Rights and Repro Discussion at the Gilcrease in Tulsa

By Michelle Maxwell

The gardens at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, OK

Recognized as one of the nation’s premier museums, Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum features some of the finest and most-renowned collection of art, artifacts, and historical archives that document and depict the American experience. The Museum is a national treasure that generations of supporters have been proud to call their own.

I came on board the Gilcrease in July 2008 when the University of Tulsa and the City of Tulsa entered into an historic partnership to begin a new chapter in the life of the Gilcrease Museum.

In its new role as steward of the Museum and its collection, TU is leveraging its nationally recognized academic expertise in history of the American West, art history, anthropology and archaeology, law, management, and marketing to propel Gilcrease into a new era. Security and protection of the collection are important parts of our stewardship. Today, many museums are facing the challenges of maintaining current operations with a dwindling budget.

Protecting the collections includes not just the physical collection but also the intellectual property rights of that collection. The digital age has changed the rights and reproduction process making it much more complicated than it was in the ‘old’ days. Because of confusing, sometimes contradictory issues regarding intellectual property rights, many rights and repro staff are scrambling to keep up with the digital age. Registrars, curators, rights and reproduction coordinators, photographers, and collection’s managers have voiced a clear and growing need for reliable and understandable guidance on rights and reproduction issues.

The Gilcrease Museum is organizing a webcast that will feature two of the leading rights and reproduction attorneys from across the nation who will address some of these issues. This first webcast will be held in late February. If you are interested and would like more information, please contact me directly:

Michelle Maxwell, Rights & Reproduction

Gilcrease Museum

michelle-maxwell@utulsa.edu

(918) 596-2788 (918) 596-2770 fax

David Porter Presentation about #wma09 at #mcn2009

By James G. Leventhal and David Porter

Click here to viewDavid Porter at #MCN2009 Talking about #wma09David Porter’s presentation to the Museum Computer Network annual meeting in Portland this past Friday. THANK YOU, MCN for inviting WMA to be a part!  The following questions were asked:

Slide from Porter's Presentation ot the Museum Computer Network Conference Attendees in Portland 2009

• Describe the purpose, size, and topical scope of the conference.
• Describe the attendees, making an attempt to capture their occupations, roles, ages, experience level, interests, and the extent to which they engage with each other.
• What were some of the highlights of the conference for you? Best sessions? Best conversations? Most interesting person you met? Feel free to describe the top sessions in as much detail as you’d like.
• What were some of the takeaways from the conference? Did you resolve to act on something you heard there? Did you share information about the conference with colleagues (either inside or outside of your institution)?
• What would you change about the conference, if you could? (Keep this positive. One or two ideas only: we don’t want to alienate conference organizers from other meetings!)
• Was there a conference backchannel? Can you describe it? Did you participate in it?
• Would you attend again? How frequently?
• What was the cost of the conference (and of travel/lodging). Would you consider the conference good value for money?

And the other participants on the panel included:

TED – Nik Honeysett
CAA – Beth Harris and Steven Zucker
WebWise – Diane Zorich
SxSW – Paco Link
MW – Bruce Wyman
SI2.0 – Nancy Proctor
AAM – Douglas Hegley
AFTA – David Green
THATCamp – Beth Harris and Steven Zucker

Thanks for the invite, Susan Chun and MCN!  This is such a great way for us all to keep up evaluative process as we maintain a rolling assessment of the value of “carbon-based conferences.”

Free, Shared, Online Tools for Museums

by Allyson Lazar (disclosure: I moderated this session)

Follow Allyson on Twitter

Technology seems to be a key buzz word in the museum world these days. Many people are still a little tech-shy, but that changes day by day. But while people may feel less afraid or daunted by the idea of online technologies, they still aren’t always quite sure what to do with them. The session on free, shared, online tools at last week’s WMA conference introduced some of the ways that Internet technologies can help with everyday projects in museums such as digitizing collections and curating and developing exhibitions and sharing information with the public.

Follow Lynn on Twitter

Lynn Bethke of the brand new Museum of Culture and Environment at Central Washington University opened the session with a brief overview of the types and range of tools that would be discussed and then demonstrated how several of these free, shared, online tools help her in her daily quest to digitize her collection. Some of the software she uses includes: Picasa and the GIMP for photo editing; IrfanView for batch photo processing and Kompozer for web page editing. Her presentation can be viewed here.

Follow Sharon on Twitter

Next Sharon Leon, Director of Public Projects for the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University spoke about one of CHNM’s projects, Omeka. Omeka at its most basic is a web publishing platform–like a blog–for museum collections that can be used as a research tool. However, that is not really doing Omeka justice. Omeka allows museums to create detailed, rich pages about collections objects, including text, photographs and videos, that can be used to develop online exhibitions. And because Omeka adheres to strict metadata standards, searching for information and keeping the information portable are simple tasks. Sharon’s presentation can be viewed here.

