I was among the 21 AAM members who were fortunate enough to be able to attend this year’s conference through the Diversity Fellowship program. As a student, and an international one from a third world country at that, it is almost impossible for me to attend a national conference of this magnitude because it is just beyond my financial capacity. This is why I am tremendously grateful for the fellowship.
After the conference, I took home new knowledge, validated learning, connections and inspirations that will continue to be valuable throughout the rest of my career as a museum professional.
When I signed up for the conference, I was prepared to learn. But I was not prepared to learn so much in just a few days! As a museum educator, I gravitate towards sessions that focus on education/interpretation. However, there are other topics I was also interested in learning more about: diversity, technology, audience development and leadership. It was very rare that I will only find one session I was interested in that was not scheduled at the same time as two other sessions I also wanted to attend! As such, the handout printing kiosks made available to participants during the conference were exceptionally helpful because it allowed me to learn from the other sessions I couldn’t attend by reading the speakers’ slides.
Since it would be impossible to list down all that I have learned from the conference, I decided to list down just three here:
1) Our visitors want to communicate with us. They will tell us what they love or hate about our museum, what they learned from their visit, how they can contribute to our exhibit, or even how to do our jobs better so they will keep coming back. Therefore, museums should make sure that we provide them a way to accomplish that, whether it’s face to face encounters, through comment kiosks (written, drawn or videos) at the exhibit, or online. It’s the sense of somehow being part of the exhibit that makes them feel more valued and their experience more memorable.
Two examples that were shared during the conference were the Brooklyn Museum, which has a video kiosk at their lobby that allows visitors to leave their comments and the Art Gallery of Ontario, which provides activity tables where visitors can write, even draw their comments.
2) Museums can use online social networking tools to their advantage, not only to promote their museums but to educate their audiences as well.
I learned that a number of museums actually have youtube channels! The Brooklyn museum has a youtube channel that is viewed by thousands of people! One of their more popular video “The art thief” has already been viewed over 32,000 times! If even 10% of those numbers translate to actual visits, then wouldn’t that be great? They also encourage visitors to create videos about the museum then they broadcast it through their website.
Another museum that uses this tool is the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. They upload videos to keep their audiences informed and interested. One of their videos showed how Burke archaeologists moved a 2,000 year old mummy and a 3,000 year old coffin from their storage to the museum’s gallery for temporary public display. There was also another one where they showed how they installed a 125 million year old "fish lizard" fossil in their gallery. These might be ordinary events for us in the museums, but for our visitors it’s exciting because it provides them a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes!
The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses twitter to share breaking astronomical news. They created a twitter account for their Mars Phoenix Lander mission to deliver news of the mission but eventually it became a way for them to interact with the public and respond to their questions about space exploration. At the end of the 152 day mission, they had over 41,000 followers!
Museums and libraries around the world have been using Flikr to upload images of their collections and make it available for the public to see, leave comments and even contribute information. The Commons on Flikr invites viewers to help enrich the collection of photographs by describing them through the addition of tags or comments. Some of the images from the Library of Congress’ photo stream have been viewed over 20,000 times and left with hundreds of comments.
3) Diversity is not just a noun, it is a goal that museums should aspire for. In order for museums to welcome and encourage diversity in their audiences, they too need to embrace diversity in their organizational staff. These people can be the museum’s ambassadors to their individual communities and help museums connect to a broader and more inclusive sector of society.
Being surrounded by over a thousand people who share my passion for museums is quite overwhelming. I had the opportunity to meet people who have shaped how I think as a museum educator. One such person was Lynn Dierking, who is one of the two major proponents of free-choice learning in museums. Call me geek but after reading a number of her books, researches and published articles, I was just terribly excited to finally get to talk to her in person to tell her that like her, I’m also from the University of Florida and that I find her researches absolutely interesting and useful.
The sessions and evening events also provided opportunities to make connections, share stories, challenges, frustrations and even aspirations. It is comforting to know that we don’t need to solve everything alone. Isn’t it great that somewhere out there is someone who has already experienced the current challenges your museum is facing and that they are willing to share how they have successfully overcome it?
When I go back home to my country, the Philippines, after finishing my Masters Degree in Museum Studies, I will bring with me all that I have gained from the conference: the knowledge, connections, validations and passion. These will serve as inspirations as we continue our struggle to convince schools, parents, government and the general public of the value of museums. The video, Spark, shown during the general assembly was a very powerful reminder about why I chose a career in museums- yes, MUSEUMS DO MATTER!
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Click this link for pictures of the AAM conference
Click this link to view my pictures from Philadelphia
Click this link for pictures at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
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I leave you with this interesting entry for the PSA for The Brooklyn Museum, First Saturday Video Contest.
(Image of girl taken from http://www.philaculture.org/image/2840)
(Spark video courtesy of Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance: https://www.philaculture.org/news/2829/spark)
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