As the country rebounds from the COVID-19 pandemic, how are museums doing? Who is coming to museums and why, how does attendance compare to pre-pandemic norms? What are the barriers to visitation? In this Future Chat, AAM’s Elizabeth Merritt chats with guest Susie Wilkening, principal of Wilkening Consulting, about the latest data from the Annual Survey of Museum Goers.

Transcript

Elizabeth Merritt:

Hello and welcome to Future chat. I’m Elizabeth Merritt, Vice President of Strategic Foresight and founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums at the American Alliance of Museums.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with CFM, this is the Alliance’s think tank and research lab for the museum sector, and my job is to help you think about the future and learn some of the skills of applying strategic foresight to your work.

Future Chats are a chance for me to share a piece of recent news from my scanning and explore its implications with you.

Normally, when I do a Future Chat, I look at my scanning feed. I pick a story and I share it, and then I bring on stage an expert to discuss it. Its implications and our topic today is museum data. So I went online looking for a recent news story to anchor our discussion but I couldn’t ignore the fact that swamping everything else in my news feeds is the outcome of the US presidential election.

And the elections already influencing how I think about my work how to help museums and museum people over the next 4 years, what data, we’ll need to support that work. So I started thinking about the connection between data and how the election may affect our work.

And here’s one connection, one thing that stresses people out about the future is uncertainty and its partner, fear. And there are a lot of things up in the air right now and that uncertainty may make us anxious about outcomes, it can actually help to identify what we want to know in order to reduce uncertainty and where we can look for that information.

So, we’re going to ground our chat today in a review of some of the data that we collect and share about museums in their audiences. We’ll start by discussing shifts that have happened over the past several years, including emergence, from the pandemic and we’ll talk about how that data can inform our path forward and even in the uncertainties introduced by the election.

With that preamble, I’m so happy to bring on stage, my valued research colleague, Susie Wilkening. She is principal of Wilkening Consulting, trusted research partner of AAM. She helps us and the museum sector understand people’s attitudes and opinions and expectations about museums notably through the data she collects and interprets from the Annual Survey of Museum-Goers [(ASMG)]. Susie has been doing the ASMG for 9 years, 6 years of that, uh, together with me at AAM.

Susie Wilkening:

Thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.

Elizabeth Merritt:

I think many of us feel a little bit uncertain now about what the next few years will bring, um,

Uh, can you share with me some of your thoughts as a researcher about how what you’re thinking, as you look at the news and how it might affect your work?

Susie Wilkening:

Sure. I mean we are all feeling that sense of uncertainty. I mean that’s not unusual but I think it’s just been exacerbated by the results of the federal elections last week. So I’m a researcher. And, you know what I want to do is I want to wrap my arms around these patterns that we’ve been seeing for some time and also bring in that new information that we got last week to help us understand the path ahead a little bit better.

And so, what I would love to start with is a poll that I created to gauge how all of you are feeling right now about things, So, I think that poll should be about starting.

Here it is. So, thinking about today’s discussion topic…How are you feeling?

And I think you can answer more than one choice here.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes, multiple choice. Pick all that. Apply. And our choices are resolved. Worried, hopeful, was uncertain of the path forward, confused or bewildered, or isolated and alone.

For our results… looking at Susie.

Susie Wilkening:

I don’t I can’t see the results. Can you see the results?

Elizabeth Merritt:

Oh, I can let me tell you what they’re wanting.

Susie Wilkening:

Okay. Yes, please do.

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, so far, our front runner at 35 and a half percent is uncertain of the path, forward followed by worried at about 25%, and trailing behind that is hopeful at 14%. And then running a distant next to last and last are resolved at 9% and isolated and alone at 5%.

Susie Wilkening:

And was anybody saying they thought confused or bewildered?

Elizabeth Merritt:

That was 12%. Sorry, I missed that one.

Susie Wilkening:

Okay. I’m just jotting that down because you have a data geek.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes.

Susie Wilkening:

So, yes, there’s a lot of uncertainty here. There’s some worries. The better, maybe some considerations, the pathways that make people feel hopeful too. And I think that kind of wraps up how I feel about things as well. Oh there we are. Okay.

So, what I really want to do to help us think about that, path ahead is to look at some of those significant shifts that have been happening with museum audiences over the past several years because that helps us inform the trajectories of what’s been happening.

So, we’re going to look at some very quick attendance trends, since before the pandemic to today. We’re going to look at some shifts in audiences by race and ethnicity and we’re going to look at political values and that how that affects visitation and how that affects the experience in a museum setting.

So, just for a moment before we start.

There’s a really important question which is how do we know any of this stuff? And it’s a methodology question. The really good news is that over the past several years, as Elizabeth mentioned, we’ve been running the Annual Survey of Museum-Goers and nearly 500 museums have participated in the annual survey during that time period. This provides us with both robust data sets of frequent museum-goers, and a frequent museum-goer is someone who’s on the communications list of a museum receives the invitation to take [the] survey and then takes time to do so. So, they’re having that interaction regularly with at least one museum. And those museum-goers, it’s about 100,000 respondents every year.

As well as, [we field at] that the same time, a demographically representative sample of the broader population. And that’s going to be, uh, casual sporadic and non-visitors to museums. So, we have those two data sets that we have every single year we can look at this stuff.

Because of that depth of data, we know a lot about the public and museums and then the museums that participate in the annual survey have even greater insights into their specific audiences.

So, the first thing I want to start off with was looking at some attendance trends, particularly through the lens of the COVID pandemic. So let me just open up some slides right here.

There we go.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Awesome.

Susie Wilkening:

But that’s okay. I’m going to talk you through it.

So, this is from broader population sampling. This is that demographically representative sample of us adults, it’s the very first question, we asked them in a survey, which is which of the following have you done in the past year?

This is how we assess what percentage of us adults have been to a museum in the past year. So, if we look, over on the far right of this screen or this other right-hand side, you see that museums and you see that result, going from 2021 and 2024, there’s a weird year in 2022, because we actually asked previous two years, I don’t think we would have done that in retrospect. We should have that… just, so kind of take that one with a grain of salt, but you can see for all of these activities there’s kind of a … for the most part. There’s an upward trajectory, right? And we see the same thing for museums. So even before the pandemic, we were typically seeing around 25 to 31% of US adults were saying pretty consistently, I’ve … set foot in a museum in the past year.

The good news is that in 2024 when we were in the field, it was 33%. So, we’re actually exceeding, our pre-pandemic norms. People are back at museums.

However, we also know that half of US museums have not recovered their attendance from the pandemic. So why is that happening, and so, that’s when we’re going to look at the frequent museum-goers. There’s people who are on those communications lists, who take our survey.

And when we look at the frequent-museum goers, we’re looking at this in two different ways.

So first, we’re looking at repeat visitation rates. This is you know they’re thinking of this museum that asked them to take the survey. I’m going to pick on a local Seattle museum, the Burke Museum of Natural History, you know, they are on their list.

They received an invitation to take a survey that I think you have [visited] the Burke. How often do I go to the Burke? Okay, so I live in Seattle. I have kids. I probably go there 2 or 3 times a year and so I would mark that off. Alright so what we’re doing here is we’re aggregating. All those individual museum results and looking at them over time. And what we see if you look at that 2 and 3 times a year, it’s a little bit higher but it’s a little bit lower for that 4 plus. And also, if you look at that less than once a year, it’s a little bit lower than that once a year, but all adds up and away that indicates that frequent visitation isn’t quite back where it was pre-pandemic.

And so, people are back at museums, but they’re not visiting as frequently to their museums. We look at one more way, which is similar. It’s a similar question, but it’s just, but it’s also a very different question. This is not about how frequently they’re visiting a very specific museum. This is asking how many different museums did you visit, in the past year?

And so, you know, personally me, I am on vacation and 3 days, I can knock out, 6 museums, but I know I’m an outlier and probably all of you are too.

Most people don’t visit that many museums.

So, you can see these are the results from these frequent-museum goers. And if you look at these results, especially if you’re looking at the 5 or more, the 3 or 4 categories, you can see it’s a little bit lower still than where we were in 2020, which that’s actually a pre-pandemic sample in 2020 because we were in the field January and February of 2020. And so, we’re just not back. People are back at museums but not as frequently. So, if you add up all those repeat visits and that breadth of museum going all those visits, it actually adds up to a lot of visits that we haven’t gotten back since the pandemic.

So that’s that big ship that we’re still continuing the track and we’ll continue to track in the 2025 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, to see if we have any more gains that happened in the past year.

Okay, Elizabeth. You ready for me to switch to race and ethnicity or do you have any thoughts about that?

Elizabeth Merritt:

Go for it. Yes, please.

Susie Wilkening:

Okay.

But now, let’s think about by race and ethnicity. What’s really interesting is we’ve been tracking this for several years. And we have seen actually a really big shift happen over the past several years, which is really exciting.

So, first off, let’s think about those frequent museum-goers. Those people who are on this communications list, when we look just at that group of people, it’s a small slice of the broader population.

What we find is that the vast majority of them, 83%, identify as white. Now, that is a big skew, right?

But that said, since 2017, it’s a ball of drop of 10%, it was 92% in 2017. So, we’re seeing this slow progression downward and the percentage are identifying as white because we have more people of color responding as frequent museum-goers.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Just pausing … is there a last slide for that because I’m still seeing the historical data slide.

Susie Wilkening:

In a second. Yeah, we’re gonna move the slides in just a second.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Just checking.

Susie Wilkening:

So, we having a slow shift happening what by race and ethnicity among frequent museum-goers, and it’s slow, and it seems to be pretty steady the more things get a lot more complicated and where we’ve seen them, much more massive shift is with the broader population.

And that’s now I’m going to go ahead and change that slide. And let’s look at those casual and sporadic Museum goers.

The big shift that’s happened here is several years ago. Those two categories who have also skewed disproportionately white. But that’s no longer true.

Casual, and sporadic visitors are actually same as casual visitors. They almost exactly matches the US population by race and ethnicity. And sporadic visitors. It’s pretty close. It’s within just a few percentage points.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And there is a question in chat. Susie, how much do these numbers [correlate with education]? Ethnicity reflect education levels. Do we have any data on that?

Susie Wilkening:

So, it’s really kind of tricky to correlate with, with education. When we have our sample of 20,000, we would need a bigger sample to really be able to do that effectively.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay.

Susie Wilkening:

But 20,000 is a great sample for the US population sample, so we’re not quibbling with that, but yes, some of it is going to be due to increased levels of educational attainment, among people of color overall, because educational attainment is a strong predictor of museum visitation. So, that’s certainly going to be a contributing factor and it’s one of the most significant contributing factors.

But you know, several years ago, this was not true when we looked at casual and sporadic visitors in terms of race and ethnicity. It was still skewing more significantly white. So, we’ve had this massive shift now but someone… I was a casual and sporadic visitor so we’re not seeing this on our email list as much right now or among our frequent visitors but it’s getting there. Now, it may surprise a lot of people is when we look at this non- visitors, because they’re also skews to proportionately white. So, among the white population, we actually have the split where white people are more likely to be that super frequent museum-goer, but also white people are more likely to be that non-visitor.

And so that’s really interesting as well. So why doesn’t it feel this way when we’re standing in the museum, it’s all those frequent visitors who are making all those frequent visits that we can also skew your perceptions.

Okay. So, the last thing is around political values.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes. Actually, before you dive into that data, I want to because there’s been a lot of anxiety about how political values are going to influence attitudes towards museums. I want to remind everybody that overall, we have great news about how the public perceives museums. So, this is all from AAM’s advocacy data. 96% of Americans would approve of lawmakers who acted to support museums, and this is consistently high among respondents who consider themselves liberal, moderate, or conservative.

96% of Americans think positively of their elected officials for taking legislative action to support museums. Three quarters of the public believe, museums are an important part of our civil society.

Republican-led states are among the strongest funders of their own cultural institutions, and museums, and the total economic contributions of museums in 2016 was over 50 billion dollars. Over 725,000 jobs and 12 billion in taxes, on local state and federal governments. And that’s the kind of economic impact that’s appreciated by all across the [political spectrum]. So yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah, I mean we have some fantastic news at museums are very much perceived as bipartisan organizations.

So overall people love museums, they love having museums in their communities and they think they contribute positively to our society. So, we don’t want to lose sight of that. Yet.

Individual political values do influence museum visitation as well as that visitor experience.

And so, when we look at who’s visiting museums through that lens of frequency, what we see are some really vast differences by political values.

Among frequent museum-goers, the majority of frequent museum-goers actually identify as liberal.

And not that many identify as conservative. But if you look at casual visitors, we’re at parody. Sporadic, visitors skew a little bit more conservative and non-visitors, skew, more conservative.

So, we do see how those political values seem to be affecting how frequently people are visiting museums or how if they’re visiting museums at all. So, we won’t be very mindful of that.

And there’s something else that we want to keep in mind. And I’ve been saying this for about 5 years and that is, the number one thing that happens. The number one thing that affects how people view the content in a museum, regardless of what you share and how apolitical it is or not.

That political lens is how they view their the content that you’re sharing in museums, [it’s] the number one predictor.

And it’s also the number one complaint. We typically have… about museum content, that content has become political even if the only people who think that content is political are the ones who happen to dislike the content itself, which often isn’t perceived as political by most people that seems like a, a little bit of a circular argument, but it’s actually true. So, you have to grapple with this, whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to deal with political values.

Fortunately, we’ve been asking political values and the annual survey since 2021. So we know a lot about how they influence museum visits and how, and museums that participate in the annual survey know their own audiences political values quite well.

Now, we’re not going to go into today. How it affects that visitor experience.

Except to note that about 20% of museum-goers and the broader population really strongly pushed back when confronted with specific kinds of content.

The things that tend to really create that pushback are things around … inclusive content and history, climate change, public health, civics and civil society, as well as outcomes such as empathy and connection.

And hope… So, those are all subjects and outcomes that museums focus on every day, which makes this particularly challenging. Because we have to really know our audiences including politically to effectively navigate that future.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And what I have heard you talk about, and we’ll be talking about this more in the future. Susie is… a lot of it’s about the language you use in talking about those things. So, it isn’t necessarily the underlying concepts are values. It’s the words you use.

Susie Wilkening:

So, we want…

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, what I’m hearing you say just to summarize, repeat visitation is not back to where it was and that reflects shifts in leisure time.

Susie Wilkening:

Yep.

Elizabeth Merritt:

On audiences are getting more diverse and casual and sporadic. Visitors are reflective of us … by race and ethnicity and we’re continuing to work on that.

Susie Wilkening:

Right.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And museums absolutely have bipartisan support. But political values are influencing how people experience with local content. And we need to be aware of how it does this and how it might affect overall perception of museums.

Susie Wilkening:

Yes, exactly.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Awesome.

Okay. Now, we are going to transition to the other regular feature of our future chats, by giving all of you a chance to talk to each other about this topic. So, what we’re going to do is break you out into discussion rooms and give you a couple of questions. They frame your conversations and then at 3:40, we’re going to bring you back in to compare notes and share some thoughts. Now, both of [the] things before we do this.

First of all, please remember the number one role of future chats is, what is said in chat remains in chat. So please, hold anything that is shared by your fellow attendees in confidence, and don’t [share their] remarks without attribution.

Before we go out into breakouts, a couple of notes. First of all, we’re going to send you out into rooms of 8 people.

But uh, if you find yourself in a room by yourself, or if only a couple of other people, their want to be a big bigger group, you can use the join another feature to move yourself into a room with more people.

Please enable… to allow other participants [in]. See, you can hear … in the rooms.

And warning. If you’re joining us via a mobile device, or you’re using Safari as your browser, it may not support participation in the breakout rooms and you’ll be going, I can’t get in.

If that’s the case, I encourage you to step away for a little while, come back at 3:40, when we reconvene to share thoughts, that’s when Susie, and I are going to discuss our concerns by advice for your museums in the next few years, as well as hearing from you so many things that happen in the chat rooms. Okay? With that online. Sure, there are the assignments. We’re giving you for a breakout rooms.

When you get there, go around the circle and make it a production. Say this is who I am, I’m with this organization and in your introduction to share, 1 thing, that feels uncertain about how the election may affect your museums and your communities.

Then second time, I’m going around the room.

[And] share one thing. You’d like to know something that would help you manage those uncertainties in the next 4 years. So, a piece of information or a piece of data that would help you feel less uncertain about what’s going to happen.

Okay.

We’re gonna break you into breakout rooms now and we will see at 3:40.

Hello, Susie. Welcome back. I you were in one of our many chat rooms with some of the participants.

Susie Wilkening:

I’m back.

I crashed a chat room. It was fun. I had three friends in there. It was awesome.

Elizabeth Merritt:

That’s great.

So, I noticed before we went into breakouts that we had some very vigorous participation going in in the chat, which is a sidebar on your screen. So, I’m hoping that you’ll use that to start sharing some of the ideas that surfaced in your discussion rooms. So please tell us some of the uncertainties you identified and tell us what data would help you manage these uncertainties.

Now, I know it usually takes a few minutes for people to begin to wait in the chat. So, while you’re doing that, we want to feel a second poll and what we want to do is gauge how talking over this with other people. May have changed how you feel. So, maybe if we could put that second poll up,

And it’s going to take a minute to go live. All right, and you’ll see it’s asking you now that we’ve talked about things, how are you feeling? And it’s the same voice choices. So, you’re going to say are you more resolved? Having talked about it, are you more worried, are you more hopeful? Are you more certain of the past forward? Are you more supported or feel more supported or part of a community? So, let’s get a little read on how to discussing it with people. Change may have changed how you feel and Susie, I don’t know if you can see these or should I read out the results to you.

Susie Wilkening:

You should read them out. I am ready with my pen and my paper.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay. So, the front runner at 45%, bopping up and down but it’s over. 40% is people saying they feel more supported and part of a community, and trailing behind that at about 25% are people who say they feel more worried. That’s sad. I feel bad about that.

Susie Wilkening:

Oh, okay.

Elizabeth Merritt:

About 11% though, feel more hopeful that’s great. Uh 10% feel more resolved. About 6% feel more, a more certain path forward, and about 7% are more confused or bewildered.

Susie Wilkening:

Okay. So, it sounds like feeling of support is growing that you’re not alone.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Now.

Susie Wilkening:

But those worries are still persisting. And the because that lack of certainty is still kind of persisting.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes, and I’m going to close the poll, which I think we bring it up for you.

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah, I see it.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay. It’s very interesting. Well, so it seems like a lot of positive but some negative, uh …

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah. Influence from talking to other people around this.

Susie Wilkening:

Yes.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And looking on the right, I’m reading some of the certainties that people are reporting like the impact of tariffs and other economic policies on disposable income uh concerns about how to present inclusive history. That’s something you’re going to be able to speak to.

Susie Wilkening:

I can.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Well, these are jumping. There’s so much coming in, I’m having trouble focusing before it jumps around, ah, help …

Susie Wilkening:

Okay.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Uncertainties about how the impact will trickle down to education. Will federal funding to public schools be cut. I think federal funding to public schools is only about 10% of the total, is …

Susie Wilkening:

It’s not very much and I think some states are already thinking through like okay, what happens if we just eliminate federal funding, so.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

We could do it on our own. I know that’s the conversation that’s happening in Washington state right now.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Awesome. Um well, Susie with the new administration and the shifts in Congress. What are your concerns for museums? What are your anxieties?

Susie Wilkening:

So, I have 3. And Monique Davis at the Mississippi Museum of Art. She and I had a conversation that’s really helped me kind of solidify what my three big concerns were she was like you need to tell me what my you’re the top 3 are, the first 1 and this is by far the biggest 1.

It is what I call The False Consensus Effect and the empowered far, right? So this is not, specifically, what politicians might do? This is not the political stuff, it’s the empowerment of the far-right.

And what I fear, is going to happen is that they’re going is going to be a narrative that’s created. Where the far right? Says we have a mandate on these 10 issues.

Or 15 issues or whatever many, we have a mandate on anti-DEAI because that’s how the voting came out. We have a mandate against climate change, shifts or or adoptions, because we have a mandate because that’s how the voting turned out. Or, you know, we have a mandate that to ban inclusive history in schools because that’s the voting turned out, alright? And that’s not actually true.

And we know that’s not true. Most people actually want museums to do these things in schools to do these things. And for us to do take climate action because people were not voting in terms of all of those issues, they were voting on what their number 1 priority was, which was …

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes. Which must have been some might have been something else entirely.

Susie Wilkening:

And for many years, probably their family and their family economic future.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

And what they perceive to be the better choice in that sense.

So that False Consensus Effect is basically when a small group of people projects, the image that most people agree with them on a topic when the opposite is actually true.

And so, we have to be then double down and really focus on what does the data tell us about what people think about these certain topics that are controversial.

Find you know, what we learned is that most people want to do this stuff and then we need to talk about that really visibly.

So that they can take that rug out from underneath them before they even start with that False Consensus Effect.

Because it’s going to be chilling if we let that happen. So that’s by far my number one.

My number 2 – and this one is a much smaller one, even though it’s actually really big – is the power of executive orders and legislation to restrict what schools people families museums educational institutions everything can do and so it’s not just, you know, within the museums it’s also you know, public health and vaccines, it’s also climate change action, things like that but you know, things like you can’t get this IMLS grant unless you agree to banish, you know, any inclusive Dei content or positions in your Museum. So, there might be some ties and executive orders things like that and they may or may not hold up in court, I don’t know.

But thinking through what are those possibilities that might tie our hands or tie the hands of others or affect us all. So that’s number 2.

And then number 3 is, of course, Very specifically, the future of IMLS, NEA, NEH and those kinds of things. And that’s where we have to really again come together.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

And advocate.

And join us in February and go storm Capitol Hill in a good way for museums.

Yes.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Well, these are all big things to be concerned about.

Susie Wilkening:

Yes, they are. All huge.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Definitely advocacy day. I will have more information about that, but do you have any other thoughts on things museums can be doing to prepare?

Susie Wilkening:

So, we can prepare we are. This conversation is like a great start for preparing. There are lots of things that we can do to think about these things and be proactive and be ahead of them. So, the first big one is to know your audience.

And to figure out, you know, what, where are their values, what are those shared values that you have as a community that you at the Museum can build on? , you know, most people did seem to vote on their economic issues and they don’t agree with the far right on everything. So we want to understand how that’s playing out in your community.

And look to that data and in terms of how people are responding in your community on this issue. So you know and are prepared on those issues before you even put that that information forward in the museum.

Think through in advance and be tactical about The False Consensus Effect and how it will be likely deployed by the far, right.  there’s not a mandate on these issues, remember that and be on the offensive about it. There is a process called disinformation inoculation which you can go through with your leadership with your colleagues. You can do it with your board. You can do it with your volunteers. You can even do it with donors. Even do it with the public where you’re getting ahead of misinformation. You’re getting a head of The False Consensus Effect in a way that you can, then support you doing the work that you want to do. That’s true to your mission and it’s true to history science and art.

Calibrate, calibration is incredibly important.

You want to be effective and think through what that most effective path forward is on lots of issues. And so, and that most effective path isn’t necessarily straight calibration does not mean backing down.

It means being caring. And means being thoughtful. And making this individual choices as museums of what’s going to be it that path for. But remember, the tortoise won the race.

So, we’re going to all, you know, kind of champion tortoises when we’re going to win the race on so many of these issues.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

And advocate for museums.

Elizabeth Merritt:

We have a couple of, uh, comments in chat. I wanted to pull forward, someone’s asking. Can you say that list of topics that we see more push back on, one more time.

Susie Wilkening:

Sure. So, there’s right now. We have a bucket I think of it is bucket of topics. Three are topics and two are outcomes. Basically, that seem to be really sensitive to that 20% on the far, right? Who just don’t like them climate change, for sure. Inclusive efforts inclusive, history, inclusion, and art museums.

Sequence. Now we’ve never tested on public health, but I would assume that that’s going to be another one.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Well, okay, but to this point I want to back up and remind people and push back if I’m getting this wrong. Susie, even on those topics, the vast majority of people may support music like climate change. The vast majority of people whether they’re a conservative or liberal support. Museum is teaching about climate change and taking action. So, when you say, it’s a trigger point, it’s a trigger for a very small percentage of highly vocal people. And one of your excellent data stories that I would recommend to people is about how not to give too much weight to a small. Number of people who are very loud. So maybe you could say a word about that.

Susie Wilkening:

Of course. Yes. Yes. About 20%.

Yes, so there’s a data story called, Amplification versus over-amplification. And it talks really specifically about how do you pay attention and make sure you’re amplifying. Push back, that’s valid. And not over amplifying. Push back this coming from a white supremacist position or, or, or anti-science position, things like that. So you can then assess it more fairly and also consider and think through your own emotions as you are dealing with push back, because emotions for yourself, come into big play. As you’re dealing with push back and criticism because we all kind of go when we get criticized about something. So that, that can be really helpful. There’s also another data story. It’s about The False Consensus Effect specifically. And if you go onto the data stories website and search for False Consensus you can…

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah. Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

… find that one really easily as well and it also takes you through those steps of this information inoculation and how to do that, with your teammates or or your leadership or whomever,

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah. I also noticed my former CFM, colleague, Phil Katz is saying, there may also be a False Consensus on the left and middle assuming attitudes about political opponents.

Susie Wilkening:

So…

Elizabeth Merritt:

First of all, yes, I’ve been going through a lot of research that says 1 of the problems that’s causing what political polarization there is in the US is people tend to put a label on the other, whether that’s saying, ooh, your conservative or your label and then the your label fill in here liberal. So therefore, you believe all these things, and it’s way more complicated than that and until that you have a real and open listening conversation with somebody, you don’t know what they believe on, all these different points. And then…

Susie Wilkening:

Absolutely. Well, thank you to another valid point that we tend to make assumptions based on demographic characteristics.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes, yes. Yes.

Susie Wilkening:

And that we shouldn’t do that, too. I mean, we can, we can understand that big picture. There are certain demographic characteristics, excuse certain way but we can never make that assumption about a person standing in front of us until we start understanding who this person is.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Absolutely. Absolutely. The other point that Phil made is you’re not going to change somebody’s mind by yelling at them.

Susie Wilkening:

Mm.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And one of, I think, one of the skills we have to learn in the in coming years is what is an effective way of reducing polarization and really communicating in a lot of that starts with listening. It’s not going to help to yell at people and say all the same things and think that if we say for the tenth time, they’re suddenly going to hear it, it’s going to be more listening, it’s going to be more understanding. It’s going to be being sensitive to our language. And knowing when certain words or trigger points for somebody else, and the fact that a word means one thing to, you doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean something, uh, else to somebody.

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah, and civics is a great example of that. We tend to use it as a, as a dictionary describes it. But, on the far right, they use the word very differently and …

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, this is an example of there’s good research out there. Again, we’ll be sharing this in blog posts and talks and coming months about what language is less triggering. So, for example, I was just reading that civics has a negative connotation as you say to some people, but the word community, for them means the same thing and has fewer negative connotations. So fine, I’ll say community, not a problem.

Susie Wilkening:

Right? And but saying, ahead of these language shifts, I’m going to be honest is is very exhausting.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

And the good news is that we tend to be ahead of it, through our coding of, open-ended responses in the annual survey to really help us. Get ahead of like, oh, we start noticing trends.

And we try to share those with you. And through those data stories that y’all are already aware of them. Before it starts percolating up more commonly…

Elizabeth Merritt:

And I will say, for those of you who will be joining us at the am annual meeting in Los Angeles and met Susan. And I do an annual data session where Susie previews, the as yet unpublished data from the current Annual Survey of Museum-Goers. So that’ll be a great place to preview some of the next results.

Susie Wilkening:

And we’ve got some really great themes in this year’s survey that fit in really well with this entire discussion, because one of the big things we’re looking at, is our responsibilities to community.

Curious about is a question about what you know as a responder you’re thinking, here’s this random person who’s taking your survey.

What does that person think that other people in their community?

Think are important. And looking at those Community shared values more perceived to be those shared values.

So, then we can route our work in that a little bit more effectively and then start rebuilding again.

Elizabeth Merritt:

One of the questions in chat. Uh was would we be offering some resources for advocacy am over the coming months and yes, we will. And let me tell you a little bit about that first of all.

Here’s what I hope. You all are taking away from the session. First of all, you are not alone. We’re all in this together when it comes to navigating disruptions I hope that 1 thing you learned from your discussion groups is a lot of other people share these concerns.

And I hope what you’re hearing from Susie from me from a am, is there are things that might help us collectively and maybe you individually feel more in control. One thing you can do is sign up for Advocacy Alerts from AAM. There’s one coming out tomorrow about what the election means. For museums, we’re going to drop in chat, I’ll link you can use to sign up for Advocacy Alert. But the other thing is if you sign up too late to get that one, they’re posted on the Advocacy Alerts page so you can read that, that’s a beginning … series of things that we will be pushing out and coming months about ways that you can engage, information you might need, and how you can help influence your legislators in appropriate ways and [move] things forward.

Susie. How about you any closing thoughts for our participants?

Susie Wilkening:

Well, they should absolutely go to [Museums] Advocacy Day. It’s fun. It’s actually a lot of fun. I actually …

Elizabeth Merritt:

Hey, so there are people who haven’t participated, just give them a little preview of what it would be like and people who have been to advocacy day, could you, could you drop and chat some comments?

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah. I mean it feels it can’t be like very intimidating like oh my gosh, I’m going to Capitol Hill but it’s but there’s a whole day of training.

We give you lots of information, we give you data, we give you lots of ways to make your case.

To your legislative offices and then you get to go wander around Capitol Hill. How cool? Is that? I mean, how amazing is it that we live in this country, we can go walk in the door of our legislator’s office and say what we think.

And so, it’s an amazing experience of democracy. And people are so nice up on the Hill, even when you go into office and they’re like, they’re not, maybe a little bit not as, you know, excited to see you as maybe what I get in Washington state. But, you know, it’s still great experience and you’re advocating for something you care about and lots of people care about, so it’s fun. You should totally go do it.

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, two days here in Washington, DC, Ariel could you find and drop a link into the chat about museums advocacy day, sorry we didn’t have that pre lined up, but when you come, as Susie said, you’ll get training, you’ll get support. You’ll get practice on how to do this and then AAM sets up all these appointments with you. So, we’ll group you… with other people who, also are in the same legislative district for Congresspeople. Or for Senators, you’ll have an appointment. You’ll go to the office building. You’ll be welcome in. You are sat down, and you often talk with aides. Sometimes you actually talk to the legislators and it’s like the best part of participatory democracy after voting.

Susie Wilkening:

Yes. It’s easy. And new friends.

I bring my kid because I want them to learn about it too. It’s awesome. Okay, the other thing you can do is you need data on your organization because how are you going to navigate all these different values that people have? If you’ve never asked them about their values,

And so, you know if you haven’t already participated in the annual survey Museum goers which we do in partnership with AAM, you know, this is a great year to go out and do that. The survey instrument has been vetted by people. It’s a bipartisan survey instrument, we vet across the political spectrum. Before it goes out into the field and, signups are happening right now. It’s the base fee is 1,250, so it’s not very expensive. You can probably do it on a budget. [W]e’re going to put the link in the chat, … and it goes out in the field in January and February my colleague, Jessica does an amazing job, helping every single museum to participate to get their survey out the door and get some good data reports into their hands. By the middle of … spring, so you can then have that information that you need to navigate this effectively and to calibrate for your audience and your community.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And we often write about it, we share it through AAM so that you can benefit from the overall data whether or not your participating.

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah, absolutely.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay, well that’s our chat for today, Susie, it was a pleasure working with you always I’m value. You so much as a research partner and thank you for all you do for the field.

Susie Wilkening:

Well, I love doing this for the field and I love working with everyone at AAM because I love museums. So, we’re going to get through all of this over the next few years together.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay, great take care. Be strong and look forward to working with you in the coming year.

This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. In the current political climate, the work museums are doing to become more human and empathic may be misunderstood both internally and externally, and the latest data by a leading museum research consulting firm already indicates a lowering of public trust in museums. In this recorded session, panelists and attendees will explore the relationship between public trust and the changes the museum field is making, using examples from various types of museums to understand how we can better formulate policies and communicate while building trust among staff, visitors, and non-visitors.

Transcript

Gail Lord:

Welcome, welcome, welcome. Well firstly, thank you very much for joining this session. The goal of this session is not just to have us talk, although we have incredible speakers, it’s true. Oh my god, it’s silent all of a sudden, but we want to have the last half hour be conversations and storytelling with you all. So, we have a room with a lot of tables, but what I we’ve had a little high-level conversation among the panel and this is what we suggest eventually, we’re going to form groups of like discussion groups.

This is just to say stay where you are now, but this is like a preview of what we’d like to happen after everyone makes their presentations about eight minutes each so that works out to about 58 minutes depending on how long I talk now actually. We’re going to use this row if you think of each think of these as rows. So, row one is going to be a themed and John Hampton is going to be the facilitator of this row and you’re going to hear him speak so you know you’ll know. This row is help me here Yvonne please help me what’s number two?

You’ll see you don’t have to remember to remember, but just think about, and you don’t even have to know now where you want to go, this row is going to be the second thing that we’re talking about. Building trust.

So, ah, this row is all about trust, right? Now, you’re going to ask you before to try and have Gadot on two tables. If you ask me about that, it’s early for me, too, by the way. Okay, So this row is going to be the basic building trust and that is going to be facilitated by Susie Wilkening. The problem is she can’t facilitate a row, so we like people who are interested in that topic to gather around the front two tables and maybe you’ll push the tables together TBD we’ll see how many people it is and this area, so the front two tables now are going to be for community and that’s going to be facilitated by Yvonne Tang. You don’t have to stay where you can move wherever you want.

Oh, you can move wherever you want. And it’s– yeah, I don’t know what I can do. I’m having enough trouble with this. God forbid when I start to talk. So, the thing is that just to tell you that you will be moving somewhere– or this is kind of good, it’s OK. I’m not one of these people who is trained to speak with a microphone and wander around. I was trained in the era where if you get to talk, you stand at the podium and you do your best. Okay. And then a different generation.

So — and then the fourth row, which will be the front two tables of the fourth row, is the theme of staff and visitors. So again, if that’s where you feel so moved to go, you will move to that row. This may not be clear, but it will become clear. Just saying, you know, when you get comfortable, it’s really horrible to be asked to move. I am somebody who will sit in the same place at the same table day after day after day. That’s my job as a consultant, that’s what I do. So, I know it’s not comfortable to move, but it’s gonna be great because we’re gonna have a discussion.

So firstly, let me welcome you to this session. You can sort of see this in somewhat crazy, oh, where’s the clicker thing? Thank you. You can see how.

A lot of symbolism here. If this looks like 1984, there is a symbol of somehow, i.e. the movie or the novel, depending on your taste. This is kind of, we’re moving in this session from a kind of faceless mass to a highly individual perception and conversation about our experiences with the subject of trust and well-being. So, we chose something will take us from this kind of neutral blend territory.  So, Anna’s not here, our designer, but she found this picture at the last minute, and I somehow thought it was shocking enough to actually like.

So, this is, oh, I should have shown you this before. I’m sorry. So, this is the order of speaking. Some of you will have seen the promotional material that we put out. So, I’m the facilitator, my name is Gail Lord. I’m going to introduce the panelists, and I’m going to tell you for about two minutes why trust and well -being are connected and why this is such an important topic, and why we’re so glad that you’re here.

And I really need to thank you, 8.30 on the last day of the conference isn’t easy.

John Hampton, pardon me, is going to be speaking about, you can see, more human museums, and that is going to be the theme of this row. Got it. Okay. The third area is Susie Wilkening. I’m going to introduce her in a minute. Yeah, thank you. And then the fourth on our agenda is putting you into community. That’s Yvonne Tang.

Susie, have a one, two, three, four, and then finally towards civility and belonging for both visitors and employees and that is what Christie is going to be talking about and then facilitating the tables about that. Now, if you think it’s easy to find a place for water here, it’s not. It’s all, it’s all like, it’s okay, I’ll be fine. Okay, so that’s what we’re doing and thank you very much for coming.

So firstly, I want to introduce our panelists and I’m going to introduce myself a little bit, then I’m going to speak for two minutes, and then we’re going to get going. So firstly, I’m overwhelmed by the attendance. Thank you all for being here.

So, you can see this. This is, I’m not going to read this, but this is why we’re here.

So, museums clearly are all about empathy and humanity. We try to be very, very hard, but there are challenges. And so today what we’re going to do is really explore those challenges, and we’re going to share experiences about them. And at the core is, of course, the theme of this conference, which is well-being, and we’re adding this word trust. And there’s a reason for it, which I’d like to talk to you about.

It’s said by philosophers that first and others like anthropologists too and other experts. The trust is one of those aspects of life that is uniquely characteristic of our species. Now, of course, I think you all know as good museum workers, that every time human beings come up with, oh, communication is unique to our species, we find out that a lot of other species, if not all of them, communicate. And then we say, OK, well, work is what’s really unique to our species, and then, of course, research shows that, no, indeed, a lot of other species work, and so on and on and on.

Well, the latest thing is that trust is unique to our species. I don’t know if it’s true or not. Most likely, we’re going to find out that whales, especially because they’re the mammals with the biggest brains, also experience trust, but that research hasn’t been done yet. Trust is really an important, relatively new arena of research. But let’s say that it is very important to our species. And it’s said to be essential to both our well-being and our survival. And I’m not going to rehearse all the information. I’m sure you’re going to find it. But what I thought was extraordinarily interesting for us, because we’re here to talk about trust and museums and well-being of museums, trust among our staff and ourselves, if you’re a staff or you’re a manager, you’re a leader, and trust with the public. We’re interested in what is the museum situation, that’s why we come to this conference.

And then of course, we’re interested as individuals and also for our staff and our visitors, how does this relate to well-being? Because that’s why we came to this conference in the first place. And I think that What I’ve deduced from my little bit of research is that in trusting, and this is where perhaps it’s very especially human, we are showing our vulnerability to others. Trust and vulnerability go hand in hand.

And that’s tough. And I think we’re all experiencing that in our work, how difficult that is. This trust vulnerability access, if you like, is essential to our capacity to work together, to live together, to solve problems together and that is a very great superpower of human beings, our ability to work together to solve problems. So today we’re all here as museum people, we’re going to explore the relationship between trust, our institutions, and maybe our vulnerabilities as well, and certainly our well-being and I welcome you to it and I especially welcome having such a brilliant panel.

So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to introduce each member of the panel, and we’ve given cards at your table so you can see their pictures. My picture is 15 years old. No, this is a good one. My picture on the book leaflet is 15 years ago, those are the days, and my picture on the card is actually, I believe, as I look today, but everybody else is really as they look.

So, the first person is John Hampton. John is the executive director and CEO of the McKenzie Art Gallery in Regina. They entered the arts through studio practice and then started their career in the Artist Ron Center community as a curator at Neutral Ground. He was an artistic director at Trinity Square Video, so he has a great background in the arts and technology. Then they previously served as curator-in presidents at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and Executive Director of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba. Now some of you may not know where those places are. I myself live in Toronto, so I know where those places are, but as John will tell you, someone who lives in Toronto doesn’t know where any of those other places are, so just feel comfortable. Most of them are in Western Canada, which you might call Central U.S., I don’t know, but It’s a slightly different world from the one that we’re in right now, and an important one.

Hampton is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, and he examines in his work the intersections of Western and Indigenous culture through his practice, policy, and theoretical writing. So, John, we’re so pleased to have you here, but you don’t get to speak because I’m gonna interview everybody, I’m gonna talk to everybody at once, and then you just kind of follow along so that we’ll be the maximum efficiency of our time.

I think Suzie Wilkening requires no introduction to most of you. She does the most interesting research, in my opinion, most valuable, on the museum sector, has been doing work of this type in our sector for over 25 years. The thing about Suzie that’s so amazing is that she actually makes data understandable. And for people like me, that’s actually a big challenge, and she’s going to present some amazing slides that take us through all the situation today, which is changing all the time about trust in museums and the importance of it. So, Susie, I’m not giving you a full introduction, but it is so impressive and so wonderful.

Yvonne Tang is a colleague of mine at Lord Cultural Resources. Yvonne is the director of our visitor experience group work that we do which includes interpretive planning which is the weirdest word of all because what does it say it says that we museums for all the trust people having us we still think of our work as translation we have to find  another word for it but anyway that’s something that might come up today she’s had 25 years of experience in museums including nearly 20 years leading custom projects for museums and groundbreaking national research on the role of museums in communities. And her focus, and she’s also in the book, is all about museums and communities. And she calls it putting the you in community.

And that’s great. And then, and I know, I wanna talk a little bit about Christy Coleman. We think we met each other, but in fact, I’m such a big fan of hers, and I was so thrilled that she could make time to be on our panel. And she accepted right away. And Christie has spent over 35 years in museum and cultural work. She served as the chief executive officer of some of the nation’s most prominent museums. She’s a tireless advocate for the power of museums. Narrative, this is a good one, narrative correction. And I think what you do always, what you used to do on, I don’t think, are you active on Twitter still? Somewhat, less. Yeah, I know we all feel the same way about it, but what’s the replacement? Anyway, it’s so corrective. I think that that’s really fantastic. She’s always correcting the record with real research. She’s a tireless advocate for the power of museums and diversity and inclusiveness. And we’re just thrilled that she’s part of this panel.

So, I think that we have an amazing group of people, but we’re about to meet. We’re going to each speak for like six to eight minutes so that we can have your insights and I think probably you’re even more amazing. So, I’ll just say, oh my God, that wasn’t too bright. I was supposed to do that when I introduced the people. 8:30 is not my favorite time, guys. No matter what time zone I’m in. So, there we all are. And you see, it’s not a bad picture of all of us and you’re gonna meet us all.

Okay, I have to say a worried about my company, Lord Cultural Resources. Many of you will have heard of us. These are where our offices are. We started in the log cabin. It’s really true. 42 years ago, my husband and I, and we have grown. And thanks to so many people in this room, we are quite successful in our goal, which is to make the world a better place through culture, which includes city planning, urban planning, cultural planning. But our big focus always has and from day one, and always will be the museum sector.

And we contribute books to the field, and those are some of the books. And yes, there is a new book. And yes, you can get it online. And yes, you can get a 30% discount. And no, we are not publishers. And no, we don’t earn our income by selling books. But we write books because we love the sector. So that’s me. And I’m going to ask John to please come up and start us off. And We’re going to proceed with this wonderful meeting. Thanks. I don’t follow.

John Hampton:

Oh, there’s the book plug there. [LAUGHTER] Can I just say one thing?

Gail Lord:

Yeah. All right. Everybody now knows I’m left-handed. That’s my big excuse. And I have a real problem coordinating things. But I somehow managed. OK. (audience laughing)

John Hampton:

Okay, thanks, Gail. (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) That means, the last one means I look after art. That’s our translation for being an executive director, a curator, any role, really, within an art gallery. So, I’m very grateful to be here, thanks you all for coming. I say them pronouns and I’ve been asked to start us off with a little bit of a story as well.

