Author: Blaire Moskowitz

Each holiday season, I get a first-hand look at the awesome online museum community as organizer of the annual Museum Holiday Gift Shop Exchange. It’s the coolest thing I do as creator and moderator of Reddit’s MuseumPros community.

The Museum Holiday Gift Shop Exchange is a “secret santa” in which each participant sends a gift from their own museum’s shop to another museum staffer at a different museum.  Participating museologists get to share something unique about where they work, receive a little surprise trinket in the physical mail, and become personally connected to a museum staffer somewhere else in the world. The exchange can bring just as much attention to a tiny museum as a large museum – and we all love gift shop souvenir shopping, right? This year was undoubtedly the biggest (and best) exchange yet, with the most holiday spirit!

I post a Surveymonkey link in mid-November with a signup deadline of early-December. Participants provide their name, shipping address, email, and one sentence bio, and choose between the “send and receive within the US” and “send and receive anywhere in the world” exchanges.  They also agree to the following guidelines:

• You may send your gifts anonymously but to receive a gift, you must provide your full name below (because it is kinder to the postal service).
• The value of the gift is to be $5-10 or an equivalent value.
• All participants are to be museum staff (vendors and design firms included), museum students, or museum volunteers. This exchange is not intended for museum visitors (we love you too, but…)

Then, I match everyone, first dividing the list into US or international and then I try my best to randomize the matches. Next, I check to see if any of the matches are at the same museum or in the same state, and if so, shuffle them around.  Ideally, the matched participants will not be within a day’s drive of each other so that the exchanged items are unique to the sender’s location.  By the second week of December, I email or Reddit private message every single participant their match, a reminder of the rules, and the  schedule.  All participants are required to send their gift by December 17th.

So, how did it go?

Here are the 2017 results by the numbers:

• 82 participants exchanged gifts this year
• 2x the number of gift exchanges this year in comparison to the 2016 exchange
• 45% of matches in which a participant was willing to send to another country
• 55% of matches in which a US participants preferred to send within the country
• 6 countries participated: US, Canada, Portugal, UK, Philippines, New Zealand
• 1 participant I went to school with, who I didn’t personally solicit for participation

And some observations not by the numbers:

• By early November, two people had already contacted me asking when the 2017 exchange would be posted – having people not only remember the exchange but also looking out for it was amazing.
• I get to see multi-year participant’s careers progress via the one sentence bios that are submitted alongside the participant contact information – this year’s standout was the person who is now proudly responsible for managing a large budget.
• The MuseumPros community means a lot to people.  Here are two examples of really nice messages I received:  “I love /r/MuseumPros and I think it’s a really valuable resource…. I browse it almost daily.” and  “It’s great to be able to connect with fellow museum workers around the world in such a fun and casual platform…The subreddit has helped me deal with so many problems in the office… I appreciate all the learnings!” And more than once, I’ve been invited to people’s institutions – if and when I visit their part of the world.

This year, I also asked participants to send me a photo of what they were sending their match so that I can better advertise and grow the exchange next year (images included throughout this post).  I love the unique fan I received from the Lopez Museum in Manila printed with an archival photo of a Filipino street.  The trendiest gift was the dinosaur bag with the same design that Dustin wore on season 2 of Stranger Things – which is a sold out item with overwhelming demand!  And I also loved seeing the enthusiasm for receiving the gifts. My office mate enthusiastically opened her package and then excitedly went into our boss’s office to show her what she had received.  And that participant I mentioned above that I had gone to school with? He shared his items very excitedly on Twitter (see below).

Each year, there are a few learnings that make the next year better.  Twice, people whose museum didn’t have a gift shop wanted to participate – one sent nails that the blacksmith at their living history museum had forged and the other sent a 3d printed bust from their makerlab.  From that, I learned to add “or an equivalent value” when specifying the price range.  This year, a staff member at a nature center had a similar inquiry, which will be reflected in next year’s institutional qualifications.  I want to get more non-US participants as well – let me know of any suggestions in the comments, please.  

