Ben Masbaum

With this being my first blog for the IMA, I implore you to scroll away if you consider yourself one of those people who doesn’t particularly hold noobies in high regard. If you’ve stuck around, allow me to share a few thoughts on music videos as an art form.

I remember sitting in my living room when I was thirteen years old: voice cracking, flannel shirt around my waist with my combat boots on the coffee table and my mother urging me to wash my hair.  I couldn’t, of course, because I was busy watching MTV, pre-Real World and before the internet we know of today.  I would stare the wild camera effects of the music videos and think to myself, “Wow!  I love this!” It seemed easy to do and I wanted to be a part of it.

Fifteen years later, I’m about half-way there… with a bit of a different idea on the whole thing.
Music videos are a thirty year old venture that have gone from phenomenon to nuisance in the span of their lifetime.  I’ve seen so many mundane videos in the last ten years which only seem to be created to fulfill some pop star’s need to be seen on T.V. I actually believe that the music should support the video (Which I’ll get to in a bit).  That is it!

Enough about pop stars. Let’s talk about art. The music video as an art form can and should showcase the artist behind the camera and the artist at the editing table, as well as the musician (and in some cases more than the musician!) At the same time, the video should not lose track of the overall message.

It’s about experimentation.  Boundaries that cannot be crossed in conventional cinema are welcome in the music video world. An artist who is not crossing those boundaries is missing the point.  A great example is Michel Gondry.  Known for films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Human Nature, and Be Kind, Rewind, Gondry also swims through the music video world. He has given mainstream videos a wake-up call and a smack in the face.  Here are some examples:

Occasionally, one will find collaboration between video artist and musician.  I’ve always favored this concept.  In fact, this an idea that I have put on my personal hit list.

However, one problem that can arise with this kind of collaboration is that the video art probably already comes with a soundtrack of some sort. If the artist decides to replace the music, the results can be drastically different. In the next example, the musical artist Kenna and video artist Mark Osborne team up on a video.  Kenna’s song “Hell bent”  is dubbed over an already existing clay animation short by Mark Osborne, called “More.”

The Kenna/Osborne collaboration is better, in my opinion.

Videomaker.com says that the primary goal of a music video is to serve the music artist.  I don’t completely agree.  I believe that this philosophy has turned the video into a showboat opp for musicians, not always in the best interest of the song and the story.  I think that the audience is fed up with artists in music bragging about themselves on this platform.  Aren’t they?  I certainly hope so. Sure, I believe that the video should exist to serve the song.  But perhaps the music can serve the video just as well.

You’ve probably heard enough of my ranting and raving on this matter.  I suppose it is up to me and others like me to step up and do something.  Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve already taken a stab at it.  This one is mine:

For me, life at the Academy settled into a rhythm that included some or all of these each day:
A morning jog in the amazing park of Villa Doria Pamphili;
Catching up on IMA-related business via email;
Audio-recording interviews for my project and conscientiously downloading these to more than one storage device;
Writing a crude attempt to outline ideas about thinking, language and sensory experience triggered by the interviews; and
Visits to the AAR library on deliberate quests, sometimes spiced up by fortuitous discoveries of books related to the ideas mentioned in the previous item.

The daily rhythm is regularly punctuated by the Academy mealtimes – gatherings of people who are deeply engaged in their own individual quests. These include not only the scholarly and artistic endeavors of the Fellows, Visiting Scholars and Visiting Artists, but also the quests of “Fellow Travellers,” the Academy’s term for companions of Fellows and Visitors who are sometimes partners caring for young children. The adventures and discoveries of these residents, very often artists and scholars themselves, are often ingeniously integrated with the rhythm of naps and school hours.  So when all gather in the dining room, there seems to me to be a sense of adventure.  The meals function not simply as social times, but also as super-colliders where ideas get knocked against one another, tested and potentially changed. I continue to be impressed by the way the quality and artistry, really, of the kitchen staff contributes to these gatherings. Each meal is obviously prepared with care and served with considerable generosity on the parts of both cooks and dining room staff. I sense that we residents all leave the dining room loved and fortified to return to our work and our various solitary explorations. This may sound over-blown, but the meals feel like good-natured and very informal blessings.