Bob Ketner, Virtual Community Manager for the Tech Virtual, is also working on developing

Follow Bob on Twitter

exhibitions–only while he does the developing in a virtual space, ultimately the exhibitions are created in a physical space. The Tech Virtual is a “collaborative online design platform for developing museum content”–a virtual testing ground for exhibition development and evaluation. The Tech Virtual makes use of Second Life–where only a person’s imagination limits what can be designed and built–as a virtual space for building potential new exhibits. Bob’s presentation can be viewed here and in addition he also has a list of resources available here.

Along with describing the various tools they use, the three panelists also addressed such questions as, “What does free really mean?” All of the software that they discussed is free to download, free to use. Space for hosting information and maintenance or customization of databases, software, websites, etc is not free–but it can still be cheap. And just in case words like “free” or “cost-effective” aren’t enough to get your board on board with these technologies, the panelists also pointed out that these tools allow for both evaluation and data collection–both key to the metrics that are so important to funders these days.

Although it wasn’t mentioned much directly in any of the presentations, online social networking was also very present in the session. Sharon was “tweeting” the session on Twitter using the tag #wma09 for easy searching. In one particularly great moment, James Leventhal in the audience asked about a creative commons plugin for Omeka and Sharon responded by tweeting that suggestion to the Omeka development team who were in their afternoon meeting. Talk about instant gratification!

Both Bob and Sharon mentioned that their projects are currently looking for volunteers as well; the Tech Virtual is looking for museums who are interested in making use of this virtual workshop for developing content and Omeka is looking for volunteer museums for a new hosting program that is going into Beta–that is, in addition to simply offering the software, CHNM is now offering to host museum websites that make use of the Omeka software. Anyone reading this post who is interested in either of these programs, please visit Bob and Sharon’s websites and contact them!

Keeping Staff Afloat

By James G. Leventhal

Rosalind Bedell

On Tuesday, I was lucky enough to be invited to be a part of a session entitled Sustainable Work Practices: Keeping the Staff Afloat at #wma09 organized by Rosalind Bedell, Human Resources and Volunteer Director, Nevada Museum of Art and Program Committee Co-chair for WMA, San Diego.

In difficult economic times how do you keep the staff sustained and on board? This session looks at alternative staffing models including part-time work, job sharing, working from home, as well as the problem of burn out. In addition, staff spends time texting, on the internet and cell phones. Should this multitasking be incorporated into the work day? When and how much is acceptable? Are these ways of working models for the future?

I started the session off talking about the new work model — weisure — 24/7, total interconnectedness and the impact of the use of social media as part of a plan for institutional enhancement and the impact of organizational horizontilization.

Increasingly, it’s not clear what constitutes work and what constitutes fun [be it]…in an office or at home or out in the street…all of these worlds that were once very distinct are now blurring together.

- Sociologist Dalton Conley, New York University

In the non-profit sphere we have all been doing the work of three people for a long time, and now with new technology we can do the work of five or more.  But this might not be good.

Regina A. Petty, Esq of Fisher & Phillips

I purposefully made an effort to “fill the room with joy,” to quote one of the other panelists and to help, in that way, to prepare for the presentations to follow by Valerie Nelson, Director, Human Resources, Autry National Center; and Regina A. Petty, Attorney, Fisher & Phillips LLP.

Valerie Nelson talked about how the Autry has navigated these difficult times and Regina Petty spoke about in a focused and detailed manner about the issues every organization is presently dealing with:

• Hiring freeze and pay freeze
• Compensation reductions and furloughs
• Voluntary programs
• Reductions in force

Petty’s presentation was incredibly helpful and really well received.  Her presentation can be viewed on SlideShare here.  She presented daunting facts like, “People furloughed or working part-time rose from 3.7 million in June 2008 to 6.5 million in June 2009.”

Valerie Nelson and Rosalind Bedell during Regina Petty's presentation

Petty also drew particular attention to the legal issues around furloughs, noting that employees are strictly prohibited from performing any work during the furlough period.  This includes checking work-related email and voice mail.  Regarding social networks, and their impact now, Petty cautioned that an employer’s Social Networking Policy:

• Prohibit unlawful harassment/ discrimination
• Prohibit use of Company’s Proprietary, Confidential Information without express authorization
• Confirm no expectation of privacy where Company-provided system or e-mail
• Prohibit use of employee work e-mail address for social networking account

Thanks, Rosalind.  It was a great session.

Were you there?  What was your take-away?  How do we continue that sense of dialogue — finding encouragement and constructive advice during the challenging financial time in the industry, indeed most every industry in the United States?  Share your thoughts, please.

