By Eric Dorfman

Tangible heritage. Outmoded? Credit: Magnus Manske.

I read in the paper the other day that Unitec Associate Professor Hossein Sarrafzadeh has announced the development of an intelligent tutoring system that can adapt its response to the emotional state of the viewer by interaction through a computer system. She’s called Virtual Eve. And she can teach your eight-year-old math. With the new year just upon us, Virtual Eve seems like an appropriate launch pad for thinking about where museums are at and, perhaps, muse a little about where they might be going.

At the risk of presenting a hackneyed run-up to this topic, I’ll spend only a moment on what museums used to be – cabinets of curiosities of the 16th and 17th Century. These collections of objects, contained at first in wooden boxes were the myth-dispelling (or enhancing) proof of natural phenomena. They brought tangibility to the world’s intangible heritage: mermaids, unicorns and dragons had their place alongside coconuts, coral and giant emeralds.

At their most fundamental, modern museums still serve that function. The objects they show us ‘prove’ the existence of the stories we know about the world, as well as introducing us to new stories. In the days of the iPAD,  iPhone and social media (this blog post for instance), where we can see images of just about anything with a few presses on a touch screen, museums’ unique place remains the same as it was four centuries ago: to experience the real thing, in some instances, even to touch it.

It’s my relatively casual observation, however, that the trend in museums is to move squarely into the virtual sphere (at least aspirationally), with ever more increasingly complex an expensive computer technology. The “Horizon.Museum Project” was set up “to explore the potential of research that would have a focus on the applications of emerging technologies for museums, especially as it might be used for education and interpretation.” They listed a number of critical challenges for museums, and I’ve excerpted a few below.

Content production has failed to keep up with technology. Audiences expect to consume information whenever and wherever they want. Museums have been scurrying to repurpose information already created to try and meet demands. The challenge and the opportunity for museums is to stop for a moment and look at ways to meet the current demands for existing raw data and to look at research about the uses of media in multimodal learning in order to create real, valuable, interesting, and engaging content.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Creating a digital strategy is critical for institutions today. Museums need to think about creating digital strategies for long-term institutional sustainability. Creating digital learning is only one part of a comprehensive digital strategy, which should also include e-marketing, e-philanthropy, revenue generation, digitization, digital preservation, and issues with regard to general technology infrastructure. Digital learning has linkages to many of these other areas of museum operation.

Embracing change as a constant remains a challenge. Museums are, in general, conservative institutions and because of this, and a variety of other reasons, they often lag behind commercial entities and educational institutions in the adoption of new technologies. Money and staff resources are always cited as reasons for not participating, yet in general the reluctance has more to do with the fear of change. Adopting technologies may well enable museums to better accomplish their missions and serve their audiences but the community needs to become more flexible in its response to emerging trends.

My question, and one for which I confess I don’t have an answer, is whether museums are beginning to use new media for its own sake (or, at least to asked to do it and resisting, if the third point above is correct). How will institutions in our typically poorly resourced sector ever hope to compete with what the average 14 year old has available on his or her home computer? Once there’s a Virtual Eve for every student in the classroom, will it be worth museums redirecting their limited funds from curation and collection management to developing virtual content for interpretation on the floor? Additionally, with the speed of change of what’s available, even if those technologies are embraced one year, where will the funds be to keep up with the pace and provide a fresh experience?

More fundamentally, are we beginning to enter a period where objectless exhibitions are seen as acceptable for museums? While I agree that institutions should have a digital strategy, I wonder if part of that process is not to reaffirm our relationship to our tangible heritage.

Virtual Eve – a responsive avatar that can read your emotions. Credit: Massey University.

Image Captions 
1. Tangible heritage. Outmoded? Credit: Magnus Manske. 2. A cabinet of curiosities – physical proof of the unknown. Cabinet of Curiosities (1690s) by Domenico Remps, Oil on canvas, Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence.  3. Virtual Eve – a responsive avatar that can read your emotions. Credit: Massey University.

I’ve just come back from the general conference of the International Council of Museums in Shanghai, held from the 7^th to the 12^th of November. It was my first time to Shanghai so, from that perspective a definite eye-opener. Shanghai was still wearing its spectacular finery created for Expo, and at night it was ablaze with coloured lights. By day the city, with a population a third more than that of New Zealand and Norway combined, was a frenetic hub of expensive cars pelting through streets of ultra-modern architecture.

