“mahatma” by artist cryptik

Title: Measuring Critical Thinking: Results from an Art Museum Field Trip Experiment

Author(s): Brian Kisida, Daniel H. Bowen and Jay P. Greene

Publisher: Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness

Year: 2015

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2015.1086915

Topics: arts education, museums, field trip, visual arts, critical thinking

Methods: randomized controlled trial involving 8,000 elementary, middle- and high-school students assigned by lottery to attend a field trip and facilitated tour of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Researchers collected demographic information on the students and conducted a textual analysis of essays written by the students after the field trip responding to an image of a work of art. The essays were coded using a critical-thinking assessment rubric developed by the US Department of Education.

What it says: This study validates and expands upon the results of the authors’ 2013 Crystal Bridges study. The museum field trip was led by trained museum docent facilitating open-ended, student-led discussion about art work in the collections. Following the field trip, students completed surveys on their demographics, prior art consumption and production, knowledge of art, and attitudes toward cultural institutions. Students were also shown an image of a painting that was not part of the Crystal Bridges collection and given five minutes to write an essay describing what was going on in the painting, and what they saw that led them to that conclusion. In the first semester of the experiment, as discussed in the 2013 study, students were shown a representational work of art. Students participating in the study’s second semester were shown an abstract work of art.

All students assigned to the treatment group demonstrated stronger critical-thinking skills in their essays than those in the control group. However, across the board, some aspects of critical thinking as measured by the seven-section rubric were more evident than others; and measurements were not consistent between student responses to representational and abstract pieces. Specifically, students responding to the representational painting showed many examples of observations and interpretations in their written responses, whereas responses to the abstract piece were heavy on observation and light on interpretation. Instances of “problem finding,” “flexible thinking,” and  “comparisons” were less likely in response to abstract work.

However, as reported in the 2013 study, a relatively modest “dose” of arts education – one visit to the visual arts museum – produced a significant effect in the treatment group. Many of the students had never attended a school-based field trip before, and the authors note that students who reported prior exposure to arts education – including non-visual arts education – displayed stronger critical-thinking outcomes in general than students who reported little or no arts exposure. Female students and students from larger communities also scored higher on the critical-thinking rubric. Interestingly, students attending Title I schools showed significantly higher critical-thinking outcomes than their more affluent counterparts when responding to the representational artwork, but the differences were less pronounced for the groups responding to the abstract work.

What I think about it: The 2013 Crystal Bridges was rightly lauded for its scale, clarity, and thoughtfulness. This 2015 follow-up continues in that mold. Randomized controlled trials such as this one are considered a gold standard for research; the high level of inter-rater reliability among the researchers coding the student essays – who were not aware of any student characteristics (including whether they were in the treatment or control group) – leaves little to fault in the study’s design. There are limitations, of course: there is no way to know whether the effects on the treatment group last over time, for example, and whether they would remain consistent in an urban area that afforded residents more cultural opportunities. The difference in student responses to the abstract versus representational works of art also raises questions about the depth of conclusions to be drawn. Students were only given five minutes to write their essays, so the fact that they primarily stuck to observations and interpretations isn’t surprising; nor is it illogical that students working with the abstract piece offered fewer interpretations and more observations about the work. It would be interesting to see how the responses would have evolved if students were given more time to work on them. It would also be useful to know which elements of critical thinking were on display during the treatment group discussions at the museum. According to the authors: “The goal of the museum educators was to facilitate an open-ended, student-centered approach to discuss the works of art, encourage a deep level of engagement, and motivate students to seek out their own unique interpretations.” The extent to which students accomplished this, and the balance of observation versus interpretation in the discussions, may have depended on their abilities to respond to the essay prompt in a short amount of time.

Another question emerges: how much of the impact on students’ critical thinking had to do with the field trip and how much had to do with the arts-based nature of the experience? The authors note that “this research does not establish which components of the art museum experience were essential for increases in critical-thinking skills, or if these same effects could be generated from school-based arts exposure.” I wonder whether there were components that didn’t have to do with the arts at all. If students were guided to discuss a representational photograph, or to observe an environment for a science class, would such observational practice lead to similar results? And how much, if any, of the critical-thinking gains exhibited in this study might transfer over to other activities?

What it all means: Not many randomized controlled trials take place in arts education, so this one is heartening; perhaps it will serve as inspiration to other researchers interested not only in the impact of the arts on students, but how critical-thinking skills are cultivated in the first place. Despite its scale, the study leaves several questions unanswered. It does confirm that, in the short term, students who participated in a field trip to the Crystal Bridges Museum were able to respond to works of art in a more robust way than students who did not. As with the first Crystal Bridges study, the fact that this effect is most pronounced for Title I students examining representational work seems worthy of further examination.

“Museum” by flickr user World’s Direction

Title: “Taking Charge – Evaluating the Evidence: The Impact of Charging or Not for Admissions on Museums”

Author(s): DC Research Ltd.

Publisher: DC Research / Association of Independent Museums

Year: 2017

URL: https://www.aim-museums.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Final-Report-Taking-Charge-%E2%80%93-Evaluating-the-Evidence-The-Impact-of-Charging-or-Not-for-Admissions-on-Museums.pdf

Topics: museum admission, admission price, museum attendance, museum finances, UK, Wales

Methods: literature review, survey, case studies, interviews

What it says: Purpose and product: DC Research Ltd undertook this study in the first half of 2016 to understand the effects of charging or not charging for admission at UK museums – and of changing a museum’s policy toward charging – on attendance, visitor diversity, funding, visitor experience, and institutional relationships. (The research was commissioned by the Association of Independent Museums (AIM), in partnership with Arts Council England (ACE) and the Museums Archives and Libraries Division (MALD) of the Welsh Government.) The researchers produced four documents: the full report discussed here, a separate executive summary, a summary of the results from Wales, and a “Success Guide” capturing lessons learned for use by museums.

Methodology: The authors reviewed the existing literature on the consequences of charging for museum admission; conducted a survey generating usable responses from 311 museums across the UK; produced 20 case studies, primarily of museums that had changed their charging position, involving site visits and interviews with a variety of stakeholders; and consulted 18 museum experts through one-on-one conversations. Notably, all of the study components excluded National Museums and Galleries, which have tended to be the emphasis of much previous research into this issue in the UK. The authors also had access to AIM’s proprietary Visitor Verdict database.

Findings: Few clear patterns emerged with respect to what kinds of museums charge for admission or the effects of charging. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that other factors, including how a change in charging policy is communicated and managed, seem to matter more for nearly all of the metrics considered. The main exception is that charging seems to be associated with more time spent in the museum (longer “dwell times”) and possibly with greater likelihood of using the museum shop and café. Unsurprisingly, charging was found to provide a useful focal point to welcome visitors and collect data.

Of the 311 respondents, 57 percent charge for general admission and/or specific exhibitions, with a mean general admission price of about £6 for adults; this was higher for museums with more visitors and those that reported being a key attraction in their area. There was a stark difference in perceptions between institutions that are free and those that charge: the former mostly believed that being free had a positive effect on the number and diversity of visitors and on spontaneous donation and secondary spend; the latter mostly believed that charging did not have much effect on any of these. (Interestingly, separate data suggests that the average visitor experience rating was similar across the two kinds of institutions.)

Only 26 percent of the 311 respondents changed their charging policy in the last three years, with 70 percent of those who did being museums that already charged and merely increased price or scope. The institutions that increased charges mostly believed that these increases had no significant effect on number or diversity of visitors or spontaneous donations. The nine institutions that went from free to charging reported that adding a fee did reduce attendance overall (by some 35-40 percent, anecdotally) and disproportionately for locals and repeat visits, but did not seem to affect the social diversity of attendees. Data from AIM’s Visitor Verdict offers some support for this last point: the 2016 breakdown of attendees by social class was nearly identical for charging and free museums. The museums reported, however, that special outreach and discount programs are necessary to achieve this. (Some of the institutions that switched from charging to free reported an increase in diversity, although data was often thin.) The institutions that added a new fee also reported that spontaneous donations decreased, but that this was more than offset by the admissions income.

In terms of best practices for changing charging position, the authors conclude from their case studies that communication is the most important factor for success, emphasizing that staff should be trained to be confident and positive, stakeholders (especially the local community) should understand why the change is happening, any increase should ideally be tied to an improvement in the visitor experience, and thoughtful pricing tiers and discounts are key to maintaining the diversity of attendees.

What I think about it: The design of the study means the authors rely mostly on what museums perceive to be true, and so it doesn’t allow analysis of causality – especially since so few of the institutions involved changed their admissions policy. The authors wisely adduce external data (especially from Visitor Verdict) to triangulate those perceptions and adjudicate among them, but because the dataset is proprietary, it is hard to know how much confidence to place in it, and the authors do not address that question. As a result, the findings on the effects of charging must be taken with a grain of salt. More interpretation, perhaps from the case studies, might have increased the usefulness of this study.