Touring the World, Virtually

View of the Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey from the vantage of the minaret, a piece of a spherical panorama. Photo © Gross Brothers Media LLC

As part of TechLab at #wma09, the Gross brothers of Gross Brothers Media presented on their amazing virtual recreations of real-world spaces, places, objects and paintings.

Here’s what they have to say:

We are very excited to be here in San Diego with the Western Museum Association.  For the past few years we have been shifting our focus a bit from historic architecture to museum and gallery spaces.

We are participating in a very exciting project with the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to digitally bring the Kress Collection – about 3000 works distributed among almost 100 museums across the United States – together on the Kress website.  Visitors can view the Collection by repository or artist, and in a dozen museums that hold the largest sets of the Collection, visitors can view high-resolution spherical (360×180) panoramas with “hot-spots” that link to zoomable high-resolution scans of the artwork.  Sculpture is also viewable as “object files” that allow the viewer to rotate the pieces around as if they were on a virtual lazy susan.

One of the most intriguing features of the panoramic presentation is that it preserves the intent and logical sequence of the exhibition, and allows side-by-side comparisons.  The intellectual and aesthetic intent of the curator is preserved, which is especially useful for scholars and students.

Please visit our website for links to some of our latest projects, and feel free to contact us with any questions you may have or if you are interested in creating a virtual museum of your own.  Also, we wanted to thank our colleague Forrest Wittenmeier at Sweet and Baker Insurance Brokers in San Francisco for introducing us to the WMA community.

To view the Gross Brothers walking tour of Al-Haram Al-Sharif click here.  The Gross Brothers also worked on a Best Practices Guide to Digital Panoramic Photography — [pdf] for the Institute of Advanced Technology in the Arts and Humanities (IATH), University of Virginia, Charlottesville Society of Architectural Historians (SAH)

The Gross brothers have served as Co-Directors of the Williams College Virtual Architecture Project since its inception in 2002, under the direction of Professor Eugene J. Johnson, Amos Lawrence Professor of Art. The result of this project is a unique collection of over 1400 high-resolution spherical panoramas that represent many of the greatest monuments of Western and Islamic architecture.

Michael and Barry have been working with digital panoramic photography since the 1990’s. Their photography of art and architecture has been published or displayed at Williams College, Williams College Museum of Art, University of Virginia, University of California, Los Angeles, Saudi Aramco World Magazine, University of South Africa Johannesburg, University of Vienna, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Princeton School of Architecture, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, ARTstor, and others. They have presented their work at Texas A&M University (Fall 2005) and Williams College (Summer 2007).

In 2006, both Michael and Barry were Visiting Fellows at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia under the direction of Professor Bernard Frischer, where they served as project coordinators and editors of the IATH Best Practices Guide to Spherical Panorama Photography – a guide to the creation of photographic virtual reality documentation of World Cultural Heritage Sites, commissioned by ARTstor and the Society of Architectural Historians. Gross Brothers Media LLC was founded by Michael and Barry Gross in July, 2006.

On-line Engagement and Metrics (#WMA09, Monday at 11:00 a.m.)

John Maccabee

One of the first sessions to kick of #WMA09 will be A1 Metrics Of Success: How to Measure & Account for On-line Social Engagement for Museums on Monday morning at eleven o’clock (right after the Keynote by Bob Welch).  The  panel will explore the intersection of sincere, social, on-line engagement and mission-driven value
assessment. The presenters are:

• Stephanie Almeida, Independent Museum Consultant
• Tim Hart, Head of Institutional Research, J. Paul Getty Trust
• John Maccabee, Founder & Principal, City Mystery: A Gaming Company
• Melissa Rosengard, Principal, Vision Dot Org

The conversation will be moderated by James G. Leventhal, Director of Development & Marketing, Judah L. Magnes Museum.

Tim Hart from the Getty will start.  Hart’s presentation will focus on mission-driven metrics.  And his presentation will be followed by John Maccabee.  John will take that concept one step further by presenting on his successful practice of developing Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) for museums.  These games bring together on-line communities and create a whole new level of engagement on the ground.

What are ARGs?

Below is a summary by Georgina Goodlander of the Smithsonian American Art Museum on John’s last project “Ghosts of a Chance:”

"...everybody play the game..."

In the fall of 2008, The Smithsonian American Art Museum  (SAAM) hosted an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) titled “Ghosts of a Chance.” This was the first ARG in the world to be hosted by a museum. The game offered both new and existing museum audiences a novel way of engaging with the collection in its Luce Foundation Center for American Art, a visible storage facility that displays more than 3,300 artworks in floor-to-ceiling glass cases.  ARGs are immersive gaming experiences that “deliberately blur the line between the game and the real world. Players investigate the world of the game using the same tools with which they interact with the real world such as websites, email, telephone conversations and even in-person discussions with actors playing game characters.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_(game), referenced 15 September 2008]. Ostensibly, “Ghosts of a Chance” (ghostsofachance.com) invited gamers to create objects and mail them to the museum for an ‘exhibition’ curated by two game characters posing as employees. But the ‘game within the game’ was also a challenge to uncover

clues to the narrative that binds those objects, and to investigate the way objects embody histories. The game culminated on October 25 with a series of six scavenger-hunt-like “quests” designed for players of all ages. Over 6,000 players participated online and 244 people came for the onsite event.

