Minnesota Children's Museum today |
Should we focus on opening
our museum in a permanent site with the space and amenities we really want or
should we open sooner in a smaller site and assume we’ll move later?
This is one of the most
frequently asked questions from groups starting a museum. Mostly I hear it from
children’s museums, but it is no different for virtually any new museum. One
would think that being asked this question repeatedly over 30 years that I, and
other museum planners, would have a good answer. Nope. There are no simple
answers to this question. In fact, no single answer could fit every, or
even many, museums’ circumstances.
The question itself
reveals the complexity and various trade-offs involved in making a decision
with far-reaching implications. Realities of capacity and readiness must play a
role in whether a museum is able take on a large, permanent home or is better
suited to grow site by site. Often opportunity and even serendipity have a
deciding, if invisible, hand in what site shows up, where, when, and with what
strings. Inevitably, the relativity of time distorts the meaning of permanent.
Three years is forever in the life of a 5-year old organization but merely a pause
in a 30-year organizational journey.
First Site
Whether a museum operates
with no walls, borrowed walls, or permanent walls, in the end each answers the
question of it first site its own way. In my experience starting in an
unbelievably small space, moving onto a somewhat bigger second space, and then
landing in a good-sized third or fourth space is not unusual. Madison Children’s Museum
where I was involved during its mobile years and its first two spaces has grown through multiple moves as
has Minnesota Children’s Museum where I worked in its second and third sites.
Growing site-by-site characterizes how a number of established museums have
grown.
• Austin Children's Museum (TX) operated
as a museum without walls from 1983 to 1987 when it moved into a 5,000 square
foot (s.f.) space. Ten years later it opened in a 20,000 s.f. space in downtown
Austin. In May 2012, the Museum broke ground for a 40,000 s.f. building in a
mixed-use development northeast of downtown.
• Bay Area Discovery Museum (Sausalito, CA)
opened in a 2,500 s.f. pilot site at a shopping center in Marin County north
of San Francisco, in 1987. In 1991 the Museum relocated to a 7-1/2 acre campus
at Fort Baker (under the Golden Gate Bridge) and occupied 21,000 s.f. In 1993
and 1999, additions increased the space to 31,000 s.f. and then
31,500 s.f. New construction on an
entry building with classrooms and performance space, improvements on interior
spaces, and development of exterior play areas took place between 2003 and 2005
increasing indoor s.f. to 52,000 plus 1.84 acres of outdoor exhibits.
• Chicago Children’s Museum
opened in the hallways of Chicago Public Library in 1982 and moved to a 7,000
s.f. space in Lincoln Park in 1986. A move to a 21,000 s.f. space in North Pier
followed in 1989. The Museum opened in its current home of 57,000 s.f. at Navy
Pier in1995. Plans are underway for an expansion.
•
Explore & More Children’s Museum
in East Aurora (NY) opened in 1994 with 500 s.f. of exhibit space in a school
and added 500 s.f. more in 1997. In 2000 the Museum relocated to a 6,500 s.f.
space in an office-park building in a residential neighborhood. Currently
planning is underway for new construction of 25,000 -30,000 s.f. of space in a
multi-use development at the western terminus of the Erie Canal in downtown
Buffalo.
Madison Children's Museum's first walls |
•
Madison Children’s Museum (WI) shifted from traveling exhibits in public venues to a 500 s.f. basement space
in the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters in 1980 and was open on
weekends and school holidays until 1985 when it moved into a 5,000 s.f. space
in the garden level of an old factory building at the edge of downtown. In 1991 the
museum opened 8,000 s.f. of space in a renovated bank building on State Street.
Twenty years later, it moved 58,000 s.f. in a renovated a 1929 Montgomery Ward Building right off the Capitol Square.
•
Minnesota Children’s Museum opened in 1981 in a 6,000
s.f. space in the Itasca Warehouse along the Minneapolis River front. In 1985,
it relocated to an 18,000 s.f. historic railroad building midway between
Minneapolis and St. Paul. In 1995 the Museum moved into a newly built 65,000
s.f. building in downtown St. Paul. Recently, the Museum announced a 14,000
s.f. addition to its current building and reconfiguration of interior spaces.
Madison Children's Museum 2012 |
The earliest spaces these
museums called home were modest. Some were so small or incidental–like the hallways
Chicago Children’s Museum occupied–they were not even measured. Some early
spaces received minimal preparation and others were renovated. Getting from a
first space to a “permanent” home can take 10 years or 30 years. As these
timelines illustrate, even when a museum is in its “permanent” home, its
physical footprint is likely to change by growing and reconfiguring space.
