Habitot, So Long

Minnesota Children's Museum's HABITOT

Minnesota Children’s Museum recently announced it will replace 3 iconic galleries as part of its $30 million expansion and renovation. After 20 years, Earth World, World Works, and HABITOT will close and be replaced by new galleries.

Since 1989, HABITOT has been Minnesota Children’s Museum’s area for very young children, first at its Bandana Square location and then at its downtown St. Paul location. Designed as a learning landscape for infants and toddlers, 6 to 36 months and their caregivers, it followed Boston Children’s Museum’s PlaySpace as one of the early spaces designed specifically for the youngest museum visitors, their parents and caregivers.

When HABITOT was being planned I was head of exhibits and education at the Museum. My background in early childhood and children’s environments and the Toddler’s Nest I had created for Madison Children’s Museum were helpful in working with a team of Museum founders and board members. Karen Dummer, then Executive Director, had advocated for a dedicated early childhood space. Her question, “What does babies parked in strollers and perched on hips say about how a museum values children?” became the rationale for the project.

Doing is becoming 

At 900 square feet, HABITOT was not large. It was, however, a safe, engaging environment where infants, toddlers, and caregivers could feel comfortable actively exploring together. More like a landscape than a playpen, its research-based, developmental-design approach recognized that, especially for very young children, physical development is cognitive development and social-emotional development. A new walker careening down a ramp is walking, moving from here to there, dealing with gravity, and motivated by the sight of a parent nearby. What that toddler is doing is what that toddler is thinking is what the toddler is becoming. Even at this small size and squeezed into a narrow slice of space near the Museum’s entrance and the bathrooms, HABITOT was large enough to signal a firm intention to serve young visitors well, share information about children's developmental potential, and support a range of related activities.

Three abstract landscapes–canyons for peepers, creepers and crawlers, islands for toddlers, and caves for increasingly independent preschoolers–were designed and built in the Museum’s fabrication shop. Ramps, steps, a wavy walk, crawl-in caves, changing surfaces, a birdcage-climber along with loose parts, sensory tubes, and busy boxes supported a range of experiences for moving in different ways, testing new motor skills, playing games, and mastering new feats.

Before opening, a group of toddler sons and daughters of staff and board, affectionately known as the HABITOT babies, explored and tested the spaces with their parents. Their activity and enthusiasm was a clear endorsement soon to be played out repeatedly by families with very young children and small groups from childcare programs.    

The year HABITOT opened, attendance increased 40% over the previous year. In 1988 attendance statistics were rudimentary, recorded by cashiers with paper and pencil. While the precise percentage increase might be off, the magnitude reflects the impact on the Museum in recognizing and serving this young age group.

Over the next few years, HABITOT was a site for staff observations, University of Minnesota student internships, and an academic research project by the Kinesiology Department. Also a hub for programming, weekly programs for parents were presented by Museum partners. Parents shared anecdotes about their child first rolling over on the Canyon cushions, taking their first steps, and overcoming hesitation to crawl into the texture caves. Caregivers reported they found the brochures useful and liked chatting with other parents and caregivers. Some families visited weekly, a pattern that has since become familiar in many museums among members with very young children.

HABITOT Grows

Evidence of the need for more museum space was reinforced by the attendance growth that followed HABITOT’s opening and plans for moving to downtown St Paul began taking shape in 1991. The 10 focus groups conducted confirmed a high interest for an updated HABITOT. Valuable lessons from HABITOT’s first 4 years guided us in many ways. A focus group with HABITOT parents allowed us to explore family experiences in greater depth. Input from these groups informed the 1992 Programmatic Master Plan and launched gallery planning.    

Jane goes ice fishing in the Forest 

Parents, caregivers, and educators were emphatic about a larger HABITOT with amenities. We were able to double the size of HABITOT to a still modest 1,800 sf. that also included a resource alcove, nursing room, bathroom, and stroller park. When parents talked about experiences they wanted for their very young children, they mentioned positive experiences in nature. This fit with the place-based context suggested by the name HABITOT, originally constructed by Director of Development Kristin Midelfort. It also fit with conceptualizing the 4 new galleries as Worlds. Landscapes became less abstract and more local. Each of the 4 areas, Pond, Prairie, Woods, Bluff Caves, were specific Minnesota locations in a different season. 

