(FUN)DRAISING RETROSPECTIVE: 1.5 YEARS OF INTERVIEWS

(Fun)draising | Samantha Summers

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This is my penultimate column of 2019, and thus it marks 1.5 years of me writing the (Fun)draising column. Rather than feature another interview this month, I decided to sit back and reflect a bit on what I have learned about fundraising over the past 16 months. (Don’t worry, I have some amazing interviews lined up for later this month and for 2020.)

A quote adorns the wall of the Textile Museum's collection space. "Who is worthy of memory?" -Desmond Miller.
Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers.

I started (Fun)draising knowing nothing at all about the art of fundraising. In fact, I didn’t even realize I was interested in this field as a career. I went to my first Musings meeting, was told it was essentially the only column available, and so I took it. Knowing nothing about fundraising, I decided the best way to tackle this would be to feature the words of those who do know something about fundraising. Surely that would be a better use of readers’ time than the ramblings of someone who knew nothing about the field.


Armed with all of the confidence of someone who did not understand this field very well, I set out to meet with anyone and everyone who was involved in the financial side of museums. I sent emails with abandon. I have met with Executive Directors, COOs, Directors, curators, and even high-profile donors. I have met with people who, now that I understand the field better, I am shocked ever took the time to meet with me. Which brings me to the first thing I have learned about fundraising through writing this column: this is a field of incredibly friendly people. You cannot be successful in fundraising (or I think a more accurate term, development) unless you are excellent at meeting with people and building and maintaining relationships with them.

The Art Gallery of Hamilton in downtown Hamilton. (Source.)

I would characterize the average development professional as passionate, driven, and incredibly warm. They are all deeply invested in the educational and social programming at their institutions, and work hard to ensure that other departments have the support they need to achieve their goals. My favourite question to ask my interviewees is what they think is the most exciting thing achieved through fundraising since they joined their institutions. Almost every single person I have spoken to has discussed providing the support for educational programming, supporting marginalized communities, and supporting their institution’s involvement in the local community.

I have learned that the root of development work is education; teaching potential donors about the importance of the work your institution does and showing them how they can support that mission. This can take many forms, from throwing major events like galas to meeting with people for coffee and a chat. As an aside, if you hate coffee, this might not be the field for you.

Friday Night Live, an event hosted at the ROM in which the museum becomes a club. Drink and dance with your favourite dinos! Source.

I have learned a lot of practical things writing this column, like the ideal ratio of funding from various sources to which major corporations tend to support what kind of philanthropy (any literacy initiatives coming up? Talk to TD). I have learned tips for how to make “The Ask” (for money) to major donors and smaller donors alike. I have learned that the financial side of museums requires just as much passion and heart as the more artistic side.


I get the impression at the Faculty of Information that we prefer to avoid talking about the financial side of museums, or to think of them as less our business than what might be more cultural concerns. It isn’t easy to marry ambitions of social justice and curating conversations with the capitalist reality in which museums exist, so we tend to sweep those realities under the rug. While there is a half-year course offered about fundraising and project management, and the Ethics, Management, and Leadership course usually includes an assignment involving a spreadsheet, we really don’t talk about money in a practical way during our museum studies courses here. The overwhelming impression this gives is that we are museum professionals, interested in tough conversations and changing the world, and the money side of things will be sorted out by the cold capitalists working in accounting and development.

A gift of custom Caxton Cicero stationary given to donors who helped the Fisher purchase the Caxton. Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers.

I think that this is a grave injustice to the field of development. This is not only an important field and one that everybody working in museums should have some understanding of, but also one that engages with some of museology’s biggest questions today in a very unique way. I hope that my column has introduced readers to this fascinating field, challenged our understandings of development, and provided some insight into this extremely important aspect of running a museum.


Here’s to another 16 months!

WHAT HAPPENED TO #METOO IN MUSEUMS?

She's My Muse | Samantha Summers

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Last summer, in response to allegations of sexual assault made against photographer Raghubir Singh, whose art was being shown in the exhibition Modernism on the Ganges, the Royal Ontario Museum hosted an exhibition titled #MeToo and the Arts, curated by Dr. Deepali Dewan. This exhibition was held from July 21 to October 21 in the Thorsell Spirit House, a publicly-accessible and no-charge space adjacent to the main ROM entrance off of Bloor Street. The exhibition aimed to engage with its Modernism on the Ganges exhibition and the question of how institutions and individuals react to problematic creators.

