Last week I went on a bit about how museums are interested in collecting more than just “old stuff,” so this week I thought I’d look a little at what museums don’t collect.
I should note first off that museums, being human institutions, can be as quirky as people are. So, here’s where I insert the usual disclaimer that what follows are my own opinions, limited to my own experience,and should not be taken to represent Universal Truth for all museums.
The Esplanade is a local social history museum; we collect artefacts to represent the human experience of Medicine Hat and the surrounding area. That mandate restricts us in what we’ll collect; we’re not collecting natural history specimens, or ancient Egyptian artefacts, or coin and/or stamp collections. For the most part, we collect pieces that have a known (ideally, documented) history and association (called “provenance” in museum-speak) with the local area. That generally excludes things that don’t have a known history; many times were offered items that people have acquired from other family members, or friends, or have just been in a barn for the past 70 years—and they can’t tell us much about the piece except, “it’s old.” If we don’t have the history of use for an item, it makes it hard for us to use the item to explain the history of the area. So, there’s Reason #1 why a museum might not collect a certain thing—no specific history on the item.
Reason #2 might be that an item is damaged, broken, or incomplete. If, for example, a particular game set isn’t a good representation of that game because it’s missing key pieces, it’s tougher for that particular game set to be a good representation of the larger social picture. There’s some room for exception here, if the provenance is particularly good.
Reason #3 might be if the piece physically represents a danger to people or our existing collections. This, thankfully, doesn’t come up often—but we have been offered live artillery shells, acid-soaked wooden boxes, and poisonous chemicals. We try not to take many of these…
Reason #4: we might already have 16 of them in the collection. Storage space is a precious commodity for most museums, so we try to avoid collecting more than 2 or 3 examples of any one thing. If we end up with 16 desks, for example, we might not be able to acquire a more unique piece of furniture, for lack of space to put it.
Reason #5: inability to care for an item. This generally applies to larger pieces, like vehicles. Everything we take into the collection comes with an obligation for us to preserve it for the future; if we don’t have the resources to preserve something, we can’t in good faith accept it in the collection. If we have to store a large piece, like a vehicle, out in the elements (which we have done in the past, before acquiring some warehouse space), it will deteriorate, and we’ve failed to preserve it. So, if we know at the outset we can’t preserve something, we won’t accept it in the first place.
So, if you’re ever in a position to offer something to a museum, please understand why a museum might not accept your gift. It’s not for lack of appreciation for the offer—many museums will be flattered that you consider them a suitable home for what you’re offering. It’s just that we have to be selective to ensure we can do our jobs of preserving the items that truly reflect the history of our community.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
It's Not All "Old Stuff"
There’s a fairly common perception about museums that we’re only interested in “old stuff.” This is often reinforced by visits to museum galleries, where mostly “old stuff” is on display. This perception, while understandable, is false.
Let me ‘splain.
Museums are about preserving history. “History” to a lot of people conjures up thoughts of famous dead people and long-ago dates. The origin of the word in ancient Greek means “inquiry;” up through the Middle Ages it meant much the same as “story.” It wasn’t until the late 15th Century that “history” specifically referred to the past. So we’re probably better off to think of museums as preserving “stories” rather than “history.” After all, the only difference between a story from yesterday and one from 1910 is about a hundred years; it’s only a matter of time before yesterday’s story is that old, too.
There’s a couple of reasons why “museum” and “old stuff” seem to go hand-in-hand. One is that we often need a time buffer to be able to recognize significant events or social trends. It can often take the passage of several decades to provide enough context for someone to say, “Yes, that is important—we should preserve that.”
Museums also want to educate their audiences. As recent events are often already well known, exhibits tend to focus on older, less well known stories.
Another factor seems to be the reluctance of people to recognize that their own lives are witness to “history.” I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard people say, “I remember those; that can’t possibly be old enough to be in a museum.” My personal experience is that most people don’t consider something to be “historic” until its 40 or 50 years old. And, since most of our collections come from donations (museums being chronically under-funded and unable to buy many artefacts), we’re largely dependent on our donors pre-selecting what they think is historic.
This is not to suggest that museum people are above this kind of “history prejudice.” I’ve worked in museums that had self-imposed cut-off dates for what they collected. That might work for, say, a First World War museum that won’t collect anything more recent than 1918. But, for a community museum to decide not to collect anything post-1960 is just kinda silly, and necessarily restricts them to collection “old stuff.”