So, I feel like about maybe two or three of you know this story but because I’m from way up in Canada then there’s plenty of people won’t have heard of it, but so I call it the Northern Great Plains, and my nation’s from the Southern Great Plains there, and looking at that unity across Turtle Island and that continent is how I like to think about that territory.

So, this is where I’m situated, it’s the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, in Oskanika, Zategi, which means pile of bones, named for the genocide of the buffalo there in the forced starvation of the local nations there.

But my story starts with a site visit from an artist that was coming to do a studio visit — or coming to do a visit for their solo exhibition looking at the West’s simultaneous obsession with defining and consuming the other. The artist is Divya Mera, based out of Winnipeg, Manitoba. And while she was there, she wanted to do a little research into our collection and the site and get some context for the exhibition.

And she came across this peculiar item in the collection, which was labeled Vishnu knew and people who might recognize that this is maybe not a male deity up there depicted and so she her interest was struck by that so she started doing some research and then she came we went for dinner that night and she came just all fired up and then shared what she had found and she had gone through our big leather tomes, which I’m sure many of you have around your early acquisitions.

This was from — this object was from the original bequest from our namesake, Norman McKenzie, and he had dictated the story in the book, in his own words, talking about how he came by this object. And so, he said that, you know, like a lot of his contemporaries, he had these high ideals of gathering the culture from around the world and sharing it with the local community in Regina and building a museum one day. And so he traveled mostly to British colonies and collecting objects as well as European artworks and he was visiting India and traveling down the Ganges River and they pulled up to a got and saw an active shrine there where there were three idols that people were currently worshiping at. And he told his guide, “I need an idol, just like one of those.” And he got in an argument, and they said, “No, no, I think the word’s here that a Hindu will never part with their God.” And so, after that he saw somebody had overheard and knew what they were talking about. So, he went and talked to the shadowy figure, and later that night that that man showed up to his hotel room with a box and then revealed the very three idols that were in that shrine.

And he said, “No, very benevolently said, ‘No, I can’t possibly take these.’ This would be a great affront to the British government for he to take these idols. And so, then if you take them all back, go return to the shrine, reinstall two of them, and then if I see those two installed, I’ll buy the small one. And so that’s how this ended up in the McKenzie collection.

And so, she told me this story and shared the documents over ramen and said, “For the exhibition, I would like to have that object return to India.” And I said immediately yes, because I was naive. I wasn’t CEO at the time. I was director of programs, so without much experience with repatriation. And so, I immediately said, “Yes, that’s amazing.” And we started thinking about impossible scenarios of finding the original shrine where it was and reinstalling it. So, then we got into the actual work of that.

What’s my next slide? Oh, there’s Divya there. And so, Divya, through her research, she talked to Sadatasha who helped identify that No, this was not Vishnu, this was Annapurna, who is actually the queen of the city from which the idol was taken, Varanasi, which made it even a worse offense. And then I started doing the back behind the scenes work, got an updated appraisal. The appraisal came back at 1500 Canadian dollars, is what they said that this idol was worth. And it’s an object, we haven’t exhibited it much, but we had it a couple times, but it primarily lived within the vault. And so, we said, does anyone really even want this back? But we persevered and said, this is important. And then the artist was producing our work around this process too. And boy, we were just completely wrong about that assessment would anybody want it, because when we went through that process and talked, oh here, automatically changed.

[Background noise] So here it is upon the return to India that 24/7 media coverage happening around this, millions of people gathered to pay respect. It traveled on the Silver Palaquan here. A four-day journey, visited 12 communities, and they renovated the Annapurna Shrine at the most sacred area near the original site of where it was taken, and then they reinvested her into the idol because upon breaking that idol, then you lose that presence of the God there, and it was just fundamentally profound to see this disconnect between the different ways of valuing these objects.

So Prime Minister Modi made a national address there saying It was a proud day for all Indians.

And then– and we had our exhibition. And Divya produced, as part of this project, this new artwork called There’s Nothing You Can Possess, Which I Cannot Take Away, Not Vishnu, New Ways of Tarasana. And this is– that’s it. On the left in the exhibition, she exhibition, she purchased that sack from a

Hollywood memorabilia store and put it on the shrine and then filled it with sand.

That’s the equivalent weight of that statue. And there it is in storage in the drawer, in the outline of

where that’s idol used to be kept. And so, it retains the links to those records. It still has the same accession number from the original piece, but then it has that full story and holds that space to cover that history and that story and allows us to talk about our institution’s founding and those movements through time.

And one of the things that’s, I find really interesting about this work is that the idol was displayed 15 years before this project in an exhibition called Raiders of the Lost Vault. And so, it wasn’t a secret that that same story was included in there as well. And it was, but it was displayed under a different context.

It was an adventure. It was Mackenzie buying things from Edgar Banks, who supposedly the influence for Indiana Jones was put as an exciting story to tell.

And I’m sharing it like an interesting story. But so, the object hadn’t changed. The story hadn’t changed, but how we view it had. And so, we no longer were viewing it from that objective distance of the museum effect, but we had new eyes on it that hadn’t been conditioned to view it in that detached theme, but approach, but then to see the human elements within that, and that it was a sacred idol stolen from an active shrine, mislabeled and undervalued for over a hundred years.

And so, in these types of processes and movements within our institutions and these individual actions, there can certainly be fears about loss of objects, about loss of reputation around using, you know, the name of our institution, for example. And sometimes there’s just that momentum of business as usual that can blind us, but we’re all charged with caring for culture at our respective territories. And sometimes that means that we are in the business of giving things away, giving things to others who can care for them better than we can. And when we are able to do that, then we can see audience engagement at a level that’s more profound than we were able to do for that object in any iteration of our institution.

And with that, I want to say this artwork, originally it was just going to be an individual artwork, but Divya, just right before they and realized she wanted to conceptualize it as an addition of 10. And so, one has been sold, that’s this one here. So, there’s still nine available.

That’s the end. Thank you.

Susie Wilkening:

Does it sound good? Can y’all hear me in the back? Okay.

So, we’re going to change gears a little bit, but we’re still thinking about trust. And one of the things we really want to think about too is all this polarization, how that might be affecting the trust that individuals have with our organizations. And when that trust, some people may feel it’s violated, how that may end up affecting you and your staff and those of you who are individuals who are close to your organization.

So, let’s just look at the numbers because, you know, I’m a numbers person. This is from 2021, this was the last time we were in the field looking at trust specifically with the American Alliance of Museums. And the question we asked was how trustworthy do you find, and then we asked about all these different things on a scale from 0 to 10. And we have some good news, museums do really well. We have an average score of 6.4, this is a broader population sample of U.S. results around the country. 6.4 were number two to friends and family. Not really sure how I feel about that, but, you know, that can be trustworthy, too. But we do better than practically everything else.

A lot of questions why. This might be some, as a whole another conversation, not in eight minutes, but we have some, it seems to be some resilience here. So, this is some 2021. So that So that was now three years ago.

This is brand new data. This is from the 2024 Annual Survey Museum Goers. This was in the field this winter, and this is from the broader population sample we did concurrent with all of y’all’s museum samples that were collected during this winter. And what we found was that 92% of U.S. adults think museums are nonpartisan providers of educational content.

So, this feels kind of good in some ways too, right? That we have resilience. There are so many things out there are feeling not so resilient when it comes to trust. When we think of media, we think about libraries and we think about K-12 education. Museums are proving fairly resilient for now.

So, then we go and look at the data over and over and go, okay, what we tend to find consistently is that most people want us to do really good work in our communities. They want us to share science. They want us to build healthy communities. They want us to connect us to one another. They want us to explore shared history. They want us to be thoughtful and maybe return things if we need to. Most people are on board with that.

So, what’s stopping us? And I think we all know what’s stopping us. And it’s a segment of the population that we’ve started calling the resistance because they resist a lot of the things that we may be trying to do as institutions. And so here are some numbers, these are mostly from the 2022 and 2023 annual survey museum goers looking at the blue here is frequent museum goers going across and the red here is U.S. adults in the broader population and looking at who’s resisting content around climate change?

Who’s resisting content about inclusion, you see that one’s highest of those.

Who’s resisting us talking about civil society and civics? There they are.

Who’s resisting us talking about and cultivating a connection to humanity?

It’s a lot. I mean, as the majority of people no. But we’re all kind of in this 20% range. We’re adding a new one this year. Resisting us talking about hope. So, what happens when there’s about 20%? Oh, sorry. I have to have this quote first. They say things like this.

Stop catering to woke people who only impose their thoughts and not the majority. And this is a really clever little trick that this resistance malice 20% percent groups do, which is they are trying to project that they are the majority mainstream opinion.

They’re not, but they’re trying to project that. I think some truly believe they are, because they’re in their bubbles, and some know they’re not, but they’re trying to project it. This is called the false consensus effect. And it’s, I like how I word it, so I’m going to read it. This is when a small group of people projects the idea that their values and attitudes are shared by the majority of people. Typically, in our modern discourse, it’s used to shut down conversations that a small segment doesn’t want us to have or to stop a behavior they don’t approve of. And it’s clever. Oh my gosh, it is very clever and it’s insidious.

So how do we know when the false consensus effect is coming into play? And how do we assess whether a topic is likely to be polarizing or to start a controversy? Because I’m going to keep talking about that 20% number. That’s a certain critical mass that ends up being important. How do we know?

So, this is something that I’m playing around with in this kind of framework where we’re looking at the content that we’re sharing and assessing, is it neutral or not neutral, and what we mean by neutral or not neutral in this particular case is neutral as in facts, not neutral as in values. So that’s kind of a narrow definition for this. So, we have what’s neutral and what’s not neutral, facts, values, and then what’s partisan and what’s nonpartisan.

And so, here’s the theory that broadly accepted facts when about 95% people are more agree, those are neutral and nonpartisan, but the facts that are not as commonly held where you get that 20% pushback, those are partisan facts.

And then for values, commonly held values, those where virtually everyone agrees, those are not neutral but they’re nonpartisan, and then partisan values is where you have that critical mass pushing back. So, you may still have 80% saying that is a great thing but you have that 20% pushing back. So here are examples.

Nonpartisan neutral fact would be germ theory. The Earth’s round or it could be historical facts. You know Civil War began in 1861, historical fact. It can also be things like aesthetics around ideas and what is beautiful. Because you know pretty much most people think that Monet painting is pretty beautiful, and that’s pretty much fairly agreed on as a kind of fact.

Partisan facts, though, are around whether the evidence around racial disparities in our society, or around vaccines, or climate change, civics and hope, I put in this category too, just whether those are things that should be supported even if we’re not saying what to do with those civics and hopes ideals.

And then for values, creativity, imagination, education, and do no harm, those are commonly held values. They’re nonpartisan. Most everybody agrees with those things. And then the partisan values are inclusion, climate action, connection to humanity, abortion, immigration. You can probably come up with other things. Those would all be partisan values. So, you kind of get the sense of thinking through, okay, what is a value? Is it partisan? Is it non-partisan? Where is the controversy going to come? And the controversy is going to come in this partisan column overall.

So, what happens is when we have a challenge around the trust issue and when people get angry, particularly is when we as museum staff, of whom 70 percent of us identify as liberal think oh well here we have this topic and we might put it in one quadrant but there is a segment of the population that would put it in a different quadrant and then the messaging is a little off right and then we’re surprised when there’s controversy.

So one of those exercises we’re starting to recommend is you know when you have a new topic coming up, take a moment and assess where it’s going to fall on that chart, that framework, and if you think that the public might put it in a different quadrant or even a segment of the public, think about why that is and be ready and thinking through in advance what that pushback might look like and how you’re going to prepare for it.

We don’t want that false consensus effect to scare you from topics that we all need to talk about. Most people want us to talk about climate change and want us to be inclusive and want us to support civics and all of those things. But instead, we want you to think through the best approach to be effective and

prepare your staff and your stakeholders for pushback. There’s a process called disinformation inoculation that you can go through before you have a program, before a four-year exhibition to prepare everybody for that pushback so that it minimizes the conflict.

Keep in mind that goal posts shift really quickly. What may be considered non-partisan today may be partisan tomorrow. Things we asked about four years ago that 20% segment of the population, we’re like, we want museums to do this, now they’re telling us are to woke. So those goalposts shift really quickly. So, we are always constantly looking for what we call canaries in the coal mine for things that might end up becoming issues that are okay today.

So, it makes it really hard for y’all to be brave, right? especially when you’re thinking something big might come up. How do you be brave? But what does it mean to be brave? It’s understanding your audiences and their values, practicing disinformation, inoculation with staff and stakeholders, assessing and calibrating content to bring your audiences along with you, which I would love to have that discussion with you at some point. How did you do this stuff?

Practically caring for your colleagues and yourself and preparing and having all that in place before something happens. And that’s what’s going to really enable you to be effective and serve your audiences, your community, and broader society. And I’m going to leave you with a quote from a museum goer because it’s just so lovely. And this is what we get a lot more of because most people are agreeing with us on this. “Museums should be a social gathering place, oh there’s a type of there, so

people can build relationships with those in their communities, so we can care more about those we live and work with building a stronger community.”

And that’s a geeky methodology thing. Okay, passing on.

Yvonne Tang:

Thank you, Susie. Perfect segue. Appreciate it. So, I just wanted to talk a little bit about putting you in community and what that means. And before I start, I’d really like a few people if you can raise your hand and let me know what you think your community is or who you consider your community.

Anyone?

No? You don’t know who your community is? Okay, please. Thank you.

Audience member:

But in a very democratic bubble in a very grand state. And we are in a disinvested downtown environment. And our population is majority, I would say, High school educated in a crumbling infrastructure making under $40,000 a year with 2.3 children they’re caring for in one-parent households.

Yvonne Tang:

Thank you very much and being brave for speaking first. Anyone else? Okay. Thank you so much. So, before I get into my few slides and my few minutes, I am going to thank my community, who I worked with to develop this chapter in the Manual of Museum Management and part of my talk today. It was co-written by Munna Faisal Elgerg, who’s the CEO of the Museums and Heritage Sector at Dubai Culture and

Arts Authority. It was also co-written by Terry Nyambé, who’s the curator of ecology at the Copper Belt Museum in Zambia, and who’s also the vice president of ICOM.

I also interviewed Ilana Altman from the Bentway in Toronto, Jessica E. Banks, who’s formerly from the National Gallery of Cayman Islands, Lance Wheeler, who’s formerly at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. Laura Van Brooke-Hivind, who’s the director of the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University. Leewee Gracioso, who’s the director of the Museo Miraflores in Guatemala City.

And Orit Sarafati, who was formerly at the Evergreen Brickworks also in Toronto.

So, they are my community. And so really wanted to think about what puts you in your community and how we can center ourselves. And to me, thinking about community is much more than the people that are around you in your institution. If you think about it, our community is also other institutions that have the same topics and types and themes and stories that we also tell. It’s all the people that come into your institution. It’s all the people that talk about you when they leave. It’s everyone that you work with every day. And so, I think really thinking about your community much broader than just your locale but all the connections you have in the world and also all the different partners and institutions that you surround yourself.

And so really having a visitor forward community is important to first of all create a welcoming environment and all of that is you know from making sure there’s proper signage to washrooms and seeing people feel comfortable walking in your doors to feeling like even before they walk through their doors that they’re welcome and available and part of your story. And so also includes, you know, I say visitor forward, but I mean visitor in terms of anyone that walks through your doors. So that’s your staff, even before you hire them. So, the children that come in, it’s your volunteers, your docents, And really every interaction is the potential for your future.

You don’t know if that four-year-old is going to, you know, staring at the mummies of the dinosaurs is going to be up on stage one day giving talks at the AAM. And so really investing in a lot of the things in your community, whatever that community is, and embracing those multiple stories and multiple ways to do it and really thinking about communal growth. You know I wrote this about a year ago and I am still growing and learning and thinking and considering and making a larger community for myself and the people that I work with.

So, there are ten ways to incorporate community that are listed up here but I’m going to focus on the

first four.

So shared visioning a visioning is something I really like to do with my clients and think about From the beginning of your project from the beginning of your museum from the initial thinking of things making sure you’re inviting a variety of voices to the table, and that’s not necessarily just for new institutions Or new projects or new ideas, but making sure There’s a lot of people from education all the way to directors, really having that sense and a chance to be heard and a chance to share. Then also collaboration and co-creation, ensuring there’s a lot of collaboration and opportunities to be integrated. it really gives you a chance to humanize your co-workers and the people you work with and sharing stories.

And through those, you build stronger relationships, making sure that then you understand where people’s strengths are, maybe their interests that you didn’t know before, potential for, you know, moments of healing or moments that you need to reach out to certain communities that you hadn’t really thought about or considered at the time.

And finally, creating a connected sense of purpose and a goal to accomplish. And it doesn’t mean, you know, you can’t make mistakes along the way, but maybe making sure that there’s a fortified sort of idea and a goal you’re working towards and that each time you’re learning and each time you’re building from that.

And key to every great relationship is communication, and it’s exactly the same here. So, it’s not just information gathering, taking the information from people and gathering it and using it in your institution, but making sure that these stories are continually reciprocal. It’s always happening. It’s a circular conversation. You’re hearing what they say, reflecting, changing on what you want to do at your institution and then pushing it back out again and so that’s totally part of that trust building process and creating a sense of belonging that way they really feel like they’re part of your institution, you as individuals, as representatives and everywhere you go out in the world and making those connections is so key.

And finally, empowering youth. I think, you know, no matter where you are in the world, it’s such a significant portion of the of the population and really they can flourish by developing skills you can create opportunities for them to create their own programs to their peers but also to provide insight to any of the products that we’re putting ahead giving us hope, Susie for the future and really building

future museum goers, future museum donors, future staff, and giving them that opportunity to really become invested in what we are doing. They might not know the process, but you can help them through that, but they can for sure do a lot of amazing things if you allow them to participate.

And then I’m going to hand it over to Christy?

Christy Coleman:

Okay, I’m often known for my candor in talking about some of these interesting things. I went the wrong way. Okay, so I have to start by talking about my institution. I joined the Jamestown Yorktown Foundation in January of 2020. And this organization is a state museum. We have a budget of roughly 25 million. We have 400 plus staff and 900 plus active volunteers, operating two museum sites and a central support facility. This institution had a reputation of being rather insular. In fact, those of you who may have been around for a while may not have seen very many JYF people that would come to AAM. There were a few that would show up at ALFAM or AASLH, mostly they hung out in Virginia at VAM.

On top of that, the institution for 25 years marketed itself as historyisfun.org and then wanted to know why others didn’t take their work seriously. And so, when I came in in January of 2020, six weeks into the job, the pandemic hit. And it was interesting because, as a state institution, there are a lot of compliance, a lot of state-mandated training that I had to do as an agency head, as they call me. And all these other things that needed to happen, of course, that didn’t happen. And It enabled me to — I had to make a choice. I could seize the disruption caused by COVID and try to reinvent the place really fast.

And I kind of tried to do that.

And because what was interesting is all of these state people around me who had been in the system. I mean, my leadership team had an average service of something like 29 years, right? So, their instinct was to lay everybody off immediately and shut the place down. And I said, “Oh, we’re not doing that. Well, how are we going to pay them?” I said, “With that million-dollar surplus we have. Figure it out. Well, what about the wage staff? The wage staff in particular. Until we have some instructions about how to move, this is what we’re gonna do. And then I realized I really was gonna have a challenge with my leadership team, which I don’t have anymore.

And it was interesting because one of those leaders who had created history as fun as the marketing, right, told me in my first meeting with her that she set the agenda, that she would tell me what my talking points were wherever I went and that the vision belonged to her.

So anyway, she was the first, and so, like I said, this disruption piece, right? So, what I decided to do, I knew that, like I said, use the disruption to disrupt the institution, to try to stir some things up. The board had told me in the hiring process that the staff really was looking for some innovation. The staff was really looking to feel more engaged in the institution in a very different way. My predecessor had been there 32 years. And so, I decided that strategic planning was not going to involve anyone in a supervisor, manager, or director level.

[Applause]

Now, that was — you can imagine, right? The response to that. Because I set up these sessions where it was just me, and we did this in August because we reopened in late June. Everybody was trying to get their mojo going and we started having these strategic planning sessions and I really wanted to know what the staff wanted to do.

And you know, the managers and leaders were really put back. I mean, they were like, “What do you mean we’re not involved?” I said, “Not yet. Not yet. I need to hear from them. I need to hear what they want, what they see, because I can guarantee you these folks see far more than you do on any given day. Because I used to be an interpreter, I mean I know what I saw versus what my leadership saw.

And so, we did that, roughly 15 sessions with staff members from every level of the organization except, right? And when I say every level, I mean the housekeepers, the landscapers, the interpreters, the museum gift shop, the ticket sales, reservationists, everybody that did not have that title was in that room in 15 different segments over the course of, so basically five sections for each phase of the strategic planning. And then as we got past phase two, where they had identified three pillars that they wanted us to work on and that we were refining what we were going to focus on. That’s when I brought the directors back in. And their job wasn’t to change what the staff had done. Their job was to figure out how to make it happen.

And so that’s how we operated for the first three years. And the pillars for us were people, program and communication. And it’s been uneven at different points in time. In the two areas that I think that we’ve struggled—I just want to say struggled– that we have to revisit. Because now, I’ve been here now four and a half years. It’s time to revisit. Does this still work for us, et cetera?

But what we are discovering and what I am learning is that because there has been change in personnel, and I will say this to anybody that’s a leader or aspires to be a leader, whenever there is change in your top leadership, there is at least three phases of organizational change, okay? And that first phase is when everybody’s still excited, you got some skeptics, you got that person, occasionally that’ll say, “Well, I’ve been here longer than– and I’ll be here when they’re gone. We’ve got those, right? So that first phase is really like people trying to– it’s kind of honeymooning. OK, let’s see how it all works. And then you, as a leader, get to that point where you have to make some decisions. And those decisions are determining who can cut it, who doesn’t want to cut it, right? Right and who’s trying to undercut it. And you have to make some decisions right away and so Fortunately enough in the first real phase of things a lot of people self-selected themselves out They chose to leave the organization, which is really lovely.

You know there were a few people that I was disappointed pointed to see go, but at the end of the day, it was the right thing to do. The people who are can’t cut it are the hardest, because you really have to do

everything you can. At least, I feel like I have to do everything I can to help them be successful, which meant part of our people pillar was rethinking HR instead of being just compliance and termination into HR and professional development.

And so, we did things like instead of each department having memberships in various organizations, we consolidated the ones that were most impactful, and we created institutional memberships that then allowed every single employee to take whatever workshop, training, et center, either for free or at reduced cost. And we built that into the budgets.

But there’s still going to be the person who can’t cut it. Now the undercutters are really a challenge because they’re often the longest serving. They often feel like they know better than anybody else how the place works. And they know the system exceptionally well, especially the state system, really,

really well, and they are the most dangerous to growth. Because these are the individuals, I could give you some, cite you some examples that are just mind-numbing, but nonetheless, the Commonwealth of Virginia does have civility in the workplace as a policy has always had it. It was not always practiced in this institution. And in fact, this institution had different pockets where active bullying of other employees took place, threats of physical violence, actual physical violence, that had just been looked the other way because the person committing it was a good employee.

I mean, do y’all tolerate toxic in your space? Of course you do. You know who they are. I don’t. I try really hard to get rid of that in the space. Because, again, the undercutter can poison so much. And like I said, we’re really uneven right now. Some areas are doing really while other areas are not. And we’ve been diversifying.

And that’s another thing about JYF, right? When I came into the institution, 12% of our employees were people of color– indigenous, African, Asian Pacific Islander, 12%. 90% of them were in housekeeping or landscaping. Today, well, we’ve had a little modification because of some toxic behavior, but we were up to 23 percent and represented at top leadership all the way through.

So, all, you know, we were intentional about where we were recruiting, how we were recruiting, how we were trying to build an environment that would be welcoming and then the undercutters show up again. We have one area of our institution right now that we’re working through where an individual was hired into a director role, came to us with lots of experience, a black male, coming into a department that was all white. And they immediately said he was unqualified for the role because they liked the other guy. The other guy who couldn’t keep two sentences together during his interview, as far as I was concerned, right? You know, talented, yes, but not the best candidate.

But these staff members, because this black man was now their boss, and they did everything, literally did everything like actually saying to each other, oh, and the previous director who had moved on, one of those people who needed to move on, was telling the staff at my institution, “Well, just don’t help him. Make him figure it out for himself.” I mean, still was him putting themselves into the environment. I mean, this is real stuff that happens in museum space.

And I’m telling you that as we look at these questions about what civility looks like the staff did tell us some things about how they wanted to work together but they also said we also have some issues with visitors who come through here and we’ve always been told the visitor is always right we’ve always been trained to this idea and so our new museum senior director of museum operations and education came she said yeah we were having these conversations on staff and they would like us to think deeply about this idea of civility so going back and looking at you know how we were presenting ourselves to the public and all of that we completely rebuilt our marketing materials a couple years ago we actually brand by our name JYF museums org instead of historyisfun.org. We completely redid the website to make it more navigable. I mean, the website was a hot mess. You know, on the very first page, you could click on hotels, and it would take you right off the site. And then they wanted to know why they couldn’t sell tickets.

And then, so we put up onto our website and very easy right up front what we are, right? Educational Agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Our mission, which I remind people, this was around before I showed up. I’m just amplifying certain sections that you’ve ignored. Right? So, the mission is to foster through its living history museums, and we’re changing that to museums, programs, and outreach.

Right? Jamestown Settlement, American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, an awareness and understanding of the early history, settlement, and development of the United States through the convergence of American, Indian, European, and African cultures, and enduring legacies bequeathed to the nation.

Now, there were some who were like, “Well, that’s just the rah-rah, we say, “Pledge of Allegiance, we do that.” No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It’s, the legacies of this are really quite complex and beautiful and troubling and an opportunity in all of that and so our programs have been more reflective of that but the question that the visitors of visitor behavior especially in the environment that we’re in where staff were sharing with us especially like indigenous staff were sharing with us you know visitors saying to them calling the females Pocahontas and the males calling them chief and just being just disrespectful and them not feeling like they had a recourse that management didn’t have their back.

So coming out of Moe this was created and we the manage the leadership team we talked through these and tried to refine it and what kind of imagery that we want. And we aren’t the first to do this our neighbors at Colonial Williamsburg, they have these little placards where they have like 15 things you shall not do right, we did our we wanted ours to be different we wanted ours to be more about more about sort of again this idea of belonging collaboration etc.

And so it’s real simple and that’s that visual that you see on the side is on every door every major entry point into our museum spaces it’s on our website. And we ask that visitors be open to learning in a shared space, create an environment free of harassment and threatening behavior, engage in dialogue without discriminatory language, show respect to staff, fellow visitors, and museum property. And then we say, we will not tolerate racist, sexist, or homophobic comments, vandalism, physical contact, or harassment of any kind at our museums. Guests who cannot comply with our Code of Conduct will be asked to leave the museum premises.

And we will put you out. And you have to. If you’re talking about really protecting your staff and other visitors, you have to be willing to take that step. And if they want their money back, give it to them. Because guess what? That builds trust for the people who are there, both who are working there and who are visiting because they will know not only, we met what we said but I’m safe here.

And safety is sort of the first thing that we’ve been trying to focus on. How do we create safe space and you got to do that before you can really talk about welcoming space. And this is something that I don’t have the answers to, I will tell you. I mean, I’ve seen things in this institution that I haven’t seen in others. And I think, again, I think it’s part of it as a nature of its size.

I can’t be everywhere all the time. And so, there is a reliance. And there’s also a recognition that over time — remember when I said management came in to figure out how to make those things happen for the staff? Well, the staff aren’t feeling as empowered anymore in some spaces, because the managers in a super price. So, I’ve got to now go back as we go into this next phase of strategic planning to say, OK, we’re all at the table now, and we need to hear each other.

One thing that we just completed is our first– well, that’s not our first — our first independent, independent staff evaluation to let us — and it’s independent, it’s anonymous and all those things, and it allows me to see things across areas that are working and really dig into the details of things that are not, and that’s really lovely. So that’s where we are, that’s who we are, and now it’s time for you all to turn things over back to Gail to put you in your rows.

Are you doing it? Yeah. Okay, so for the rows, right? So, thank you very much.

Gail Lord:

Wow. [Applause]

Well, well, I want to just thank the panelists for doing the impossible, which is to stick to time so that we can have some time talking to one another. So, I’m supposed to move this forward. There we are. So, you replace the concept of table with concept of row, and you could just choose where you’d like to begin your conversations. I just want to say this is about sharing experiences. Maybe we’ll solve some problems. Maybe we won’t. And so, wow, this is an incredible group. Thank you all. And really, let’s give our, let’s give our panelists just another hand.

[Applause]

Well, I hate to do this, but we have the trust of the AAM to leave the room when we’re supposed to and many of you will want to go to other sessions. So, if I wonder if I could just ask, pretty much everyone has a microphone and if I could just ask the group leader, just a facilitator, speaker, or panelist to just maybe report back on a couple of the ideas that came out of each session, out of each table and then we’ll say goodbye and meet again next year. I believe it’s in Los Angeles.

Okay, I know we have a lot of problem-solving happening. Thank you so much everyone. Can I just ask you? Okay, so if I could just, just in the interest of getting people together again, you don’t have to go back, stay where you are.

Let’s see. Yvonne, can you do a quick report? Yvonne, can you just do a quick report with your microphone on, just say any ideas that came out of this session, 30 seconds and we’ll go around in that. No problem.

Yvonne Tang:

Thanks, everybody. So, my table was about community, and we talked a lot about dealing with hate or pushback or negativity in the community. Which really kind of pushed off Susie’s talk as well, and also Christie’s, which was fabulous. And so, we talked a lot about providing hope and feedback from visitors, from your staff, from within. Potentially pre-populating some controversial or difficult topics within your trusted partners.

We talked about potentially using marketing ahead of time so that all that hate, and disparagement and negativity will be received ahead of time and by the time your institution institutions ready to go, it’s everyone that is willing to pay and willing to come. And know that it is the 20 percent that you’re speaking to and including them, but there’s still 80 percent that are behind you. They might not be right there all the time, but they will come out and they will be there.

And then finding support to strengthen and rebuild and potentially look at either mediation or a civil discourse within the institution from outside help to be able to do that. And so, I really wanted to thank everyone at my table for sharing, being really open about their issues and talking about community.

Gail Lord:

Thanks so much. Sounds like maybe you’re next at the back.

Susie Wilkening:

Hi, okay, yeah, here I am. Okay, so there are four things we talked about, fairly similar overall up here. We talked about frontline staff, museum shop staff in particular, but people who are getting that pushback and how to help them.

So that segwayed into talking through the disinformation inoculation process of how do we prepare people. It’s all about that element of surprise. How do we think about that element of surprise and diminish that role in sparking those reactions.

So, we went through disinformation inoculation. We also talked about how we articulate our values as institutions, which included thinking through what our own individual biases and how we translate that to organizational values that we then then share with the public, asking them to then consider what their values are before they go into an experience and how that might be affecting their intake of information.

Which also means we have to practice radical curiosity and courageous empathy with that group that pushes back and creates that challenge because they’re coming from somewhere. If we’re radically curious about figuring out where they’re coming from and empathizing them to understand their pathway, even though knowing that does not mean we have to agree, that’s going to help us be more effective in our communications and conversations.

Gail Lord:

Fantastic. Thanks so much. John, if you just want to just tell us about your group, every discussion was fantastic.

John Hampton:

I don’t have a microphone over there.

So, our group, talking about decolonizing museums, talked about how to communicate that, and about it’s, you know, maybe the city of it’s just the right thing to do came forward as that, but then also the difficulties within some states around navigating government relations about doing that work and then trying to maintain governments that maybe aren’t on side with those goals as well.

And then we went into just a rapid fire, things of practical steps around that, which were really about connecting with community. About sometimes that’s hiring Indigenous staff, but then recognizing what relationships that you’re expecting from them, about how to value those, about building professional development for all staff within there, whether that’s through language lessons, which is one thing we’ve done at the Mackenzie Art Gallery that would bring in people to teach Indigenous values and cultures by teaching them language so that they can speak some key words especially around like, you know, to articulate hello and welcome or any Indigenous languages that you use within your institution. But also creating those professional development opportunities for Indigenous staff to be able to learn more about their own culture and relationship and that can be non-Indigenous staff, too. If you’re asking for people to come with connections and knowledge about their culture, then value their connection with culture as that work time, as paid professional development opportunities.

But I won’t go into all of our steps here because we’re — (inaudible)

Christy Coleman:

Real quick, we talked about staff and visitors. What do they need? And it came down to how are we training, educating them? How are we building cohorts for them to be able to understand, and then how do we address those in both cases who may be more toxic to the organization and trying to deploy empathy first to get them to understand the values of the institution and the goals of the institution moving forward. And then doing a cost benefit analysis. Is it worth keeping them?

Gail Lord:

Thanks so much. Thank you, everyone. [APPLAUSE]

This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. In the face of an epidemic of anxiety, depression, and physical disease, many museums have been exploring mindfulness practices to support the health of their communities. This recorded session addresses how museums might develop mindfulness programs that address the developmental needs of youth, a currently underserved population in mindfulness-based museum programming. The goal is to prepare museum educators to confidently incorporate mindful movement into object-based learning programs for youth at their museums.

Additional Resources

Fostering Resilience in Children slides

Fostering Resilience lesson plan

Fostering Resilience Rebalancing Big Energy

Fostering Resilience Mindful Moving and Breathing Techniques

Transcript

Jennifer Reifsteck:

So, welcome to Fostering Resilience in Children Through Virtual Mindfulness. So, my name is Jen Reifsteck and I manage school and teacher programs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian art. That’s my day job. And by night and by weekend, I am a yoga and qigong teacher, and I’m joined in this session with Lisa.

Lisa Danahy:

Hi, I’m Lisa Danahy, and I’m the founder of Create Calm, a non-profit organization that brings yoga and mindfulness programs to schools and communities. I think I just have to be closer.

I’m Lisa Danahy, and I’m the director and founder of Create Calm, a nonprofit that brings yoga and mindfulness programs to schools and the community. And I have been really honored to work with Jen for the last several years to create a program that is able to work with schools, support schools, but also supports community spaces in bringing social-emotional learning to kids from birth up through young adults.

So, I’m really excited to be here and then to play today.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

So, our organizations together developed a program called Artful Movement and Artful Movement is a virtual field trip program for children in grades pre-K through sixth.

And our goal for this session is for you to leave with tangible tools that you can take back to your institutions to develop your own slow-looking and mindfulness programs with your audiences. Together we will practice and then workshop ways to interpret projects, through inquiry practices of guided looking, and through interpretive practices through movement.

We’ll learn how the practices of slow looking and mindfulness are connected, and how they foster skills such as self-awareness, self-regulation, and perspective taking.

So please be sure you have something to write with. You can take notes on your phone if you wish as well. If you want to follow along on the app, we have the slides in a PDF format and all the handouts available if you’d like to pull up those resources while you participate in the session today.

So, we’re going to jump right in with a brief demo of the Artful Movement field trip program of course modified for an in-person audience.

And so, Lisa’s gonna get us started with a mindful moment and to go over our community agreement.

Lisa Danahy:

Okay. Oh, okay. I don’t know if this is gonna work. I like to have a headset so I’m gonna try to do this with the microphone maybe sort of in front of me I will see I’d like to just stick it under my arm.

So, we asked you to take out pens and paper and all of your handouts and I’m actually gonna ask you to put them aside for a second.

I’m gonna ask you to notice as you’re sitting there in your space, if you feel like you have space to move around, if you feel like you have space to really be comfortable and adjust yourself, either slide your chair away from the table a little bit or slide further away from, yeah, from your things.

So, allow yourself to start to get a little comfortable and then place your feet on the floor and just notice what it’s like to connect your feet with the floor. You can even stomp your feet a little bit. Yeah, just feel that connection and then as you press your feet into the floor sit up a little taller stand up a little taller.

Take a big breath in through your nose or your mouth and as you breathe out open your mouth and say. That felt good. Let’s do that again. Big breath in and say, “Ah.” One more time. Big breath in. “Ah.”

Now just take a moment to notice how that feels. To connect a little bit more on the inside and then feel your connection to what’s going on around you. And if your eyes are closed you can open them just a little bit and we’re going to create some reminders of how to be part of a community.

So, yoga means union coming together. And we find that sometimes we feel more comfortable coming together if we know sort of what the plan is. So, we have some really simple agreements that we’ve initiated that we’re hoping are gonna keep you feeling really comfortable, really safe, and allow you to have a really fun time.

So, the first agreement that we have, I want you to reach your arms out to your sides, and if you don’t have room, slide yourself somewhere where you have room. Take both arms out to the sides. Take a big breath in, stretch your fingers, open your heart a little bit, and start to feel as if you’re bringing in all kinds of goodness and love. And then wrap your arms around yourself as you breathe out and love yourself.

And it’s the last time you gave yourself a hug. All right, now extend it out, take a breath in, and love everybody else. Feel that connection you have with everybody else. And then hug it in and love yourself. Love everybody else and love yourself.

Start to notice keep going how this feels to open yourself up and then at the same time keep yourself feeling really nice and snuggly So this agreement reminds us to respect ourselves to respect each other to move in safe and positive ways and to bring our best to what we do from the inside and the outside. Next time your arms wrap around yourself Give yourself another big hug, and in your mind, or out loud, say, “I love me.”

Good. All right. Now bring your arms out to the side, sparkle your fingers, and imagine you’re a balloon. Fill yourself up like a balloon. Bring both hands together and breathe out and bring them down to your heart. Let’s do that two more times.

And take a moment to check in with yourself. And our second reminder our second agreement is to listen so take your thumb and your first finger rub it on the top of your ear the top cartilage. There’s an acupressure point here that helps to simultaneously wake up your brain for focus and activate your parasympathetic nervous system to calm you down. So about three o ‘clock in the afternoon or when you come to a session after lunch on the last day of a really long conference, you may want to rub the tops of your ears to help you wake up and to also feel secure.

This is a reminder as we do our agreements to listen, you’re gonna listen on the inside to your inner knowing and you’re gonna listen to your colleagues that are here with you. So, drop your fingers down into your lap take another big breath in. Breathe it out and let it go.

Just notice how you feel. So, if at any point in our practice today You start to feel a little lost you start to feel like you need a little bit of grounding or a little connecting. Remember to love yourself, remember to listen. All right.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

Thank you, Lisa, and that, I think we’re ready to look at a work of art together.

So go ahead and let your eyes wander all over this image. Notice the colors that you see, the shapes, the textures, the lines. Now going to your writing tools.

What did you see? What did you notice as you looked at this work of art? Write down five words or phrases and now we’re going to take a second look. So putting your pencils your pens down. Let our eyes wander all over the image again this may have come up in your conversations, but what questions came up? What do you wonder about this work of art?

So, I saw a lot of animated conversations, lots of smiling and gesturing. Thanks so much for sharing out with each other. Now to share some information about this work of art, so the name of this work of art is Thunder God, and it was painted by the Japanese artist Hokusai. It’s over 170 years old, and it’s about as tall as a love seat is wide, and it’s a hanging scroll. And I bet you’re wondering what that shape was on the back of the figure. And this is how the thunder god makes the thunder. You might notice now the drumsticks in the hand here and the really stylized laser beams of lightning. And perhaps you were wondering about the writing in the bottom corner. It’s signed by the artist who’s also added man mad about painting. Hokusai was 88 years old when he painted this work of art.

Now I am wondering what a thunderstorm might feel like in our bodies and Lisa is gonna guide us that way.

Lisa Danahy:

Can you hear me? Okay So I want you to consider whether as you were looking at this piece of art at any point you felt any energy present, or any emotions present or felt like a sense of a connection to movement in the piece of art and because very often that’s what makes art so powerful for us Is this visceral relationship we have with it.

So, we’re actually going to embody some of what we felt and sensed as we connected with the piece of art. So, I’m going to give you the option to take a spot along the sides if you’d like to stand up and really move or sit on the floor or to stay right where you are in your seats, but make sure you’ve got room to move behind or in front of your chair.

We’re going to be in all kinds of little positions, but it will be completely accessible, and you will be able to move in whatever way feels really good for you.

All right so we’re gonna get started with just a big breath in. Take a breath fill up like a balloon and breathe it out.

Another big breath in and breathe it out. Let your arms reach up overhead, fill up, stretch, and bring your hands down in front of your heart. Now consider what it might feel like to be a cloud, to be a puffy little light cloud floating in the sky and put your body in whatever position feels like a cloud. So, you might wanna ball up on the floor, you might wanna stretch out, make a shape of your body that you can hold for a couple of breaths that feels like a cloud. Good.

Feel free to grab a chair or the floor if you’d like. And then pause here for a few breaths and just feel into what it’s like to have the energy of a cloud. To be contracted and drawing inward. Now slowly start to bring your body back to a standing position. Reach your arms out and take another big balloon breath. And breathe it out.

Now start to rumble your feet. Start to imagine your cloud is building energy. Feel your feet rumble. I’m shaking the whole stage here If we fall down you keep going all right rumble those feet rumble your legs get your whole-body rumbling.

Feel as if you are that cloud now starting to churn, starting to maybe gray or fill denser. Let your head get into it. Let your arms get into it.

Really start to build that energy. Really get it rumbling. Good.

Maybe you want to make a little grrr sounds. Yeah, feel it, feel it, feel it, let your cheeks shake. All right, now, plant your feet. Take a big breath in, reach down. As you breathe out, explode up. Yeah, do that again, come down with a little tiny tongue. Wow, one more time.

Wow.

Now let your arms come down by your sides. Take a moment to pause and notice how you feel.

Is there tingling? Is there a shift in your breath? Are you noticing any change from a moment ago?

You can feel how it shifts so quickly. Clouds are always moving. Energy is always moving. All Alright, so now, take a big breath in, reach your arms up in front of you, step your feet wide, and as you breathe out, make a chopping motion, like lightning. Make whatever sound you want. And if you really want, you can take your hands and hit them on the ground. Yeah. Make that lightning really big and bold. One more time.

All right, now come back up, take a big balloon breath. Breathe it out.

Put your hands on your heart. Notice if there’s been any change. Notice your breath and your body.

Alright.

So, you’ve been expanding and contracting your energy. Take your hands and make fists. And then bring just your fingertips to the tops of your head and make rain. Can you hear it on the inside?

Bring your rain down your head and your shoulders and down onto your belly and your back. Make rain on your arms. Maybe you want bigger rain now.

Maybe you want really big rain. Make some rain on your bum and all the way down to your toes make rain all over your body wherever you want and if you want you can make some thunder let me hear it keep going and if you want you can make some lightning now.

One more time, and come back and make some more thunder, and make some more rain, tapping your whole body, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, anywhere you want on your body, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Alright, now slow it down.

