GLAMOROUS GLAMS: 6 STUNNING GLAM BUILDINGS

GLAM Guide | Evelyn Feldman

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For my final Musings post, I wanted to celebrate the beauty of some GLAM spaces. Whether big or small, modernist, classical, or brutalist, GLAM buildings often have stunning designs.

In these stressful final weeks of the semester (if you are a student), I hope this post can give you a thoughtful break through the appreciation of some extraordinary, glamorous GLAMs.

Niterói Contemporary Art Museum 

This museum in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, looks kind of like a UFO. It finished construction in 1996 and was designed by Oscar Niemeyer.

The beginnings of its construction were connected to political scandal.

Niterói Contemporary Art Museum in Brazil. Source (top). Source (bottom).

National Archives building of the BAnQ

The BAnQ (Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec) has several facilities throughout Quebec, and was created in a merging of Quebec's national archives and national library in 2006, making it an example of GLAM convergence.

While the Grande Bibliothèque in Downtown Montreal is pretty stunning too, I decided to show off the somewhat lesser-known national archives, which are located in the Gilles Hocquart Building in Montreal.

The interior design was done in part by the Provencher agency, who also designed the beautiful First Collector Sewer and Québécor Pavilion renovation in Montreal's Point-à-Callière Museum.

National Archives of the BAnQ, Montreal, Quebec. Source (top). Source (bottom left). Source (bottom right).

Anne of Green Gables Museum

Maybe you're not a glam kind of person, and cozy is more your style. Then the Anne of Green Gables Museum at Silver Bush, in Kensington, Prince Edward Island, might be the museum for you!

The building housing this museum was used as the setting for Lucy Maud Montgomery's novels Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat.

Not to be confused with Green Gables House, another related heritage site.

The Anne of Green Gables Museum at Silver Bush in Kensington, Prince Edward Island. Source.

The Guggenheim 

Okay, this one is a classic, but also a personal favourite. Isn't there something kind of glamorous about that swirling white gallery wall? 

Whether or not you're a fan of the white gallery wall, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York is certainly extraordinary. Completed in 1959, the Frank Lloyd Wright design recalls a nautilus shell, with a continuous ramp spiralling towards the ceiling.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Source (top). Source (bottom).

Calgary Central Library

Lastly I have to squeeze in a couple of libraries! First is Calgary's new Central Library, which just opened in November 2018 and is all the talk of library land.

A section of the Calgary CTrain, a light rail transit system, runs right through the middle of the building. You can watch a time lapse of the library's construction here.

The New Central Library in Calgary. Source (top left). Source (top right). Source (bottom).

The Toronto Reference Library

Let's finish close to home, with the Toronto Reference Library. While it may look a bit like a boring brick on the outside, the Toronto Reference Library's interior is stunning.

Maybe you've already heard of this one, but did you know that the Reference Library features in The Weeknd's music video for Secrets? Or that its floors used to be lined with hanging plants, evoking imagery of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

The Toronto Reference Library. Source (top). Source (bottom).

Really, there were hundreds--thousands--of GLAMs I could have chosen for this post. Some runner-ups include the Biblioteca Sandro Penna in Perugia, Italy (another UFO!), the Tama Art University Library in Tokyo, Japan, the Erawan Museum in Samut Prakan Province, Thailand (the museum is inside a three-headed elephant), and the Vennesla Library and Culture House in Vennesla, Norway (isn't culture house a neat term for a library?)

I hope this list of glamorous GLAM buildings has given you a break from the stressful final weeks of your semester--or any other pressures of your day.

DO YOU SUFFER FROM GLAM ANXIETY?

GLAM Guide | Evelyn Feldman

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Librarianship has a term called library anxiety.

Library anxiety refers to a feeling of inadequacy in your research skills, and perhaps the sense that librarians are judging you for your lack of searching abilities. It often leads to a fear of libraries and librarians themselves. It is mostly used in the context of academic libraries, and can be liked to feelings of fear, helplessness, shame, or intimidation. The term was coined in a 1986 article by library science professor Constance Mellon.

Robarts is watching you. Source.

Have you ever talked to someone who declares that they got through their entire post-secondary degree without once using their school's library? This declaration--whether said with pride or shame--is probably related to library anxiety!

We can see how even public libraries can cause similar feelings, although the term "library anxiety" is not commonly used in relation to them. Do you have that one book that you never returned to your local library, and now you're afraid to ever step foot in the library again for fear of being judged? Or maybe you've racked up a lot of late fines, and cringe imagining the look the librarian will give you when you go in to pay them?

