Re: Discovery

Discovery's transition from space shuttle to museum object is not just a bittersweet historical moment but a fascinating opportunity to think about what it means for something to "belong in a museum." Certainly  Discovery is not just any other object, and its arrival at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center was celebrated in a way that marks its status as a national symbol, maybe even a national treasure. I have found myself wondering whether this space shuttle (and NASA's program) was always so cherished, or whether the circumstances and ceremony surrounding its handover to the Smithsonian have turned it into something more precious. Not that I think it doesn't deserve the awe it's been receiving. I was one of the thousands of people who stood outside to see it fly over DC and as I watched it circle the Capitol, I found myself grinning and tearing up and feeling emotions that I never thought a space shuttle would make me feel. It really is something special.

But there is, of course, an element of sadness: NASA's space shuttle program is over, it is literally the end of an era, and Discovery will never fly again. There is no better institution to become the space shuttle's caretaker than the Smithsonian, but that is because its useful life is over: museums are where things go to die, to put it dramatically. Discovery's job now is to be on display as a symbol and as proof of the space shuttle program which is now relegated to history. As wonderful as it is that this fascinating spacecraft will now be accessible to anyone who visits the museum, its presence there is a reminder of things that are finished. I think that same pathos can apply to much of what museums collect and display, although fortunately I don't think its what most curators emphasize or what most people dwell on. Museums can be, but shouldn't be, mausoleums.

Bittersweet as it is, though, the handover of the retired shuttles to museums is a great thing for those institutions. Museums are not just repositories of the "dead," but of the real. Seeing Discovery as it is after almost thirty years of service, battered and grimy, speaks to the amazing fact that we've been sending people into space - that this very shuttle, that anyone can now walk right up to and look at and photograph, has gone into space! Amazing! (The squeaky-clean Enterprise, formerly at the Udvar-Hazy, was pretty awesome to look at, but as a test vehicle it doesn't feel as much like the "real thing." Sorry, Intrepid Museum.)

Star Wars Identities

Not long ago, I heard about the exhibition Star Wars Identities, opening at the Montréal Science Centre in April. My first reaction, as a fan and as a person who enjoys seeing things I like in museums, was excitement. I am strongly opposed to the idea that exhibitions about pop culture subjects, like Harry Potter or Star Wars, have no place in museums, even if they are intended as blockbuster exhibitions (I also am not wholly convinced that blockbuster exhibitions are inherently a bad thing). These topics are an aspect of culture and deserve to be preserved, studied, and shared. And, they are also something that lots of people enjoy - people who might need that extra push to discover how great it is to go to a museum and see something you recognize and then find out something new about it.

But on the other hand, I'm not sure about this Star Wars Identities exhibition. The goal is that visitors will "learn the components of human identity in this character-driven adventure that explores what makes us who we are." The show uses Star Wars characters, and "a vast collection of Star Wars props, costumes, models, and artwork from the Lucasfilm Archives", to frame an exploration of the scientific concept of identity, which I admit is an interesting approach. But to me, it feels like a) an awkward way to legitimize a Star Wars exhibition and b) a lot of marketing. Sure, identity is a big theme in the movies, but I have a hard time believing that George Lucas's characters developed and behave in ways that exactly match the scientific findings that this exhibition aims to illustrate (especially when the creator himself seems to have a hard time keeping certain behaviors and motivations consistent). I also have a hard time believing that this show and the 3D re-release of Episode I are just coincidentally occurring in the same year. Again, marketing is not necessarily a bad or an unenjoyable thing. But the link between a collection of Star Wars props and the science of identity strikes me as a little too dubious for me not to think that maybe this sort of thing really shouldn't be in a museum, after all. I would much rather visit an exhibition about Star Wars itself - the cultural phenomenon - than one that uses Star Wars as a prop for science, or science as a prop for Star Wars.