The real value of the work may therefore be in the success guide, which provides practical advice to museums considering changing their policy. Here the anecdotal approach yields valuable insight, and the narrative style allows the authors to put their suggestions in the context of specific institutions they have learned from so their applicability to other institutions can be weighed by the latter’s staff.

The report would be strengthened if the authors made available the list of relevant institutions in the UK and/or of those that received the survey (to clarify how representative the response base is) and the survey instrument itself, without which it is sometimes hard to interpret the summarized responses. For example, only 3 percent of respondents charge for specific exhibitions only; one-third of free institutions believe being free has no impact on “admissions income”; and respondents are more likely to charge admission if they report that competition for visitors is more intense in their area.  These findings strike me as quite counter-intuitive, and I’m not sure how to evaluate them: access to the survey would help me understand whether I am interpreting the terms differently from the respondents. These are also examples of when more interpretation from the authors would be useful: if these things are true, what do they mean? If not, why do the museums perceive them to be?

What it all means: This is a topic on the minds of many museums: about half of the institutions surveyed have considered changing their admissions policy, though the vast majority think it is “not very likely” or “not at all likely” that they will change in the next three years. That last point, and the fact that such a small number of institutions actually did switch from free to charging or vice versa, suggests that this debate might be a proxy for more fundamental issues – and potentially a distraction from real engagement with them.

For example, the debate about charging in the US is often considered in terms of equity and access. This report (and especially the Visitor Verdict data it cites) suggest that charging or not charging is not the main factor in achieving diverse attendance, though the grain of salt mentioned above must be added. If that’s right, this report is a salutary reminder to focus on what matters to achieving our desired ends, which may be more about communication and implementation than admissions charge. But one additional caveat applies here: like many studies touching on diversity in the UK, this one focuses on social class based on occupation; race is not considered.

North Adams, Massachusetts – photo by flickr user John Herr

In 1986, Thomas Krens, with an MBA in hand from Yale University and new to his consultancy for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, suggested turning a shuttered electrical plant in North Adams, Massachusetts into the world’s largest contemporary art museum. He had spent six years in North Adams as the director of the Williams College Museum of Art, and the plant had been in his backyard. It was a big, wild idea, and it came to fruition thirteen years later, when the site became the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in 1999. Now, nearly thirty years later, Krens is back with a newer, bigger idea for North Adams: a 160,000-square-foot art gallery on the city’s Harriman-West Airport grounds. This new museum is designed to complement, rather than compete, with the “old” one: it would only show its contemporary-art collection, and there would be no exhibition programming. The idea is unusual in structure, as well; unlike most museums, Krens’ idea is for this one to be privately owned by a for-profit group of investors, and they’re only seeking a twenty-year lease. Not much has been heard of from Krens following the end of his twenty-year tenure as director of the Guggenheim Museum, but this new idea–five years in the making and originally planned for China–is sure to push him back into the limelight. The North Adams Airport Commission is on board. Next up: the Federal Aviation Administration.

Chula Vista Schools Invest Heavily in Arts Education. Chula Vista Elementary School District, which lies just south of San Diego, California, serves some 30,000 students. The last time the district had an arts coordinator was the 1970s, and last school year, the district had just four full-time art teachers. All this is about to change: this summer, the district has undertaken a massive expansion of its arts education program, hiring 60 new art teachers, with 16 spots still left to fill. This unprecedented investment in arts education, spearheaded by Lauren Shelton, has been made possible by $15 million in funding approved by the Chula Vista school board in June. The money comes from from Governor Jerry Brown’s state local control funding formula, which shifted education spending decisions to the local level and targets disadvantaged students. Chula Vista is not the only district to benefit from Governor Brown’s formula, but it’s the first to focus the entire pool of funds–$5 million a year for the next three years–on aggressively expanding arts education. The District’s goal is simple, if ambitious: to raise student engagement, boost attendance and improve academic performance among low-performing students, and of course, implement a long-term plan to restore arts instruction in the district.

Social Sciences Scrutinized, Found Lacking. The social sciences have found themselves in the Createquity limelight recently, and not necessarily for good reason. In March, we reported that the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology had banned testing for statistical significance and related procedures in papers published in its pages. In May we covered Michael LaCour’s study on the impact of gay canvassers on voters’ behavior, which was retracted when its data was found to be falsified. And this past month, the journal Science released the findings of a yearslong effort to faithfully reproduce 100 studies, in most cases using original data. These studies, published in the leading journals Psychological Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, are considered some of the most important work published on personality, relationships, learning and memory. In the case of more than half of the studies, the replication project found that “the evidence for most published findings was not nearly as strong as originally claimed.” While the study of the studies itself could stand some further investigation, the shocking numbers are just the latest warning not to take research results at face value. Is increased competition for academic jobs and research funding to blame, or is the Internet merely making it easier than before to spot crimes against science? Either way, social science is not doomed–but it sure is harder than we give it credit for.

China Lifts 14-Year Old Ban on Video Gaming. In 2000, the Chinese government banned the production and sale of video game consoles, citing concerns that games could have “adverse effects” on Chinese youth. Last year, China eased those restrictions, letting game console-makers operate in the Shanghai free trade zone (though even then they had to enter into contracts to build new manufacturing facilities, secure approval for console sales from regulators, and allow every console to be individually inspected.) This month, the Ministry of Culture lifted the ban altogether, opening the door to Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft to manufacture and sell their Xboxes, Playstations and Wii. Although China is expected to overtake the US as the world’s largest mobile gaming market by 2016, it’s not immediately clear what impact the lifting of the ban will have on Chinese gamers, or on the bottom line of the big three. In the absence of consoles, PC and web based games have eaten up the lion’s share of the market, leaving little room for new products, especially new consoles, which have, despite it all, long been available on the grey market.

Art School Profits off of Student Dreams. Remember when the entire first year MFA class at USC Roski School of Art and Design in Los Angeles dropped out in May on account of their funding and teaching opportunities being curtailed? If that story made you mad, have we got a tale of student exploitation for you. The for-profit Academy of Art University, based in San Francisco, was by founded by Richard S. and Clara Stephens in the 1920s. Under the watch of granddaughter Elisa Stephens, who became president in 1992, the school has become the largest private art university in the United States, with 16,000 students (35% of which are online-only) generating an estimated $300 million in annual revenues. The Stephenses are purportedly worth some $800 million, which they spend–lavishly and visibly–on prime San Francisco real estate, summer homes, yachts, jets, and cars. According to a Forbes exposé this month, it seems that fortune has been built on the selling of false hope. The Academy accepts any applicant with a high school diploma and the willingness to spend $22,000 a year on tuition–no art portfolio required. Only 32% of full-time students and 3% of part-time students graduate, and it takes most full-time students six years to do so. (The school keeps a full semester’s tuition if the student is enrolled for at least four weeks.) Add to this a caginess around job placement statistics and numerous building violations, and regulators are finally taking notice. It’s worth reconsidering the white-hot controversy surrounding Roski dean Erica Muhl in this light: shady as the university’s dealings might have been, they affected a grand total of seven students.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• At long last, the National Endowment for the Arts has a new theater director: Greg Reiner.
• Charlotte Cohen has been appointed executive director of the Brooklyn Arts Council, succeeding Ella J. Weiss who is retiring after serving 16 years as president of the organization.
• The Tucson Pima Arts Council announced a leadership shift this month: Debi Chess Mabie was appointed CEO, with current executive director Roberto Bedoya transitioning to the new role of Director of Civic Engagement.
• Angie Kim was named president and CEO of California’s Center for Cultural Innovation.
• Jennifer Coleman has been appointed Senior Program Officer for the Arts at the George Gund Foundation in Cleveland.
• After fifteen years with the Walton Family Foundation, Buddy Philpot will step down as its executive director.
• Sarah Martínez-Helfman has been named president of Philadelphia’s Samuel S. Fels Fund.
• Former Microsoft executive Michael Thatcher was named president and CEO of Charity Navigator.
• Scott Cantrell, long time staff music critic at the Dallas Morning, is the latest writer to accept a buyout at the paper.
• The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation seeks an arts program officer. Posted July 27; no closing date.
• The David and Lura Lovell Foundation seeks an executive director. Posted July 31; no closing date.
• The Krupp Family Foundation is hiring a part-time Foundation Grants and Program Director. Posted August 4; no closing date.
• The Prince Charitable Trusts is hiring a managing director. Posted August 5; no closing date.
• The California Arts Council is hiring a deputy director. Posted August 19; closing date September 18.
• The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is hiring a Program Fellow for the three-year Hewlett Fellowship. Posted August 28; no closing date.
• The South Jersey Cultural Alliance seeks an executive director. Closing date September 11.
• Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts is hiring an Assistant Director for the Arts Research Institute. Closing date September 30.
• The New Jersey Council for the Humanities seeks a Director of Programs. Applications will be reviewed beginning October 15.
• ArtsEnging/a2ru_News has openings for a Research Director and Research Fellow. No closing date.
• AEA Consulting is recruiting a research analysts and consultants. No closing date.
• The Oklahoma Arts Council is hiring a Director of Art in Public Places. No closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• A recent analysis of the Mellon Foundation’s Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program by the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute has found that the program has “no significant effect” on Ph.D. completion rates among minority students.
• The University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism examined the 700 top-grossing films between 2007 and 2014 and released a report revealing, in no uncertain terms, Hollywood’s bias against women, people of color and LGBT characters.
• A new study suggests that educational television programs such as Sesame Street have not been successful in reducing kids’ prejudices.
• The U.S. Department of Education released two reports assessing the qualifications of middle & high school instructors across arts disciplines. Spoiler alert: they’re not all qualified.
• How do you get to Carnegie Hall? A new study published this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that individuals underestimate the value of persistence for creative performance. Another report from the same journal indicates that money does matter, and what’s more, that low-income individuals are less happy in places with greater income inequality.
• A public study of Chicago residents commissioned by Arts Alliance Illinois last year reveals that while Chicagoans are united in wanting access to arts, not all have access: 28 of 77 of the city’s neighborhoods are home to zero arts organizations.
• A report published by Gulf Labor, a coalition of artists and activists, reveals that underpayment and harsh working conditions have persisted for migrant workers building new Guggenheim, Louvre and Zayed National museum branches in Abu Dhabi.
• A survey of professional dancers in UK revealed that more than half of them earn less than £5,000 a year from their performing engagements (and other bleak statistics).
• And in more lighthearted news: baristas rejoice! A new study reveals that people are willing to pay more–13% more!–for latte art.