A lot has been written about library anxiety, and a big part of librarians' jobs is finding ways to make the library welcoming--for example by introducing fun gamification programs like escape rooms that subtly teach research skills, or by eliminating late fines altogether (although this is a controversial idea). Or, through broader policies like emphasizing the importance of customer service.

The Royal Ontario Museum. Source.

Museum anxiety?

Do we have the same phenomenon in museums? I would say, certainly!

Though again we don't use this term for it, museums can generate similar feelings of fear or helplessness. Art galleries and art museums in particular can create a sense of shame at one's inability to "appreciate" art.

The only mention I could find specifically of "museum anxiety" (that wasn't in the sense of museums helping people with their anxiety--interesting that museums can both help and hurt in this regard!) was in a Museum Hack article, which proposes strategies museums can use to combat the phenomenon.

Museum Hack makes its ideas sound revolutionary, but (as you probably know) museums already spend a lot of time thinking about ways to make their spaces welcoming and inviting, to break away from perceptions of museums being intimidating, overwhelming, elitist, or boring.

The Tate Modern in London. Source.

"Anxiety" as a category of barrier

If museums are already thinking about similar ideas, why write this post?

First, I like bringing to light another challenge shared across Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums. This is yet another area in which we can learn from each other to find strategies to employ.

But I also think that the term itself highlights an important distinction in types of barriers that keep people away. Museum anxiety is different from barriers such as high cost of entrance or physical inaccessibility. "Anxiety" does not just originate from an institution's policies or physical features, though they can be connected, as shown in the often-intimidating library and museum buildings. Instead, it uniquely also comes from within visitors themselves, created by (false) feelings of inadequacy, shame, or judgement, and inaccurate preconceptions of the institutions.

Furthermore, its causes can be hard to combat, because they often originate from characteristics inherent to our institutions. Academic libraries exist for research, and art museums exist to display art, but these very things can cause anxiety that keeps students and visitors away.

But maybe not "anxiety"?

While these ideas are useful to consider, it is also important to think critically about how we use a word like "anxiety," which is a very real mental illness for many people. Overusing the word might risk it losing its impact for those who need it the most. Maybe "GLAM nerves" would be better?

In the end, rather than coining a phrase for our GLAM vocabularies, what is most important are the ideas at work behind the term. Thinking about these ideas can help us better observe areas that might be creating specific barriers, and find strategies to make our spaces, which can be inherently intimidating, feel welcoming, inviting, and accessible.

The Geisel Library at the University of California San Diego. Source.

ALLOWING "PUSSY" IN THE LIBRARY: ART CONTROVERSY ACROSS GLAM SPACES

GLAM Guide | Evelyn Feldman

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Much of this post is informed by Amy Arsenio and Diane Macklin of Markham Public Library's inspiring session at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference 2019, titled Defending Pussy: How Two Recent Public Art Controversies Challenged us to Change the Way We Think About and Defend Art in our Spaces.

The events: Censored to uncensored

From March 2-30 2018, the Markham Village branch of the Markham Public Library displayed Yafang Shi's exhibition Marching for Gender Equality: Voices, Movement and Empowerment. The exhibition featured 51 photographs from the January 2017 Toronto Women's March, including two photos that captured signs containing the word "pussy."

Wikimedia Commons, Toronto Women's March. Source. 

The library received complaints even as the art was going up. These complaints were largely regarding the art's child-appropriateness (although the photographs were not displayed in the children's section). The branch left the photographs up for the exhibition's opening panel on March 2, but then took down the two photographs containing the word "pussy."

At their conference session, Amy Arsenio and Diane Macklin described how these complaints followed directly on the heels of a previous controversial exhibit, which had contained a drawing of two nude men depicted from the chest up. In the first situation, the staff involved had been prepared for objections, had weathered them, and had left the art up, though they admitted during the conference session that it had been emotional for both the staff and artist involved.

They had been less prepared to receive complaints about the Yafang Shi's photographs, having barely noticed the word "pussy" hidden in two of them. This perhaps led to a more emotional and reactionary response to complaints.

A few weeks following the removal of the art, pressure to restore the photographs arose from sources such as the American Library Association. The library retracted and put the two photographs back up, apologizing for the act of censorship and acknowledging their fault. News media including the Globe and Mail picked up the story, conveying a dramatic tone at the library's act of censorship--while ironically themselves censoring the word "pussy."