Make little tiny raindrops on your cheeks, taking your fingertips to your cheeks and then to the forehead. Make little taps on your forehead. And then let your arms reach out to the sides. Take a big breath in, fill up like a balloon and breathe it out. Bring your hands to your heart and notice how you feel.

Now step your feet wide. Reach your arms out to the sides. And we’re going to make a little bit more energy move in the storm. We’re going to make some wind and some clouds moving by crossing the midline like this.

And then come up and start to make your arms twist and make a wind the sound.

Start to slow it down and now imagine you’re dragging your fingers through water. Just the tips of your fingers are dragging through the surface of the water.

Notice how your energy is changing.

Notice how, sometimes your energy seems big, and sometimes little. Sometimes it feels calm, sometimes it feels maybe even angry.

There’s no good or bad in your feelings, because it’s all just the energy and you can always move it.

Now slow your arms down, take a big breath in, breathe it out, and then find your way back to where your chair is and put your hands on the seat of the chair or the back of the chair. And you’re gonna let yourself hang a little bit upside down so it looks like this. Letting the last rain drip out just sit extend out through your back stretch back. Hands on the table or hands on a chair, extend your arms, put your head between your arms, and just take a few breaths, spend your knees a little bit to stretch.

Sometimes it helps to go a little bit upside down to change your perspective on how you feel, to shift the energy in your body. Take three more breaths like this. At the end of that third breath. Make your way back into your little cloud that you started with or find a seat in your chair and be a little cloud like this.

Notice what your body wants and what you need.

Give yourself the opportunity to become light, to float, to notice the sensation of movement and stillness at the same time. And to notice that your energy is always shifting, it can be interpreted as positive or negative or good or bad or scary or fun. It’s all just energy.

The emotions can shift as easily. And sometimes if we know how to move the energy in our bodies, we know how to move, how we feel. Just like with the storms, the biggest storms bring rain that waters the plants. The biggest storms move rivers, shake leaves from trees and help them grow.

Clear spaces that are overcrowded. And so even when a storm seems big and scary, it’s just a space for growth. Take one more breath here in your little cloud and then gradually come back to sit. And if you’d like, take out your paper and your pen or your notepad and just make a little note about how that felt for you.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

So, let’s come back together as a group.

So, what we just experienced was a modified version of the Artful Movement virtual field trip. And it’s rooted in the pedagogy of slow looking.

So, what is slow looking? Shari Tishman, she’s a researcher at Harvard Project Zero and she defines SLO looking as taking the time to carefully observe more than meets the eye at first glance. And Shari goes on to say that slow looking is a quote rewarding feedback loop so the more you look the more curious the you are and the more you want to see and keep looking.

So, you may all be familiar with timing and tracking studies of visitor experiences in the galleries and we know from these studies that visitors aren’t necessarily slowing down. If they’re spending any time in front of an object it’s they’re spending most of their time actually reading the label reading the interpretation of the object.

So how can we get visitors to slow down?

With the Artful Movement virtual field trip program and other programs at the National Museum of Asian Art, we use Project Zero Thinking Routines. So just by a show of hands in the audience, who’s a fan of Project Zero thinking routines and uses them in their practice. Excellent, great.

So, if you’re new to Project Zero, Project Zero comes out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and was founded in the late ’50s by a philosopher who wanted to study the arts as a cognitive science. And when Nelson Goodman went to research how the arts are studied as a cognitive activity, as any good researcher, he wanted to start with the body of research that already existed. And he found absolutely no research that existed. And so that’s why it’s called Project Zero.

It’s studying the arts as a cognitive science. And I first heard about project zero actually at AAM in 2011. And so today we experienced a combination of two thinking routines. So, thinking routines are a way to scaffold the learning, to really deepen the engagement of looking at a work of art through guided discussion. And it’s working to build these skills or thinking dispositions. And so, we experienced to modify looking 10 times 2. Instead, we looked 5 times 2. And this develops descriptive language, your vocabulary skills, your observation skills. And we used that as the C and C think wonder in our conversations.

So how does slow looking and mindfulness overlap? Quite literally, in the slide we put in, It’s the inquiry. So, at the root of these practices is the slowing down, taking the time to notice. And that noticing comes from a place of non-judgment.

What you see is what you see. What you feel is what you feel.

And when you slow down and inquire through mindfulness practices, And you do that in a non-judgmental way. You are developing curiosity. You’re developing wonder.

And you’re able to notice different perspectives.

And these are practices for a reason. They take time. They take concentration. These are learned dispositions.

So, Lisa, do you want to talk about inquiry, awareness, and connection and get us into the energy component?

Lisa Danahy:

Yeah. So, I have all these little notes in my head rushing around, and I’m not sure what I want to share with you first. But I’m going to start with inquiry and this notion of curiosity. Recent studies have come out that have shown that imagination is key to accessing the higher functioning in your brain. And when you are curious, when you are able to question and use your imagination and creatively experience your environment, you are able to create more positive quick synapses. You’re able to build new neuro pathways. You’re able to connect with your brain, getting it out of a limbic response and getting it into that more executive functioning space.

And when folks are coming to the museum, a lot of times it can be very cognitive and it can be really connecting and we can share a lot of really academic beautiful history and it can help to engage imagination and movement to get into that space to bring them really into that very comfortable place of not judging, not feeling unsure of themselves or feeling really more stable. The way we can do that is through being aware. I’m aware of what I’m doing, I’m aware of what you’re doing, and I’m aware of how I’m connecting in my space.

When I connect, I can be more curious. When I’m more curious, I can be more aware. When I’m aware, I can be connected. The one thing that really works with bringing the movement into this program, bringing that awareness into the mind-body connection is that there’s a book called Spark. I don’t know if any of you have read the book Spark by John Raddy.

John Raddy has, he’s a psychotherapist and researcher, and he has pulled together all this research on the value of movement in building the brain and actually wiring the brain. It is said that when you play, it takes approximately, I think it’s four minutes of play to implant a new experience as a memory. It takes 4,000 times of rote memorization to plant the same experience. So, we want to get away from just talking and providing information, and we want to get it to be a little bit more of a felt experience. And so that’s where the movement really starts to help.

So, when we start to move, we get into this energy inquiry. And you did these things today. You were able to connect. We started actually with the connection to the breath. We connected to the breath because it’s usually a pretty quick space to get into, and you start to very quickly feel that you can adjust your states of being. And from that connection, you get into the focus, the inquiry, the exploration, the imagination. You’re starting to move the body and activate the nervous system.

The nervous system is one of the primary ways that we can shift our experiencing and we can engage social-emotional learning. The nervous system is a key to our self-regulation, and that’s where once we can tap into that nervous system, we can start to recognize through the awareness how we can calm ourselves down, how we can rebalance.

So, the key is not to always stay here, right, even though a lot of us want children to stay here especially Because they have big energy, what we really want is to play with and move. We want to play with and move the energy, we want to play with and move ourselves, and we want to play with and move our minds, right? We want to engage in this slow looking, the project zero thinking routines to really get out of the standard answering and responding and waiting for someone to tell us about our experience.

And that’s the same with the movement, you know when I had you create your own movements. When I had you feel your energy when I had you doing that you were controlling your experience And so it’s really important as we’re developing Social-emotional skills is to empower everybody we’re working with to have a sense of ownership of their experience an agency a Voice to be seen to be felt to be heard without any judgment, any expectations.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

So, to bring it all together and recap, so Artful Movement, again, was a virtual field trip developed between National Museum of Asian Art and Create Calm. It started in 2021 as a virtual field trip for students in pre-K through sixth grade but has since evolved into on-site trainings for teachers. And as you experience today, it starts with a centering breathwork practice, classroom agreements.

We go into looking at one work of art with a project zero thinking routine, and then a movement from instructor from Create Calm guides us through a movement and experience to interpret the work of art. And then we conclude with a relaxation and time to reflect together and check in with the students. You know, how are you feeling right now?

The program fosters social and emotional skills, such as self-regulation, self-awareness, perspective taking, and it’s culturally responsive because we intend to create a learning experience that’s based on trust. We value the students sharing their unique perspectives, their unique experiences with us.

And now we’re going to turn it over to you all. It’s time to workshop. So, what we’ve prepared for you, we prepared six works of art coming from the National Museum of Asian Art Collections, and we provided a link to Project Zero Thinking Routines.

So, the goal of the workshop is you’re going to be working in your groups of three or groups of two, and you’re going to pick one work of art of the six we prepared for you. You’re going to pick one projects you’re thinking routine that you would use to examine the work of art and then you’re gonna work together as well to create a movement or a sequence of movements and I know Lisa has some tips on sequencing movements.

Lisa Danahy:

So how many of you were able to get a sense of whether energy was rising or lowering as you were moving earlier today. OK. All right.

So, the idea here is that when you look at a piece of art, you may tune right into a type of energy that you want to capture in that piece of art that you want to play with. And in that case, you can take just one thing and you can move with just that one thing.

You’re going to want to breathe your way into it and breathe your way out of it, but you can come up with just one movement. So, in your handouts, the things that we did today are listed on a handout that kind of focus on whether they were high energy or low energy, what they did. So, you can actually use this handout to help you to pick a movement to match your piece of art or you can create your own.

But the idea is that you want to feel an energetic space and find a way to embody that energy so that you are relating to the energy of the piece of art as well as your experience, your personal experience.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

I think it’s the next. I think the lesson plan template also takes you to the Google Drive, right?

Lisa Danahy:

I think so, maybe. Yeah, I think that might. I think so.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

Yeah, so the lesson plan template is also, the Google Drive link.

Lisa Danahy:

Where you’ll find your handouts.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

Where you’ll find the handouts about moving energy. The middle link takes you to the website of Project Zero, specifically their menu of thinking routines related to exploring art, objects, and images. And then the final QR code takes you to a link of the six works of art from National Museum of Asian Art Collections.

So again, you’ll pick one work of art from that six, one thinking routine from the menu of choices from Project Zero, and then create your movement piece.

Lisa Danahy:

So, let’s go back to that template in its form that you’re going to find in your Google Drive if you want. And you don’t have to use the template. We just put it together for you, so you have it. But the idea is, you’re going to pick your object, the piece of art, and then you’re going to do a slow looking yourself at that piece of art, determine a movement so that you’ve got your project zero thinking routine on the bottom which one you’re going to use or if you’re familiar with them you can pick one, otherwise you can pull from the QR code on the next page. And then you’re going to create your movement and you can pick one of these movements that’s already there or you can create your own.

So, you can pick one movement and let that be the whole experience or you can pick a series of movements. So, what I did with you is when, so we lead an institute that is a three-day exploration of this lesson planning, so we’ve really tried to boil it down into something really quick for you all. But the idea is to create a bell-shaped curve of an experience of movement.

So, you’re going to start with breath and then you’re going to come into the body. So, you may want to come into the body with a smaller movement and then with a bigger movement and then you’re going to come back down on the other side. You don’t want to leave folks hanging up in the big energy. You’re going to come back down with a breath or another movement and then breath. And so, the chart that you have here, you’ve got things like crossing the midline. You’ve got things like making big movements, bringing you upside down inversions, and then these cross-body movements that help to settle.

So, you can use those as the center of it. You can also use them as either pieces, like the down dog and what we call turtle shell, what I call cloud for you today are very centering and help you find the energy or come back to the neutral energy.

So, we really just want you to play with it. There’s no right or wrong here. You don’t have to use these. You don’t have to there’s really there’s no way you can do this wrong because it’s your embodiment of the piece of art that you’re working with.

[In the background] I tried to get on water, but I had a leader train and by the time they come to the area the network is super flowing. There’s a way to sit. There’s a great deal of conversation. And then the other networking kind of stuff, it was all super fun. But it’s ideal to do that in the middle.

Lisa Danahy:

So, how’s everybody feeling?

Do you all feel like you have movements sort of tracked out or do you need another minute or thumbs up if everybody’s good to go or…Okay.

All right so let’s pull up the art.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

We could either do this by art or we can just take volunteers.

Lisa Danahy:

Let’s go by art.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

Let’s go by art, okay. So, did anyone pick the ancient Thailand vessel? The spiraling, okay.

Lisa Danahy:

Okay, we have spirals.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

So, let’s all stand up and let’s move again. So, we’re going to learn from you friends how to move to this work of art.

Lisa Danahy:

You can move out into the sides too if you want.

That’s fine. [laughs]

[Audience 1]

So, we’re feeling what that feels like in our ankles, maybe some static feelings in our arms. Yeah, are you holding water like that? Can you slowly come to a standard position? Maybe start moving our arms in some circles. Start out small. We’ll slowly get bigger. Incorporate some knees, start to make those circles really big.

That’s a good question.

Yeah

Yeah, the trust in the breathing. The autonomy yeah, there’s no right way to breathe in this. Let me slowly make them smaller again. You feel how that changes your breathing?

Yes, and then we’re still breathing. (laughing)

[Audience 2]

Those are fairly similar. Yeah, good job. OK, I’m going to lead you through a similar thing, I suppose. First, start standing with your feet together. Raise your hands up over your head and touch at the top.

Imagine you are very strong, but with strength comes the component of being brittle. And someone drops you and you crack. And so, imagine now that you go limp, you can even lay on the floor if you want. You’re a bunch of little shards. Oh, no.

But somebody picks you up. Inhale, stand.

And similar to how you were formed on a pottery wheel, you can spin in your body very slowly, don’t get dizzy, and you can exhale very deeply as you go.

That’s all I got.

Lisa Danahy:

Thank you. So, for those who were experiencing being guided through that, any thoughts, any comments on the different types of movement causing different energy sensations?

[Audience 3]

Even though we were moving, it really made me actually focus more on the object and the first glance glancing at us swirls face and then really like feeling that energy even though we were moving at the same time.

[Audience 4]

And I thought with the second set of instructions I was really cognizant of the fact that that is a piece of pottery that has a history and age and so that was really cool.

Lisa Danahy:

Yeah, to think about the material, your construction, right, that was really neat. So, was there any point in the energy that you felt it go higher or lower?

Where was a high energy point? Was there a high energy point?

Yeah, big arms yeah how about a low energy point yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so can you see how you can sort of put them together there.

[Audience 5]

I was just gonna say that you know just examining the vase you have the circularity as Noah pointed out when it was on the wheel or around. But you also have the circularity in a different plane, which is vertical, on the actual vase. And each of us, even though we didn’t coordinate, and you explored one of those, and we explored, I think, primarily another.

So, I thought that was really interesting.

Lisa Danahy:

And when you tie that in with the Project Zero Thinking routines of what do you see? What do you wonder what’s going on and you’re getting the descriptions and the feelings both from the movement and from the visual it’s pretty cool. You can go…

[Audience 6]

They start with, you know, myself, you know, the small circles where you started and then they talk about my community and then they talk about me. So, I think you could really embody it with that.

Lisa Danahy:

Thank you.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

Okay. Did anyone pick the Chinese court robe, the Shelfu, by chance. I thought I saw birds, so I’m curious if there was anyone picked either the Korean face? Yeah, yes, the blue and white, yes.

[Audience 7]

Everyone please start seated. We are calling this crane waking from slumber. So with you all started seated I want you to imagine yourself a crane just waking up and you’re just starting to feel the weight of the sleepiness on the base of your feet.

I’d like you to breathe in and breathe out, feeling the weight below your feet.

And now slowly start to lift one foot and then the next foot lightly tapping on the floor. Lift one foot and then the next. Take a deep breath in and breathe out. And now bring your feet both back down to the floor and cross the right foot over the left foot and back, then the left foot over the right foot and back. Slow movements, you’re just waking up from a long sleep.

And now bring your feet back to the floor, resting. Take one deep breath in, let it out. And now we need to wake up our head and our neck, which has been curled. You need to uncurl your head. So, start to turn your head to the left and then to the right, to the left, to the right, down towards your chest then back up again to the left to the right, towards your chest and up again. Take one deep breath in. Let it out. So, the second time when you take, you’re going to take a deep breath in and when as you start to let your breath out, I want you to realize or think about your arms, the position of your arms, also known as wings.

Start to raise one arm, one wing, and lower while breathing in and out. Raise one, the other wing, lower. Raise one wing lower, the other wing lower. And now put your two wings back down towards the middle and we want to sort of stretch, get ready to stand up. So, you’re going to stretch out your core a little bit so stand or while you’re sitting just kind of lift your head extend your chest while breathing in and then breathe out and when you feel comfortable stand up and now raise both wings to the side breathe in and breathe out one big breath in as you raise your wings and breathe out.

Now we’re ready, we’ve woken up and now we want to take a little flight. So, you want to take your two wings out to either side and start to twist your body as though you’re floating through those swirly clouds, no they’re not swirly, through those clouds that are above them. Great. Yeah, they’re kind of curved.

And I want you to start to look at the ground and look for a beautiful marsh landing where you’d like to, a marsh spot where you’d like to land. While you’re slowly start starting to slow down your flight just a little bit when you feel like you’ve found a landing spot. Then very slowly and carefully sit back down. Kind of pulling your wings down. Either side of you I don’t know how to explain that.

What are we doing next oh.

Yeah, yeah, we’re going back to feet. Okay, so we’ve landed now. We want to make sure that this this marsh land is strong enough to hold us. It’s not too marshy So you want to take your feet and tap them on the floor again? Bringing your breathing down. Back to the center. And then to sit tall and that’s all we have…

Lisa Danahy:

Thank you, that was great, so anybody have any observations from that?

Any, yeah…

[Audience 8]

When you asked us to look down after we were in the air. I honestly felt like this strange like perspective as if I was like actually like up higher than I usually am. So that was really interesting how I really got caught up in that story and those movements to the point where look down at my feet I’m like whoa my feet are so small. And I was also imagining maybe being in a group, especially of like much younger children. I know that it’s nice and it’s soothing to be caught up, but if, say, the lesson was about perspective or being high up in the sky, asking what you might see below or something like that.

Lisa Danahy:

Yeah, I think that’s a really good point because one thing we want to, it’s always fun to have a story and to tie a story to our movement and our art, but sometimes it’s nice just to be a little bit outside of the story too. So, you’re flying high, you look down, find a place to land, right? And so, because then we don’t have to question whether they know what a marsh is or what a, right?

You know, I mean, no, no, no, this is, we’re all learning this together. And I do the same exact thing. I create these really fabulous stories. We go to the beach and then half the class goes, I’ve never been to the beach. And so, then I go, oh, yeah, that’s right. So just allowing yourself to not have such a story that was really beautiful, that perspective. Because that’s exactly what we’re trying to do is create a space of curiosity and open learning. So, you land where you wanna land.

And it’s nice too because in that piece of art you can’t really tell where they are, you know, whether they’re coming or going or, you know, they sort of seem like they’re on land, sort of seem like they’re kind of in floating, so that was really great. So big energy, where was a big energy moment?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the flying was big energy. Yeah.

I agree. I agree. And then a low energy.

Yeah. So, this is crossing the midline. It’s the quickest way to connect the right and left hemispheres of the brain and body. Any time you cross over the midline with a hand, a leg, a head, anything that you’re doing, it’s the quickest way to enhance the mind-body connection. So, I always like to see cross-binding. Oh, out of curiosity, what was your Project Zero thinking routine?

I noticed.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

Jennifer Reifsteck:

I think we just have time for one more group to share if anyone wants to volunteer.

Thank you. So, So if you guys cool awesome. All right.

[Audience 9]

So, we are taking a look at the piece in the upper left of this screen these two birds here which is actually a full wall, correct?

Yes, this is a full wall quick tidbit we chose this piece because it moved from two blocks away from my museum to inside of their museum. So, we had a connection there. We thought it was pretty cool. But yeah, so, we’re not gonna do the full extended version of this, but take a moment to look at the work of art. That’s our moment.

Now, I want you to think of a couple of things you see here. Just what do you notice? And you can shout one thing out and then I’ll repeat it into the microphone. What do you see? What comes to mind?

Feathers, spread wings, Ooh, conversation, confrontation, dark, flying, a few different words here, all right, gold, excellent, all right. So what I want us to do is we’re going to imagine, very similarly to our last group, a day in the life of these creatures here. The way that I’d like for us to begin is just waking up our morning. So, I’m gonna have us all stand up and we are gonna take a moment to stretch our wings as we’re waking up.

So, what I’d like for you to do and I’m wanting to put the microphone in my armpit here too, is stretch your wings out and then pull them back in.

And again, I might forget to mention the breathing here but please continue to breathe. Maybe take a deep breath in as you’re stretching out. And then out as you pull them back in. In as you stretch out. And then out as you pull them back in.

Excellent. So now that we’ve had a moment to stretch our wings to wake up, I want us to imagine what it would look like for these birds to move throughout their day.

We mentioned some conversation, some confrontation, maybe something’s going on here. So now that we have our wings all stretched out, I want you to begin to move your wings around a little bit. Start to feel what it’s like to have these wings, to have these feet beneath you. And as we’re moving specifically, I want us to make some big movements with those wings so we can imagine spinning around. I’m seeing some up and down, some side to side, some big movements. As we’re getting into those big movements, I want us to add some bigger movement, some moving around the space. Feel free to use those feet, move around. And I want us also to imagine what it would sound like to be these creatures. Add a little sound to your movement as well, whatever feels right to you. What would it sound like?

Excellent, lots of big sounds here, big sounds, little sounds.

Awesome, and then much like our last group, take a moment to find your way back to your nest. And once you’ve found your nest, we’re gonna fly back in, drop back down. Feel free to take a seat on your chair. And we are going to settle in for the night. So, take a big breath out. Maybe another in and out, and we’re gonna curl ourselves up within our wings. Curl up into a nice little ball, and again take a few more nice deep breaths.

So now that we’ve settled in, now that we’ve nestled into our nests, I’m wondering, do you have anything more that you’re wondering about these works of art now that we’ve put ourselves into the shoes of these animals here? Do we have any more questions that are still in our minds? Again, I would leave more time for this, but you can shout one out if one comes to mind.

I know I’m still wondering what they’re doing. What’s their relationship? And we can end it there.

Lisa Danahy:

Awesome.

Big energy? Where was the biggest energy?

Yeah, yeah. One of the biggest secrets in creating movement experiences, especially for kids when you’re not used to cueing breath, is to make sound. Because you need to exhale to make sound. So, when you invite sound, you don’t have to guide the breath. And sound creates more visceral experience of the movement, too. So yeah, that was lots of really nice big movement. And then did you feel the shift of the energy after you moved, and then you came back down into your nest?

Yeah. And how many of you saw the piece of art differently after the movement, right? Yeah. That was the whole point of doing this, so thank you for modeling that so well. Any questions or comments from folks on that experience?

Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

I know, we’re at time.

Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us in this workshop and participating. We’re going to put up our contact information up here. If you want to drop your contact information, we do have a sheet in the back. We’d love to hear from you and continue workshopping together if you’re interested. So safe travels, enjoy the rest of your conference. Take care.

This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. Museums have been guilty of discounting oral histories as “non-academic” or “inappropriate” methods of historical documentation – a trend that contributes to the erasure of Latinx and BIPOC stories and culture. Through a series of case studies from institutions doing exciting and effective work with oral history, this recorded session explores how to engage community members in oral history projects, advocate for the importance of this work in museums, and share research on how the inclusion and prioritization of oral histories in museums can impact the relationships between the museum and its community and staff members of color.

Transcript

Sehila Mota Casper:

And we started out as a very, very grassroots organization in 2014. We were a lot of museum professionals, curators, academics, historic preservationists, anyone in the heritage field. And realized that when we would go of conferences, there really wasn’t sessions solely dedicated to Latinx history or heritage.

So, we just came together trying to support one another within our work. And we became a 501 (c)(3) three years ago and have staff now. So, we’re very excited that a lot of the work that we’ve been putting into this over the last 10 years is finally coming into fruition. So that’s what we’re going to share with you day. We are a national organization. We focus on places, stories, and cultural heritage in the United States. And I will say that our work centers on racial and social justice for inclusion. And I will pass it on to Asami.

Asami Robledo-Allen Yamamoto:

Sorry for the random caps. That did not look like that on Canva. So, this is a quote from Michelle Obama on the dedication day of the Whitney Museum of Art new building. It’s no secret that museums have a history of excluding stories and representation of marginalized identity groups like people of color, disabled people, the LGBTQ + community, and so many other identities. Traditionally museums have prioritized the white male abled body lens and that is often the art that that hangs in the walls, the histories told in the exhibition, and the perspectives shared throughout the one’s museum experience.

While the needle is moving slowly, museums are often instituting change and diversifying their collection and approaches to museums, but a lot of this work is internal. So once again, community is being left out and not really seeing all the very important change that’s happening inside.

So, our presentation is going to focus on oral histories and how conducting oral histories and integrating them into exhibitions and galleries can help amplify community voices and transcend the boundaries of traditional community involvement.

There’s a lot of research that has been published and being expanded on that explores the impact that belonging has on human development, societal relationships, and challenging stereotypes and narratives. All histories can promote belonging in museums. So, on the next slide I have to do my museum educator hat. I’m gonna show you a work of art with the museum label next to it. So, we’re gonna sit with it for, I don’t know, a minute. And then I’m gonna challenge you to act like this work of art is in a gallery, not on a projection screen, you’re walking through the Smithsonian.

And this painting is called Braceros. Does anyone know what a Bracero is? Okay, we have some folks that are saying, yeah. So, a Bracero is a person that they were a Mexican — it was part of a Mexican labor program in the 1940s to 1964. So I’m just going to leave you with that information.

I’m sure y ‘all know this, but the average person only spends 22 seconds per work of art in a museum, so I know that this minute is feeling like 10.

Okay, so now I’m going to do something a little different. I’m going to interrupt the presentation for a second and I’m going to play a little fragment of an oral history. Now, I want to recognize that this– I wanted to find an oral history of a Bracero. Now, so many of these aren’t Spanish. So, in terms of language equity, I wanted to share one that’s in English. But if anybody wants to hear a Spanish one, you can come up after, or I can play both of them, either way.

Maybe I’m gonna play it.

– ‘Cause we’ve had Brassettos there.

– I see, so one that they would come in, you would be at your little, by your machine or let’s say by your station ride and then they would—

– They would bring ’em on in and shoot ’em through and in fact, I think we would X-Ram, check ’em and then they went and shouted, because I remember that now, that you had your hands were just completely dirty, dirty, dirty, you know. And smell, man, when those poor guys got off those boxcars and those cattle cars, poor guys. I mean, it was…

– I know I talked to a woman who was, she was a clerk typist, which I think I believe would have been across the compound from where you where you all were. And she said she almost fainted once from one of the first times she was there, and they would line up in front of her and she said it wasn’t necessarily their fault because they hadn’t had a chance to.

– And they were jammed. We went down and literally we would open sometimes, open those boxcars and let them come out. God, I mean they were. How they survived, how They survived coming up, you know, and I you know a lot of people used to criticize Us over here how we treated them what I said.

Okay?

If anybody is feeling like they have the emotional and brave capacity does anybody want to share how? Listening to the oral history while looking at this work of art made you feel It’s okay if you don’t

Yeah Yeah that it’s allowed me to connect with our telling story that maybe within that context. Thank you so much for sharing. Yeah.

It just sort of gives a sense of the reality of the experience.

>> Yeah. Thank you! So much for sharing.

>> Oh, I see one more in the back. Awesome.

Okay, yeah, go ahead.

>> Especially having — with multiple faces emphasizes the–

Thank you. So, it sounds like, in general, we kind of had a good feeling about integrating these oral histories.

Now, I’m going to pass it off to Ms. Sehila.

Sehila Mota Casper:

Yeah, just to support on this and work a little bit further on this. I’d like to share a video clip that was put together by one of our dear partners, University of Texas, at El Paso, the Oral Histories and Borderlands Department. Over the last nine years, I’ve partnered with them to help conduct oral histories, document Braceros stories, because we just helped save, and we just designated Briovista Farm, which is a Braceros site, as a national historic landmark. Last week we did the unveiling, it was pretty exciting. So, they put this together for a Bracero History Summit that I organized and again just think about that artwork and context and here you will listen to three Braceros and it is in Spanish. We have closed captions at the bottom, and I had no control about how big it could be so If you wanted this, I could email it to you also following today’s talk.

Here we go. So, this is an oral history taken from the Bracero History Archive that Asami just showed. This is Juan Rosa. And these three gentlemen actually received their contracts at Rio Vista Farm outside of El Paso, and they’re going to share their experience in receiving their contract and also the interview process but also being out in the fields.

“If I could work in Mexico, I could work in the United States.”

Y ‘all, thank you for your patience.

I think I’d be better off with the clicky thing instead of trying to use the PC.

Okay, here we go.

“Al economía y a la vida de esta nación. Mis expectativas solamente eran de que si yo podía trabajar en México, yo podía trabajar en Estados Unidos y que de allí yo podría darle una mejor vida a mis hermanos, a mi madre. Cuando entré de Brasero estaba allá en mi pueblo y no vine a Chihuahua porque ahí estaban contratando, ahí en Chihuahua porque caerán miles de braseros y ahí no reunieron, era cantidad de gente, en aquel tiempo era la oportunidad para que la gente viniera del sur de México a Tratarse para Brasero. Miren, la batalla empezó en Chihuahua.

Allí en Chihuahua agarraban, había una estación, que le decía, una estación vieja de tren. Era muy amplio ahí el terreno, estaba fuera del pueblo, en Chihuahua. Y no había sanitarios. Ahí pasaba un río. y ahí iban a hacer sus necesidades, hí íbannos, y allá toquemos mucha gente, total es que ahí empezaba la batalla.

Había una oficina fuera de Shubahua y allá tenía uno hacia línea, todo un día, como la primera vez fue muy duro, como yo creo que más de mes, durmiendo en un cartón en la banqueta, cuando ya me contraté y llegué ahí con los americanos, yo lo vi de la diferencia, con mucho, le miraban uno las manos, los ojos así fijos y le miraban las manos a uno, ya cuando le tachaban que sí, ya vete que te hayan comido, ahí estaba un comedor, ya por cuenta de la agricultura.”

So, these oral histories of these gentlemen are actually being used to create the very first Bracero Museum in the United States. It will be at Socorro, in Socorro, Texas, which is about 20 miles outside of El Paso. And it’s the last remaining historical site associated with the reception and contracting site on the United States side for Braceros.

So, we wanted to share this, just giving a little bit more context to the experience of what these individuals underwent and actually hearing from their own perspective and it was based on these oral histories that we were able to document everything and get the site listed as a National Historic Landmark and then also to help identify what we would be telling at the story through the museum.

So, what is an oral history? An oral history, it’s a primary source, and I can’t stress that enough so many times, academics, like we just think that oral histories are not, and they are, such as a recorded spoken interview, that aim to capture and preserve narratives about the past through life histories, oral histories, and they generate valuable insights into the construction of historical narratives.

So, through the museum, we learn from these Braceros, and we will be taking their own words and also allowing for them to share their stories with visitors throughout the exhibit. We will also, instead of having curator speak, we will have an audio, you know, having the Bracero speak instead.

So, it’s really been kind of a guiding light for us as we begin to think through this, and I will pass it over to Asami.

Asami Robledo-Allen Yamamoto:

So oral histories, they’re usually conducted on a one-on-one setting, but there have been group histories and those can also be effective It’s in collaboration with a well-prepared and empathetic interviewer. The narrator may be able to recall information that they might not notice that they recall and draw conclusions about their experience that they would not have been able to produce without the interviewer. Oral histories, we showed you two different ones. So, mine was only a voice recording. And Stela’s had video, and both are common, although voice recordings are usually better, because they take up less space. Recording preserves the interview for use by others, removed in time and/or distance from the interviewee.

Oral histories also preserve the entire interview in its original form, rather than the interpretation of what was said. So, if you go to the UTEP oral history site, you’ll find everything is transcribed. And oral histories are used to seek new information, clarification, or new interpretation of a historical event. During the interview, the interviewer should ask the narrator for first-person information. These are memories that the narrator can provide on a reliable basis in which they participated or witnessed or decisions in which they took part. Oral histories can convey personality, explain motivation, and reveal inner thoughts and perceptions.

Okay, so these are the six R’s to keep in mind while conducting oral histories. So, research, be prepared. You know, these are moments in someone’s life. Be prepared with as much background information as you can. And that’s really going to help them remember as well. Rapport so it’s a pre interview call is going to go super long. It’s going to start establishing that relationship. Often folks are really nervous like if someone came and asked me about a event in my life. I’d be like why so being welcoming and being empathetic. It’s incredibly important.

Restraint. An experienced interviewer maintains rapport by effectively managing equipment conducting the interview chronologically, asking open-ended questions, listening attentively, following up on details, respectfully challenging questionable information, and fostering an atmosphere where the interviewer feels comfortable and truthful.

Retreat, so making sure that oral histories do not make, are not long, are not to a length where the interview becomes fatigued. Also, acknowledging that oral histories can readdress trauma and knowing that the interviewer is not a therapist. And also, there’s some form of care for both the interviewer and the interviewee that needs to take place.

Review, so interviewers should immediately check that everything is being recorded. And then once everything is transcribed, the power should be given back to the community. So, they should have the power to say, actually, I want to omit this, or I want to take this out because of this. Actually, I don’t even need to give you a reason. But it’s just giving them that control back.

And respect. Always begin and end with respect and honor. These are their memories, and they can carry a lot of emotions. These shared moments are their truths and need to be treated with respect.

So additional terms that I wanted to address with oral histories– community healing. So, community healing consists of three key psychological dimensions– connectedness, collective memory, and critical consciousness. There are integrated to define community healing as an ongoing multilevel process, whereby oppressed groups in their connectedness and collective memory through a culturally symbiotic process in which in ways they promote critical consciousness to achieve optimal states of justice. That was super academic-y.

But essentially just saying that oral histories can really cultivate the space for community healing. Also, through and they’re the definition for collective memory.

Storytelling. So, a collective narrative is a common story about, I jumped something, so storytelling not only facilitates an understanding of human behavior, it also functions as a tool for resisting oppression, fostering healing, and promoting spiritual communion. In community settings, storytelling has contributed to restoring cultural identities, building a sense of community, and serving as a counter-hegemonic stories to refute negative stories about oppressed groups.

And in there, I also threw in community narrative and dominant cultural narrative, which is meaning a community narrative is a common story about the group in a particular setting, consisting of personal and paralleling stories among group members. Whereas the dominant cultural narrative is what’s, you know, commonly said by major socializing institutions.

And also wanted to address how interviews are different from oral histories.

Interviews typically are shorter and they’re looking for a specific point to address, whereas oral histories are really about honoring and collecting somebody’s memories and preserving the events that they lived through.

Sehila Mota Casper:

So, who should be documenting history? Who should curate stories? History isn’t just about what happened, it’s about who gets to tell the story, and we allow communities to share their own experiences through oral histories and community-led documentation.

We ensure that the voices of those who lived it are heard and honored. This isn’t just about preserving the past, it’s about empowering people to define their own narratives and ensure a richer, more inclusive record. And back to what Asami was saying was really focusing on empowering community, allowing their voice to be heard and honoring their own experiences is so important whenever we are documenting someone’s history.

And here’s another example about just preserving the past.

Imagine the difference between a textbook or museum exhibit of the civil rights movement written solely from the perspective of white citizens and politicians. Now let’s compare that one to one that includes the voices of activists, like freedom writers and everyday people who participated in sit-ins.

Just think about that for a moment, you know, if we are as academics just reading from a textbook or taking accounts from that one lens, you know, how linear that history could be. But thankfully we were able to document and continue to document the civil rights movement.

Asami Robledo-Allen Yamamoto:

So, the history of storytelling traces back to the prehistoric era when we had cave paintings and petroglyphs depicting hunting scenes and daily life. From there, civilization evolved to written stories like the epic of Gilgamesh, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek mythology, and Hindu epics. Today we have TikTok.

Now, it’s great. We have TikTok, YouTube, social media, podcasts, even video games and VR as methods of storytelling. These platforms have democratized storytelling, allowing diverse voices to share narratives globally and multimodally. Storytelling and oral histories are methods of documenting historically used by communities of color, especially black, Latinx, and indigenous communities. Historically, this has been a primary source of knowledge sharing for these communities. However, we’re often discounted as non-academic, inappropriate methods of documentation therefore contributing to the erasure of BIPOC stories and culture.

Minoritized groups have used storytelling to preserve culture and identities through oral traditions such as indigenous communities using oral history, oral storytelling to preserve their languages, traditions, and histories in the face of colonization and cultural erasure. Native American oral traditions encompass creation myths, historical accounts, and moral tales that sustain cultural continuity.

Another example comes from West Africa. Griots have served as historians, storytellers, and musicians preserving the history and culture of their people through oral narratives. Through storytelling oppressed communities have also challenged dominant narratives through autobiographies such as those written by formerly enslaved black people in America, such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, who wrote narratives detailing the brutal realities of slavery, thereby countering pro-slavery propaganda and humanizing the enslaved population.

Additionally, writers from formerly colonized countries have used literature to critique colonialism, reclaim indigenous histories, and highlight the complexities of post-colonial identities.

Testimonials, which means testimonies, invite survivors and community members to resist internalized name through the first person testimonial counts with the community bearing witness first person accounts include pre trauma experiences that can provide emotional release validate and document the storytellers lived experience and facilitate post traumatic meaning making.

An example of that is a project that was done with Mayan children in Guatemala which was designed to encourage participants to engage in cultural activities such as making masks and weaving. And the workshops were well documented, and it showed to not only help children but their parents to better understand their collective trauma and inspire feelings of safety, acceptance, and respect in both ways.

So, museums typically follow suit by not including or highlighting oral histories during exhibitions or throughout the overall collection. So, I encourage everyone here to ask your curators, how is their research done? How are the labels written?

What about the introductory text? Where is this history coming from? The cultural erasure and colonized tendency to discredit and not include oral histories is one of the inspirations for the Abuelas project.

Sehila Mota Casper:

So, the Abuelas Project is really centered on exactly what Asami just said, is that Latinx and indigenous voices have been written out of history, out of heritage, and there really isn’t any type of archival source to help tell these stories through grassroots efforts, such as creating and collecting and amplifying these stories through crowdsourcing. We’re really excited to share that the Abuelas Project just launched this year and we’re going throughout the United States, and we will be collecting a lot of individuals’ own experiences through location so we can get historical sites that are important to individuals in that community so we and understand what cultural practices they do there within these cultural landscapes.

We’re also going to be able to capture new media as well as oral histories, of course, photographs, videos. We’ve already have a few up, so we encourage you to take a photo, check out the Abuelas Project, and learn more on things like conjunto music. Learn more about Braceros and the farm workers.

Through these efforts, we will be documenting community voice. It’ll be an open archive free to the community, and we will be going throughout the country, having workshops and sharing with community and educators, how you actually conduct oral histories, how you can preserve your own history, and what’s the 101 on historic preservation? How do we of our own culture, cultura, latinidad. And it’s going to be through these workshops that we, again, help create and empower individuals to then take back and claim their own history and retell it.

Asami Robledo-Allen Yamamoto:

And we would love to partner with any museum that wants to integrate the Abuelas Project into their galleries. It really just invites community to be involved in preserving their own histories.

So, we’ve talked a lot about what museums aren’t doing. I do want to highlight just four examples of museums that are doing the work and are integrating oral histories or have a portal for oral histories. So, starting off with the MoMA, they actually have two programs.

In 2011, the Artist Oral History Initiative was started, and that’s when artists were filmed in their galleries and they discussed works of art in the collection with museum curators and scholars. Then they also have the institutional oral history project, which is founded in 1990. The program produced interviews with select interview individuals affiliated with the museum, and this one really focuses on capturing the museum’s institutional memory.

Now, I put this out of order. I don’t know why. So, we’ll just go to the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum. So, they also have a program that started in the mid-1990s. The systemic collection of living people’s recollection of their experiences with farming, ranching, and rural life is a major component in researching and interpreting these subjects for their visitors. And on their website, they ask wouldn’t you rather hear about history from people who were actually there.

Then we have the National Museum of African American History and Culture. If anybody works there I think y ‘all are doing a great job. They actually have the oral histories available to the public which I think is a really wonderful way to also share it back with the community.

So, it says, “The mission of the initiative is to document, preserve and interpret African American stories through the art and practice of oral history. We collect and preserve oral histories from iconic elders of African Americana and other ways and others who have shaped the culture in significant ways. They have also developed oral history projects that support the research and exhibition goals of the museum.”

And lastly, we have the National World War II Museum, which strives to preserve the legacy and lessons of World War II through the stories of those who experienced the war. And they’re open for submissions. So again, I just want to highlight that the National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only museum here that has the databases available for the public.

So, if you want to do it, I have these questions that I think that I challenge you to answer before moving forward.

It’s not easy to get oral histories done, it’s not easy to do community engagement. There’s been a lot of trauma, especially for communities of color and marginalized communities. And we can’t just be like, “Hey, sorry, I traumatized you. Tell me your life story.” That’s not going to go well. So there has to be a lot of patience and there has to be a lot of persistence from the museum side and really thinking about what it means to create that safe space for them to come in and tell their stories.

So, at LHC, we learned to avoid certain phrasing over vocabulary when asking folks to participate in the Abalas project. We also learned to make the pitch really fast. We kind of aimed for like less than 30 seconds, and then we’re also learning to accommodate for multi-modality.

So, some folks are going to be more comfortable with creating a work of art about an event or writing it themselves. Whereas other folks are gonna say, I want you to do the work, I’m just gonna talk to you and you’re gonna transcribe everything I say.

And that’s okay. So being open to different ways of recording their history is important. And then another important lesson is to not only focus on the bad. Oftentimes when light is shed and minoritized communities, only suffering is highlighted when in reality we are much more than our suffering.

Suffering and losses have been thoroughly recorded throughout white history, whereas oral histories can allow minoritized community members the opportunity to shed lights on victories and joys, providing the avenue for them to empower themselves.

So, the benefits.

This personalizes history, so kind of thinking back to the activity from the beginning. It kind of made it feel a little bit more connected in a different way, made it feel more personable. Oral histories provide personal perspectives and first-hand accounts, making historical events and narratives more relatable and engaging for visitors. It preserves voices, literally and figuratively. They capture the voices and experiences of individuals, especially those from underrepresented or marginalized groups, ensuring a more inclusive historical record.

It enhances emotional connection. Hearing stories directly from people who experience events fosters a deeper sense of empathy and emotional connection among museum visitors.

I have a quote here. When personal healing is embedded within a communal framework, there is a greater transformational process facilitated by a shared collective memory, which can help shift bodies, minds, and spirits from a status of suffering to repair and create opportunities to evolve.

So, meaning that this is really the possibility to start communal healing. It enriches exhibits. They add depth and richness to exhibitions, providing multiple viewpoints and enriching the overall narratives presented by the museum. Encourages engagement. So, this is engagement in a different way. What if we were to ask each of you to record your reaction to that work of art, you would react, you would engage with that work of art very differently. It promotes cultural understanding, and it documents everyday life.

