Employee Engagement: Cultural Silos and Personal Ladders
Trends come and go in business. You might hear one person say in a meeting, “It’s all about stories.” And then all of a sudden every article in business journals and blogs are about stories. Breaking silos is a particularly fashionable phrase current. Silos Silos dot the countryside in much of the US. These tall …
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The Future of the Art Museum: The Alternative Possibilities
I was struck by this response to a previous post of mine. I wasn’t the only one. It had 40 likes and 18 retweets. I want loud art museums. I want social art museums. I want playful art museums. I want art museums that rip me from my bubble world & throw me into …
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Addressing Inadvertent Bias in Language
Words matter. Actions matter too, don’t forget. But, words can be harbingers of actions. They are certainly bellwethers of the inner mind. Words belie deep secrets. Words are the ultimate tells. Most imperative, however, words are not static. Their meaning, their usage, their connotations fluctuate. The transmutation of meaning can feel imperceptible for people, like …
The Strengths of Museums: What We Can Learn From Each Other
Last week, I had a wonderful amount of feedback on my post. I had compared two fairly different types of museums, Art and Science Museums, to see what they can learn from each other. Often, museums silo their practices within their own specialty. By looking over the wall at the successes of others, the whole …
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How to make museums more engaging? Develop Employee-Centered Museums First
Museums share collections and research for visitors. But, of course, they are also workplaces. People, who work at museums, create research and installations for visitors. This simple equation highlights an essential challenge for museums. Unhappy People equals Unhappy Product Unhappy people are some of the most generous folks around. They share their negativity with awful …
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What can museums learn from each other?
Scott Sayre, of the Corning Museum of Glass, once said, “Science Museums make complex ideas simple and art museums make simple ideas complex.” (Hear more from Scott here). This comparison struck me as so incredibly powerful, not just for its succinctness, but also its insight. Both times of museums are two sides of one coin. …
Inequity in The Arts & Culture Economy Equation
The arts and culture present some serious funding challenges for society and represent some serious inequities. Production: The top of the pyramids, like the directors of museums or the owners of galleries, make much more money than those starting out. Many people cannot afford to work in the arts because of the low salaries. …
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Nickles, Dimes, and Tough Times : The Relationship between Visitors, Revenue, and Value
This post is a follow-up on a post last week about the Metropolitan Museum of Art instituting mandatory ticket fees. For many years, I ran a department in a free museum. Perennially patrons would ask for a free parking sticker stamp. If I had been a visitor, I, too, might have asked for this. After …
A Museum Christmas Carol
In which a museum director learns that he is leading badly. Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. This was nonsense! Jonathan still had work to do. Jonathan gazed upon the stack of Change of Status Forms weighing down his desk. They would need to …
Are Museums Neutral? Or are they Neutered?
While I was going to do a round-up of our favorite blog posts of the year today, a recent post by Rebecca Herz made me want to return to one topic: #MuseumsarenotNeutral. I wrote a bit about it last month, and it was one of the five most popular posts. But, let’s dive in: Neutrality …
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