After the Mona Lisa 2.0 by Devorah Sperber. North Carolina Museum of Art |
The question, what does your museum make possible?” arose
as I read a tribute to David Carr, scholar, thinker, and friend of libraries
and museums. In Think With Me: David
Carr’s Enduring Invitation in Curator (Vol. 59, No. 2), three of Carr’s admirers
and museum colleagues, Beverly Sheppard, Marsha Semmel, and Carol Bossert,
remember and reflect on Carr’s graceful, insightful, and sometimes provocative ways
of thinking, teaching, and mentoring.
When I think of David
Carr, I think of his interest in pushing beyond what appear to be the limits of
knowing and thinking. I remember the poetic provocations he made seemingly
effortlessly in his writings and speaking. Working with him on the Reading the
World issue of the Journal of Museum Education that I guest edited in 2004 generated
an expanded view of literacy in museums. David explored how reading text,
objects, and collections are starting points for taking the experience of the
museum beyond its walls.
Libraries and museums,
Carr thought, “must encourage us to explore the unfinished nature of our lives,
and to generate more questions.” They “must become places that assist the
mind’s unfolding–they must recognize knowledge as a process, not a thing.”
Museums and libraries he described “as being about what they made possible, not
what they contain, presenting their collection as springboards to deepen
thought and courageous questions.” (Curator Vol. 59. No. 2. p. 115)
In the Context of the Possible
Thinking with David about what
museums make possible is an open invitation to consider their value. How can
museums matter to their visitors, partners, and communities? What are promising
benefits of visiting a museum, exploring an exhibit, being part of a project or
program, discussing ideas with friends or family, studying the catalogue, reflecting
on a visit?
Exploring what museums can
make possible helps us understand what these benefits might look like for
children of different ages, youth from low-income homes, and seniors
experiencing isolation; for first time visitors and long-time friends; for
regular museum-goers and experience samplers. With images such as these in
mind, we can start to envision, size up, and describe likely impacts. Only then can we begin to intentionally contribute to those changes by creating the
conditions that increase the chances they will be called forth. Although we may
not be able to measure the changes precisely or for several years, a frame
around value helps us communicate how museums matter with greater clarity and
confidence internally and to supporters and decision makers.
Setting this thinking in
the context of the possible provides a poetic starting
point for exploring and capturing museums’ value. It keeps in mind the full
measure of a museum’s aspirations even as it follows them to their impacts. A
focus on the possible balances quantifying a museum’s value and condensing it
to a number, or even a set of numbers.
What can–and do–art,
science, history, natural history, cultural, and children’s museums, zoos,
aquaria, and visitor and nature centers make possible? How do they inspire,
motivate, transform, and challenge children, youth, and adults to think,
question, learn, make different choices, act, and perhaps, occupy their lives differently?
How do they contribute to individual and common good?
Some of What Museums Make Possible
Below is a sampling of
what museums make possible for individuals, family and community groups, and the
larger community.
1.
Give insights into how parts of the world work. As places
of things, museums are full of real objects, varied materials, tools, technology,
and phenomena. With the freedom to explore, experiences of planned discovery
allow children, youth, and adults to interact with natural phenomena and
scientific ideas. In maker spaces, they experiment with raw materials and their
properties; use shop tools; and engage with skilled facilitators. They find a
framework of knowledge in a collection of objects or how parts of the world relate
and are ordered.
2.
Offer moments of freedom and respite. The quiet of a gallery, view from a tower,
expanse of a sculpture garden, and calm of a nature trail create a separation
from the day’s routine and demands. Moments of escape and solitude can empty
the mind, transport us to distant places and times, invite contemplation and
reflection, make space for new thoughts, and restore us allowing us to inhale
more.
3.
Help solve community problems. Museums work with community partners to manage, if
not solve, community challenges like homelessness, inclusion, workforce development,
health, or environmental problems. The B.B. King Museum and Interpretive Center’s
7-week summer camp in Indianola, MS for children and youth 6 – 15 years has
focused on childhood obesity making connections with local music and dance
traditions.
4.
Grow new knowledge across many fields. In the research they conduct and participate in,
museums generate knowledge. They contribute to scholarship in carrying out and
publishing research on their collections and sites. Some conduct research on
learning, embodied cognition, play, or biodiversity. Many more are sites for college
or university research. Development of research agendas by museum associations suggests
more and more extensive research in museums and a greater role in growing
valuable knowledge.
5. Support life-long learners. Many of the tour guides adding depth to our exploring exhibitions in museums, parks, and zoos are docents. Trained volunteers, they undergo extensive and intensive training in interpretation and communication, the museum’s collections, access and interactive learning. Docent training at the Minneapolis Institute of Art lasts 6 months and involves reading and shadowing experienced docents. Life-long learners, docents facilitate others’ learning.