Brooklyn Museum – by Flickr user Wally Gobetz, Creative Commons license

Following in the footsteps of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Haven, in 2015, New York City will begin issuing municipal identification cards to undocumented immigrants, with an arts-oriented twist. Much like those seen in other cities, New York’s program will allow access to critical services, such as opening a bank account, visiting a medical clinic, and renting an apartment. Based in the idea that the cultural treasures of the Big Apple ought to be available to all, the ID card will also provide free or discounted memberships at 33 of New York’s leading institutions, including the Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA PS1. The cards will be available to any city resident over the age of 14, and thus offer a way for anyone who feels they cannot afford arts and culture — not simply undocumented residents — to participate.

Grantmakers in the Arts Claims a Major Lobbying Success: At the end of August, the Obama Administration announced a $250 million “preschool development” grant competition, part of its efforts to improve preschool access for children below the poverty line. Grantmakers in the Arts’s Arts Education Funders Coalition (AEFC) helped ensure that program participants will receive the same arts exposure as students in the Head Start program. With the arts included as a key “approach to learning,” arts agencies have an opportunity to help design their states’ proposals, work with preschools to select curricula, and augment program offerings at preschools looking to meet the grant’s requirements.

Symphonies and Labor: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Locked Out: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra musicians have been locked out for over a month in a labor dispute, with healthcare benefits and the size of the orchestra itself at stake. An earlier, three-week lockout in 2012, fundraising difficulties, and low government support compared to other cities compound the problems, with the current season canceled through at least November 8. Four weeks into the lockout, CEO and President Stanley Romanstein resigned. Terry Neal, board member and former executive at Coca-Cola, will take the helm until a permanent replacement is found.

Corcoran Gallery of Art Merges with National Gallery and George Washington University: A D.C. judge recently approved the merger of the Corcoran Gallery of Art with the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University (GWU), which will effectively dissolve the Corcoran in a $2 billion deal. Once the oldest privately-supported art museum in the United States, the Corcoran has long struggled against mounting debts, tens of millions in renovations, and a shrinking endowment, and most recently, a lawsuit against the merger. As a result of the merger, approximately 150 staff will likely face layoffs, the National Gallery will absorb most of the Corcoran’s collections, and GWU will take over its College of Arts and Design, offering jobs to all of its full-time faculty.

New Research on Wellbeing & the Arts: The U.K’s All-Party Parlimentary Group for Wellbeing Economics has come out with a major new report on the intersection of arts funding and the wellbeing of the general public. The result of a year-long inquiry and titled “Wellbeing in Four Policy Areas,” the report contains two major findings: first, active participation in the arts has a much greater impact on overall wellbeing than serving as a passive audience member; and second, arts participation has a much larger effect on disadvantaged communities than wealthier, resource-rich areas. The effect on policymaking in the U.K. could be quite notable, as the the report asks arts funders to evaluate the wellbeing impacts of grants to organizations and employ this data to justify government spending.

MUSICAL CHAIRS/COOL JOBS

• The James Irvine Foundation announced Don Howard as the new president and CEO.
• Jim McDonald was named the deputy director and director of programs at Grantmakers in the Arts.
• San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley has announced that he will retire after a 44-year career in opera in 2016.
• Artist Trust has hired Shannon Roach Halberstadt as its new executive director.
• Mayor Martin J. Walsh has named Julie Burros as the new chief of arts and culture for the city of Boston. Burros was formerly head of cultural planning for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.
• The National Endowment for the Arts is looking for a program analyst. Salary: $89-138K, posted September 23, closes October 7.
• The Cleveland Metropolitan School District seeks an arts policy-focused plan manager and partnership manager. Posted August 28, no closing date.
• The Center for Effective Philanthropy is in the market for a research manager in its Cambridge, MA office. Posted August 27, no closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• The NEA has launched its “Exploring Our Town” site, a set of online case studies highlighting its signature creative placemaking program.
• More evidence for the power of young brains on art: a new study in the Journal of Neuroscience provides the first direct evidence that long-term engagement in community music programs enhance the neural processing of speech in at-risk children.
• The Nonprofit Finance Fund released its 2014 State of the Arts & Culture Sector brochure: even as organizations continue to expand and innovate with programs, many remain financially unstable.
• The James Irvine Foundation continues its interest in improving arts participation with a Helicon Collaborative report on the characteristics of organizations that successfully engage diverse audiences.
• Portland’s Regional Arts and Culture Council proves that engaging diverse audiences isn’t just a California thing with its own report.
• In a progress report, Grantmakers in the Arts investigates how funders are using capitalization principles to strengthen cultural organizations’ fiscal health.

Capitol Hill, Washington DC – by Flickr user KP Tripathi, Creative Commons license

Several policy shifts are underway in Washington that may have significant effects on arts nonprofits and funders. First, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the America Gives More Act, which would 1) make permanent three expired tax deductions – including the important IRA Charitable Rollover provision that allows seniors to donate up to $100k of their retirement disbursements without paying taxes on it – while 2) allowing individuals to credit deductions made before April 15 of one year to the previous tax year, avoiding the Christmas scramble for donations before patrons know their tax situation, and 3) simplifying the excise tax rate paid by foundations to 1% (it can currently rise to 2% in some circumstances). The future of the bill is uncertain: Obama Administration and many Congressional Democrats oppose it because it does not contain any revenue provisions to offset the reductions in tax income. The Senate is not expected to consider the bill before the fall.

Second, the IRS has released form 1023-EZ, a dramatically streamlined application for 501(c)(3) status that will allow applicants to become tax exempt simply by filling out a 3-page form (vs 26), paying $400 (vs $850), and swearing under penalty of perjury that they have less than $50k in annual income and less than $250k in assets. Some 70% of applicants are expected to be eligible for the EZ path, and the IRS won’t even review these applications as a matter of course. Some fear this may open the door to abuse, but aspiring nonprofits eying the 60,000-organization line to be reviewed may feel differently.

Finally, in pre-legislative news, the House Appropriations Committee approved level budgets of $146m for the NEA and NEH, restoring $8m cuts made to each in subcommittee, while the artist resale royalty rights bill is gaining momentum, attracting new Congressional co-sponsors in advance of a potential vote this year or next.

More money, more problems at the DIA: As the City of Detroit’s much-anticipated bankruptcy trial looms – it begins on August 16 – two contending valuations of DIA’s art have emerged. Artvest Partners, hired by the city, placed the total value of the 60k-piece collection at $2.8-4.6B; a creditor’s expert, Victor Weiner Associates, at $8.5B. But that’s in theory: Artvest estimated that the works would fetch only $850m to $1.8B in the current market, accounting for a potential glut of masterpieces if the museum were to deaccession en masse. (Victor Weiner acknowledged the actual haul would be lower but did not venture to say by how much.) Meanwhile, donations continue to flow toward the “Grand Bargain” that could spin DIA off as a separate non-profit, if the courts allow it, with a group of business leaders, companies, and corporate foundations pledging $26.8m toward the $100m DIA must raise. Oh, and there is art happening, too: DIA began installing reproductions of its masterpieces in Michigan communities for the fifth year of its Inside/Out project.