The plenary sessions were held at the Expo Centre, in what is touted as the World’s largest convention venue. Expo itself was only just beginning to be dismantled, so many of the conference’s several thousand delegates were treated personalised tours without having to contend with the huge crowds of just a few days earlier.

Our hosts were lavish in their hospitality. The city’s streets and highways were (incredibly) lined with flags advertising the ICOM conference, and attendees were witness to an almost non-stop procession of lavish entertainment, ranging from modern Chinese dance to classical European opera. Major functions were held for us every night, each hosted by a different institution. This, I believe, speaks volumes not only about the pride that the Chinese take in being good hosts, but also in the importance they place on museums and the preservation of natural and cultural heritage.  

Despite the distracting entertainment, a considerable amount was accomplished at the meeting. Hans-Martin Hinz, from the Berlin-based Museum of German History, was elected President of ICOM, and a new Council chosen. Resolutions were passed on topics around best practice, and a new document “Emergency Red List of Haitian Cultural Objects at Risk” was presented. (See more news at http://icom.museum/news.html)

The Natural History component of the conference was hosted by the very impressive Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology. We progressed our work towards producing a global ‘meta-exhibition’ for natural history museums in the lead-up to the Rio +20 meeting in 2012, as well as having a physical presence at that conference in Brazil. We were also successful in proposing the theme for the 2012 International Museum Day (IMD): “Museums in a Changing World”. This will serve as a platform for institutions to talk about important issues such as climate change, provide a chance to celebrate successes in sustainable practice, explore new media and innovations, and encourage active participation in public-good initiatives.

Of course, one of the most important components of the conference was to share recent work through presentations. It began with a session of keynote speeches:

The Chinese Natural History Museums developing and assorting with the Society   

Mr. Meng Qingjin, Vice president of the Chinese Association of Natural Science Museums, Director of the Committee of the Natural History Museums in China, Director of Beijing Museum of Natural History, China

Museums in a Changing World, Dr. Eric Dorfman Chair, Vice President, ICOM NATHIST, Executive Director, Eklektus Inc. New Zealand

Natural History Museums and the Rio 2012 project, Dr Volker Mosbrugger, Chair, Working group EURASIAN SUMMIT of Natural History Museums, Director General of Senckenberg, Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Germany

Building Economic Dioramas by means of Scene Reappearance, taking Zhejiang Museum of Natural History as the example

Mr Kang, Ximin, Vice president of Chinese Association of Natural Science Museums, Vive director of the Committee of the Natural History Museums in China, director of Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, China

Over the next day and a half, we had the opportunity to share and discuss ideas about dioramas, multicultural approaches to interpreting climate change, environmental literacy, as well as plans for the new Shanghai Museum of Natural History, currently in its planning phase. These papers will be produced as a set of proceedings. If anybody is interested, please feel free to contact me directly.

The conference ended with a presentation by former French President, Jacques Chirac, who maintains a strong interest both in China and the museum field. Just at the close of the conference, came what was certainly the most impressive of the gifts we received. It was a large, hard-bound coffee table book of photographs from the conference, beautifully presented with gold cover and high production values. Three and a half thousands copies were distributed about 9pm, and the last photos had been taken at 11am, giving an impression of what can be done with enough resources.

 I’d encourage everybody in the New Zealand museum field to become a member of ICOM. Although it’s sometimes perceived as a European organisation, that’s far from the truth. It was a chance to interact with other Antipodeans, as well as to meet people from North and South America, Asia and Africa. I was stimulated by the wide ranging perspectives, and am looking forward to the next General Conference in Rio in November 2013, as well as the upcoming ICOM NATHIST meeting in Bangkok in October/November 2011.