AAR dinner

On weekends or when interviews are unlikely and meals are not served, long exploratory walks to historic sights are the things. Walking the streets of Rome on a Sunday is a delight, as my IMA colleague, Daniel Incandela, recently commented. Families, couples young and old, groups of friends: it’s good to just be outdoors, strolling or perhaps stopping for a gelato or an espresso.

a street café outside the Pantheon

This week my Academy routine was interrupted by a nasty cold or flu of some sort. I felt ill for several days, finally surrendering to complete bed rest for two full days. The prospect of walking down several flights of stairs (and back up) and of meeting people was too much in my weakened condition. I had to forego a scheduled Academy walk through some nearby ruins. The Italian language felt overwhelming. I was sick.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that sometimes illness is an opportunity, except in the sense that all experiences are opportunities. But perhaps it’s worth saying that there are moments when the opportunities of experience coincide with an openness or a readiness to take advantage of particular features of experience. What I’m trying to say is that I got sick and, yes, there was some discomfort involved (the fear that can flare up when it’s the middle of the night and you’re having trouble breathing and you’re alone, for example), but that it was not an entirely bad experience. As far as my intention to think about thinking, knowing, language, aesthetic experience, and the realm of the visual while at the Academy, the interlude of being sick, especially during that post-acute-misery time of weakness and recovery, provided some valuable time for reading, writing and sorting through perspectives.

My first Pecha Kucha night, enjoyed from the squishy goodness of a giant red comfy sack in The Toby, was  like no other PowerPoint presentation I’ve been to. I left feeling inspired and liberated (since profanities could be shouted or whispered freely at any point). I’m definitely experiencing culture these days, maybe due to a motivating post by Meg. It’s true–as a marketer, and as a resident of Indy–we should all be experiencing the amazing galleries, games, plays, concerts, trails, architecture and exhibits offered by our friends. But why not also ask ourselves how as individuals we can create culture?

Matthew Hale, life-long resident of Indianapolis and graduate of Herron School of Art & Design, pitched his idea to make Indy a cultural landmark at the recent Pecha Kucha Night. “Letteracks: A 3D map for Indianapolis” is a coordinated system of 26 giant letter bikeracks, one for each letter of the alphabet, designed for the regional center of Indianapolis. The options for the use of these letteracks are endless–from field trip and jogging destinations to wayfinding and photo ops. Letteracks would add a unique system of nationally recognized landmarks to our city and increase the cultural language so-to-speak of the people in our city.

"Letteracks: A 3D map for Indianapolis"

While Matt didn’t win the $10k PK prize (in my opinion, he should have), his idea speaks to the idea of creating culture on a large scale. On a much smaller scale, as a child, I was a ballet dancer, I painted Tiger Lillies by the mailbox, I played the piano, I wrote poems and stories, I sang “Billy Boy” on the swing set, I planted mounds of pumpkin seeds and sunflowers in my garden, I took portfolios of pictures after a heavy snowfall, I read. Today, I rarely make time for these renewing acts or share them. What would Indy be like, if we each brought our own light and talents to our family, neighbors and city? What if we didn’t passively absorb culture, but actively created and shared it?

I heard an artist speak on the topic about a year ago in a sun-drenched gym on the Old Northside. “Do you have a picture to paint? A book to write? A dance class to take? Are you needed by someone?”

We should all have our day in the comfy sack, but I’m going try to make more time to create, converse and inspire.

