Work in Progress

By Maria Mortati

One of our current projects, The Fort Collins Discovery Museum has posted a set of panoramic views of the job site. It's a lot of fun for us to see things progress. For those that live there in town, it must be really exciting.

Looking Deeply in the Art Museum

By Maria Mortati

A few weeks ago, I again participated in an Enormous Microscopic Evening, this year at the Hammer Museum. It's an event created by the artist-run Critter Salon, and was supported by the Machine Project residency at the Hammer.

I ran the DIY Scope table, letting folks play and helping them assemble a variety of viewers from found objects. The audience was delighted that the Hammer was supporting this event, and I had countless folks asking me if they would "do this again".

Young participant chooses her lenses.

I've written a few times about the idea that artists make great public programmers. They are experts at exploring ideas and figuring out how to involve others.  The goal at this event was to "celebrate and demonstrate the range of equipment people are using to explore the invisible". Phil Ross, the force behind Critter, described the event as a "large microscope jam session".

The fact that this event was held at an art museum was a nice foil for Critter's objectives:

"CRITTER presents cultural events that focus on the way science is practiced in everyday life, taking form as talks, classes, demonstrations and workshops."

It underscored that point and caught an audience who typically comes to "look" in an art museum by surprise. Visitors were exposed to a variety of ways of looking and navigating in the barely visible, and often academic world.

It was a fantastic success. I had kids and adults coming back for more after making a loop around the room. The layout of which was arranged with the the DIY table in the center, with the full regalia of microscopists forming the edges. 

Feel free to visit the Flickr set by Machine Project here. Photo courtesy of Machine Project/Marianne Williams, poster by Critter Salon.

Speaking of Humble Materials...

RE-CREATE show entries spanned use and metaphor.

By Maria Mortati

How funny just after Justine's recent post on "do humble materials belong in museums" I happened upon Julia Storrs of the Museum of Children's Art (MOCHA) setting up for an exhibit opening this Friday night called "RE-CREATE":

"Re-Create is a recycled art competition and exhibition that is open to student artists (K-12) in Oakland schools. Students are invited to create artwork using discarded or reused materials and compete for prizes."

The "museum" operates out of an empty storefront on Oakland's waterfront. For this exhibit, kids collaborated in teams to practice their 4 R's (reduce, reuse, recycle and... rot).

Julia Storrs,  curator, artist, and teacher, with one of the entries.

Using humble materials and backed up by a well-defined program, kids rose to the challenge– creating some wonderful collaborations on a variety of scales. This exhibit is ephemeral, and the raw storefront space is a perfect backdrop for the kid's art.

If you have the opportunity, go see it! Opens this Friday night, 54 Water Street (Jack London Square) 6 - 8 pm.

Visit their website for the skinny.

Asian Art Museum Wants Your Input

By Maria Mortati

Today I received a request to participate in a survey* for the SF-based Asian Art Museum. I always think what is most interesting are the questions asked. 

If you are so inclined, and especially if you live in the Bay Area, give it a try. What do you think they are thinking about?

Asian Art Museum Survey

*They are not a client of ours.

Engagement at the Urban Waterfront

 By Maria Mortati

Recently, I was invited to participate on a panel in SF about creating engaging public spaces at the urban waterfront.

Yes, I know, the waterfront is already a draw– it's a giant confrontation between ourselves and the great unknown. In urban areas, however, it's pretty challenging to simply get to the water (on the east side of San Francisco that is particularly true), let alone engage with it.

Planning & Design

Dan Hodapp, Senior Waterfront Planner at the Port of San Francisco helped the audience understand how the Port looks at the watefront on a larger scale: the diversity of usages it needs to support, and the ways the city needs to meet it. This includes how far people must walk amongst access points, industry, and entertainment. 

Challenging  Design Environment

I talked about 'Impermanence as a Design Strategy' for creating engaging exhibits at the water's edge. It's hard to do permanent work there: environmental impact on maintenance, urban impact on exhibits, politics of civic art & design. 

I based this on case studies of art;  Ledia Carroll's project through Southern Exposure on tracing the edge of the built-over Mission Lake in SF, informal shared research; the Hidden Ecologies Project, and my work designing and building prototypes along the waterfront in SF for the Outdoor Exploratorium. What these things have in common is that they were/are fairly achievable on a variety of scales, and yet had a lot of impact.

Large Scale Public Involvement
Kate Bickert, Director of Trails Forever for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy talked about the involvement of the community in the redevelopment of Crissy Field. That was and is a fantastic, long-term model of civic engagement in a local resource. 