At this Monday’s session, John will start to give a peak at his next, multi-institutional venture Pheon.  Pheon.  Pass it on!

Will We Be Going Inworld?

Then after spending time rollicking on the green, playing games and moving in and out of the matrix, we are going to move headlong down the rabbit hole, and explore Second Life with Melissa Rosengard and Stephanie Almeida.

A Wide-View of the Landing Spot Area at the Frank Lloyd Wright Museum in Second Life

Starting from the basics and some intros, together Melissa and Stephanie will showcase just how far along the world of museums and education are in Second Life.  There’s a “museum” in Second Life dedicated to Frank LLoyd Wright, with FLLW sites fully recreated.

And this fall, Linden Lab, the Makers of Second Life and Second Life Work announced the first statewide rollout of a virtual learning environment in the world.  The Transforming Undergraduate Education Program, at the University of Texas System, recently awarded a grant to fund the initiation of a pioneering statewide virtual learning community of students, faculty, researchers and administrators in Second Life, that offers an innovative, low-cost approach to undergraduate instruction. (source: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/learninginworld/blog/2009/09/15/the-first-statewide-rollout-of-a-virtual-world-learning-environment-the-university-of-texas-system-in-second-life.  To read more click here.)

Joining Forces for Sustainability: Balboa Park Cultural Partnership (#WMA09, Monday at 1:35 pm)

How do we make it through these challenging times with museums and historical societies closing their doors or implementing hiring freezes after a sustained period of expansion?  One approach is to join forces.

To quote from one of the underlying themes of the work occurring in the San Francisco Bay Area as part of the National Arts Marketing Program:

As more and more advertisements try to capture your prospective patron’s attention, it‘s becoming clear that it is no longer enough to just do more. We have to start marketing smarter because, honestly, there’s only so much that an arts organization can do by itself to gain a foothold. We have to collaborate.

On Monday, October 26, 2009 the afternoon session of the first full day on the Western Museums Association meeting in San Diego will include a session to discuss the formation and strategic planning of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership (BPCP) and describe its activities including the Balboa Park Learning Institute, business services, advocacy, sustainability, marketing, public relations, governance, parking and on-line collaborative.

Gail Anderson

Presenters: David A. Lang, Executive Director, Balboa Park Cultural Partnership; Paige Simpson, Director, Balboa Park Learning Institute; and Rory Ruppert, Collective Business Operations Manager and Director of the Balboa Park Sustainability Program will be joined by Gail Anderson, President, Gail Anderson and Associates as moderator.

Foundational work in the creation of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership has occurred with two studies:

• The Soul of San Diego (2006)
• Keeping Balboa Park Magnificent in its Second Century (2008)

David A. Lang, Executive Director, Balboa Park Cultural Partnership

As an overview Executive Director David A. Lang summarizes BPCP’s history:

Established as a nonprofit organization in 2003, the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership is the collaborative body and collective voice for 24 diverse arts, science and cultural institutions in Balboa Park whose 500 trustees, 7,000 volunteers, and 3,500 staff serve more than 6.5 million members and visitors annually. Our mission is to enrich the cultural life in and beyond San Diego by facilitating collaboration among Balboa Park’s cultural institutions and with the community; to enable the cultural institutions to achieve their full individual and collective potential; and, to preserve, enhance, and make accessible the arts, science, and cultural assets of Balboa Park for present and future generations. The Partnership facilitates collaboration in areas such as education, operations, governance and advocacy, marketing and PR, and sharing and communication.

While neither part of the session, nor really a part of the Western Museums Association, per se, another amazing aspect of the collaborative work at play in San Diego, Rich Cherry heads up the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC).

Cherry is more focused on the Museum Computer Network (MCN), amongst other professional organizations.  In fact the upcoming 37th Annnual MCN conference later this year has the working theme of “Museum Information, Museum Efficiency: Doing More with Less!”  And Rich Cherry and the Balboa Park Online Collaborative helped bring together the #sfmetrix session WMA co presented last August at the SFMOMA.