Markham Public Library, Markham Village branch. Source.

Following the re-installation of the two photos, the branch, at Yafang Shi's request, held a discussion about censorship hosted by the artist. And, most recently, two of the staff members involved presented about the events at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference.

The library censored this. Right or wrong?
We're hosting a public conversation with @yafangshi about #censorship, #womensrights & the challenges that come with #publicart contextualized by her photo exhibit on the Women’s March.
Join us at Markham Village branch on March 28, 7pm. pic.twitter.com/oKyO1gBWbO

— MarkhamPublicLibrary (@markhamlibrary) March 27, 2018

Cross-cutting GLAM questions

Across GLAMs, our institutions face challenges related to censorship and controversial content, although for libraries these challenges are more often directed towards their books.

"Just as a library's uncensored collection says 'all these stories matter,' so too does an uncensored art exhibit" - lessons learned by the Markham Public Library after weathering the art controversies last year. A brave admission of where mistakes were made!" #olasc

— Vicky Varga (@vixvarga) January 30, 2019

At the conference session, questions arose that cut across our GLAM fields. How do we prepare staff for art that may be controversial? What do we give to front-end staff to help them be ready for any complaints they may receive? How do we write art policies that prepare our institutions to face these situations?

How much should GLAMs need to satisfy the demands of their communities? Is it our duty to create spaces in which visitors are comfortable, or spaces in which visitors are challenged?

Our expectations of spaces

These events also show the importance of considering context: viewers will have different responses to art depending on the space it is in, whether Gallery, Library, Museum, or public art in our own neighbourhoods.

How do our expectations of spaces change how we perceive the art in them? While visitors go to galleries and art museums expecting to view things that educate, surprise, or unnerve them, they might be going to the library for a peaceful study space, to use the internet, or to pick up a book. Art displayed in libraries faces different challenges and considerations to art in museums or galleries.

As Arsenio and Macklin noted in their session, many patrons feel a sense of ownership of the library. The library feels like it belongs to everyone. Libraries can be spaces of comfort or security, and having that security questioned by art that challenges us can be jarring.

For me, these events show a common concern across GLAMs relating to the display of controversial content, and how we can share questions and approaches relating to such situations. But at the same time, the events also show a key difference between GLAMs--our spaces are not the same, and patrons or visitors expect to encounter different types of content when entering them.

WHY DO WE CALL THEM "VISITORS"?

GLAM Guide | Evelyn Feldman

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In my first weeks of my first semester studying Library and Information Science, I was assigned this blog post by Karen Pundsack to read for class. It's been one of those readings I've never forgotten, that has seemed to live in the back of my mind ever since.

Pundsack's post summarizes an ongoing conversation in Public Libraries about what to call the people who use the library. As Pundsack notes, each term brands the library in a different way.

Patron positions the library within a more traditional framework, but is perhaps problematically jargon-like.

Customer positions the library as a product and a financial investment; coming from the business world and carrying a strong corporate undertone, it is perhaps the most controversial of these terms.

User is active, and positions the library as a space to do things, but is perhaps impersonal.

The Toronto Reference Library. What does the Toronto Public Library call the people who come to use it? Source.

I recommend reading the whole article for more terms (student, member, guest, client, visitor) and various arguments for and against many of them.

What I find interesting is how hard it is for an outsider to even find out which term a library system uses, without doing some serious sleuthing (can you figure out which term Toronto Public Library uses, if any? I couldn't!). This lack of surface-level transparency shows just how much these terms exist for the library's own internal conceptualization of itself, rather than as tools for users.

Whichever word a library chooses to use, the decision reflects big questions each library system asks itself: How do we perceive the people who use our services? How do we want them to fit within those services? What do we want our library to be?

What about museums?

Falk & Dierking, who wrote about museum
visitor motivations, inspired Musings'
Falcon Deerking logo. Source.

Entering the Museum Studies half of my degree the following year, this was a big question on my mind: What words do we use in museums?

The answer, as you probably know? It's almost always visitors. 

Of course, there is some variation; I think guests is not uncommon, either. But museums seem pretty settled with their terms. On the other hand, museums focus more on a different set of questions: rather than what do we call people, they ask why do people come. This focus is illustrated in Museum Studies' core concepts like Visitor Research and Museum Visitor Motivations from Falk and Dierking (who inspired Musings' mascots!).