The fate of the Corcoran’s collection hangs in the balance: Back in February, the long-troubled Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art and Design announced they would be taken over by the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University. The Corcoran’s 17,000-piece collection would be split up, with the bulk going to the National Gallery and the remainder distributed to museums around the country. Now, a group of advocates — including museum donors and alumni of the college — has filed suit to stop the deal, arguing longtime board mismanagement is to blame for the current state of affairs. At issue is whether the Corcoran’s lawyers can show that the proposed arrangement is the “next best” option to maintain the original intent of the institution. While alternative solutions are bandied about and exhaustive arguments laid out on both sides, the Corcoran’s fate should be decided by the end of August.

Another shakeup at the William Penn Foundation: Philadelphia’s only remaining major arts funder is showing alarming signs of instability. Managing Director Peter Degnan, the foundation’s second leader in less than two years, has resigned after less than six months on the job, citing “personal reasons.” He succeeded Jeremy Nowak, whose tenure ended in 2012. Chief Philanthropy Officer Laura Sparks will take over as leader of the foundation with the new title of executive director. While she will likely have broader authority and responsibility than her predecessor, she is not expected to make major changes in the grantmaker’s strategic areas of focus.

Looking for affordable artist housing? Take a number: In a jarring indication of how bad New York’s affordable housing crisis is, a recent lottery for housing slots in one renovated Harlem building generated a whopping 53,000 applications from artists. The building, El Barrio’s Artspace PS 109, is a former public school that was sold to Artplace two years ago. Foundations, politicians, and local departments of housing and cultural affairs contributed $52.2 million in renovations to create 89 housing units — begging the question of how big an investment would be needed to make a dent in artists’ demand for affordable living spaces.

MUSICAL CHAIRS/COOL JOBS

• Andy Horwitz is leaving New York City to launch a new consultancy called Applied Creativity; though he will continue writing in other venues, Culturebot will go on sabbatical indefinitely from September transition to new leadership.
• Reuben Roqueñi will join Hewlett as a program officer in Performing Arts; he is currently program director at the Native Arts and Culture Foundation in Washington State.
• Laura Packer has become ED of the Howard Gilman Foundation in NYC. She had been Arts Program Director at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation in New Jersey.
• The Nathan Cummings Foundation has tapped former Trustee Ernest Tollerson as interim CEO while a search gets underway.
• Longtime National Arts Strategies VP Gail Crider will take over as President and CEO from Russell Taylor at the start of the year.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• The California Film Commission reports that film and TV projects worth $2 billion relocated their production away from California over the last four years, often when other states offered better tax breaks.
• Another bleak snapshot of the writer’s life: median author income in the UK fell by almost a third over the last decade, to $18.5k per year.
• Meanwhile, on stage: Last year, London’s 241 theatres served 22m patrons, earned $1B, and employed 3,000 performers at a time. This was the first quantitative report of this kind, so the historical trend is unclear.
• More than a third of 18-34-year-old tourists to the UK identified culture as a major draw in a new survey; historical buildings and arts institutions got special mention.

Summary

Published in 2011, The Participatory Museum presents Nina Simon’s social web-inspired approach to museum exhibits and partnerships and serves as a handbook for museum professionals for engaging in participatory projects. The Participatory Museum looks at how audiences participate in online platforms such as YouTube and Flickr and extends those principles to visitor participation in a museum. The first section of the book presents the theoretical framework for participatory design, and the second lays out practical tips for designing participatory exhibits and programs including types of projects, evaluation tips, and advice on how to build institutional capacity for participatory projects.

Four main ideas make up the theoretical part of the book:

Scaffolding places clear parameters through design into an exhibit that help frame the visitor experience and the range and nature of responses generated. Scaffolding guides visitors and keeps requests for participation from being too open-ended.

Me to We Design, a recasting of Simon’s earlier hierarchy of social participation, guides visitors through personal entry points to make connections with content, and ultimately to other individuals. Those connections take many forms.

Social technographics are a concept borrowed from Forrester Research’s 2008 “social technographics” tool, which categorizes audience profiles in social media engagement, audience profiles are based on types of activity and include creators, spectators, critics, joiners, collectors, and inactives. Good design considers how the actions of each audience type can enhance the experience of others.

Social objects function as a conduit for participation allowing visitors to “focus their attention on a third thing rather than on each other, making interpersonal engagement more comfortable.” Giving objects a social dimension can involve making design tweaks, physically altering objects, or reworking interpretive tools to make objects more personal, relational, active, and provocative.

In the second section, one chapter each is devoted to four types of participatory projects—contributory, collaborative, co-creative, hosted—three of which come from the Public Participation in Scientific Research (PPSR) project of the Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE). Simon added a fourth type, “hosted,” to accommodate projects that are done by outside groups within the museum. The participatory models range from less to more control on the part of the participants but needn’t be attempted in any particular order. She even demystifies choosing among models through a handy chart.

Analysis

At first, I was skeptical of the book’s wide applicability. Would it work well in the field regardless of museum type, location, or resources? As I read, however, Simon seemed to anticipate my objections, and The Participatory Museum succeeded in allaying most of my questions.

• The Participatory Museum is dense in practical information. Tips are peppered throughout the book. Simon reinforces her points with numerous case studies that illustrate both successful and unsuccessful attempts at encouraging participation.
• The examples are diverse, featuring organizations from several countries, of many kinds and sizes, and at different points on the participation spectrum
• Between the examples in the text, and anecdotal evidence from colleagues, it was clear that participation, as a tool, is useful in building engagement across a wide spectrum of audiences.

The theories underlying The Participatory Museum appear to be sound even if not originating in or having been formally tested in a museum environment at the time of publication. Simon translates what assessment does exist into practical advice, and even lays out a blueprint for what good evaluation could look like. The Participatory Museum gives every indication of being directionally correct, and an excellent guide to incorporating participatory design into an institution.

Implications

Simon’s book has had an undeniable impact on the museum field, reigniting debate over how to breathe life into decaying institutions. In the four years since its publication there has been a shift—or at least public perception of a shift— toward more participation. And even within the field, participation and the principles laid out in the book have become the focus of conferences, institution-wide training sessions, and professional development workshops. Though participation does seem to be where the field is headed, the principles have met with some resistance from proponents of the more traditional museum experience and design and the absolute control and authority of the institution.

At the end of the day, are audiences more engaged and are institutions meeting their missions more effectively through participatory design techniques? The Particpatory Museum’s usefulness ultimately rests on the answers to those questions. We will need closer study of participatory work to fully understand the implications of the broader trends the book catalogues and appears to be ushering forward. What do we gain from participatory exhibits or institutional cultures of participation? What do we lose? The good news is that the success of The Participatory Museum and the speed at which its recommendations have been adopted should provide a wealth of material for researchers to begin answering these questions with more specificity in the years ahead.

(For a briefer edition of this analysis, check out the abridged version.)

“This may sound messy,” Nina Simon, engineer turned experience designer, writes of participatory projects. “It may [also] sound tremendously exciting.”

Summary

Written in 2010 as a handbook for museum professionals who want to engage audiences in deeper forms of participation, The Participatory Museum presents Nina Simon’s social, web-inspired approach to exhibits and partnerships. At the time of writing, Simon was a highly sought-after experience designer whose philosophy was made popular through her blog, Museum 2.0. Part argument for participation and part toolbox, The Participatory Museum aims to inspire readers’ enthusiasm about participatory design and prepare them to launch their own successful projects.

The book itself is the product of a participatory project. Simon used an online wiki format to allow readers to submit relevant case studies and assist with writing and eventually editing. The online version of the book features linked footnotes for the examples used throughout the text.

Taking cues from social websites like YouTube, Netflix, LibraryThing, and Flickr, The Participatory Museum explores how brick-and-mortar institutions can learn from virtual participatory experiences. Simon defines a participatory cultural institution as one in which “visitors can create, share, and connect with each other around content.” Participation encourages multidirectional content experiences: a museum, rather than limiting itself to sending information in the direction of visitors, can encourage those visitors to contribute information to the institution and even share among themselves. Participation also encourages more equitable relationships among all stakeholders, making objects and entire institutions more accessible.

All of this requires an adjustment in thinking about authority, the role of the visitor, and the flow of information between individual and institution. In participatory projects, museum staff members used to holding absolute authority in the interpretation of objects must cede some of that power to visitors. Simon asserts that the very process that makes participatory projects rewarding for museum audiences is often a source of apprehension for museum staff. Done right, according to Simon, “participatory projects create new value for the institution, participants, and non-participating audience members.”

Drawing by Jennifer Rae Atkins

Using the example of how interactivity has transformed entire organizations such as the Boston Children’s Museum, Simon imagines a future where some institutions are “wholly participatory.” The Participatory Museum advocates for the power of participatory design to fulfill idealistic mission statements about engagement, connection, and inspiring action. Nevertheless, Simon is careful to include the caveat that this new method of design isn’t meant to supplant traditional techniques but to augment them, and argues that the two can peacefully coexist.