She also showed discussed some cools projects such as the Learning Barge, being developed a the UVA School of Architecture: 

"The Learning Barge will address this deficit as it traverses the highly polluted and urbanized Elizabeth River. The educational spaces and interactive exhibits will provide meaningful, hands-on education... The Learning Barge will serve residents of the Elizabeth River watershed and Hampton Roads population of 1.6 million. Over 19,000 formal and informal learners are anticipated each year, including K-12 students and teachers, diverse community groups, families, children, adults and elders of all backgrounds." -Learning Barge Web Site

BTW, there's also the Science Barge in Yonkers, NY. It's a floating sustainable demonstration garden that is a great draw for the waterfront and for informal science education.

Public Art at the Waterfront

Ned Kahn (do I have to tell you who he is?) shared his fascination with (and I should say mastery of) intersections between the built world and the nature of fluid dynamics. 

It was beautiful.

Image: Lars Ploughman

If wishes were horses beggars would ride

Justine Roberts, Principal


Our very own Maria Mortati is founder and curator of the San Francisco Mobile Museum - an experimental project that organizes exhibitions, plays with approaches to exhibiting, and explores what it means to be a "museum".   Their second exhibit - FREE SHRINES - opens as part of the Exploratorium's After Dark event this Thursday 6pm - that's tomorrow.

FREE SHRINES is a bit of an experiment.  Anyone can submit work to an SFMM "challenge" and it will be exhibited. This is a little bit like an open-comment blog where there is no one editing posts before they go public  However, Maria does shape the presentation.  She creates an exhibit out of the submissions, bringing in considerations about the audience, organizing the work into a larger theme, and mixing traditional interpretive elements with objects made by local participants. 

Also in FREE SHRINES is a place for people to add on the spot. 

The idea for FREE SHRINES came from everyday life.  Maria drives to our office in Oakland and along the way she often sees roadside shrines, and wonders about who those people were, or who was left behind. Then she started noticing her own little accidental shrines around her house: photos from the kids and an object grouped together from a certain era, cards and a statue and a picture of her grandparents. As she explains it: 

"I realized a lot of people may have these informal shrines around them. As I researched the world of international and famous shrines and shrine practice, it became clear to me that it is rarely theological, but rather a way to communicate with the intangible- to give it form. Whether it is  wish, a remembrance or a reverence."

The SFMM is experimental - each new project and exhibition is a chance to think about a new question or strategy.  The whole effort is designed to fit into Maria's car and this transportability, which is at the heart of the whole effort, has been noted by The Center for the Future of Museums as part of a potentially emerging trend for "museums" that are not place-based.

If you are in town, stop by the Exploratorium and say hello.  And let us know what you think here!

How many people does it take to make a new museum?

Our client, the Fort Collins Discovery Museum has revised their website in regards to the new museum project. We're thrilled by the fact that they're giving all the external players credit. It's also a great overview of what types of groups need to come together on the "outside" to make projects such as these happen:

http://www.fcmdsc.org/about/new/designers.html

One thing not mentioned is the staff at the Museum. They have been collaborating very closely with us; going out into the community, researching and co-developing the exhibits. They are a talented, cooperative and passionate group. It's such a richer project and process as a result of this relationship.

Interesting New Museum Project Preview

One of our clients- the Fort Collins Discovery Museum, had an interesting video of the new project developed by their local TV station. I like the inserts of the museum's co-directors walking you through the virtual site/space. They've taken our exhibit renderings, landscape plans and architectural images to make a collage overview.

Check it out:

Museum Futures from the Future of Museums

The Center for the Future of Museums recently published a report called "Demographic Transformation and the Future of Museums". It's a substantial tome which lays out the story for paying careful attention to who we think our audiences are now, and are becoming. "Majority Minority—What Will It Mean for Museums?" is a key section.

http://www.futureofmuseums.org/reading/publications/2010.cfm

There is lots of thought-provoking and inspiration for budget-setting material in there. Take a look. We'll be posting from time to time about it as we review the information and balance it against our experiences -looking backward and forward.

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pat_ossa/4336431744/

Exploratory Science

While we're on the topic of supporting education, I thought I'd also post this TED Talk by Brian Cox. He is a physicist from CERN who is also a voicebox in the UK on explaining physics to folks.

It makes the point that the cost of exploratory science is... priceless:

"...for every $1 spent on the Apollo program, $14 came back..."

April Rides for "Equity in Education"

We're not late, we're talking about our very own April Banks, designer extraordinaire, who is also an artist. Last Friday, she left on an bike trek across the US with school teacher Kelly Clark for We Ride, a campaign to bring awareness to Public Education in America.

Why you ask? According to Kelly:

"This ride is about sharing the message of public schools being the backbone in every sector of any industry. Public schools educate the majority of us. Public schools should educate us well. Public schools are essentially the last remaining platform where all citizens have the right to attend/participate without any direct ‘out of pocket’ expense. Public schools are our opportunities to create healthy, productive, safe, and fair communities. Public schools are our chance to help children, families, and communities build a happier world."