Wilber in his comfy sack

]]> http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2009/11/18/creating-culture/feed/ 4 http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2009/11/18/creating-culture/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IndianapolisMuseumOfArt/~3/mbKuYanYMI4/ http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2009/11/17/transparency-and-museums-part-3-institutional-culture/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:34:41 +0000 Rob Stein http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/?p=9602 Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the 2009 Museum Computer Network Conference in Portland, OR.  While Portland was rainy and cold all week, I found the conference to be both engaging and thought provoking.  While the sessions were great, the thing that keeps me coming back for more is the community.

Community – the culture of this gathering – is where the real diffusion and impact occur.  Although the speakers and panelists were great and a good trigger for conversation, the value really took hold in the hallways over coffee or in some of Portland’s great pubs over a beer.

In thinking about this next post on transparency, it struck me that the same is true about our own museums as well.  The culture of our institution – the hallway and cafe conversations that happen between colleagues – is where much of the success and innovation will come from.

At the MCN conference we heard some great conversations about strategy and innovation.  But I think all would realize, the harder part of strategy is finding a way for it to take hold and become REAL.

As a final salvo offering reasons why your museum should adopt open and transparent practices around institutional performance, let’s talk a bit more about the impact this choice can have on the culture of your museum.

If you’re just joining the conversation, here are links to parts 1 and 2 of this series. (Part 1 – Walking the Talk) (Part 2 – Reasons for Transparency)  Please join the conversation in the comments and tell us what you think! A little virtual water cooler would help us all.

Reasons For Transparency: Impact on Institutional Culture

“The organizations that will be truly successful in this environment are those that have integrated Transparency as part of their organizational culture and not just their communications strategy. To the extent that the two are inter-related, the communications strategist has a substantial role to play here.”

-Mark Hannah, “Transparency as a Principle not a Tactic”, PBS.org, January 7, 2009

The infusion of an attitude of Transparency and an institutional understanding of strategy will allow our museums to continue to mature steadily and continuously over time, but these goals require a cultural shift for our staff. One organization which understands the impact of Transparency and the role of company culture is the internet shoe company, Zappos (recently acquired by Amazon). As illustrated by Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh,

“It’s a very different world today. With the Internet connecting everyone together, companies are becoming more and more transparent whether they like it or not. An unhappy customer or a disgruntled employee can blog about a bad experience with a company, and the story can spread like wildfire by email or with tools like Twitter.

The good news is that the reverse is true as well. A great experience with a company can be read by millions of people almost instantaneously as well.

The fundamental problem is that you can’t possibly anticipate every possible touch-point that could influence the perception of your company’s brand.”

-Tony Hsieh, “Your Culture is Your Brand”, Zappos CEO Blog, January 3, 2009

Hsieh makes an important point that museums should observe as well. In order to remain culturally relevant, museums must address this inevitable and global cultural shift towards ubiquitous information and user experience or risk being sidelined both online as well as in our communities.

Putting Transparency into practice in an institution has a number of consequences which can offer significant benefits to museums. The act of publishing information for public scrutiny always elevates the attention that is given to that effort.  Whereas staff members may have been apt to forget about tracking performance in a key area, a commitment to publish that information pushes professional staff members to pay more attention regarding how that information will be perceived outside the walls of the museum.  Ideally these are features museums want and need to be tracking anyway, but the reality is that when no one is looking, it’s easy to pay less attention. Transparency then, is an effective mechanism for generating this external motivation which can result in measurable improvements for the museum.

When these key metrics are tracked, organizations will be able to easily identify and develop trends and forecasts for these mission critical pieces of information. Since institutions are committed to a timely publishing of this information they will also benefit from more timely and accurate disclosure of problem areas not only to the public but also to internal constituencies. Indicators of success and poor performance can help management teams identify areas which need more attention or resources without simply sweeping the problem under the carpet.  Measuring which areas are succeeding can help museums better optimize how much effort is required to continue performing well in that area.  Perhaps staff can spend half as much time or money and achieve the same results?  Mission-critical information such as this is a crucial underpinning that will allow management teams to execute good decision-making based on fact and not opinion.  These steps can facilitate not only cost savings, but time savings over the long term as well.