Legler Benbough, Philanthropist (1909-1998)

The Balboa Park Online Collaborative is made possible in large part by the The Legler Benbough Foundation.  For many decades, the Benbough family helped shape the City of San Diego. Legler Benbough’s father, Percy Benbough, founded the Benbough Mortuary and was mayor of San Diego from 1935 until his death in 1942.  Legler Benbough, as a businessman, civic leader, philanthropist and rancher was an important contributor to the civic and cultural life of the City throughout his lifetime. He expanded the mortuary business after his father’s death to become owner of the largest group of mortuaries in the United States.  With no direct heirs, Mr. Benbough made a decision in 1985 to establish a charitable Foundation that would promote his interest in helping improve the quality of life for San Diegans.

The Foundation was initially funded with proceeds of business operations. In 1987, the Benbough ranch in Rancho Santa Fe was transferred to the Foundation and sold. In 1999, the principal funding of the Foundation occurred on the settlement of Mr. Benbough’s estate.  As of December 31, 2008, the grants from the Foundation to date totalled Twenty Million Eight Hundred one Thousand three Hundred thirteen Dollars ($20,801,313) and the assets on hand net of liabilities were Twenty Nine Million Eight Hundred Fifty Four Thousand Three Hundred and Forty Eight Dollars ($29,854,348). (source: The Legler Benbough Foundation)

San Diego is lucky.  And as many of us know, the best way to cultivate, engage and encourage extraordinary support is to keep friends and donors informed.  But what do you do if there are limited resources?  An extremely important part of the ongoing collaborative experiment is underway in San Francisco — the Bay Area Big List.

According to those who are running the Big List:

In many cities across the country, arts groups have started new experiments in collaborative marketing designed to harness the collective energy of the community. These have helped increase both first-time and return attendance levels for the community at large — essentially raising the tide by working together instead of working against each other.

Later this week in the San Francisco Bay Area there will be free workshops that will focus on how 112 arts organizations of all types have collaborated to form one of the largest “Big List” list cooperatives in the country. The Bay Area Big List, which currently holds information for over 430,000 unique arts-going households, is fast becoming one of the largest list co-op programs in the country.

This collaborative model, in which companies gather their mailing lists together in a centralized pool to be cross-referenced, checked for accuracy and tagged with demographic information, allows arts organizations to market smarter, reach new arts-hungry patrons and get a higher return on investment.

Each convening will feature a panel of local arts organizations and Big List administrative staff discussing the impetus of the Big List, the other collaborative efforts that have emerged in conjunction with that program, and the future of collaborative marketing in the Bay Area.  Panelists will include representatives from SFMOMA, ACT, Berkeley Rep, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Oakland East Bay Symphony, and more.  A full description and the RSVP form (required) can be found at www.theatrebayarea.org/tide.

The free sessions will be

• Thursday, October 22 (San Francisco), 10AM-12PM (SFMOMA, Wattis Theatre)
• Thursday, October 22 (South Bay), 3PM-5PM (San Jose Repertory Theatre)
• Friday, October 23 (East Bay), 10AM-12PM (Aurora Theatre, Berkeley)
• Friday, October 23 (North Bay), 2PM-4PM (Cinnabar Theatre, Petaluma)

It is programs such as these above that help the big arts organizatiosn equal as much as they do the small ones.  Everybody benefits.  And what’s this year’s theme for #WMA09?  “A Rising Tide,” right.  All boats, people.  All boats.

And these sessions in the San Francisco Bay Area about the Bay Area Big List?  Their theme/title?  Raising the Tide.  All boats, people.  All boats.

See you in San Diego!

(Raising the Tide is part of the NAMP/Wallace Marketing Workshops series. The National Arts Marketing Project (NAMP) is a program of Americans for the Arts and is sponsored nationally by American Express. In the Bay Area, these free workshops are further supported and developed with a grant from The Wallace Foundation in partnership with The San Francisco Foundation, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund and Theatre Bay Area.)

The Mythological Museum Visitor – The Young Cosmopolitan

By Adam Rozan

The author at the Oakland Museum of California, showcasing and Creative Time presents Mark Tribe's Port Huron Project 5: The Liberation of our People.

The Targeting Young Cosmopolitans in Museums study was born out of a 2009 session of the Association of Midwest Museums conference entitled, The Next Generation: Targeting Young Audiences in an Uncertain Economic Climate.

The report was designed to measure the energies involved in young cosmopolitan programming by examining 170  museums, varying in size, affluence and scope.

The term “young cosmopolitan” describes a hybrid generation born out of Generation X (those born between 1967 and 1977) and Generation Y (those born between 1978 and 1993). They “are exceptionally social, ethnically diverse, college educated, technologically savvy, and have a creative and open mindset.” Alexandra Gregg, co-author of the Targeting Young Cosmopolitans in Museums survey, wrote earlier in a post on WestMuse:

YoCo – young cosmopolitan – because it focuses more on a psychographic than on specifically drawn lines of age, gender, etc. YoCos are the people who are highly social, are all over Facebook and iPhones, and are curious, creative, and cosmopolitan. It’s the people who go to the Hirshhorn’s famous after-hours event in DC, or the Hammer’s Bike Night in LA… But YoCos can still be understood in terms of geography and economics – they tend to gravitate around cities and have a general US buying power of $924 billion.