While you’ll have to wait another 10 months for the 2018 Museum Holiday Gift Shop Exchange sign ups, I encourage you to check out this vibrant community of over 3,000 people throughout the year.  In this past month alone, the MuseumPros community has provided interpersonal advice for a colleague managing a collection, shared a newly announced NBC prime-time comedy about a natural history museum, discussed the role of entertainment and embellishment in historical events, and posted ICOM’s misprinted marketing materials.  Previously, I, along with my co-moderator, have also hosted AMA sessions, written a job hunting resource, created a list of emergency resources, and wrote a graduate school Q and A.  If you have any ideas or want to participate in something new, let me know.

Happy holidays and see you next year for the annual Museum Holiday Gift Shop Exchange!

Imagine the following scenarios:

• Prospective visitors are asked to pay extra fees to visit your institution’s website.
• Digital visitors find your website, but it loads at an excruciatingly slow pace.
• While the homepage of your website is available, the microsites (from exhibition-specific landing pages to crowdsourcing and crowdfunding projects) are ‘pay-walled’.

Now imagine the results. Would prospective visitors pay to visit your website? Unlikely. Would digital visitors get bored waiting for the website to load and give up? Probably. Would your crowdfunded project ever hit its goal? Doubtful. Would your mission to educate be fulfilled? No.

These scenarios sound preposterous – that’s just not how the Web works, right? It’s possible that this is all about to change.

Net Neutrality, which defends an Open Internet, is under threat by the US government’s Federal Communication Commission (FCC).  This means that ‘big cable’ could impede access to information by choosing which websites load faster and which load at all, and generally controlling our behavior online. The corporations that pay or lobby the Internet Service Providers (ISPs), could influence what sites are available. And, as a result, small-money entities, from mom-and-pop-shops to small or under-funded museums could be deeply effected as well. July 17th ends a ninety day comment period run by the FCC, and today, July 12th, is the day that internet-based corporations are banding together to alert the general public.

In addition to recognizing that those who are planning to visit in person use our website as a pre-visit tool, museums need to recognize that our visitors are digital. Our digital visitors may never visit our institutions in person; they may be in another country and not have the means to travel. Or, they may be scouring the internet for places to visit in the distant future. Yet, these digital visitors come to your institution for many of the same reasons that your in person visitors do – to learn, to be entertained, for a respite.

Once we recognize that visitors are more than just the bodies that walk in our doors and that digital visitors count as well, Net Neutrality becomes increasingly important for us to fulfil our missions.  As we aim to make our institutions more welcoming for local and underserved communities, we must also fight to make our digital sites available to our web communities at large.

Many museums are recognizing the reality of the digital visitor. Recently, the Metropolitan Museum of Art released their latest visitor statistics.  After announcing their record breaking in-person attendance, they devoted subsequent paragraphs to their digital visitorship – progress at least in terms of their definition of visitor. Numbers, though, aren’t everything.  In terms of project-based results, the Smithsonian, U.S. Holocaust Museum, and Museum of the Moving Image have all met funding goals through Kickstarter campaigns.  Many of the funders are likely local, or familiar with the institutions, but not all of them.  If the websites of these institutions were not publicly available, or cost more to visit, would the prospective donors wait patiently for the site to load? Would they pay extra to see what they could then be asked to fund – thereby paying two amounts of money?

Digital visitors also come to our sites to contribute their time and expertise.  The cognitive surplus that museums have generated has at once satisfied the curiosity of visitors while making a small but significant dent in our limited resources.  Institutional crowdsourcing has forwarded countless research projects – our visitors have transcribed menus, alerted us to objects that should be on display, and given us insight into how visitors understand our objects through social tagging.  These tasks could not be achieved without our digital visitors.  If Net Neutrality is decimated, do our institutions have the financial means to hire substitutes? Do we have the bandwidth to bring in more volunteers? Are local volunteers enough to cover the digital resources that may not be nearby?

In addition to digital visitors, we need to consider how our institutional narratives are seen in the context of ‘big cable’.  Does your cable provider or its parent company have strong feelings about climate change? Natural history, interactive science, and botanical gardens which have climate change educational materials could have their websites slowed.  Does your cable provider or its parent company have strong feelings about civil rights or other activist causes? Social history, memorial, and advocacy institutions could be censored.  Does your cable provider have television or web shows that have corresponding toys? Children’s museums may need include exhibitions featuring those characters to appease the website-availability-deciders.  Even if it’s not a directive to change your mission and narrative, at what point will museum staff need to yield to their cable providers just to survive online?