Next week, we’ll begin to look more practically at how the Indianapolis Museum of Art put some of these theories into practice and what kind of impact / experience we’ve seen since doing so.  Again, I’ve really enjoyed some of the comments offered to these posts… but understand that there are several shy ones among you!  Don’t Fear!  Pipe up with your thoughts… I’ve generally found our little blog community to be very open to opinions of all different stripes!  -Rob

The Pharmacy prescribes the following links to combat Monday online anemia.

Blog: Scanwiches

Jon Chonko, a New York graphic designer who has been scouring the local deli scene, has a scanwich blog for his findings, replete with delectable cross sections to satisfy your every sandwich desire. If you’re not hungry now, you’re about to be.

(via npr)

ArtBabble Video: Behind the Scenes: Tim Burton

IMA Work of Art:

Alchemilla vase by Alessandro Mendini (Designer)

Tweet:

RichardMcCoy: Finishing up my next @Art21 post. Sneak peak: there’s talk of Futuro House by Matti Suuronen http://bit.ly/2jIqHg

I am still digging tropicals and other non-hardies at home. If the weather had not been so great I would be in deep double-dug doo-doo. As it is, I’m sort of leisurely going along – but admittedly starting to look over my shoulder for “real” November weather. Whether it was the cooler summer or the steady rains I don’t know but many plants did extra good this year. The Amorphophallus konjac got huge.

The Xanthosoma violaceum produced “pups”. A first for me.

Even a stroll around the IMA reveals horticulture rarities. One of the bananas Jim planted by the Rain Garden bloomed this year. Since that stalk will die anyway he just left it in the ground. The leaves look real sad but that bloom, that bloom thinks it can still make fruit. The middle of November and it is barely touched by cold.

These little yellow flowers would each develop into a banana in the perfect (tropical) climate.

Behind Deer Zink the containers still have variegated shell ginger (Alpinia zerumbet ‘Variegata’) looking great. On November 13!

On the Sutphin Mall Geranium ‘Rozanne’ demonstrates why I still am willing to plant it. Plenty of flowers on a plant that started blooming in May.

The woody plants continue to put on a show as well. Near the Formal Garden, European beeches glow in the afternoon sun. All that yellow holding back the gray of winter.

In the Overlook an oak and some viburnums seem to have color coordinated themselves.

So even though it is mid-November there is still plenty to enjoy and delight in the gardens. Why don’t you come and visit a spell?

This is the project description that I sent to members of the Academy community, attached to an email inviting them to schedule an interview time with me:

3 October, 2009
Member of the Academy Community:

My name is Linda Duke and I am an Affiliate Fellow in residence at the Academy for four weeks, Sept. 28-Oct. 26, 2009. Back home, I serve as Director of Education at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. While in residence in Rome, I hope to collect from members of the Academy community descriptions of and reflections on their recent aesthetic experiences – with works of art, architecture and other design arts, gardens and thoughtfully-prepared food.

View from AAR balcony

Volunteers will be invited to speak or write about whichever experiences they choose and may participate as many times as they wish. There are precedents for using language as a window into the types of thinking that are engaged (see below). In this project, it will be important to capture participants’ actual words, via audio recording or in written form. My interest is in examining what commonalities of critical and aesthetic thought might be found across the domains of art, design and culinary art.

If such commonalities can be documented, the implications for educators in any of the three areas would be significant. They would indicate that experiences with the tastes, textures, aromas and appearances of food – experiences that are commonly enjoyed – could be used as an entry point for expanding young people’s capacities for noticing, describing and other activities and mental habits that are fundamental to appreciating art and design. Noticing, wondering, savoring – these mental activities slow us down and put our full attention in the present moment, connect our senses and emotions, and often prompt us to make links to related knowledge from past experiences. Engagement with the arts both fosters and requires these activities. So does the enjoyment of real food, the kind of food that nourishes body and spirit with its sensual beauty. Rich or poor, urban or rural, people, including school children, enjoy food. I hope the data I collect might provide an argument for educators to more often exploit the use of language – in discussion and writing  – related to direct, personal experiences with art, design and food to enhance aesthetic development and awareness. I anticipate writing one or more articles describing what I learn in this project.