Protestors march carrying a #MeToo sign in Paris. (Image source.)

This was not a perfect exhibition. Jaishri Abichandani, who accused Singh of raping her, said that it was not comfortable working with the ROM. Some visitors to the exhibition with whom I spoke with felt that it did not engage explicitly enough with the allegations made against Singh. Others felt that keeping it physically separate from Modernism on the Ganges made it too easy for visitors of that exhibition to ignore these allegations. And yet, despite all of these complaints, #MeToo and the Arts struck me as very brave.

To the best of my knowledge, #MeToo and the Arts is the first time that a Canadian museum has heard allegations about a featured artist and responded by starting a conversation, not sweeping those allegations under the rug. A perfect, and roughly concurrent, example of this is the Musée des Beaux-Arts Montréal. Indeed, the MBAM showed D’Afrique aux Amériques: Picasso en face-à-face d’hier à aujourd’hui [From Africa to the Americas: Face-to-face with Picasso from yesterday to today] from May 12 to September 16 of the same year. The exhibition received rave reviews, and did not engage with Picasso’s exploitative relationships with women. In general, this is how museums handle controversial artists: show their art, hide their history, and hope audiences don’t probe. #MeToo and the Arts may not have gone as far as some visitors may have wanted, but at least it asked questions.

Pablo Picasso's Mujer con sombrero y cuello de piel, a portrait of Picasso's mistress Marie Thérèse Walter, with whom he had a very troubled relationship. (Image Source.)

When #MeToo and the Arts was first announced, I thought it would be a turning point for museums. I thought, finally a major museum is asking the right questions and encouraging audiences to do the same. I looked forward to the next #MeToo exhibition, and wondered which museum would take up the mantle. Perhaps the National Gallery of Canada, with its extensive collection of Indigenous art, would explore artistic violence against Indigenous women. The Art Gallery of Ontario could comb its collection for problematic artists and explore their stories, and showcase their art in light of those stories, with an honest and frank exhibition. Or maybe this would lead to the founding of Canada’s own National Women’s History Museum. I was excited. I was hopeful.

I was disappointed.

#MeToo and the Arts should have been the beginning of a long, complicated, and difficult conversation in major Canadian museums. Following the ROM’s example, this could have been the year when Canadian museums explored their collections and challenged misogyny in the art world. Instead, this was pretty much a normal year for major Canadian museums.

This year in major Canadian museums saw European painters, dinosaurs, and arachnids highlighted. (Image source.)

So, what happened? Why didn’t other institutions run with this conversation and bring it into their own spaces? I have theories, of course. It would be too much trouble. It might impact revenues to suggest that artists are to be challenged, not necessarily celebrated. And of course, nobody wants to appear to be promoting an artist who engaged in violence against women, in which case, best not to mention them. I do have to wonder at which point ignoring an artist’s controversy becomes lying about an artist’s controversy, and whether or not Canadians will ever themselves become invested enough in #MeToo to demand this kind of accountability from museums.

It does not seem likely the Canadian museums will embrace the #MeToo movement in any comprehensive way any time soon. In curating #MeToo and the Arts Dr. Dewan offered other institutions an opening to give Canadian museology its #MeToo moment. Perhaps it will fall to us, the museum students of today and professionals of tomorrow, to finally answer that call.

See  past Musings editor Kathleen Lew's take on #MeToo and the Arts here.

MUSEUMS OR NOT? PART 2: THE SHOPPING MALL

Beyond Tradition | Joanna Wreakes

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One of the many views inside Edmonton's West Edmonton Mall. Source.

When you visit a new city, what’s usually on the top of your “must-see” list? As museum people, we’re more than a little biased towards museums and galleries. But, I’ve been heartened when hosting guests from out of Toronto on their eagerness to visit both the ROM and AGO. I recently spoke with a colleague who is going on a work trip to Edmonton. What was one of the top sights on his list? The mall.


via GIPHY (source)

As a born and raised Edmontonian, I’ve got mall culture deeply ingrained. Edmonton is home to West Edmonton Mall (WEM), the largest shopping mall in North America, and the location of my part-time gig during undergrad. It’s a huge space filled mostly with the same stores we’ve got here in Toronto at the Eaton Centre, with a few hidden gems of locally owned places spread throughout the endless hallways.