Images:

1. Shanghai at night. It’s big.
2. Entertainment at the conference. That was big too.
3. The opening of a temporary polar exhibition from our host the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum
4. Working hard…
5. Outgoing President of ICOM NATHIST, Dr Gerhard Winter

Dr Eric Dorfman is a Wellington-based author of popular natural history books, short fiction, articles and documentary scripts. His critically acclaimed book Melting Point (Penguin 2008) explores New Zealand’s responses to the issue of climate change. He is also Director of Eklektus Inc., a collective that produces strategic and visitor experience services to the international cultural sector, and a Teaching Associate in Victoria University of Wellington’s Department of Museum and Heritage Studies.
Twitter: @eklektusinc

By Eric Dorfman

What is (or could be) a visitor experience? Eric Dorfman links the traditions of his childhood Halloween celebrations with the world of museums.
In my last post I wrote about thinking around what it takes to make a visitor experience out of a demonstration home built by Victoria University of Wellington students as part of the Solar Decathlon competition. It’s catalysed me to start thinking a bit more laterally about what a visitor experience is (or could be) and the generalities that can be gleaned. A lot of thought has gone into what makes an effective visitor experience. For instance, author on architecture and neuroscience Maria Lorena Lehman provides an insightful list of ten “must do’s” for museums creating visitor experiences. (See her whole article here.)

1. Motivate Visitors: Target an audience — the general public and/or specific communities
2. Focus Content: Filter content so visitors are not bombarded with information overload
3. Immersion: Engage visitors within a “story”
4. Modularity: Present smaller themes instead of one larger complex topic
5. Skimmability: Information should be easy to take in because visitors are often standing and/or have different levels of education
6. Patterns: Incorporate traffic/circulation patterns, exhibit sequence patterns and pre-existing framework patterns (architectural elements)
7. Capture Curiosity: Use storytelling techniques to engage visitors
8. Interaction: Give visitors a “fun” experience by tapping into their emotion
9. Integrate Technology: Technology should enhance visitor’s experience, not detract from it
10. Layer Content: Present information in a hierarchical manner

 At the end of the month it will be Halloween. It’s not a big deal in New Zealand but, having grown up in the United States, I have vivid memories of trick-or-treating: wandering around leafy neighbourhoods dressed as a pirate or ghoul, along with hundreds of other children extorting the neighbours for sweets. Most of the houses welcomed us with open arms, many complete with glowing jack-o’-lanterns and sheet-clad ghosts to thrill us into shrieks of laughter. While no official statistics exist for trick-or-treating, people have had a go at estimating the participation, and it’s in the many millions every year.

I would argue that this tradition is the Western World’s biggest facilitated participatory visitor experience, especially considering the lengths that people go to ensure that kids earn their candy by being truly petrified. Even though produced by enthusiastic amateurs, Halloween experiences share many of the features of Lehman’s list: the target audience is well defined and the best examples are completely immersive, enhancing a sense of mystery and engaging visitors emotionally. Although the experiences are not truly interactive (because visitors usually don’t themselves alter the experience), the sense of theatre contributed by the costumed kids is integral to success.

On one level, it might be considered surprising that the phenomenon should be mentioned in the same breath as the pedagogic world of museums (Disneyland is perhaps okay) – clearly some component of Halloween revelry is driven by the manufacturers of candy, costumes and Styrofoam gravestones. However, these traditions go back to pre-Gothic times, and speak to us on the archetypal level of good versus evil – something dangerous that can be conquered just by facing it. This is, to me, why it continues to be popular and grow, connecting us to our ancestors over a thousand years ago. For Americans at least, this is intangible cultural heritage.

Image credits:

1: Jack-o’-lantern
2: Millions of households across the United States go to great pains to dress up their homes for the entertainment of trick-or-treating kids, in a participatory visitor experience of massive proportions. From Full Halloween, Paranormal Magazine
3: Many people now spend up big with prefabricated set dressing. See more
4: Humour is a large part of the proceedings. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Dr Eric Dorfman is a Wellington-based author of popular natural history books, short fiction, articles and documentary scripts. His critically acclaimed book Melting Point (Penguin 2008) explores New Zealand’s responses to the issue of climate change. He is also Director of Eklektus Inc., a collective that produces strategic and visitor experience services to the international cultural sector, and a Teaching Associate in Victoria University of Wellington’s Department of Museum and Heritage Studies.
Twitter: @eklektusinc

By Eric Dorfman

As museum professionals, many of us spend a lot of time thinking about what makes effective, memorable visitor experiences. Most frequently, our attention is focused on more or less traditional springboards for engagement, like galleries or visitor centres. Occasionally, an opportunity comes up to consider something outside the square, which is a great chance to test our assumptions about best practice.