If we’re doing our jobs right, social history museums like the Esplanade ought to be collecting material that relates to significant developments and experiences of our communities, regardless of how old that material is. “Contemporary collecting,” as it’s called in the museum field, offers the opportunity to collect objects in prime condition, often with other materials that help tell the story.
Some of the pieces we’ve collected in recent years include a car window flag reading “Go Kalan Go” from Kalan Porter’s 2004 “Canadian Idol” campaign; a blazer from our local Centennial Ambassador from Alberta’s 100th anniversary in 2005, and a 2010 Canadian Monopoly set, featuring Medicine Hat on the property usually occupied by Illinois Avenue. It’s all about the story behind the artefact, not how old it is.
If you wanted to preserve something to represent Medicine Hat as it is in 2011, what would you choose?
Let me ‘splain.
Museums are about preserving history. “History” to a lot of people conjures up thoughts of famous dead people and long-ago dates. The origin of the word in ancient Greek means “inquiry;” up through the Middle Ages it meant much the same as “story.” It wasn’t until the late 15th Century that “history” specifically referred to the past. So we’re probably better off to think of museums as preserving “stories” rather than “history.” After all, the only difference between a story from yesterday and one from 1910 is about a hundred years; it’s only a matter of time before yesterday’s story is that old, too.
There’s a couple of reasons why “museum” and “old stuff” seem to go hand-in-hand. One is that we often need a time buffer to be able to recognize significant events or social trends. It can often take the passage of several decades to provide enough context for someone to say, “Yes, that is important—we should preserve that.”
Museums also want to educate their audiences. As recent events are often already well known, exhibits tend to focus on older, less well known stories.
Another factor seems to be the reluctance of people to recognize that their own lives are witness to “history.” I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard people say, “I remember those; that can’t possibly be old enough to be in a museum.” My personal experience is that most people don’t consider something to be “historic” until its 40 or 50 years old. And, since most of our collections come from donations (museums being chronically under-funded and unable to buy many artefacts), we’re largely dependent on our donors pre-selecting what they think is historic.
This is not to suggest that museum people are above this kind of “history prejudice.” I’ve worked in museums that had self-imposed cut-off dates for what they collected. That might work for, say, a First World War museum that won’t collect anything more recent than 1918. But, for a community museum to decide not to collect anything post-1960 is just kinda silly, and necessarily restricts them to collection “old stuff.”
If we’re doing our jobs right, social history museums like the Esplanade ought to be collecting material that relates to significant developments and experiences of our communities, regardless of how old that material is. “Contemporary collecting,” as it’s called in the museum field, offers the opportunity to collect objects in prime condition, often with other materials that help tell the story.
Some of the pieces we’ve collected in recent years include a car window flag reading “Go Kalan Go” from Kalan Porter’s 2004 “Canadian Idol” campaign; a blazer from our local Centennial Ambassador from Alberta’s 100th anniversary in 2005, and a 2010 Canadian Monopoly set, featuring Medicine Hat on the property usually occupied by Illinois Avenue. It’s all about the story behind the artefact, not how old it is.
If you wanted to preserve something to represent Medicine Hat as it is in 2011, what would you choose?
Friday, January 14, 2011
Where's All the Stuff?
Over the past two weeks, I explained a bit of what was involved in moving the Museum collection into the Esplanade. Walking through our permanent gallery, you might well think, “There’s not so much stuff here; why’d it take so long to move?’
A lot of times people think that the entire museum collection is on exhibit. That’s not the case—we have about 1,000 objects on permanent display; about 4% of our collections. The main reason social history museums like the Esplanade collect things isn’t to build exhibits—it’s to preserve the objects that are witness to our history. We preserve these things so that present and future generations can learn from and enjoy them. But, it’s tough for a lot of people to learn from and enjoy a bunch of stuff on storage room shelves, so a portion of what we collect does go on exhibit, with explanatory text, and often with photos to help create a logical context for the artefacts. The exhibits themselves usually have a theme to them as well, also to help create context—otherwise, the stuff would just be a confusing jumble of unrelated things. Our permanent gallery’s theme is the history of Medicine Hat and surrounding district since about 1880 to present; temporary exhibits we’ve hosted have been on such themes as toys, ranching, prisoner of war camps, etc.