Yarn, museums, and community

In the knitting and crochet world, LYS stands for "local yarn store" (or shop), which is exactly what it sounds like: a small, local store, usually more personal and offering higher-quality yarn than a big craft chain. A sense of community is an important feature of an LYS - they often host knitting and crocheting groups, classes, and other social events, creating community both in the sense of sharing a hobby with other practitioners, and offering a neighborhood gathering place.

In fact, the two LYS's I'm most familiar with both seem very rooted in their neighborhoods, particularly Looped Yarn Works. Looped is in the Dupont Circle area of DC, which means its neighbors include the Phillips Collection, the Textile Museum, and more broadly, the many museums in the city. It has been fun for me to see Looped showing up in a museum context, and vice versa, museums being a part of Looped's activities. Staff from the store are present at the Renwick's wonderful Handi Hour events (a happy hour/craft party after-five event) to offer knitting instruction or companionship. Looped has a podcast that recently interviewed a curator from the Textile Museum, and next week they are hosting a "super secret event" to celebrate an exhibition at the Phillips. I will admit that I'm not sure what Valentine's Day, the Phillips exhibition, and yarn-bombing Dupont Circle have to do with each other, but I guess that's why it's super secret. In any case, it makes me very happy to see two of my favorite things finding ways to intersect and mutually benefit each other.

The Art of Video Games

I'm getting excited about The Art of Video Games, opening at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on March 16. Not only am I geeky enough to be delighted by the idea of video games being exhibited in an art museum, but it's also been fun to see how SAAM has been trying to spark and sustain visitor interest. They began last year by inviting the public to vote on which games would be included in the exhibition. The best thing about it was that they weren't just gathering votes to create an "audience favorites" section that would be stuffed into an alcove or left online - these votes determined the entire content of the exhibition (visitors were able to choose the 80 games out of a choice of 240 that would be in the show).

Since then, they've been sending periodic updates by email, letting us know about the GameFest event being held for the exhibition's opening weekend, a Flickr group to share pictures of fan creations inspired by games, and the opportunity to get your name in the "credits" by donating. There are also some behind-the-scenes exhibition construction photos. I admit that I'm usually not very excited about newsletters, but I've enjoyed their emails because they only send them when they have something interesting to tell us about. And I like that they've continued to seek audience engagement, even before the exhibition opens, in ways that make sense given the presumed interests of the people they're targeting. It's easy for me to donate online, and the increments are small, with the lowest option being less than, say, a month's subscription to World of Warcraft. People who make and want to share their fan art or costumes probably already have images online, most likely on Flickr. And GameFest sounds like it could be a promising blend of a low-key convention and the kind of programs the Smithsonian museums already put on to support their shows, like film screenings, discussions, craft activities, etc.

I'm not enough of a gamer to have a sense of how these email updates and opportunities for involvement are being received by the average person who may have been interested enough to vote last year (when a number of geek-culture blogs picked up the story), but probably won't make it to the exhibition. Maybe it appeals more to people who enjoy a behind-the-scenes and/or participatory experience with a museum, and who happen to also enjoy games. Either way, it seems like an authentic and enthusiastic attempt to mesh the museum world with gaming culture - and since Georgina Goodlander is the face of this exhibition, I'm not surprised by how well thought-out it seems.

Restoration ninjas

Here's a fascinating article from Wired: The New French Hacker-Artist Underground, about a secretive group that sneaks into cultural sites in Paris and carries out "shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair." It raises some very interesting questions about cultural patrimony and whose responsibility it is - this group claims they do what they do because the "government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain" many cultural sites and artifacts that no longer receive any attention. Meanwhile, of course, they have been sued by the government once it learned about some of their projects. Is it better to let historically-valuable objects degrade while they're being kept "safe" by the state? Or is it better for individuals to break in at night via poorly-secured tunnels and carry out their own restoration projects? Both are very bizarre approaches to cultural patrimony. But I have to say, I love the idea of this organization having "subgroups specializing in cartography, infiltration, tunneling, masonry, internal communications, archiving, restoration, and cultural programming." They sound better organized than some of the institutions set up to carry out the tasks these people have decided to undertake themselves.