A recent cover from Time Out New York reads, “You’re smart. Cultured. And you’ve never been to the Rubin?… Museums: The Actually Cool Guide.” Inside the article reads as a tasting menu of New York city’s many museums, highlighting various activities, events and parties held each month targeting this cosmopolitan audience.

Despite such articles, this scene is not the norm across the country, rather the opposite–only 37% of museums that participated in the Targeting Young Cosmopolitans in Museums study offer such programs.

With the key attributes of the YoCos in mind (e.g. highly social, college educated, creative, etc.), why are the other 63% of museums studied in this survey not engaging these audiences? Funding, limited staff time, lack of board support, and “not enough time to organize an effective program to YoCos,” prevailed as the primary reasons provided. Furthermore, 8% of those surveyed felt “this demographic cannot be reached” and accordingly another seven museums provided that this target group was not relevant to their institution. While seven museums are far from a majority, can any institution truly afford to ignore this diverse and knowledgeable audience?

YoCo programming remained the primary responsibility of the education and programming departments for 51% of the study, and sadly, only 7 museums reported “cross-departmental collaboration (primarily between education and marketing),” and only one institution had a “YoCo team with representatives from marketing, events, development, etc.”

The 77% of museums that host YoCo programs reported having clear goals and objectives, and used terms like “attract,” “welcome,” “target,” “reach,” or “increase attendance” to describe some of their goals; another group used “engage” or “educate” to best describe their objectives. Because only 23% of respondents “have or consult a young adult advisory board or related committee,” it is not surprising that some of the museums felt they were not adequately targeting the YoCo audience.

What is to be done with YoCos?

Time Out New York’s article on museums highlights activities such as “behind the scenes tours, lectures, films, and even the quirky B-movie nights,” which are similar to those mentioned by the museums surveyed. These events usually occur at night and are aimed at attracting YoCos to museums. The evenings differ between alcohol and no alcohol, tours to lectures, and so as I have written earlier here at WestMuse:

At first, with young adults the need was to create the parties, and provide the invitation. Now, that they are arriving, and are interested–isn’t this the time to change our programs, exhibitions, and other existing models of activity? Let’s begin to re-think how visitors act and interact inside galleries, and with our collections. Asking what is the role and purpose of exhibitions, and programs, and how our visitors are to use them and participate. Maybe the best place for the deejay is inside the gallery, on a Saturday afternoon, next to the collections?

Rethinking our visitors and the visitor experience is paramount to the successful museum, not just in outreach exercises, but in the delivery of the modern museum visit. What that means is unique to each museum: however, we can no longer avoid the new rules assumed by today’s modern audiences. The lives of YoCos are defined by their digital identities and social and cultural connections with their psychographic interests. The balance between one’s iPhone and one’s personal life has merged, and yet at the same time the need to socialize, learn, and interact has never been more present.

Museum of Modern Art Twitter Sign in to Recommend STRETCH A yoga class at MoMA surrounded by a video installation by the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist.

In many ways we are entering an era focused on experiences. In the 2009 Museum Section of the New York Times, Carol Vogel writes:

Yoga classes and bicycle get-togethers may not be your typical museum fare, but in these rough economic times, anything goes…But lean times are bringing out a pioneering spirit as museum officials strive to develop creative strategies for what is undeniably a new world… Most, if not all are expanding their public program. More than before, institutions big and small have adopted the same mission: to transform once-hushed museums into vibrant cultural centers where the activities go far beyond what’s hanging on the walls.

Today’s economy has given permission to experiment, and has required us to evolve.  Audience development for museums is not by any means a new pursuit, nor is recognizing underserved audiences within our institutions. Moving away from demographic pursuits to psychographics and augmenting our institutions to today’s audiences is necessary to captivate today’s audience and tomorrow’s patrons.

(Note: Special thanks to Kathleen McNally for her assistance with this article!)

Trans-Civic Arts Marketing: 510Arts.com Launch

Four Cities One Web Site

Public/Private/Community Partnership Shines Spotlight on Diversity, Quality, Volume and Accessibility of Arts in the East Bay as one of America’s Highest Per Capita Arts Regions.

By James G. Leventhal

Today there was a press conference to launch the 510Arts.com portal website.  I live in Oakland.  I work in Berkeley and the Western Museums Association has its central office in Berkeley.  Around these parts, there’s the Oakland Museum, the Richmond Art Center and the Berkeley Art Center.  And Emeryville’s opening its annual  Celebration of the Arts tonight.  I’m all about the “510,” I guess.  It’s the local area code.  San Francisco’s is 415 and further east in the growing expanse that is the Bay Area it’s 925, and down on the peninsula, it’s…well, you get the picture.