So, what about all this extra stuff, the stuff that’s not on exhibit? If the public can’t see it when they visit the galleries, why keep it? Well, we do draw upon that in developing our temporary exhibits—“Playful Revelations” in 2009 put 75 toys on exhibit that otherwise would have been in storage; our upcoming “Hand Made by Altaglass” exhibit will feature a couple of hundred Altaglass tools and products that otherwise aren’t normally on display. We also replace artefacts in our permanent gallery with one from storage—both to ensure there’s a regular infusion of new stuff to see, and also to make sure some items won’t be damaged by prolonged exposure to light.
We also collect items to document past ways of doing things. For example, we’ve got a Mountie uniform that, for some reason, was stuffed into the walls of the second Mountie barracks built in Medicine Hat around 1909. The uniform was only found when that building was torn down in the 1960s, to make way for the present Royal Canadian Legion building. You can probably imagine what clothing might look like after being stuck in a wall for 50 years—dirty, torn, and generally not in good shape for a display. But, we have it because it demonstrate what the Mountie uniform was like in 1909—the material it’s made from, how the fabric was cut, and sewn, etc.
We also occasionally have researchers come to us, to learn from our collections. In the past year, we’ve had someone from the University of Manitoba drop by to research Metis textiles in our collection; another museum researched what types of quilts and hand-woven textiles we have; and a collector came in to research our military medals. Something that we haven’t done a good job of advertising is that anyone can come to us as a “researcher” to gain access to our collections in storage—just call me (403-502-8587) to make an appointment, and I’ll be happy to show you what you’d like to see!
A lot of times people think that the entire museum collection is on exhibit. That’s not the case—we have about 1,000 objects on permanent display; about 4% of our collections. The main reason social history museums like the Esplanade collect things isn’t to build exhibits—it’s to preserve the objects that are witness to our history. We preserve these things so that present and future generations can learn from and enjoy them. But, it’s tough for a lot of people to learn from and enjoy a bunch of stuff on storage room shelves, so a portion of what we collect does go on exhibit, with explanatory text, and often with photos to help create a logical context for the artefacts. The exhibits themselves usually have a theme to them as well, also to help create context—otherwise, the stuff would just be a confusing jumble of unrelated things. Our permanent gallery’s theme is the history of Medicine Hat and surrounding district since about 1880 to present; temporary exhibits we’ve hosted have been on such themes as toys, ranching, prisoner of war camps, etc.
So, what about all this extra stuff, the stuff that’s not on exhibit? If the public can’t see it when they visit the galleries, why keep it? Well, we do draw upon that in developing our temporary exhibits—“Playful Revelations” in 2009 put 75 toys on exhibit that otherwise would have been in storage; our upcoming “Hand Made by Altaglass” exhibit will feature a couple of hundred Altaglass tools and products that otherwise aren’t normally on display. We also replace artefacts in our permanent gallery with one from storage—both to ensure there’s a regular infusion of new stuff to see, and also to make sure some items won’t be damaged by prolonged exposure to light.
We also collect items to document past ways of doing things. For example, we’ve got a Mountie uniform that, for some reason, was stuffed into the walls of the second Mountie barracks built in Medicine Hat around 1909. The uniform was only found when that building was torn down in the 1960s, to make way for the present Royal Canadian Legion building. You can probably imagine what clothing might look like after being stuck in a wall for 50 years—dirty, torn, and generally not in good shape for a display. But, we have it because it demonstrate what the Mountie uniform was like in 1909—the material it’s made from, how the fabric was cut, and sewn, etc.
We also occasionally have researchers come to us, to learn from our collections. In the past year, we’ve had someone from the University of Manitoba drop by to research Metis textiles in our collection; another museum researched what types of quilts and hand-woven textiles we have; and a collector came in to research our military medals. Something that we haven’t done a good job of advertising is that anyone can come to us as a “researcher” to gain access to our collections in storage—just call me (403-502-8587) to make an appointment, and I’ll be happy to show you what you’d like to see!
Friday, January 7, 2011
Looking Back, Looking Forward (The Move, Pt. 2)
Last week I discussed some of the measures that went into preparing our 25,000 artefacts to move from the old Medicine Hat Museum and Art Gallery into the new Esplanade. This week, I’ll finish the tale with the move phase, and the post-move work.