Sehila Mota Casper:

So, we just wanted to share some guidelines if you’re interested in learning how to do oral histories. I think the biggest thing that I would say is preparation and research. Before we go in and conduct an oral history with an individual, we not only research, see if there’s any type of documentation on them, the context, the historical context to which we are researching around also the community. We look through newspapers, we look through books, we look through other oral history archives just to prepare for that.

We also need to think about ethical considerations, such as Asami was talking about with trauma, that tends to be one of the largest ones that we try to stay away from. And just being very considerate of one’s experience, when we were conducting Bracero oral histories, that was something that we really had to think through and really consider exactly what questions we were going to ask and in what order.

You usually start out with, you know, easier questions. As we said, open-ended questions. We don’t ask yes or no questions and you allow people to then talk. If they choose to walk into that space, then we allow that. If we recognize that it’s getting emotional. It’s okay, we can take a pause, see if they want to continue or move on.

We also want to build rapport. We typically, as Asami said, a phone call is great. I typically like to go in person as well, meet them face to face, let them get to know me, let them get, I get to know them. Typically, I like to share questions ahead of time, so that way someone, especially a community member, will be aware as to what type of information we’re hoping to collect. This is very important whenever we have elders whose story has never been documented. Some of these histories, let’s say last weekend we had a gentleman who was 95, a bracero, and we shared with him the types of information that we were hoping to gather from him and thankfully going through old photographs, he was able to recollect a lot of the information that we were hoping to document and that he was willing to share with us for his own experience.

Also, I want to make sure that you record the interview. This is so important. I cannot stress enough, check your batteries, check the audio levels, do a test a few times and just make sure that the record button is on. It has happened before that you just did an incredible interview, and it was amazing and you learn so much from this individual and unfortunately it was not documented. So, check that as well as video and audio when we go on the road and we’re doing video recordings. It’s always important to see how much space we have on the memory card because you don’t want to have it cut off like a quarter of the way then if we were in the middle of a really important story that was being shared.

And then also conducting the interview. As we said, you know, you want to prepare. You have your questions ready. you’ve practiced the questions out loud, and you’re actually conducting it and remember that the star of the show is not the interviewer, it’s the interviewee, so we ask questions, and we stop speaking and we listen, and we learn. If there is a follow-up question that just came to mind that you didn’t have on your sheet, just write it down, jot it down and get back to it at the end of the regular interview and ask them to go back to that. But I would say that the biggest learning lesson is learning not to step into that conversation the way that we do in everyday conversation.

Documentation and take notes. A lot of times when I’m taking an oral history, if they said something like I was just saying, I just jot down a phrase quickly to remind me that I want to go back to that topic and ask them to expand more on that.

And then post-interview process. A lot of this is just making sure that you are extremely organized. If you’re taking multiple oral histories in one day or on a road trip, Asami’s about to go on a crazy 10-day road trip and taking oral histories. And we talk through the organization, the documentation, how that’s being written down and jotted down, especially if you are traveling, and especially if there are multiple different individuals that are in charge of various things, from photo documentation, to audio, to video, to the interviewer, and the notes that were the follow-up notes that we want to make sure that we document and collect those as well.

Archiving and preservation, Latinos and Heritage Conservation, we really believe in open access to information. The work that we do is strictly for community. It’s for them and anything that we provide, whether it’s photographs, video, audio, we gift them back to the families, get things printed, get them recorded, and give them however many they want. Many times, people want ten because they want to share them with their families and it’s a really lovely way to help just document their own history and genealogy.

So that’s the access in use and then reflective practice. A lot of times at the end of the day we sit down, and we go back and think through what we just listened and what we learned through this individual. Sometimes we don’t cover everything and for me that is the part where it’s like, oh goodness, I forgot that part, but it’s okay. I can go back and I can give them a phone call, we have a great rapport now and can say to them, you know, I forgot to ask you this. Do you mind, you know, sharing more on this or writing on this?

It’s also good just to take a moment to learn and process a lot of what we heard. And I think as individuals, whether we’re historians, you know, folks working in anthro or heritage fields, a lot of what we take from community or when we’re hearing oral histories, can also take a lot from us individually. So, during this reflective process, I always like to just understand that this was a moment in time and I was so grateful to have sat down with them. But also, it’s preserved, it’s there, and I’m able to step away from it if I can.

Asami Robledo-Allen Yamamoto:

I wouldn’t be a museum educator if I didn’t end with an activity, so I have two options depending on how we’re feeling. If you’re feeling a little bit more introverted, I’m going to challenge you to think about your museum’s collection and think about what themes you would conduct an oral history over. And then you can start listing a couple questions and we’ll be up here and if you want to bounce those questions back and forth, although that’s not really solo, but you don’t have to do that part. And if you want to be more extroverted and you feel like chatting with strangers, find a partner and take turns conducting an oral history about a recent historic event. For example, COVID, 9/11 Hurricane Katrina, um, not to only focus on the trauma.

If you also want to, I don’t know, I don’t know who won yesterday, somebody who won a baseball game, if you want to talk about that.

This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. As museums compete against a growing range of leisure and educational options, they must reevaluate their approach to pricing to demonstrate value while developing more holistic revenue strategies. In this lively and thought-provoking recorded session, panelists will explore how cultural organizations are leveraging pricing strategies to maximize revenue, prioritize accessibility, engage new audiences, and grow membership. Viewers will take away inspiring ideas and concrete strategies they can apply at their own institution to create more purposeful and sustainable earned revenue strategies.

Transcript

James Butterworth:

All right. Good morning, everybody. We are gonna kick off a great session this morning and it’s wonderful to see almost a full house and I can say I’m very happy to be at AAM.

I’m James Butterworth, I’m with Blackbaud and hopefully we’ve got a few Blackbaud clients here. All right, thank you. We are one of the lead sponsors so we get to say hi to groups like this and beyond that if you’d like to speak to me or other staff come down to the expo but you’re not really here to see me so I am gonna let the experts take-off I think Rosie literally is going to introduce everybody, but if you’re an accountant raise your hand, in membership, and then development. All right, so there you have it. All right, appreciate it.

Have a great time today and take good notes because there is a test at the end.

Rosie Siemer:

All right. Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome. We are excited to be here with you all today. My name is Rosie Seimer. I’m the founder and CEO of Five Seed. And at Five Seed, we’re a research and strategy organization, and we partner exclusively with museums and cultural organizations to help them better understand their audiences and to develop data-informed strategies to grow their membership programs.

I am thrilled to be here with you all and to have our wonderful panelists with us today. So, let me introduce everyone and then we will get started talking about all things pricing.

So, to start, Mary Bradley is the Director of Membership, Visitor, and Volunteer Services at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Mary started her career in the corporate world, working in call centers and with customer service. And then about 25 years ago, she transitioned to the non-profit cultural space and she’s been contributing her skills and leadership there ever since.

When Mary first started at the gardens 14 years ago, she had just three employees she now manages a department of 50 and that includes people working in the areas of membership, volunteer services, visitor services, a training team, a call center, and the visitor experience team. So as Mary likes to say she’s the director of all the feet in the door. In her free time, Mary likes to write those stories. And she draws a lot of inspiration from the 1800s cemetery that the Denver Botanic Gardens was built on. So, thank you for being here, Mary.

Next up, we have Spencer Janssen. Spencer is the Deputy Director and Director of Membership and Guest Services at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. Spencer’s been building engaging membership, annual fund, and affinity groups at the museum since 2014. In his role as deputy director, he continues to develop the museum’s membership program while also overseeing areas of the museum’s store, restaurant, programming, box office operations, and data management systems.

And I had the great pleasure of working with Spencer on a case study for my most recent book about membership innovation, but I was surprised to learn that his photography has been featured in another book titled, “Fly Fishing for the Soul, Tales of White River Guide.” And something else you might not know about Spencer, he was named the best bartender in Arkansas, not once, but three times. (audience laughs) So. (laughs) If you wanna talk about bourbon, this is your man here.

And Last but certainly not least, we’ve got Rehn West. Rehn is the Director of Development and Marketing at Nauticus, which is a maritime discovery center located along the waterfront in downtown Norfolk, Virginia. Rehn first started at Nauticus about six years ago in the development department, and she now oversees a team of five that are focused in the areas of fundraising, marketing, and membership. Over the past four years, Rehn has led the fundraising efforts for a $21 $1.5 million capital campaign to reimagine Nauticus’s exhibit and visitor entry. She is a Norfolk native and also a twin. Didn’t know that.

Alright, so today we’re going to be talking about pricing. Pricing for admissions, pricing for membership, and pricing for other earned revenue areas. Pricing, you know, it’s one of these things that I have kind of fallen in love with because it’s so complex and there are so many different ways to think about pricing strategy.

As we all know that admissions can benefit membership, sometimes compete with membership, programs can lift revenues, sometimes you know we have to have a strategy for how we’re going to apply discounts and things like that for membership.

So, we’re gonna talk about all of these areas and we’ll save time at the end if anyone has any questions for our panelists. There is a microphone in the center. Please walk toward the microphone and use it if you have a question, and we’ll save time at the end for Q &A.

So, while pricing is one of the most important decisions that an organization can make, I found that it’s also one of the most overlooked areas of opportunity for museums.

Pricing decisions are often kind of just done. There’s not necessarily a lot of research or intentionality that goes into some of that. And so, we’re going to talk a little bit about how these three organizations have approached pricing decisions at their organizations.

And of course we need to talk about diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion, DEAI because at museums, unlike at for-profit organizations, we actually have a responsibility to our communities and to make sure that we are making our organizations as welcoming and accessible as possible. So, we will spend some time talking about that as well.

So, to get started, let’s– I’d like to ask each of our panelists to introduce their organization, share a little bit of background about your Institution and tell us if you have any new exciting initiatives on the horizon and Mary, maybe we’ll start with you.

Mary Bradley:

Everybody thank you for being here I’m with Denver Botanic Gardens, and we are located pretty much centrally in Denver. We have another Campus about 15 miles southwest of Denver Chatfield farms, And so we draw different communities as a result. What was the next part?

We have currently, as of April, we have 56,000 member households, which is just insane. When I first started, we had around 26,000. So, it’s been quite the growth adventure.

Any of your initiatives? No, currently, we have indoor and outdoor art exhibits, which are drawing a wide variety of audiences and really have increased attention on the gardens, both for those who just think that they’re going to see their favorite plant as well as those who have a favorite artist. So, it’s been a lot of fun having the incorporation of both.

Rosie Siemer:

And Spencer.

Spencer Jansen:

Hi, I’m with the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, we just recently reopened after a major renovation. So, we’ve been open in one year. We celebrated one-year last week. So got done with all those fun activities for that.

We have a pretty large collection focusing on contemporary craft and works on paper. But we also have a theater that does children’s theater productions for the very young. But we’ve also expanded that into offering concerts, ballet performances, and movie screenings with a local cinema society. We also have a full-fledged classroom that offers classes for all ages and very intensive classes, not workshops, but we do eight-week, four-week classes. Not college accredited, but it is very much a place where you can really learn a new skill and craft. That’s about it.

Rehn West:

Hi everyone. I work for Nauticus. Like Rosie mentioned, we’re right along the waterfront in downtown Norfolk. We’re very unique, in my opinion, in terms of what a museum offers, and that our campus houses our main museum, so we focus on the maritime industry, big push on workforce developments and getting folks into jobs in the maritime industry, also the maritime environment, and then we celebrate the connection to our US Navy, being right there in the world’s largest Navy base. So, besides the museum, we are also home to the last and largest battleship built by the US Navy, which is the Battleship Wisconsin. And then we are also home to a sailing center. The sailing center primarily serves at risk youth. We have an amazing after school program. Sailing is just the hook, but we’re getting students in there on the water and teaching them leadership skills, but also the art and science of sailing. And last but not least, we weren’t doing enough. We are home to is only cruise terminal.

So, as we gear up for a year-round service next year with Carnival Cruise Line, that is something that our campus and our staff all works as one to tackle. So, in addition to year-round service and everything else we’ve got going on, we are, as Rosie mentioned, finishing up a $21.5 million capital campaign to completely redesign Nauticus. Nauticus turns 30 years old next month and with the campus and how much it’s grown our museum really didn’t have much put back into it in terms of our exhibit so we worked with Roto who you will see in the exhibit hall definitely recommend stepping by their booth to completely reimagine the exhibits and our lobby to be way more engaging and friendly for our visitors. So that’s about it for us.

Rosie Siemer:

Alright. And each of you have led your organization through major pricing changes in recent years.

Let’s talk a little bit about DEAI and how that came into your pricing strategy and how your organization really kind of thinks about accessibility and inclusion. And Spencer, maybe we can start with you.

Spencer Jansen:

Sure. First thing that comes to mind is we are a free museum. We do not charge for any of our special exhibitions or our permanent collection. Now the other things I mentioned about the classes in the theater that is a paid thing but it was a very conscious effort when I started in 2014 the last paid exhibition happened in 2013 and I was in membership at the time so I actually thought I was going to get fired because all these people that joined for the special exhibitions were not renewing and it just wasn’t looking great but really it’s it’s turned a corner we’ve had the highest membership level we’ve ever had partly because we just reopened the new building after a three-year stint of being closed.

But that really, it was really important for us. We went to the community. We didn’t have one main funder that helped build this building, but it was a community effort. So we decided we really need to make sure that the community is welcome and invited to the museum.

So even little things like changing the word visitor to guest, we felt was an intentional thing of, you know, when I look at those two words, A guest is someone you invite. You want a guest to stay, but a visitor is transient. If a visitor comes in, they leave. But when I have a friend at my home, it’s not a visitor, it’s a guest. So even changing language can create more accessibility for people when they read it.

It’s subtle things, but it’s also those bigger, broader things of, okay, we are a free museum, and then we have to look at the earned revenue to make up for that sponsorships and development as well.

Rosie Siemer:

Mary, how about for you?

Mary Bradley:

Yeah, we’ve had for quite some time, I would say well over 20 years, eight free days a year so that people can come at no admission ’cause we do charge admission.

The problem with free days, particularly as we are increasing our attendance and our membership, is that it can be, for those of you who are close to my generation, a soilent green kind of an opportunity where you’re just all, you know, going down the pathways and it’s so crowded you can’t enjoy yourself. And so, we’ve really focused a lot of effort on seeing how we can expand opportunities for people to visit the garden who might not otherwise have an opportunity or would prefer to perhaps avoid the crowds during our free days.

And so, we have a variety of options, we have the SNAP program, we call it Explorers Club, and Charge a Dollar per Person for Entry.

We also had at one point received a grant to start a shuttle program, and we have a person who is basically a community liaison and goes out to the wide variety of communities in the metro area to invite people to come and folks will have access to a shuttle that then comes to the garden so they can visit without any charge and get to explore and those are throughout the year there’s no limitation outside of avoiding the free days for them to come and see it and then in regard to membership you know it’s challenging, because what’s the point of membership, you’ve got to raise the money.

So, we try to incorporate what we can in terms of discounts, on a variety of things, military discounts, senior student discounts, both for our membership and for our admission pricing.

Rosie Siemer:

Rehn, how about for you?

Rehn West:

So, to visit Nautica and stay in the battleship, we do charge admission, and we have a brand-new membership program that we launched last year, thanks to Five Seeds Help, which I think we’re going to dive into a bit later. But in terms of providing access, I mean, like I mentioned, we really want to serve our military community being right there in Norfolk.

So, my team, my fundraising team, is constantly looking for different sponsors to offer free admission to active duty and veteran service members throughout the year. Most recently, we celebrated the Battleship’s 80th birthday, so we had a sponsor that provided free admission all month long for those folks, which we saw about 3,500 come through, so that was great in April. We also host toddler times, and we kicked those off in advance of us starting our renovations because we recently opened a children’s exhibit, so we hosted about five of those for free to start, and now members are able to participate in those for free.

We are a part of the Museums for All program, which I’m sure most of you are. And then thanks to our local healthcare system, we did have a sponsorship with them to also allow in Virginia residents with Medicaid card holders. And this winter, through that support, we’re also hosting a Medicaid weekend where they’re able to get in for free. So, we’re always looking for different avenues and in order to do that I do have to get a sponsorship for it but most folks in the community are really looking to support that.

What else do we do? It’s probably there’s a lot of other things but that’s just a little bit.

Rosie Siemer:

No that’s great and I think so some of these discount programs that you all are talking about is what economists would call price discrimination, where we’re being really targeted in who we are reaching with our accessibility programs. So, it’s not just a blanket discount or free admission. It’s more for military or for folks who truly have a financial need.

And so, I think that’s one way that we see museums be very successful in balancing the need for revenue and accessibility. Another thing to note as we’re talking about free admission, I think it’s just important to call attention to the fact that there have been a lot of studies that have found that attendance to museums is really price and elastic, which just means that if you raise the admission price, people who have a habit and behavior of attending museums still go, and if you lower the price of admissions, people who have a habit of going and purchasing tickets and visiting museums still go.

So, I think that price is just one barrier that we need to be aware of, but it’s– you know, there’s some research that also shows that it’s not the top barrier for why people don’t visit museums.

There are other barriers, like not feeling like it’s a welcoming place, not having anyone to go with. Time and transportation. I’m so glad Mary that you mentioned transportation because that’s a that’s a big barrier for a lot of folks To be able to come through our doors. So, you know price is not necessarily, in all cases a panacea just to remove the admission price, but I do think that you know, for example at your museum Spencer, you know free admission is embedded in your DNA and so I always like to say that if the strategy is not wrong if it’s right for your organization. And so free admission may not be right for every organization but if it is something that’s really a focus of your institutional priorities and it is demonstrating your commitment to the community then maybe that is the right strategy, and you need to have a way to also be financially healthy as well.

All right, so keeping with that theme of DEAI, Spencer, I’d love for you to talk a little bit more about your membership program, ’cause you also just recently launched a new membership structure.

Spencer Jansen:

Sure, we launched a new membership program with the opening of the new building. So, one of the things that we really looked at when we were devising the names and the price points and the benefits was, “How do we make this accessible to the most people possible?” One of the first things we did is we eliminated the idea of a family membership. Families come in all shapes and sizes.

So, we just said, you know, kids, grandkids, they’re included on any membership level that you have. It became too difficult to say, “Oh, well, you have a kid and you’re going to enroll them in a class for 20% off. They need to be at a certain membership, which might be $20 more than what they have in their household budget for a single mom of three. So why put up that financial barrier? The goal is to get them in the doors. And we have other ways to raise the revenue to really reach that bottom line through sponsorships and our major gift programs and grants.

So really saying to one family or five families, I’m sorry, your children aren’t here. We’re not allowing your children to come because you’re not at that membership level. We just said that’s ridiculous. The other thing we did is we wanted to do a pay what you wish membership.

That’s not something we have on our website. It’s something that you call, or you come in and you ask about it or the front desk will say, you know, in that conversation with a guest, they will say, oh, well, they can read if maybe they’re not willing to have the price point of what our membership is. It starts at $70 than 90 and up. But we said, just let ’em be a member. We have a lady that Is that a apartment complex next door to the museum that is retired teachers?

They’re income restricted. We gave memberships to everybody in that building because they actually let us use the parking lot for our staff parking, so we can allow more people to park in our parking lot. So, we said, “Just give everybody membership.” And then she comes every day to the museum. And when one year rolled up, which was literally two, three weeks ago, her membership was up. And She’s like, I can’t afford the $70. We said, that’s fine, do you have a dollar? She gave us a dollar and she’s a member. We don’t, there’s nothing in our system that denotes her any differently. We don’t ask for a WIC card. Presenting that WIC card or SNAP benefit is a barrier. People can be embarrassed to do that. All we care about is to belong to our museum and really grow our community of supporters. So that was one of our first things that we did with that.

Is that what you?

Rosie Siemer:

Yeah, that’s great. And I will mention that I’ve seen a lot of success, organizations have success with offering free community partnership membership.

So here again, I completely agree that that verification process can be a real barrier. And so, some organizations are finding success with working with community organizations that serve those populations and then providing free membership through those organizations.

So that’s another another opportunity Rehn would you like to talk a little bit about your new membership program? Because I think it ties into a lot of what Spencer was just saying. Yeah, absolutely.

Rehn West:

So, as you all know, I mentioned we’re coming up on the final phase of our big capital campaign to completely reimagine what it what it means to visit Nauticus. So, in advance of, we had to schedule this into two phases because we couldn’t afford to close the museum for a year, unfortunately. So, in advance of our first phase, which was going to open two new exhibits, which they opened last summer, we said, oh man, we really need to look at our membership program. Because our membership program, frankly, hadn’t been reinvested in and looked at Probably since like 94 the prices were very low Another another reason this was that we weren’t really reinvesting back into our membership program is until about 2018, 2019 Nauticus was solely a department of the city which makes sense we have a great partnership with them But that means you know revenue and expenses it all just went into the city and would reset the next year So, at times there wasn’t enough emphasis with just everything we had going on to push membership and drive revenue to then see the benefits back to our museum.

So that’s when our foundation was started and long story short, now we have a very healthy foundation and membership is one of those big drivers, but we knew that in advance of opening those two new exhibits, we needed to reimagine this program to one raise the prices a bit. Because our admission prices were also going to raise, which are set by the city. But we wanted to make sure that we were engaging our local community, which is something that Nauticus had not been putting a lot of emphasis on. They were really focusing on that, made a Memorial Day to the Labor Day tourist visitation because we do have the battleships.

So, we would see a good amount of folks in the summer, but what were we doing to get the local community to become a member? So, we did reach out to Five Seed because I was at a loss coming from a strictly fundraising background in marketing and then inheriting a membership program, which they all do coincide together. But we worked with them and said very similarly to Spencer, that what can we do with our new levels to make sure that everyone is feeling that it’s worth it for their family, especially with our community being so transient with the military and making sure that grandma, grandpa, if your neighbor wants to come or your dog, anyone can come on our new membership plans.

And we were able to speak with other attractions in our local area and talk with them about their pricing and realize our pricing was very low so long story short we launched that new program about three months in advance of opening our first phase of exhibits and we first let our members know they were the first ones to know as I’m sure you all know they’ve got to be the first ones to know if they’re going to be angry. And we let them know, and we automatically moved them over into the new program. There was no, hey, we need you to renew first. It’s, hey, we’re going to put you into the new program and give you a couple extra months so that you can experience what this new program is like.

And you can bring your friends and your friends’ kids. And

— Could you try it?

– Sorry. And so, we launched that with the members first. And then we launched it to the public and say, “Hey, we want everyone to come in and it is 50% off.” So, the rates were even lower than what the membership prices were. So, we went from about 650 household members, which it just kills me to say, but since then we’ve doubled. So, we’re sitting at about 1,800 household members right now, which I know can seem not like a huge number compared to other attractions.

But for us, I mean, that’s just shown in a lot of our new members are loving this program and we’re seeing it was this time last year that we had to launch this new program and most of them are renewing unless they have had to move out of the area because we do deal with that a lot with the military.

So I know it rambled a bit, but that’s kind of how we launched the new program and then we added new benefits on a big stickler for our members was that we are located right downtown kind of similarly to the national aquarium and I’m not sure what their parking is like, but our parking is two parking garages all the way across the street you got to slip all the kids over and we weren’t offering a parking discount and so we really pushed with the city of Norfolk to really give us some wiggle room and help us get a parking and discount for our certain level of members. So I think it’s at the Nauticus six. So we named them all Nauticus two, four, six, eight, 10. And that’s been great and then adding on new benefits.

Rosie Siemer:

Yeah, and I think first I would like to acknowledge that Nauticus and you and your team were really thoughtful about making that investment and thinking through that membership change in a well-in-advanced of grand opening which is really important because I’ve seen so many organizations have a real missed opportunity to raise prices and launch a new program until after grand opening and so you know if you can back up and put those new changes into place you will then benefit because it’ll be established when you start getting all of that momentum and earned media and tension and visibility, the spike in membership that comes with grand opening. So, I think that’s a really great thing that you did there. Also, I want to pick up on your 50% discount because this is something that if you talk with me and anyone else from 5Seed, our philosophy on discounting membership is not discounting on acquisition but in this case it was a really strategic discount because we were essentially doubling the price of membership and we knew that there was going to be a lot of sticker shock and potentially some resistance to that and it was a very limited I think two months.

Rehn West:

Yeah, just two months and then it was at the same time that our new exhibits were opening. So, they’re coming in and seeing these awesome new exhibits, and it’s 50% off? I mean, it’s a great deal.

Rosie Siemer:

And you’ve got a second phase of openings.

Rehn West:

Yes, yes.

Rosie Siemer:

Yeah, so now those members are there, and they’ll get to be part of that. And then when you grow, hopefully you’ll be in a much better financial position because that membership program is now appropriately priced ’cause you were definitely kind of underpriced for the market.

Yeah great, and then Mary you also made some changes to your membership program but you also had an admission price increase just this year. Would you tell us a little bit about how that’s going and have you had any pushback to the changes?

Mary Bradley:

No. Here’s the deal so yeah, our admission pricing termination has not been strategically aligned with our membership pricing increase.

Two different beasts. I love, however, that I have both admissions and membership under my purview. It makes life very flexible and easy. I strongly recommend, if anybody’s restructuring, talk to me, I’ll let you know. However, our pricing for admission has to go to a city council approval process. We have a contract with the city.

We ourselves are not city employees, but the land we’re on, the buildings we build, belong to the city, and so that process is handled by our CEO, CFO, going and charming city council. And so, the last time admission prices had been increased was in 2020, oddly, right four things. And then again, admission prices went up this year. And meanwhile on membership land, we had not increased membership pricing of, pardon me, overall since 2012 until 2023.

Note, don’t wait that long. Because A, you might have to make it a larger increase than you your folks might want. and be, that’s just way too long to wait, and you should probably do it every three years in minimal fashion, so it’s not a huge pain for people. Denver Botanic Gardens is one of five pretty large cultural facilities in the city. However, of those five, we have the lowest admission pricing and as it turns out, pretty much the lowest membership pricing. Does that contribute to our thousands of members?

I don’t think so actually, I think they just really like coming and seeing us. However, all to the point, we did look at all of our pricing structures and our membership levels. We, similarly, to Spencer’s Museum, really do not want to define who’s coming in terms of this is a family and a family consists of this and this and this and this. And instead, we have friends and family. You can bring whomever you want to. It lets in, you know, X number of people, et cetera, et cetera. And we have a dual and an individual plus and it goes up from there.

But we did increase the pricing for our dual– I’m sorry, our individual plus up through our friends and family category and the friends and family category had the largest increase in price but at the same time we offered this new category called dual and allowed people to float, you know, are they going to go down to dual or are they going to go up to the friends and family and the pricing that we established for dual, I’m making this way too complex, I’m sorry y ‘all, but essentially was the same pricing that had been at the friends and family before then we went up for friends and family.

And we rolled it out and we had no complaints. And that’s the thing, it’s scary if you have an increased pricing for a while, but it’s interesting also, don’t be scared of it. Go ahead and raise your rates if it’s time, if it makes sense. And quite frankly, your organization needs that increased revenue. So, we did not see, you know, oftentimes I anticipate we’ll see an attrition of member households and that can be offset by the increased pricing that you’re getting. And in this instance, and when we introduced it in 2023, we actually did not see attrition and our numbers just continue to grow and our retention continues to be very strong ’cause of course that’s the other piece of it.

So yeah.

Spencer Jansen:

I want to add a little bit on our project when we shut down for three years to renovate our building. So, we knew membership was just going to go away. We didn’t have a satellite museum.

We tried to offer classes and COVID happened. So all those things that we were trying to do we couldn’t do because of that. So, what we did is we really need to retain as much as we could, so we had a huge farewell party in our old building, and we actually brought in two dump trucks full of sand in a gallery and built a beach. We actually did a brainstorming session, so what do you wanna do in a museum that you never could? So, we had buckets of paint everywhere, people could paint on the walls, we had inflatable slides, and it was the coolest party ever. But one of the things we did is we built a speak easy in the back where we held our collection. And the only way you could access that that is you signed up for a new membership which we called 22 and you because we’re gonna open in 22 and what you had to do is give us your credit card or your banking information and sign up for auto renewal.

So, you want to go access the big fun party give us that information you get access and I’ll be honest the code was pretty easy to know it was the new address of our temporary building and I sent it out in a joking riddle to all the members, and they weren’t sharing it. The members that were there were sharing, oh, you gotta go to that party, but you gotta go sign up. So, it was just, and it really worked, and we were able to retain a good amount of members and keep them in the auto renewal program up until the opening, and we also said, we’ll lock in your rate for the first year of opening. So, they had one year of that lower rate, and that was kind of, that was the loudest we got about the rollout of the new membership pricing, but it was kind of just it really did work to retain people because they wanted access to a cooler party. People like food and drink that’s definitely a takeaway.

Rosie Siemer:

Food and drink are a definite and motivators. Also, I love that Spencer in terms of thinking about how you can incentivize the right kind of behavior. So, when we do offer or encourage our client organizations to offer membership discounts, we would encourage them to incentivize the thing that you want the most, which should be auto renewal or perhaps early renewal. So, there are places for discounting, I think, as long as it’s intentional, yeah. Excellent. And let’s see, so, so, I lost my thought here and oh Spencer while we’re with you could you also talk a little bit about some of the other earned revenue strategies at your organization here as a free museum?

Spencer Jansen:

Yes, so like I mentioned, we’re free so we got to keep the lights on somehow so we really one of our biggest earned revenues right now is our museum store. We just have an incredible manager at the museum store, and he has gone the extra mile to make things and create things in our store that are unique. So, we look at our collection, and that’s what is represented in a scarf or a puzzle or things like that.

It’s a lot more extra work. It’s a little bit more costly than going with public domain images, but the reality is we don’t have Van Gogh’s sunflowers in our collection. So why would we sell that?

They don’t see it on our walls, they can buy that off of Amazon, but what they can’t buy is a reproduction of Dos Mujeres by Diego Rivera. So, it does take the extra effort, but it makes us really unique.

And we also traveled around to all the different stores in our region. And if they had that product, we said no. There’s a lot of other local artists that were represented. We didn’t want to carry them because we need to be more unique and really stand out.

We are an international collection, so we actually sent our store manager to France to Missande Objet to go look at the trending products that are coming out globally to represent our collection as an international collection.

And I will say, I am seeing these products throughout our state now, and we were the first place to carry them because we were just ahead of the curve. And as a museum, we can do that. People come and expect to be a little bit more cutting edge and unique.

But that store is doing great. The other earned revenue his facility rental is a big chunk of revenue for us. When we redesigned the building, a lot of our spaces, we intentionally designed to be functional in many formats, whether it is a place for a wedding reception and you could also have a lecture or you could have a ballet performance and an artist talk in the same setting or it could also be rehearsal space for the theater.

So, making sure that only that the gallery paid for the galleries, but every other public space in the building had to have at least more than one functionality, because otherwise it’s just sitting there not earning revenue for you when it can.

And then the other aspects we would have the school that I mentioned, that’s a big chunk. That is the largest part of earned revenue for this fiscal year, and then we do the children’s programming through the theater and our collaboration with the Cinema Society.

So, all of those are our main sources of Earn revenue. Our restaurant brings in some, but that is an outside vendor, and we just get a portion of the revenue from that. And then did, forget, sponsorships and grants. Those are the big chunks, but that’s really not earned revenue.

Rosie Siemer:

Fair, fair. All right. So, one thing we haven’t talked about is how you all rolled out these changes. So, Rehn, we talked a little bit your discount, did you– because I think, Mary, you were kind of talking about this about the importance of, you know, communicating. So, it– the communication strategy for how you roll out changes, especially price increase, is really important. Rehn, do you have thoughts about how you went about this?

You said you migrated your members over. Were there other things that stood out from

Rehn West:

We did. So, when we first kicked this off, we sent out a direct mailer, something that we hadn’t really invested in in the past, like a very nice direct mailer for our members. It’s not asking them for anything, it was just telling them, “Hey, this is super exciting. Brand new program. I think we said it’s making a splash, and you don’t have to do anything, but you’re getting these added benefits.” And then obviously email, we did not have any complaints, I don’t think, but again, we were only looking about at 800 households that we could potentially upset.

But it wasn’t bad, I mean, we just rolled it out, you know, traditional mailings and lots of communication, and then we did host a preview for them, which was about a month after of our brand new children’s exhibit that we opened and that was real face-to-face communication with our members that did show up and prior to this we didn’t really have a lot of members that participated in a lot of events that we hosted and it just continued to grow from here. And then yeah, we rolled it out to the public and it’s still rolling along. Another thing that our membership department never did because we didn’t have the budget for which we now have it locked into our budget is just direct mail appeals in general.

So, we just sent out our first 25,000-person mailer to promote the membership program and we’re seeing a good return on that and that was advice again that we got from Five Seed she said if you’re not doing that you need to be doing that.

So, we’ll now do that twice a year, and yeah, anything else?

Rosie Siemer:

Yeah, no, that’s great. And Mary, what’s your philosophy on announcing price changes?

Mary Bradley:

Rosie and I don’t agree, so I’ll just tell you that right now.

Rosie Siemer:

We have a middle ground; we definitely have a middle ground.

Mary Bradley:

Yeah, we have a middle ground. Don’t tell them, just do it, basically. I was so scarred back in the day in my first membership experience, I’d come into a department and a decision had already been made that, and this is a different organization, but that there was gonna be this price increase, and so a letter went out from the CEO, and it was, if you will, almost apologetic in nature, and then it offered, for heaven’s sake, grandfathering, which essentially turned into a three-year process just to get beyond because every renewal you’d get some you know, Jojo would be calling and saying you guys This is so unfair And so that really left a deep scar in my psyche and then I thought just don’t tell them and see what happens and actually it works.

I mean it has worked. It has worked for me. So, I will say something to consider.

Rosie Siemer:

Yes, yes, and I think that the idea here- the big idea is not to apologize for raising prices And you know you want your members, they should be feeling like they’re part of your mission and what you’re doing and that membership is supporting and so I think that’s really an opportunity.

I would say that one of the things we found works really well is that rather than just increasing prices period making strategic changes to your membership program at the same time because then you get to talk about all of the exciting things the changes the the good part about the new program rather than just you know we’re raising prices.

We haven’t talked about any research that was done, maybe you could share a little bit about any research that you did prior to making these changes and kind of how that process went.

Spencer Jansen:

Okay, I’m gonna go back to that last point as well about the rollout.

One thing that the benefit of being a free museum is our members are typically more philanthropic in nature and we continue to continually study that and do A /B testing on our appeals, our emails, our letters to have either transactional based language or you know philanthropic language, philanthropic wins every time. We also, this is funny, we’ve done surveys for members, this is before we reopen. The number one benefit members appreciated though was free entrance to the museum. I don’t know where they got that. We put it in there just to see if they said yes and they did.

But to go to your actual question about the research, I mentioned that we were closed during COVID for this, so honestly the timing for us was beneficial because we had time to research and what we looked at was museums of our similar scope and the size of their collection, the square footage of their building, what our new building was going to become, where we were located in our city if we were a capital city if we were not what is our general makeup of our population? And then also what was locally being done?

So we looked at you know Nationally and locally to determine what our pricing was and the language that we use to make sure that those benefits I mean I had probably 600 pages of Memberships from around the country that we were looking through and also pulling different benefits. But the reality is We got all those benefits and then we went pretty much back to where we were with just a couple additional things and we learned how to be very good at being vaguely specific because we didn’t know really what we could offer with new benefits without being in this new museum. We didn’t know how it was going to operate. We didn’t know how people were going to react to it and how it was going to live and breathe with us as an organization.

So, there would be very vague but specific things that you would get as as a member. I couldn’t tell you what which you’re gonna get but we got an idea of it. Yeah, and so we’re in that phase now if you’re too okay we’ve been living with it now it’s time to kind of revamp the membership benefit see what people used and what they like and then go from there because the majority of people that really do are transactional members are the ones that are take to school that is the biggest discount I mean classes can be $300 plus so 20% off of that, you’re close to paying for your membership. But we do see most of those stay in the school and they don’t branch out into a whole lot of other things throughout the museum. So that’s one of our things is we gotta get them engaged beyond taking a class and becoming more of the member community.

Rosie Siemer:

Rehn, how about on your end, any research that?

Rehn West:

Yes, so when we were looking reimagine this program, we knew already just by going online to the Norfolk Zoo and whatnot and seeing that our prices were way lower. But that wasn’t enough for me to go to leadership and say, hey, we just should copy their prices. Like, I needed a very thorough comparator study and benchmark study that– luckily, I had Five Seed for. I know I We’re laying back to you guys, but I needed all of that to be able to go to our team and say, hey, we really do need to put some emphasis on membership and there is real value here and this is gonna be great for us, not only us, but also the community. So, we worked with Five Seed who spoke with our local attractions. I know we looked up and down the East Coast to see if anyone was similar into kind of the realm of what Nauticus does. I mean, again, I think we’re a little bit different because we do have the cruise terminal which does impact some of our what we can offer to members which were that’s our new little hurdle to cross this coming year. But it’s all good stuff and we went to the traditional studies so that I could then take it to our team and say you have to focus what you have to help me focus and also give us a larger membership budget so that we can focus on membership.

Rosie Siemer:

Mary how about you?

Mary Bradley:

You know Denver, the Denver metro area has a unique opportunity that a lot of other places don’t so I’m just going to apologize in advance for that but not really because it’s called the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District.

One penny of every $10 sales tax throughout a seven-county metro area goes to the facilities that support arts and sciences. So, we benefit tremendously from that.

What this does is it creates, rather than an air of competition with our fellow cultural organizations, an air of collaboration, nobody is worrying that if I give you this information, you’re gonna steal my members and my donors and I’m gonna hate you. Nothing like that, really. I mean, there might be in the development world, no offense. But the point is that we’re able to really work together and then essentially see what the other organizations are doing, what they’re charging, because we share so many of the same constituents. So that was, it helped us more than benchmarking gardens across the country or you know whatever because we were dealing with the reality of being in the metro area in Denver.

Rosie Siemer:

Excellent, yeah. That transparency is so important and as we are all colleagues and we can share that information, I think that really helps a lot. Well, I’d love to open it up to you all for questions. If anyone has any, please walk up to the microphone in the back there and we’ll start taking some

Audience member:

Hi, really fascinating everybody. Thank you Kasha from the Canadian Museum of Nature. We’re in the middle of a pricing study ourselves for all of our products so membership admission anything and I’m wondering have any come across of you come across the situation. We’re in your museum different business units are co-funded by revenues some of these pricing products And so we’re trying to figure out when we get to the do implementation and roll out how long is it going to take us maybe to try to change some of those business models to make them work internally anybody experience that and do you have any comments?

Spencer Jansen:

You know I would say we had a point in time which we knew we were opening so that kind of was a benefit but the other thing is we also had the first deadline and then that got pushed back and back and back.

So, what I want to say doesn’t really answer your question because we had a longer runway than we originally planned, but we were looking at a six-month rollout of we’re going to open on January 1, so let’s say our goal is to hit June 1, but it’s going to take us six months to even get to that point. That was kind of what we looked at, and we wound up having eight months of it, actually. Does that answer your question but it really took six months to devise it and implement it and then six months rolled out to the people until we open our doors again.

Audience member:

It gives me a ballpark. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Rosie Siemer:

Great. We’ve got a few others coming up for questions.

Audience member:

Hi. I’m curious about the social pass that’s at your museum Spencer.

Could you say a few words about that, I was stalking you on the website.

Spencer Jansen:

Yeah, yeah. So, the social pass when we were redoing our membership program, we eliminated our affinity groups because we kind of wanted to see what was happening with membership organically and then we would create those affinity groups later.

So, one of them that we deleted was our young professionals group. So, we thought, how can we attract them and get them in the doors? And We were seeing that in the past. They really just liked the parties.

And we had a lot of people that just came to the preview parties where they could get their free food and drinks, and that’s what they did. They didn’t take classes. They didn’t go to the store, shop, or the restaurant. They didn’t get those other transactional benefits.

They wanted the fun benefits. So, we priced it at $37, which is just over half of our entry-level membership. It’s also a nod to our first year of opening, was 1937. So, it was kind of a little tongue-in-cheek and internally for that and It’s all green. So, there’s no mailer. Everything is done digitally and that’s the way to do it.

We When we did our projections, we thought it was going to be about a thousand Memberships was gonna was gonna take that and we thought okay, then we can build our budget for our parties do about 40-50,000 Because we’re getting the revenue from them.

It didn’t hit like that at all It was probably 250 signed up but the benefit is we hit where we wanted to go and we got it through our member plus membership so we actually increased our revenue because of it.

We’re gonna continue it I could say maybe in a year or two We’re gonna really have to look at it and say are people using it and or they not we’re seeing a lot of people will start and they kind of dip their toe into membership It’s a good like dating membership level and then they actually will upgrade to that marriage of member,vmember plus, traveler, et cetera. So, it’s been a good entry point. So even though it was 250, I’d say probably 30% of them have already upgraded. So that’s, is that any other questions about that group?

And one other thing I’ll say is talking to other members. We, I remember talking to Retiree and I was telling her about our theories of this social pass and said, “Well, I want to do that. That’s me. That’s me as a member. I don’t do anything else. I just come and enjoy the community of and the fellowship with members.” So, we scrapped the age thing.

So originally it was like an 18 to 35, but after talking to a couple other people, we’re like, “No, no, no, no. Again, we’re putting up barriers. At the end of the day, what are we doing? We want to get people involved. We want to get membership. And if I’m putting a barrier up because of an age limit for five people, that’s enough for me to say let’s do something different.

Audience member:

Fantastic, thank you.

Audience member:

So, this is kind of right on point with that. As you have redeveloped your membership programs, like how have you decided what to rename them? Like, Rehn, your memberships are like something two, four, six, like do those numbers mean anything? You know, and Spencer, doing away with your family membership, like how have of you like helped people find identity within your membership programs?

Rehn West:

The naming was fun.

We went back and forth with different cute names and simple names, but we came out in the end with what is the most simple thing possible? So, we are Nauticus, and then we have the different levels pertaining to how many people can get in with your membership, so very simple. So Nauticus two, two people, four, six, eight. And then of course we did add if say a family was very strict or a family of three, we do not like anybody else. We don’t wanna bring anyone else. We don’t wanna be at a four, but we can’t be at a two. We do allow an add-on of one guest or one person per membership level. And that has worked for some families.

But yeah, the naming, the naming can be fun though, but we wanted to be real simple for this first round.

Spencer Jansen:

That’s the exact same thing, keep it simple. We looked at some of our names and they were too fru-fui and does it really, people don’t know what that means. So, our membership level is that social pass. Well, what does that really give you? The social activities, it’s a pass to the social events. Member, member plus, so two people. Traveler, which is where the NARM benefits and Rome benefits kick in, and then benefactor. And that benefactor is the most philanthropic and then we get into major gifts but the benefactor benefit that is nice is that it provides a membership for someone else so that that can go and offset the cost that we have for the pay what you wish membership is the benefactor membership. So we just tried to make sense of what it was. It does get a little confusing when we have it called member member plus because it’s a member member. But most people don’t think of it that way they’re just like I’m a member at the museum so why do they have to have some other big flourishing name to it they are what they are.