AAR Pranza

A well-known model for using discussion and writing to support aesthetic growth and development related to viewing works of art is Visual Thinking Strategies, or VTS, a discussion-based approach to teaching in museum galleries, a professional development program for classroom teachers, and an image curriculum based on the research of psychologist Abigail Housen. VTS is the basis of the IMA’s highly regarded Viewfinders program in several Central Indiana school districts. In her basic research, Housen has demonstrated that language can be used as a kind of window into thinking and, therefore, into the changes in thinking that occur with aesthetic growth. Housen and others have shown that VTS supports aesthetic development in controlled studies. She has also demonstrated that aesthetic thought can be shown to overlap with what is more generally called critical and creative thought. This makes the implications of a program such as VTS, as well as the promotion of aesthetic development itself, important for educators very broadly, beyond the disciplines of art or art history. If aesthetic development is very similar – if not identical – to the development of critical and agile thinking in any field or arena, then the term “aesthetic” is due for a make-over. Instead of referring to something effete and impractical, it may be understood to be an essential aspect of human consciousness and creativity.

For my Academy project, I imagine applying some of the same techniques for gathering language that Housen has developed, expanding them to elicit language describing experiences in the three arenas. With nearly 20 years of professional experience in facilitating discussions about art, I look forward to exploring the potential for fostering discussions of the three arenas (art, design, food) with the Academy residents. I hope that the raw data I collect – the recorded interviews and discussions – might be of interest to others who have the scientific training to analyze them through the lenses of linguistic anthropology and developmental psychology. I am currently seeking collaborators who might play this role. Developmental psychologist Karin DeSantis has agreed to review the material. I hope to engage the assistance of a linguistic anthropologist as well. I imagine these specialists might look at language from several points of view. When and why do people pull terms from other domains? For example, when is it helpful or even necessary to describe a painting’s colors as luscious, a building’s roofline as inspiring, or a pastry crust as heartbreakingly flaky? Do these kinds of appropriations occur more often when people have more or different kinds of experience with art, design or food?

Chefs in AAR

A few words about the usefulness of initiating this project at the American Academy are in order. A quick scan of the impressive list of scholars and artists who are in residence shows that this is a gathering of gifted and uniquely experienced people. So this project is not about collecting samples that would be considered “average” in any way. However, it is an opportunity to learn how much variation there might be between the kind of noticing, reflecting, and wondering an individual directs to an experience with a painting and a building, or a garden, or a seasonal dish. The Academy may afford the opportunity to gather data from individuals who have highly developed critical thinking skills in at least one arena, and to examine whether and how those show up in a non-specialty arena.

The fact that internationally renowned chef and food educator Alice Waters has recently helped the Academy overhaul its dining program is a plus (In Rome, the Academy Learns to Cook, by Elisabeth Rosenthal, NY Times, 3/15/09). That fact ensures that some of the residents will have noticed the quality of the produce and other foodstuffs brought in for meals, as well as the nuances of preparation and flavor juxtapositions. Back at the IMA, educators have been considering opportunities to partner with that organization’s new food provider, Nourish Café.  They’d like to experiment with educational programs that might link thoughtful sensory experiences with food to thoughtful experiences with works of visual art. For me, the opportunity to learn first hand about how a fellow arts organization, the American Academy in Rome, is pursuing this idea will be very useful and timely.

Thank you for your consideration.