Prior to the move, I attended a workshop on preparing artefacts for shipping (I know—who knew there were workshops on stuff like that?). The instructor cautioned that the most vulnerable time for an artefact in transit, the time it’s most likely to be damaged, is when it’s handled by non-museum people. That was a pretty big factor in our decision to move most of the collection with museum staff, rather than use a moving company. We did use movers to handle about 70 of our biggest, heaviest, most awkward pieces (pianos, sofas, a Link trainer, shown in the above photo being loaded into the truck, etc.); the rest was carried out by museum staff and our wonderful volunteers.
Every box (almost 2500 of them) was numbered, and every artefact that went into each box was inventoried. Each box on every shipment out of the old building was recorded, whether that shipment was in a rented truck, the Museum’s van, or our Director’s private vehicle.
The first stuff to move was about 1,000 objects that needed to be installed in our Permanent Gallery. These moved mostly through the fall of 2005, and were all in place by the gallery’s opening on December 11, 2005. The rest moved in dribs and drabs through early 2006, then in a crazy two weeks in April (when we rented a 24 foot truck), the bulk of the collection moved downtown. A few more shipments were made in the Museum van through May and June, with the last shipment on June 26.
That was no where near the end of the move for us, though. Now we had about 24,000 pieces inside about 2300 boxes—that all had to be unpacked, checked against the box inventory, put on into a new storage location, and inventoried there. Several of our sainted volunteers from the packing/moving phase stayed with us through the unpacking, which took about two years. After that, one of our volunteers took on the job of entering all of our inventory data (which was recorded the old-fashioned way—with pencil on paper) into our collections database. That took about another two years, finishing up in early 2010. Meanwhile, our ever-faithful volunteers—we have four of them still, of the ones who originally signed up to help move—took on other projects; photographing the artefacts, data entry, conducting research, etc.
As in any move, though, there’s still the odd box or two that for some reason or another wasn’t unpacked. As of this writing, we have 90 boxes still outstanding. Some of these (at least 30) we know were in fact unpacked in the mad rush to complete the Permanent Gallery in December 2005; a few others look to have been counted twice, and several dozen packages, mostly containing one artefact apiece (a few floor lamps, a “Flood Relief” sign from the great flood of 1951, a stained-glass window, etc.) that are difficult to store, and that we haven’t unpacked just because we haven’t figured out just where to put them.
This brings me ‘round again to just why I’m explaining all this, at this time of year…
For 2011, the Esplanade Museum resolves to finally finish its 2005 move!
Prior to the move, I attended a workshop on preparing artefacts for shipping (I know—who knew there were workshops on stuff like that?). The instructor cautioned that the most vulnerable time for an artefact in transit, the time it’s most likely to be damaged, is when it’s handled by non-museum people. That was a pretty big factor in our decision to move most of the collection with museum staff, rather than use a moving company. We did use movers to handle about 70 of our biggest, heaviest, most awkward pieces (pianos, sofas, a Link trainer, shown in the above photo being loaded into the truck, etc.); the rest was carried out by museum staff and our wonderful volunteers.
Every box (almost 2500 of them) was numbered, and every artefact that went into each box was inventoried. Each box on every shipment out of the old building was recorded, whether that shipment was in a rented truck, the Museum’s van, or our Director’s private vehicle.
The first stuff to move was about 1,000 objects that needed to be installed in our Permanent Gallery. These moved mostly through the fall of 2005, and were all in place by the gallery’s opening on December 11, 2005. The rest moved in dribs and drabs through early 2006, then in a crazy two weeks in April (when we rented a 24 foot truck), the bulk of the collection moved downtown. A few more shipments were made in the Museum van through May and June, with the last shipment on June 26.
That was no where near the end of the move for us, though. Now we had about 24,000 pieces inside about 2300 boxes—that all had to be unpacked, checked against the box inventory, put on into a new storage location, and inventoried there. Several of our sainted volunteers from the packing/moving phase stayed with us through the unpacking, which took about two years. After that, one of our volunteers took on the job of entering all of our inventory data (which was recorded the old-fashioned way—with pencil on paper) into our collections database. That took about another two years, finishing up in early 2010. Meanwhile, our ever-faithful volunteers—we have four of them still, of the ones who originally signed up to help move—took on other projects; photographing the artefacts, data entry, conducting research, etc.