If you would like to support their work, you can make direct donations or buy cool tee shirts at: http://www.weride3000.com/

Go April!

Staff time on visitor participation?

We wanted to check in and ask the general museum community how it's going with your visitor contribution exhibits. Things like post-it walls, maps, and other non-digital participatory experiences that require upkeep.

Has it had any impact on staff time? Maintenance? We'd love to hear from you.

Image: National Constitution Center by Gyroscope.

Informal Science Panel... on the Radio!

Local Bay Area radio call-in show "Forum" hosted a panel at the Exploratorium called "From The Exploratorium: Engaging Kids in Science":

"With California schools facing a huge budget crisis, what's being done to maintain and grow quality science education in the state's K-12 schools? In a special remote broadcast from San Francisco's Exploratorium, we look at innovative programs going on in the Bay Area to bring science to communities with limited resources."

There were some great comments, questions, and discussions around not only the value of Inquiry-Based Learning, but practices explored. On the panel were leadership in learning from the Explo, and the Bay Area school system.

It's exciting that these ideas are being aired with a broader audience. 

Podcast should be available later today via the link above. Have a listen.

Searching Museums

Yes, I'm being facetious post Museums & the Web, but this looks like an area of tremendous opportunity if you haven't embraced it yet. 

Web site Search utility is often under-realized. However, it's probably the one feature on a museum website that offers your on-line visitors the closest thing to an in-house experience.

Major art museums are out in front on this- at the conference it was noted that MOMA has figured it out. Especially with their Collections Browser. It's a bit buried, but it's a cool utility. In reviewing it, Nate Solas of the Walker stated that people like being able to search in different ways and get results in meaningful ways: "Concept Browsing is a great way to surface deep content and provide a sense of fun and discovery vs. straight up Search".

Expanding the backend behind Search and Browse on your website, and reframing it on the visitor experience end makes a lot of sense from a practical to an educational and finally, a cohesive branding perspective. It's about expanding access- to even things you can't show at the moment (or ever).

The SFMOMA does a great job of making this clear with their "Explore Modern Art" being at the top of their main navigation. My wee gripe being it's not blindingly clear what ArtScope is, and "Explore Our Collection" is a bit buried. I'm averse to feeling like an outsider especially at a modern art museum.

Thoughtful interlinking amongst your content, collections, and yes, even your gift shop, looks like a worthy next step for an expansion or enhancement.

It's also a good strategy for smaller museums that may not be able to afford capital campaigns but could swing some web development.

Museums & the Web 2010: a few rules of thumb

Museums and the Web is an annual museum/tech conference that caters mostly to developers. Archimuse, runs the conference and does a good job of capturing the detail from sessions on the site. 

Here are a couple of quick hits from my time in Denver– much of this we’ve written about before, but it’s worth repeating:

If you want visitors to contribute to your on-line project, hang out in the spaces where they are and respond. Don’t expect to put up a visitor created content experience or participatory design web site if you aren’t there yourself.

For example, if you want a lot of followers on your Facebook page, then you have to find like-minded folks, friend them, post relevant info to their needs (that of course reinforces your identity) and follow up. Keep the party alive.

All aspects of a website reinforce your institution, not just the graphics. Christina DePaolo from the Seattle Art Museum suggested that everything from the text on your site (no matter how informal), to the experience of surfing it, needs to reflect your institution or brand. Do so cohesively.

Sometimes, every department wants their content on the home page, but that can make for a lousy intro. If you’re still having a hard time determining what goes where, Dana Mitroff Silvers of the SFMOMA suggested that you try bringing the public in to help.

When you’re too close to the trees, make topic cards and bring them out onto the floor– let the public take a stab at organizing them into content “buckets.

Connect with your collection/exhibits on your website (even if it’s not out on the floor) and do it in a variety of ways. Finding both obvious and unexpected ways to connect back and forth to your physical collection is ideal. 

Nate Solas from the Walker Art Center suggested if you are going to provide “deep links” into your site's content, be sure to give visitors a sense of where they arrived. They may be coming from a Google search.

Speaking of which, next let's look at why it's good idea for museums to do justice to their search feature.


Image courtesy of Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/teknokool/

This just in: "Arts Career Mushrooms in California" ?

Hopeful little article from "Live Career News" (I'd never heard of them either). They're saying that things are looking good in SoCal for museum workers. Statistically speaking, of course:

"The infusion of "new curatorial blood," the report says, reflects a "growing ethnic diversity and as well as fresh perspectives and programmatic growth," as the art world tries to lure back art patrons and enthusiasts."

http://bit.ly/b78PIY

Bring it.