Structure and scope

The book is organized into two sections. The first, more theoretical part lays out several participatory design principles, and the second details how four different models of participation can work in practice.

Participation in theory

For Simon, the first and perhaps most important point that undergirds all successful design is a clear connection between the institution’s mission and the benefits to be gained from a participatory project by the institution, participants, or audience. No one will be engaged – or fooled – if a museum halfheartedly invites participation because it has become trendy. To reap the rewards of participation, staff and leadership must understand how the project will advance the museum’s core purposes. This grounding in mission and clarity of benefits makes everything else possible.

The Participatory Museum identifies “two counter-intuitive design principles at the heart of successful participatory projects” that reappear throughout the book. The first is scaffolding, the guidance and constraints given to visitors to help frame the range and nature of responses generated. Scaffolding is necessary to set up a safe environment where audience members feel comfortable sharing and interacting with each other. Simon juxtaposes the completely open-ended request for participation with the thoughtfully narrow one.

Compare, for example, the open-ended dialogue program of British artist Jeremy Deller, It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq,with the Human Library, an event first held for youth at the Denmark Roskilde Festival in 2000. It Is What It Is attempted to encourage visitors to ask questions of people who had served in Iraq by creating a large gallery with provocative images from the country and installing living-room-style seating. At points throughout the exhibition, soldiers, translators, and others were on hand to answer questions from visitors. Simon argues that It Is What It Is lacked “sufficient scaffolding to robustly and consistently support dialogue”: the two times she saw it at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, there were just two guests sitting on couches next to a powerful object.

The Human Library explores similar terrain: it is intended for “anybody who is ready to talk with his or her own prejudice and stereotype and wants to spend an hour of time on this experience.” Participants select a “book” from a catalogue of stereotypes, such as a black Muslim, a cop, a Goth, or a quadriplegic; once at the “checkout counter,” they encounter a person embodying their chosen stereotype for a discussion lasting anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours. The experience was more carefully crafted, and it was a success at generating the kinds of provocative discussions the designers hoped for. The framing of the event as a library eased some of the expected reluctance in confronting visitors’ own prejudices, allowing participants to choose their own book provided a personal entry point into the activity, and even restricting the time helped set people’s expectations. Simon reasons that limitations make people more likely to participate and that better-defined parameters lead to higher-quality and more relevant participation.

Good scaffolding alone doesn’t automatically result in amazing social participation. Truly social interaction, Simon says, has to start with the individual, who begins to climb a participatory ladder from a personal entry point, her second design principle. “Me-to-We” design, a recasting of her own earlier hierarchy of social participation, guides visitors through those entry points to connections with content, and ultimately to other individuals.

Not everyone will always want to engage with others socially, even if an exhibit is designed to allow it. To categorize the different styles of participation, Simon looks to statistics on American adults from Forrester Research’s 2008 “social technographics” tool, which categorizes audience profiles in social media engagement.

Forrester Research’s social technographics participation ladder.

In this framework, audience profiles are based on types of activity. Creators make up a small part of the participation pie, whereas critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives represent the majority in social platforms – and all but the last two (not just creators) count as truly participatory. Good design acknowledges the mixed composition of audiences and provides an outlet for each role to be involved, enabling the actions of each audience type to enhance the experience of others.

Simon devotes considerable attention to two other elements of design: technologies for social experiences and social objects. Each of these concepts is meant to aid in moving toward the “we” end of design. Simon asserts that mediating technologies can make people “more comfortable socializing with strangers” within the physical space of the museum. For example, Internet Arm Wrestling, an exhibit set up concurrently in several science centers around the U.S., enabled long-distance personal interactions. Visitors at one institution sat behind a metal arm and a computer screen and arm wrestled someone elsewhere at the same center or hundreds of miles away at another. The exhibit succeeded in engaging audiences in types of behavior they would not normally try within a museum or, probably, anywhere.

Simon doesn’t neglect the role of objects themselves in prompting social interaction. Simon argues that “social objects,” a concept taken from engineer and sociologist Jyri Engestrom, perform a similar role as mediating technologies, allowing visitors to “focus their attention on a third thing rather than on each other, making interpersonal engagement more comfortable.” Social objects differ from regular ones in that they tend to spark interactions among audience members who see them. Simon uses the non-museum example of her dog, who serves as a focal point for social exchanges with passersby when she is out for a walk. Harnessing social potential is as much about good design choices as good object choices, and giving objects a social dimension is an art. It can involve making design tweaks, physically altering objects, or reworking interpretive tools such as panels and labels to make objects more personal, relational, active, and provocative..

Participation in practice

Shifting to the practical considerations for participation in the second part of the book, Simon borrows three categories of participation from the Public Participation in Scientific Research (PPSR) project of the Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) and supplies a fourth of her own. One chapter is dedicated to each of the participatory models:

• Contributory
• Collaborative
• Co-creative
• Hosted

Simon describes contributory projects as “casual flings between participants and institutions,” with the most common form being the comment box or feedback wall. As the name suggests, these projects solicit contributions from visitors, which can take the form of opinions, stories, or personal objects such as photographs. Of the four participatory models, contributory projects are the simplest to execute and can involve the most people. Even though these projects are relatively casual, scaffolding still helps institutions ask for and receive meaningful contributions through thoughtful questioning and modeling desired behavior. The London Science Museum incorporated visitor-donated toys into the exhibit Playing with Science, and visitors reported feeling a sense of ownership and pride in seeing their toys on display.

In collaborative projects, institutions still take the leading role in project development, but they work side by side with community members to create new exhibits, programs, and services. These projects usually require a higher level of commitment from participants than those in the contributory category. The National Building Museum in DC runs an annual program that collaborates with local youth to create an exhibit based on the photography and creative writing of community members. Participants take part in twelve classes and have the opportunity to “partially self-direct” an exhibit at the museum. To Simon, though, the exhibit is just the beginning. She asserts that the real measure of success for these projects is what happens after they end – specifically, whether participants remain involved with the institution beyond the project. Simon suggests establishing four non-overlapping roles for the management of collaborative projects: project director, community manager, instructors, and client representatives. Each of these roles balances different levels of authority and intimacy with participants, so keeping them distinct, Simon argues, is important to project success and staff sanity.

Co-creative projects may be undertaken at the initiative of outside participants. On the surface, these projects may look very similar to collaborative projects, but the key difference lies in the share of power between the institution and participants. Co-creative projects are demand-driven and “require institutional goals to take a backseat to community goals.” The special sauce that makes these projects successful is a mixture of non-specialists equipped to accomplish both community and institutional goals, and institutions genuinely desiring community input and leadership. Seattle’s Wing Luke Asian Museum uses the co-creative model exclusively in developing their exhibits. Wing Luke staff members facilitate the development of the themes, content, and form of the exhibits by a team of advisors from the community.

In hosted projects, outside participants have almost complete power. One of the most common of these is a late night social event or reception sponsored by an external organization, although some museums may turn over a set of rooms for exhibitions controlled entirely by someone else. In all of these projects, the outside partner carries out their own project within the museum’s space. Despite the near-total abdication of power in these projects, creative constraints are still useful in ensuring a degree of consistency between community-led projects and those led by professional staff.

While the participatory models range from less to more control on the part of the participants, Simon believes that they needn’t be attempted in any particular order and shouldn’t be seen as a progression. She has even demystified choosing among models through a chart that walks through assessing your commitment to community engagement, desired control over the project, preferred level of leadership, availability of staff, skills gained by participants and benefits to nonparticipants.

Toward the end of the book, Simon devotes chapters to evaluating and sustaining participation. Evaluating participatory projects can be especially tricky because it must focus not just on results for the multiple beneficiaries but also on the process itself. And even the best design can crumble with inadequate institutional support and management structures. Simon suggests a few methods to get staff comfortable with taking on more challenging participatory projects, such as encouraging them to “spend time on the front lines with visitors” or conduct audience research. She also offers several strategies for keeping momentum going with newly started participatory projects, including hiring a community manager and cultivating a participatory culture from the very top.

Analysis

After reading The Participatory Museum, museums and their staff, regardless of their size or resources or content, should be able to begin their journey to reinvigorating themselves, right? What’s good for the web must be good for the galleries? I have to admit that at first I had my doubts.

Specifically, I was skeptical that the book’s techniques would work in a museum like mine, the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre in Laos: tiny, few staff, little money, no technology, almost no repeat visitors, and in a developing country. Forrester Research’s social technographics data draws on audiences in North America, Europe, Australia, Metro China, Japan and Korea – all relatively developed places. If any setting could test the limits of this model, it would be here. As I read, however, Simon seemed to anticipate my objections, and The Participatory Museum succeeded in allaying most of my questions about its applicability.