If you do think your institution can survive not having a website or having one with very few visitors, because you would rely more heavily on third party sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, they don’t think this is a good idea either.  Frankly, no one does, except for the cable companies and the FCC.

Our registrars and conservators are experts in preparing for disasters.  They write documents about hurricanes and floods, fires and prodding fingers on our objects.  If Net Neutrality comes to an end – is it time for our digital teams to write their disaster plans? Given our digital world, is anyone prepared for this? Do we know where we would even start?

As our entire premise is built on sharing, educating, and preserving, it is our responsibility to join in the fight for Net Neutrality, thereby enabling us to share our content online, educate our digital visitors, and preserve the internet as it was meant to be.

Please sign. https://www.battleforthenet.com/

UPDATE:

On June 11, 2018, federal Net Neutrality protections died following an FCC vote on December 14, 2017.

Since the vote, this blog post has been linked to by futurist Bryan Alexander and Director of Technology and Digital Strategy at the MIT Museum David Nunez and since the repeal, led to an interview and article with Inverse.com, a digital publication specializing in technology, science, and culture for millennials.

Aside from earning $103.3 million during opening weekend in North America, being the highest grossing film directed by a woman, and earning 93% positive reviews on review site Rotten Tomatoes, Wonder Woman and its main character Diana Prince stand out for another reason.

Wonder Woman is joining my list of fictional-movie-and-television-characters-who-work-in-museums-or-have-art-history-degrees-which-only-tangentially-relate-to-the-main-narrative (phew, that’s a mouthful!).  As the movie begins, we see Diana entering a stunning office in The Louvre surrounded by ancient arms and armor, receiving an archival photograph.  It’s assumed that she is now part of their curatorial team, making her possibly the world’s only superhero art historian.  

Back to this list… who’s on it? 

• Diana Prince, Wonder Woman: Previously visiting lecturer on Greco-Roman mythology at Gateway City Museum of Antiquities, currently works in the Louvre’s antiquities department.
• Dr. Zoidberg, Futurama: Despite being the medical doctor for Planet Express, admits that his doctorate is in art history (S6E05).
• Mandy Hampton, The West Wing: Earned a bachelor’s in art history prior to becoming a political consultant for the Bartlet administration (S1E02).
• John Smith, Mr. & Mrs. Smith: Majored in art history at Notre Dame University.
• Charlotte York, Sex and the City: Majored in art history at Smith College, worked as a New York city gallerist through season 4.
• Blanche Devereaux, The Golden Girls: Museum assistant at a Miami art museum.
• Ross Geller, Friends: Paleontologist at the Museum of Prehistoric History, which is  supposed to be the American Museum of Natural History.
• Hannah, Made of Honor: Director of Acquisitions, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Okay, my list is only eight characters long. But that is eight characters that have reputations for being smart and they’re tied together by academic major and/or career.

More interestingly, these backgrounds are mentioned as “throwaway” lines or occasional side plots and having little or nothing to do with the main narrative.  Yet, we real-life museum workers get excited and see it as an exciting nod to our profession.  

Is it chosen because our profession is unknown and mysterious? 

Considered exciting?

Held to a higher moral standard?

Makes one seem really smart?

Are we just… cool?

For every line of dialogue that’s cut, why do these lines stay in?

How many more characters are also art historians and museologists but the dialogue gets cut before the final production?

There are, of course, also movies and television shows in which the main plot revolves around a museum or art historians:

• Night at the Museum’s Larry Daley is a security guard at the American Museum of Natural History; the movie trilogy bring him to the Smithsonian and British Museum.
• The DaVinci Code’s Jacques Saunière is a Louvre curator who is murdered, prompting Robert Langdon to solve the mystery of his death.
• Mona Lisa Smile’s Katherine Ann Watson teaches “History of Art” at Wellesley college.