Both parent input and the availability of a resource space for books, articles, and information sheets allowed us to rethink caregiver messaging. In this version of HABITOT, adults’ supporting and extending infants’ and toddlers’ exploration was a high priority. Graphics used a playful, conversational-style with questions and prompts to invite exploration. Paired with bold, picture-book style images and sandwiched between clear Plexi panels, they were easily visible from two sides as adults kept up with toddlers. A short video starring a new group of HABITOT babies and their parents focused on how children at different ages explore each landscape and its features supported by parent engagement.     

HABITOT inspired more programs and events geared to this very young group of children. Weekly HABITOT Tuesdays designated for children 4 years and under offered story, movement, and sensory programs. HABITOT Halloween grew and eventually evolved into HABITOT Holidays throughout the year. 

In A HABITOT Generation

These days, when I work with a museum to develop a vision statement, I typically frame a question asking, “What changes does the museum believe are possible in the next generation for children and families in our community?”

The generation since HABITOT opened has been a good one for very young children and their caregivers in museums. Museums have broadened their view of their audience, now serving the full life span from the early years to the elder years. With a boost from research on early brain development and national conversations on the critical role of early experiences in the first 5 years of life, museums have stepped into larger supportive roles around early childhood. Publication of the 2013 policy report, Growing Young Minds: How Museums and Libraries Create Lifelong Learners by the Institute for Museums and Library Services, both reflects and encourages this trend.

Spaces planned for very young children have taken root and grown in museums. They have spread from children’s museums to science centers, art museums, history museums, and natural history museums. Less likely to be squeezed into a small, unused space, they are increasingly among the core experiences a museum offers. Often as designated totspots distributed throughout the museum, early childhood spaces make it easier for families to explore galleries together. In some museums, the early childhood space is one part of a comprehensive resource for serving young children, parents, educators, and the community along with supporting programs, professional development, a research agenda, or preschool.

Iterations and updates of design for these spaces have generated other changes. Increasingly the distinctive needs of this young audience are being recognized. HABITOT and PlaySpace environments are not just smaller versions of other exhibits in a museum. Experience rather than content-driven, sensory exploration and play are at the heart of these developmentally- calibrated and responsive environments. Playing a crucial role in their child’s everyday and museum experiences, parents, grandparents, and caregivers are a high priority audience in these spaces. Making it easy for them to get into the act requires considering their comfort, interests, and expectations. Multiple strategies for involving caregivers need to be incorporated into the complex choreography of the experience.

The “HABITOT babies” of 1989 and 1995 are now parents themselves. Soon they will be bringing their sons and daughters to Sprouts, a new and larger space for very young children opening in 2017 as part of Minnesota Children’s Museum’s expansion. Designed by Gyroscope,Inc., Sprouts continues to explore the concept of young children’s physical development as social and cognitive development with a fresh, engaging design approach. At 3,000 s.f. and a wider range of experiences including water play and more amenities, the spirit of HABITOT continues to grow. 

Worried About Reading

Photo: Luzinterruptus

We are worried about reading. Parents and grandparents, librarians, pediatricians, teachers, school boards, college administrators, employers, museum educators, and avid readers, are worried about children being ready to read at earlier and earlier ages. We worry about the word gap becoming a reading gap becoming a stubbornly persistent achievement gap. We worry about the presence of reading material in homes and about boys not connecting with books. Each summer we worry about summer reading loss. Around 3^rd and 4^th grade we worry about the transition from learning to read to reading to learn. Every year there’s worry about reading test scores and grade-level reading at the end of 3^rd grade and graduation rates. We worry about children, youth, and adults wanting to read. We worry about reading in short bursts on small devices. In museums we worry about visitors reading text panels and way-finding signs

Given what we know about the far-reaching impacts of reading on success in school and throughout life, this concern is not misdirected nor is it exaggerated. Every important social issue is affected by low literacy: poverty, education, employment, social justice. More than merely a single set of skills for sounding out letters and printed words, reading is intimately related to writing, listening, speaking, and thinking. It is through sounds, words, stories, books, and ideas that we explore, understand, and navigate the world starting in infancy. Limited early experiences with language, interactions with others, and access to books can change the life-long trajectory.

Moreover, reading is pleasurable and empowering–something everyone deserves to enjoy.

