The Economist gets Arty

Everyone keeps talking about this. It's an article in The Economist about how business has taken a turn to being a bit art-obsessed. And I don't mean what's hanging in their lobbies.

The interesting part to me was talking about the fact that artists know how to tell stories and that is an important marketing tool to business. I naturally thought to myself "but museums also know how to tell stories!". I've written about museums expanding to function as community centres, and bulking up their bank accounts by going in more commercial directions. The thought of museum exhibition designers being loaned out or freelancing to help marketing agencies is an interesting one. An even more pressing issue, however, is internal cooperation.

One of the complaints I've heard from staff who work in admin is that they feel a bit disconnected from the actual work of the organisation. The more accountants, marketers, development workers and other professionals who don't work directly with exhibits and day-to-day operations can gain input, the better. If a curator can help the marketing staff tell a story, they should, just like accountants rely on budget justifications to know why departments spend what they do. It's so important with our shrinking pool of resources to work as a team. So maybe next time you have a staff meeting, try sitting next to someone from another department, or ask someone from another team to lunch. Or maybe something like this award-winning program for staff at an American regional museum.

Investing in Culture

This has been kicking around for a while already, but I wanted to give it some press. Mission Models Money has released their Capital Matters report, which discusses the sick funding cycle of museums and cultural organisations (in the UK but it could be anywhere, and not restricted to culture) that feed into this idea of "using" funders, rather than having a mutually beneficial relationship that views funders as investors.

Here is the page on their website to download from. There is a space for comments on the page, and in the coming months, they will be publicising some of the conversation the report inspires.

It's been too long!

In the process of changing continents, I dropped the upkeep ball. I've seen a lot of great articles in the last month and a half, but just have a couple to share. One is from an art history blog, and one is about a developing story.

Linked below is a two part article about museum security. It's interesting advice for all sizes of museum. One of the points is to have your security guards greet guests. Don't have security guards? A volunteer who is willing to just say "hi" or "hello" can be just as effective. As the article reminds us under point number 4 (about CCTV use), surveillance is a great deterrent. If would-be thieves and vandals feel they've been noticed, they're less likely to commit a crime.

Part One and Part Two

The other article that really got my interest this week was about the Chinese mummies that are/are not on display at the Penn Museum right now. On one hand, the Chinese say this is a simple problem of not checking all of the bureaucratic ins and outs, while the director of the museum says it's all one big misunderstanding. If I had to make my staff replace objects with photos and papier-mache, I would be very disheartened. They say the visitors like it, but I keep going back to grad school discussions about the power of the object and reproductions. Has anyone seen the mummies at any point in their current tour, or the exhibit at the Penn?