But in each of these, the art history or museology plot is critical to the story. Then there are the movies about archaeologists and museologists who are actual real people doing real things, but I digress. 

Going back to the original list of fictional-movie-and-television-characters-who-work-in-museums-or-have-art-history-degrees-which-only-tangentially-relate-to-the-main-narrative, my musings don’t have much of a conclusion as much as a wink back at the directors who wink at us.  We notice. We get excited. And I hope that by making our profession the everyday life of demigods, futuristic medical doctors, political operatives, and spies, art history and museum work maintain a positive reputation. 

Have some more movie-and-television art historians and museologists to share? Comment below or tweet @ me!

Priyanka Chopra looked very familiar during the Golden Globes Red Carpet, but it wasn’t because I had seen her in a recent movie.  Her gown’s detailed geometric patterns woven into golden-yellow brocade and low neckline, coupled with her dark hair and raised arm, transformed her clearly into Adele Bauer-Bloch.

When Janelle Monae appeared in a stark white fluffy skirt with black dots of varying sizes, I saw the energy of Yayoi Kasuma’s Pumpkin.  The dark blue gown with orange accents on Caitrion Ambalfe vibrated with the same intensity as a Mark Rothko in the same colors.  Thick black graffiti danced across Heidi Klum enveloped in what must have been a Keith Haring.  

I started to live-tweet these comparisons, again, but this time, I used a new hashtag.  With another tweet, I proposed #AwardShowsSoMuseum, received multiple positive replies, and continued….

Stay tuned for subsequent award shows and look for #AwardShowsSoMuseum on Twitter!

Trust is fraught with risk.

Trust is important when web users assess knowledge claims online because we risk believing facts that are simply not true.  As Judith Simon explains, the web is an “enormous conglomeration of epistemic content of varying quality” so knowledge is not a validation of facts but “a success term labeling epistemic content that has survived critical scrutiny from multiple agents and satisfies communal standards”.

While I would typically be talking about trust in online communities, let’s go on a different and more thrilling adventure…

The Octopus

This past month, a new museum was advertised in New York City – the Staten Island Ferry Disaster Memorial Museum – which tells the story of 400 victims who died when a giant octopus attacked a Staten Island Ferry boat, on Nov. 22, 1963 – an event overshadowed by the assassination of JFK that same day. 

The corresponding brochure looked real and the person who showed it to me had found it at a tourist location.

“Eye witness accounts describe “large tentacles” which “pulled” the ferry beneath the surface…. The Staten Island Ferry Disaster Museum hopes to correct this oversight by preserving the memory of those lost in this tragedy and educating the public about the truth behind the only known giant octopus-ferry-attack in the tri-state area.”

I was immediately hooked on solving this mystery.  How had I never heard of this small museum or seen the Battery Park monument commemorating the tragedy?

When we trust information, we are taking responsibility for believing and granting authority to the evidence.  Remembering my research advocating epistemological vigilance, I was still suspicious that this place didn’t exist for the following reasons:

• While the brochure said the museum was inside Snug Harbor Cultural Center, the address placed the museum right outside of the property.
• Calls to the listed number did not lead to a person or voicemail.
• Listed Twitter account was unavailable.
• A statue appeared in Battery Park that I had never seen before.

I sent a tweet out, tagging #itweetmuseums and tagged some of the most informed museum people I know in New York. But, they hadn’t been there either – another telling clue that the museum couldn’t exist!  

One day later, the NYPost picked up the story, followed by Gothamist and Mashable, which included my Tweets in their story.  I was right to doubt the brochure’s integrity, predictability, and benevolence and while I didn’t denounce the museum as a lie, I was suspect to it all.

We now know that the story is entirely fictitious – There was never an octopus in the harbor and it surely didn’t grab a ferry.

Uncertainty and vulnerability within the trustor and trustee relationship make it hard to weigh options and to calculate possibilities.  People have to determine if others have integrity (righteous behavior), predictability (adhering to promises) and benevolence (expectation of doing good) and then must make an informed decision as whether to trust the parties.