We’ve been giving some time to the group of students at Victoria University who are putting together an entry in the Solar Decathlon. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this initiative, it’s a competition held every two years by the United States Department of Energy to build and operate a solar-powered house that’s cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive.

The competition involves groups of students from 20 universities in the United States and around the world, designing and building houses that are measured against five criteria:

• Is affordable, attractive, and easy to live in.
• Maintains comfortable and healthy indoor environmental conditions.
• Supplies energy to household appliances for cooking, cleaning, and entertainment.
• Provides adequate hot water.
• Produces as much or more energy than it consumes.

Entries will appear on the Mall in front of the Washington Memorial, playing host to more than 300,000 people over the course of the 10 day event.

The team is made up of four students from the school of architecture at VUW: Anna Farrow, Ben Jagersma, Nick Officer and Eli Nuttall.  They’ve been encouraged by their department to enter the competition, after completing an initial design as part of their course.  Since entering, the project has become enormous, involving inputs in landscape design, media and, of course, visitor experience.  VUW is the only group ever to be chosen from the Southern Hemisphere, so it’s an important achievement not only for them and the university, but for New Zealand as well.

It’s a lot of fun interacting with them, brainstorming on the project. One of the most enjoyable aspects has been thinking about how to tell a story while retaining a naturalistic household setting. Unlike exhibition environments, most homes are not, at least overtly, attempting to tell stories about themselves to visitors. Of course, every dwelling tells some sort of narrative around taste, history and experiences. But rarely does it demonstrate its own insulation properties. The goal, of course, is to impress on visitors (especially those who might happen to be judges) with the innovative ways the house addresses the challenges set by the competition, in the relaxed and gracious context of modern living.

I’ve been impressed with some of the solutions that have come out of our meetings so far. You’ll be able to see the final result when it’s exhibited in Wellington early next year. To find out more about their project, or even get involved. Over the next months, we’ll also be covering our thoughts stemming from our own involvement. See that here.

Image 1: The house as it will appear on the Mall – plenty of visitors for the experience
Image 2: Solar Decathlon students Nick Officer, Ben Jagersma, Anna Farrow and Eli Nuttall
Image 3: Interior of the house, a different sort of interpretative challenge

Dr Eric Dorfman is a Wellington-based author of popular natural history books, short fiction, articles and documentary scripts. His critically acclaimed book Melting Point (Penguin 2008) explores New Zealand’s responses to the issue of climate change. He is also Director of Eklektus Inc., a collective that produces strategic and visitor experience services to the international cultural sector, and a Teaching Associate in Victoria University of Wellington’s Department of Museum and Heritage Studies.
Twitter: @eklektusinc

I was at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth over the weekend and stumbled on a wonderful peace of interactive soft sculpture.

Walking up the stairs to the first floor I was faced with a small scene. Against a white wall sits a chic white leather sofa. On it innocuously sits a pile of white knitting, a white paper bag filled with skeins of wool (white of course), and two pairs of wooden needles of different sizes. In front of this tableau is a coffee table with some information but, at least at first, it’s not needed. You know what you’re supposed to do. You sit down and you knit.

It turns out that each of the pair of needles is attached to the opposing end of a single scarf. It’s the “Khata Scarf”, a participatory artwork by Yin Xiuzhen, part of the Gallery’s exhibition China in Four Seasons: Song Dong + Yin Xiuzhen, showing until the 12 of September.

I managed to knit off a row (or purl? – probably some of both) before looking deeper into the project. People (and it looks like a lot of people) have contributed to a single fairly outrageous object that will, on the 21^st of August, be auctioned off to contribute to a charity of the artist’s choice. I’m curious to see who will buy it. At about nine metres (so far), it’s too long for most homes, and not a beautiful piece in the classic sense of the word. But it’s got great provenance, contributed by knitters, men and women, some very young (judging by the handwriting in the guest book) from all over the world: Germany, France, the UK, Singapore, Australia, China.

What I love most about this is that it’s a shared kinaesthetic experience with strangers, all working on a single project. The goal of the project, in fact, is not as important as the creative drive – the act of making something. It’s not even something you will keep. This is art that is focused not as much on the relationship between object and viewer, as it is on the relationship between people, where the work itself takes a back seat.