Many books meant as guides meander through abstractions and skimp on specifics, but The Participatory Museum is as dense in practical information as in theory. Tips (“Generally, a platform that has one-fourth to one-half of the space open provides a feeling of welcome and encourages visitors to share”) are peppered throughout the book. Simon reinforces her points with numerous case studies that illustrate both successful and unsuccessful attempts at encouraging participation. For example, in the section on collaboration, she shares her involvement with The Tech Virtual Test Zone, a 2007 project of the San Jose Tech Museum that did not turn out as expected. Simon’s own personal example of participatory failure was a poignant reminder that even seasoned designers don’t get things right all the time.

The examples are also diverse, featuring organizations from several countries, of many kinds and sizes, and at different points on the participation spectrum—some, even, from organizations similar to mine. To cite just a few cases, Simon presents an advice booth set up in the University of Washington-Seattle Student Center, a community photo-documentation project at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology (VME), and a participatory book-tagging experiment in the Netherlands.

I also saw the applicability of Simon’s approach to the developing world firsthand recently, when my museum undertook a community-based participatory project similar to the VME’s. This work brought a flood of enthusiasm among community members previously untapped through traditional design methods. And a colleague in Indonesia recently quoted the book in justifying decisions she made within her museum. Between the examples in the text, and anecdotal evidence from colleagues, it’s clear that participation, as a tool, is useful in building engagement across a wide spectrum of audiences.

But can we trust the theories underlying The Participatory Museum’s recommendations for practice? While an exhaustive review of primary sources upon which the book draws is outside of the scope of this article, Simon certainly seems to have done her homework: her central typology of participatory projects (contributory, collaborative, co-creative, and hosted) is taken from the literature on public participation in scientific research. She deftly adapts it to the somewhat different context of museums, and added the final category (hosted) herself to account for the use of a museum’s space by an outside organization, where she argues persuasively that the principles of successful participation still apply.

That said, readers should be aware that most of the theory underlying The Participatory Museum had not been formally tested in a museum environment at the time the book was published. Simon speaks forcefully about the need for more and better evaluation of participatory projects; she calls the lack of it “probably the greatest contributing factor to their slow acceptance and use in the museum field.” The Participatory Museum seemingly does a good job of enlisting what assessment does exist and translating it into practical advice, and even lays out a blueprint for what good evaluation could look like, but the evidence presented in most cases is anecdotal. (There are exceptions, such as a 2002 impact study of Glasgow’s Open Museum, which lent objects to visitors in the community.) Purely on the basis of what was known in 2010, it is hard to be sure what tradeoffs would be involved in manifesting Simon’s ultimate vision of a new, wholly participatory kind of museum, or exactly how best to do it. Even so, The Participatory Museum gives every indication of being directionally correct, and an excellent guide to starting that process at an institution.

Implications

Whether you love or hate it, the impact of Simon’s book on the museum field is undeniable. With over 250 citations in books and journal articles, and required reading status in graduate museum studies programs, The Participatory Museum is widely touted as a must-read for museum professionals. The book has inspired conferences, institution-wide discussion sessions, and professional workshops around the country, and reignited debate over how to breathe life into decaying institutions. Simon continues to experiment with these principles at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, where she has been executive director since 2011.

It’s hard to know how much credit The Participatory Museum can claim for this, but there has been a shift—or at least public perception of a shift— toward more participation in the four years since its publication. The Economist recently noted that museums were almost completely unrecognizable, having changed from being places “where people look on in awe” to being places “where they learn and argue.”

But is participation for everyone? There is a tension in The Participatory Museum between Simon’s utopian vision of wholly participatory institutions and her call for balance between traditional and participatory design. Writing about her divergent experiences during a visit to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in Wyoming in 2008, she admitted:

I am an elitist when it comes to national parks. I like my parks hard to access, sparsely populated, and minimal in services…I believe in lowering barriers to access and creating opportunities for visitors to use museums in diverse ways. On this trip, for the first time, I truly understood the position of people who disagree with me, those who feel that eating and boisterous talking in museums is not only undesirable but violating and painful.

If participatory design is not the only worthwhile kind of design, where is the proper balance? How do institutions and staff know when they’ve hit the participatory sweet spot and when they’ve gone too far?

Indeed, the principles Simon advocates in her book have met with resistance from some quarters. While many institutions have begun transforming themselves into the new kind of museum that Simon envisions, others hold to their support of quiet contemplation and traditional design and seem to believe that they can meet their missions effectively and satisfy their audiences without these design techniques. Bruce Bratton, a Santa Cruz resident, and Judith Dobrzynski, a New York Times writer, are the most recent standard-bearers of the camp that is critical not so much of The Participatory Museum as of the concept of participatory design itself. Dobrzynski believes that the participatory trend, or as she calls it, “the quest for experience,” has led to a field-wide identity crisis in which entertainment has taken over the previously quiet and contemplative environment for which museums were known. Bratton’s more personal attack took aim at Simon’s own museum, calling it a “hobby circus” and claiming that the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History had devolved into a community center under her leadership.

The Participatory Museum does acknowledge these concerns about audience members who don’t want to take part themselves or feel that others’ participatory experiences are intrusive. Early on in the book, Simon argues that the segment of the audience seeking a more traditional experience should not be left out of the process of “mapping out audiences of interest and brainstorming the experiences, information, and strategies that will resonate most with them” that is foundational to audience-centric design. The research profiling participant types notes that “passive” participants outnumber creators anyway, and through strategic design they can still benefit from others’ contributions. But at the end of the day, are audiences more engaged and are institutions meeting their missions more effectively through participatory design techniques?

For all the accolades and buzz it’s received, The Participatory Museum’s usefulness ultimately rests on the answers to those questions. We will need closer study of participatory work to fully understand the implications of the broader trends the book catalogues and appears to be ushering forward. What do we gain from participatory exhibits or institutional cultures of participation? What do we lose? Are there gaps between perception and reality on this front? (For example, the book presents little evidence that participatory design can make museum audiences less white.) Finally, how can we most effectively take Simon’s advice to put the audience first in any design, given the varied desires and priorities of individual members of that audience? The good news is that the success of The Participatory Museum and the speed at which its recommendations have been adopted should provide a wealth of material for researchers to begin answering these questions with more specificity in the years ahead.

Further reading:

• Nina Simon’s blog, Museum 2.0
• Jessica Shoemaker, A review of The Participatory Museum
• Sarah Jesse, What Would the Internet Do?
• University of Chicago Cultural Policy Center, Participatory Museum workshop
• Collections Link, Participation Portal
• Archaeology, Museums, & Outreach; Moving from Me to We
• Mike Murawski, Developing Questions for Visitor Participation
• Interviews with Nina Simon about the book:
  • Huffington Post, Nina Simon and the Participatory Museum Model
  • National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, Five Question Q&A
  • Smithsonian Magazine, Nina Simon, Museum Visionary
  • Information and Design, The Participatory Museum

National Museum of Cambodia. Photo by kfcatles.

A heat map of museum activity in Asia would show the whole region aglow. At first glance, if you’ve been getting your story from mainstream American media, you might think Asian institutions are becoming just like us, or beating us at our own game: the National Museum of Cambodia recently put its collection online thanks to a grant from an American foundation, and the Mumbai airport recently unveiled the largest airport gallery in the world. Other stories might give the opposite impression: a museum in China was shuttered after nearly its entire collection of 40,000 artifacts was found to be fake; in some public museums in Southeast Asia, staff are government employees who have been demoted to what is seen as an undesirable role.

So what’s really happening? I have spent the last two years as Programs Director at a private ethnology museum in Laos, but I’ve been following these developments for much longer. During the three years I lived in China after college, I became interested in museums as a platform to share my growing appreciation of Asia with a wider audience. My interest deepened back in the U.S., as I researched China’s recent cultural policy changes and their impact on museums for a master’s degree in China Studies and then wrote more broadly about museum issues in Asia for a museum studies certificate. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the story is as complex as the continent, a medley of unique political systems, museum governance structures, geographies, human resource policies, levels of development, and education systems.

I can’t tell that whole story in a single post, but I do want to share some of what I have seen unfolding in museums across developing Asia.

The boom

Over the past several years, prominent news sources have reported the growth of museums in Asia: The New York Times, the BBC, CNN, The Economist. The focus is often on China. In 2011, at the People’s Consultative Congress, former President Hu Jintao announced China’s plans to become a world leader in the arts and to make cultural industries a pillar industry by 2015. To make good on its plans, Beijing earmarked more money for the construction of new museums and to make public museums free. But the government alone isn’t driving the growth. Affluent businessmen are opening their own museums to house the private collections they’ve amassed at auctions. All over China, even in sparsely populated regions, new museums go up at the astounding rate of about 100 a year.

But other places are beginning to share some of the spotlight. Further south in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country and fourth largest by population in the world, similar conditions for art museum growth exist: economic prosperity and strong competitiveness in the international art market, with Indonesian artists beginning to break local price records. Indonesia also has one thing to credit for the creation of new museums in general that China doesn’t: rapid political decentralization. Each province in the country must have a museum, and new provinces come into existence at a surprisingly frequent rate.