It’s important to note that I’m far from the first person to consider the similarities between shopping malls and museums. Anna Zhelnina’s article “‘It’s Like a Museum Here’: The Shopping Mall as Public Space” talks about research carried out at malls in urban Russia. This relates to museum and museum-like spaces as places to see and be seen, where “visitors […] carry out informal monitoring based on their own ideas of what constitutes “right” and “wrong” behaviours for this place.” (source) This is similar to the observation I made in my last article about the symphony, another flashback to well-known museum academic Tony Bennett!

Looking at the example of WEM, the mall is full of intriguing attractions that we might not expect to see on a shopping trip. Kitschy theme streets are vaguely reminiscent of the themed galleries in museums - Europa Boulevard, Chinatown, and BRBN Street all can be found. Europa Boulevard is especially interesting. It plays on a lot of cliches Canadians might have about Europe. The walls are made to look (somewhat cheesily) as if you are in an outdoor shopping street, surrounded by ornate and colourful old buildings. This street also holds a lot of the higher end and more expensive stores in West Ed.

Europe Boulevard. Notice the beautiful building facades. Source.

Another thing that you might expect to see in a museum over a mall is an aquarium. The Marine Life part of WEM has a variety of educational programming, a lot of which is designed to tie into the Alberta education curriculum. Teachers can apply to have educators visit their classrooms, similar to many museum outreach programs. Here in Toronto, it can be compared to the ROM’s travelling education kits.

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Looks like our African Penguins Dayo and Skadu are TV show stars! Find them in @cbcgem's new #FamilyDrama series @northernrescuetv or visit them at Sea Life Caverns. . . . #northernrescueoncbcgem #northernrescue #cbcgem #cbctelevision #wested #wem #westedmontonmall #marinelife #sealifecaverns #africanpenguins

A post shared by West Edmonton Mall (@official_wem) on Mar 4, 2019 at 2:37pm PST

While I definitely wouldn’t advocate for replacing museums with malls, it’s intriguing to think about how the two function similarly as public spaces, places to provide entertainment and enjoyment, and even in some cases, act as educators.

COMING INTO CONTACT WITH ROYALTY: TREASURES OF A DESERT KINGDOM AT THE ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM

Weekend Edition | Samantha Summers

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The exhibition entrance. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Lew.

Over a sumptuous breakfast at the media preview for the Royal Ontario Museum’s latest exhibition, Treasures of a Desert Kingdom: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India, I went looking for a chai masala. On my way back to my plate I bumped right into someone, nearly covering their suit in hot chai masala. I apologized, they accepted, and I sat back down, eager to hear remarks from today’s guest of honour: His Highness Maharaja Gaj Singh II of Marwar-Jodhpur.

After opening remarks from ROM Director and CEO Josh Basseches and a warm message of welcome and gratitude from Dinesh Bhatia, Consul General of India in Toronto, it was time for His Highness to speak. To the stage rose an older gentleman, poised and graceful, who moved with the gravitas of someone who has spent their life performing diplomacy. His suit was, thankfully, chai-free.

With mortification I realized that I had collided with His Highness.

His Highness Maharaja Gaj Singh II of Marwar-Jodhpur. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Lew.

His Highness and his daughter Princess Baijilal Shivranjani Rayje had travelled from India to attend this event. Many of the objects on display belonged to their family and have never before travelled outside of India. Together they form a dazzling collection that truly highlights the richness of the Kingdom of Marwal-Jodhpur.

This exhibition has now been shown at various institutions in the United States, and ROM curator Dr. Deepali Dewan set out to slightly modify it, adding transitional zones which encourage visitors to consider the collection from a broader perspective. Visitors are prompted to interpret jewelry through the lens of diplomatic relations, to see Indian art through a decolonial paradigm, and to interpret both art and games as complex networks of subtle cues charged with meaning. “I think people will come in because of the royal angle,” she tells me, “but I want them to leave with a more complicated understanding of India.”

A collection of beautiful jewelry, which Dr. Dewan wants to encourage visitors to interpret as tokens of diplomacy rather than as simply aesthetic objects. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Lew.

Dr. Dewan has carefully avoided cliches in this exhibition. She is purposefully not pandering to colonial notions of Indianness, which cast India’s cultural and artistic traditions as uniform, second to the diversity of European traditions. The stylized scalloped arches which Dr. Dewan identifies to me as being among the cliches of this projected idea of India are nowhere to be found. Although His Highness’ family can trace their roots back countless generations, and although much of the art I am viewing is at least a few centuries old, there is nothing to reinforce the colonial notion that this culture is a curiosity of the past. This exhibition is vibrant and bold. As I admire artwork from the seventeenth century, I am surrounded by the dynamic present of Marwal-Jodhpur.