Participatory art is not a new phenomenon. In a performance context, it reaches back as far as 1957, with the “happening” of  Allan Kaprow. Fifty years later it seems to be a phenomenon that’s still gathering momentum, rather having been established as a common practice.

The examples that do exist are notable for their diversity. They include  a large graffito coordinated by Brett Cook (aka Dizney) in 2006 in San Francisco’s White Walls Gallery

In 2007 in Connecticut, USA, Puerto Rico–born artist Victor Pacheco developed The Avocado Tree Project that encouraged people to grow and contribute avocado trees to an installation. The message behind it was in equal parts activism, environmental awareness in an urban setting and public food production. Activism is a common theme throughout much of participatory art.

San Francisco has been an important centre for particpatory art since the 1960s, perhaps abetted by it proximity to Silicon Valley. Last year San Franciscos’s Museum of Modern Art The Art of Participation, 1950 to Now, explored strategies and situations in which the public have taken a collaborative role in the art-making process. One important web-based work was communimage, a project by Swiss artist Johannes Gees, going continuously since 1999.

Visitors to the communimage website are invited to upload pictures onto a grid system, along with some basic information. (It helps if you speak German.) The result is an enormous mosaic of images in different styles, ranging from sweet to vulgar.

New Zealand has not had many forays into participatory art, so it’s exciting to hear news of the first annual Wild and Sneaky Art Festival (WASA!) in Nelson this October, encouraging attendees to become artists, and turning the CBD into a living art gallery. Conceptualised by business advisor Nickola Blunt, tourism advisor and trainer Craig Wilson and author/artist Alison Rae, it promises to be important internationally as a model of participation, as well as heaps of fun.

Dr Eric Dorfman is a Wellington-based author of popular natural history books, short fiction, articles and documentary scripts. His critically acclaimed book Melting Point (Penguin 2008) explores New Zealand’s responses to the issue of climate change. He is also Director of Eklektus Inc., a collective that produces strategic and visitor experience services to the international cultural sector, and a Teaching Associate in Victoria University of Wellington’s Department of Museum and Heritage Studies.
Twitter: @eklektusinc

The last few weekends we’ve been visiting some of the regional museums in our area. It’s been a great excuse to explore places we wouldn’t normally have a reason to go, and to learn historical stories told with the authenticity of local voices.

Despite the lure of the world’s large and glamorous institutions, regional museums are extremely important, comprising more than ninety percent of the museums in the world. While it’s true, most regional museums cannot compete with the treasure-rich vaults of the British Museum, Te Papa or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they have the opportunity to do something that many of these urban giants do not: to distil and preserve the identity of a local community.

This was recently discussed by the American art critic Bill Wittenbreerin in his analysis of Peter Lund’s 19th Century painting Logged Over Hills, North Minnesota.

Art museums, such as the Minnesota Museum of American Art, that collect and display the artwork created by local and regional artists do more than tell the story of the region’s art. Often times, such museums may treat the work of art as a piece of the region’s history… When this happens, the collections of these museums provide an intimate insight into their area’s social, economic, and cultural conditions.1

Regional museums have the opportunity to form a critical link between society’s past and future, playing a key role in regional social development. Additionally, smaller museums find a new role in society: to help drive visitation to local communities. (Especially true in New Zealand, as we slowly inch our way from an agricultural economy to one based in tourism.)

However, lack of resources frequently puts limits on what’s possible for these museums to achieve, even potentially threatening their existence. And the situation is the same world-wide. In the UK for instance, the House of Lords’ Select Committee on Science and Technology has pointed out that while regional and national museums have a vital role in inspiring young people and provide novel outreach opportunities that foster engagement, the funding situation is “precarious”.2

While a lack of funding wouldn’t be news to anybody associated with a regional Museum, there is also a positive slant to the situation. Hartmut Prasch, the Austrian ICOM senior councillor and champion of regional museums, considers that lack of resources in local museums leads many to finding new methods of communication, presentation and promotion. New ideas and outstanding communication methods are the main tools establishing the “public quality” of museums. He suggests that this is a perfect incubator for innovation and creativity.3

Here are a few useful strategies that are being used to create cost-effective innovations. Many of these ideas can be seen in New Zealand exhibitions already. For interest, here are a few examples from regional institutions overseas:

• Fresh perspectives: objects or works of art can be repurposed in unexpected ways, using the power of surprise to add depth and interest. An example comes from the exhibition Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things from the Price Tower Arts Center in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, USA. Through it, they suggest innovative ways to ‘upcycle’ common objects, initiating a conversation through art about the environmental impact of today’s society. By extension, recycled materials themselves can take the spotlight, giving an important message about sustainability. Exhibitions like Treasures from Trash, from the Museum of Croydon in the UK, explores creative recycling from around the globe.