Audience member:

We’re in the process right now of examining our member benefits and rates and also looking at event and program fees as well kind of benchmarking against a lot of our friendly competition in the area and we have free admission to our galleries we don’t want to change that part of it It’s more just programs and events and things where I’m paying outsiders to come in.

But currently, because we don’t have a paid admission, one of the member benefits is they get to go free for most of our programs and events. And we’re considering instead doing a 50% discount when we do our hike rate. And I have a reason for this, and I want a reality check from this group, is that free admission for our members, they sign up and a lot of times I have a limited house, and then because they paid nothing, eh, there’s no skin in the game and they don’t show up, and suddenly I go from a sold out program to 20 empty seats. If I do 50% discount and we have a higher fee for the others, am I on the right track here I guess?

Spencer Jansen:

Uh, yes, I actually just had this conversation Monday, uh, with my boss. Because we know about 50 to 60% of people show up for anything that’s free. Um, people value things they pay for.

>> Yeah.

>> Um, we’re not going to start pricing some of our lectures and things like that yet or even have that free for members and not, but we do know that if we have a free event, we’re going to– that house number is about 25 to 30 percent more than what it can actually hold.

So that’s one thing is you’ve got to know that they’re not going to show up and make sure you can seat as many people. So, bring your cap, if you have 50 seats, sell 75. and be prepared in case everybody shows up, but they’re not, they’re not. Things get in the way and if it’s free, they’re not gonna show it because they’re like, something else that I paid for is gonna be there. But yes, I think you’re on the right track. I’m advocating to start charging for non-members for events and then members get free, but it still has the issue of they won’t show up. Because even in the previous iteration of our building, we’d announce something and tickets would be sold out in a matter of two days and they all went to members and we look around like, “Where are they?”

So, yeah, I don’t have a yes or no answer for you, but we’ve seen the same thing.

Rosie Siemer:

And I’ll just agree and say that what we’ve seen in our research working with organizations is that a very nominal fee for any type of program does generate more commitment and attendance, so I would encourage you to test it out.

Audience member:

Thank you so much. Great session. I have a question. We are trying to build a museum in Niagara Falls, so a lot of our people who walk through in would be tourists, so they don’t have a membership track. So are there any recommendations, obviously, kind of similar model, where they are just visiting there and they walk through, they never show up again, they show up to Niagara Falls.

Thank you.

Rosie Siemer:

Rehn, tourist?

Rehn West:

Tourist. Let me think. So, I don’t know, that’s a tough answer. I mean, we obviously, and I’m sure a lot of museums do this. I mean, if you buy a ticket that day or that week, you can then transfer your admission dollars into membership.

We see a lot of that with our tourists that want to take advantage of the ASTC benefit. So that means they can then visit a museum that’s a part of the association throughout the world.

And I’m not sure if AAM has anything like that.

Rosie Siemer:

Yeah, there are several reciprocal programs that I think make a real difference. So, people who are not visiting, that can be a great way to upsell them into membership at a specific level to get that reciprocal benefit because then when they, you know, wherever they travel they can use that membership benefit.

So, I agree that’s a great strategy.

Rehn West:

And training the front desk staff and incentivizing them to want to push the membership sale at the front desk versus the general admission ticket has been really great for us.

Training always, like every six months.

Rosie Siemer:

One other thought, we’re actually working with an organization right now that has a very high tourist population, and they’re considering creating a very special branded premium for membership.

So, if you join onsite that day, you know, for tourists, it’s a nice souvenir to take home, and it’s a way for them to stay connected with the organization and the experience that they had. So that might be another possible idea.

Audience member:

Thank you so much.

Audience member:

First, I just want to say thank you. This has been really insightful. I was definitely intrigued about the community partnerships.

Do you develop a program just for organizations like a senior living? Like you get these different benefits if you could expand more on that.

Rosie Siemer:

So, the community memberships that I was referring to are really just your standard memberships but being made available to community partners.

So, they go to the individuals or to the family and they’re just a standard membership but they’re free and so it’s a way for the museum to engage with the broader community.

Spencer Jansen:

I’ll add on what we’ve done. Excuse me, AMFA is we all we looked in our what we wanted to do program-wise and realize why reinvent the wheel. If we have a ballet in Little Rock, we don’t need to do another ballet. We have a great community partner that does it and actually started with the museum back decades ago. So, they come in and do their performances. Same with the Arkansas Cinema Society. They come and do screenings and programings with us.

We don’t share databases or collaborative memberships, but we’re just rolled out this week with ACS that all of their members actually can become a social past member if they want to, and come to those parties and just be with us, and then our members receive a discount for their screenings. So that’s what we’ve done with them, but not anything bigger than that right now.

Rosie Siemer:

Yes, and I think that’s it for us today, but we’ll stay up here if anyone else would like to come up and ask any further questions and thank you all very much. It was wonderful spending the time with you today.

This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. What is the state of museum governance today? Hear the results of AAM’s Museum Board Leadership survey, including critical benchmarking data on governance practices, board responsibilities and performance, board culture, diversity, and more. Drawing from the insights of museum board members and directors across the country, this session will share where museum governance is flourishing and where there’s room to grow, and as well as share actionable takeaways for how museums can help their board, and their museum, thrive for years to come.

Speakers: 

• Cory Garfin – Senior Research Scientist, Co-Director, Slover Linett at NORC
• Linda C. Harrison – Director and CEO, The Newark Museum of Art
• Jacqueline Jordan – Senior Vice President and Regional Director, Foundation and Institutional Advisors, Northern Trust Company
• Carys Kunze – Research & Data Specialist, American Alliance of Museums

Additional Resources:

Research Insights from AAM’s Museum Board Leadership Survey slides

Read the 2024 Museum Board Leadership: A National Report

Transcript

Cory Garfin:

So, I just want to mention about the initial survey that was run in 2017 was sent to museum directors and board chairs. This was sent to museum directors and their boards so there’s a slight difference in the methodology. We heard from 456 directors and 606 board members that represented a really broad cross-section of the museum field. We sent it to 4,42 directors and then we asked them to distribute to everybody on their board and just a process note throughout these charts that you’re going to see the letter N indicates the sample size for each question. Some of them are slightly different than the others and any statistical significance between side-by-side data are indicated by a carrot symbol.

Okay so we primarily heard from people from history museums, historical societies, and art museums. You’ll see that the directors are the kind of dark blue bars. The board members are the light green. So that’s and that is the makeup of who we heard from and I’m going to jump into some of the key findings my colleagues are going to go into the details and we’re going to start with questions of diversity the working title for this project was the board leadership and diversity study the published title is the board leadership study.

So, a lot of the emphasis was on diversity or a lack thereof, but we did find that boards have made meaningful progress in diversifying their ranks, but they still have some significant room for improvement. And that’s we’re going to go into detail about how they can improve but there are some actions that we can take, and Carys has. At the end of our deck there’s a QR code that links to the full report and there are some really helpful guides and tips for action to take off of this.

Okay boards and directors widely agree that diversity and inclusion are important to board performance. This sentiment has grown since the 2017 study. So, it’s not just the board effectiveness as a board as a body it’s really how they represent the museum. It’s their ability to advance on the Museum’s overall mission and it’s their ability to understand communities that the museums serve so that’s what they think diversity does for them and what…next slide. Well, most boards have engaged in conversations about diversity and inclusion, but many museums have not followed up on these discussions with concrete actions to promote diversity. Again, we’re going to have some tips for that but just as an example most boards are recruited through personal networks so if a board is predominantly white it becomes an echo chamber which we found of people in their network. So, we did find that there’s relative parity in representation in the responses between men and women on boards and a majority of directors are women. There’s one caveat here though is that women are much more likely to run museums that are smaller. So, about 75% of museums with revenue under a million dollars are run by women.

So, and we found that boards can widely improve their performance regarding things like fundraising, outreach, advocacy, and government relations. We did ask boards to grade themselves and then we asked directors to grade the boards. So, we’re going to talk more about those grades as we go but these are some of the areas that rose to the top of things that could do better. And then finally the museum field continues to face financial strain with half of museums indicating at least one sign of financial stress. So this was a question that asked in the past six months back when they took it in 2023, have you had any of the following and there were things like having to dip into their endowment. Things like laying off staff. Things like sunsetting programs.

So, half of museums have done something, at least one of those things. Some of them many. So, with that we’re going to dive into the details.

I’m going to pass it back to Carys you.

Carys Kunze:

Thank you, Corey. The results of this survey are going to be divided into three sections the people, the work, and the finances. I’m going to be chatting more about the people that make up museum boards and before we dive any further I’ll mention that, like Corey said, these results are coming from a larger report that you can find on AAM’s website at the end of this at the end of this session will also have a QR code up on the screen linking directly to the report. And we’re really just sharing the highlights a select amount of the findings so a lot more you can find in the report and I’ll also mention that some of these data visualizations are pretty dense some of them have a lot of text in the answer options so no need to stress about reading every word. All of the data visualizations are in the report for you to be able to look at in more detail.

The report is also full with a lot of actionable resources so here’s an example page where if you’re looking at a particular area of the findings and you’re saying yes this is an area that my board could stand to grow in there will be a selection of resources directly linked for you to start working on that particular topic. And with that let’s go ahead and dive into the results.

So we’ll start with the race and ethnicity of board members and directors and we found that board members and boards overall have made significant strides in improving their diversity, and that there’s still a lot of continued room for improvement. So, compared to the first iteration of this study which we ran in 2017, at that point almost half of directors reported that there were no people of color on their boards so that their board was entirely white. That of course was a highly concerning statistic to find and it sparked AAM’s Landmark initiative, Facing Change, which was focused on supporting boards in increasing their diversity. Looking at the results from this survey we see meaningful movement on this.

So, at this point we’re seeing a decrease to 27% of directors reporting their boards as entirely white coming down from that 46% in 2017. That’s a meaningful increase. Obviously, there’s still a lot of distance to be covered there. 71% of directors reported that 3/4 or more of their board members are white which indicates to us that a lot of the board members of color that are serving on museum boards are in many cases one of only a few people of color or the only person of color that’s serving on their board. And as you can see from the chart the vast majority of both board members and directors today are white despite board members and directors widely agreeing and recognizing the importance of diversity and inclusion to their museum’s missions.

Taking a look at gender we see relative parity between men and women on museum boards. Both of those are very close to 50% when we’re looking at directors 64% of directors share that they identify as women. And as Corey alluded to that is very different based on the size of the museum that we’re looking at. So, for museums that are under 1 million in annual revenue about 75% of those are directed by women and then museums that are over 1 million in revenue it comes to a closer to a 50/50 split. Taking a look at LGBTQ+ identity we found that only 5% of board members reported that they were part of the LGBTQ+ Community that’s a higher number for directors at 133% and even higher for directors who identify as men 20% of whom identified as the LGBTQ+ Community and for benchmarking about 7% of us adults identifies as LGBTQ+ next taking a look at disability for benchmarking about 13% of the civilian population is disabled directors report pretty close to the statistic at 12% but board members were much less likely to report living with a disability at only 4% taking.

A look at age, the majority of board members are over the age of 50. We found that 37% of directors reported no one under the age of 40 on their board and 82% of directors indicated that there was no one under the age of 30 on their board. Next, we asked directors and board members how important they felt board diversity and inclusivity was for increasing the organization’s ability to advance on various issues and there was wide agreement that board diversity inclusivity is important for many goals and a lot of these sentiments have increased since 2017. So, the vast majority of both board members and directors were agreeing that board diversity and inclusivity are important for increasing the organization’s ability to advance on its mission overall, enhancing its standing with the general public, understanding the population served by the organization, and a number of other important goals so these beliefs and values form a very important space for any further institutional DEI work.

Next, we asked directors what concrete actions their board has taken in relation to various DEI goals we found that about 2/3 of boards have agreed that it’s important to incorporate diversity and inclusion into their organization’s core values but we saw much less frequent use of very concrete actions. So, for instance just over one-third of boards have modified their recruitment efforts to pursue potential candidates from diverse backgrounds. Only about a third have also conducted DEI training for staff and/or board members. And we saw only 12% of directors reporting a detailed plan of action for the board to become more inclusive. So one of the big takeaways, I think, from this data is this gap that exists between belief between discussion and between more concrete action. That’s an important area for our field to continue growing as we’re moving towards these important goals. And when we’re talking about board members and who’s serving on boards it’s important to consider how they came to be on the board in the first place. So we asked both directors how they recruited new members and asked board members how they personally were recruited. The vast majority of board members said that they had been recruited by either a board member that they already knew or a director that they already knew. And about three quarters were recruited by someone who was already in their own personal network. That can be a challenge, like Corey mentioned in his earlier remarks, that can be a challenge because personal networks are often homogeneous and so it can create sort of a cycle where it can be difficult to open up the board to more diverse candidates. And so considering other potential avenues for recruitment can help boards to consider potential members they might have otherwise missed.

We also asked directors what importance their board assigns to various criteria when they’re recruiting new board members. So, over half of directors agreed that passion for the mission and community connections are important criteria. We also saw a wide variety of other potential criteria that are being used. So, about 1/3 of directors reported placing a high value on demographic characteristics. About the same amount said that they were placing a high value on candidates being a member of the community served by the organization. Recruiting might also be based on desired skills such as HR, technology, marketing, and those more concrete skills. About 28% said that they placed a high priority on the ability to fund raise. That’s notable because as Jackie will talk about later in the report or Linda I believe many of our directors also said that their board could grow when it comes to fundraising and then not very many directors reported that they were placing a high priority on prior involvement with the organization, knowledge of the field at large, or connections with public officials. That brings us to the end of the people, and I’ll now hand it to my colleague Linda to take us through the work.

Linda C. Harrison:

Thank you. So the work this is where at one point my fellow directors may feel when you are interacting with your board wow it feels really good that might be when you first start your job or it could be that you go okay they’re getting it yay and then somehow you get to that that point where I think I’ve got to send them to kindergarten camp so that they can figure out how to talk to each other and the director. So, this first slide that I want to show you has to there’s a lot here on this particular slide about board and engagement in culture. But there are the top three which is probably not surprising to us. Where the board has interest of the organization really over their own personal agendas and about 96% of the board the boards that were surveyed are in this camp.

Not surprising that as directors we have a slightly lower number of about 78% that second highest is that there is communication. The board was at 90%. We were the directors at about 76% and it could be that in this my experience is that we have a lot of communication I have a lot of communication with my chair and with my executive team and probably chairs of the committees and the rest of the board generally gets their information probably at the board meetings. But that’s something that will also be interested in in your comments as well. The third expected or not surprising is that the board is a collaborative team, and they really work on being a collaborative team.

We tend to find that it is the chairs of committees that work more, in a more collaborative way than say the general board especially if you have a larger board. At least this is something that I find in my world. But I was very interested in this slide where you we’ll see down at the bottom where I think that there is a key challenge where the majority of board members are actively engaged well, they think they are at 74%. But we tend to think it’s a little lower at about 58% and that’s what ties back to perhaps there are that core group that’s more engaged than the overall general board. And then board members share accountability and take responsibility for the failures and the mistakes. Well, the board thinks they are right there taking accountability.

I don’t know, is this a safe room is this a safe space should we formally make this a safe space. Only 41% of us as directors feel that the board is taking responsibility and being accountable and this is something that communication with them. Sometimes board members they may be participating in a meeting but maybe not hearing what is the work that we are about to do and then come and ask what happened. How did this happen that our staff seems to be unhappy? Well, we’ve been telling you that and we’ve been sharing with you what we want to do about that. So, this is an area that I think we will…I think is an opportunity more for us even though it’s not in that top three.

So, job satisfaction well I would say this side of the room is not happy with their job according to well 25% of you according to this survey and if you look at the 75% of assess directors who are satisfied well maybe that first 25 of the 75% are those who just started in their world and it’s all beautiful and then as you move towards the middle they’re assessing and then by the time we get to the last 75% it could be that you’re about to join the 25% that are not happy with their job. So, we may want to have some wheat grass juice when we get out of here with chamomile. So that we can continue but this is why you come to a to be reenergized and inspired to continue this difficult work that we do and that leads us going right into from job satisfaction may be directly related to fundraising. So, 84% of us think that…indicate that our boards rely on the staff for fundraising. I could ask you to raise your hands right now do you feel this is a safe space, raise your hand if you are part of this 84% that feel that your board thinks it’s your job. Okay all right, safe space, this is something that we continually want to work with, and the survey also said that 67% only 67% of our board Trustees say that they were clear and it was made clear to them about our the expectations of them on the board.

Now I can personally tell you that I am one of those directors who came from the corporate world and I said we are going to sign a document that says roles and responsibilities of the Board of Trustees two and a half pages of stuff you got to sign it and I sign it and the chair signs it and yet I’ve experienced trustees telling me, Linda I didn’t know that that was the expectation. Okay this is where the kindergarten camp comes in and so it’s one of those areas that really moves us into where are the areas of growth. The top three areas that the survey shared was strengthening the fundraising efforts because 52% of our trustees believe okay, they should participate but what’s happening with the other 48% of our trustees? What is causing that disconnect and 52% thought strengthening outreach and acting as ambassadors was important. Well, I tend to think that we, you should come in knowing that that’s going to be your job 100% of your job in connection with the governance of the organization. So it’s an area of growth for us.

And the commitment to engagement this is this is something where 41% of our board members feel like they’re engaged and all of this to me is leading towards what should our retreats maybe look like with our Board of Trustees. It actually gives you a some fundamentals there but this was of note to me that I wanted to bring up for a possible discussion and that is conducting a self-assessment. It’s not in the top three it’s buried that’s not buried but it’s low on the priority list for both directors and our trustees so what does this say. I think we are fearing being self-assessed. We talk about the 360. We talk about you know performance evaluations and then when it comes to the board maybe us as directors, we don’t even want to know you know and the trustees are like why should we self-assess ourselves and this is something that my board I suggested to the board chair we need to do this.

It was painful and then it got more painful and then really painful when we talked about the results and then it just like stay home for a week to recover. When we wanted to talk about how are we going to take this assessment and now fold it into our daily way of being in terms of an effective organization and we got through it. But I’m it shocked me that this is not just standard operating procedure for all of the boards that we interact with.

And then we get to advocacy, and this was a surprising number because somewhere maybe 24% it could be a little higher sometimes it’s a little less for those organizations who are getting some of their budget funding from the government it could be the local or state feels that only 10% of our trustees are engaged with our advocacy work. And 10% maybe even know about our advocacy work and this is something where we send at my museum the trustees, they are getting all of the updates every time we are doing something. Particularly when I’m interfacing with any of the legislators, but this survey says even when it comes to those who are participating it’s only 133% and that’s pretty low number when as a director, I’m spending a lot of time you are spending I’m sure a lot of time interfacing with legislators particularly if we’re getting any kind of funding from them. So, I noted that as an area that I thought could need some help from us.

And then our final slide is board meetings and maybe all of this leads up to pretty much if about 75% of our board members attend the meetings and in that 75%, they’re not attending all the meetings and so that becomes a challenge. When you’ve prepared all of this information you’ve done all of this work and it seems like even though we’re in quarterly meeting in my world it’s like we’re rolling from one board meeting to preparing for the next and then our board members don’t attend the meetings. We also know personally when we were in lockdown the board attended more meetings because they were Zoom and then when we switched to in person in fact my chair said I don’t think we should switch to in person and I said we’re a museum and now we’re open I think you got to come to the museum and experience the museum but we had a decline. I almost felt like we we’re like what’s the entertainment to get our board members to come to the museum. This is a direct can have a direct impact on are they participating in the fundraising, are they participating in the meetings, not only with legislators but other key stakeholders that that may be important, so this was an area that also needed to dive in a bit mor. Which we do in the detail of the report but it’s one that I think may be part of that long retreat now that we all are going to have when we go back as a result of this and that moves us to finances, Jackie? [Applause]

Jacqueline Jordan:

All right good evening everyone. So, the last topic for the board survey that we’ll address today. I’m sure is everyone’s favorite which is finances. But on a serious note, I sit within our foundation institutional advisor practice at Northern and we serve about 400 clients and I’m always traveling around the country talking to my clients about what have they been working on in areas of focus and what are the priorities going forward. And I would say, always in the top three is self-preservation through financial sustainability it is always on the front minds of directors and boards. And when you think about Arts and Cultural organizations you guys really are and you really do preserve the history and the beauty of society, and you are on the front lines of really exposing citizens to cultural experiences. And so the concept of lasting into perpetuity and having a legacy is really important for this group in particular. And the best way to do that is by financial security and so when we go through some of the data points we’ll be discussing today use them as a benchmark for your organization to kind of see how you fit within that space. And some of these areas where you can allocate some resources or have board discussions, I think will be very relevant going forward.

So, let’s jump right into it. So, when we think about how do we maintain or obtain financial stability and sustainability. The first way of doing that is identifying really the ways you can allocate or really get revenue. So, revenue sources are the first area of focus. So, when we pulled all of the board survey participants, we really realized that there is some diversity in how museums and historical organizations are getting revenue. But looking at this data ultimately shows you that 2/3 of Revenue is really built on the responsibility of the museum. Yes, there’s Federal funding available you see at 3 % for board participants. Right, state, and local government as well but if you look at it 32% of museum revenue is arrived from program related revenue as well as you think of dues and fees and things of that sort. And so, I think right around the pandemic the art museum culture and community was really hit unfairly by the pandemic. A lot of the revenue that was derived from some of the activities really on pause and so as we’re coming on the back end of that a lot of board members and directors are focused on building up their programs and allocating resources to make sure they’re really engaging the community to get back in and improving those revenue sources.

As a complement to that so you think about earned income, charitable contributions, and donations take up a third of the revenue sources and so as we know development and fundraising, and donor engagement is one of the toughest jobs in the business, but it accounts for a third of museum revenue. And also, and you think about the pandemic a lot of charitable revenue and contributions that went to the arts and culture were steered more towards essential services and so as we’re getting back to people focused really on arts and culture. You know donor engagement is becoming a huge priority for museums and historical organizations going forward and so when you look at the broader survey I want you to pay attention to some of the data points around fundraising and Linda showcased some of those as well that the board finds it a priority but the actual action items and actually doing fundraising there is a gap in the goal and the actual making sure that we get money in the door. And so when I talk to a lot of my clients about fundraising best practices and the really successful ones that have planned giving programs. I would say there are two areas where they’re allocating resources or having conversations the first and I know we talked about board commitment but really truly 100% board commitment to donor cultivation.

So when you think about setting expectations for board members on the front end of their participation or even throughout you’ll see that there is a lot of support when you’re when they’re giving themselves. So they’re fine you know doing charitable contributions but the most successful boards when it comes to fundraising in general feel comfortable having the ability to articulate the mission to their own communities are more ambassadors when really trying to showcase the needs of the museum or the organization and so doing just kind of a refresh of board expectations but just educating them on the mission, the value, right, the impact to the community.

We also arm them to be able to go into the community and really be ambassadors for staff and directors as well I would also add outside of just full board engagement, I would say there’s been an increased in just development staff in general, you know. I would say 15 years ago you used to have very robust development teams and we’ve kind of seen those go to now they’re one or two people within an organization and they’re responsible for the fundraising goal for the whole year. And so I think there’s been a priority for a lot of clients on making sure the individuals that their priority is development make sure they have the right resources available to them make sure that they can also articulate the mission but then can also explain to potential donors on ways of giving now and ways of giving in the future.

I think traditionally you know outright gifts from cash marketable securities is very straightforward, but you know 80% of planned gifts are bequest so that’s estate planning. So, that’s having the ability to articulate with individuals who really find the value of your organization to be a part of your legacy and do that through planned gifts. And that can be as simple as being the beneficiary of an insurance policy or a 401k, things like that really do make a difference in fundraising goals and targets overall. And so making sure that your development staff is very tied closely to the planned giving councils. Make sure that they’re networking with other development staff but also have a board liaison that also interacts with staff that can really help with the ongoing fundraising efforts because as you see 2/3 of the success of a museum is built on really yourselves which is the programs and then the fundraising.

So, I’d be curious to know everyone’s thoughts on that as well another portion I want to highlight, and this is a good segue to the next slide is around investment income. And so, when we pulled the survey participants we uncovered that 74% of the individuals or organizations had less than $10 million of investable assets now a best PR best practice when we think about reserve accounts or endowments is that they should be somewhere between 2 to three years of your operating expenses.

So, that’s kind of a good starting point but when you talk to boards, and you talk to directors their goal is to last in perpetuity so to have investable income and endowments that can last through pandemics and things that we really cannot control and so this is an area of growth for the museum Industry in general. But I will pause and say that this is always somewhat of a conflict within the nonprofit space. You’re having and especially when you think about charitable contributions, you’re posed with the issue of do I deploy those dollars today or do I save them so that I can deploy them in the future and donors always have this conversation, right, if you’re a charitable organization or an art organization you’re supposed to be providing services to the public. So, when I give you money right, they’re supposed to be deployed immediately. But the conversation is around how do we last forever and that to me inspires a conversation around endowment building and investable assets and so it’s a conversation that needs to be having at the board level, right, at the staff level, but also at the donor level too. And so, there’s a lot of good resources available for that. But as you see there are a lot of organizations within this space that have a lot of room for growth within the investment portfolio. So, if you do have one, they did a good job of asking kind of how are they structured. And then where are these assets deployed so in the first area you see that majority if you do have investable assets, they’re diversified global portfolio which is pretty standard. But one area I want to point out is we’ve seen an increased trend in investable assets being allocated to like ESG or diversity equity and inclusion initiatives. And I think there’s some interesting points there and I’ve seen a lot of arts organizations, historical organizations, and broader nonprofits also use it as a marketing tool.

So, we recently had let’s say for example a zoo put a screen on their investment portfolio and then they put a newsletter together highlighting to donors that if you’re prudently right giving investable assets to the endowment we’re still being thoughtful on how we’re investing that we’re still aligning with our mission and value and so being able to actually use ESG as a marketing tool to get discretionary dollars in the door. We’ve seen an increase in that and so I’m sure as we continue to do this if we do this survey over the next four years, we’ll see an increase in that.

But it also ties in nicely with just the overall focus on diversity equity and inclusion so based on the data that we saw that Carys talked about and Linda there seems to be a board focus on making sure that women are represented, and minorities are represented as well. And so, it’s been beautiful to kind of see the progression in the in the investment industry to see that there are women-owned firms and minority-owned firms that have very fantastic performance. And so you’re starting to see them incorporated in portfolios and then you can speak to donors about that as well so we’re just being very thoughtful and prudent and investing which lead to more dollars in the door which is the goal now how are your investable assets actually being purposed right so they did a good job of breaking this down but it kind of aligns with the need of investment portfolios right. So, the benefit of having investment income is it can go towards your operational needs it can go towards program related expenses and then of course it can go back into the endowment to continue to build it but the benefit and the beauty of having an investment portfolio is it gives you more flexibility overall and you see exactly how the museum clients are using those assets now from a governance standpoint. Especially for board and directors they ask the question on if you do have investable assets right how often are you looking for the provider how often are you going out to RFP so an industry standard is really like two to five years. The majority of organizations who have an investment adviser or a partner go out to RFP, and it really truly is a best practice for a couple of reasons. First from a fiduciary responsibility you want to make sure you have the best partner and that you’re aligned well but it also allows you to see what’s new what else is out there. You know I have seen where organizations may have the same partner for 15 plus years and when they finally go out to RFP, they realize there’s so many more options as far as those that align with their mission and value but may have other focuses that they can bring to the table that can grow your portfolio overall too. So, it looks like from the board study results still in line with the industry standard but just keep that in mind if you’re responsible for overall governance the 2-to-five-year window is the sweet spot where a lot of people do look for providers.

And then last but not least you know we talked about the financial challenges that hit the museum and historical you know community and we talked about a lot of the synergies involved here but I want to highlight the first bar where you see that 25% of the survey participants did pull from their endowment. So, we talked about the financial hardships but the benefit of having, right, those pools of assets is that you have the ability to pull from them when you need to and what that does is that enables you not to have to do other things like programming and staff and things of that sort. Which you see that over the past six months some of our museum peers had to do that in order to make sure that they were covering their operational expenses. And so about 51% of Museum and historical organizations did have financial hardships within the past 6 months. But it’s nice to see 49% did not. And so, if you think right around the pandemic those numbers would have been a lot higher. And so, it looks like we’re coming out of that space where most organizations we’re facing some level of challenges. And so, still keep these in mind as overall themes but I would say financial challenges we’re getting to the tail end of some of them but some of them will remain and so that overall theme of making sure from a board standpoint and staff standpoint you’re focused on program related revenue because that’s a third of how we’re keeping our lights on and then the third and the other third is just focus on donor cultivation, which you know, armed with the right staff and full board participation could really account for a lot of the revenue and could help overcome some of these financial challenges that are on this slide today. Thank you.

[Applause]

Carys Kunze:

Thank you to all of our wonderful panelists today up on the screen is a beautiful QR code this will take you to the report that all of this data is drawn from, so it’ll have all of the data all of the visualizations that we shared today and also quite a lot that we didn’t have time to include in this particular presentation. Thank you all so much.

This recording is generously supported by The Wallace Foundation.

This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. In this recorded session, museum professionals from various institutions – a museum focused on the Holocaust, a museum telling stories related to terrorist attacks, and a university conservation lab experienced in working with objects where damage is part of their value – discuss the challenges and opportunities that arise when working with populations affected by trauma and violence. Panelists will impart helpful tools, questions, and prompts that attendees can apply within their organizations and personal practice.

Additional Resources:

Curating Trauma and Violence slides

Transcript

Stephanie Arel:

Hi everyone, we’re going to get started right away here because we have just an hour and four presentations for this session on Curating Trauma and Violence, a topic which all of us here care pretty deeply about. So, we’re doing 10-minute presentations and then we’ll open it up for questions and conversation afterwards.

My name is Stephanie Arel. I’m going to start us off today with talking about memorial museums and trauma in terms of thinking about the viewpoint of the workers.

And I’ll introduce this by telling you in 2017 I started with a fellowship at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and my project initially was to do research on empathy and related to the longevity of the museum and facilitating empathy in the visitors who came.

And one day, as I was sort of surveying what was happening at the museum, I watched a tour end in a corner of the bottom part of the museum and all of the visitors, there were about 12 of them surrounded the guide who was a girl of about five feet tall and divulged their 9/11 stories to her, some of which were crying. She handled it beautifully, but what I recognized was that in the mediation of human suffering at these types of institutions, the workers are asked to mediate that experience. They’re asked to take it, they’re asked to care for it, they’re asked to hold it, and I feel that’s quite a lot to ask of people who don’t have training in that kind of facilitation.

So, when I went to do research to get slides for you all today, one thing that came to bear pretty quickly related to photos of workers in memorial museum settings was that they didn’t really exist.

So, the public imagination actually supports this concept where museums are visitor focused. And in these types of spaces where we’re curating trauma on multiple levels with people and content, the lack of attention to the workers is something that we actually support as a culture and a society. And my goal was to do a little shifting with this.

Now, in the actual facilitation or the mediation of human suffering in the spaces of memorial museums, another sort of phenomena that I noticed in doing the research was that workers are really trained and actually comfortable with relegating themselves to the service that they provide.

And I’ll conceptualize that in three ways. They first are beholden to and relegate themselves to the interests of the institution. So that they’re acutely aware of what’s happening at institutional levels and in terms of thinking about stakeholders, for instance, that the institutional needs come before them. And I would say that this is something that psychologically I see happening, even in conversation, casual conversation, with people who work at these types of places where there’s always an attention to the need of the other before the need of the self. I don’t wanna problematize that, I just think it’s worth raising up in terms of thinking about what these institutions might have as responsibilities in return to the worker.

The second category of relegation which I’ve mentioned already is to the visitor. I have this picture of the Parktide Museum specifically because going there and interviewing one of the workers, I recognized, am I good? I heard somebody. I recognized an incident, or yeah, I hear it, or I witnessed an incident rather, of two groups of black teenagers and white teenagers getting into an argument in the museum about the way that something was represented.

And the guide, again, had at his disposable set of tools that he had actually and training by himself in psychology to help this situation, but once again it was at the relegation of himself to help these visitors work through their own angst in the experience of this setting.

The third category is that workers relegate themselves to the community that they serve. And I underscore the idea of service. So, they are tending to mediating, holding, responding to, and caring for people in the community.

Now, the museum field, memorial museum Field, is relatively new in terms of thinking about the history of the museum field. And so, it still has some work to do, I think, around addressing what the diagnosis or what the experience would be of workers and I would argue that they have some fields which they can refer to in order to do this.

So, I’m just gonna highlight nurses pretty much started the progression of compassion fatigue in the 70s a woman wrote an article it got picked up by other fields I will frame the Veterinarian field, which does a lot of work around ethical fatigue. If you’re in a setting where you’re being asked to do something that feels uncomfortable to you, but you are beholden to do it because of the work, this can cause ethical fatigue.

We have another category of compassion fatigue in the lives of ministers. And then social work, which really followed the nursing field in thinking about secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma in relationship to working with people who are presenting traumatic symptomatology.

So I wrote this book and as a result of doing research around the globe, Cambodia, Bosnia, South Africa, the Whitney Plantation in the U.S., 9/11 Memorial Museum, Poland in Israel, I think that covers everything. And one of the things that I just draw to the fore for you has to do with the fact that we’re not just dealing with random workers, we’re thinking about people that have histories of trauma that are often related to the event that they’re commemorating. And out of 82 people in those locations that I’ve mentioned, 35% of them were survivors themselves. 35% were family members doing the work in honor of family members, some that were survivors and some that were not.

And the other 30% were community members that cared about what they were doing. So there was not one person that I interviewed out of that 82 that didn’t feel pretty intensely about the service they were offering to whomever they were relegating themselves to, whether it was the institution, the families, the visitors, or the community.

I highlight this, workers are invisible until they’re called upon, and that’s actually part of the job. This is a Quote by Velma Sarek, she is in Bosnia. She does a lot of work with peace and reconciliation there. She really helped me interview quite a few people in Bosnia. To underscore the point that I made about vocation and caring, I will read the middle of this. “Genocide survivors that work in museums, I know that every single time they talk about their experience they do so with passion but I also know how tired and exhausted and stressed they are.”

The rest of this had to do with our talking about what would help and one thing that Velma articulated and which I would say reverberated in the interviews that I made had to do with building community.

So I offer three things to think about in relationship to responding to trauma within museums, which I don’t think it’s necessary to problematize it or necessary to say it’s not there, shouldn’t be there, because the activity of a memorial museum is to honor human suffering, to mediate human suffering, to recognize it. And I think that workers deserve the transparency around what that means and acknowledgement that the work is hard.

I would recommend training. Psychoeducation means like what’s happening to you when you discover an ID that is somebody who’s who died, what happens to you chemically, physiologically, psychologically when you’re negotiating such artifacts. What’s happening physiologically, psychologically to the guide that I referenced at the beginning, and then skill building. Skill building research shows actually helps the negotiation of traumatic symptomatology, and that doesn’t have to be skill building around trauma. The underscoring concept of that is creating agency in the worker. And however, that agency is created around skills is sort of irrelevant.

And then as I mentioned before, the importance of constructing community, oftentimes that happens internally in the institution within departments, that’s fine. But the fact of just mentioning that it’s something to do in relationship to helping people confront and deal with the work that they do, it can help. Thank you very much.

Alexandra Drakakis:

Hi everybody, I’m Alexandra Drakakis and I’m going to be talking about curating traumatic heritage, bringing the perspective of an acquisition’s curator, practitioner to the fore.

So as an acquisitions curator for over 15 years, I have worked directly with members of the 9/11 and Holocaust impacted communities on the creation of a foundational collection for the National September 11 Memorial Museum and on the continued development of an established collection at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. My tenure at the latter institution was marked by the passing of members of the Holocaust eyewitness generation and current events, most notably a massive surge in anti-Semitic incidents and the ongoing impacts of the Israel Hamas War.

My sense of duty to my staff at the Holocaust Museum and processes that I put into effect during my time there were heavily influenced by my experiences at the 9/11 Museum.

An experience from 2011 in particular, helped shape some of my feelings and approaches to curatorial acquisitions work. My objective in sharing it today is to set the stage for contemplation on topics central to this panel from the perspective of a practitioner.

Two key questions to keep in mind are, one, what ethical implications arise for staff when professional museum practices intersect with the complex vulnerability and unpredictability of human grief?

And two, how can museums put structures in place or rethink established ones to support the well-being of the museum worker, the donor community, and the institution itself, specifically when grappling with difficult and traumatic history?

In an early stage of the 9/11 Museum’s collecting efforts, we acquired this handwritten note from a lower Manhattan worker who had been handed it by an evacuee running from the debris cloud. Prior to its installation, forensic archaeologists tested the smudge adjacent to the hastily scribed message.

In July 2011, it was confirmed that the smudge was a fingerprint of dried blood, and to our astonishment, a subsequent DNA test matched it to World Trade Center victim Randolph Scott.

On 9/11, Scott was in his office on the South Tower’s 84th floor, directly within the building’s impacted zone. As a result, his family had presumed that he had died instantly. This is one reason why when his youngest daughter asked to see the note before it was placed on display, I was conscious about my role as mediator of that experience. This young woman who was only a child when her father was murdered on 9/11 had begun to understand his death in a way that was upended a decade later. Bearing witness to her encounter with material evidence of her father’s last-ditch effort to survive under this set of circumstances was one of the most emotionally challenging moments of my museum career. I still wonder whether I handled it as responsibly as I could, and what the museum’s role was, if any, in the processing of grief.

There is no museum studies program that trains a person for this kind of workplace experience, Yet, those of us at museums that contain material tied to personal or large-scale traumatic episodes confront it regularly and in many ways.

Through the acquisition of these artifacts and interaction with impacted individuals, through the arrangement, description, and cataloging, conservation treatment, handling, and rehousing, intellectual interpretation, physical installation, through the public’s visiting reactions to these items and through our own intercollegial exchanges.

This can make for a precarious workplace scenario at times as it has the potential to open up a wellspring of human emotion as much as it may serve to suture it.

In the aftermath of large-scale disaster, there’s a need for connection, something that helps us regain a sense of control amid feelings of powerlessness. At the 9/11 Museum, I bore witness to victims’ families endeavoring to find connection through the objects tied to their loved ones and by donating personal material to a public repository.

At the Holocaust Museum, I witnessed this on a much greater scale, and as it was unfolding almost 80 years after World War II. Despite the passage of time, the volume of donations to the Holocaust Museum is incredibly high, one testament, perhaps, to the enormity of loss and to how the repercussions of genocide are truly ceaseless.

An example of an artifact accepted under temporary custody by the museum during my time there is this child’s romper, purportedly worn by the depositor’s mother when she was an infant on Kristallnacht, stained with the blood of a male acquaintance who was attacked in her presence during the Nazi rampage. Each donation experience comes with its own slate of challenges and lingering questions, including the one that still troubles me from my interaction with Randolph Scott’s daughter. Did I navigate responsibly with the proper balance of sensitivity and professionalism, clearly managing expectations by articulating the bounds within which the museum must function?

There is a growing body of research that demonstrates that there can be a psychological unburdening effect when an individual divests themselves of an artifact of trauma and places it in a museum.

In a field report, following interviews conducted with 9/11 museum collection donors, published by Brenda Cowan, a subject referred to the museum as a quote, “therapeutic ally.” That participation in the donation process can be a positive experience for the donor is a huge relief. However, that the museum worker is perceived as providing something akin to a therapeutic service when we are not trained in that manner is notable. It emphasizes the level of responsibility that the museum worker bears and the role that our institutions play in a donor’s psychological well-being. It also begs the question of what this all means for our own psychological well-being.

Relatedly, there is also some research on the therapeutic value of spontaneous public memorials created after traumatic events. In the 2020 article pictured here, researchers posit that public shrines are now an expected response and point to the 2017 Manchester Arena Attack as one such example.

Research also reflects a growing practice to preserve the material culture from spontaneous memorials. Here are examples from the Manchester together archive and an image of students working to document the collection.

As gratifying as this work to preserve these memorial items can be, it is not free from mental burden, especially when workers are not trained and prepared for its emotional tax, a point that the research clearly articulates.

Part of the charge of stewarding the material evidence of trauma is negotiating the intimacy of confronting human grief with institutional dynamics. These dynamics include limits in the form of staffing, resources, storage, and organizational priorities. They are not always taken into account in our acquisition practices, where success can be measured by volume, and saying no to the victim of trauma can feel like a moral dilemma.

Further, the donor may not fully comprehend the permanence of donation, length of time it takes to accession a collection, or the inability of the museum to promise display. If research suggests that we can be therapeutic allies, however, then what structures need to be put in place to protect and empower the worker and the donor to establish clarity in a common language, cultivating a healthier relationship between the museum and the community it serves.

I wish to invite discussion on how we can lean on policies and technical aspects of our practice to help address these challenges. For example, how can formal decision-making bodies like an like an internal acquisitions committee, fortify staff by helping to pace acquisitions work and manage donor expectations.

Should collections management policies, which articulate collecting scope and decision-making practices, be more socialized across museum staff and activated as communication tools, both internally and externally? Do non-collections colleagues need to be more engaged in the challenges we face so that they may be addressed more holistically?

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution I offer these examples as food for thought on what a closer look at our museological practices can offer as a complement to psychological support and specialized training as we collectively explore how boundaries and clarity can help support the health and well-being of the donor, worker, and institution. Thank you.

Lisa Conte:

I’m going to try to look at my notes here.

So, actually, I’m just going to hold it. So good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining this panel. My name is Lisa Conti, and I’m a paper conservator. Two years ago, I began teaching at New York University, one of four graduate programs specializing in the conservation of art and cultural heritage in the United States. Before this, I was the head of conservation at the 9/11 Memorial Museum for five years, where I focused on the care of traumatic heritage. During this time, I developed a deep appreciation for people-centered approaches and the care of collection items. Today, I would like to introduce some of the themes and issues I encountered while working at the museum to share some of my approaches to working with objects associated with trauma and invite you to challenge and expand upon them.

So, while we have been discussing the impacts of trauma and the complexities of collecting trauma-related artifacts, I’d like to establish the sheer breadth of what they can encompass. So, I will provide some context for the equally as well for the equally extensive and complex principles and practices that distinguish the preservation of these items.

So put simply a traumatic artifact is a thing directly associated with a natural disaster, conflict, or other form of violence and suffering, which unfortunately seem omnipresent these days. Artifacts born from such events often carry significant emotional in historical weight, serving as tangible reminders of the experiences and the memories of those affected.

As we’ve seen in the examples already shared about 9/11 and those on the screen, these can include personal belongings, remnants of destroyed structures or everyday items, and objects that played a role in the event itself. Significantly, they can embody a person’s grief, particularly things created in response to an event like an artwork, spontaneous memorials, or other tributes. So, while all artwork and artifacts require particular handling and ethical considerations, those associated with traumatic events demand special sensitivity as we’ve been hearing.