Our worry about reading is expressed in many and varied ways and at different scales and is clearly not only the domain of schools. Because early language development is early literacy development, campaigns like TalkingIsTeaching, Providence Talks, and the Thirty Million Words initiative are spreading through communities across the country as programs, billboards, and bus sides. Basic literacy is one of the 21stcentury skills highlighted by IMLS. Libraries, schools, community centers, and homeless shelters offer programs and camps to slow summer reading slide and build reading skills. Newspaper articles offer parent tips on encouraging teen reading year round. There are apps for reading, rhyming, and spelling.

How do museums fit into addressing this pervasive challenge? Museums don’t teach reading. It’s hard to find an interactive experience that attempts to explore punctuation, spelling, or transitive and intransitive verbs. Museums, however, do share information and tell stories. As places where people gather and connect and explore objects, artwork, ideas, and fascinating slices of the world, museums combine the conditions that encourage language and literacy development, build an interest in words, and inspire readers of all ages.

As they greet visitors, sell a membership, lead a tour, answer a question, write label copy, museums can, and do, deliberately and actively engage children and adults in speaking, listening, reading and writing; in thinking and making connections, and in deepening enjoyment with ideas and interests. In the exhibits they develop, text they compose, programs they offer, resource centers they house, partnerships they form, authors they present, and in the book clubs they host, museums have a vital role to play in our becoming a nation of readers. Some of the ways this is happening are highighted in the following posts.

  

• Literacy + Learning

The connections between literacy and learning are strong and striking. These interconnections underscore the impact of literacy on learning throughout life, not just in the early years. When museums shape experiences for learning, they also have opportunities to shape experiences that engage and enhance language skills.

• Literacy at Play

Museums are settings rich with fascinating objects, tools, processes, and materials to explore, describe, point to, and play with. They are also social settings explored with family and school groups, people to talk with and listen to. This combination of talk and play is the foundation for literacy. 

•  Playing With … Words

Playing with the sound, shape and meaning of words is an important part of how children learn language and learn to read and play. From knock-knock jokes, to Pig Latin and riddles, playing with words and language, sounds and meaning stretch their language skills. Joyful experimentation doesn’t stop with childhood; adults are often eager punsters, rhymers, and neologists.

• Anywhere and Everywhere … Books

Imaginatively decorated, Little Free Libraries dot lawns, parks, and stores responsive to a passerby’s sudden urge to read or find a bedtime book. In museums, book nooks and reading areas in galleries and exhibitions make it easy for visitors to relax and dig deeper into a topic. Even branch libraries serve visitors in museums.

• Storyland: A trip Through Childhood Favorites

Books children and adults love and remember, whether childhood favorites or world classics, carry information about the world, stimulate conversation, and offer wide access to literacy tools. Whether walking into a book’s illustrations or acting out a story, children and adults immerse themselves in books through active exploration, sharing favorite parts, engaging in pretend play, and inventing stories.

• Book Sculptures

Reading may not be strictly required in book arts, but the expressive possibilities of the book form inspire and empower both new and accomplished readers. Book arts integrate aspects of literacy–letter shapes, words, images, and layout. Experimenting with these elements involves direct experience with the book and its parts and invites constructing new meaning from them.  

• Filling Museums With Words and Language

Words and language help illuminate ideas, deepen a visitor’s understanding, and broaden a view of the world. This is precisely what museums do, do well, and can do more of.

How Can Museums Become Places Alive With Questions?

Photo credit: Robert Stadler

Years ago at a small conference for teacher resource centers, I sat down with my co-worker Cathy at breakfast across from Bena and Heidi. Conversation during the course of our breakfast covered a lot of territory. It seemed like we were talking a lot about our work at The Teacher’s Workshop in Madison. When breakfast was over and it was time to move to the first session there was an awkward moment. Bena and Heidi then shared that they were doing a small experiment. They decided to ask us questions and see how long it would take for us to ask them questions. I am chagrined to admit that we hadn’t asked them a single question.

There are countless reasons why asking questions is important. Valued as tools for thinking and engaging socially, questions are critical to learning, innovation, success, and even to happiness. We ask questions to help resolve uncertainty; to fill the gaps between what we know and don’t know; to direct our attention; to explore alternative points of view; to find relationships among ideas, objects, and situations; to open up to possibilities we can’t yet fully imagine; and to probe discrepancies.  