Thailand’s strong national interest in archeology and the sheer volume of artifacts being discovered motivate the building of new museums, although fewer than in China and Indonesia. Alongside these more traditional (albeit brand-new) institutions, a robust network of grassroots, community-based museums adopting unconventional practices has sprung up as the result of local training opportunities.

Though India has also seen a relatively modest increase in the number of museums, it has a growing network of international partnerships. Recent agreements signed with the Tate and the Metropolitan Museum may go further in raising the level of museum practice in the country through the loan of objects that will help keep exhibits fresh, research collaborations, and joint learning programs for staff and fellowships.

In Asia as elsewhere, museums come into being for a variety of reasons and through a variety of actors. Burgeoning economic prosperity is often the impetus for museum growth. Yet slower economic development does not preclude it. Because many national governments, occupied with meeting other development benchmarks, have been slow to invest in arts and culture for purposes outside of economic growth, other parties have stepped in. Organizations owned in whole or in part by foreigners, or grassroots artist cooperatives such as San Art in Vietnam or the Cemeti Art House in Indonesia, may fill the art-for-art’s-sake gap. Their unaffiliated status translates to more flexibility in hiring, fundraising, interpreting their collections, and setting their own budget and agenda. Private museums are still much less common in Asia than public ones, but they, too, are part of the boom.

Audience, outreach, and local impact

Tourism and the local audience

Tourism contributes significantly to the economies of Asian countries. This can be helpful in keeping up foot traffic for museums – but whose feet, and at what cost? Many Asian museums have geared themselves toward foreign visitors, for at least two reasons: money and education.

It’s not uncommon for museums to offer free entry for locals. These patrons’ lack of financial contribution, however, may lead to their neglect. In a country like Laos, in which tourists make up a large part of museum visitation, locals may be put off by the fact that the majority of guests are not like them – a familiar refrain for American museums struggling to reach out to underrepresented groups. When tourism drives the local economy, the tourist is king, and the quality of service provided to locals may receive little attention, if any at all, in programming and promotion.

In addition to having more money, tourists also tend to be better educated. One of the biggest shifts in my own thinking about exhibit design after moving to Laos was about assumed literacy and comfort with self-guided discovery. The same Asia that is home to economies such as Singapore, Korea, and Shanghai, envied for their top-ranking academic performance, also suffers from development-stunting education systems. Literacy statistics for Asia—especially South and Southeast Asia, which is most of the continent in terms of both population and landmass—look deceptively high when the reality is that they only measure basic, not functional, literacy. As museums in Asia have added less familiar objects to their collections and adopted the Western model of explaining them with labels, some have risked losing connection with their local audience. What good are labels and panels if your audience can’t read well enough to understand the signage?

Going local

But the story may yet have a happy ending. I have noticed several hopeful signs that Asian museums may be paying more attention to local communities. Last November, I met Sabyasachi Mukherjee, the director of the encyclopedic Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) in Mumbai, India, at a conference. I was impressed with the recent push in India for museums to appeal to all segments of society. Mukherjee was clearly interested in this topic: he questioned speakers at the end of every session, challenging museum directors from the West to rethink their audience.

It turns out Mukherjee’s commitment to orienting museums towards their communities is working for him back home. At the CSMVS, local participation increased by almost 50% over a three-year period, thanks to a mix of dynamic exhibits and unconventional programming. In the United States, we take for granted that a museum will display objects from other countries. By contrast, typical museum collections in Asia consist primarily of artwork or objects from that country’s own heritage and history, given their focus on preservation and guardianship of national heritage. India stands out in Asia for its ability to host blockbuster exhibits of artwork and artifacts from around the world. Both the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert have brought shows to the CSMVS, and other notable exhibits have featured paintings of Rubens and Van Dyck.

Mukherjee has also experimented with museum buses, which carry objects from the collection to neighborhoods throughout Mumbai and offer free access to locals. The program began as outreach to schoolchildren, but has since expanded its focus to reach suburbanites. The CSMVS has also begun to partner with NGOs to do programs with marginalized communities, such as sex workers and HIV patients.

The push in India for accessible art goes beyond the CSMVS, and it includes public art. Leading that initiative is Rajeev Sethi, the designer behind the T2 terminal at the Mumbai airport I mentioned at the start of this post. Though the idea of art in airports is not unique, the initiative is much broader. Sethi envisions the whole country as a museum and advocates bringing art dug up from museum basements “back to lived spaces—railway stations, bus stops, public parks, hospitals” – to serve a richer pool of stakeholders than he believes the Western view of museums supports.

Faced with a rapidly growing consumer class, museums in Indonesia are also trying to adapt their approach to their public. Until a few years ago, Indonesian museums were run by the Ministry of Tourism, where they enjoyed relatively high levels of financial support and attention. Their main audience under this ministry was foreigners or traveling Indonesians, which meant that exhibits changed infrequently — it matters less if your information is static if you have few repeat visitors. Museums were seen mostly as places of leisure, and money was poured into them to attract tourists.

In 2010, control switched to the Ministry of Education and Culture, which has a budget predominately allocated to education, and funding levels dropped. But this move also prompted museums to begin to think of themselves as serving the people of Indonesia and having an important role in informal education. A series of locally focused initiatives began then that included a Museum Visit Year campaign and revitalization projects. Most recently, in 2013, thirteen museums in Jakarta took their collections to that most public and popular of institutions, the mall. They hosted a museum week cosponsored by the Jakarta Post and the Ministry that featured an expo-style layout of booths with exhibits. Visitors were able to see exhibits and objects they might otherwise not have seen. The organizers hope to make this an annual event, and there is optimism that over time the event will bring more visitors to the museums in their own cities.

Human Resources

The Role of the Curator

Staffing has traditionally been a challenge for private and public museums alike in Asia, limiting the vitality and even sustainability of these institutions. With a glut of museums opening quickly and then having virtually no visitors, or even closing, China‘s example has shown that the success of new museums often depends on having the right people running and staffing them.

Museum professionals in the West take for granted that decisions about the collection and interpretation of objects—a principal function of a museum—will be made by a curator, someone with specialized content knowledge and appointed for that specific purpose. In China, curation has only emerged as a distinct role over the past ten years. In that time, though, it has taken off: it’s not uncommon for established museums to have hundreds of exhibits a year. Flexing its new muscles in this area, the National Art Museum in China sponsored its first international Asian Art Curator Forum last September, which gathered eighty curators from thirty countries.

However, less developed countries in the region still have a long way to go. In the most extreme cases, such as some government museums, curators may actually be seen as unnecessary, since exhibits may only change every five years. More often, where turnover is somewhat higher, curation may be outsourced to independent consultants.

It’s not just curators, either. Several roles in Western museums, such as marketing, fundraising, digital media, and visitor services, simply do not have counterparts in Southeast Asia, where job categories reflect an institutional focus on preservation or research on new archaeological finds.

Training

Perhaps unsurprisingly, museum workers in parts of developing Asia come to the museum with very different training than what might be typical for young museum staff in America.  For example, those in parts of Southeast Asia may have studied history, art history, biology, anthropology or archaeology only up to the university level – and in some cases, maybe only at the high-school level. It’s highly unlikely that they have specialized museum education or experience interning or volunteering at a museum, so training happens on the job. For example, in Cambodia and Myanmar, the respective National Museums are charged with the professional development of the entire country’s museum staff after they are hired. What’s more, government museum staff may lack not only expertise but even interest. Because civil service positions are often coveted for their benefits rather than actual job responsibilities, motivating public museum workers can be especially challenging and those who are motivated may find themselves isolated.

This, too, is beginning to change. Thailand has taken a leading role in providing professional development in Southeast Asia through its involvement in regional networks such as the SEAMEO SPAFA Centre for Archaeology and Fine Arts and with the support of members of the royal family through the Princess Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre and Museum Field School. Students from throughout Southeast Asia attend these programs, where instructors include regional experts and museum professionals from the U.S., Australia, and Europe. Add that to its relatively strong economic performance within mainland Southeast Asia and open government, and Thailand offers a possible vision of the future for museums in the region.

Leapfrogging into the 21^st Century

We sometimes think of museums in the West as in search of their second life, a return to some – perhaps nonexistent – point in the past when they enjoyed widespread popularity. For the majority of museums in Asia, the second life they are building is really a first life: until recently, many of them were essentially public storage facilities and archives.

Development economists talk about technology leapfrogging, in which emerging economies bypass earlier stages of technology use. For example, rural villages may skip entirely over having landlines in their homes to use smart phones, or skip over dial-up Internet and start with wireless. With increased opportunities to collaborate on shared challenges, leapfrogging may catapult Asian museums directly into the future, perhaps with Western museums along for the ride. Institutions around the world can benefit from grappling together on issues such as cultivating first generation audiences, stretching limited institutional resources, enriching visitor experience, representing underrepresented or misrepresented groups, motivating reluctant staff to rethink the role of museums in society, promoting social inclusion and diversity, and creatively seeking funding.