This work often involves interfacing with effective community members for who these artifacts can evoke deep emotional responses, in addition to serving as historical evidence. Our focus is often on preserving this immaterial value. So let me just press play here, great.

So, what we see on the screen is a prime example, World Trade Center dust. Following the collapse of the Twin towers, this dust-blanketed lower Manhattan, taking on different meanings, both positive and negative, depending on personal experiences. The dust itself, along with objects covered in it, were saved as relics. These gained added significance shortly after the event, as people realized the dust could contain human remains.

The 9/11 Memorial Museum has always worked closely with the office of the chief medical examiner in New York City who reviews all dust-covered material before its addition to the collection. No remains have ever been found in prospective collection items.

So, the dust was collected both intentionally as seen in the previous slide and unintentionally by those working in rescue and recovery or whose nearby studios and homes were blanketed by it.

Here you see two different approaches to preservation. Artist Elena del Rivera, who’s studio home near the trade center, was severely damaged on 9/11, ritually cleaned, numbered, and documented what was there. Initiating a quasi-conservation practice, salvaging over 3 ,000 pieces of paper and the dust that covered her studio, Rivera worked with these materials, which she calls, quote, an archive of dust. For 20 years, she worked with this material, revealing in historian Warwick Anderson’s words, quote, how long and painful the work of mourning can be, end quote. This work is not in the museum’s collection; however, I included it because it powerfully illustrates the transient nature of the dust and the profound impact of trauma on people’s lives.

Similarly, the dust clung to many first responders, Steve Samin, captain of the Brooklawn, New Jersey Police Department, who reported to Ground Zero on the afternoon of 9/11 noted, quote, “Not only did I wear it, but it’s a part of me,” mostly on the inside, end quote. Samin now suffers from illnesses caused by 9/11.

Donors, for the most part, make the most difficult decisions about whether to preserve World Trade Center dust and artifacts before they enter the museum. As conservators, we typically are aiming to respect and maintain those wishes. However, preserving dust is not typical for museums.

It is often, you know, but in the case of the 9/11 Memorial Museum’s collection is often essential for maintaining cultural resonance. However, hazardous elements like asbestos and lead can be present in it posing health and safety risks.

The 9/11 Memorial Museum frequently faces the challenge of balancing preservation with hazard removal. To ensure safety, the museum integrates health and safety protocols into its policies, developed in collaboration with occupational and environmental health professionals. And what you can see here is that essentially within the museum context, you’re implementing kind of an opposite approach of what industry does, where preservation over elimination, oftentimes is your primary goal.

So as a conservator, the values that I aim to uphold by working with World Trade Center dust and other museum artifacts include sensitivity to trauma in people’s experiences, considering cultural values, determining whether the story, the object, or some other immaterial value is being preserved. Typically, we want to take a minimal approach, a minimally interventive of approach. With that, we want to have respect for object authenticity, which can mean, in many is preserving damage, even if this might seem antithetical to typical preservation approaches.

As we’ve heard, centering the community, whether it be the donor or the source community, in approaches to care, involving them in decision making, and recognizing the unique values stored in the material fabric, and understanding that the same item can have different meanings to different people, with dust being the prime example. And here you can see an example of a tea set, which was in the home of a resident of lower Manhattan, and for them the only way to see the dust was a hazard. And so, they cleaned it, even though this patina kind of may seem part of its essential value to others.

So, the next example of, you know, preservation ideas that I’ve considered in my work, focuses on an unremarkable metal fragment, which you see in the third image from the left, which was purported to be a piece of Fritz Koenig’s The Sphere, which was damaged during the 9/11 attacks and later transformed into a memorial.

It sits just above the 9/11 Memorial Museum Plaza now in Liberty Park. So, determining the metal fragment’s metal alloy makeup could verify or refute its origin as its finder who recovered it while working at ground zero, he firmly believed that it came from this sphere. And the sculpture was special to him because it reminded him of time spent with his father sitting near it.

But think about it, among hundreds of thousands of tons of rubble, this fragment was saved because it conjured a positive memory. So, you know, even though we initially thought about trying to positively identify this fragment, why possibly strip the artifact of that value by identifying it otherwise when it could never even be returned to the sculpture anyway, which was preserved in its damaged state as a memorial. So often as we’ve been hearing trauma survivors give artifacts museums associated with traumatic events to unburden themselves from their trauma as a part of their healing process.

This case study raises important questions about research ethics and values in scientific analysis, such as respect for the object and informed consent when working with your donor populations because scientific analysis can change the immaterial value, the story of what this thing is, and thereby the value of the object for the donor. The research problem raises questions on how to balance oral testimony versus scientific analysis, especially in the context of research involving humans that fall outside the scope of institutional review boards. For this object, the research approach should reflect shared decisions between the donor and the museum because it can alter the artifact.

So, it’s important to consider before undertaking any examinations or tests that may alter cultural property. Conservation professionals must establish the necessity for such procedures. So, in this case, I ask, what would be gained by analyzing the fragment?

Finally, I’d like to consider replication as a preservation strategy. This can be especially important in history or memorial museums, where there are a finite number of artifacts to tell a story that is on permanent exhibition. However, frequent display and exposure to light and environmental factors, as we all know can lead to alterations over time, so what do we do?

Which type of artifacts are appropriate to replicate? Reproductions as a preservation approach come with philosophical and practical concerns. For example, there is the concept of the aura, or the uniqueness of the original, experienced in a distinct time and space. Sometimes the aura includes decay as part of an object’s life cycle. When decay is an important component of an object’s intended function and significance, there’s a strong argument against conserving or replicating an artifact. Additionally, some materials are unsuitable for replication due to their cultural or spiritual context.

So, consider the star filled with sand. It was left at the base of a tree on the 9/11 Memorial Plaza by two sisters in memory of their sibling, a victim of the 9/11 attacks. The sisters frequented this particular Hawaiian beach inscribed on the lid when they were growing up as children in Honolulu and thereafter during their lives.

The jar of sand was brought to the memorial for the 10-year anniversary of the attacks. Since its acquisition, you can see the lid has significantly changed in condition. Corrosion on the jar’s lid is due to moisture and chloride salts trapped in the beach sand, as well as rainwater and environmental moisture from when it was outdoors on the plaza. Despite the altered condition, the original lid was ultimately used when the jar was recently exhibited.

However, initially a facsimile lid was considered because it was thought the change in appearance to be perceived as a result of a lack of care for the object. However, after consulting with the victim’s family, we realized they did not see it this way. The corrosion does not diminish the heartfelt gesture embodied by the jar of sand. And so, the collections team chose to use the original lid rather than create replica. We determined that the primary value of the object was in the sand, not in the jar itself, and that the corrosion is part of the story of the saltwater and the passage of time.

Despite the persistent emphasis on the aura and originality, increasingly accurate reproductive technologies and a focus on access make a strong case for replicas, especially for mass-produced materials like those seen here, where the front and printed covers were reproduced.

In such cases, the primary value is informational.

And I’m going to end on this slide in just a moment, but just to consider the inherent complexities that museums and cultural stakeholders, you know, confront, we should really consider establishing systematic processes, you know, not just for evaluating, of course, replication efforts, but on all of our, in some ways, our conservation work, but appreciating the different museums. There is, again, like Alex said, there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.

For some museums like the Whitney, they have a committee, for example, for the purpose of evaluating what is appropriate to make a replica of or not. And so just to leave it on this note, replication has a long-standing tradition and opinions about copies have fluctuated over time. And no two approaches to replication, even just in the few examples I’ve shown, will ever be the same.

So in the consideration of this story and thinking about that idea that, you know, there are limited artifacts to tell certain stories that are very important and powerful within the context of a historical exhibition, you know, even if you’re not making an exact one-to-one copy of something that potentially, you know, contains, you know, biological evidence, you know, and thinking about that aura and originality, you know, perhaps there’s, you know, other approaches, such as creating, you know, graphic representations.

The family of this note was consulted in the consideration of creating a replica, which is seen on right, which really closely accurately reflects the original. But I kind of leave it to you to kind of consider, you know, maybe, you know, what you would choose kind of within your own museum and how you might go about the approach of navigating these complex questions and concerns.

So, you know, there are many growth opportunities in the preservation of traumatic of traumatic heritage, but as others have also said, I think that it’s really important to consider that objects and conversations have the capacity, these reminders, to plunge people back into distress and make their presence an issue for communities as well as individuals as highlighted in this article. So, I think that that’s probably one of the most important things that we can consider.

It’s kind of like how we consider thinking about avoiding re-traumatization as well as kind of carefully considering and discussing our personal bodies of ethics as well as our own as well as our own.

Thank you so much.

Ian Kerrigan:

Good morning, everybody.

Excellent. So, thank you, Stephanie, for setting our table and for Alex and Lisa for sharing these really rich case studies. My name is Ian Kerrigan, and I am the Senior Vice President for exhibitions of the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City.

As we’ve heard this morning, there’s often a lack of training on how to successfully work with traumatic and violent content, how to interact with the people who directly experienced these events, who have put their trust in the museum to share their stories and their objects. And how to proactively care for the museum worker engaged in this practice. That leaves many of us trying to fill the gap, and so I’m gonna speak from the position of a supervisor or an administrator who’s also trying to figure out not only how to care for themselves, but how to best care for the staff at our institutions. I’m gonna follow next in sharing some strategies that we have found helpful in our practice.

These approaches have been developed in direct response to addressing the needs of our colleagues, and thus some may or may not seem appropriate in all scenarios. There is not, as Alex said, a one-size-fits-all solution, so any strategies must be tailored to the specific needs of the people you were seeking to support.

A quick caveat that when I talk about supporting staff, please note that I’m using this as a shorthand to cover employees, interns, and volunteers at our institutions. So some of the strategies that we have found to be effective include starting on day one when you onboard new staff, be transparent about the difficult nature of the work, share what resources are available at your institution, such as an employee assistance program, or leaning on other staff who have been engaged in this process much longer, and make it personal too. Share what resources or coping mechanisms you yourself have leveraged and stress the importance of self-awareness and taking care of oneself.

Boundary setting is another strategy. Much easier said than done, but cognitively understanding that as a museum worker you are not a vessel for other people’s trauma can be a powerful tool that with practice can help us continue to do this work sustainably.

In a similar vein, it can be incredibly helpful to remind yourself and your colleagues about managing expectations of what is inside or outside of our spheres of control and influence. As staff bring forward areas of concern, it can be helpful to identify what an individual can do that is empowering for themselves, what can a team do to support each other, and what can an institution do that you can collectively lobby for. As I particularly work in the realm of exhibitions, I often hear colleagues talk about the pain of making curatorial choices of what can or cannot be included in a show. As if removing an object from a checklist is a direct assault on the individual who donated that object and trusted the museum with their memories.

It can be helpful to repeatedly recognize that exhibitions cannot be encyclopedic and that making curatorial choices is not about being dismissive of individual stories or punishing somebody who already experienced trauma or violence.

But rather, choosing representative examples best invites the public who has limited knowledge of these stories into the story so that they can be inspired and want to learn more about a particular topic.

Making curatorial choices about artifacts or artworks, photos or films can be tough. And certain types of assets in our collections can take a toll or a heavier toll on us. Specifically, I’ve frequently heard colleagues characterize listening to oral histories and watching moving imagery related to traumatic and violent events as some of the most challenging materials to work with. Limiting exposure to staff who can handle these assets, checking in on staff regularly who are doing this work to assess the impact it is having on them, and spacing the work out into chunks over time can be helpful methods to consider.

When staff anticipate, whether staff anticipated or not, we are all representatives of our institutions when we are out in the world. When a staff member discloses where they work or the type of job they have, this may prompt others to want to share their own stories of trauma or violence.

Preparing staff for this occurrence and reminding them to use the same strategies that they have developed at work can be leveraged outside of the museum may help make those moments less surprising and therefore easier to manage in the moment.

I also strongly encourage members of my team to seek out their counterparts at other museums. Building that type of network can foster the sharing of resources and the creation of new strategies. Serve as a reminder that you are not alone in this type of work, and sometimes help separate the everyday bureaucratic stresses of working in any organization from the particular issues that arise when dealing with traumatic and violent content. I’ve also found that involving staff as much as possible in evaluation work can have a very positive impact.

Seeing how visitors engage in one’s work product can create long-lasting meaning. Similarly, inviting staff to meetings where stakeholder communities have been invited to hear how one’s own work product is meaningful to those that directly experience trauma and violence can also be a powerful motivator and reminder as to why we do this work.

Soliciting feedback from staff is an important component for supervisors and administrators to demonstrate this is an ongoing process and not something that is one and done with. I found requesting feedback directly and anonymously, both have their merits.

One technique that I have used for asking for anonymous feedback to assess current issues and trends is the pass the paper activity. It generally works best for about groups of 10 to 20. Everyone receives a blank piece of paper. I then asked them to write down a concern that they have, something that they’re dealing with, some issue that they have in working with trauma or violent content.

They write it, and then they pass that paper to the right. You then get a new piece of paper in front of you, you’re asked to write a new comment or respond to the existing comment on your piece of paper. That continues, pass the paper, write or respond to the comments already there, pass again.

At the end, I would collect, transcribe, and organize the comments into themes, and then discuss them at a future staff meeting where we could brainstorm collectively as a group and then discuss them to figure out how we could address as individuals, as a team, or bring forward to institutional leadership.

Which brings me to our final suggestion in this category, which is noting the importance of procuring institutional buy-in for measures that can support staff in the work. This can be in the form of resource allocation, training, facilitated conversations, policy creation, setting up an internal wellness committee to make recommendations at a staff level or more. Again, each museum and its staff may have different needs, but securing sustained support and commitment to staff care at a leadership level is key.

In addition to the staff that work at our museums, many of us also work with external partners. I use the term vendors here as a catch-all for contractors, consultants, independent museum professionals, and other firms that we might engage to collaborate with. For these partners, There are a few different strategies we would like to call out.

When working with any new vendor, it can be valuable to offer some pre-visit preparation before they come to your museum. Let them know what they might encounter in terms of traumatic or violent content on display or as part of a meeting, either as directly relate to their scope of work or simply what they might be moving past as they’re coming through your facility.

For my exhibition partners, for example, this can include what galleries they may encounter, if any of the media is going to be on or off that day so that they can prepare themselves to see or hear this type of content.

This pre-visit prep can reduce the element of surprise and give your partners the opportunity to give some thought ahead of time as to what they may experience and how they may respond accordingly. And then, similar to what we’ve discussed with staff being representatives of your museum, many vendors, especially if it’s their first time working with you on a project, may feel compelled to share their own relevant stories if they are affected by the content.

Providing a space for them to engage can build empathy and trust, as well as giving staff members a bit of control over providing that space in terms of when and where those conversations happen and managing them accordingly.

For example, staff can explicitly ask vendors at a designated point how they’re feeling in relationship to working on this content or doing work in galleries displaying certain content rather than wait for a vendor to dive into that topic at an unexpected time.

Lastly, I want to touch upon stakeholders, and in particular, external stakeholders to our museums that represent communities of trauma and violence. We advise inviting representatives for these communities to contribute and participate in your programs.

Again, as I come from an exhibition’s perspective, examples of this could include involving stakeholder representatives to be on advisory councils during your exhibition development, participate in front-end and formative evaluations such as focus groups or prototype reviews or even as contributors to your exhibition scripts to include their voices directly in the interpretation.

The format may vary but whatever whichever channel seems most fruitful to you be sure to be transparent about the scope of participation you were asking, be clear about the time commitment frequency, be open about compensation for sharing their expertise and offer clarity about who holds decision-making authority. Additionally, because I think in terms of exhibitions, there are a variety of interpretive and design tools that can benefit as effective stakeholders that in reality can really be advantageous to all types of visitors.

First is to consider opt-in experiences. These could take the form of privacy walls in your galleries to shield sensitive content, advisory signage, know before you go information on websites or communications with pre-visit ticket sales, or other techniques that signal traumatic or violent content is present and allow people to make choices about their level of engagement with that content.

Second is to intentionally include respites as part of the museum journey. These could be visual respites. As change in color, material, or lighting, or even a blank wall that can give visitors a sensory break from their encounter with sensitive materials. This can also be a content respite. A moment to interject a different kind of subject matter in the visitor journey through your museum to provide a break. This should also be an emotional respite. Such as adjusting the interpretation to be more cognitive and didactic in its presentation, so visitors have an emotion rest from their feelings.

Similarly, I think a lot about the emotional arc of storytelling. Limit the potential visual and auditory assault on stakeholders visiting your museum and pace out these types of assets that bear more emotional weight.

Perhaps a printed quotation rather than a played audio, for example, could get across the same content point without the same heightened emotionality behind it of hearing a human voice. Fourth, examine the language used on text labels in your museum.

For stakeholders visiting, they experience a traumatic and violence firsthand. Using language that describes these events without editorial embellishment can offer a or re-encounter with the event, minimize the potential of re-traumatizing these community members, and avoid characterizing events in a manner uncomfortable for those stakeholders. For example, one could write about a mass grave as opposed to a horrifying mass grave.

Write about a rescue effort as opposed to a heroic rescue effort that could make a first responder feel uneasy with that added signifier because in their minds, they were just doing their job.

Some of the strategies we’ve discussed center around building skills to manage interactions with traumatic and violent content Others focus more in building communities of practice and support that staff can rely upon I hope that some of these suggestions sound feasible and present a lower threshold for adoption.

Nonetheless, we still advocate that museums and their counterpart organizations in the museum field Establish policies and guidelines that help staff navigate the moral dilemmas that arise when working with this type of content. To create parameters and guard rails to help museum professionals do their work effectively and compassionately, but also with emotional safety and support.

Museums like any type of business often deal in risks and liabilities, and we argue that repeated exposure to working with traumatic and violent content without effective and sustained support is just another risk and liability to consider. Without proper attention and care, results can include dips in staff morale, burnout, lower retention, reduced desire and ability to engage with stakeholders and more.

Doing this work can be very rewarding, but it is also tough. And we are all trying to navigate the human element involved, being effective in our job duties while also having our own feelings and being impacted by the feelings of others. Now, I’m going to hand the mic back to Stephanie for some concluding thoughts before we open up the conversation to Q &A.

Stephanie Arel:

Thank you all. I hope that there was something that each of you took away from listening to us discuss, navigating the human element, and dealing with traumatic content and material at museums and memorial museums.

So, in the interest of time, Let’s just go ahead and open it for questions if you would come to the floor and this microphone up here If you have a question to ask.

Its very public

Audience member 1:

No, yeah, okay.

Thanks everybody. I really appreciate all the presentations. You have this specific focus on institutions that are memorials those of us who work at institutions that occasionally will have content that features very traumatic content. It’s not something that our staff knows about going in when they and suddenly their job is related to this I’m wondering if you have any thoughts specifically about that you’ve provided a huge array of tools That are things that we’re already thinking about but that idea of it’s a little bit like surprise your job has become this now.

Ian Kerrigan:

I can start with that one. First we would say sorry and welcome to the club, that I mean it sounds funny, but unfortunately more and more there are more institutions that find themselves and find their staff stressed into this type of work. One of, I think one strategy that you can do is reach out to some of the institutions like the Holocaust Memorial Museum, like the 9/11 Memorial Museum, that do this work on a regular basis and we are more than happy to share our strategies, but also connect you with other institutions who have found themselves because of an event that happened in their community.

It’s a little different, and it takes sometimes a little more time not only to wrap your hand around what to do in your professional responsibilities, but also how at an institutional leadership level to start them to think about the support that you were going to need to do this work. So, reach out, and happy to connect with you and that’s I think for us the best way that we’ve all learned in talking with those that have come before us.

Stephanie Arel:

I’ll add one thing which is the element of surprise which Ian referenced in his presentation is psychologically one of the two factors that make the most impact.

So, the ability to recognize when one’s been surprised and then mediate or deal with that as it’s happening in real time is really important. Because people feel, when they’ve been surprised, it feels like, should I not be feeling this? Should I be in my professional cognitive moment and not in this psychological reaction?

So, validating, no, it’s pretty normal that you’re affected when you’re surprised by something that you didn’t expect and it has something to do with trauma.

Audience member 2:

Hi, thank you so much for thinking all this through and for these tools. Thank you. How do you know if a staff if a staff member or someone is responding to a cultural trauma or a collective trauma or it’s personal problems or is that the wrong question to ask? How do you know?

Lisa Conte:

I think one of the themes that we’ve been talking about is transparency and that not waiting until you think that there may be a problem.

So, I think this applies whether you’re working in a memorial museum with traumatic materials or otherwise. I think it’s about navigating the human element in your workplace environment and being proactive about care for your staff.

And unfortunately, because we don’t have the training other than Stephanie from a– I would say from the perspective of someone trained in being a human health expert, that oftentimes you have to defer if you think there’s a problem to someone who does have that expertise, right? That’s really important to know, is that you should defer people to get professional help.

And sometimes you need to kind of share with your department administrators or whatnot. I’m sure that you have an ethics guide or other guides within your institutions that help you navigate these kinds of complex problems, issues. They’re not problems.

Ian Kerrigan:

I would also just quickly add to that. A lot of that work happens before those moments arise. As a supervisor, as an administrator, the most that you can set up a culture of, you know, that open door policy, giving space to your staff to bring their issues to you, hopefully creates that relationship. I think it’s really hard to bring up and try to pinpoint and you try to resist that armchair psychologist in all of us giving feedback specifically on the work.

I’ve noticed you’ve shown up late I’ve noticed, you know, you’re not hitting deadlines. Whatever that is, you know. Do you want to talk about that and just starting there and making this space for your staff members to bring forward?

Whatever issues is sometimes a good strategy.

Audience Member 3:

Hi Thanks again for these great presentations. I was just wondering like how do you navigate when the the museum itself is directly contributing to the experience of trauma, especially if it’s intergenerational trauma, with the display of an object or the excavation of an object. For example, the Topaz Museum in Utah excavated a memorial stone related to someone who was killed at one of the incarceration camps during Japanese incarceration. And the community to like pay for like a professional like archeologist and said the museum went ahead and used like a literal backhoe to like drag it out of the ground and it was damaged and the community is, you know, re-experiencing, you know, like, ’cause there are still survivors of that, they’re re-experiencing the trauma.

So, I was just wondering how do you, if a museum does something like that, whether it’s, I’m not gonna say intentional, but You know, there are all these complicated factors. What do you what do you do?

Lisa Conte:

One quick thing it’s just to say that I think you’ve heard as a theme throughout this presentation is involving your community members from the outset because people are going to have different approaches and especially if you have if you are dealing with sacred material or human remains there are also federal guidelines that dictate the way in which you are going to approach those kinds of situations. So those are very well laid out and should be respected and followed.

So, I will just give that as a one answer, one sentence. But sometimes you do confront challenging situations that you have to navigate.

Alexandra Drakakis:

And I’ll just really quickly add that I think sometimes, despite the fact that there are ethical guidelines out there to refer to and there are resources to turn to, that sadly the reality is that museums are going to take those tremendous missteps. I want to kind of underscore a point that I feel a lot of my fellow panelists have made, and this is where leaning on the museum community to just be better and improve and continue to evolve our practices and our approaches collectively, because we’re all grappling with these same issues, whether we’re coming from a memorial museum perspective or otherwise.

So that would be my response to your excellent question.

Ian Kerrigan:

Quickly add what we know and what we feel we can’t assume that other people know. We can’t assume that our supervisor, our museum director, our board are thinking or feeling the same thing. I’m gonna steal something from my colleague Alejandro in the audience who yesterday or the other week was talking to me about having courageous conversations and finding a way and sometimes just using that language to talk to leadership in your organization and say, you know what, I want to have a courageous conversation with you, set the tone that you’re about to bring up something that is difficult, something that might be challenging, something that might be awkward, can help set the stage to allow you to express your feelings and say that, you know, you don’t want to speak for others, but that there may be others that are also having similar feelings about this and that you encourage your leadership to do some listening.

Lisa Conte:

And I just want to say sometimes museums just need to get out of the way. Like we may not be the best people to be in a certain situation or working on certain things. So, that’s an important thing to kind of I think for us all to internalize.

Audience Member 4:

Thank you all so much for being here and giving some excellent resources. My question kind of fits with the first question that was asked, we’re finding that our site in the past few years has become a little bit of a destination within the Midwest to commit suicide. And we’re also dealing with a lot of pressure from the state and from other higher ups to maintain, to keep the site open. So, we’re having staff that maybe see or confront these experiences with you know, a mental health crisis and then are seeing 2000-3000 visitors that day that know nothing about this. So how can we better support staff when they’re forced into that kind of experience?

Stephanie Arel:

I mean, I think this gets back to the issue of transparency and acknowledgement It goes a very long way to tell people we see that this is happening.

Here’s a– you guys can come up with the creative ideas about how to create that in a museum. But the ability to say, these are the two realities we’re living in, and here’s how we’re going to respond to each one.

That will take you far in terms of caring for workers at your institution.

Ian Kerrigan:

And I think also with the general public, being transparent and open and how to do that, and I don’t feel that a museum needs to step into the role of being the resource provider on that subject, but I can say, and here are resources, if you’re struggling with mental health or you want to learn more and make those publicly available, I also think that goes a long way.

So, I think we’re running out of time. I think we’ll stay up here if anyone wants to come up and ask us any questions so we can continue to ask your questions. But thank you all so much for coming.

Stephanie Arel:

Thank you, thank you.

This recording is generously supported by The Wallace Foundation.

This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. Natural History museums play a unique and urgent role in helping document and understand the world’s plants and animals during the current biodiversity and climate crises. This work is taking place at a time when museums are reckoning with their past; challenging – and being challenged on – their authority to do this work; and aspiring to consider and apply indigenous knowledge in their collecting, research, and interpretive practices. This recorded session explores this topic through two case studies from different sides of the Pacific Ocean and in different cultural contexts.

Transcript

Hae Su Oh:

So good morning, welcome to our session Confronting Colonialism: Intersections of Scientific and Cultural Knowledge. My name is Su, I’ll be moderating this session.

I was formerly at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County where I was one of the executives who supported this institutional process. And I would like to welcome you and our esteemed colleague panelists to this discussion.

They’ve traveled here from afar, and we’re doing a little geography lesson here today, both across the nation from Los Angeles and of Wellington, New Zealand. So, I appreciate being present here because I know it’s a journey to share this kind of work. And for all of you here in the audience is whoever traveled afar.

So, both the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the National Museum of New Zealand in Te Papa Tongarewa will be taking you on a journey as they share the stories in confronting their colonial past and practice while working with their local indigenous peoples, all in the consideration of the biological remains of whom are considered cultural and sacred ancestors. And as we share the context and repatriation process, we wanna follow up with an open dialogue with the panelists and the audience. One note, many times in museums we refer to best practice and what happens when there but what happens when there is no consistent practices established in our field that we can refer to. We must use our humanity to approach these scenarios. We asked to take a moment for you to shift your perspective while we listen to others and in these Conversations, especially in working with each community and as their community Representation matters.

Let’s go down the table and let everyone introduce themselves.

Gabrielle Crowe:

Miha to hope to Hovitt-Tomet, the 20-A Gabrielle Crow. Greetings, everyone.

Hello, good morning. My name is Gabrielle Crow. I am the vice chair, as well as the secretary for environmental sciences for the Gabriela Shoshone Nation. So, in addition to a land acknowledgement, I just wanted to give a small blessing this morning before we start so we can start our journey in a good way together. So I just asked that the creator be here with us in spirit and mind and body and for us to have you know open thoughts about the process that we went through and take this as our experience as kind of an example for things that you can do to build community and partnerships in your own institutions. And that you know if you have questions that there are people that are there to help seek or guide you with these answers. And so, just to seek knowledge from those communities that are surrounding you, and that I hope that you all have a good session. So, wish kinda huh, thank you.

Miguel Ordeñana:

Thank you. My name is Miguel Ordeñana, I’m a co-senior manager of the Community Science Office in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. I’m also the biologist that discovered P22, the mountain lion on the screen there and also responsible for applying for the permit to bring his remains to the museum.

Amy Gusick:

Morning everyone my name is Amy Gusick I’m the curator for anthropology and the NAGPRA officer for the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles County and I’m also responsible along with a number of my other colleagues for a lot of tribal liaisons, tribal engagement with the local indigenous communities within Los Angeles and surrounding areas with our institution.

Migoto Eria:

[Indistinguishable Māori] Hello everybody my name is Migoto, I am from the east coast of the north island of New Zealand. And I’m just acknowledging the presence of my ancestors at this talk and supporting you on your journey. And I’m hoping that this discussion we can leave with inspiration and support for one another [Indistinguishable Māori].

Philip Edgar:

[Indistinguishable Māori] By way of introduction, I’m Philip Edgar, I will say that my family are from Scotland and Ireland, I grew up in Christ Church on the South Island of New Zealand. I currently live in Wellington. I’m the head of Natural History at Tapa National Museum. Kia ora.

Su Oh:

Thank you everybody. Right before we start with a, as a point of reference, and with a quick show of hands, I would like to ask you how many of your museums are engaging in dialogue with your indigenous communities, whether it be with artifacts, collections, programs, or exhibitions.

Wonderful. Thank you. So, as I said earlier, we’re going to take a look at these two case studies in which each institution worked together with their local Indigenous communities and government agencies to take a holistic approach to repatriation of a significant and sacred ancestor.

Acknowledging that these scenarios are extremely complex, this has brought forth an opportunity to engage in challenging dialogue while still sharing together with deep empathy.

So, I’d like to ask Miguel, Amy, and Gabrielle, can you please share with us the story of the Mountain Lion P-22?

Gabrielle Crowe:

So, to put into context, what’s on the map right there is actually my ancestral territory. So, being from a Gabrielino  tribe, another name that they go by is also the Tongva.

So, our tribe is actually located in Los Angeles, California. Now for a lot of people, Los Angeles has become a home for many other indigenous people, because of relocation, assimilation, other different things that happen in different times that we have the largest urban native population in the entire United States is in Los Angeles, but there’s also not just Native American communities, there’s also indigenous communities from Mexico and other places in the world that are there.

So, something to note in this is that when more and more indigenous communities come to the area, it’s also difficult to sometimes see the actual indigenous communities that that’s their ancestral lands. And so, with us and the situation that happened with P-22 or in our language Tukorot, it was something that the situation mirrored our own experiences as indigenous people in this area of Los Angeles. So, when I say Los Angeles, that’s just a broad term our tribal territory is actually on the coastline from Malibu all the way down to Laguna Beach and inland all The way into the San Gabriel Mountains And it’s also the four southern Channel Islands so including Catalina Island. So I don’t know if any of you have ever been there It’s one of our biggest tourist destinations off the coast of LA. And so for a long period of time our people were kind of hidden in the shadows for for those of you that don’t know the context of it, we’re a part of the, our products of the California mission system where basically our people were colonized, they were scooped up from around the area that they were living in and basically forced to live and work on the mission.

For those who actually survived even through that process, each time a new culture or settler came into the area, they basically were forced to, I guess adopt that new way of life and to the point where for over 200 years our tribal people were not able to actually do anything in ceremony or anything in their own culture and tradition so now we’re at the point where we have a lot of cultural revitalization going on and so for us and seeing that our territory slowly and surely shrunk over time by urbanization, colonization all these different things that are happening, we saw the same thing that happened to our people as the same thing that happened to this mountain lion. And what makes it so special is that he was born in the Santa Monica mountains, but he actually crossed different freeways to go into the different territories that he was at.

And the beautiful way that the city of Los Angeles actually embraced this mountain lion was something that had never really been seen before. And so, for us, It was a different connection in the fact that we didn’t see it as something that’s different to humans. So, for our creation stories, basically everything that’s in the planet, so the plants, the animals, the dirt, the air, everything, those all sustained us and people were the last thing to come onto Earth.

And so, for us, we consider even the mountain lions or other animals to be our ancestors. And so, if we have a duty to protect those animals that don’t necessarily have voices like humans do, but they are equally as not, if not more important to us than other humans. So, thank you. Oh, and let me just give context to, so that picture is actually done by a Gabrielino artist, her name is Washoyo. So, she did it after P-22 passed away, but it’s just a very powerful picture that was actually put up in the museum afterwards as well.

Miguel Ordeñana:

Thank you, Gabrielle, for that important context. So, I’m gonna talk about P22’s impact to the scientific community and also the urban wildlife conservation.

So, Griffith Park, which is where P22 ended up living basically his entire life, which is over a decade. This Griffith Park is surrounded by freeways and urbanization on all sides. And that’s important to note, because a lot of people, for that reason, thought Griffith Park was just useless for wildlife. And there weren’t any possible linkages between Griffith Park and where we knew mountain lions lived.

And so myself and Friends of the Group of the Park, started a study, a grassroots project, to basically prove that it’s not just where the Hollywood sign is, and it’s not just for filming and tourism. This is a very important place. And it was my local Yosemite as a little kid. I grew up in Los Angeles, and I had struggled myself to connect to nature. So, this is a very personal effort as well for me.

So next slide, please. So, the discovery of this mountain lion butt was basically life changing. And it was like seeing chupacabra or bigfoot for the first time. It was that type of moment for me and I will never forget it. And it said a lot to connectivity issues and the resilience of these animals and that impact keeps going.

Next slide, please. That’s the first shot that was actually taken of P-22 by these remotely triggered cameras, motion activated cameras that we positioned on the edges of the park.

Next slide. And then after the I shared this information with the National Park Service, they incorporated him into their study that had started in 2002 and gave him the name P-22. P stands for Puma, which is just another name for the same species, and the 22 is the sequence in order that the animal is incorporated into the study. And through that process, they put a GPS tracking device to see how he used the urban landscape and also took some blood to see if he was genetically tied to the Santa Monica Mountains population that they were already studying. Next slide.

And so, the Santa Monica Mountains population was where he was genetically tied to. His dad was P1, the first mountain lion studied in the study. And it’s a situation where these animals are on the verge of extinction, one of the most endangered mountain lion populations in the world because they are affected by fragmentation mainly by the 101 freeway that is congesting these solitary, territorial animals to the point where they are killing each other over remaining space, they can’t escape from each other without getting hit by the freeway- cars on the freeway, and if they’re not doing that, they’re inbreeding with each other. So, a lot of problems there. So next slide. So, P-22 was born west of the 405 freeway, where P-1 lived his whole life. And to escape his father, he had to leave east across the 405, which had killed two other mountain lines before him.

Then he went through Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Hollywood, then crossed another 10- lane freeway, the 101, to eventually get into Griffith Park. Next slide. And as soon as that story got out, he became locally famous, and then globally famous, when that famous National Geographic Hollywood sign photo started circulating. And even for issues like rat poison exposure.

And so, the state of California banned the most lethal form of rat poison because he was the ambassador for that because he got sick with rat poison and mange. Next slide. But he’s most famously a catalyst for a really important campaign to build the what is going to be the biggest wildlife crossing in the world that will go over the 101 and connect these populations to each other.

And it was a 10-year campaign that I was fortunate enough to be part of and is going to save this population from extinction and its own P22 for other urban areas.

And history has been translated in so many different ways and languages because it’s so relevant from the standpoint of it’s a story of resilience going against the odds. And so, it’s been translated in children’s books, multiple languages in the media, hip hop music, all types of different things, so you can change the slide. And even in his passing, he missed the slide, but, oh yeah, there it is. Even in his passing, he left an impact where people wanted to honor him through memorials and murals all over the city, just like they did for Kobe Bryant when he passed away. And even a celebration of life was a sold-out event at the Greek Theater, and Tatavium Elder, Alan Salazar, let the blessing, and even Gabrielle’s beautiful daughter was in the audience there with her own plushie doll, P-22. And it was a really moving time, and next slide. Oh, sorry, before, so a little bit back, there we go. This is kind of where I transitioned over to Amy where I because of this biological and cultural relevance that I was aware of to a certain extent.

I really wanted to make sure that his legacy was honored and my idea was to apply for a permit a year before he passed away with the set California Department Fish and Wildlife to bring his remains to the museum So that he was not incinerated because the normal practice of our local state wildlife agency is to do a necropsy which is an autopsy for animals and then incinerate the body so that there’s no that opportunity to do anything after that is lost. And so that’s why I wanted to preserve that opportunity but unfortunately I made the mistake of not consulting with local tribes while I did that or even after I got the permit and I still regret that to this day.

But at the same time, it was a huge learning lesson for me and a growth opportunity for myself and our institution, I hope. And I’m really happy that now we have the relationships that we have. And Amy’s going to take it from here with the rest of the story.

Amy Gusick:

Great. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks. You can go to the next slide. So, I think you heard from my colleagues about the cultural context of P22, the biological and scientific context of P22. So now we’re at the point of what happens when this important animal, not only for conservation and biology, but also an animal that is really very important to the local indigenous communities, not only because of the fact that he’s an ancestor, but also because he really is amongst ancestors really kind of mirrors the community, as you heard my colleague Gabrielle speak about.

So, what do we do? And so this was the question that came before us and we were able at this point, this was two days before Christmas, when this all occurred, in 2022 passed and was being transferred down to the San Diego zoo for the necropsy, what do we do at this point? He’s coming to our institution per the permits, but we also have a very good understanding through our existing partnership with our local indigenous communities that this is a very important moment for them. This is an important ancestor for them.

So, we were able to utilize our existing relationships and very, very, very quickly, within a couple days’ time, really kind of network out very quickly by contacting, emailing, was on the phone for a couple days with elders from the different groups. There are a number of different Native American communities, local indigenous communities within Los Angeles. I think there’s over 20, 25. And it was important to us to make sure that we were reaching out to every single one of them because we didn’t want anyone to feel left out. So, then the way we were able to do that was to utilize our existing relationships. And I can’t stress enough how important that was at this point.

We were able then to identify individuals that wanted to travel with Miguel down to San Diego to escort P-22 back to the Natural History Museum. So, Gabrielle was on the trip as well as Alan Salazar were on the trip as well. And that was important because they were able to handle P-22 in a culturally appropriate manner. and they were able to provide blessings for him as he made the trip up to the Natural History Museum.

On the other end of his journey, we understood the importance of this being an important community event for the Native American community. So, we were able to arrange to have a number of individuals whoever wanted to come to the institution to welcome him to our institution.

And so that was the part of that. There’s Some of the community members there, this is after P22 arrived at our institution, arrived at NHM and was welcomed by the community and then held at our institution while we discussed what the next steps were.

And this was a really important part because thinking about repatriation, I think, when people think about repatriation, when they think about working with museums, working with native communities, I think the first thing that probably comes to mind is NAGPRA, cultural collections or patriation of ancestral remains, of human ancestral remains. But what happens when it’s an animal?

What happens when it is, the normal process would either be incineration, as Miguel mentioned, or possibly accessioning into the collection for study? Is that appropriate in this case?

What should we do? Was really the point that we were at.

So, we were able to then work with the 20 different Native communities within Los Angeles, invite them into NHM, along with our staff, our biologists, myself, others within our institution that work with and had relations with the Native communities, as well as the National Park Service and the representatives from California Fish and Wildlife.

So, we were at really a kind of pivotal moment, I’d say, where you have a number of different individuals coming to the table to listen and to understand how to move forward.

We had requests from the tribal communities to not accession him into our collections and to do no further scientific study on him. He had already had a necropsy.

There had been a few samples taken from him on the necropsy, our process would have been to take additional samples and then accession him into the collection for future study. The native community was uncomfortable with that, and they asked us to please repatriate him with no further study. We agreed to do that, and I do have to certainly give kudos to our federal and state partners because they were able to, even with the permitting, there’s kind of special conditions with the permitting, they were able to also honor those requests.

We don’t, so P22 was repatriated to the Native communities, and I will say this was also the importance of him to the communities was also very stressed to us because we did have all of the many of the communities come together and not all of the communities typically have meetings together or work together very well in some cases.

So, the fact that any disputes or differences were put aside to come together as one community to say, look, this is important to us and this is what we need, really, really resonated with us, and we listen to our partners.

We listen to, you know, the relationships that we had, and we understood the magnitude of this for them. So, we were able to repatriate the mountain line, and there was a ceremony, and he was respectfully reburied from an area from where he…

That’s right. The only– one thing I did forget, the only thing that we were– that the tribes did support that we collected were digital scans and some molds from P22.

But other than that, he was repatriated, and he was buried. And I’m going to actually pass it back over to Gabrielle to talk about kind of moving forward.

Gabrielle Crowe:

Yeah, so I think it’s also important to note that when this whole process happened and it happened very quickly and we were all, it was kind of historic for us as different tribal communities to come together ’cause for many, many years, it would be a very difficult thing to have everybody in the same room together, but also in agreement was kind of almost unheard of.

And so, part of what also made it interesting too is that the museum themselves gave us the time and space to also have our own meetings with just the tribal community and they were you know they left themselves out of the conversation so that we could have our own discussion figure things out before we went back to museum to give them kind of our answers. And so, myself and one other tribal community member were both actually scientists too so we kind of balanced out kind of the two worlds between it.

My career is in environmental education and so taking that into account realizing that from a conservation standpoint that there’s so much to learn from this one mountain lion that we wanted to, you know, because there was a lot of arguments about whether or not the samples that had already been taken were also going to be given back and then going to be buried with him. And so this is a long process and when it happened, you know, in order to get everybody to try and get together on the same date is almost crazy in the first place. But trying to get together in agreement with it and doing this, so we ended up getting to the point where we were in agreement that the samples that had already been taken were done, we were done so ahead of time and that, you know, we were allowing the museum to do the scans just from a conservation standpoint for us to still be able to study just how amazing this one mountain lion was.

But from that, you know, when the process happened, like we, as the tribal community, like we were able to bury him, we still even have questions like where is he buried? It’s like, well, we’re not going to tell you.

It’s just in a general area because people, you know, were arguing back and forth about wanting to bury him at Griffith Park and other things too. But it was just such a special thing that we wanted him to be at rest as soon as he was put to rest.

So, in moving forward, just something that’s kind of interesting to note is that the museum themselves have had a relationship with my own family for 30 plus years.

You’ll see at the end of the– this is actually still from a video that we actually just had digitized over the last couple of weeks that was from 30 plus years ago of my grandparents and some of my other family members actually building one of our traditional houses at Alvera Street of all places.

But so, are we already had a long-established relationship with the Natural History Museum? But at the same time, that made the relationship and everything that happened go more quickly with this process with P22.

But I think that’s something that’s important to know is that whether or not you already have an established relationship, or whether or not you’re started with a relationship today, if you start something today and something happens in your museum in 30 years, you already have this time period. So, it’s just, it’s something to think about that you can establish those connections as relationships and start them now, and really work towards building a relationship where you’re mutually respecting each other, realizing like you both have something to learn on both ends of the situation and you’re working together with them before a project happens or before you need them to consult on something.

You know, we got connected with the museum, reconnected with the museum a few years ago and actually they used to have a Native American exhibit hall and so all these videos and other things were in the Natural History Museum.

But as museums do, they remodel, they change, and other things sue so the collections go somewhere else. And so that’s how I actually established a connection with Amy just a few years ago and going to visiting and seeing these things.