One of the exhibition spaces after other guests have left. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Lew.

Before I leave, I take one last look through the gallery. The crowds have dissipated. Save security, I am alone in the exhibition. The quiet stands in sharp contrast to my morning: the bustle of the TTC, my run-in with His Highness. This feels like a different world. In just a few days this space will be bustling with visitors eager to see dazzling jewels and royal tents that are three times the size of my bedroom. Selfies will be taken, and voices will weave their way to the ceiling as people take in all the beauty that will lay before them. I soak in the quietness and reflect upon Dr. Dewan’s hope that this exhibition will complicate visitors’ understanding of India. In the stillness the message is reinforced that every jewel, every brush stroke, and every thread is infused with some kind of meaning. The objects communicate in a language I don’t speak, but I am acutely aware that I am surrounded by layers of meaning that run centuries deep.

This exhibition is beautiful. Beautifully complicated. Beautifully powerful. Beautifully nuanced.

I’ll be back to see it again.

The sun is a recurring theme throughout the exhibition. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Lew.

Treasures of a Desert Kingdom: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India is at the ROM (Garfield Weston Exhibition Hall) from March 9 to September 2, 2019. 

CREATING THE LAUNCHPAD: ANNUAL GIVING AND DONOR CIRCLES AT THE ROM

(Fun)draising | Samantha Summers

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The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is one of the country’s leading museums, both in terms of programming and in terms of donor relations. I sat down with Jessica Hall-Cummings, Director of Donor Circles and Annual Giving for the ROM, to discuss getting people involved in Patrons Circles at the ROM, and maintaining their interest in these groups once they have joined them.

The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum, illuminated by night. Source. 

Donor circles always offer incentives to join and incentives to stay, such as early access to exhibits. How is it decided which incentives you’re going to offer?

That’s always an interesting topic of conversation. We’re always playing with it. We’re always tinkering. It’s important to be really responsive to the donors, you can’t just say, “Here’s the program.” They’re living organisms, as it were. Especially over time. The Young Patrons Circle is very easy to make adjustments to, because young people tend to be very open to change. The Royal Patrons Circle, for a long time, when you surveyed them said, “Everything’s great, never change.” But it will continue to grow, and there’s a large group of the boomer generation which will move into that circle, and their needs and preferences are wildly different than people who are in the program now.

Obviously young people are a sought-after demographic in cultural and heritage institutions, presumably because one day we’re going to have money and invest it in these organizations. How do you court young people? How do you set up those relationships and then maintain them?

Specifically from the foundation side, the Young Patrons Circle is our channel to do that. Not to say that other people don’t end up working with younger donors, but that is our main way in which we engage young people. It was created almost fifteen years ago, and the idea was that we wanted a younger generation to join our Patrons Circle, but all the research said that the benefits that drove success in that group were not going to be of interest to a younger generation. They launched a fully separate program. It has changed a lot over time, but the idea remains the same: What is an attractive offer to young people to get them engaged with the ROM, and then hopefully turn them into the future major gift donors of tomorrow?

What kind of stuff is offered [to the Young Patrons Circle]?

The program is very socially-motivated. Our hope is to have one event a month. They’re of varying sizes. Sometimes they’re quite small and have limited capacity, sometimes they’re massive like an exhibit opening and shared with other donor groups, so they’re not always exclusive to that group. It’s important to have enough that are exclusive to that group for them to feel happy. I would say that’s different from when the program started, when it was very, very socially-motivated and it wasn’t as much about the museum. There were lots of events like Supper Clubs, where it was around social opportunity and the program was making those opportunities possible, but it wasn’t necessarily reinforcing what it is we do at the ROM.

Friday Night Live, an event hosted at the ROM in which the museum becomes a club. Drink and dance with your favourite dinos! Source. 

Making these events more tailored to the museum makes a lot of sense. 

Yeah, and we do share a number of events with the Royal Patrons Circle every year. With that change in our benefits that I mentioned before, we now have a healthy number of younger people at those events. The hope is that by the time they’re ready to leave the Young Patrons Circle, it isn’t like they won’t know anybody. But essentially programs like that are a long-term experiment that I don’t know if anyone in Canada has seen the long-term results of. I feel like there are institutions in Canada which are in this middle place like us where they’re starting to see better integration, but it will be a long time before we see if these people become major gift donors to the ROM in their fifties and sixties.