Linda Duke
Director of Education, Indianapolis Museum of Art

A few days after sending this, I decided that some interviewees would feel more comfortable if I asked them to choose a picture to discuss. I paid a visit to the wonderful photo archive and was able to get digital images of Academy gardens, the historic Villa, works of art made by artist Fellows, and the nearby Tempietto of Bramante.

Bass and Kitchen Gardens at the Academy

I grateful to say that I have been able to record some wonderfully thoughtful interviews. One of the first was with Alexandra Vinciguerra, the master gardener who has restored all of the Academy’s gardens – the Bass Garden and kitchen gardens at the main building as well as the historic gardens of the Villa Aurelia just down the street. I’ve interviewed the master chefs and interns in the kitchen as they chopped and stirred. I’ve captured the thoughts of scholars about their work here. They talk about the buildings, paintings, music and ruins that have captivated them and sometimes drawn them into relationships lasting decades. The artists and musicians have also given me some astonishing and thought-provoking interviews – fueling my growing sense that our culture needs to better understand that range of aesthetic thinking and the role of the senses in understanding our world and lives. I started with a simple idea: collect samples of language people use to describe aesthetic experiences and see what similarities are found across domains of experience from the arts to design to food. I now feel I have material that begs to be looked from other angles as well.

Audience at The Toby

We have a lot to offer at the IMA: permanent galleries, Lilly House, 152 acres of gardens and grounds, exhibitions, public programs, web projects, and community outreach. After a while, it’s easy to take for granted all of the ways that the museum serves its mission. Every week I write ads, print pieces, Facebook updates, and blogs that focus on the opportunities for visitors at the IMA, but I often don’t take advantage of them myself.

Just 30 seconds from where I sit, I have an amazingly impressive collection of the world’s art, and I rarely take the time to see it. I’m not sure if it’s my hectic schedule or laziness, but it’s shameful to me how little time I spend in the galleries or at the IMA’s public programs. As a marketer, I spend my day encouraging others to experience the IMA, but I wouldn’t be doing my job well unless I do it myself. Therefore, I have recently decided to attend two public programs each month and spend at least 30 minutes in the galleries each week. It’s still not enough, but it’s a start.

As part of my personal mission to experience the museum, a week ago Sunday, I attended an event at The Toby. On November 1, the IMA hosted the string quartet Osso, the singer-songwriter DM Stith as well as Sufjan Stevens and his film, The BQE. The eclectic event entertained a sold-out crowd of 600. As I sat in the balcony of the theater next to a 16-year-old hipster in buffalo check plaid, skinny jeans and black framed glasses, my heart swelled. He and his fellow high school friends were completely engaged in the experience. They were giddy with delight. (In a cool, hipster sort of way, of course.)

DM Stith on stage at The Toby

I loved the event, because Osso was the most bad@ss string quartet that I’ve ever seen perform. I loved the event, because DM Stith has a hauntingly gorgeous voice. I loved the event because The BQE was a devastatingly beautiful film. But, most of all, I loved the event because everyone else loved the event.

As a marketer, I often focus on the cause. “What will make a person attend the Museum?” But not often enough do I focus on the effect. “What happens when a person attends the Museum?” Attending public programs, walking through the galleries, and experiencing the IMA as a visitor are all critical to doing my job well. By taking time to enjoy the mission of what I do, I am better able to serve it.

So, with all that said, I have a challenge to my colleagues in the field – not just marketers, but registrars, curators, designers, IT specialists, and accountants. EXPERIENCE YOUR MUSEUM. Don’t take for granted that you work at an amazing place. Be amazed by the place at which you work.

It’s hard, I know. We have all have priorities that pull us away, but I implore you to take the time. For just a little while each week, stop working and start experiencing. I guarantee you, it’s worth it – and I’m not just saying that because I work in marketing.

Saying that transparency is a “good idea” is not enough to address concerns that many museums have about sharing  information in this way.  Today, we’ll spend some more time examining a few reasons why museum administrators should seriously consider an open approach to transparency as a strategic choice in running the museum.