So, it’s actually been a process even to get those digitized. But it’s been an amazing process in building this relationship and really feeling like we’re moving at the speed of trust, but also, I can text her about something or she can text– and it’s having that kind of close relationship.

That’s something to strive for because going to hash out ideas, but I think that there’s always a starting point and I think that whatever your programming has going on at the museum, they invite us to community science, and we have partnerships with them. Our tribe recently received 12 acres of land back in Los Angeles and so Miguel and I do a lot of work together with the Indigenous School in Los Angeles and we actually do a lot of projects where we do research.

And so, it’s creating those career pathways, educational pathways for the community now so that you’re really strengthening that relationship. So, I think that there’s a lot to learn from this situation.

Su Oh:

Thank you, Gabrielle, Miguel, Amy. Thank you so much. [ Applause ] So, Phil and Mikoto, can you please share with us the story of the great-leatherback turtle, tehoun’

Migoto Eria:

I would like to take the time to respond to the land acknowledgement as representatives from Ōtautahi and also visitors here to those of you who are descendants of this land  but also to acknowledge those of you who are descendants of the ancestor that was just discussed. It is a priveledge to be sitting here with you here in Baltimore and amongst you and the knowledge that you hold and the knowledge that you hold within your institutions. Thank you very much for taking the time to come and be part of this discussion.

What I’d also like to establish is that we represent many peoples from Ōtautahi and not only my own tribal heritage that I come from which is again the east coast of the north island which is the center of the universe but also tribes and the ancestors land at our museum resides on which is actually reclaimed land which is part of our harbor and its not without their support and their acknowledgement that we’re able to come here today and discuss this case study with you. And those tribes are [indistinguishable Māori] and it’s a privilege for me to and Phil to represent their voices here today. But last, not least the descendants of the leatherback turtle or we call the honu that are represented through this ancestor of and they are called the hoto haka people from the south island. So, there are lots of people represented through two people here, sitting here with you today to discuss this case study. But I wanted to in response to the land acknowledgement share with you some well wishes and blessings in our language which encompasses the reason why we’re all here today. And this is how it sounds

[Indistinguishable Māori]

Philip Edgar:

I’m actually gonna stand. I’m still on New Zealand time, and its 4 o’clock in the morning tomorrow so I’m kind of…I’m living in the past, which people often say. Anyway, so I’ll stand if that’s okay. …

So, Migoto and I are going to talk, give a bit of a story about the journey of a leatherback sea turtle from this beautiful place, [indistinguishable] on the south island and it’s journey to our museum, Te Papa in Wellington, and it’s return back to the land from which it came and to communities from which it came a short time after. It’s at this location that we received a call in March 2019, from our department of conservation.

That’s the New Zealand Government agency responsible for our environment and while it’s not a frequent thing to happen to get a call from them it’s not that unusual because the department is involved at every whale stranding for example they take responsibility for our marine mammals and when whales strand and whales are deceased on a beach they step in and work with our local iwi are local tribes to work out the next step in the process for that animal. And that could be reburial, it could be that the iwi, the tribe, use that animal for their own customary practices or the animal could be offered to a museum such as Te Papa to become part of the collection.

And this was the beautiful animal that had washed ashore. It’s a leatherback sea turtle weighing over 200 k. So, quite an amazing animal. And not something that you see every day. These animals are not uncommon in New Zealand waters but they are uncommon close to the shore and very uncommon for them to be washed ashore deceased in this way.

It’s an interesting animal that has, in scientific terms, no close relatives. It’s vulnerable, globally. And this population in the pacific is critically endangered. It’s in that state because of intensive egg collection over the last 100 years, fisheries bi-catch, and other threats to the environment today are putting these animals at grave risk.

So, the department of conservation asked Te Papa is this something the museum would be interested in brining into it’s collection and looking after for the long term? We have an active collection development program at Te Papa, we are a national museum that includes art collections, history collections, pacific cultures, Māori collections, and natural history collections. And the natural history area, where I’m the head we have an active program that’s really responsible for anything divided into the history of New Zealand, the south pacific, and our waters down south to Antarctica.

So, for a rare turtle like this it was an opportunity for that animal to become part of our collection. And to become part of our understanding about biodiversity.

So, with the understanding that we had the support of the local iwi, the local tribe, through the Department of Conservation’s discussions, our scientists retrieved the turtle from Kokorarata in South Island and drove it back to Te Papa.

And our scientists were really interested in trying to discover how the Honu, how the turtle died. So, in some of the cases to the line, a necropsy would have been performed on the turtle to understand those causes of death and also to prepare a skeleton to be part of the collection for comparative research in the future.

And this is a standard practice, so when we are offered whales to become part of the collection which are very significant animals, if the … agrees to become part of the collection those processes happen and they become part of the permanent collection.

And there was some media interest in the turtle arriving at Te Papa. So shortly thereafter, we received a call from Machupane, the chair of the Kokorarata Runaka, the tribal council in the South Island in Kokorarata, where the turtle washed ashore, saying that in the rush that often happens in these situations, because things need to happen fast, the right consultation process hadn’t been followed, and the authority for the turtle to come to Wellington and to come to the museum had not been granted. And so, at Te Papa we have a principle called Manatanga which is a principle we had at the museum for just over 30 years now and it recognises that we see ourselves as guardians of the talna, the treasures in our collections, guardians for the communities from which those longer, including animals from our natural environment.

I’ll wear the guardians for them, and that the iwi, the tribes, wishes in the care, and the use, and the ongoing– what happens with the animal once it’s part of the collection is considered throughout its ongoing life within the museum.

So, when we received that call from the chair, we immediately stopped any sort of idea of what we were going to do in terms of bringing the honu into the collection and began engagement at a senior level with the tribe to understand what their desires were for the turtle going forward. And Migoto will take on the story from there.

Migoto Eria:

Thanks, Phil. So, next one. So, when things like this happen, so, we don’t get turtles washing up in New Zealand shores every day and also that we were contacted by the tribal council then thereafter the department conservation it becomes something that comes to my realm of working at the museum. And, I wanted to just reiterate what these, what these situations and also what the life of the turtle means to us as indigenous people. And, I think we have a mutual understanding of what that might be but I just want to express that at the moment and it’s when we see and experience these sorts of things we are not only in the present but we are seeing our past. And, we are also seeing our future. And so, we see ourselves, we see our ancestors, and we see our children and our grandchildren and our great, great, great, grandchildren. So, there is an influence and resonance and a profound nature to these experiences and why they happen.

And so, when we got the call from chair of the tribal council, these were the sorts of things that he was explaining to us. That this is our ancestor. We see ourselves in this honu. And we need to express to you that it coming to Wellington is wrong. Actually in a really diplomatic way, he debated for a certain amount of time as well, so what you probably can’t see and hear is the amount of time that it took for us to also understand what that meant and then process the return of the turtle to the south island which is not around the corner, it’s a long journey from Wellington.

So, the likes of the turtle is a manifestation of our ancestors likewise to our precious items in our collection and our ancestral human remains at our museum they are examples of us seeing our past, present, and future.

And, so, this is in Wellington, this is at our off-site store that’s actually not at the Te Papa site itself. But, when anything scientific comes in or we’ve had anything say in the freezers or anything large like this it comes down to our science officers and labs and the honu which you probably can’t see and probably in that last slide is that its not small its huge and its really heavy but also it’s been in the freezer and its defrosting, can you imagine what that smell might be like.

And so, this is the beginning of honu being brought out the freezer and you can see people in the background. There’s a guy in the background with a tie, he’s the chair of the tribal council. And, what happens in this process is a whole lot of and not to dimmish it but a whole lot of ceremonial practices, well wishes, and blessings such as the one that I shared earlier.

And, I just wanted to reiterate the distance in which this very heavy, very large turtle had taken but also a group of us from Te Papa had travelled to acknowledge its repatriation back to the south island. These are just some amazing photos that I’d taken on the journey. Cause it’s a beautiful place. And so, this part here, I’m in the center of the photo, that was really scary because of the weight of this turtle, we had about at least 10 guys around this crate and it was a real struggle. The amount of pressure that was released from the truck when it was lifted from the truck was phenomenal. But not only that they had to traverse really not flat ground, so there’s a lot of potholes and stuff like that so not only did they have to use a lot of core strength but traverse a lot of ground that was not really level to get it into a space where we could acknowledge this ancestor properly.

And so, that takes the form in a little bit of way in Māori terms, like a funeral. So we are mourning this ancestor as if it was our own because it is. And so, we’re doing a whole lot of what we can karakea and acknowledging the land in which it is come from, its journey, what it represents, what it means, what this experience means to the local tribe. So, it can seem very, like it was very sad that this has happened, and this is like for us what we call a tohu or not well-translated is sign. This is a response from nature to us as indigenous people that we need to stop and take the time to acknowledge our connections to the land and also of course the ocean.

And so, again this is not a short process. This was maybe two or three hours sitting and hearing the different perspectives in a ceremonial way. So that’s a lot of speeches, a lot of genealogy, expressing what this experience means to us. But moreso also the chair of the tribal council and also the local tribe. Because this was pretty huge for a very small settlement in the south island.

So, this is shortly after we acknowledge each other afterwards and we go and shake hands and meet people. But the turtle is now being prepared to be re-crated and helicoptered to its final resting place. Which was another phenomenal thing to watch. Again, it’s not small or light. And seeing a turtle helicoptered was pretty awesome too.

And this photo’s here just because Phil’s in it on the right.

But, the ceremony, not only included the local tribespeople, it included people from the national museum, people from the department of conservation, the neighboring tribes, and scientists were also there so its also an example of us all coming together to acknowledge what has just happened and how important it is to do these things properly.

Awe, ya, so, perhaps this photo doesn’t do it justice, but you can see the helicopter. And I don’t know whether a turtle has ever been airborne in its life bless this ancestor was going to be airborne and its pretty amazing and actually really touching. To watch it being air lifted and to its final resting place. Which is this little island in the middle of this, it’s like a lake. It’s just so beautiful. The hole that had been dug for the turtle is on this island. So, which is why it needed to be airlifted there’s no way they could cross that water with this turtle. At the exact time that I took this photo there was a lot of what we call in Māori, karunga, which is a female ceremonial call to the ancestors. And it’s one of those times when you feel those chills. When you know that you’re not alone, and you know that everybody that has ever lived and walked these areas were present with you.

And here is the honu’s…we don’t know if this might have been a bit offensive, but its okay. Because, this honu, I say he, cause I don’t know if it was a male of female turtle is the only turtle buried on this island and in fact these turtles don’t turn up to New Zealand very often and more to that every 500 or more years one of these turtles washes up in New Zealand.

And this is the neighboring Mari. We call Mari the traditional gathering grounds and houses that the local tribes use for all of these ceremonial practices together, where they live, where they hand out, we’re actually going to have lunch shortly after the ceremony. But, its symbolic of our ancestors again. So, the naming of the houses, these are places where our ancestors stood, looked, watched, loved, and so that’s the importance of this image. I’m showing the Mari. And here’s our amazing crew, so, you know that lady on the right. People in this photograph are members of our board from the museum, our executive and also Phil and members from our … we have a repatriation team at Te Papa who are tasked with and actually government mandated to research and return ancestral human remains from overseas to New Zealand to the source communities. So, it was a pretty big trip for us. And also, our science, curatorial colleagues as well.

Su Oh:

I think that’s it so.

Okay thank you very much.

Migoto Eria:

So, in our custom we would like to just share with you what we call a [indistinguishable Māori] but just to again reiterate this is where the sound and the language of our ancestors so that our ancestors can hear and acknowledge why we’re doing this.

[indistinguishable Māori singing]

— Ma kere ana ngahere.

Su Oh:

Thank you. Thank you so much.

This recording is generously supported by The Wallace Foundation.

This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. Throughout the museum field, institutions have been grappling with how to address problematic objects in their collection, taking various approaches from removing the works from view, deaccessioning them, or leaving them in place as is while they grappled with how to best address them. In 2021, the Chazen decided to take a path uncharted, entering into a partnership with the artist Stanford Biggers and MASK Consortium to undertake the re:mancipation project — an exhibition that sought to recontextualize an overtly racist sculpture in a way that felt authentic to the Chazen’s mission as a teaching museum, but also honest and inclusive. In this session, take a deep dive into the re:mancipation exhibition planning process to learn how the Chazen approached a project fraught with risk and uncertainty and which has influenced organizational change at the museum.

Additional resources:

Leveraging Permanent Collection Objects for Collaboration and Change slides

Transcript

Amy Gilman:

Thank you all for coming to our session today. I’m Amy Gilman, I’m the director at the Chazen Museum of Art. I’m really delighted to have you all here today. I also want to make a plug for the second session that we have tomorrow morning, it is not repetitive, right?

So, what we’re gonna talk about today has to do with the development of the relationship and the partnership that eventually led to an exhibition and really talk from an institutional perspective about what the challenges were, how we navigated all of that, and then the sort of outcome and some long-term effects of that. Tomorrow, we’re gonna talk about the object. We’re gonna really talk about the object. And I’m gonna guess that all of you in here, once you see which object, if you don’t already know, let me just flip this object here, you are immediately thinking about objects in your own collection. All of you have objects that are difficult, hard, problematic, to manage, et cetera. And I want you to keep that in your head, and I want you to come back tomorrow because we’re gonna really, tomorrow is the hour and a half, and we’re gonna do a lot of sort of getting you to really think about this from the kind of process that we started here, okay? So QR code takes you to emancipation .org. If you don’t get it now, you can get it later. We also have little business cards with the QR code on it, if you’d rather that. You’re also invited tonight to Creative Alliance, which is Google-able. It’s here in Baltimore. This is not associated with AAM, except that we’re here and we’re having a party. And we will be showing the 30-minute documentary of this project at that. You’re going to see a three-minute teaser trailer here. And then we’re going to have DJ Rich Medina spinning jump and funk for us for the evening. So, if you need to just blow off a little steam, tonight, creative lines.

OK, so I’m joined here today by Mark Hines of Mask Consortium, Kate Wanberg, who’s the exhibitions project manager for the Chazen Museum, and Katherine Alcauskas, who’s the museum’s chief curator. And we’re here today to talk about re-mancipation. And this project, which spanned multiple years, beginning in 2019, although we didn’t know it at the time, and really continues today, indeed just in the next couple of weeks, we will be releasing a catalogue about the project. We also have this beautiful vinyl, which has the romance -patient theme song on it, gives you a sense already about how multidisciplinary this whole project was.

And so, this project really started from a pretty conventional place in museums, which is inviting an artist to do a response work. But that’s not where we ended, and that’s why we wanna talk to you So, I’m going to start by flipping this slide and you’re going to see a teaser trailer for the Re-mancipation Project that will give you a broad overview.

[Beginning of video] “You think you gave us freedom? Is this emancipation? Is this the side you lead ’em? 9 -1 -1, what’s the address of the emergency? Please, Emmanuel Church is playing people’s shot down here.

Please send somebody right away. Emmanuel Church? (static) (shouting) What was his name? (shouting) What was his crime? (shouting) No justice! (shouting) (crowd cheering)

– It felt like an inside joke that everybody knew about, but nobody really talked about.

– I had very little ideas about sculpture and reimagining pieces that are It’s an incredible opportunity to really look at how we will move forward when dealing with contentious, challenging, problematic works from our American past and even our American present.

– Man’s inhumanity to man is especially terrifying to a black man who has experienced a fury of white mob violence.

– When there have been wars or when there have been conflict, those who lose are not celebrated.

– With a re-investigation at hand, we decided that it made more sense to collectively invite people to respond and react to the piece. And the resulting project, we believe, will be a compilation of all of that ephemera, all those conversations with micro-dialogues. The large -scale conversations amongst many people to the intimate responses from one individual directly to the piece.

– You did a lot of study, worked with, with your beautiful 3D scan. Was able to take apart and dissect all the different elements of this sculpture.

– With your artistic process, has technology always been involved in that or is that more of a new thing? – The energy of student involvement is perfect. That’s definitely what we want to have happen.

– I have loved you since ship shed bodies touched my water and made a country out of me.

– So, the response work is very much a story of love. – We are inviting people to create a counter monument that is actually a living, breathing thing. The dark side of the tomb, no apology. Call the monoxide in the booth. Do not follow me.

– Oh, holy honest aid. You can catch me because I’m gone. It feels both risky and scary, but it also feels like a learning place.

– How do we deal with our pasts in order to move on to our futures? Okay, so now you have a little bit of insight into the overall project.” [End of video]

Okay, so now you have a little bit of insight into the overall project. That was made in the fall of ’22 when we were pretty much in the middle, and you would think, because you all work in institutions, that by then we would have actually figured out exactly what we were doing, but that’s not true. We opened an exhibition in February of ’23 and still in the fall of ’22, we were honing in on design and layout and checklist. The things that we normally in museums start with, we actually left to the end. But before we get into that, and we are going to get into that, I want to go backwards in time from this moment.

This moment we’re actually pretty well into the relationship but that’s not where we started and where we started was actually 2019 so pre-pandemic when we had an we hosted an exhibition of Sanford Biggers work at the museum and as a closing event invited Sanford and Mark to come and perform with Moon Medicine which is their performance and music group and that was the first time the two of you had ever been to Madison and to the museum. And then we had a dinner as you do right and at dinner I think it was you who asked what other things are you guys thinking about? What other things are you working on?

Mark Hine:

Well, maybe I think as I’m remembering it, there was, I mean, there’s a lot of this monument energy.

Every, you know, a monument starting to come back.

Amy Gilman:

Right, like let’s remember sort of what the context was.

Mark Hine:

The text and you know so I think that at some point started to inhabit the dinner conversation and I think I was making a point to someone across the table to make a point I brought up the Emancipation Group which as far as I knew I had experienced it in DC I had experienced it in Boston and I was referencing these public artworks that to me were just indicative of what I thought was a problem and a good perhaps subject matter for a counter monument.

And that’s what tripped the conversation. It was—

Amy Gilman:

Like, oh, we have one of those. And that we didn’t, and that the conversation then continued.

I mean, the next day you guys went in and actually spend a lot of time with it. You looked at the gallery.

Mark Hine:

I want to talk about that for two seconds because I mean I think it’s one of the key things here. I was talking about a piece that I had already been moved by that I had been observing in public for a lot of my life and I think what really excited me was this opportunity to actually access that work. Because the public ones are larger and they’re set back and actually at this point they had become the point of several articles and started to be gated off to just something that you couldn’t really get up close and personal to.

So, to find that you had a version in your collection that we could go experience was exciting. So yes, that’s what happened the next morning and that was a trip because number one, I didn’t know that it existed in these other forms and mediums, but that room was weird, gallery four at the Chazen Museum of Art.

Amy Gilman:

You can all just imagine, right? Okay, so the room is a traditional 19th century portrait gallery, really. Now we’re a university art collection. We do not have, and we don’t aspire to have an encyclopedic collection. So, the piece was in the room, there was a second sculpture in the room, also problematic, of a young Native American boy really as a cherub, right? You sort of know these late 19th century sculptures.

This piece, and then it’s surrounded by portraits of white men and women that we all come to find out later, almost all of them have some kind of connection to the transatlantic slave trade in some manner, which frankly is not surprising given the time period in which they’re living, right?

Mark Hine:

So yeah, we would come to find that out, but for me, when I walked in that gallery, I was like, this is giving me heavy slave energy. And it was just this object in the middle, the emancipation group, and the only black person in the room is kneeling. And it was really strange. It was quiet. And I think mostly not just the object, but this presentation of it was, I think, what made me take a step back. Why is this here, this way, in this institution? How long has it been this way? What’s the information presented around it?

And I think that started a line of entry and to our delight, supported as artists. There were curators on staff who showed up with a ton load of information.

Amy Gilman:

Right.

Mark Hine:

Which really fueled our interest around actually doing a counter-monument project around this piece. I mean, that’s where this ends up going.

Amy Gilman:

Right, so we started this idea that we would invite Sanford to think about a direct counter monument interacting with our collection. And this is actually a pretty standard in the museum field way of engaging with collections. And that’s kind of where we began because I admitted to the group when we were talking initially about the object that we didn’t know what to do with it, right? And I felt personally really stuck because really, I felt like in the field, we have kind of three options. Add a label, this feels inadequate. Take it off view or most radically invite somebody to engage with it.

And I will admit here that even at the time it still felt inadequate, but it was the closest thing to something right that we could come up with at that moment and that’s where We started, that was 2019 into 2020. And then, then we had a bump.

Well, first of all, the world had a bump, right? So, March of 2020, everything shuts down, we all shut down, the whole museum shuts down, and we basically went totally radio silent with Mark and Sanford about this project.

Like I was just worried about whether or not we were going to be reopening the museum right all of that but this was like the hardest professional period I have gone through and We just dropped the ball right because we were doing other things.

Mark Hine:

From our perspective it felt like..We were strangely met in a place of excitement around potentially dealing with this object Intimated that we might be provided access to it to do this. And when the conversations went quiet the backdrop was Complete chaos in our actual streets.

So, for us the reading was you said one thing you’re doing another thing and probably at the time that it matters the most and it…

Amy Gilman:

Right

Mark Hine:

Really it was I wish it was hard it There that I think generated more of a little bit of anger and frustration And that was kind of where things set for maybe nine months…

Amy Gilman:

Yeah, nine months and then I think, so finally Sanford actually called me in October of 2020 and was like they’re taking the Boston piece down right so this was when they decided to take the piece off view in Boston. And he’s like there’s this group that’s forming Mask Consortium which hadn’t did before and it’s a collective including Mark and if you want to do something like this is the group right this is it and at that moment like we had just enough headway in the COVID stuff and we were partly reopened by then that we’re like okay let’s take the meeting let’s actually do this.

And I’ll tell you, neither Mark nor I knew that each other had those feelings until 2023, right? Because we didn’t, and I do think that this is part of what I really want to talk about is like the development of the relationship, right? The decision that we made that we were going to continue the generosity of our partners to continue even when we pissed them off, right? Or we mis-stepped, or we got stuck in our own, like, this is how we do things around here. And we just kept trying to say yes to things.

Mark Hine:

I think once the idea moved from, I don’t know, we don’t know, this is what my experience was in that meeting. You did admit in the dinner that we didn’t really know; we don’t really know what to do, but I heard you owning that ignorance and then actually acknowledging you all seemed to have an idea of what to do.

So Why am I resistant to accepting leadership of someone who does have an idea what to do when I am saying, I don’t know what to do? That’s what I got.

Amy Gilman:

And this is the hubris of museum professionals, right? As curators, as educators, we often are like, well, we know the object, right? We know the history.

And this is one of the most important lessons was to actually be humble in that space and know that some, that other people also are bringing not just an expertise, but a disruption to standard thinking that allows the museum to grow in ways that we had not anticipated. And then…

Mark Hine:

Well, oh great, we get green lit and we get this shift in no support to, we’re supporting you and it’s real and we can feel it. So we start giving that direction and I think that’s where things become challenging again because I think while we were entirely clear, what we were presenting was novel to the institution, Even in the first time out, so first part of our process, Mask does digital cultural heritage preservation.

And to study the object or the space or the people around it, we’re going to sample. We’re going to literally scan objects and spaces and engage people and film and record.

And all this digital information allows us to start to Synthesize some thing about what is it that we’re going to present? So I I Think the first set of look we not we need to come to the institution and we need to scan a range of materials Was including the emancipation group so it was one but when we added another 29 things to that list in the first place I think Kate as the preparator or head of the preparator staff can speak to what that felt like in terms of us essentially requesting a week with strange scanning rooms setups with strange lighting setups and pretty much having artifacts from all over the museum you know dragged it to us was a so much change, request. Why don’t you talk about how that? (laughs)

Kate Wanberg:

So, coming from a collections background, project management background, and going back to what Amy said, this idea of having artists and collaborators come in was not new, but the level of access that was being requested and how my team was being requested was new.

And so, a lot of these questions were about, well, what are we going to be doing? You want us there for a week, but what is actually happening? We’re bringing these objects. They’re going to scan them. What does that mean? What does scanning look like? Is it safe for the object? And so that, for me, I didn’t know how to answer those questions.

And so, there was a lot of excitement. We’re working on a project that we’re invested in, we want to be a part of, we’re supportive of this experimentation, but we have no idea how it’s going to work. And that’s scary. And so, it was kind of trusting this idea that we were going to show up, we were going to tackle these problems and look at them as opportunities.

And there was a lot of anxiety for that first visit until we met. And then once we were in it, I think there was this really important shift with preparators, with collections. We’re not typically involved in these in-depth conversations. We’re not creating content. We’re implementation. And so, we’re bringing the object, we’re assisting, we’re arranging, but then we’re not in there talking about this and suddenly we felt part of this project and I think I think that created a lot of buy-in It created a safe space where this idea of not knowing was more comfortable It was palatable and then it developed it gave us both the time and the trust between our two teams where we knew that it doesn’t matter if we don’t know where we’re going, like it’s gonna be okay. (laughing) I mean, at least until you left and then we got scared again.

Amy Gilman:

And that was the cycle, right? (laughing)

Mark Hine:

Right, but so that experience informed our relationships with each other and informed our relationship with the subject matter itself and I think we started to learn that this object, although it has a national mythological footprint, has a specific emanation in the museum that it had occupied and the people who have been interacting with it for years in the university, museum space, community members, et cetera, have been impacted, students have been impacted by it being there and not contextualized or poorly contextualized.

And so, we start to understand that we needed to actually, just as much as we’re exploring objects, explore the community members around it who have been impacted. And that’s what formed the next shift in the project.

So, we’re now moving away from this counter-monument model because Sanford pops up after the scanning week, which was great for all of us, and we learned a lot. He steps back.

Amy Gilman:

I mean, Sanford intended to come for a day, and he came for three, right? So, it tells probably really in a concrete way, like how generative that week turned out to be.

Kate Wanberg:

Yeah.

Mark Hine:

I want to mention, at this point about that week, we created outside, thank you, outside of the scanning operation, Sanford asked for a night at the museum. What does that mean? What it meant for us as black men was we wanted an opportunity to be able to engage the museum space and the art without always feeling surveilled.

Because essentially our entire experience in museums for our entire life is going in there and first being looked at and followed around and surveilled. So, there’s a whole other thing happening around you while you’re trying to look at the art.

It’s ever present.

So, it was kind of like, all right, we want some Willy Wonka stuff right now. We want a wish fulfilled. We see an opportunity for it. Clear the place, like, yeah, you can be there, Amy. And someone else who knows about the stuff, but we just want to be able to walk around freely and look at stuff. And when something excites us, put it on a list. Put it on a list, put it on a and we were pretty outrageous. I mean, we got pretty diva about the things that excited us and that, yeah, we want to see that and we’re going to scan that.

And I just wanted to make that point that for us, as this unfolded, it became, we were proxies for access. We knew we were proxies for access and what we were trying to do was punch at where access isn’t and open it up in a way that could potentially, you didn’t have to be a super famous artist or someone who’s really focused on a particular project in order to be able to access and experience these objects in a similar way. So, we’re trying to create experiences first that we could then model throughout through the process and ultimately remove what we call the force field that is around museum spaces for people of color.

So, I just wanted to make that point. That happened inside of the week. And it was fundamental to the kinds of objects that got selected, ultimately scanned, and brought into the overall digital survey that we had to then have a few months to really help inform what the project was going to be, which, according to Sanford, was now not a counter monument. So, it completely shifts. One day he says to me, yeah, I don’t know about this counter mighty thing. I’m like, okay.

Hard to grasp because I mean we, so we leaned into this university, to this university institution for a year for them to ultimately say we were wrong, we’re taking your lead, we’re gonna do your thing, what are we doing, we’re doing a counter mighty, bet, let’s go. And we’re gonna pull the rug out from under them and say what? Well, he says, Sanford says, all right. I want you to study Maya Lin. I want you to study some other artists who actually deal with space as art. For me as, I’m an engineer first and foremost. I’ve become an artist through working with Sanford and Sanford’s also a professor. So, he’s great at teaching art.

And I saw him attending his art classes on a regular basis. He sends me off, look this up, check this out. And he opens up for me an entire field of work that could, that didn’t have to be an object in order to be art, number one, or to be a response to something. So, he starts to say, look, let’s push this whole thing into a response perhaps from the people who have been impacted by this work, less so than the fabrication of something and that being the answer to the problem.

So, I didn’t know really how to respond to that except to go do the research and then get myself together, turn around to our partners and share with them the shift in direction which I guess you guys can talk about how that was received.

Kate Wanberg:

So naturally, as the person planning the exhibition, my response was, well, what is going to be in the exhibition? What’s on the checklist? What happened to these 29 objects we pulled? Like, what’s going on? And so, I think that was a big shift for us to really understand this is the project, this is the exhibition, and we still have to kind of work through it in trust. But I want to go back to this point of access because in order to do that, to create this experience, to create a space that allowed for responses in different mediums by dancers, musicians, bringing glue and glitter into the gallery.

This was a red flag all over the place. I’m like, whoa, what is happening here. I’m like, I like it. I want to do this. But like, really? So, I think that was, you know, you, you want access. You should have access. And it made me realize my role as a gatekeeper. And I think that’s really important, particularly in museums, you know, because when you’re not in a leadership position, you don’t always recognize the power you have. You don’t recognize when you’re giving expertise and saying like, no, we shouldn’t do this, that that can infect an entire project and it can really shut things down. And so, for me personally, it was acknowledging, I trust this group, I trust this process and in order to fully buy in, I have to let go of this preconceived idea that these are things that we shouldn’t be doing in gallery spaces.

And so that, I think, is something to take away from this talk, is like really question what your position of power is in your museum and how you can say yes and still do the things that you’re, you know, because I was also afraid, I’m like, oh man, if we break something, this is gonna kill the mood, you know? So, there was this feeling of risk and it was scary but that didn’t happen it was ultimately it was okay and then backing down and like trusting each other knowing that if something was going in a direction and suddenly you know we said okay we really have to kind of draw a line here which we actually ended up drawing physical lines in the gallery that that our teams were gonna trust each other and respect each other for kind of their role in the project.

Mark Hine:

So, what it ended up shifting to as we grappled with how does this object impact the space was delving deeply into the other communities and layers of the university that the object has impacted for years.

And for us, we’re interested in, yes, Wisconsin and this local Madison experience, but considering that this, for us, this is an investigation of how this has impacted folks of color, then we also needed to go broader than just Madison in order to get how does this impact folks. So, we pushed into Milwaukee to develop relationships with art organizations and leaders. Who could also continue to continue to inform us about, we’re New Yorkers, so inform us about what is the energy out here, what is the experience.

I think that in addition to pushing the museum to reach across the aisle with other departments, let’s put it that way. So, we were very much about cross-pollinating and multiple disciplines being inside of the conversation, so hopping out of the museum and working with the engineering school and working with the drama department and the dance department, and really, frankly, anyone who, the Odyssey group, which is a student group, you could probably explain better what it is, but various layers in making sure everyone’s invited to the conversation. Ultimately, and evolved to the second visit, which was April of 2022. So, the art piece that we’re now exploring is people interacting with the object.

The task we’re giving, everyone who we’ve invited is Bring yourself bring your art bring your medium, whatever it is into your thing. We’re here to document it.

And so we had spoken word dancers poets musicians

Amy Gilman:

the teaser trailer actually Has a lot of the footage from that second

Mark Hine:

and So Kate, Thank you for helping us move beyond the stresses of that moment to help realize that it would then I think that entire experience with Ping Pong to help us start to frame what the actual exhibition would be, which was not going to then become this combination of people responding and objects from the collection and new work that was going to get created by Samford, all to now fit in a new gallery that we were going to repurpose to look like the gallery where I originally had this first experience.

Amy and Catherine, maybe you talk about the sort of the next iteration of figuring out what was gonna actually show up in the exhibition. We had moved away from Counter Monument. Now it’s people respond, but then we’re also gonna make a piece. How much time do we have left before this exhibition? Is this supposed to arrive?

Kate Wanberg:

– I don’t know, about six months.

Mark Hine:

Okay, right.

Amy Gilman:

Right, I mean, just saying up here, like we started without a checklist, right? I mean, that actually, Mark didn’t actually know how radical that was until we were well into the process, and it became this like running joke, right? Like, I mean, Janine who will be talking tomorrow was like, it was not a joke. It was funny to me.

But I actually think that part of the thing that I wanna do here, Kate really gets to this is like figuring out a way to say yes, right? The gatekeeping is so often about figuring out how to politely say no, right? But figuring out how to say yes and keep saying yes to things. And at this point, six months in advance of an opening for a show, we did not know what was going to be in it. We had some thoughts.

And we actually started the exhibition planning process when I had a conversation with Catherine, and we were sort of talking about gallery four, which is where it had been, the work had been originally, and we were starting to talk about like what could be in the exhibition. And Catherine was like, don’t you was like, don’t you think you should be able to see it in that context, right? And then be able to see some of the response to it.

Katherine Alcauskas:

Yeah, and I think I also, I think the original idea was that you would start with gallery four.

Amy Gilman:

Right.

Katherine Alcauskas:

Because that’s what the project started with. And I said, if we’re really shaking things up, we shouldn’t do this kind of chronological way that we typically do exhibitions. Let’s put the gallery smack dab in the middle of the exhibition gallery recreated there and so that you don’t have this logical procession because that’s not how this project was.

It wasn’t clean, it wasn’t logical. Let’s mix it up.

Amy Gilman:

Yeah, and so the first exhibition design, quote, design that I tossed to Kate and Mark was literally on a scrap piece of paper that I think I was traveling at the time and I’d been thinking about this conversation with Catherine and I was like…here is the gallery it’s a big rectangle not unlike this room and then let’s start by just having the gallery four in the middle. Like that that was it that’s what we started with.

Kate Wanberg:

But I mean, this is not the first time someone hand me an exhibition plan on a napkin, so it didn’t throw me that much. But I think at this point, this is where I started to get even more excited because I’m like, okay, I know what we’re doing. Oh wait, no, I don’t.

But I think what really became clear is what creating a space for reflection means was actually reflecting the process, And so we’re going to walk you through some slides of the exhibition space.

Yeah. But ultimately, we ended up dividing the gallery into sections, which I’m sure everyone is accustomed to that idea.

But this really looked at how we approached the process. And so, the entrance to the gallery was more from kind of typical institutional approach and it created a timeline where we’re giving context to the object and thinking about the history of slavery in America.

But it wasn’t, you know, the text on the wall wasn’t as traditional. Where this information, kind of, you know, working with Mark, working with Mask Consortium, you know, we were working as a team to kind of about what is going to be included in this area. And then as you, and this really kind of reflects where we started with the process, like, oh, this is gonna be somewhat traditional, this is what we’re expecting.

Mark Hines:

But it’s also where the 30 pieces that we scanned originally start to come back into the picture because where, this is where the collection, and the things that we were inspired by the collection, we started to see how we could use the objects themselves as a better way to bring what we were learning to life and then explore the collection of the Chazen as a way to punctuate certain points that would have otherwise just been a card on the wall or a date or something boring.

I think that’s just how some of the original part of the process started to fall back over on the actual exhibition.

Kate Wanberg:

And so, we’re using other objects to contextualize this one object which I think worked really well and really kind of drew people into the exhibition.

And then you transition into an area that’s really a deep dive into the emancipation group itself. And this is looking at the iconography that is embedded within the sculpture and coming out of this different process of scanning, all of these things that you’re seeing surrounding our parts of the sculpture that have been then scanned and 3D printed, they’re surrounding the object in this constellation format, and then there’s lines on the floor leading you to other objects that further contextualize these specific parts.

So, thinking about the cap, thinking about the post, thinking about the shackles, and really a deep dive into what are these things mean and what is that kind of layering on the object. And a huge thank you to Janine, one of the curators on the project for just her incredible expertise and dive into this. And then we’re in gallery four. And so here, this is where we’re bringing the original context of the sculpture kind of into the exhibition, but instead of just having it by itself, it is reflected and challenged by this incredible Kehinde Wiley painting that’s reflecting the painting in our collection. And so, we’re starting to incorporate response. And so instead of this 19th century portraiture by itself, We’re seeing portraiture from people from the project, from these artists. We’re seeing portraiture that are overlaid with oak lads from our collection, from people of color in Wisconsin and UW-Madison’s past.

And so this is really kind of challenging that idea of who should be in the gallery, right? And as we kind kind of further go through the exhibition, we end kind of with this video. And at the time we opened, an empty pedestal. And so, the video is talking about the process, things that are, events that are happening. Here you see the Boston Memorial being removed, but it also has these performances. It has the dancing. It has the students you know, performing in the gallery space. And so, do we want to talk about the shift back, or?

Mark Hines:

Oh, maybe.

Amy Gilman:

So, the empty pedestal is because about three and a half months before the exhibition was scheduled to open, Mark calls me and goes, “Oh, and we had these zooms every other week right and we were recording them because we were recording everything, and Mark says we want to do a…

Sanford wants to do a piece so we’ve like come full circle now, but I do not think that the piece that he created now which is now in our collection and you’ll see this in a minute. I do not think he could have created that piece exactly without this whole process, right? Because it would have started and ended in a different place. So, it wasn’t physically possible for us to get this piece there by the end of January because it was being fabricated in marble, actually in Madison, coincidentally, but we finally had it for the end of the show. But, you know, here’s the thing, like, do we generally open things without all the objects?

No. Do you have to like actually to appreciate the actual power of the empty pedestal in this space right in front of the huge video wall, right? So, by diving deeply into this object and to our institution, into this thing, we actually started to take away some of its power, right? By like, decentering it weirdly because we have picked it apart so closely and we have we have all these incredible responses to it so in in fact the counter monument is the whole thing right and Sanford’s work which you now see here called lifting the veil is a part of the entire response to them.

Do you want to talk about that piece?

We’re also going to talk about the piece extensively tomorrow too.

Mark Hines:

Well, I think that once Sanford had gotten, you know, he had inspired so many different voices to participate then, and that was the piece, then he felt left out. who was like, “I want something in the show.” You know, it was all this great art that was forming. And, you know, artists that he’s a big fan of, like, Vareal Manj performing and becoming a part, a fixture inside of the exhibition, I think, inspired him, yes, at a very late date, as it relates to the exhibition planning, to make this piece. But it’s also, it’s representative of a lot of the layers of research that were done throughout the entire project.

And I think I talked about crossing disciplines and reaching across aisles, et cetera, but the piece itself and how it was created is also that same sort of amalgam of research, technology, traditional art. And challenges the, it’s more of an exercise in the iconography that we ended up getting from Jeanine and the curatorial team.

But it was great to have it not be there and have the video and all the responses function on the pedestal as the work for a period of time before Sanford’s piece could join that statement.

And I think the community appreciated the various layers that the exhibition grew through. I don’t think we mentioned it, but that QR code on the first slide does enable you to get to a virtual, a scanned version of this whole exhibition so you can go through it in detail, visit each of the pieces, all the actual pieces are, I mean physical artifacts are available in augmented reality.

So that, don’t forget when we first came to study then we scanned everything, so we were able to come back to this point about access again and make it with the exhibition because we wanted the exhibition to be accessible to people who didn’t, who weren’t necessarily at Madison. We wanted the objects to be accessible in a way to people who couldn’t necessarily have the proximity to them. So, to be able to bring that object into your own space via augmented reality, things of that nature.

I was really excited to see how all of these components came together.

Amy Gilman:

So, I want to get to the, what did this, you know, exhibitions are finite. Projects can be finite. This one has legs that will last for a lot longer. But like what is one of my things when we went through COVID was we cannot go back to the way that we were right.

And part of going through this process is also we cannot go back to where we were. We have to learn from what we’ve been doing, and we have to let it affect both us personally and the institution.

And so, I want Katherine to talk a little bit about that long-term.

Katherine Alcauskas:

Sure, so right now we are planning for a reinstallation of our permanent collection as a number of other institutions are as well. And we’re really drawing on the experience that we learned through the re-mancipation project to I think so, can everyone hear me okay?

– Okay, all right.

Katherine Alcauskas:

I’ll speak up a little more too. And so, we’re doing that in two ways, through process and content, so process-wise, we’re really working collaboratively across units. We have curators of works on paper working on paintings in their, you know, period-wise, their specialty, but lending kind of different approaches. We’re working in groups. We’re involving the preparators early, early on, before we even get to finishing checklists and layouts, so that they have not only the context when we get to layout, but they can actually contribute some really helpful vantage points. We’re trying to get feedback from staff, incorporate that in from faculty, from other constituents throughout the process. And in a very kind of informal and unstructured way, we’re kind of building the plane as we’re flying it.

And I think that’s really helpful because it keeps us loose and able to kind of adapt to what the objects are telling us. And so, I think that’s the other way we’re approaching this is we’re really starting with the objects, in our reinstallation, we’re going to center focus objects and then use our collection to contextualize those, similar to the constellation form around the Emancipation Group sculpture.

And we really hope that this helps our visitors look more closely at the object. Like, we are museums, we collect objects, we collect artworks, so encouraging close looking and thinking about what you see and what that artwork is actually telling you or implanting in your mind and so that students have more awareness of these kind of iconography and symbolism.

So, we’re really excited about this, and this is the first time we’ve publicly presented it and so we’re really looking forward to using what we’ve learned from re-mancipation to creating something new and different and exciting.

Amy Gilman:

So, you know, a lot of us are grappling with permanent collection reinstallation and, you know, chronologic, thematic, and the idea of taking what we learned from this deep dive into a single object and actually translating that into how are we gonna talk about our whole permanent collection by identifying single objects that are rich visually and give you lots of meat, right? And then connecting them, in this case, we have 2,000 molded ceramic vessels like the one in the center. Just one of those quirks of the collection.

And so, one of the spaces will actually, it will be historic, right? It’ll be historic, but it also draws out other parts of it, right, you’re able to really ground it in what you can see and observe. And I feel like it feels fairly radical to us, but strangely traditional also similar to the iconographic analysis that Janine did of the original object.

So, I want us to get to questions, but I do want to just talk a little bit about sort of wrapping up here some of the long-term things, which is that from my perspective as the director, was the risk worth it? Absolutely. Now, could we have done it the way we did it if COVID hadn’t happened?

I don’t know. Because it actually opened up something for all of us, institutionally and personally, that I think allowed for an acceptance of risk because the whole, everything was in such upheaval. But our major takeaways from this are that if you wanna do this kind of work, right, leadership has to accept a certain level of risk, right? And this project felt really risky to people on the team.

And one of the things that I said again and again and again about this project to the team was, I am out in front on this project.

You are not taking the risk, right? Kate is not going to get fired if got some feedback, a bad feedback about the exhibition. If anybody is going to get fired for this, it’s me, right? I didn’t actually think that was possible, right? I’m a total trust that what we were doing was right, but you have to, if you are directors in this space and you are pushing that kind of risk onto your team, stop, that’s for you, right? You have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, right?