As in any move, though, there’s still the odd box or two that for some reason or another wasn’t unpacked. As of this writing, we have 90 boxes still outstanding. Some of these (at least 30) we know were in fact unpacked in the mad rush to complete the Permanent Gallery in December 2005; a few others look to have been counted twice, and several dozen packages, mostly containing one artefact apiece (a few floor lamps, a “Flood Relief” sign from the great flood of 1951, a stained-glass window, etc.) that are difficult to store, and that we haven’t unpacked just because we haven’t figured out just where to put them.
This brings me ‘round again to just why I’m explaining all this, at this time of year…
For 2011, the Esplanade Museum resolves to finally finish its 2005 move!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Looking back, Looking Forward (The Move, Part 1)
The week between Christmas and New Year’s is often a time of reflection on the past year, and looking ahead to the year about to begin. It’s been that way for a long time; the very month of January is named for Janus, a Roman god with two faces that always looks forward and back at the same time. This week, I’m looking back at an event that has been major concern at the Museum for a number of years—and one that I’m looking forward to completing in 2011; our move into the Esplanade.
Some of you may be thinking, “didn’t they move to the Esplanade, like, five years ago?” And so we did; sort of. The Esplanade building was completed in 2005, with our first travelling exhibit installed in October that year, and the permanent museum gallery opening in December. But as anyone who’s ever moved into a new house can tell you, getting functional in a new space is a long way away from being fully moved in.
Our preparations for the move began in 2003, with the building of new storage boxes for our glass and ceramic collections. These had previously been stored on free-standing open shelves—the kind you might find at a Value Village store (I must admit, I thought twice about making that comparison, as it’s not the most flattering to the Museum—but it does give you an accurate picture). While low-tech, that system worked fine in our old building (which, by the way, was located by the junction of Higways 1 and 3—Wynz Night Club occupies the building now). But, back then the shelves were set up firmly on the basement floor; in the Esplanade, the glass and ceramics are stored on a high-density mobile shelving system. This is a really cool system that has all of our shelves on platforms that roll along tracks in the floor. That way, we can jam them all together, and only need space for one aisle, which we can open up anywhere we need it. This enables us to get a lot more stuff on the same floor space. Problem is, with mobile shelves, even the most efficient will still create a bit of vibration. This vibration will make glass and ceramics “walk” across the shelves, with disastrous results if and when these fragile pieces walk right off the edge. So, our exhibit technician Sam Ferrier made over a thousand plastic boxes to house these collections, with an average of six or eight pieces per box. The individual pieces still move around a bit due to vibrations, but they just move a little in their own plastic cells; the boxes are too heavy to be moved by the vibrations. These boxes not only prepared the glass and ceramics for the Esplanade, but also essentially packed them for the move.
Our other collections also had to be inventoried and packed for the move. We couldn’t really start that until 8 or 9 months before the move. We had to shut down our old exhibits before we could start packing because we a) needed to get the artefacts out of those exhibits in order to pack them, and b) because we needed the gallery space to store the packed collections until the Esplanade’s storage area was ready to move into. But, we had to do more that just throw things into boxes; we had to be able to track every artefact in every box, in case we needed a particular piece before the unpacking was completed. The only way we were able to get it done was through a group of fantastic volunteers that contributed hundreds of hours to inventory and pack more than 20,000 pieces.
This is starting to get a bit wordy, so I’ll leave it for now, and pick up next week with the move and unpacking process, and where we are with it today.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Some of you may be thinking, “didn’t they move to the Esplanade, like, five years ago?” And so we did; sort of. The Esplanade building was completed in 2005, with our first travelling exhibit installed in October that year, and the permanent museum gallery opening in December. But as anyone who’s ever moved into a new house can tell you, getting functional in a new space is a long way away from being fully moved in.