Facility and site changes are a reality; they reflect museums’ responses to changing contexts and to serving
visitors whose interests and priorities change.
Bigger Steps
Site by site growth is not
the only model for growing a museum. There are fewer, but increasingly more,
museums that open “full-size” in a permanent home. Betty Brinn Children’s Museum (Milwaukee, WI) opened in a new 25,000 s.f. space
in 1995 without incubating in a previous site. Creative Discovery Museum (Chattanooga, TN) opened in a new 42,5000 s.f. building in
1995. Stepping Stones Museum for Children (Norwalk, CT) opened in a new 19,000 s.f. building in 2000 and opened a
22,000 s.f. addition in 2010.
In 30 years, the arts,
culture, and education landscape where museums position themselves has changed
across the country. Children’s museums have become more familiar in towns and
cities and are relatively established in the lives of American children and
childhoods. Making the case for a children’s museum or science center doesn’t
have to start with an introduction to an unfamiliar museum concept.
With the growth of
museums, the start-up and expansion process has consolidated and become
somewhat formalized. A group starting a museum will often find and identify their own
“benchmarks,” museums in communities of similar size or with a similar vision; they will know their histories and growth. Sharing and developing resources for starting museums have
also occurred on several fronts. The Association of Children’s Museums
published Collective Vision
in 1997. It sponsors an annual emerging museum conference and launched Collective Vision On-line Tool Kit
in 2011. The Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums has offered an annual Building Museums symposium.
In 2012, Minnesota Historical Society published Building Museums: A Handbook for Small and Midsize Organizations by Robert Herskovitz, Timothy Glines, and David Grabitske.
Navigating Site Questions
The site-growth question
is not only common, but is also bound up with other long-term strategic choices
a museum faces at an early stage in its development when it has few
procedures and precedents for guidance. Site questions will always interact
with larger questions of a museum’s vision, process, and position. Site and facility are more tangible ways for a board to approach larger,
more abstract issues of mission or what the museum is and will become. The very
concreteness of site’s size, its address, and expense can mean greater
comfort in finding a site than exploring intangibles like experience, quality, or
learning value.
Finding a first site–or
perhaps any site–also requires distinguishing among size-related considerations like
location, quality, or vision. For some museums, questions of site and
facility are actually a proxy for other issues like fundraising goals (modest
or ambitious?); personal or professional relationships in the real estate,
construction, or development sectors; or values related to diversity and
access. Finally a sense of urgency to find a site can be so insistent for
founders and board members that it dominates the other business of starting a
museum, overshadows other possible ways the museum could pursue growth, and at
times actually derails a museum project.
Learning from Experience,
Proceeding with Confidence
There
is no formula for finding the right site at the right time in a relatively
simple process. A few guidelines do emerge, however, from scanning the
experiences–successful and otherwise–of other museums that have wrestled with
finding a site.
•
Vision: Maintain a roomy vision for the museum, even if it will take a
long time to physically grow
into that big vision. Keep the vision.
•
Discuss. Engage in lots of lively discussion about site and size. Bring
new questions and new information to the discussions. Be honest and respectful
in discussing the museum’s capacity to successfully raise funds, create an
outstanding experience, and effectively operate a site.
•
Evaluate. Develop a really solid set of site selection criteria to help
frame what is required of a site and to compare sites. Revisit the criteria
periodically because circumstances change. This does not mean changing the criteria every month. It does mean bringing
new information, perspectives, and questions to the criteria to test, refine, and
strengthen them and the candidates. This builds a strong, shared sense of what they mean–and
don’t mean–for longer-term and newer board members. When the real site decision comes up, things can move very
fast.
•
Compare. Build a strong list of promising sites well informed by an
understanding of the real estate market, neighborhoods, zoning issues, and the
health of other culturals. Visit the sites. Always–always– look at multiple
sites and compare and contrast.
•
Realism. Be realistic about the museum’s challenges and capacity. Be
aware of committing to a larger facility than the museum will be able to support
financially and will have the capacity to operate well. At the same time, avoid
frequent moves. Relocating is demanding. It takes a lot out of a museum staff; it can be challenging to bring visitors along to a new location.
•
Setbacks. It’s not unusual to find an “ideal” site that then falls
through. In hindsight, the site turns out not to be as good as it seemed at the
time: the area didn’t take off or a site of a better size came along.
•
Caution. Even the best-managed site processes can become enmeshed in
controversial issues that initially seem minor. Be alert to the early signs of
a pubic fuss arising about a site, especially if the museum is associated with
it. Contact museums that have had to navigate similar situations and learn from
their experiences.
•
Opportunity. Keep an eye out for opportunity. Listen for the knock.
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