Is it the fault of the tourists who have been actually going to Staten Island wanting to see the museum?  Have they been informed enough to calculate risk and integrity?  Is it fair to expect tourists to know this is a joke? Would they have reason to speculate?

While us real museologists may have had nothing to do with this, its important to remember how much gravitas the term “museum”  has.  Tourists – for better or worse – take our museum marketing at face value.  

Have you seen more people than usual staring at their phones in your museum? That is because “PokemonGo” was released this weekend. It quickly claimed the number one place in the app store and will soon surpass Twitter in daily active users by capturing the attention of two coveted demographics – children with cellphones and millennials craving 90s nostalgia.

PokemonGo’s tagline has remained the same as the prior GameBoy iterations.  You still want to  “catch ‘em all”, only this time it’s not limited to the virtual world inside the Gameboy.  It is the right time and place for this game: advancements in geolocation (which people increasingly find commonplace) and mobile phones (already in our pockets, no bulky awkward GoogleGlass this time!) mean Pokemon live in our world through augmented reality.  With a GPS overlay, the app knows where you are as you walk around real streets and will buzz when you get near a Pokemon.  This is where museums come in – the virtual monsters are in public places, as detailed in Pokemon’s March press release, which explains, “Explore cities and towns around where you live and even around the globe to capture as many Pokémon as you can…. Also look for PokéStops located at interesting places, such as public art installations, historical markers, and monuments, where you can collect more Poké Balls and other items.” 

To determine the location of the Pokemon, the PokeStops, and PokeGyms, it appears that PokemonGo is running from two databases.  The first would be the database of locations they used for Ingress, Niantic’s last game which was conceptually similar.  The second is the Historical Marker database, which keeps track of local points of interest in the United States.  On the plus side, this is how most towns have Pokestops.  But on the negative side, some of the historical markers were put into the Ingress databases years ago, and the sites may no longer be public.

Our museums, similarly, want to “catch” these difficult to reach children and millennials and attract them to the museum.  We’ve seen previous attempts to attract these groups with varying success – how many childrens’ activity days, young member parties, and hands-on scavenger hunts have you seen? We recruit participants for teen and young adult councils, organize internal task forces for brainstorming sessions, hire external consultants, and conduct focus groups, all to determine the best way to grab the attention of these demographics.  Museums repeatedly make claims that we are competing with Netflix and YouTube and a host of other entertainment, so when new visitors spend a weekend walking through our doors to play a game we didn’t devise, how can we capitalize on that?  Yes, you read that right: there are visitors who have walked in our doors this weekend, just to find Pokemon!

Searching “PokemonGo” and “Museum” on Twitter has dozens of people posting about visiting a local museum, often for the first time.  Most of these people have even entered the museum and walked around the exhibitions.  In large museums, Pokemon will “live” in one wing, so players are on the look out for each other to provide helpful hints  (There are multiple stories online today about people becoming real life friends through Pokemon quests.  Sherry Turkle, what do you have to say to that?).  But, there are also museums where people are just sitting in the parking lot and not venturing inside.  At one small museum, nine people were observed sitting in the parking lot playing PokemonGo, none of whom entered the museum.  And by sheer irony, this institution’s curatorial theme is fairly “nerdy”, which would likely interest the people playing the game.

It might be a challenge to pull these people away from their game, but if we museum professionals want to do community outreach, figure out what interests non-visitors, and then engage them in the world’s greatest treasures, we need to figure out how, quickly.  Some museums have advertised on Twitter and Facebook that there are Pokemon onsite.  Others have mentioned that visitors can have Pokemon battles with the staff.  Crystal Bridges has blogged about PokemonGo, posting images of their Pokemon next to art work (Pikachu is appropriately next to a Dan Flavin).  And outside of the museum-world, commercial spaces are also capitalizing on these new visitors, from indie clothing shops inviting people to catch Pokemon and browse their goods to multiple NBA teams depicting Pokemon playing with team members (which reminds me of SpaceJam).  An example of a non-museum person using a cultural site in a brilliant way was the Facebook event to walk together through the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens (near the Opera House), which attracted one thousand people and inspired the hashtag #PokeGoWalk.  Imagine if the Gardens had officially hosted the event. What can the value-add be if the event was institutionally hosted?  Could distributing discount admission tickets to a future visit increase repeat visitation?  Advertise classes? Encourage visitors to download the museum’s app?

