What can Docents Learn from a Sunday at Church? Storytelling for the Galleries
On one cold snowy Saturday, I found myself sitting on a hard wooden pew while doing some mental algebra. I was reading a wedding program and assessing the priest’s style with the hope of counting the minutes left before I could escape this country church. While I certainly shared the joy of the congregation of …
Continue reading “What can Docents Learn from a Sunday at Church? Storytelling for the Galleries”
When museums are run like Downtown Abbey…
After spending hours of research watching and rewatching Downton Abbey (and over a decade of research working in museum), I can’t help but see uncanny similarities between museum organization structures and the hit PBS show. The Abbey The museum, like the manor, is more than a structure, and frankly is more than the collections it …
Continue reading “When museums are run like Downtown Abbey…”
Enter the Interns
It happens every spring. The snow dissipates. Flowers come into bloom. And, the gaggles of summer interns appear at museum doors throughout the country. This is a little note for the interns and their supervisors. Dear Supervisors, please remember Slavery was not right then and isn’t now. Internship is not slavery! An intern is not …
Meeting Needs…
A thoughtful person asked me today if all museums worked this way. By this way, she meant with long stretches of meetings marked by legislative decision-making, interspersed with back-door conversations, and then short forays into actual work. Museums are a bit like universities in that they are presided over and populated by academics, often people …