Like, you just have to be able to live in that space a little bit, and you just have to, like, trust this process that it’s going to– like, that we’re going to get to a good place, right? And that was something else that we reiterated to each other again and again and, and I have been really struck by this is that we have been grappling with some really tough stuff and the last five years have been really difficult, right? Just like COVID, the, like, I mean, everything, right, and the gesture to all the things is that this process was also incredibly joyful because of the relationships that we developed and that is actually enables the accepting risk, the being uncomfortable, right, because we have we have developed a level of trust, we have worked through conflict, but I do you know just to reiterate again like if you are in an institution and you’re trying to work on these kinds of things is you really have got to have leadership buy-in because that is the only way from my perspective that you’re really going to get institutional change, right, is when you get buy-in. And there’s lots of ways to do that. You don’t have to start with being like the director and having buy-in. You can work on that director to get them up.

But I just really, really developing the team and trusting the expertise that everyone is bringing to that space is really important. And so, I want to thank you all for coming and I hope that you will join us tonight for the documentary screening. Here’s the QR code again, if you didn’t say it, and we’re happy to answer a couple of questions. I think we have about six minutes.

Audience member:

Hello. Hi. Thank you so much for your presentation. Thank you for your honesty and transparency about the pain points that you encountered during this project. I was interested in knowing what Mask used the scans of the objects for.

Was that a way to increase accessibility? And then how did the museum engage with an outside understanding their objects and like did you have input on where those scans or photos went after it was scanned?

Mark Hines:

So, we use technology in a lot of our engagements and we’re often introducing those technologies to the institution where the points of education as to how to use it and how it might be applied.

So, we brought that requirement to the table, the Chazen accepted that part of our workflow. The initial intention was, we are where we are, you are where you are. We want to be intimate with these objects to be able to understand them over a period of time. So, for us to stay close to a digital facsimile of these objects was what was gonna enable a more intimate relationship with those objects to unfold.

So, they were used internally, initially, and as a point of research. The hope was that the Chazen would, since they had not had any 3D scans of any of their art objects in their catalog, that this would be the first set, since we did scan 30, related to the exhibition, that that would be the first set that the Chazen would be able to offer in that way. And it would just puts them on the forefront of exploring how to use these kinds of this medium to support education and exploration and access.

Amy Gilman:

And so right now, we own the scans, and if you are able to come tomorrow, Janine is actually going to walk through some of the iconographic things. And what you will see is actually some of the ways in which the scans helped us be able to literally pull pieces out to be able to look at them in a way that is really difficult when it’s just the object itself, right? It’s too small or it’s, you know, all of that. And so, I think we’re really just at the beginning of what would be possible, but I actually think it could be an enormous research tool for close looking.

And from an accessibility perspective, it does mean that people can explore the objects, but I just don’t think we know yet how to use that.

This recording is generously supported by The Wallace Foundation.

This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. In this fast-paced and dynamic session, four small museum professionals showcase how small museums – which face unique challenges but are also hubs of innovation, creativity, and community engagement – are thriving in today’s ever-changing landscape. Watch for an exhilarating exchange of 60 actionable ideas in just 60 minutes, all centered on the theme of small and mid-size museums thriving within their communities. Viewers will leave with a treasure trove of ideas to implement in their own institutions, showcasing the resilience and creativity that small museums bring to the cultural landscape.

Transcript

Ann Bennett:

Good afternoon, everybody and welcome to Balmer, hun. How is everyone liking Charm City so far? So, thank you for coming down to Baltimore. Thank you for coming to our session. the ideas in 60 Minutes, the Small Museum Edition. My name is Ann Bennett. I am the executive director of the Laurel Historical Society, right down the road, about 20 miles from here in Baltimore. And I am joined by the Small Museum Dream Team.

So, in addition to myself, we have Sue Goganian, Kenny Libben, and Allie Schell. And our museums range from here in the Mid-Atlantic to the Midwest to New England. And a lot of our examples come from our own institutions, so you know that they are proven ideas, they are tried and true. And we had a lot of fun with this session, I just have to say. And we had a lot of fun putting the ideas together, But we do want to hear from you. So, there should be time at the end for lots of crowd input if you are willing to share and to learn from everyone here in the audience.

So just a few brief announcements. First of all, this session is being recorded. So, thank you to AAM for recognizing small museums. And thank you to our answer for sowing your support for small institutions.

If you do have ideas that you are willing to share with us, we ask you to please use the center microphone. So please come up and share with us later in our session. Second, there was a handout of all of our ideas. So, if you did not get a copy, please do not be anxious. I am happy to send them to you along with the presentation after the session today.

So please ask me or any of my awesome co-panelists and we will get that information to you after the session. We are really excited to bring these 60 ideas, actually 63 ideas. Again, we were really excited. And we hope that they represent a great mix of ideas for you, things that you can implement right away at your institutions, things that you might need to tailor a little bit, or simply just be inspired by what your small museum co -workers and colleagues are doing in the field.

And if you’re not ready to implement any of these ideas now, that’s fine too. Just be with us and get inspired and be with your community. Also, these ideas are for institutions of any size, but hopefully you will find that they are the perfect fit for your organization where you are right now, so you won’t have to scale them down too much, which is sometimes the case at conferences of this size.

Lastly, while we want you to be inspired by all the ideas that you hear from us and from the audience today, if you can really only take away one thing from this session, let it be this. Find your people. Find the group of people that you can talk to as a small museum professional.

Because you might be a volunteer-run organization, you might be a one-stop shop, you might be a micro museum. but find someone to talk to, to listen to, and even to vent to. I am happy to do that for you. I am offering the services of my coworkers and my panelists here as well, especially Allie. She is a consultant and will help you listen and vent to you. But I also want to just offer two other resources just real quick before we begin.

Look up the Small Museum Network on Facebook. It is an open group. Just answer two quick questions, and I will approve it after the session is over. I am one of the administrators. And the other one is the Small Museums Association. They are an up-and-coming on the RISE National Organization. And they also have an annual conference next year.

It’ll be in February in Gaithersburg, Maryland, so this is another excuse to come back to Maryland to the old line states. It’s actually not too far away from here, but with traffic it’s terrible, it’ll take you at least an hour.

So, with that being said, again, thank you so much for being here. I hope you learn a lot. Please feel free to stay afterward and talk to all of us.

And now I will pass it over to Ali to get us started. Thank you, everyone.

Allison Schell:

Can I just get a round of applause for small museums to get us started?

All right, here we go. Are you all ready? We’re starting off with education and a lot of times small museums have a budget of zero for education programs. So here are some ideas to implement that are scrappy and innovative on programs and activities.

Coming in at number one on your list of 60 is repurposing traditional games. So, I’m going to give you a very specific example because I love it. So, this organization actually repurposed Cornhole Boards to tell about the War of 1812 from a bombardment that happened on their town. So, one side it was British, one side was American, and each side of the Cornhole Boards has different rules based on what happened during the bombardment. But this is just something to rethink about traditional games like Jenga and other things that you can throw at the rules and do something new.

Another game I wanted to share, you can totally steal this idea, is it’s an actual game out there called Timeline and I kind of repurposed it for my museum. So really quickly what you do is basically you get a world event, a historic events on one side of the card and on the back is the date of that event and then you have other people play and try to fill out the timeline so each person is adding something to the timeline trying to guess where it is can only know the answer when they flip the card over. This works really great to teach about your site’s history if you have a special exhibit. I do expansion packs based on special exhibits at our site and different things like that that if you want to kind of teach people about the timeline or things that are going on in relation to your site’s context. This is a really great game. I have some examples up here if you want to see it.

I love lamination.

Native plants programming can be accessible to any site, even if you don’t have a garden, even if you’re not interested in botanical studies at your site. This is something that’s really important that all museums should really advocate for, and you don’t even have to have a garden. You can use this in pots, in potted plants, and this can be accessible to kids. You can do some scavenger hunt sea programs, virtual programs, any sort of thing that kind of advocates for people to plant native plants in their garden and maybe team up with someone in your community that can talk about it.

I’m just going to like briefly cover summer camps in general. So just a reminder that summer camps don’t have to be a whole week. They can be a single day. They can be twice a week. They can be once a week every day for that or once a week for that month. People forget that. And I only have the capacity of my site to do it once, one session for our camps. And along that, you can also use these like kind of one day experiences or twice a week experiences to test out different topics that might resonate with campers.

This is really low hanging fruit if you’re looking to grow your outreach programs or you know add a little something in the summer time. Most libraries across the country buy into the library summer reading program. There’s different themes every year, and I think a lot of libraries also get funding so that they can host programs at their site. So, we do this every summer. I create a new program, a repurposed one, and we book about 20 of these, which is really big for a small museum like mine across the state of Delaware.

So really great way. I love low tech. I will always advocate for low tech. I love things like felt boards. You can’t really see it too well in the picture here, but on this felt board is an activity called like a building a coin. So, think about old school color forms.

So, I am at a full-time staff of two in my museum and then we have about 100 volunteers that I manage. So, I am very well aware of all the different challenges that come from recruiting and sustaining volunteers.

So, here are some ideas to help. All right. So, this one actually came from one of our board members who put this challenge out. It is he gave away $100 gift cards to any volunteer that recruited another volunteer and got that volunteer to stay on for at least 25 hours in their first year. This really helps, and so the person that gets the $100 is actually the recruiter. So, it’s up to them if they want to share it with the volunteer that they nearly recruited. So, I don’t know if they tell them that that’s why they’re doing it and being on top of them, but this really helps with the problem that sometimes you have with a volunteer that comes on for a session or two and then leaves just because life happens. So having someone on there to advocate for them and to keep them involved because there’s money on the line or whatever it is you wanna put out there has been a really great challenge for us and has worked absolutely.

Volunteers still love traditional things like a potluck, and you can certainly rethink maybe some parameters of a potluck. Maybe there is a fun challenge like a cookoff. Maybe you do them quarterly, maybe there’s different themes. So, and this is a really great thing too if you don’t have money for catering for special things People get nosy. They love to see what other people bring. So don’t overlook potlucks.

Now if you don’t have a volunteer manager at your site, this is a really great tool. I know you all have heard about volunteer application forms, but just a reminder that this is something you should absolutely have. It’s a great way to screen volunteers also to let them know, hey, this is kind of our parameters, here’s what you can get involved with. So, it’s right up front for them. And if you don’t have a volunteer manager, this just helps get all that information aggregated for you.

But my favorite idea from this with the appreciation form is, which comes from Kenny’s Museum, is you ask your volunteers, your staff, or your board members what their favorite things are. So, it could be your favorite dessert, it could be your favorite ice cream flavor, color, shirt size, and then if you need to reward them or if you need to send them something forget well, you have that information on hand or like with his one board member, loved mashed potatoes instead of a dessert. So, they got him mashed potatoes…

And then finally this has been a thing that’s worked really well for us as programs as a volunteer funnel so having specialty programs in particular that draw in people that already have an interest in your site and you kind of funnel them into your volunteers so we did a Model T driving school that we had people that wanted to learn more and we’re like hey well if you come a volunteer you can certainly get more information and learn how to become a driver at our site and with our youth we have a train camp where they actually get to drive one of our trains and we found out through that program we had a lot of youth that were really interested in actually getting involved with our organization beyond the trains so we created a whole youth volunteer program based off of that and it has been really successful to the state.

Passing the baton.

Ann Bennett:

Okay thank you so much Ali. Yeah so, I should have said it’s going to be 60 ideas in 30 minutes because, again, we’re very excited and we talk very fast, but that leaves more time for all of you.

So, what was I going to say? Oh, yeah. And thank you for that, Allie, because I also want to say that my small museum, I am the only full-time employee, and then we have two part -time employees of up to 30 hours.

So, we do a lot with the little, as I’m sure most of you in this room can relate to. So, I am going to be talking about the next two sections, Interactives and Exhibits.

And we’re going to start with something from my museum. Again, really low-tech options, low budget options, and then higher end ideas of the same thing. So, if you need to collect money and ideas at the same time, put them into a donation feedback container. So, if you want to go really high end, do what the Virginia Museum of History and Culture did. This tied in really nicely with their existing exhibits on the regions of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and then you can vote and represent the area that you live in, and then museum gets money, and also gets a little bit of data about its visitors. And so, we did something similar before we actually went down to Virginia. But we just had a board member make this with random craft supplies and it worked just as well we the money, we get the data, it matched our exhibit at the time, and bonus tips if you can get field trips or cub scout groups to bet against each other it rises up the change and the dollar bills that you will get. So, if you find them to live in different areas, then this is a win-win.

So, in terms of interactives going with exhibit space, we’re talking about having facilitated educational experiences. And these can be added to your museum at really every price point.

The Museum of the American Revolution obviously has a much higher budget than a lot of us in this room, but it can be as simple as a basket of dress up in the corner, or it could be a board with practicing how to tie knots or rope tying. Whatever the theme of your museum or exhibit is that you want to highlight, think about these two things. What hands -on pieces can you pull out of that exhibit, and then what skill or fact, do you want the visitor to learn?

So again, my formative years, we’re at a Maritime Museum, so we leaned really heavy into the sea shanties because everyone needs to learn sea shanties, right? And also rope tying and things like that. So, they can be added at any skill level, any participation level. And I will say, don’t forget the adults. We love interactives too. show of hands, if you love the children’s interactives, yes, exactly, so don’t forget the adults when you add these facilitated experiences to your exhibits.

Also going along with a similar theme is we have low-cost interactives, and these could be seasonal, they can be very super simple, they can be switched out very easily based on exhibits, based on seasons, And this is a nice way just to put a sign in a sign stand, have a basket of crafts, and a social media hashtag with it, and you can get engagements virtually and on site. And so that’s a nice way to kind of marry those two aspects together.

Again, very similar. You can see that in this sign stand we have copies of primary source documents that you might have in your collection. And here at the Molly Brown House, they really highlight Molly’s or Margaret’s life and capitalize on current issues or questions that they might wanna highlight related to an exhibit or related to a school group that’s coming in. So again, these are infinitely switchable, you can switch them in and out based on exhibits, the time of year, or anything like that for different groups or different needs.

And this brings us to archaeology, so how much time do we have left? Like 50 minutes? I’m going to fill up the rest of the time talking about archaeology, because I’m an archaeologist and I can take us into a really deep dive about all the great ways you can do archaeology at your site.

So, if you have a chance to do archaeology, do it, or dinosaurs, but we won’t talk about that because archaeologists do not dig dinosaurs. But if you are not an archaeologist, look into grad students or college students at your local college or university. And a lot of times CRM firms or cultural resource management companies, they’re required to do public reporting, so they might all already have to look for cultural or historical institutions to partner with. And so, they can assist you with doing archaeology programs or getting you started at your organization. And it can be very, very simple. This example just south of here in Laurel, south Laurel, Montpelier Mansion, they have a, I don’t know, plastic peanut butter filled pretzel from Costco Container or something like that. And they filled it with sand and replica artifacts. And you just kind of turn it over and it’s a very, very mess free option.

But then there’s me at the St. Joseph Museum in a big trench of sand just digging. So again, adults love the interactives too. So, you can be very messy or very high tech depending on your budget and needs.

Okay, excellent. So, we will go on into the exhibit section. And just a reminder that exhibits don’t have to be heavy on content. It could just be an excuse to have fun and just kind of get tactile and just do something with your family or your friends.

So, this is a great way in the telephone museum to talk on different phones. Anytime you can have a rotary phone or an old-fashioned typewriter in your collection that hits hands on, it’s a great way to have fun and get engaged, especially with the younger and younger generations that don’t hang up the phone like that. They hang up the phone like that. And you’re like, OK, now I feel old. But anyway, it is a great way to have that low -cost interaction. And exhibits can be everywhere.

Has anyone been to the St. Joseph Museums? Okay, yes. The exhibits extended into the bathrooms in the St. Joseph Museum, and it was interpreting one of their sites, which is the Glore Psychiatric Hospital Museum, so they deliberately put you in a small space to do your business and then just highlighted all these phobias.

And one of them, right, so, you know, so if there’s a fear of ghosts, then you go into a small room called the haunted bathroom, right? There’s also one that is not pictured here for good reasons, and that is the clown bathroom. So, take your chances there, but again, don’t pass up the opportunity to extend your exhibits anywhere. Obviously, this is higher end. They wrap the doors. They wrap the walls inside the bathroom, but if you have a corner of your room, if you have a poster frame, if you have one display case, you can use that to extend your exhibits into small places and just keep layering that information that you’re interpreting.

This framework, I see quite often, and I really like it as kind of an internal, easy understood framework for exhibits. And this could be the exhibit itself or it could be an introduction or summary of your museum. And so, these two examples are from History Colorado, they have Denver A to Z, and 100 Objects and The Grand Rapids Public Museum has A to Z as well. And so, with the Denver one, they had entire exhibits, entire rooms based off of this framework. With the Grand Rapids one, it’s just that wall that you see. So, they have an artifact representing either a letter or a number, and it’s a great internal framework.

Oh, and this is great. Alli, do you wanna model this with me?

So again, you can do exhibits on the Jeep and they can be very useful and very low cost.

So, they don’t have to be big and complicated. So, my personal favorite tool is the blue painter’s tape. We have to hoard it in our office so the collections volunteers don’t find it. But there are other ones.

So how many of you have used the plastic, corrugated yard sign type boards. Yeah, so you can use it in your exhibits. We’ve also used it in just updating yard signs, but there’s a useful tool actually

Allison Schell:

That cuts it down a channel. So, you can fold it in half and make these little sign holders or whatever you wanna make bigger signs. And you can cut all the way through a channel with it as well.

Ann Bennett:

Yeah, so no more X-Acto knives, no more metal rulers, although those are very helpful as well. And so that is the what the coroplast and the coroclaw which you can see here.

Also, useful tools are just spray adhesives, spray mount, double-sided tape, hard squeegees for folding things, bone creasers, all these really handy things.

If you’re a crafter, a lot of this will be familiar to you. So go into the craft section as well for your exhibits.

Okay. So how many crafters, speaking of that, do we have in the room here? Okay. So good. So, start raiding your stashes. The cricket machine or the vinyl label machine can really be a useful tool for making in-house exhibit labels. And like I said, they can be used to update the Coreaplast for dates and signage that you might have outside of your museum. And if you don’t have one or don’t have the budget for one, check with your local library system because oftentimes you can actually check out the machine and you just have to pay for the cost of the materials. And as the note said, take the time to weed.

I don’t know what that means, but I think of your crafter. You know what that means. I think it just means to clean up your work.

And then coming to the middle of our exhibit section, what we did is we just peppered in our regular exhibit schedule with pop-up exhibits or temporary exhibits. And we did this with a local photographer, Tracy Camilla John. She actually lives in Laurel. And it was great because not only were her pictures gorgeous, but they matched the exhibit that we have on display in terms of looking at all the neighborhoods of Laurel.

So, we were able to capitalize on her network and to really boost our attendance and just have something that wasn’t history related. If you’re a history museum, you don’t have to just do history.

So, you can do arts and other social events as well.

And then coming into the last couple of examples here, going Back to the St. Joseph Museums, like I mentioned before, they have several different museums under one big umbrella. And this was a really spiffy way, I thought, to represent visually all the different museums that you can see on their campus.

And it was done by a single color and a single motif, a designer, a picture. And so, no matter where you ended up on the campus or the map, you can say, oh, I want to go to the Purple Museum and just head in that direction. So that was a very kind of low -tech way of just bringing cohesion to multiple site interpretations.

So, this is fun too. This is a picture from the JFK Presidential Library, and this is just a way to get your staff paid or unpaid, your volunteers, your interns, even your community, do people’s choice. And this is great because you can showcase items that might not make it into regular rotation. You might have a lot of items that are super cool, but just don’t meet the theme of an exhibit. So, this is a way to pick those out, highlight them on a regular basis, and they can be copies put into a display case like this one in Boston, or they can be online. This could be something that you do regularly, and people can vote on it, and it could be turned into a contest. But this is a great way to, again, show your collection beyond just the exhibit that you have currently on display.

So, these are great too, and if anyone has other examples of these from your museums, I would love to hear more about this. So, the idea of exhibit marketing going viral and doing something fun and wacky and creative and out of the box can be found everywhere.

Canadian Museum of Nature, American Revolution Museum, the Jinxon Arts Festival, that is all actually fake food as an art form to really you know kind of highlight the exhibit and they put them in vending machines so vending machine culture is very big and it’s a special limited edition and they sell out very, very quickly in these big popular office spaces. But you can also get your living history, your costume nerds like me just to go dress up and mark it, Occupied Philadelphia for example, or just get a bunch of your friends together and get a dinosaur costume because honestly, that’s just so fun, you know, whatever dinosaurs are doing in costume, mowing the on dancing. I will watch it on my phone.

And then again going back to some low-tech options. These are examples of just ways that you can either get feedback, again going back to that donation feedback box that we talked about earlier.

This was kind of a military based exhibit and so that’s why they say sound off, but it’s just post-its in a paper. You see this all the time. It doesn’t have to be very complicated, but it’s a way to get that feedback that you might not get elsewhere.

And then this was a very fun and creative voting exhibit. Again, this came from the psychiatric hospital, so they’re talking about health and healthcare and medicine. And so, you’re voting on the question by placing a tongue depressor into one of the voting receptacles. So, just having fun and being creative with the information that you’re asking the public.

And so, this is a way to do partnerships on current topics. This was actually a way to commemorate and memorialize the lives that have been lost in the years of the coronavirus pandemic and it provides space for families to come together, to gather, to mourn, to heal, to process, and just to show the public that these were people and they’re not just a statistic. And this is a great example of a museum being a resource for the community and being a place to heal, not just for the pandemic, but for really any type of tragedy or mass event that might have happened in your community.

Oh, that was what I was talking about.I ‘m sorry, I messed up. I’m sorry, that probably makes more sense now. I’m sorry about that.

And then, sorry, I’m gonna go. There we go, I got my slides mixed up, so I’m sorry. This is the one about exhibit partnerships, and so this can be done with other nonprofits or groups in your community, especially ones that encourage dialogue on contemporary issues.

This is the example on border and immigration dialogue, and then this is the one that I was saying about the memorial to the victims of the pandemic, and that can be turned into any memorial or a sense of healing for your community. So that, I think, yes, that is where I end, and Kenny begins, so thank you.

Kenny Libben:

All right before we get into my list one thing I want to remind everyone I’m sure if you’re in a small museum you know this as well for all of these topics but especially events and programs the best ones aren’t just an event or program they increase membership they increase engagement they bring attendance to your attendance to your museum recognition, more donors, more members, everything. So, when you’re looking at these ideas or thinking of your own, think how you can incorporate all the other subjects into it as well. All right.

So first up, everyone knows, add alcohol, and that will usually make it a good event. So, some of these ideas, one of them, the Brenton House, is a virtual idea where they will actually recommend suggested cocktails or drinks for that event, and then they host a virtual lecture. You can also do them in person, obviously.

The Barnes Museum will go to micro-breweries that operate out of historic houses or historic buildings, and they will tell the history of that building while you’re there drinking at that location. You can do a traditional holiday market. So, this museum is actually in Upper Austria, and it’s a small Pine Farming Museum. They do a Christmas and an Easter market and it’s all local handmade goods that are pretty much traditional to that area. So, the town is about 2 ,000 people. They’ve been doing it for 20 years but they bring in about 8 ,000 people per weekend that come just because everything is local, handmade, and then they also use it to preserve local traditions and techniques, musicians, art craft, and cuisine as well.

You can always add food to make something popular. So, this is from my museum. We did a World War One on the home front exhibit. Part of that we tied in victory gardens, gave away seed packets, but the biggest straw was we went, we gave all our volunteers and board members historic recipes from World War One and they made them and then everyone came in to try them.

And I can assure you most of them are not worth trying but that’s why people came in. This was a few years ago so I forget all of the crazy ones, but we had Welsh rarebit which does not have rabbit in it and it’s not from Wales. Peanut butter soup was actually one of the more interesting ones, but you can find all kinds of these recipes online because the government made cookbooks and put them all over so now it’s public domain. So, any way you can incorporate odd foods, that always brings people in.

Do anything hands-on with workshops? So, the Richland Early American Center for History, they’re near me. They actually built a whole blacksmith’s shop. So, every week they have blacksmithing classes you can go do. Other ones like the Grand County Historical Association do flower pounding where you use real flowers and natural dyes to make designs on cloth.

I’m sure you’ve seen a million other ideas that museums do. Anything to let people do things hands-on is always a great way to get them in and they remember that experience with you.

Also, if you have a green space, include that in your programming whether it’s for just social hours or outdoor lecture series. There’s a million ways you can incorporate that. Hiking series, you’ve all seen a walking tour in your city, but if you have a forest or a natural park You can go do a natural history walking series with that

Or if you’re in a rural area consider a barn tour So this is a drive-it -yourself barn tour they do it every other year, but I believe they sell about 500 tickets each year And it’s their biggest event by far each barn that they have lined up. It’s a volunteer owner that cleans up their barn. They’ll bring in food trucks, something interactive, like a blacksmith or an artist, something like that. And then throughout the day, people can just buy a ticket and drive around to all the different sites and see these historic barns that are quickly disappearing. So, it’s a great way to both promote preservation of history and give people a chance to explore these private properties. You can also do archaeology, workshops, and discussions.

So, this is my museum. I will say we’ve put it on temporary hold as most of you know, NAGPRA has been updated. So, we are in the process of just making sure everything is kosher with that.

In our case, we’re not actually showing people how to go look for the stone tools, but our area has millions of indigenous stone tools that are found just from the fields when people plow you can walk through them and for decades that’s what everyone’s done.

So, our session we pair up with the Ohio Archaeological Society and do more of identification of stone tools so they can learn what they have already found what it is what time period that sort of thing. So, if you have opportunities like that, they’re always extremely popular with our museum.

Also, cemetery preservation is a big thing. We all know somebody who’s died and is buried, so hopefully they’re buried. I guess it doesn’t have to be. But you see all these old historic cemeteries around and they’re all beautiful, except they’re in disrepair. And so, cemetery preservation is a big draw now. We teamed up with Atlas Preservation, I believe they’re out of etiquette, but they do a national tour. They call it 50 states in 50 days. And we partnered with them to bring them to Ohio. And I think we attracted about 200 people to the event. So, they learn how to clean headstones the proper way without damaging them. And then as you can see in that picture, also how to reset ones that are falling over or starting to lean. And it’s a great way to help preserve people’s memories.

You can also do scavenger hunts, and there’s a couple different options with that. You can obviously do a scavenger hunt in your museum You know hand out a guide where people can go look to explore things that are in your exhibits Whether it’s relevant to the exhibit or like the Cleveland Museum of Natural History hides cheeseburgers It’s a huge draw for them. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s fun to do

Another one like my museum, we call it the adventure hunt, and it’s an outdoor activity that people drive throughout our community. And they have hints and clues to where to go, like historic sites, so it helps them discover the area. And for each task they do, they get points and then can win.

All right, and for memberships, then.

So, this one, is that our time on it? This one is my favorite one, so we’ve developed a travel series where we will put together small group tours for our community and our members can sign up and get the opportunity to travel abroad. It’s been extremely popular. The best part about it is I get to go along for free, so I will always promote that one.

You can also give away free membership.

Real quick back to why that’s under the membership thing. We only offer the first week to sign up to members. So that may not seem like a big deal, mostly strip sell out in two days. So, our membership has more than doubled since we started the series, because everyone wants to know how they can sign up. And even though there’s only a few chances a year, they’re still willing to pay for an annual membership for years just for the chance to sign up.

You can also give away free membership. I actually really like this idea. I believe it’s Sue’s Museum. They have a couple different ways that they do it, but if someone new moves into your community, give them free membership.

For the most part, membership doesn’t cost any of our museums anything. My museum is free admission, so it certainly doesn’t cost us anything, but it makes them appreciate the gift you gave them and maybe they’ll come in and maybe they’ll keep paying year after year.

You can also do different types of membership drives. I like both these ideas because they incorporate the month into them. So, in February you can do like a Valentine’s Day theme where a member can give away membership to someone else that’s not a member.

For the Marshall Steam Museum, they do a March membership madness. Which do you want to say that one or two?

Oh, yeah, that’s right.

All right, you can also do special members -only events. This doesn’t just have to be film screening. Think about any way that you give a perk for someone being a member. It can be a behind-the-scenes tour.

It can be, you know, if you want to do an antiques roadshow sort of thing where you have an appraiser come in to identify objects for people. What my museum does is we have a historic theater in town that was bill has an opera house it’s now a state-of-the-art movie theater, but we’ll rent that for private screenings and we’ll show historic films and part of that is we try and make it more fun and engaging for our members so last week we did Blazing Saddles in addition to just showing that we gave away bags of gold candy we tied up the Rollo tubes of candy to look like dynamite and we passed out fake mustaches and badges so everyone could do photos and then they get free popcorn as well.

So that’s always a popular activity.

And then to tie it all back together, bring alcohol into your museum. So, Ann’s annual meeting they found out was during Cinco de Mayo and we all know annual meetings are super fun for everybody, but when you add alcohol, everyone did enjoy it. So, any way you can tie in a theme, whether it has alcohol or not, but tie in different themes with your events, it always gets people excited for something fresh and something new.

All right, and now it’s up to Sue.

Susan Goganian:

I just want to mention two things before I start.

One, about the exhibits in the loo, hang your event calendar in there too it’s a captive audience after all. And the other thing is most museums are small museums and we have a power that we’re not taking full advantage of, so I just throw that out there for anybody who needs to know that.

So, we’re gonna start with community. The Center for Contemporary Art in Bedminster, New Jersey, participates in their local farmers market, installing art displays and engaging the community with interactive opportunities, such as coloring books for children.

Minnetrista Museum staff serves the community brunch, themed around holidays like Valentine’s Day and Father’s Day. They say it’s not just about indulging in delectable dishes; it serves as a reminder of how our community connects, interacts and shares experiences.

For sites with limited hours, the Minidoka National Historic Site in Idaho install the box where people can get brochures and trail maps after hours, plus stamp their NPS passport or scavenger hunt, geocache, et cetera. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had calls from people who wanted their passport stamp when we weren’t open. This is a great idea.

Community collecting days at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. Programs built around community collecting days. They could be stories or photos. Laurel Historical Society and Rehoboth Beach Historical Society have done photo ID nights in person and online.

We’ve also put images on Facebook and asked people to identify people or places and to offer us additional items related to those topics.

This is one of my favorite programs at my museum. We do a community art show annually. With a theme and we attract, I think our last show had 40 artists and about 60 works. We remind the public that we are interested in collecting recent depictions of our city.

A lot of people think historical societies only want things that are really, really old. That’s not true. It provides acquisition opportunities for us, and it brings in income through commissions. The closing reception includes awards sponsored by the local art college and others.

Buy nothing. Check Facebook, Google, and other sites for free or low-cost items. We are always trying to do more with less, right? We also ask on those sites for donations of office furniture, monitors, or anything else that we need.

Partnerships and collaborations, sorry. The Ashland County Historical Society hosts live bar trivia each month at a local the shop. Trivia is free for all to play with the restaurant providing gift certificates as prizes. The museum uses the venue to advertise upcoming programs, membership, etc. What was the slowest night of the week for the restaurant is now the busiest, with increased awareness and attendance at other museum events with younger demographic. This is a huge win-win for everybody.

I love this one, this is Kenny’s. Playing off the Victorian tradition of hiding a pickle in the Christmas tree, the museum hides fake pickles throughout the community in December and posts clues to their location on social media. A local business custom prints the resin pickles and a local art club custom paints each one. Often The fighting spot or the clues involve historical tidbits that lead participants to otherwise unknown locations or landmarks, helping them discover and appreciate the history and the culture of the area more.

The Brandywine Valley Educators Forum suggests you form a local committee with area museums, choose a topic to connect on like education, volunteerism or fundraising and invite local professionals to participate, brainstorm, and resource share. Some community foundations also convene gatherings of small nonprofits to share resources.

Partner with local hotels for the use of historic photos in buildings. They can be in the parking lot, on the room walls, or more simply in frames in the hallway. We also work with developers to add images to the exteriors and common areas of housing projects and office buildings, especially if there was formally a historic property on the site.

The Marshall Steam Museum hosts joint training opportunities that include other local sites which can help to reduce training costs. They did this for audio description training and the creation of touch tours. If they got 10 participants to come to the training, the costs would be $50 each.

Recognizing their strength was in running small museums, the Denison Railroad Depot became a contract manager for several nearby historic sites, providing administration, training, oversight, and resources to several institutions. This improved these sites while also earning income for Denison.

Fundraising. The Denison Railroad Depot Museum also restored a historic Pullman sleeper car and put it on Airbnb. It gave new life and purpose to an otherwise unused site while providing more income for the museum and an increased interest from the public in the history of the car.

The Marshall State Museum says, “Create your own merchandise.” They invested in a button and a cricket machine to make their own buttons, bottle openers, magnets, ornaments, t -shirts, and more. Great souvenirs. I also believe in selling merchandise so people can’t get anywhere else in your gift shop.

The Landis Valley Museum holds a silent auction with items that utilize the talents of their volunteers and staff. The auction which features a variety of handmade furniture, woodworking, décor, metalwork, ceramics, artwork, and crafts along with experiences and gift packages donated by area businesses raises money for the programs of Landis Valley.

So, this is ours. We do a yearly holiday house tour of five to six private homes that sells out well in advance and brings in lots of new people. We usually sell about 250 tickets. This type of tour requires two shifts of four to five volunteers per house, and we would never be able to do that with our core of volunteers. Realtors are perfect for this because they love talking about houses. Our partnership with Coldwell Banker has been amazing. In addition to providing the majority of the volunteers, they cover the costs of the mailer and the event day map. All it costs us is the staff the day of the program. That’s it.

Ashland County Historical Society’s Pumpkin Glow event invites community members, businesses and organizations to carve pumpkins and then display them on the museum’s campus and adjacent park. The park and buildings are lined with the jack -o -lanterns and the community is invited to come out at night and walk through the park to see all of the pumpkins lit up.

Our final subject is Board Relations and Board Development. The Ashland County Historical Society youth board is meant to give Ashland County teens a voice in their communities’ history and heritage sector.

Members have a chance to create inclusive and innovative programs, events, and initiatives with the assistance of the staff.

Onboarding made fun. This is Laurel Historical Society, I believe. Having an informal reception at a board member’s house for going and incoming board members makes onboarding more fun by removing the formal structure of meeting spaces. And I’m sure it also makes it much more welcoming for the new people.

— Also, alcohol.

Funny money.

Make strategic planning fun by adding a funny money exercise to focus on goals and planning from the SWAT. But give each board member dots worth $1 ,000 to vote with and see what they would spend an imaginary donation on.

Have you ever gotten an actual donation out of that? Well, you can always hope, right? New board member orientation packet and meeting to get members up to speed on how the museum operates, recent financial statements and meeting minutes, as well as recent or recurring exhibits, programming, advertising, and more. We also give an in -depth tour of our main building, which was built in 1781, so that the board members understand some of our challenges.

Board member expectations. That is the form that we give out to prospective board members, which lists all our policies and a giving program, and we ask them to sign it yearly. It includes things like respond promptly to every communication from staff or other trustees. And the minimum number of events they’re expected to attend each year.

And I’m going to turn it back over to Ann.

Ann Bennett:

Alright, thank you everyone. Hi Rica! I told you it was a dream team, right? So, uh…thank you so much for presenting today and for you being in the audience. So, we did that in under and hour because like I said we talk fast and we get excited so…Now is the time, if you want to share anything that is happening in your museum in your community, please, we would love to hear from you.

So again, this session is being recorded, so we ask that if you are willing to share, no pressure, you don’t have to. And if you need to take a break and step out, feel free just to head out as well.

A quick reminder, use the center microphone, so if you wanna start lining up to share your ideas, while I just have a few announcements, that would be wonderful.

Again, we do have the handout available and the presentation, which we are happy to share with everybody. All you have to do is just leave your business card or ask any of us at the end of the session.

And then also there’s a few goodies still left at the front of the stage, so please feel free to grab those on your way out. And just a—

>> Questions about our—

Yeah, we’re going to take questions.

And just as a reminder, quick before we hear other ideas, I am presenting tomorrow, and Ali is presenting on Sunday, right? So please check out our presentations.

We would love to see you at those sessions as well. So, I think the mic is live. Why don’t you go ahead and test it out for us, please? Why don’t you say your name, your organization, and go for it.

Marshall:

Oh, so my name is Marshall.

I’m actually at the Virginia Museum of Natural History, which is not a small museum, but a smaller museum, as far as natural history museums go. So, we have a few ideas. We haven’t implemented them yet, but we want to do a downward dino, which is yoga under the dinosaurs at our museum. Kind of bring people in that might not come in, but also do it like before we actually kind of a sunrise or sunset sort of thing.

And then another one that we’ve thought about doing is art nights, where we have a plethora of taxidermy that’s kind of kept behind the scenes that doesn’t usually come out for displays very often, pull those ones out and then you could have kind of those wine and sip night, or wine and paint, wine and sip, wine and paint night sort of things where you get to like draw or paint a tiger or something like that that’s not normally a display. But I love all the ideas, though, thank you.

Ann Bennett:

Marshall, yes. I love that.

Rachel:

Hello, my name is Rachel, I’m from the Calvert Marine Museum down in Solomon’s, Maryland. So, local but I wanted to share an idea about accessibility that we have actually happening tonight, that we have at the Calvert Marine Museum. It is Night at the Museum for Friends with Disabilities. We do a low sensory, lights down, low audio, or we have tour guides for low vision people, we also have hearing accessibility, so we’re not considered a small museum either, but for the area, we’re one of the only museums. It’s pretty rural, but that’s just something I wanted to put an idea out there for everybody. Thank you.

Ann Bennett:

Yes, thank you. Anyone else?

Sarah Maylano:

Hey, I’m Sarah Maylano. I’m a PR consultant in Philly. I work at a few different museums. One of the museums I work with, we put on a holiday market outside the museum store and we brought in all of these vendors that have things in the store like local makers and artists and didn’t sell the things that they sell in the store but sold different things from their collection that they sell and then people went into the store and the store did really well that day and we brought in like local bakers and people that sold food and hot chocolate and just had fun.

Ann Bennett:

Yes, hot chocolate is always fun too. Anyone else? Come on up please.

Emily:

My name is Emily and I’m from the National Museum of Industrial History. Two ideas. Related to making your own labels. You can actually purchase vinyl paper that you can run through a regular printer and then you can trim it and either stick it to the wall or you can mount it on foam core or any other sort of board. As long as you’re doing something small enough, it looks a lot more professional than if you’re just printing and gluing. So that’s a fun little hack that we figured out recently.

And then as far as unusual partnerships go, we actually recently partnered with a local amusement park. They opened a new roller coaster related to steel. And we have a huge collection of steel artifacts. So, we partnered with them to move those things and put them on display and to potentially reach an audience that might otherwise not be interested in industrial history.

So that’s been a really fun collaboration.

Ann Bennett:

I love that. Thank you so much.

Sammy:

Hi. I’m Sammy. I’m with the Irish Railroad Workers Museum here in Baltimore.

And fun little combination idea that we have is through a partnership with St. Peter’s, the Apostle Cemetery. We do our Irish Wake program every October, and with that we are now talking about doing saw and traditions and doing turnip carving, which are the original pumpkins. So, bringing those traditional ideas to a modern setting, but it’s really fun.

Ann Bennett:

Thank you, Sammy.

>> Hello. I’m with the General Patton Museum at Fort Knox in Kentucky. And so, we covered sort of general military history, and we have a section of our museum devoted to 9 /11.

And so, what we’re doing in the future is we are adding just a simple printed out map, blown up, of the flight path of the plane that hit the Pentagon.

And it’s a pretty good idea because it’s deeply moving and it’s complicated, like it’s complicated enough that kids will kind of just naturally avoid it, whereas adults will stand and try to understand, like for example, the red, the sections of the office buildings that are like the cubicles that are in red are people that were murdered.

And then people who survived was like yellow or green. And so, you don’t have to be really told. It’s very much explained by the map itself, and it’s, again, super cheap and deeply moving. And people can engage with it or choose not to.

Ann Bennett:

Yeah, I love that. You kind of leave it up to the visitor to make that connection. Thank you.

Kennedy:

Hi, I’m Kennedy. I’m coming from Historic Congressional Cemetery in in DC. First of all, I’d like to echo anyone who mentioned cemeteries as a good partner. We are just weird outdoor museums for the most part. Please partner with us.

We want to when everybody gets weird about it. Number two, when it comes to wanting like membership benefits and things like that, We found out that the most simple way, because we don’t have, because we’re a historic cemetery, we don’t have like collections or anything, but the easiest way to like make people feel special is let them see things that you make them feel like it’s behind the scenes.

Like we’ll let people like peek into the mausoleums and things. So, a really easy way to engage, especially like membership is being is being like, well, you can see what happens behind the scenes, see how we take care of our collections, et cetera. Yeah.

Allison Schell:

I wanted to– oh, gosh, that was really out. I wanted to share off of that Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, they do a hearse show, like a car show put with hearses. So, I love that idea. Please steal it.

Andy Schlauch:

My name is Andy Schlauch I’m Director and Chief Curator for the Cafesjian Art Trust in New Museum in Minnesota.

But as somebody who was born and raised in rural Ohio, y ‘all are bringing it home for me today. [LAUGHTER] And Loudonville’s great for canoeing and kayaking. But I’ve worked for small museums or small arts organizations for many years.

And some of the better, successful ones that were really, really simple. When I was at the Artists archives in Cleveland. We partnered with a national city bank at the time, and they provided us with little piggy banks that were branded and then we gave them to our members to save money over a course of like a few months and then they painted them or decorated them however they wanted to and then they brought them back to us and we put them on display for an exhibition. Super simple, really fun, partnered with a bank. It was great. Do you have to keep the money? Yes, we got the money. The idea was that we got the money.

That’s the hard part. But then we also did what I called Color Me Cleveland, where we did a plein air event across the city of Cleveland identifying specific areas that were like a university circle or something like that that had significance. And the artist could do whatever they wanted. They didn’t have to do an actual plein air painting. And then all of those Artworks came back to the institution for a silent auction and live auction, which was really great.

And then I’ve done a lot of work with glass, so just keep in mind, like, if you know people that have certain skill sets or certain creative abilities, like, I mean, was able to do a blind touch tour her for the Chihuly collection in St. Pete, Florida, partly because glass blowers were able to recreate clear glass elements that resembled the objects in the collection and clear glass is like a nickel. So, you know, it’s not expensive whatsoever. I did a whole blind touch tour for $250, and it was really fun to do.

And then finally, I can’t under share how great it was to have at the drag queen docent tour. It was an extremely popular event, and we did tickets. We had people do — they walked around one of the Chihuly installations and their best outfits like they were models. You know, the participants really loved it. We even did an online version of it. So, something to think about.

Ann Bennett:

Okay, well thank you, everyone. We are at just at the end of our session, so I invite you once again to keep the conversation going, join the Small Museums Network, join Small Museum Association, and we’ll see you around AAM. Thank you everyone.