the Friday’s room .  Dwell time measures how long visitors stay at your site, but even then those numbers have issues since you can only measure how long someone was at the second to last page they were on while visiting your site as there is no way  (yet?) to account for how long a person is on the last landed page of a session.  So you could discover that the average time spent on your site is four minutes, but who knows what amount of time passed when visitors finally found that great educational video you produced. Bounce rate is how quickly someone is in or out of your site; you want bounce rate to be low on education pages, but high if you are buying tickets for an event (get in and get the sale done quickly).

And ISP logs help you gain a finer grain view of your visitors, although the privacy invasion is real and alive on the web;  you can be tracked for where you’ve been browsing, and while I have always understood this, Seb’s reminder made me pause.

One of the most solid pieces of advice Seb offered is for institutions to use freeware for online analytics, but PAY someone to help you customize your specific number crunching.  You need to understand what the numbers mean, and HOW they will impact your future behavior   The twitter #sfmetrix site notes that there were tons of free “Kewl Tools” out there for the using (search twitter for #sfmetrix and you can read through the tweets of the day).

There were many big take-away thoughts:

1. Beta Test:  Don’t hesitate to beta test your site putting it online sooner than later: it doesn’t have to be finished before you go live.  In fact some of the things you learn that are most valuable are when you go live and real visitors are using it. Seb thinks we should also try to work the same beta testing for some exhibition efforts.

2. Be Adept Enough to be Relevant:  Web thinking, with its open, speed driven approach needs to work backwards into how our institutions function. Remember the photography curator story developing from increased interest built in Flickr commons.

3. And finally: Note to self.  Scour the Powerhouse’s web site.  I mean really look at it very carefully.  There is much to learn about collections access and smart web design.

Lastly, Seb has a blog that presents many of the ideas and projects seen yesterday: it is a great resource.

Others of you were there. What are some of your biggest take-aways? And those of you who were not, any thoughts on collections access or museum metrics? Great examples or challenges in practice?

Rockin’ the Mint: WMA in the House

The vaults downstairs at the Mint were lit up and the spaces were packed.

Last night in San Francisco Standing Ovation productions put on a huge party and fundraiser for The Mint Project.

Click here to see a lot of familiar Bay Area museum faces who are working on the Mint Project — many of whom were in attendance at last night’s event, including Nina Simon, Debbie Frieden, WMA’s own Susan Spero and Ed Prohaska and, of course, Erik Christoffersen, Director and Master of Ceremonies.

Gypsy McFelter, Development, The Mint Project, James G. Leventhal, Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley, CA, Susan Spero, JFKU Museum Studies and advisor to the Mint Project, Elida Zelaya, Executive Director, WMA and Ed Prohaska, Monterey Bay Aquarium and advisor to the Mint Project.

Also in attendance from the museum world were Kelly Brisbois and Kevin Consey, formerly of BAM/PFA now leading the life of an international scholar, adjunct professor in Curatorial Practice at CCA and nature activist.  Lots of other familiar friends were there, including Leah Garchik and her husband Jerry, but we are just focused on the Museum folks here.

This is a truly awesome project in scope scale and implication.  The whole event felt very San Francisco.  To quote one of the evening’s honorees Paul Kanter of the Jefferson Starship, San Francisco is “49 sq miles surrounded by reality.”

Jefferson Starship wrapped up the show

“Jump and the net will appear.”

By Kristen Olson

Risk.

When I was 10 and he was 14, my older brother would follow me around wanting to play Risk. Ten-year-old me would shriek, “NO. It is boring. It takes forever. I never win.”

I literally feared Risk, (conveniently brought to you by Hasbro), because I did not want to fail.

On Saturday, May 30, 2009, I went to the Helzel Colloquium, “Risk and Reality” hosted by the John F. Kennedy University museum studies department. Walking in, I expected the day to be filled with cloudy conversations just out of reach, but all about defining risk. I expected us all to be encouraged to take more risks in our professional lives to benefit the field; you know, heady conference-y type stuff that I would put in my back pocket and let gestate until I would need to use it later. Smartly, organizer Susan Spero (with Brianna Cutts and Gail Anderson) pushed past the diffuse toward two goals of the day: understanding and tools. We’d all walk out with a clearer understanding of risk, as well as gain – or just see – new tools to use when confronting or initiating something institutionally (or personally, or field-wide) risky. This was one of those days when I wanted to go right back into the office and get to work. Exciting stuff. I hope to post this entry, then invite others in attendance today to add their two cents.

Though I’m still processing, I’ve realized how personal risk-taking is. Everyone has different levels of comfort, and as Robert Garfinkle from the Science Museum of Minnesota appropriately posited, almost everyone feels like they take a good amount of risk in their lives. How many would characterize themselves as complete sticks-in-the-mud in all aspects of their life? We all have our own comfort level, and sit in our own specific platform to allow for creative freedom. I, for example, feel very risky writing this blog entry. I fear harsh critique by those in the field more experienced and smarter that I. I am not quite comfortable having my words on unlimited display. I fear future-me, looking back and thinking, “oh geez, you really rambled there, didn’t you?” However, the way to make a break from that limiting behavior is to just jump in, I think. The benefits outweigh the detractors. Anyway, enough about me.

Well, not really. Jonathan Katz, CEO of Cinnabar, said this very short sentence early on in the day: “It is not personal.” I’ve heard it before from colleauges, and I’m still trying to wrap my arms around it, mostly because it is a break from how I think about my career. I care and am passionate about museums. I’ll venture an easy guess, and say we all are. I take it personally when I hear a harsh critique about the place I spend my days. I wince when I see cell phone commercials that have someone in a gallery…but the person is texting. (I should be happy they are in the gallery, right?) Is that a risk I shouldn’t be taking? Should I take myself out of the equation when thinking about taking a professional risk? (Here I go being diffuse.) Like I said, I’m still processing.

Thoughts that are still rolling around in my head and in my notebook:

1. The disconnect between feeling and cognition. (My gut says yes, my brain says “are you ******* kidding me?”)
2. Risk takes tenacity.
3. Risk takes patience.
4. “It is not personal.”
5. Know what you don’t know.
6. Make plain your risk factor: if it is fear of the unknown, be okay with that. Own your risk factors. Be authentic.
7. Change happens on the fringes; museums used to be on the fringes. Some still are, and have that freedom.
8. There has to be a strong goal in order for risk to be worth it. (Risk without reason is silly.)

So I ask you, dear readers, what are your risk factors? What nets need to be in place before you jump? When did you take a risk and it failed? How long did it take you to admit it? When did you take a risk and it was a wild success? How long did it take you to admit it?

Kristen Olson is a second year masters student in museum studies at JFKU, and the Academic and Educational Technology Liaison at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. She is laughing while writing this in the third person. She blogs irregularly at koko500.wordpress.com and rambles more often on twitter.