There are abundant resources and ideas about questions and inquiry. Models for the inquiry process surface on education, business, and arts websites. One model says, “The first step in the inquiry process is the art of asking Good Questions.” Another lists what makes good questions: avoid questions with a yes/no answer; don’t ask a question you know the answer to; ask one question at a time; don’t fish for the answer you want. Along with lists of ways to ask better questions, there are lists of questions to develop skills at different levels of thinking. Author Daniel H. Pink talks about the “art of asking questions” and extending the power of questions beyond science.

The reality is, questions are ubiquitous. Tests are full of them as are applications for passports, on-line security (what is your mother’s maiden name?), and tax forms. We are asked at the grocery check-out line if we found everything we were looking for. Parents quiz their children about what they did at school and teachers ask questions in the classroom.

Nevertheless, questions are often not very productive, not asked of the right person, courageous enough, or well timed. I know. While I deeply believe in the power of questions, I often frame a question only when I get stuck and have nothing else to try. I have written blog posts about questions, imagining that by doing so readers might ask more and better questions. It’s as if knowing how to ask good questions means we will do so; as if having an exercise routine means we will work out; or knowing arugula is healthy means we will eat lots.

Increasingly, I wonder more about why we don’t ask more–and better–questions in museums and less about what a good question is and how questions can be useful in our work.

How Can Museums Become Places Rich With Questions?

If questions are critical to learning, innovation, success, and even to happiness, then shouldn’t museums be full of questions? 

How, though, does a museum cultivate an inquisitive spirit collectively, purposefully, and over time? Models and lists may be useful tools for framing questions. Good intentions may be essential for advancing questions. Even together, however, they are limited in how they can infuse a museum’s life with questions. It’s not enough for a few enthusiasts in a museum to advocate for questions and inquiry, to have a single inquiry-based program, or to bring questions to a major decision occasionally. As places where people engage in daily practices to develop engaging experiences around a larger purpose to generate greater public value, museums must encourage and advance questions wholeheartedly, actively, in each of those ways: through people, practices, purpose and culture.

A Disposition to Ask Questions. Do you know someone who readily asks good questions? Someone who is curious? Likes the challenge of a chewy question?

Hire that person; cultivate that trustee; recruit that volunteer. Those people have a disposition to ask questions. A disposition is a habit or behavior displayed frequently and in the appropriate context. An inclination or a tendency to act in particular way, dispositions are voluntary. They are also environmentally sensitive; they are acquired, supported, or weakened by the conditions of the surrounding environment, by the interactive experiences in settings and engagement with significant adults and peers.

People inclined to ask questions raise them at staff or board meetings, in an interview, on a project team. They test assumptions, share a question they have been mulling over, structure a wandering discussion with questions, and search for answers. When a strategic plan is being framed, a capital project is discussed, or the budget is reviewed, they introduce questions to dig deeper, engage other perspectives, and explore misconceptions. What are we not thinking about? Do we have the necessary capacity to do this? Are these projections too rosy? What’s our plan B? They ask whether the museum is comfortable with the input on content funders expect to make.

Leaders ask questions whether they are board or staff leaders, thought leaders, or leaders advocating for inclusion, quality, or change.

Because dispositions are affected by the surrounding social and intellectual environment, the presence of colleagues, trustees, and volunteers who ask questions makes a difference in a work environment. I imagine others have noticed that each post on Rebecca Herz’s blog, Museum Questions, is a question such as, “What is the role of museums in educational change?” Colleagues asking questions seek others to share questions with; they engage others in inquiry. In doing so they help grow the disposition and skills in others to ask and pursue questions. These may be questions that engage various perspectives and bring in fresh ideas; express an interest in other people, what they think, say and who they are. Questions set a tone that people matter, that new ideas and all kinds of learning matters.

Daily Practice with Questions.Museums do use questions as part of daily practice across many areas. Questions are fundamental to the inquiry process, an approach to learning familiar in science centers and museums and across various settings. Q?rious is a science education program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History that, along with question-driven inquiries, invites students to ask questions of scientists.

Some museums use practices, like Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), as a programmatic approach for tours. VTS is a question-based methodology used in art and other museums and nature centers to explore selected works of art or the natural world. An educator, docent, curator, or naturalist facilitates discussion of 3 open-ended questions with a group: What's going on (in this picture)? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can we find?