• Clever combinations and juxtapositions: Using collections in unexpected ways, such as focusing on their colour, shape or composition,

extends the possibilities of interpretation. An example comes from the Vitra Design Museum in Berlin, with their exhibition The Essence of Things. Design and the Art of Reduction, celebrating simplicity in design. Here, everyday anonymous objects sit beside products created by named designers.

• Community involvement: Using communities as a source of stories, ideas, objects and skill can sometimes provide sometimes much-need capacity. More important, though, it actively involves communities within institutions, which has many positive spinoffs for both. For example, the Portland Museum’s recent exhibition, Inspiration China displayed contemporary student art creations influenced by Chinese artefacts.

Regional museums face many challenges in providing services and programs to their communities. Both in New Zealand and globally, a fundamental change in a attitude is needed, fully acknowledging the importance of regional museums in maintaining a healthy and vital society, and providing commensurate support. Until then, lack of resources will force the investment to be more than money, requiring time and effort, creativity and new ways of thinking.

[1] Bill Wittenbreer, Regional Museums: Their Collections and Local History http://www.quodlibetica.com/regional-museums-their-collections-and-local-history/

[2] House of Lords, 2008, Health of the Discipline in the UK: Professional Taxonomists, Volunteers and Recruitment http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldsctech/162/16206.htm

[3] Hartmut Prasch 2010, “Innovative Ideas are Born in Small Museums: the role of regional museums in future museums development”

Dr Eric Dorfman is a Wellington-based author of popular natural history books, short fiction, articles and documentary scripts. His critically acclaimed book Melting Point (Penguin 2008) explores New Zealand’s responses to the issue of climate change. He is also Director of Eklektus Inc., a collective that produces strategic and visitor experience services to the international cultural sector, and a Teaching Associate in Victoria University of Wellington’s Department of Museum and Heritage Studies.
Twitter: @eklektusinc

By Eric Dorfman
Director, Eklektus Inc.

On August 15th we partnered with the St James Theatre here in Wellington to host an evening of interactive theatre: The Affair of the Diamond Necklace.

It was based around an historical event at the Court of Versailles – the scandal surrounding the creation, and theft, of a diamond necklace that in today’s currency would have cost over $100 million. The debacle was the beginning of the end for Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI.

This event built on a developing interest in interactive theatre, some elements of which are rooted in theRenaissance Fairs that began in the early 1960s in America, and other historical re-enactments, as well as the theatre games movement initiated by Viola Spolin in the 1940s. Even the more immersive of these productions are, however, primarily entertainment, principally because the visitors remain as observers outside the event. As exhibition developers, however, we’re interested in something more – to imbue it with a scholarly backbone, imparting elements of the historical events portrayed.

Museum theory suggests that ‘in order to learn, students need to have an experience; they need to do and see rather than be told’ (Hein G. 1995. The constructivist museum, Journal of Education in Museums 15:21-23.). The demand by visitors for experiential interpretation is growing, and being met by considerably more lateral approaches. Some of these issues will be addressed in the upcoming interpretation conference in Rotorua.

Thus, the roughly 100 guests at The Affair of the Diamond Necklace were instructed to come in costume, and the St James foyer and mezzanine were transformed into the gardens of Versailles 1785, with lights, topiary, fountains and masses of flowers. They had an authentic 18th Century dinner and engaged with the actors solving the mystery, gradually helping uncover clues that would ultimately identify the culprit, through a script artfully written by Morgan Davie. Looking out on the night over the sea of white wigs and brocade was quite a spectacle.