San Francisco Chronicle is Pro Model

Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle arts critic wrote an article about museum designers and the benefit of using scaled models. 

There are many advantages to the physical model- especially the immediate sharing of them with interested parties, and the physical familiarity. We also use 3D models and fly-throughs– which he doesn't touch upon, but Ron Davis will in future posts.

It's a great little piece for the power of the maquette:

"An exhibition model "also works to get people excited about a show," Roberts said, "particularly the trustees... We also get visitor services to have a look because they point out possible problems with flow or egress ... I also show it to the engineer because of issues with fire code and such.""

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/31/DDF41CND0F.DTL

Museums & Technology conference: guest review

By Lauren Merker, Research Assistant

I thought I would follow-on to Maria’s post on the California Association of Museums’ annual conference with my impressions. It took place in Silicon Valley- a seemingly appropriate location for a conference titled “Museums and Technology”.

I (and presumably like most of the attendees) came for a variety of reasons, but with high expectations for learning about innovative techniques and cutting edge trends in the museum field. This expectation was probably driven by the ubiquitous and often times mysterious word “technology” following the word “museum” in the conference title. I came prepared to be wowed and inspired by cool gadgets, innovative uses of social media and the Internet, and new ways museums have used technology to make what they do more accessible. Unfortunately, my standards may have been a bit too high.

The conference was structured to focus on technology, innovative uses of social media and the Internet, and cool gadgets that could be used in a museum setting. However, it was made clear to me that the attendees, and even many of the presenters, were just not ready to bring the conversations up to a level that inspires. Instead, the conference was kicked off with a metaphor about how a popcorn maker and a shower head exemplified the best kind of technology (no offense Nina) and that thread of “sticking to what works” wove itself throughout the entire rest of the day. The bar of innovation was set low and underneath it was an unwavering din of technological confusion, misunderstandings about media and the Internet, and grasping on for dear life to “what has always worked”.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I may be (barely) part of the “Millennial Generation”- happily riding the wave of instant communication, knowledge, and gratification. But my cuspy birth year roots me firmly in the ideals of Generation X, which gives me my shaky sense of pragmatism and a healthy bit of mistrust. So I get it. I empathize with the museum professionals who haven’t blindly embraced any and all forms of media and technology for use in their institutions. Admittedly, much of these techy gadgets and flashy websites won’t in any way execute a mission more effectively. But, cant we at least open up our minds to the possibility that some of these gadgets may be useful? And that some types of social media can reach new and diverse audiences? And understand that dabbling in big, fun ideas can be a great exercise that creates a mood of risk-taking and achieving the impossible? Sigh…maybe at the 2015 “Museums and Technology” conference.

Making Use of Ubiquity: CAM 2010

The mash-up above represents the feeling I had while attending C.A.M. “Museums and Technology” 2010. From the comments at talks I attended, smaller institution folks are not quite feeling the love. I think in the under-funded, under-staffed mass scramble to make sense, utilize, and wow their public, museum infrastructure and staff have gotten a bit overwhelmed.

There's a big paradigm shift going on. A major take-away for many was the idea that technology is a tool that the public brings to the museum and that the museum can use to engage with their public.

In ye olden days (like, 3 years ago), when I heard “museums and technology” it meant a computer-based interactive in a museum. Now we bring it with us– it’s so ubiquitous that it’s gotten confusing. Instead of pushing content, we’re pulling, sharing, dishing, and mashing it up.

As many of us know however, web 2.0, smartphones, etc. have given all of us the opportunity to:

• Expand their audience in ways they never thought possible, including caring about an audience who may never walk through your door (think of a researcher in the UK who wants to access your collections data in Southern California)
• Enhance the existing experience by designing to leverage the technology visitors have with them, or build new experiences that are more social or more open-ended
• Get your museums’ information, expertise out there in ways that were not possible before (beyond the web site).

Developing or implementing a strategy of how to phase-in or start fresh to engage with this shift takes some thinking and prioritization-- but the payoffs are huge. In coming posts we’ll look at some of the good ideas the conference raised. 

It may be that the most effective thing to do is not to reinvent the wheel, but reinvent... or reinforce your thinking.

Wouldn't that be nice?

NY Times: "Panel Proposes Single Standard for All Schools"

This article came out a few days ago from the NYT. It's something that could make our lives easier at the Master Planning and Exhibit Development level as we work to reinforce local vs. national education standards with exhibits.

"The new proposals could transform American education, replacing the patchwork of standards ranging from mediocre to world-class that have been written by local educators in every state."

This is an ambitious  goal and we hope that they are successful in making it work... and work well.

PS: as with any suggestion of systemic change there comes debate in case you have the time.