I don't have an argument here, but instead raise this topic to ask questions--

Why these different focuses?

What would it mean for museums if we called the people who walked through our doors users, patrons, or customers?

Why is visitor so standard in museums? What does this say about museums' own internal self-conceptualization?

Even if museums (and libraries!) are well-settled and content with their terms, I love the way that this debate prompts internal reflection on what we want to be as institutions, both individually and collectively.

THE 2018 OMA CONFERENCE IN GLAM ANALOGIES

GLAM Guide | Evelyn Feldman

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The 2018 Ontario Museum Association Conference had the theme "Collaborating for Impact: Not Business as Usual," and I ventured in prepared to capture as much GLAM collaboration as possible.

I'm not sure whether it was unique to OMA, or common across all conferences, but people sure liked their analogies--with so much great discussion, these three GLAM-related analogies (GLAMalogies?) seemed the best way to organize this post.

Analogy 1: Silos. Source.

Analogy 1: Escaping our GLAM Silos

This first analogy is not new, and describes GLAMs' tendencies to operate only within their own spheres.

In the panel Collapsing Silos, Building Communities: Glam Sector Collaborations, Michael Rikley-Lancaster of the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum, Lisa Snider of the Archives Association of Ontario, and Kerry Badgley of the Ontario Library Association discussed current collaborations between GLAMs, and how fruitful such collaborations can be.

Michael Rikley-Lancaster described how one collaboration can create long-lasting synergy. The Almonte Branch of the Mississippi Mills Public Library had digitized their town's newspaper, but had not done anything with it. In 2012, the library partnered with the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum, who helped give the newspaper an online platform and bring it to public eyes. Rikley-Lancaster noted that the digitized newspaper platform still gets at least 10000 hits a month.

This one collaboration led to future projects: when the library was tight for space, they moved their collection of textile books right into the textile museum, creating more traffic at the museum through visitors coming to use that collection.

Breaking down the silos between our institutions can lead to benefits for both the institutions and their communities, and can create to long-lasting relationships.

Analogy 2: Cats. Source.

Analogy 2: Archives are like Cats

In this same session, Lisa Snider compared archives to cats: on the one hand, as access institutions, archives want people to come visit, but on the other hand, as preservation-focused institutions, they want to keep people at a distance.

Here is another way that GLAM partnerships can be fruitful. While both archives and museums focus on preserving primary, one-of-a-kind materials, archives, unlike museums, often lack the infrastructure for exhibiting and engaging audiences with that material. Collaborations between Archives and GLMs can help make archives visible, bringing their collections to public eyes through institutions that have ample infrastructure in place for such attention.

As Lisa Snider put it, archives can piggyback on what libraries and museums are doing to provide lifelong learning experiences. GLAMs can work together to balance that cat-like temperamental push and pull of preservation versus access.

(I love this analogy. What kind of cat would your favourite archive be?)

Analogy 3: Perfume. Source.

Analogy 3: GLAMs should Market Themselves like Perfume

This analogy comes from keynote speaker Stephen Abram, Executive Director of the Federation of Ontario Public Libraries. Abram pointed out that we do not market Chanel no. 5 by saying it is a smelly yellow liquid--it is the perfume's evocative smell that sets it apart, which advertisers devise clever ways to market to consumers.

Likewise, it is also foolish to market a library by advertising that it has books, to market galleries by advertising that they have art, and to market a museum by advertising that it has exhibits. Abram says that GLAMs have to ask, what is our smell? What do we do on an emotional level?

There was so much other great GLAM discussion that I couldn't fit in this post. During the Plenary GLAM Panel, Shelley Falconer of the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Vickery Bowles of Toronto Public Library, John Roberts of the Archives of Ontario, and Christina Tessier of Ingenium discussed challenges shared across institutions.

I will conclude with some of the excellent, thought-provoking questions they raised:

GLAMs all have a platform to bring topics to public awareness. Do they have a responsibility to harness that space to respond rapidly to current events?

How can our #GLAM community be #agile to current events when we function on long planning cycles? Do we have a responsibility to respond to what is happening in the immediate @museumsontario #OMAConf2018

— LordCulturalResource (@LordCultural) October 25, 2018

GLAMs all carry a shared privilege of public trust, but what do they do to deserve that trust?

John Roberts from @ArchivesOntario had a great question for this audience - “why do we deserve public trust? We (#GLAM community) shouldn’t take this trust for granted.” #OMAConf2018

— Loren Fantin (@lofantin) October 25, 2018

How can GLAMs work together to tackle these questions collaboratively, and arrive at more powerful answers?