Our goal in producing this interactive event was to contribute to lifelong learning by combining entertainment with imparting information through a combination of living history, improv theatre, food and dance. It was, in essence, an ephemeral exhibition that was made considerably more immersive by the guests being in costume. They were, themselves, part of the ambiance, adding to their own – and each others’ – sense of engagement. The actors were also highly skilled at improvisation, and had done their homework regarding life at the French court, as well as about their characters.

As we’re gearing up to run a season of The Affair of the Diamond Necklace again (for three days this December), and take it to other venues, we’re using research to look critically at what information the first guests came away with. If we were successful, having spent five hours in the milieu (longer than most museum visits, let alone the length of stay in a single exhibition) they should have gained some new knowledge. We will be using a survey to ask a selection of the guests information around the following:

• What impressions they came away with from the evening
• What information they can recall regarding the affair, the characters, or the Ancien regime in general (e.g. learning about clothing, etiquette etc.)
• What they came knowing, and what research and/or preparation they did beforehand, which is also useful in understanding how the event catalysed ancillary learning

Results will help us improve the event, and inform future similar productions.

We will be submitting the results of our study to the Journal of Interpretation Research, but I’m very happy to share salient points beforehand if people contact me directly. See more information on the event.

By Eric Dorfman

5 February 2009

When I mention ‘intangible natural heritage’ I frequently get a blank look, even from museum professionals. It’s not a phrase, say like ‘fire engine’, that immediately conjures up an image. Yet the topic, along with its sister ‘intangible cultural heritage’, is becoming increasingly important as a part of what museums are trying to achieve.

Since the first drive to collect objects in an attempt to understand the natural world, a drive that ultimately became the 16th and 17th Century  cabinets of curiosities, museums have had the principal purpose of stewarding and organising of the world’s artefacts, and interpreting  the stories of their objects. More recently, they are gaining an additional function: to safeguarding the milieux from which these objects originate, and not merely the physical elements, but the intangibles too – sounds and landscapes, as well as the evolutionary processes that forms them.

Fashion is moving away from the traditional method of presentation: an object in a case presented with tens or thousands of similar objects, divorced from its context and demonstrating more about the nature of collecting than qualities of the object itself. Increasingly the public and funders expect  modern museums to link both cultural and natural artefacts to their original environment, and to help safeguard aspects of natural heritage that might never even enter the building. Traditional cultures of dance and language, bird migration routes, predator-prey interactions, the intermingling sounds of humans and animals on a farm at dawn, are examples of phenomena that can be represented in museums, but do not exist there. They are, however, integral to the value of  object. Just as an oblong piece of metal becomes valuable when it is discovered to the be the sword  carried by Henry V at Agincourt, a bunch of skin and feathers  is of value as the last known Great Auk or Passenger Pigeon.

Thus has arisen the field ‘intangible heritage’, one that is still being explored in all its facets. Intangible heritage was the theme chosen for the International Council of Museums (ICOM) 2004 General Conference in Seoul, underscoring the importance of its role as an central goal for museums. Obliquely comparable to the Church in medieval Europe, museums have (or could have) the ability to bind societies together by connecting people to the stories and language of their cultural and natural history. ICOM highlighted its importance in a post-conference communication:
It is crucial to preserve our intangible heritage in order to perpetuate age-old traditions which may otherwise be lost forever and to place museum artefacts in their relevant context.

The Journal of Intangible Heritage (yes, there is one) is only 3 years old, and yet has some important contributions to the field. It has yet to publish any works on natural heritage; the focus has been on cultural issues. However, as governments pay more attention to preserving what’s left in the world (from, for instance, the ravages of war and climate change) museums will be increasingly called upon to work outside its walls.

The time is ripe for developing the philosophy of intangible natural heritage, and for using it to help shape programmes of research and interpretation.

By Eric Dorfman, Executive Director, Eklektus Inc.

12 January 2009

As the state of the planet’s climate, oceans, and terrestrial ecosystems decline and the world runs steadily out of oil, living lighter on the earth becomes increasingly vital, and the concept of sustainably is becoming progressively more engrained in public philosophy. Museums have had the traditional function of storing, organising and interpreting the world’s artefacts. However, they are now being given the additional role of safeguarding the world from which these objects originate, protecting ‘intangible natural and cultural heritage’. And this is not merely a moral obligation – visitors are increasingly demanding it.