When you have all these funds coming in from Patrons Circles, memberships, and major gift donors, how does all of that get allotted?

The ROM has a strategic plan that our office looks at. Priorities are identified with the ROM, and then through various channels we would be going out and raising money. The annual giving program funds the highest priorities: our operations. There are opportunities within that to do some directed giving, but it’s always our priority that people give to highest priorities because that is a crucial need. Operations is always a crucial need, it just isn’t a very sexy need. That’s part of why the donor circles work, because you have all these great experiences to engage in all these facets of the ROM, without needing to say, “I funded this specific thing.”

It’s obviously really nice for the ROM to get those super big donations, but it sounds like membership, Patrons Circles, they’re the funding that’s keeping the ROM afloat.

Our Board chair would say that the money that gets raised through those programs and the money that comes in to operations is an investment in our office to then make those other things happen. That’s the money to create the launchpad for everything else.

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DO-YOU-THINK-HE-SAUR-US? 😬 #dinozuul

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What is the most exciting thing for you personally that has been achieved at the ROM through fundraising since you joined nine years ago?

There are lots of exciting things. I think the thing that springs to mind is that finally this year we secured all the funding we need to build our new Dawn of Life gallery. [It will] start the story, as it were, and it will also be a gallery of the twenty-first century. A gallery planned in this age, where there will be lots of digital activations and ways of thinking about how people interact with museum spaces today when technology is such a prevalent part of everyone’s life. In our Instagram this week they did a great story about a bunch of kids who got really excited about the Dawn of Life gallery, and they ended up doing their own little fundraising campaign to raise money. So they brought them all in to meet the lead curator, go behind the scenes, and hear about how the gallery will look.

Did they approve?

I think they did. There were lots of happy faces.

Check out upcoming Young Patron Circle events, and take a look at the ROM’s current major exhibition Zuul: Life of an Armoured Dinosaur. 

NEW COLUMN ALERT: BREAKING DOWN "BREAKING THE GLASS CASE"

Breaking the Glass Case | Alexandra Forand

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Aniin, tansi, and hello! Welcome to the inaugural blog post of “Breaking the Glass Case.” I should mention that I am not originally from Toronto, but hail from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. When I first arrived in Toronto (like a true museum studies student) I went to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). The first gallery I visited was the Daphne Cockwell Gallery Dedicated to the First Peoples Art and Culture, mostly because it is free (like a true broke graduate student). As I walked the airy open hall I noticed the glass cases filled with Indigenous artifacts.

Daphne Cockwell Gallery Dedicated to the First Peoples Art and Culture on a Friday afternoon. Photo courtesy of Alexandra Forand 

Some of these objects were contemporary such as the Jane Ash Poitras paintings, others were older and more sacred such as the regalia of different Indigenous communities across Canada. One particular case jumped out at me right away. This case was entitled “Living Cultures,” and this specific case is concerned with telling the stories of Indigenous people today. At the far end of the case there is the Mohawk Family Life Group Diorama.

This diorama was created by Ulrich Dunbar and installed in the ROM in 1917. While this diorama was meant to showcase domestic activities it omits spiritual and intellectual life, presents a static picture of Mohawk life, and gives viewers a “cringeworthy” image of Indigenous people.

Picture of the original Mohawk Family Life Group Diorama. Photo Courtesy of Alexandra Forand. 

When the Daphne Cockwell Gallery reopened in 2017 the Mohawk Family Life diorama had undergone a renovation. The stone tools were replaced with modern technology such as iPods, power drills, and camera. The most notable intervention is the Great Seal of the Haudenosaunee which represents forms of Iroquoian government and social organization.

Update version of the Mohawk Family Life Group Diorama. Photo Courtesy of Alexandra Forand. 

The diorama is surrounded by a large wooden frame, which has a small golden plaque that says:

“You have a phrase called “Golden Age.” We do not want to be depicted the way we were, when we were first discovered in our homeland in North America. We do not want museums to continue to present us as something from the past. We believe we are very, very much here now, and we are going to be very important in the future.”
-- Georges Erasmus, Chief Assembly of First Nations, 1992

What do you guys think? Does the newly made over diorama represent modern Indigenous life? Or is the diorama another example of mishandled history? If it were up to you, what would you have done differently?

