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When you think about a museum, what image comes immediately to mind? Is it of people walking solemnly, individually or in small groups, through a quiet, white-walled gallery of carefully spaced artwork or artifacts? Or do you think of a children's museum, with kids running wild through scaled-down exhibits that encourage interactivity and play? While still keeping the concept of "museum" in mind, can you even imagine a space between these two extremes--one where adults who are strangers to one another interact--or even play--with one another around serious issues?
Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to try to think such a place into being. I was fortunate to attend the "Museums and Civic Discourse" symposium at John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley. The room was packed with some West Coast and national leaders in the field--really some amazing women there (and a few men, too). The symposium sought to imagine what civic discourse in museums might look like, as well as brainstorm ways that museums can advance civic discourse beyond their walls. The day also was a celebration of the publication of the museums and civic discourse issue of the journal Museums and Social Issues.
Some of the issues the symposium raised for me:
* What do spaces of civic engagement look like, and with what kinds of institutions should we be collaborating?
* What do museum civic engagement and advocacy look like in an age of culture wars?
* How do we build conversations and discussions into civic discourse?
* How can I get more museum folks on board with social media?
I examine each of these issues in greater depth in a post at Museum Blogging. What I don't talk about enough in that post is the uneasiness that some folks in the room had with imagining the dramatic changes that might be awaiting the 21st-century museum. As an academic, I've come at the museum field from a popular science slant--I have worked in a science center's education, exhibition, and evaluation programs; written a dissertation on the history of natural history museums; organized a large exhibition of insects, reptiles, and amphibians for the California State Fair; assisted with other hands-on science programs; and taught museum history and theory to graduate students.
My experiences in museum studies--along with a Ph.D. in cultural studies, my current position exploring progressive higher ed pedagogies, teaching museum studies at JFK University in Berkeley, and my forays into the blogosphere of ideas--have radicalized me. So when someone raises the possibility of making museums a place where new or beloved ideas are not just presented, but rather debated and questioned, it makes perfect sense to me that visitors, rather than only curators and exhibit designers, should have opportunities to make their voices heard. After all, many museums like to pride themselves on being community institutions--why not let the community participate fully in the the life of the museum?
There are plenty of reasons museums would--and perhaps should--resist such changes. After all, some museums--particularly natural history museums--are havens for highly skilled and educated scientific researchers, much as art and history museums are intellectual and vocational homes for Ph.D.s in the fine arts and humanities who work as curators. These experts know their stuff, and they have put together some fabulous, beautiful, thoughtful exhibitions showcasing the latest knowledge in their fields. I believe there is still very much a place for such exhibitions.
However, we live in an age where people can learn much of this same information online, digesting it in small bites rather than trying to absorb it all in a half-day visit to a museum. One might argue that you can't replace standing in front of an ancient tapestry with viewing it on a computer--unless that computer also allows you to zoom in to a digital copy so that you can see how the tiny threads wind together. Where would you rather see this photo of a "woman aircraft worker": on a museum wall or annotated with 20 notes from your fellow netizens? Would you be more likely to discuss this photo with a stranger if you were both standing in front of it, or on Flickr in the photo's comment thread?
Perian Sully of Musematic also attended the symposium. She asks how museums can make their objects more relevant, perhaps by starting with the Flickr model and building beyond