Irvine and Hewlett Foundations and the EBCF

At the press conference, the cities of Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond announced an unprecedented four-city collaboration that promotes the arts as a “proven catalyst for economic revitalization and community sustainability.”

Each city — Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond — was represented at Oakland’s City Hall this morning, along with a small host of institutional funders.  It was a great kick-off event.  Today’s launch was the culmination of a two-year initiative, with early champions in John Killacky of The San Francisco Foundation, Mary Ann Merker of Berkeley and Steve Huss of Oakland.

It’s funny being a once New-York based transplant, because there are parallels here in what’s known as the San Francisco Bay area that are similar to the relationship between Manhattan and, say, Brooklyn, Queens etc.  And when I was leaving Manhattan some years ago, the Brooklyn and Queens art scenes were really taking off.

Artists and younger, new arrivals were settling in “the outer boroughs.”  Manhattan was too expensive and the art scene felt entrenched.  Arnold Lehman had overseen a significant expansion of the Brooklyn Museum, some years earlier the Sensation exhibition had drawn huge attention and then later the Brooklyn Museum’s social media presence and collections activation through those pipes expanded to be identified as maybe THE leader in the field.

Now the Oakland Museum is gaining in national attention with their successful expansion, thanks in large part to the leadership of Lori Forgarty.  Fogarty recently recruited René de Guzman from SF’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.  One of America’s most promising curators.  The East Bay, as this area is also known, waits with bated breath to see what he will unleash in the new Oakland Museum of California.

Oakland’s Art Murmur gives on the feeling the “scene” is gaining traction.  Berkeley’s theater scene, represented by the Berkeley Rep, Aurora Theater, Central Theater Works and others, is doing things like launching Green Day’s American Idiot.  Berkeley’s own Judah L. Magnes Museum has been curating traveling exhibitions getting national reviews.  The Berkeley Art Center has new leadership in Suzanne Tan.  And Richmond’s East Bay Center for the Performing Arts is developing a new space.  With Pixar Studios expanding in Emeryville, the city’s poised for big things, and it’s been a home for artists for decades.

510Arts.com designer Nicole Neditch

But really, all that’s “old news.”  Soon enough, and if the “portal” gains traction, if you want to know what’s going on right now in the four cities that make up a large portion of what’s known locally as the East Bay, you can now go to 510Arts.com.

The East Bay Culture Corridor is one of the highest per capita arts regions in the nation. This four-city collaboration is believed to be the first of its kind in the US and is designed to serve as a model of forward-thinking, economically and socially viable partnerships that put the arts forward as a proven catalyst for economic development, quality of life and community sustainability.

Wilchar and Sullivan of Emeryville

It’s hoped that with the increased focus on the East Bay Cultural Corridor and the development of this new web portal, it will foster relationships between the diverse arts communities of each city, leverage new audiences and resources for the arts, increase the visibility, accessibility and sustainability of arts communities, leverage new resources for each partner city and benefit local businesses through partnerships with the arts.

Together, the East Bay communities boast:

● One of the highest per capita artist populations in the country with more than 6,000 professional artists calling it home.

● More than 150 languages spoken and many times that number of culturally specific art forms practiced.

● One of the nation’s largest per capita collections of public art.

● For decades East Bay communities have consistently ranked at the top of national city diversity figures and their arts reflect this depth and variety.

● Hundreds of non-profit visual arts, music, dance, theater, culturally specific, multi-disciplinary and innovative organizations from the internationally known to neighborhood programs, education programs and offerings for youth, seniors and others.

● Alameda and Contra Costa Counties are home to 5,532 arts-related businesses that employ 21,477 people

Sanchez and Killacky

Hats off to the funders.  The developed understanding for an East Bay Cultural Corridor and the creation of 510Arts.org, through focus group work with artists, was supported by grants from the East Bay Community Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation and Leveraging Investments in Creativity.

It’s this kind of forward thinking that helps to combat the often entrenched or unmovable ideas of locals.  The Oakland Tribune already ran a piece about the new portal this morning before the launch and wrote, “…wishful thinking that a regional cultural identity will become a lucrative reality.  Besides the 510Arts Web portal, there is no hint of a concrete project or money flowing to any arts organizations.”

Horton and Merker

It’s O.K.  For me, it is the very nature of the not-for-profit and arts professions that they remain eternally optimistic.  In fact, it is the very act of facing a blank canvas and seeing more that can define much of art making.  The same goes too often for keeping cultural organizations afloat today.  And a perfect example is the success of the Oakland Museum’s continued expansion despite the current economic downturn.