Senator Murray Sinclair said “reconciliation is not a spectator sport,” and I hope this blog can create a dialogue about the role of cultural heritage organizations and their participation in reconciliation. Beyond that, I want to hear from you, the readers, about what steps you see that are being taken (or you are taking) in the spirit of reconciliation. I want to learn from you, because I am in no means an expert on this topic and also journeying on this path of learning, understanding, and reconciliation. Please do not hesitate to contact me at allyforand@gmail.com or if twitter and instagram is more your speed my handle is @Ally_but_online. 

Breaking the Glass Case: Recent publications, such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (2007) and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Calls to Actions (2015), ask cultural heritage organizations to participate in national reconciliation and public education. These actions join the long history of indigenous people requests to redefine their place in cultural heritage organizations. This column is dedicated to exploring the history, development, and relationships between indigenous individuals, communities, and cultural heritage organizations.

MAKING MUSINGS PART 1: REFLECTIONS FROM A PAST EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Letter from the Editor | Jaime Clifton-Ross

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This is the first post of a five part series in celebration of the Master of Museum Studies program at the University of Toronto's 50th anniversary (MMSt50). To reflect on Musings' past, present, and future, we invited all previous Editors-in-Chief to return to Musings to write special Letter from the Editor posts. These articles will highlight the significance of Musings both within the MMSt program, and for writers' professional careers. Jaime Clifton-Ross was the first Editor-in-Chief of Musings from 2013-2015. 

I remember this one humid day quite well. It was late August in 2013 and I had just moved to Toronto a couple of weeks before. I nervously entered the iSchool to meet Dr. Mihalache to discuss my research assistant position. She greeted me warmly and I instantly felt at ease. I was incredibly surprised to find out that the sole project for my assistantship was to transform the existing MMSt blog into a thriving platform that served as the voice of the Master of Museum Studies students.

I began this somewhat daunting task by researching other blogs and obsessively tinkering with the back end of blogger (Musings’ Content Management System). I scoured the internet in hopes of learning as much as I could about web design and I also taught myself some basic coding. I spent the next few months developing content, writing the preliminary mission/vision/mandate, and researching blogging best practices. While I couldn’t put my finger on it, this project had ignited something in me.

By January 2014, I had convinced 4 other students to join me as contributing editors. Together we came up with a series of columns and created a rigorous content calendar that included a new post every weekday. Despite how challenging it was to maintain this busy content calendar, everyone managed to post one blog a week. I credit the team’s commitment and collaborative spirit as the reason why Musings took off so quickly.

“The Original Musings Team”. From left: Brittney Sproule, Meaghan Dalby, Alexandra Jeffrey, Jaime Clifton-Ross, Lauren Williams, and Katherine Hannemann. Photo courtesy of Jaime Clifton-Ross.

After two semesters of working on Musings, I secured an internship in the web department at the Royal Ontario Museum. My task was to conduct an environmental survey of museum blogs and identify best practices. I also wrote a series of blog posts and learned a lot about social media. This helped energize me for my second year as Editor-in-Chief, which had become an elected role with student council rather than an assistantship. Equipped with far more knowledge about blogs and web engagement, I set out to recruit the second year of contributing editors and guide them in best practices. Much to my surprise, we had several new students join the team, increasing our number from 6 to about 20. Musings was no longer a small operation, but rather an organized and vital part of the MMSt program.



My experience working on Musings first and foremost helped guide me towards a career in online communications and engagement. It helped me uncover my natural skillset and gave me the confidence to pursue my current professional pathway. The hands-on experience I gained in leadership, project management, writing, community engagement, web design, and social media marketing is what has shaped my career the most. It also broadened my knowledge and experience, which helped me to transition from the museum and non-profit sectors to the field of sustainable community development.

Upon reflecting on the blog posts I wrote during my time with Musings, one in particular stood out. The Curated Garden: A Museum? showcased Butchart Gardens, a historic site in Victoria, British Columbia. In this post, I recounted the history of the site and reflected on how museums come in different shapes and forms. While re-reading this post, I was reminded of how certain museum practices, namely interpretive planning and marketing, are adapted from other sectors. This also made me think about how other sectors can learn from museums, namely on how to communicate important subjects such as climate change, social justice, biodiversity loss, etc.

“Butchart Gardens” by Jenna Lee. Source.