Pinterest, continued

I wanted to follow up on my earlier entry by noting that just today, I heard of two more museums/institutions on Pinterest: the Archives of American Art and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Pinterest's search capabilities are pretty rudimentary (unless I'm missing something), but a search for "people" whose name includes the word "museum" produces these results. It's not clear whether these accounts are actually run by the museums in question, although some seem like they could be. The results also don't include museums like the IMA that I know are on there, so... discovery via Pinterest is still somewhat of an issue. It would be nice if people looking for boards run by museums could find them reliably (it would be nice to be able to find anything or anyone reliably via the search function, for that matter).

Again, I'm not sure whether it's confirmation bias or there really is a general increase in attention to Pinterest, but this seems to be the latest social site museums are beginning to cautiously dip their toes into. I think it's safe to say it's starting to be a "thing," but what that thing is, I don't think anyone quite knows yet.

I do like the playfulness of the Archives of American Art's boards, and I think that sort of approach is a step in the right direction.

Pinterest

Over the holidays, to kill some downtime and satisfy my craving for handmade decorations and food and presents and goodness, I spent a lot of time on Pinterest. I'm not sure whether a lot of other people felt the same impulse or whether Pinterest has recently gotten more attention, but recently the number of my friends using it and the overall activity on there have increased quite a bit, especially compared to how closed and quiet it felt when I first signed up early last year. Another interesting development is how museums could be involved in Pinterest, both as sources of content and active participants.

Some of what Pinterest offers fits harmoniously with the concept of museums. Drawing on the trendiness of the idea of curation, Pinterest allows its users to "curate" their own boards developed around a theme or interest. While many users seem to use the site simply as a visual bookmarking tool, others (including myself) select images ("pins") to illustrate an idea and/or create a focused but ever-growing collection of, to put it blandly, stuff we like. Pinterest encourages both repinning (adding someone else's pin to one of your own boards) and gathering outside content through bookmarklets that make it easy to create a new pin. And while repinning does produce a lot of repetition, looking at the site on the level of individual boards, it seems reasonable to compare them to exhibitions: often relying on some recognizable, canonical images, but also pulling in things that are newly-discovered or at least newly-contextualized in order to present a unique perspective.

But while Pinterest gives its users a chance to curate and exhibit, it's not clear to me yet what the role of museums, as actors, would be. There are certainly pins floating around that came from museum sites, but I don't think the museums generally had any involvement in adding them. The IMA has a Pinterest account which they are currently using to share highlights of their collections. Personally, I would not go looking for museums on Pinterest if I wanted to see collection objects - I'd go to their websites. Digital collection databases are not always user-friendly, but to me this format is more suitable than Pinterest, if what I'm after is good-quality images and the museum's information about an object. Or, if I was interested in pinning images of museum objects to one of my boards, I'd still start with their website. I wouldn't expect the selections a museum had already pinned on their own account to necessarily include the things I'd be interested in.

That being said, I do think there's room for museums on Pinterest. Encourage visitors to create their own exhibitions using items from the collection. Lots of collection databases will let you create an account and save images, but if you want to do that for fun, to me it's a lot more appealing to do that in a social, open space like Pinterest. Or, have a competition and challenge visitors to pick a single object to use as inspiration for a board - a wedding board inspired by a painting, a room redesign inspired by a vase, a menu inspired by a still life.

Opening the museum's collections to this kind of social remixing would likely encourage engagement (at least online). I think the key is that museums have to do more than just be there on Pinterest - as with most social sites, they have to understand how the site's ecosystem works and then play along. That leads to the two-way interaction that makes it fun.

That tricky issue of balance

Just when I thought I was finally able to grasp what was going on, it turns out I'm still not interpreting these seminar projects accurately! I was under the impression that yesterday's virtual tour of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was to create an online counterpart to the in-person experience of the Permanent Exhibition and the space's architecture, and that the "automated" tweets were a workaround for the fact that within the exhibitions, the onsite visitors wouldn't be able to communicate with the online audience.

