MediaCombo Blog

This is Part 2 of a five part conversation with Holly Sidford. Please see the Archives to access the other parts.

Holly: There’s a real tension between scholarship and entertainment. Scholars should not necessarily be expected to be entertainers and vice versa. But museums are public institutions and if they want to make a claim on public money and philanthropic money (which, given the tax advantages of philanthropic giving, in a sense is another form of public money) and attract visitors, then they must pay attention to what visitors are attracted by, what’s interesting to them.

Robin: Here’s a very interesting example of such thinking. I was reading about an experiment organized by The Cantor Art Center at Stanford, in a new book called Visitor Voices edited by Kathy McClean and Wendy Pollock. In 2004 The Cantor opened “Question,” a presentation whose purpose was to address questions from visitors such as: Who decides what is art or who is an artist? Where is the meaning in a work of art? This looks like my kid could do it so why is it hanging in a museum? They put it all out there for ten months letting visitors know that no question was inappropriate, making people feel comfortable in that space of not knowing, and there were lots of opportunities for them to enter into conversations with staff and docents. Visitors really got into the spirit of the show, and follow up studies showed that it has deeply affected the way the staff collaborates and incorporate learning goals into exhibitions.

Holly: Why does the way objects are displayed and the experience of moving through an exhibition have to be so staid and formal? Break it up, cut it up, have more fun. It may not guarantee that younger visitors will come, but without such incentives, they are likely to give museums a pass. There are just too many juicy alternatives.

Giving people a chance to participate and have a dialogue makes it juicier, without eliminating scholarship.

Robin: Actually we suggested an early version of this to the Newark Museum back in 2000 for their web site, when we were producing the multimedia components for their American Art Galleries. We wanted to set up a place on their site where visitors could email questions to the curator, who would respond on a weekly basis.

Now there are over 250 museum blogs where directors, curators, staff and visitors have dialogues about objects, exhibitions, best practices – you name it.

Holly: It’s really about how genuinely a museum wants to engage an audience — any kind of audience but particularly a new audience. One of the great examples for me – it’s almost 20 years old but it’s still a model for how to engage a new audience – is Kathy Halbreich’s work with teenagers at The Walker Art Center. When Kathy first got to the Walker, very few teenagers were connected to the museum in any way, which is too bad because it’s a museum about contemporary culture. Kathy and her staff convened a committee that represented “24 hours in the life of a teenager”: the school superintendent, people who ran youth clubs, the coaches from the local sports teams, people from Dayton Hudson department store. She tried to get people who interact with teenagers in a variety of ways to sit down and talk about how the museum could be more meaningful to them. She got a lot of ideas but one of the most important was: Talk to the kids themselves!

So the Walker composed an advisory committee of teenagers. The teens visited every department in the museum; staff talked to them about what was interesting and what would be appealing to their peers. Together the kids and the museum staff designed an array of programs that have since blossomed, including employing teenagers in various departments, strategies for engaging teens in shows and activities, and developing marketing plans that consider teen audiences. The point is they took the time to learn about this “new” audience and then developed programs and offerings of authentic interest to them. The museum has maintained their conversation with the kids over time and the result is increased attendance and real credibility with a new and enthusiastic demographic.

Robin: In fact the Walker has just launched a new version of their teen website; one half, the business side, is for museum educators and other grownups, describing The Walker’s current teen programs. The play side of the site is composed entirely of blogs generated and produced by WACTAC, the Walker Art Center Teen Art Council. They blog about music, art, films and events both Walker related and not, and post their art works and interviews – it’s a museum-sponsored site for and by teens. Since this age group is comfortable with blogging and social networking, it’s an appropriate technology for attracting teen participants.

And speaking of museum blogs, here’s a daring example from SFMOMA. For their current retrospective of Olafur Eliasson, they’ve created a blog on the exhibition website itself, where visitors can directly post their comments about the show. In essence visitors become guides who share their collective experience of the work. SFMOMA is allowing visitors to critique the exhibition, to contribute interpretations, optimize the experience for others and consequently, engage a wider audience. Our conversation continues in Part 3: Using Podcasting, Part 4: Using FaceBook and Part 5: Sharing Content.