I currently work as the research curator for a small research team in the School of Environment and Sustainability at Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC. Our research spans many subjects under the umbrella of sustainable community development—including climate change adaptation and mitigation, biodiversity conservation, community vitality, social capital and agency, as well as communications. I wear many hats in my role, however my main task is to develop effective methods to communicate our research findings beyond traditional academic channels (i.e. peer-reviewed journals and conferences). Academic research is not often circulated to the public widely nor is it often formatted into accessible mediums, which is why I think academia can learn a thing or two from the museum field. To tackle this gap and to develop best practices for academics, I draw on museum practices while experimenting with visual communications, social media content curation, web content development, and video production. I’ve even had the opportunity to curate two research exhibits, one of which just opened at the Royal Roads University Library Showcase space last week.

“Wind Turbine in Field of Sunflowers” by Gustavo Quepón. Source. 

While my experience with Musings certainly helped me secure my master’s internship and my first job in the field, the biggest reward were the lifelong friendships I formed. I am also so thankful to all the wonderful contributing editors who made, and continue to make Musings what it is today.

RISING TIDES, SWELLING COLLECTIONS

Museums on Earth | Jordan Fee

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For the past two weeks, an image has sprung up in my mind. I imagine the Royal Ontario Museum during a flood. Correction: I imagine the ROM during the flood, the one that is creeping up on us as I write this article. I imagine basements and storage rooms filled to the brim with water and objects, taxidermied animals being thrust forth from the depths of the museum, and spilling out into the main halls. Perhaps this would be another chance for the museum to discover yet another long-lost dinosaur skeleton.

Gordo, the Borasaurus discovered in 2007 at the ROM. Source.

This vision began after I started to look into the connections between waste, sustainability, climate change, and museums. A professor had assigned our class some readings on museum collections – one of them was a chapter from Active Collections, a book that explores how many museums are being “held hostage” by their massive, cumbersome collections. You can read the Active Collections manifesto on their website, and there you can also explore the different resources, case studies and “crazy ideas” that they are attempting to promote in the museological world.

"Stop...The Collections Avalanche!" Source.

The chapter that we read dealt mainly with the notion of assessing museum objects for their value to society, rather than simply acquiring them for the sake of doing so. This sentiment also is echoed in the Active Collections manifesto:

“There’s little point in preserving collections if they don’t actively support the mission. We believe collections must either advance the mission or they must go.”

In most cases, museums don’t even know what their storage rooms contain – the article about the ROM that I mentioned earlier shows this, but similar stories could probably be found at all levels of the museum world. The fact is that museums – and history museums, in particular – are becoming hoarder houses. In an article titled "Museums and Sustainability", published by the journal Cultural Trends in 2008, Nick Merriman notes that most museum professionals “were unwilling to embark on programmes of rationalization until they had greater knowledge of their collections through documentation initiatives.” However, to gain full knowledge of their collections would in most cases take years and years. In that time, the museum would most likely continue the annual 1-2% growth in their collections, thereby extending the improbability that such a task could ever be accomplished. When I mentioned this fact to my professor, he noted with a grin that these people are not museum professionals–instead, they are addicts.

What might this addiction say about the future of museums? To be perfectly honest, it saddens me that so little has been done to confront this issue. Clearly most museum professionals are aware of this problem. Many museums across the world acknowledge their lack of storage, and yet these same museums continue to house more and more objects. The fact is that sometime this century, many museums across the world will come face to face with the realities of climate change.

Hurricane Sandy spelled catastrophe for a number of New York City’s museums and galleries, and this storm was by no means an anomaly. Storms like this will continue to occur around the world, with increasing frequency, for the rest of our lives. We can develop new preservation techniques to combat them, but one day these disasters will overwhelm our abilities. Nature always does. Here, I think it is fitting to include a quote from a gallery worker from New York responding to the storm that swept up so many artworks:

     “We prepared, but the amount of water that came in was above all the highest estimates.”

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I must say that this is only a tepid sign of what’s to come.

"Hurricane Sandy Flooding East Village 2012." Source.

Recently, in my free time, I have been reading A Song For a Blue Ocean by Carl Safina, which examines the destruction of tuna fisheries across the world. In this book, Safina provides details on a wide variety of conferences, meetings and debates between government officials, conservationists and recreational fishers about what should be done to halt the rapid decrease in tuna populations. In each and every case, absolutely nothing is achieved that might realistically slow or stay the decline. Quotas are cut in half, yet are quickly restored. The conversation exists, but action is never taken.

Just as fishing corporations and recreationalists have a historically unhealthy relationship with tuna,  museums have an unhealthy relationship with objects. As many articles on the subject of deaccessioning state, what museums are doing is the very antithesis of sustainability. Museums stack up objects in decrepit, unkempt storage rooms until one day they can hand it off. To who?