GLAM Plenary Panel - what are the opportunities for GLAMs to promote civic engagement in support of democratic values & freedoms and how can we do so collaboratively? #OMAConf2018 pic.twitter.com/MQSFGRN9Gg

— Lindsay Kernohan (@LindsayKernohan) October 25, 2018

Check out #OMAconf2018 for more from the conference!

GLAM GUIDE: A NEW COLUMN ABOUT ALL YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS!

GLAM Guide | Evelyn Feldman

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This new column will explore relationships between GLAMs – Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums! GLAMs, according to wikipedia, are

"Cultural institutions that have access to knowledge as their mission." 

This is my favourite part of the wikipedia article, because it highlights how each type of institution is centered on a core mandate of access to (and preservation of) knowledge.

Convergence?

A lot of the discourse around GLAMs (some from members of our own faculty) surrounds an idea of "convergence." The idea (simplified greatly) is that the institutions used to be converged in the distant past (e.g. the Library of Alexandria, a museum, library, and records storage), and that there may be benefit in re-converging, in order to increase efficiency and serve users better.

A number of converged institutions exist, such as the National Library of New Zealand, and the Taylor Family Digital Library at the University of Calgary, both of which combine library, museum, and archival collections and functions. You may notice that in discussions of convergence, the idea of "library" often takes on a dominant role, while "gallery" often gets left out.

The topic of (G)LAM convergence has been covered by Musings in the past, in an excellent three-part series by Kara Isozaki and Maeghan Jerry that I highly recommend giving a read!

Conversations About Convergence Part I: Exhibitions in Libraries and Archives
Conversations About Convergence Part II: Hopping the Fence Between Lam Fields
Conversations About Convergence Part III: As "Herd" From LAM Professionals

And, past MMSt-student Molly McGowan worked on a GLAM project and wrote about it for Musings!

The National Library of New Zealand, a "converged" institution. Source.

Collaboration!

But what do we even mean by "convergence"? It is a nebulous word! Do we mean GLAMs working in very close collaboration? Or are we talking about GLAMs being co-located in the same building? Or, is it the complete melding of GLAMs' functions into one hybrid institution?

I think a "convergence" focus misses the point. GLAMs have grown into distinct entities for a reason, and each has its own unique mission and contribution to cultural heritage and information access. We should embrace these unique functions, contributions, and services to communities!

I would rather leave convergence behind and focus on collaboration–both a kind of conceptual collaboration (what can GLAMs learn from each others' scholarship and discourse?), and a physical collaboration (what can GLAMs actually do together?). 

I find it most productive to ask, what can GLAMs learn from each other and do together to augment each of their unique mandates?

A note on my own perspective.

My educational and experiential background are by far strongest in libraries and museums. When drawing from my own knowledge base, examples relating to these fields come most easily–although I will do my best to give archives and galleries their share of attention, too! And hopefully, the column will live on and someone with an archival or art background will contribute in the future.

I also owe a lot to Heather MacNeil's incredible course INF 2195: Libraries, Archives, and Museums: Intersections and Tensions, the course's excellent syllabus of readings, and the thought-provoking class discussion, which are all certainly informing my thinking now!

So much to talk about!

There are so many interesting and fun angles from which to look at GLAMs!

How have GLAMs become what they are today, growing in parallel but apart, into distinct institutions?

The ROM and the Halifax Central Library are modern-looking GLAMs of the future. How did we get from the Library of Alexandria (and a complexity of other origins) to this? ROM source. Halifax Library source.

Where are there tensions between these institutions? Are the GLAM fields all in complete harmony?

How do the sets of stereotypes we've formed around each institution compare, and what does this tell us about the way they are all perceived?

Indiana Jones is such a museum cliche
that it feels cliche to use it as one. Source.

Why I look forward to Fall weather pic.twitter.com/3TMzjyDPtn

— Librarian Problems (@librarianprblms) August 26, 2018

Archives often get placed less centrally in GLAM conversations (many museums and libraries have archives, but we don't often talk about archives having libraries or museums). What implications does this have for LAMs? Should there be an effort to "un-converge" archives and place them more centrally in our conversations?

How do collaborations between GLAMs actually work behind-the-scenes?

What exciting collaborations are going on right now?

Stay tuned for an exploration of some of these topics in future articles!