5. Support life-long learners. Many of the tour guides adding depth to our exploring exhibitions in museums, parks, and zoos are docents. Trained volunteers, they undergo extensive and intensive training in interpretation and communication, the museum’s collections, access and interactive learning. Docent training at the Minneapolis Institute of Art lasts 6 months and involves reading and shadowing experienced docents. Life-long learners, docents facilitate others’ learning.
6.
Develop social capital. Youth development programs that use a positive
youth development framework contribute to the development of healthy,
contributing youth from all economic, ethnic, and family backgrounds. Such
programs in zoos, science museums and centers, art and children’s museums can
be year-round and multi-year. Some, like the New York Hall of Science, feed a Science
Career ladder at the museum.
7.
Take on big ideas that can make big changes. Along with its community partners, the Children’s
Museum of Tacoma has been working to make valuing childhood a community value, co-sponsoring
an annual symposium and opening a preschool. Since 2009 The Wild Center in the
Adirondack Mountains has been hosting summits on climate change. Museums working
with multiple partners using the Collective Impact model to close the
achievement gap among children are setting example for other cities.
8.
Increase a sense of agency and competence. Museums provide a chance to learn what others
can’t teach us. Changing the outcome of an experiment, assessing physical risk
on a climbing structure, balancing across a fallen tree, shaping a pot from
clay, building a circuit, or participating in a community project with the
museum can be challenging. Attempting something new, sticking with it, feeling
successful help boost a sense of agency and confidence.
9.
Change the direction of a life. In sharing their collections, presenting
exhibitions, telling stories, giving tours, and presenting speakers, museums
inspire interests, ideas, and questions pursued by children, youth, and adults
throughout life. Touched emotionally by stories, inspired by a painting or print,
developing a hobby, starting a personal collection, connecting with nature, or even
becoming a TV anchor after sitting in front of an exhibit camera as a child,
museums affect the direction of a life in small and large ways.
10.
Expand the local learning landscape. Museums occupy several noteworthy places on their
local learning landscapes. They are sites for field trips that connect with the
classroom curriculum and offer professional development for teachers in STEM,
early literacy, local history and art. Centers for professional development
like the Exploratorium’s Teacher Institute play an on-going role in supporting
teachers and transforming classroom teaching. Across the country children
attend museum schools and preschools at dozens of museums.
11.
Spark extraordinary insights. Museums create larger-than-life experiences where
we encounter what is unfamiliar, different, sometimes seismic in connecting
with nature, cultures, space, history, or global events. The traveling Bodyworld
exhibition revealed extraordinary and sometimes disturbing views of inside the
human body. The Wild Center’s Wild Walk takes us among the treetops for an
expansive view of the Adirondack Forest. There is a moment of shock and horror coming
upon 4,000 victim’s shoes confiscated by the Nazis at the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum.
12.
Invite joy.
Everyday in museums, children, youth, and adults find and express delight and
joy. They smile and laugh; children skip across the lobby. In the moment, in
the presence of beauty, something unexpected or awesome, they feel pleasure,
appreciation, and delight. Often visitors leave with great reluctance. Some
express their happiness simply like the 4-year old boy at Minnesota Children’s
Museum telling his mother, “My heart is happy here.”
13.
Enlarge the imagination. Moments of wonder, amazement, and awe occur in
museums. Our sense of creativity and imagination expands as we look at
paintings, explore innovative technologies, watch animals, see a dinosaur
skeleton, and grasp the range of human accomplishments. We discover that Samuel
B.F. Morse, developer of the Morse Code, was also a portrait painter; that Omar
Khayyam, Persian poet and author of the Rubaiyat, was a world class
mathematician. We return to a sublime moment in childhood standing at Louisa
May Alcott’s writing desk and feel her presence. We view Leonardo da Vinci’s
Codex Leicester, a 72-page scientific treatise written backwards in brown ink more
than 500 years ago.
14.
Strengthen families. For museums, families are a core constituency. Museums understand the importance of serving them well and in many and meaningful ways. They offer amenities and choices that
make a visit easier, more convenient, and enjoyable for families. They are
intentional in developing experiences that engage adults and children together,
research family learning, and host family events and celebrations. Museums also
provide specific experiences to support families. Some serve as off-site locations
for supervised visitation and supervised parenting time. Many offer parenting
programs, train staff to facilitate parent-child interactions, and offer parent
resources and activities to do at home.
15. Call us to
act. Time spent in the museum is just the beginning
of a succession of possible responses. Museums spark wanting to know, thinking,
trying and testing, framing questions, and acting. Visitors may follow up with
conversations with others at home, work, or school; visit another museum, a
library, or historic site; make different choices; and get involved with an
interest group. Although we don’t know how it happens, visitors don’t
necessarily leave the museum behind.
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