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| Lynne Kurylo Photo courtesy of Lynne Kurylo |
Lynne Kurylo is the Chair for Liberal Studies in Continuing Education at George Brown College. Lynne’s focus is on adult education and is continually improving how it is delivered. Lynne remains in the museum community by volunteering at the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse Foundation.
What is your favourite memory from your time in the Museum program?
It was my internship. The internship back then was very broad on what we could do; there weren't many precedents or guidelines. I organized a tour of museum education departments in England for six months, after the program ended. I wrote to the museum studies program in Leicester and asked which places they recommended for adult educational programming and they sent me back a list. I got permission to visit five or six places. It was a huge insight, a huge learning experience and I got many ideas I was able to apply when I started working.
What has changed in museums from the time you graduated to now?
I'm looking at it from a museum educator’s point of view. When I started it was very much ‘how do you do educational programming in a glass case museum?’ With the influence of the Leicester Museum, as well as from influences from the United States, we started using interpretation methods that were lots more experiential (hands on) than what visitors were used to encountering at the ROM for example. That came through interrelationships that we developed going to different museum associations conferences. You were exposed to museum education methods and techniques from all these other places, and it became much more of a blend.
What does a typical day entail at your job?
I'm an academic administrator. That means I'm responsible for planning the development and delivery and evaluation of over 130 courses in a wide range of subject areas. I have to make sure on a day to day basis that those courses are running smoothly, that they have instructors, and that the instructors have all the support that they need in order to deliver their courses. I have to coach my staff and my instructors. Teaching at a post-secondary institution is different from what they're used to, many of my instructors come from the financial sector. They are either trainers or working in in some kind of job that has a direct connection to our courses.
Do you have any advice on how to become an effective leader?
I think it's really important to know your own strengths and knowledge. What is it that you know about? What is it that you can do? What are your skills? How can you be useful and relevant to the job? You need to be really clear on who you are and what you've got to offer, because that's your foundation. That's your strength, that's where you're coming from. You also need a vision or a goal. I used to have written on a little yellow sticky on my desk, "What am I here for?" and every day, I had to answer that question. You also have to recruit other people to your vision. Let them be part of it. How can they contribute? How can they help make it happen? And why should they? You need to respect them and value them so that you can achieve a set of goals that you all believe in. And you want to make it fun. If it's not fun, what are you here for?
When managing major projects, what does one need to be aware of?
You need to have a really clear, realistic understanding of your resources. If you’re going to do something, you've got to have the resources to do it. How much money is in your budget? How many employees? How many staff members do you have? How many external sources might you be able to rely on for materials or programming or whatever, right? You can't do more than you have resources for. If you get the institution into financial problems because you overspend, nobody will thank you.
What are some of the greatest risks you have taken in your career?
It was doing the programming for Into the Heart of Africa at the Royal Ontario Museum. We didn't know how risky it was at the time, but it was.
From the perspective of the Education team we made really strong, wide ranging connections with the African Canadian community in Toronto. We had a great team effort with representatives of those communities, and we put together a really good series of concert performances, activity days, and so on. For the first three or four months, everything went well. We did our best to do outreach, but on the board or at the more senior levels there were no black voices. We had done that exhibition in the context of multiculturalism. I don't know if you are aware that in the 1980s, the federal government’s National Museum Program promoted multicultural awareness, to celebrate all the different cultures that made up Canadian society. And they made money available to museums and other cultural institutions to do public programming. A guest curator of ethnology, Dr. Jeanne Cannizzo, saw that using the African collection would be a way of meeting the goals of the multicultural program and a source of funding to carry out a National Cultural policy.
Four months into the exhibition is another story altogether. But once the activism started, certain groups in the city who felt that they had messages to give the public about blackness and structural racism saw an opportunity. It became a kind of a vehicle to carry that message, but it got ugly. It ruined at least one career. You know, maybe more. I don't think the team ever recovered from that, the curator certainly.
You have to work with the collections and this African collection was brought to the ROM in a particular way by a missionary. It was part of what was going on in the late 19th, early 20th century with Britain and its colonies. It was in hindsight imperialistic, culturally arrogant and wrongheaded. And the curator was influenced by her colleagues in the ethnology field to pull the curtain back and show that collection and how it got here. She was just saying here it is, judge for yourself.
A really valuable insight was offered by a history professor from the State University of New York who came up to see the exhibition. I was the one who took him through. I asked if he had any insight into why this happened? And he said,
“Well, no, not really. But I'll tell you what I think about this collection and what you did with it. If you're going to start a conversation, or a relationship with a group of people that you have never had a relationship with before, you don't start by airing the dirty linens. That was your mistake. You told a very sad, unhappy story as your first gesture in trying to make the African collection available to the community. It was the wrong thing to do. You had to find a positive, happy, constructive topic. And then once everybody has built some trust you can ask, well now do you want to see what we've got in the closet?”
If you could travel back in time what would you advise your younger self?
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. In other words, don't let yourself be defined totally by your job. When you lose that job, and inevitably you will, then you're in trouble. Diversify your interests and hobbies, and make yourself a whole person, not just a job. I think that was one of the big things I learned. I would also say don't be willful, don't be arrogant. You also have to listen and respect other people's views and needs. You're not flying the plane alone, you know? You’ve got a crew there with you and you need to work together.
What are some of the long term trends that you think young museum professionals need to be aware of?
It’s important to understand your own values and find a place where you can make your values actual. If you believe in sustainability, put yourself in an institution that also cares about sustainability. You’ve got to find a match for what you're about.