Our preparations for the move began in 2003, with the building of new storage boxes for our glass and ceramic collections. These had previously been stored on free-standing open shelves—the kind you might find at a Value Village store (I must admit, I thought twice about making that comparison, as it’s not the most flattering to the Museum—but it does give you an accurate picture). While low-tech, that system worked fine in our old building (which, by the way, was located by the junction of Higways 1 and 3—Wynz Night Club occupies the building now). But, back then the shelves were set up firmly on the basement floor; in the Esplanade, the glass and ceramics are stored on a high-density mobile shelving system. This is a really cool system that has all of our shelves on platforms that roll along tracks in the floor. That way, we can jam them all together, and only need space for one aisle, which we can open up anywhere we need it. This enables us to get a lot more stuff on the same floor space. Problem is, with mobile shelves, even the most efficient will still create a bit of vibration. This vibration will make glass and ceramics “walk” across the shelves, with disastrous results if and when these fragile pieces walk right off the edge. So, our exhibit technician Sam Ferrier made over a thousand plastic boxes to house these collections, with an average of six or eight pieces per box. The individual pieces still move around a bit due to vibrations, but they just move a little in their own plastic cells; the boxes are too heavy to be moved by the vibrations. These boxes not only prepared the glass and ceramics for the Esplanade, but also essentially packed them for the move.
Our other collections also had to be inventoried and packed for the move. We couldn’t really start that until 8 or 9 months before the move. We had to shut down our old exhibits before we could start packing because we a) needed to get the artefacts out of those exhibits in order to pack them, and b) because we needed the gallery space to store the packed collections until the Esplanade’s storage area was ready to move into. But, we had to do more that just throw things into boxes; we had to be able to track every artefact in every box, in case we needed a particular piece before the unpacking was completed. The only way we were able to get it done was through a group of fantastic volunteers that contributed hundreds of hours to inventory and pack more than 20,000 pieces.
This is starting to get a bit wordy, so I’ll leave it for now, and pick up next week with the move and unpacking process, and where we are with it today.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Friday, December 24, 2010
The Christmas Carousel
When I was an Archaeology undergrad student in the late 1980s, I remember picking up a piece of 1,500 year old pottery, and placing my thumb and index finger into the very “pinch” the potter made to decorate the rim of the pot. It was an extraordinary moment of connection with another person I’ve never met, over a great gulf of time, through a single object.Working in museums, I’ve been fortunate to experience this kind of connection many times, although never as viscerally as that first time. One of the big challenges that museums face is in trying to bring that kind of experience to our visitors. Today, for Christmas Eve, I’d like to share another experience I’ve had, with the toy carousel pictured here.
When I first started with the museum in 2002 (it was then called the Medicine Hat Museum and Art Gallery), the carousel didn’t look like much. It had been taken apart to better fit on our too-crowded storage shelves, so it was a jumble of beams, boards, cardboard and fabric. It had been that way for years, and I left it that way for a few years more. But, in 2005 the Esplanade was nearing completion, and we had to prepare our collections for the move into their new home. I didn’t even know if the carousel was complete--the only way to figure that out was to put it together. It was the kind of job where you wish you had five or six hands instead of two—a lot of “hold this and this, while trying to fit this into that and there” business. With the final piece, though, everything just snapped into shape; it was like setting the keystone into an arch. Not only was this previously frail piece now strong and rigid, but whole thing balanced beautifully from the top peak, and a gentle push was all that was needed to send it ‘round, and ‘round, and ‘round…
The carousel was so much stronger assembled that we moved it that way, with just a bit of crumpled paper beneath it to support the floor through the move, and to keep the whole thing from turning. We still store it that way, fully assembled.
The carousel made such an impression on me (not only from the precision of its construction, but also its size—it’s 66 cm in diameter, and 60 cm high), that when I had an opportunity to develop an exhibit based on our collection, I chose toys as the theme—so we could show off this piece (that exhibit, “Playful Revelations,” ran July through October 2009). It was in the course of researching that exhibit that I found the carousel had been made by Tom Woods, an employee of the Canadian Pacific Railway, around 1920. Mr. Woods cut out the beams and floorboards, and his wife stitched the fabric and sewed on the beads and bells. The carousel was displayed in the Woods’ Braemer Street home every Christmas, and was a popular attraction throughout the neighbourhood. The donor of the carousel, a family friend of the Woods, recalled being one of the child admirers of this piece. The carousel was first exhibit by the Museum over Christmas 1995 (the first Christmas after the carousel was donated) as a nod to the Woods' tradition.