Surprise, the onsite JHU group evidently never went into any of the exhibitions, and were left feeling that the online audience might have gotten a more thorough experience. It seems there was also a lot of confusion all around about what to say on Twitter and when. The explanation provided beforehand to the online audience informed us that "the onsite group will have limited access to twitter, so please save your comments and reactions for the live discussion at the end" (which I took to mean that they would be inside the Permanent Exhibition for much of the visit). So, I avoided tweeting anything directly to the group, even though the same explanation concluded with "onsite visitors will be tweeting answers to these questions throughout the tour as well," and I did see a number of people from the onsite group posting on Twitter. Apparently some seminar participants felt that it was out of place or disrespectful to be on their phones at all in this museum, and I don't blame them.

So despite the success the USHMM group had in creating an evocative online tour, I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that there are still issues with communication, clarity, and balance - between the onsite and the online experience, and between being present, attentive, and appropriately respectful in a museum and being connected to a virtual audience.

Virtual audience, round two: USHMM

The individual groups within the JHU DC seminar have definitely been learning from each other's presentations, and the virtual visit this morning, to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, seems to have really benefited from the whole group's experiences and findings over the past week.

The USHMM group had some limitations to contend with since the museum does not allow cell phone use in the exhibitions. They decided to focus instead on the architecture of the space, since it would be easier to communicate outside the building and in the atrium areas. They also set up scheduled Tweets to be broadcast during the onsite group's one-hour tour through the museum. Reading the explanation of the project last night, I was somewhat dubious about whether they could convey the power of architecture, especially the architecture of that museum, through limited text and Twitter snapshots, and whether automatically-broadcast Tweets would make me feel like a participant in a real-time experience.

I was really impressed by what this group put together. They clearly had a lot of time to research and prepare, and they used that time well. The Tweets they sent out included images of the museum's exterior and interior, videos and photographs from the USHMM's online resources, quotes from Holocaust witnesses, and links to Soundcloud recordings they had made explaining the appearance and possible meanings of the museum's architecture. What really made this presentation powerful, aside from the always compelling topic, was the combination of media this group wove together. "Multimedia experience" is a term that often sounds clichéd and vague, but here it describes how this presentation was, in my opinion, successful and effective. Seeing images from the Holocaust, watching period recordings, reading the words of observers, and hearing the voices of my own contemporaries describing the museum - and all of this wrapped up in the visual and emotional structure provided by the building - created an experience in virtual space that uses some of the same techniques as the USHMM does onsite.

I do wonder, though, whether this virtual visit would be as convincing to me if I had never been to the USHMM. Much of what I heard and saw today was striking because it evoked and echoed my own memories of visiting that museum. Without that, I don't know whether this virtual experience would have felt as "real." However, I do think that multimedia, as today's group used it, goes a long way towards bridging the gap between onsite and online visitation.

(I also liked that today, Twitter felt more like a conduit than a site for the experience. Other online visits seemed to be taking place primarily within Twitter, which made me a little crazy. Today, partly because of the USHMM's restrictions, Twitter functioned more as a source serving me content and I didn't have to worry about frantically keeping up with multiple conversations.)

Further thoughts on the virtual audience

After reading the blog posts of some of the other JHU seminar participants who designed Friday's Newseum experience (here, here, and here), it seems I was even more confused than I realized at the time. It was news (ha) to me that the Newseum visit was divided beforehand into four sections, each of which was led by a different group member. Following the Twitter feed, I was aware that the class was moving from exhibition to exhibition and that the goals seemed to be vaguely different in each place, but I didn't perceive the structure of the visit. Was I supposed to, or was it even relevant to me as a virtual audience member? Not sure.