One opportunity within the app is an in-game purchase called “Lure” to get Pokemon (and in turn visitors) to arrive at a specific Pokestop for 30 minute intervals.  This seems to be the only way to make your museum a destination, however limiting, since one can not request that a specific site becomes a Pokestop or PokeGym*.  Therefore, if your site is already a Pokestop, you’re in luck; if its not a Pokestop, you can’t drop a Lure.  Between providing free wifi (just wait until the players get their cellphone bills this month!) and Lures, visitors really are attracted to these sites.  Wait there for a few minutes with the app on, and your phone will buzz that a Pokemon has arrived.  So how does one get a Lure?  Buy one for 100 coins or 8 Lures for 680 coins (100 coins cost $.99, 550 coins for $4.99, etc).  They can be purchased and designated to a site by anyone (institution or player) that wants the Pokemon to come to them.  Then, the Lure will appear in your location on the GPS map, as a pink hotspot.  As you can see in this image, my avatar is standing at a Pokestop that has a Lure (the pink petals).  The blue hotspots are Pokestops (which turn pink when you “touch” them) and there is a PokeGym at the crossroad of Times Square, NYC.  CEO John Hanke is already planning upgrades, including customizable functions for Pokestops and PokeGyms, including the possibility of sponsored locations, although no timetable has been set.

We might not have built this app, but the people have come.

* As of July 14 (4 days after this post was initially published), PokemonGo has enabled requests for Pokestops and Pokegyms on their website.  Now, any tourist or cultural attraction that was not included in the release can make a request by providing contact information, rationale, and exact location for review by the Niantic business development team.  Regarding sponsored locations, it is being reported that McDonalds will be the first partnership.  

Reposted on MuseumHack.

UPDATE: This post led to an on-air interview aired globally with the BBC World Service’s Cultural Frontline, and was quoted in Hyperallergic’s Pokémon Go Users Flock to Museums, Passing Picasso in Search of Pikachu, DMLCentral’s The Secret Sauce in Pokémon Go: Big Data, The Vancouver Sun’s Could Pokemon Go help Vancouver arts organizations?, and Dr. Juilee Decker’s textbook Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums.

AAM2016’s theme was heavy – “Power, influence and responsibility” – and widely interpreted.  Among two of the most notable talks were Kaywin Feldman’s elegant polemic on being “too young and too female” for a directorship position (her presentation was literally met by audience cheers) and David Rubenstein ’s affirmation that he puts historic documents he owns on view for the American public to see. But short of wielding power and influence at their levels, the rest of us also have a responsibility to museum visitors.

While my presentation about a selfie app (made in partnership between the Milwaukee Art Museum and Antenna) may seem more fun than serious, there is an element of gravitas when we empower our visitors to be content creators.  The museum has the power to focus visitor’s attention of specific works of art and their stories – in this case, the portrait miniatures whose identities have been lost to time.  Our influence emboldens present day visitors to become active participants in and have visual “conversations” with the museum, by making selfies.  And it’s our responsibility to create the tools that enable this to be possible.  I’ve related these ideas and the selfie generation app to Clay Shirky’s concept of the “Plausible Promise” which explains that participation comes when there are specific goals, tools to achieve those goals and opportunities for sharing and success.  In my opinion, the responsibility that we collectively make to every visitor (in the gallery and online) should be that they will learn and experience something extraordinary and that we will provide the tools to do that – be it an app, an activity, or the ability to see the world’s greatest treasures.

This presentation was accompanied by me explaining each slide and providing a narrative to tie it all together.  So if you want to know more, reply in the comments or give me a shout on Twitter.

And finally, a big thanks to my fellow panelists who presented their academic take on selfie culture (Jeff Bowen of University of Houston-Clear Lake Art Gallery), a case study on a pointillism selfie photo booth (Brooke Rosenblatt of Phillips Collection and the Freer|Sackler), and a case study on the Dali selfie kiosk (Kathy Greif of The Dalí Museum).