In that spirit of child-like awe for a marvellous toy, I’d like to extend to you the Esplanade Museum’s best wishes for a Merry Christmas.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Esplanade Museum 2.0
This past week, the Esplanade Museum in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, took the leap into Social Media.
I know what you’re thinking—“big whup. Everybody and their dog is into Social Media these days.”
And, you’d be right. According to statistics, 2 in 5 Canadians are on Facebook, 65 million tweets are made every day, and 22% of all online time is spent on social network related sites.
But, museums tend to be rather conservative—it’s part of our nature. In some cases being slow to engage in a course of action works well for us, such as for ensuring the preservation of artifacts (tip: never resort to using masking tape, Scotch tape, Crazy Glue or elastic bands to hold together something you value; over the course of months and years, it will cause irreparable damage to what you were trying to keep safe). Worse than that, though, is that museums have too often regarded themselves as the “experts” and “content specialists,” and there’s been a general reluctance to share that authority in the content free-for-all that is the social media scene. Museums Spoke, and Visitors Listened; that was the extent of the dialogue. I offer this not by way of excuse, but rather by way of explanation.
It never should have been that way. It’s a holdover from ancient empires where the first “museums” were state showcases of treasure stolen from conquered enemies. Those spaces were designed to be elitist, and to remind the people of the power of their rulers. Museums got (mostly) away from that a long time ago. Our most important job now is to preserve the experience of people. Sure, sometimes it’s about famous people, and sometimes it’s about powerful people. But it’s also about Charles Colter, a stonemason who in the 1890s rigged up some of Medicine Hat’s first gas lines to light a neighbourhood skating rink. Or Annie Carson, Medicine Hat’s relief officer during the Great Depression, who didn’t have a car so walked miles and miles to distribute food and clothing to people in need. Or the employees of Medalta or Altaglass, who made products that were known all across Canada; or the gas and oil workers of the 1970s petroleum boom; or you, reading this now—today—and participating in an extraordinary communications revolution.
Museums are social institutions; we’re about people. We can’t do our job if we aren’t where the people are. It’s in this spirit that we’ve set about creating a social media presence. We’re starting slowly—daily tweets on Twitter (look for us as EsplanadeMuseum), and this weekly blog. Our aim is to learn more about our community, and enable our community to learn more about us. We’re looking forward to joining the conversation.
I know what you’re thinking—“big whup. Everybody and their dog is into Social Media these days.”
And, you’d be right. According to statistics, 2 in 5 Canadians are on Facebook, 65 million tweets are made every day, and 22% of all online time is spent on social network related sites.
But, museums tend to be rather conservative—it’s part of our nature. In some cases being slow to engage in a course of action works well for us, such as for ensuring the preservation of artifacts (tip: never resort to using masking tape, Scotch tape, Crazy Glue or elastic bands to hold together something you value; over the course of months and years, it will cause irreparable damage to what you were trying to keep safe). Worse than that, though, is that museums have too often regarded themselves as the “experts” and “content specialists,” and there’s been a general reluctance to share that authority in the content free-for-all that is the social media scene. Museums Spoke, and Visitors Listened; that was the extent of the dialogue. I offer this not by way of excuse, but rather by way of explanation.
It never should have been that way. It’s a holdover from ancient empires where the first “museums” were state showcases of treasure stolen from conquered enemies. Those spaces were designed to be elitist, and to remind the people of the power of their rulers. Museums got (mostly) away from that a long time ago. Our most important job now is to preserve the experience of people. Sure, sometimes it’s about famous people, and sometimes it’s about powerful people. But it’s also about Charles Colter, a stonemason who in the 1890s rigged up some of Medicine Hat’s first gas lines to light a neighbourhood skating rink. Or Annie Carson, Medicine Hat’s relief officer during the Great Depression, who didn’t have a car so walked miles and miles to distribute food and clothing to people in need. Or the employees of Medalta or Altaglass, who made products that were known all across Canada; or the gas and oil workers of the 1970s petroleum boom; or you, reading this now—today—and participating in an extraordinary communications revolution.
Museums are social institutions; we’re about people. We can’t do our job if we aren’t where the people are. It’s in this spirit that we’ve set about creating a social media presence. We’re starting slowly—daily tweets on Twitter (look for us as EsplanadeMuseum), and this weekly blog. Our aim is to learn more about our community, and enable our community to learn more about us. We’re looking forward to joining the conversation.
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