More than any other sector, museums have the ability – and the ethical responsibility – to lead the field in building public capacity around sustainability. They can do this through innovative design, education, and informed debate, uniquely combining academic credibility with high entertainment values. The public listens to museums, and believes what they hear.

Late last year I was asked to contribute a global review as a keynote speech to a conference in Taipei organised by the National Taiwan Museum, called Challenges and Perspectives: New Roles of the Natural History Museum in Response to Global Changes.   The papers from this conference will be available in book form later this year.

Writing the paper was a big job, having to scour the net, pester my contacts and read countless business planning documents for information about who was doing what with regards to working more sustainably. What fell out of this search was information about efforts in three main areas: building design, day-to-day operations, and the creation of exhibitions (both in concept and execution).

What I found was disturbing, if not wholly surprising. While some museums are making great strides towards reducing their ecological footprints and enabling others to do so too, there is still much to do before this represents the norm. Large, well-provisioned institutions have, of course, a far greater chance of paying the premiums necessary to make sweeping reforms to buildings and exhibition design than do smaller institutions, which might be struggling to stay open and maintain their collections. However it’s not just capacity – the will has to be there as well.

My conclusions were that to be effective, sustainability needs to be an integrated approach stemming from a whole-of-organisation policy. Leadership, staff and visitors should be involved, and green values need to permeate physical spaces as well as activities. For these values to be effective across the global museum sector, the evidence-based practice carried out currently by the most proactive institutions needs to evolve into ‘practice-based evidence’ – guidelines that are empirically tested, freely available, and applicable across a wide range of institutions.

New Zealand is known internationally for leading the way in conservation, especially eradication of feral pests and island restoration.  As I was writing the paper, I asked myself what more could the New Zealand Museum Sector be doing to become sustainable. And instead of answering that, I’ll leave it open ended. Are we doing enough?

By Eric Dorfman, Executive Director, Eklektus Inc.

17 December 2008

As I write this, I’m standing on the rough turf that surrounds Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Portraits of actors colourfully display characters from previous plays: Henry VIII, Ophelia, Romeo. A little further on an advertisement tells me of their upcoming play – Twelfth Night. Ahead is the museum and shop, where you can purchase an Elizabethan ruff, submit your own poetry and even help yourself to a pot of steaming tea and a cinnamon scroll. If there’s no performance on, you can explore behind the scenes of the theatre itself, as complete a reproduction as you’ll find anywhere.  This is not, however, the Globe Theatre in London, but in Second Life, a free 3D virtual world where 16 and a half million users worldwide socialize, connect and create using voice and text chat.

It is, in essence, a virtual museum. I started thinking about the topic because of the New Zealand Museums website – in some ways it is like a virtual museum . When you enter it, you can explore objects, read about them. You can do so at random if you like, or focus on a particular collection. If you have a question, there’s a mechanism to ask an expert curator.  All from your own home computer.

This got me to wondering what else was on offer on the net. I found a mind-boggling array: about a million hits on Google, if that can be said to be an indication.  There’s the Virtual Museum of Japanese Arts and one devoted to Canadian Science. The University of Minnesota has one from its Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Centre.

Admittedly, many of these virtual museums pay scant reference to a real museum (a few might go so far as to include a floor plan), and quite a few are fairly light on scholarship. The best, however, are both engrossing and informative. I lost myself for a while in the one from National Archives of the UK, as well as (surprisingly) the HP Virtual Museum.

So what exactly is a virtual museum? After searching the web, I’m less sure than when I started. These days when many of the same people who like to visit museums are also thinking about reducing their carbon footprint, seeing a museum online instead of travelling might seem to make a lot of sense. Seeing the Russian Prehistoric Art Museum online might seem a bit tame, but it’s a lot cheaper than travelling to Kemerovo (assuming one could find it).

Could we be entering an era where museums themselves become obsolete? Certainly many institutions are making their collection items available on line, and many offer close-ups that allow detail impossible to view in person. What then is the comparative value of seeing an object in person? Is it the object itself important or what it represents, and by viewing a digital image, do we undermine the ‘objecticity’ of the original? I don’t have the answers to these questions. In fact, I’ve only begun to think about them myself. But it’s wonderful to have the NZ Museums website as the catalyst for thinking about these issues.