Again, please chime in with thoughts / questions / analogies / etc…  Your thoughts really add to and enrich the conversation.  Do you think this would work in your museum?  What would be the biggest concerns that would arise?

Reasons for Transparency: The Internet Will Out You

Since a common counter argument to efforts for Transparency is the impact of information sharing on the museum’s brand and reputation, it is useful to explore this in the context of today’s realities. Seen initially in the rise of the blogosphere and more recently in the emergence of micro-blogging and real-time search, the pace of information creation and the ease of access to this information has changed the ways in which a museum’s brand and reputation are perceived in the media and online. The advent of the real-time web means that the invested public frequently has as much input into a museum’s online reputation as media professionals do.  An increasingly information-savvy audience is becoming more and more sophisticated in their ability to decipher fact versus spin as they surf this info-sphere. Author Clive Thompson highlights the impact of these facts on Transparency in his article for WIRED Magazine,

“But here’s the interesting paradox: The reputation economy creates an incentive to be more open, not less. Since Internet commentary is inescapable, the only way to influence it is to be part of it. Being transparent, opening up, posting interesting material frequently and often is the only way to amass positive links to yourself and thus to directly influence your Googleable reputation.”  - Clive Thompson, “The See-Through CEO”, WIRED Magazine – Issue 15.04, March, 2007.

This reality is not restricted only to government and for-profit corporations to deal with, but in fact, has already reached deeply into the way that museums and non-profit institutions operate in modern culture. “There is no outside world anymore, just a world–one that is blogged, Facebooked, Twittered, and utterly porous. The extent to which we can control our image is directly proportionate to our honesty about ups and downs in a context that we can to some degree define” points out Maxwell Anderson, The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

A common reaction and perhaps our gut response is to see Transparency as just another public relations tool which can be employed to enhance an institution’s brand and reputation in the public’s eye.  While efforts in Transparency can have a positive impact on a museum’s reputation, that’s not the point says Anderson, “To view a dashboard primarily as a PR tool is to miss entirely the point of Transparency, which is to influence contemporary organizations to act with greater responsibility.“ Likewise, author Thompson points out that, “Putting out more evasion or PR puffery won’t work, because people will either ignore it and not link to it – or worse, pick the spin apart and enshrine those criticisms high on your Google list of life.”

Reasons for Transparency: Impact on Mission and Performance

“I don’t think it’s entirely a coincidence that, at a time when new media technologies are changing the rules of journalism, companies are placing a new emphasis on Transparency. Access to, and distribution of, information is being rapidly democratized and smart companies know to get out ahead of this trend. However, as with many corporate buzzwords (e.g., “quality” and “innovation”), the concept is suffering from inflation as too many companies claim “Transparency” as part of their identity without really walking the talk.” -Mark Hannah, “Transparency as a Principle not a Tactic”, PBS.org, January 7, 2009

It is a natural tendency to promote what is good about our institutions and hide what is not. As professionals, we’ve been conditioned over many years to treat the internet as just another communications medium, but in fact it’s not.  What does it take for a museum to begin the adoption of transparent methods and attitudes without falling into thinking of Transparency as just another PR tool, and what are the advantages of this strategy that might compel institutions to make the leap?

Museums are mission-driven organizations. For a museum, success cannot be measured in financial terms alone.  Sometimes – in service to our mission – museums make decisions which would play very poorly on Wall Street. However, these very decisions are those that set us apart most clearly from the for-profit world and offer us a chance to communicate with our constituents about our mission and about the unique and important place museums hold in our communities.

It is safe to say that museums spend large amounts of time and money every year on strategic planning – and for good reason.  A healthy and vibrant strategic plan is an invaluable tool to use in divining which activities we should pursue and which we should not.  The choices we make about which activities to forgo often say more about our strategic purpose than those we choose to pursue.  A common thread among many museums seems to be an addiction to an over-abundant array of worthwhile programs and activities. Solid strategic planning helps us focus activities on those which will achieve a measurable impact for the mission of the institution and result in long-term progress towards those stated goals.