Some organizations already facilitate this dialogue. Through the Asia-Europe Foundation, an international nonprofit based in Singapore with nearly forty member countries, the Asia-Europe Museum Network ASEMUS collaborates on the mapping of Asian collections, supports staff exchange, and hosts a biannual conference. Though no formal US-Asia museum-specific organization exists, the American Alliance of Museums, which has been involved in supporting international programs for over twenty-five years, is expanding its international museum work and now includes a US-China Exhibition Exchange. And a number of individual programs have been building valuable bridges. The Asia Society has hosted several events bringing together museum leaders from the West and Asia, such as the 2012 US-China Museum Directors Forum and last November’s Arts + Museum Summit in Hong Kong. The Asia Foundation sponsors the Asian Art Museum Fellowship in Asian Art, and the Asian Cultural Council supports artistic exchange between artists and arts professionals in the US and Asia.

How could we embrace even more collaboration? One possibility would be to create an international non-Western certificate track in graduate museology programs designed for American students who would ultimately either work in Asia or specialize in Asian art at museums in the West. In addition to general courses in museum studies, the track would involve coursework in cross-cultural leadership, non-Western heritage practices, and language study. Through partnerships with museums in Asia, students would have summer internships in the region; after graduation, some would have the opportunity to go back to work for the host institution as a visiting specialist. Local staff would then have the opportunity to receive training from the visiting specialists in their own countries from individuals with knowledge of the local context. American universities that already have satellite campuses in Asia might be a good place to start.

Another idea might be to set up an organization similar to PUM Netherlands Senior Experts, a nonprofit that provides consulting services to small and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets. PUM’s 3,200 volunteer specialists are matched with assistance requests and deployed abroad for up to several weeks to work on discrete projects; host organizations just pay for local accommodation and food. The advantage of this model over a traditional museum consultancy firm taking on international work would be its affordability, allowing even financially-strapped museums to participate, and focus on overall self-sufficiency.

As attention focuses on the museum landscape in Asia, it’s important to realize that the changes taking place there are as diverse as the region itself. In some places, evolution is rapid; in others, measured. But across the continent, I have been impressed by the sparks of life that characterize many new museum projects and programs. Asia is home to some of the most remarkable economic growth stories of modern history, including Singapore, South Korea, China, and India. As momentum builds across the region, I look forward to the changes it will bring to the museum and cultural heritage landscapes here.

• Seems that New York City’s recent bill forcing schools to report out on the availability of arts education in its schools comes not a moment too soon: an audit from the state comptroller found that roughly half of seniors graduated from high school without having met arts education requirements.
• Denver is out with a bold new seven-year cultural plan, “Imagine 2020.” Among other things, it seeks to “increase the visibility of local and creative talent” by inventorying and ranking the availability of the arts in all neighborhoods, and supporting micro-art projects that can create new gathering spaces across the city.
• A federal court has ordered Google to remove the infamous “Innocence of Muslims” film from YouTube after an actress who appears on screen for only five seconds – and was told she was appearing in an adventure movie – asserted that posting the film against her wishes violates her copyright in her performance. The injunction is preliminary; Google is appealing.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• The two latest articles to document artists’ struggle to make ends meet, even once they are established: on writers in London and artists in New York City.
• Hooray for practicing what you preach: the Hewlett Foundation takes stock of the two strategies of its Effective Philanthropy program – and announces that it will wind down and replace the one that the evidence suggests wasn’t working.
• Aditi Kapil from Minneapolis’s Mixed Blood Theater Company unpacks lessons from the company’s free ticket initiative, such as the idea that infrastructure costs make “free cheaper than cheap.” And thanks to to a new grant, all visitors to the Wilma Theater can now enjoy $25 tickets during the first four weeks of a show’s run. The newly flattened price structure will be in place for three years.

IN THE FIELD

• The Future of Music Coalition has been quizzing musicians on their knowledge of current copyright law, and the results are mixed, suggesting “there remains widespread confusion about the difference between musical composition and sound recordings” and musicians are generally unaware of “the changes in the digital landscape that have altered the way that money flows back to creators.”
• After managing to squeeze twelve years out of what was intended to be a three-year program, the USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program ended with its final fellows last November.
• Getty Images has released 35 million photos to be used freely for non-commercial purposes, bowing to widespread, often ignorant infringement of its images. There are a few catches: the interface is clunkier than for paying customers, Getty can track usage data, and they reserve the right to put ads in the embedded image viewer. Now that we’ve liberated images and music, are books and movies next?
• Yes, data-driven decisions can come from cocktail napkins: Nina Simon offers a nifty example of how a simple measure of “success” can help draw comparisons across programs.
• The new performing arts center planned for the World Trade Center site, in the works for over a decade, faces an uphill battle to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for construction with former mayor and big-ticket arts champion Michael Bloomberg no longer in office. The project will have to compete with several recently-opened theater spaces of similar size as well as the nearby 9/11 Memorial & Museum.

BIG IDEAS

• An example-driven look at how grantmakers are building innovation into their programs to tackle large social problems in Stanford Social Innovation Review pairs well with this examination by four Boston Consulting Group strategists of what nurtures the “evolvability” of big companies like Google and Netflix. Meanwhile, Andrew Taylor poaches more lessons from the for-profit world by examining what the “Minimum Viable Product” familiar to tech start-ups might mean for the arts.
• March 20 was both the first day of spring and the UN’s International Day of Happiness, co-sponsored this year by Grammy winner Pharrell Williams. The designation of the day was inspired in part by Bhutan’s embrace of Gross National Happiness as a critical indicator of the country’s health. Culture is one of the pillars of GNH, so Createquity readers have special reason to celebrate.
• The Future of Digital Longform Project is out with a whopper of a report on how “long” (i.e. 5,000+-word) pieces of nonfiction are evolving, what “designing a story” can mean, and how and if writers can hope to make money from these efforts.
• Digital platforms continue to creep into the edusphere, with the College Board announcing a plan to (finally) counter the overpriced SAT-prep industry via a partnership with Khan Academy, and EdX, the only major non-profit MOOC provider, expanding its list of course partners to include NGOs and nonprofits ranging from the Smithsonian to the IMF.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Egads! First we learn we can’t always trust research; then we learn we can’t always trust the research that tells us not to trust research.
• The UK’s cultural sector’s hiring practices unfairly stifle diversity, a report from Creative and Cultural Skills finds. CCS calls out a widespread preference for unpaid workers and a tendency to hire people already known to existing employees as particular problems.
• A new report from the National Center for Arts Research has found that well under half of directors of the nation’s largest art museum directors are female, and they earn roughly three-quarters the salaries of their male counterparts.
• Southern California’s “creative industries” are booming with roughly 1 of 7 jobs in the Los Angeles area tied to the creative sector, according to the 2013 Otis Report on the Creative Economy. However, the relationship between the report and the fiscal health of the arts sector — and the economic stability of artists in the region — is murky.
• The international art and antique market, meanwhile, is  almost back to pre-recession levels. The uptick, however, is more due to the rising cost of artwork rather than an increased number of sales, suggesting a continued and worrisome creep toward a “winner take all” economy.
• The Brookings Institute tried out a badass new research methodology — a “survey with placebo” — in a recent attempt to measure the impact of advocacy organizations on the passage of school choice legislation. The method is one of several new and intriguing practices in advocacy evaluation.

Museum Camp is a creation of Nina Simon and the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Createquity readers might recognize Nina and her fantastic work at Santa Cruz MAH from such Top 10 Arts Policy Stories posts as 2012‘s, not to mention many shout-outs before and since in blog posts here and there. Nina used to be a rockstar experience design consultant in the museum field and earned a measure of fame at the beginning of this decade as the author of The Participatory Museum, which you can read online for free. A couple of years ago, she decided to take the job as director of the Santa Cruz MAH, and she and her team have been up to amazing things since then, including a previous version of Museum Camp that sounded like pretty much the most fun anyone has had in a museum ever.

All that fun ultimately adds up to something significant, though, and it’s important to be able to describe what’s meaningful about what we do effectively and convincingly to people who weren’t there – not to mention ourselves. So my colleagues at Fractured Atlas and I are happy to be helping Nina bring a new edition of Museum Camp to life focused on social impact assessment, a three-day event in which small teams of people will develop creative ways to evaluate the work that diverse organizations are doing to transform communities. Our focus is on social impact in communities, and we will encourage teams to look at complex outcomes–like safety, cohesion, compassion, and identity–that are not commonly covered in standard evaluative practices. This is a learning experience with a heavy focus on actual doing throughout the event. In addition to representatives from Fractured Atlas and MAH, we’ll have “camp counselors” from the United Way, WolfBrown, Harder & Co., Animating Democracy, and more on hand to help attendees navigate the conceptual and practical issues associated with measuring what matters.

If you are interested in attending, you can fill out an application through February 28. Space is extremely limited, so the sooner the better. We look forward to seeing you!