I also had trouble keeping track of who was who on Twitter, and it turns out that (maybe?) I was responding to questions that were actually being asked of the group leaders. I was only confident of one group member's Twitter handle, so when I saw questions being posed by another name I recognized as one of the seminar people, I thought they were being directed at the virtual audience. But (maybe?) this person was also role-playing as well, since I discovered from the blog entries that he was hanging out behind the east side of the Berlin Wall to simulate the non-free experience. I followed the lead of another virtual audience member and responded to him, but was I supposed to? Again, not sure.

When I pulled up the #jhudc hashtag search a few minutes before the scheduled time of 10 a.m. on Friday, it was clear that the visit was already under way, so I might have missed an introduction if there was one. However, it would have been a huge help to me if the structure had been explained, the leaders introduced, and the event officially kicked off. As it was, I now feel even more silly and embarrassed, looking back on the event - probably not the intended emotions!

No lasting emotional damage, though, because I realize that the main point of this experience is to give the seminar participants a chance to experiment with digital technology. My role was to simulate an audience more than to actually be one, I think. And it sounds as if the in-person Newseum visit experience created by this group did a remarkably good job at encouraging visitors (i.e. the other seminar participants) to use social media to respond to and enhance their experience at the museum, rather than distract from it. This only helps to reinforce my opinion that bringing a "real" experience to a virtual audience is an extremely tricky, maybe impossible goal, at least when it relies so heavily on Twitter, with all its limitations.

Speaking of which, it has also been interesting to note the challenges the participants have encountered of trying to interface simultaneously with your smartphone and your surroundings. You run the risk of appearing rude to those around you (in this case, other visitors and the staff members guiding the groups), you lack real awareness of your setting, and what do you do when you lose your wireless signal or are in the depths of an old, stone-walled museum and can't connect to anything? Smartphones have their place, but I am far from convinced that that place is in a museum, during a visit.

Virtual audience

This morning I was part of the virtual audience as the JHU Museum Studies seminar participants toured the Newseum and relayed information about the exhibitions they saw and the idea of the free press.

It took me a few tries to write that sentence, because I'm not sure I ever completely grasped what was going on. This isn't the fault of the students that organized this morning's event, and I hesitate to use the word "fault" at all, because (again, if I'm understanding correctly) I think part of the point of this project was to explore the weaknesses as well as the benefits of this type of virtual audience participation. Just as challenging as understanding the project was fumbling around with Twitter, which I rarely use and am not really a fan of. For the sake of helping out my former classmates and maybe getting more comfortable with the service, I gave the tweet-up a try, but in "real life" this is not the medium I'd use to try to interact with a museum, and an event like this would likely not attract my interest.

Another challenge was understanding what my role as an audience member was supposed to be. Before the event, we were told to imagine we lived in a country that did not have a free press or a free society, and to think of questions we would ask of people who do have these freedoms. Good scenario, but when the event started, I was uncertain of when I should be asking my questions. As the seminar group moved through the museum, tweeting what they saw as they went, I felt like I would be interrupting if I posed any of my role-playing questions. Later, when the group was in an exhibition related to protest, it seemed like a good time for the role-playing scenario and a few brief conversations took place. But then when they moved on to the 9/11 exhibition, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to respond to questions like "What versions of media do you remember encountering on 9/11?" as myself or as my imagined persona. (I decided the latter didn't make much sense, so I responded from my own perspective.)

I think the most critical issue is that the questions I wanted to ask, and the answers I wanted to hear, just don't reasonably fit into Twitter's format. It was a challenge to think of things to ask that were worthwhile, would generate a meaningful answer, fit in less than 140 characters (including the essential #jhudc hashtag) and be answerable by someone in the middle of a Q&A session layered on top of a fast-paced museum visit. Again, maybe it's more that I don't feel comfortable using Twitter, but I didn't get the sense of having participated either in a conversation or or in a museum experience. Although I am an enthusiastic supporter of museums exploring digital technology as a way to engage audiences and create experiences that extend beyond their physical walls, I personally need something a lot more "real" than tweets to feel like that goal is being met.