“Questioning and posing problems” is one of a set of 16 Habits of Mind (HoM), also considered dispositions. Some museums’ learning frameworks are built around HoM and some around inquiry. The framework’s key ideas inform program and exhibit planning and evaluation. (Interestingly, Bena mentioned in the opening story happens to be the co-author with Art Costa of the 16 Habits of Mind.) In fact, what is evaluation but a response to a question, how well and in what ways did we accomplish what we hoped we would? Prototyping asks questions iteratively about whether the visitor gets the idea or understands what’s happening in an exhibit.

Presumably, the more questioning strategies a museum integrates into its daily practices, the greater the benefit from the power of questions it is likely to enjoy. It’s not, however, simply that a museum uses VTS, prototypes, has an inquiry model, or uses all three. A commitment to asking questions is often confined to the education department. Questions may be geared towards getting others to think about our interests. Even chewy, engaging, and open-ended questions tend to be limited episodes when they are not intentionally related to larger intentions.

For impact, these practices and approaches must be played out in the context of strategic, pedagogical, experiential, audience, and financial goals that serve the museum’s enduring interests.

An Internal Culture that Values Questions.In a speech to graduates at The California Institute of Technology, surgeon, researcher, and author Atul Gawande distinguished truth seeking and truth: pursuing ideas with curiosity, inquisitiveness, openness, and discipline as part of a larger group. Gawande’s distinction is also useful in characterizing a museum that, collectively and explicitly, places a value on asking questions, searching for answers, having impact, and learning together.

Does your museum have an expressed commitment to constructing knowledge, growing, and taking action through questions, dialogue, listening, observation, disagreement, and challenge? In what ways is this reflected in its vision, mission, and values? How does your museum live this value or set of values daily? How does it infuse its internal culture with an organizational disposition to question? How does it integrate and make room for supportive practices across the museum? Committing to an institutional value around questioning inevitably creates multiple shifts from individual advocates and isolated practices to teams of people engaged in cross-functional mission and question driven practices.   

A museum’s questions reveal much about what it holds in high regard. Do you explore such questions: What do we care most about being really good at? What do access and inclusion look like in our museum and for our community? Do we push on being more relevant for more people and for more people who are different from us? How much risk are we willing to take? How might we mitigate this risk? Are we asking questions about the source of funding and the strings attached to a particular gift from a funder?

A museum that is awake to its own curiosity asks tough questions and pays attention to the responses. Is your museum’s strategic planning process question driven or framed by assertions about quality, being a premier regional resource? When you ask questions do you pay attention to the answers or are they ignored when inconvenient? Has your museum been in a situation when someone raised the question that no one has been willing to ask? For instance, “Do we really need a building this big? Will we be able to sustain operations? Be a thriving museum with this big of a building?” Do you question the easy answers? “Yes, we have an emergency plan, but have we tested it?”

Questions make us all learners.  If your museum considers itself a learning organization, how does it learn?

The Art of Relevance – and More

I am admittedly drawn to many of the big roomy ideas that float through museums: public value, curiosity, engagement, interactive, relevance, play, creativity, participation, and dialogue. At the same time, I cringe when I hear or read these same words and ideas used constantly whether appropriately or not. Too much use without rigorous and thoughtful consideration to probe a word for meaning flattens our language and our thinking.

But, I very much like big roomy ideas that are probed, pummeled, unpacked, and played out to deepen and internalize understanding and transform a casual word into a powerful tool for thinking, working, and creating change. Nina Simon has done this and more in her most recent book, The Art of Relevance. As CEO at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH), at science centers and children’s museums she has worked, as a consultant with museums, and as author of Museum 2.0 and The Participatory Museum, Nina has honed her sensibilities about and a belief in the potential of relevance to transform lives and institutions.

What Is Relevance?

Before delving into her extensive pursuit of relevance, Nina takes time to explore it from various perspectives. She begins by grounding this construct in the work of two cognitive scientists, Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber. Two criteria make information relevant to someone: new conclusions that matter to that person (positive cognitive effect) and the effort required to absorb it–lower effort, higher relevance. Thinking about eating bacon, choosing a movie, and commemorating the origin of surfing in the Americas, Nina uses the criteria to explore the construct and its capacity across a range of situations: a painting, a museum tour, cemetery caretaking, soup, or a Laundromat. 

She also takes a few passes at what relevance is and isn’t. Relevance, for instance, is not about familiarity, but familiarity does reduce effort, encourages trying, and assists in making meaning. She challenges easy assumptions: what we do is relevant to everyone and relevance is universal.