Museums face difficult challenges when trying to measure whether or not they are being successful.  Success cannot be measured solely by the size of their endowments, attendance figures, or recent coverage in the press. Unlike their for-profit counterparts – where profit/loss statements can ultimately separate the winners and losers – a museum’s success has much more to do with achieving its mission and its degree of impact within the community.  Defining what success looks like and the establishment of benchmarks for comparison is absolutely vital to achieving a continuous improvement to goals and success over the long term. In his 2004 paper entitled “Metrics of Success in Art Museums”, Maxwell Anderson points out that “The root of the problem is that there is no longer an agreed-upon method of measuring achievement” and proposes several sets of measurements by which museums might gauge their success over time. Of course, the task of defining and agreeing on common metrics to be used across institutions seems to be a daunting task, however Anderson highlights the fact that, “While many challenges beset art museum leaders today, finding a way to measure performance is accordingly among the field’s most urgent.” and, “Without generally accepted metrics, arts organizations will have more and more trouble making a case for themselves.”

Choosing such a set of primary metrics for your institution can help to clarify and codify the relationship between your organization’s mission and its strategic plan.  These conversations are perhaps the most important discussions that could possibly be had among senior management executives and board members. As Andrew Taylor points out in his blog the Artful Manager,

“Of course, such systems [dashboards] raise a rather vexing challenge: what, exactly, are the few key indicators you would need to watch to monitor your success? It’s this question that actually proves to be more effective than the dashboard tool itself. To know what you should monitor, you need to know what you’re trying to do, and you also have to define what success looks like (more people? happier people? more art? better reviews? prolific artists?).” - Andrew Taylor, “Keeping an Eye on Dashboards”, The Artful Manager Blog, October 20.

It is important to note that this is a point at which the notion of Transparency and Metrics of Success in your museum are very closely related.  Anderson’s paper makes a convincing argument regarding the measurement of those efforts which are the most important to meeting our mission objectives.  Furthermore an establishment of appropriate metrics and benchmarks can have tangible benefits for museum operation.  Author Jason Saul illustrates this point in his book on benchmarking for non-profits,

“Thus, benchmarking has many direct and indirect benefits: increasing the impact of mission-related activities, raising internal standards, improving performance, attracting more funding, uncovering (and fixing) hidden weaknesses, and overall, improving the public face of the organization.” – Jason Saul, Benchmarking for nonprofits: how to measure, manage, and improve performance (Fieldstone Alliance, 2004) pg 12.

If these benchmarks or metrics are indeed the key drivers of our success, is it not also the case that these are the same facts and figures we should be making available to our constituents? By so doing, we begin to build an ongoing trust based on measurable fact and open a door to rational and informed conversations about why continued support of our museum is so vital.

Unfortunately, choosing the statistics and deciding to share them is not enough. Our museums are composed of an amalgam of individuals from many different social, educational, and professional backgrounds. Many of whom are extremely intelligent and passionate about their service to our institutions. Their daily choices, attitudes and activities are required to actually put these strategies and metrics into action and achieve the institution’s mission.  We cannot succeed in achieving our mission without the buy-in and understanding of these key staff members.

The Pharmacy prescribes the following links to combat Monday online anemia.

Blog: My Parents Were Awesome

New inspired crowd-sourcing blog, ‘My Parents Were Awesome‘, collects evidence that, “before the fanny packs and Andrea Bocelli concerts, your parents (and grandparents) were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super awesome.”

(via buzzfeed)

ArtBabble Video: Orly Genger: In The Factory

IMA Work of Art:

Dog Stealing Fish by Ando Hiroshige

Tweet:

iheartSAM: Construction to fix hammering man begins this week. Read @seattletimes coverage on him at http://bit.ly/4lScXc http://bit.ly/2RGYbi