Sure, a web site is not going to address the deep-seated issues that consistently present comparative economic challenge to the  decentralized areas that surround and comprise a megalopolis like the San Francisco Bay Area.  It’s the tourism and high real estate value in the center that often keep capital near to the core.  But as Diane Sanchez, Director of Grantmaking and Donor Services for the East Bay Community Foundation is quoted as saying on the Oakland Tribune piece:

…the project was an extension of an ongoing program to help artists become more successful. “This is just one piece,” she said.

That Night's Opening in Emeryville

Really, it is both the effective integration of the use of the 510Arts.com portal, along with an understanding that the portal itself is emblematic of a desire to work effectively across boundaries of commerce and art, and a heartfelt desire for recognition balanced with an understanding for integrity and the need for informed philanthropy.

There have to be other geographic areas that can learn from this kind of collaboration, transcending city lines and arts organization limits.  While these other regions in America may not be able to claim the kind of per-capita artistic concentration cited above, it is still an important collaborative, civic model to explore.

And not just for larger, richer areas like the Twin Cities or Tampa and “St. Pete,” where there must be issues related to limited resources and need for increased exposure for distributed arts offerings.

It is also important for other regions around the nation to consider, like those known to themselves as “Tri-cities” like northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia to “Quad-cities,” like around Davenport, IA.

The Statement of Operating Principals listed on the site makes for a substantial case study and starting point for most any exploration into the arts, civic engagement and economic stimulus.

Are there other places served by the Western Museums Association where you think this kind of approach can help?  I am looking forward to watching this new portal gain traction and, more, watching how this trans-civic collaborative arts and cultural marketing impacts on the individual artists and cultural organizations its been built to serve.

They Called Me Mayer July’s Second Life

By Stephanie Gabrielle Almeida

Click image to see more screen shots from They Called Me Mayer July opening in Second Life

Look no further than the nearest comfy couch or recliner for the future of Museums and Museum exhibitions.

I had the honor of attending a gallery opening at the Tachles Gallery in Second Life for the Mayer July (First Life name:  Mayer Kirshenblatt) exhibition.  I met up with others from across the world – some of the cities represented were Warsaw, New York City, San Francisco and Stockholm.

I looked at vibrant acrylic artwork alongside the other avatars in attendance, and learned the reasons behind each figure represented within the art and each design and symbol in the background of each piece.

I did this from the comfort of my living room wearing a tee shirt, track pants and bare feet with a dog sniffing elbow and an eight year old girl shoving Barbie dolls with broken legs waiting to be snapped back into place into my line of vision every few minutes.

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I learned a little bit about the town of Opatów (Apt, in Yiddish) in Poland.   During the 1930’s, about 10,000 people lived in Apt.   Of that 10,000, more than 6,500 were Jews.   The paintings, which in my opinion could be best described as Jewish Folk Art, were a study of Mayer’s experiences as a child growing up in this town in pre-WWII Poland.  I was transfixed by the use of color and the sheer number of subjects in the works we looked at.

One of the paintings that I think will stay with me forever was called “Synagogue”.  This piece depicted a synagogue with interior walls covered with stained glass windows and beautiful interior paintings including a coat of arms of the twelve tribes of Israel and zodiac signs.  This work actually contains more than one hundred and thirty people (I counted personally!) – many of them carefully painted

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with delightful facial expressions.  There is a holy ark with torah scrolls, a Rabbi, a Cantor and a host of men, women and children attending the service.  The women were separated from the men (so as not to distract them from prayer) and some of the brightest colors in “Synagogue” are found in the clothing that the children are wearing.

Another favorite of mine in this exhibition was called “Shaving the Corpse”.  It depicted more than fifty people all focused on a body outside a cemetery in the center of a village.   The note card that is given when the work is clicked on contained a story about the work.  A rich man in the town had abandoned his religion.  He cut his hair and shaved his beard, wore non-traditional clothing and attended synagogue only once a year.  The man became very ill and during that time his hair and beard grew back.  He soon passed away.  The Rabbi ordained that before the man could be buried, he needed to be groomed back to his cut-and-shaved look.  The reason for this?  God wouldn’t recognize him any other way.

Each work in this wonderful exhibition is a combination of experience, personal recollection and even a lesson in history.  There were a number of times that an avatar in attendance said “wow, I had no idea…” and I feel so strongly that art like this has an important place in every group or culture.

The Second Life exhibition of Mayer’s work was actually a simultaneous presentation of the work.  People in New York City and Warsaw had the opportunity to attend the opening in First Life (affectionately known by many as Real Life).  The images have been shown already at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkley, CA and in Mayer’s hometown in Apt.  They are currently able to be seen in First Life at The Jewish Museum, New York and in the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, Poland.  Some of Mayer’s works will be soon traveling to Amsterdam for an exhibition there as well.

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Of course, if you’re not a world traveler, you can see this exhibition from the comfort of your own home – just like I did – if you are ready to take the leap into a Second Life and join in the culturally rich environment waiting there for you.