After framing relevance, Nina looks at efforts to build relevance in a wide range of situations and settings. She has selected stories of individuals and groups at museums, libraries, visitor centers, zoos, theaters, and parks. Sketch-by-sketch, she makes relevance less abstract, exposing its inherent complexity, and recognizing the hard work involved in someone’s unlocking meaning.

• The Monterey Bay Aquarium shifts their research work to advocacy by responding to their visitors’ interest in positive action.

• The New World Symphony in Miami does the work to reduce the effort for young urban adults to find relevance in classical music.

• The Foster Youth Museum In Oakland evolves forms of displays to empower foster youth to share their stories.

• The Cleveland Public Library makes room for outsiders by serving lunch to low-income kids during the summer.    

These stories, fascinating, poignant and heartening, help clarify how connections are being made and being made to matter to a person or community. Embedded in the stories are innovative and alternative methods and techniques for relationship and community building useful in other institutions. Periodically, Nina returns to the two criteria for making information relevant and sharpening our own sense of relevance.

The mini-case studies of people, places, partners, and projects become even more valuable with Nina’s reflective analysis woven into each. Here is where she makes fine distinctions. Here is where she highlights the importance of place, choices that made a difference, the limitations of painfully broad descriptions of communities, and the value of personal stories. Here is practical advice for getting started, moving ahead, or working around obstacles: get outside, listen, meet people, identify leaders. Just as Nina wholeheartedly describes a project, idea, or change, she wholeheartedly tugs at its parts to expose obstacles, highlight what works, and make connections.

In a sense, the book is personal and that matters in bringing depth, honesty, and complexity to an idea that could remain in pop culture land. Nina refers to this book as “field notes” from her journey in pursuit of relevance. Her experiences as an insider and an outsider, the twists and turns of projects, and her evolving working definition of relevance personalize the work and make it accessible. She breaks down MAH’s Community First process, questions, uncertainty, admiration, and insights. A champion of relevance, she also acknowledges its limitations.

A clear intention to apply her insights on relevance appears to be built into the book’s structure, approach, and language. On the front page of each chapter, 2-3 succinct ideas summarize the chapter, previewing for us what’s ahead. Rigorous thinking, abundant examples, and engaging stories help illustrate complex ideas.

Throughout, she finds ways to involve us in ways that matter, placing us in the shoes of a zoo director or reminding us that, “We are all grumbly insiders about something.” She has a fluency with images weaving an image of relevance as a key throughout the book. Skillfully and creatively she extends it to a door that opens to a room full of experience, welcoming, wonderful, valuable. The room, she notes, can be made bigger–together.

The book is compact. You could breeze through it, but­ you wouldn't ’want to. You’d miss what Nina has carefully tucked into her stories, drawn from her experiences, and her encouragement to create relevant work.

… And More

In The Art of Relevance Nina unpacks, explores, and reflects on relevance in ways that can bring a museum’s core ideas to life, beyond what is often imagined. She not only does this well, but she does more.

She shows what skills and strategies like empathy, perspective taking, commitment, and collaboration look like and the work they do to make a difference. In relating relevance to mission, core values, defining communities, programming, and measuring success Nina is creating a constellation of ideas that guide organizations in planning, navigating dynamic environments, and making a difference. Sharp observations, like the urge to entertain as a serious distraction from relevance, are critical considerations for marshaling focus and building momentum to transform lives and institutions. 

The Art of Relevance has made me reflect on past efforts to forge meaningful connections with partners, draw outsiders in, bring community voices into the planning process, and sustain relationships. It has made me think of revisiting past Museum Notes posts and of new perspectives for future ones.

When you begin a quest for greater relevance, you don’t just answer one question. You answer more, learn more, think more about change. In the book’s Preface, Jon Moscone, director of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco notes that, “The challenge of relevance is complex and deep.” I would add, “and forever.” Relevance takes hard work, time, and dedicated friends and partners. It will be easier with The Art of Relevance.

What Does Your Museum Make Possible?

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.

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.

With gracious persistence, David Carr promoted the value and necessity of going beyond, exploring the unfinished nature of our lives, and generating more questions. He encouraged us to find ways to start thinking of something we do not yet understand. Along with pushing beyond what we do and know, he asked that of museums and libraries, setting them in the context of the possible. Thinking about what museums make possible is a promising start, but only a start. Thinking with David will help museums make more possible.