To us.

We inherit the world that generations before us have created. We also inherit the collections that these professionals have been collecting. What matters now is what we choose to do with them. Do we continue on this Sisyphisian quest towards creating comprehensive museums, or do we take real action to change our collecting practices? Ultimately, this is not simply a question of objects; it is a question of how we perceive material culture in a world affected by climate change. Collections have a massive carbon footprint, and while deaccessioning objects may only make a tiny, tiny dent in our flawed environmental practices, it would nevertheless serve as a statement of acceptance.

"Flooded Piazza San Marco in Venice." Source.

Acceptance of what, might you ask? Acceptance of the fact that collections are meaningless if they are hidden away. Acceptance of the fact that the world will wait no longer. A flood will one day take place in our backyard, and in various backyards across the world. Perhaps we should engage in some extreme measures of preventative conservation and begin a drastic program of deaccessioning. What good is an object if it sits, unseen by the public, in a poorly kept storage space? I can only hope that something will be done with these collections before a storm like Hurricane Sandy hits Toronto.

If you’d like to read more about which areas of the world are at risk of flooding, here is an insightful article from Der Speigel. While I understand that this is not necessarily the cheerful kind of content that people look for at this time of the year, I do find it necessary to improve our understanding of future implications for the museum world. Happy holidays, everyone! I'll see you all in the new year.

"DIVERSITY IS A REALITY. INCLUSION IS A CHOICE."

Weekend Edition | Samantha Summers

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Quite literally, the program begins with a bang. The All Nations Juniors: Drum Circle from the Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre renders the room, previously humming with chatter, silent. Their drum and their voices are powerful. It is impossible not to think about whose land we are sitting on, whose artifacts are being housed downstairs, and whose voices having been missing from museum conversations.

I am sitting in Bronfman Hall at the Royal Ontario Museum, and like everybody else here, I am captivated by these young drummers.

The All Nations Juniors: Drum Circle, Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre starts the program with powerful drum circle. Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers.

I’m here before the museum even opens to celebrate the 10th anniversary of ROMCAN (the Royal Ontario Museum Community Access Network). ROMCAN is a program that partners with community organizations and initiatives to provide free and special access to the ROM for individuals who have traditionally been excluded from its walls. If I have ever doubted that the museum community is up to the task of inclusivity, my doubts have been quieted by this event. Everybody who is here today has come with the purpose of celebrating and empowering accessibility initiatives.

I speak with Candice Gurwitz, Associate Director of Family Services and Programs at Ronald McDonald House Charities Toronto. She is there on behalf of Ronald McDonald House, which is a ROMCAN partner. The children living in Ronald McDonald House generally cannot leave it. Their immune systems are too weak to risk visiting the ROM in person, so instead the ROM brings a “Mini Museum” to Ronald McDonald House every month and museum volunteers facilitate programs for the kids. These programs allow them to have fun, learn, and engage with artifacts in ways they otherwise couldn't do from the Ronald McDonald House. I make a comment about the importance of letting kids just be kids, and Candice nods. “For the ROM it’s a way to give back, and for our families it’s a way to go to the museum,” she tells me. After all, I think later, all kids deserve the opportunity to be amazed by dinosaur fossils.

A thank-you card written to the ROM from a group of children from L'Arche Toronto, featuring a drawing. "Thank you for the tickets. The dinosaurs were cool and I liked them. Michael, Sabrina, Julie, Thomas, Jonny. [The picture is of] A baby T-Rex eating meat." Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers.

The drum circle gives way to opening remarks from Elder Shishigo Gijig of the Whitesand First Nation. She warmly welcomes us all to this event and to the ROM, and clearly is very excited to be here. I later learn from her that she is a longtime volunteer in the First Peoples gallery. She is excited to learn that I’m a student at the University of Toronto, and tells me about her daughter and grandson who are both pursuing degrees at the University of Toronto as well (a Master’s degree and a Bachelor’s degree, respectively). She is filled with warmth and buzzing with energy, off to visit the First Peoples gallery before heading home.

Speeches follow from Josh Basseches (Director and CEO, ROM), Minister Michael Tibollo (Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport, Ontario), and Mayor John Tory. When Yasmine Mohammed, the Director of the Cultural Access Pass Program at the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, speaks, I’m stopped in my tracks. “Diversity is a reality,” she announces to the room. “Inclusion is a choice.” It’s a succinct and powerful summary of why we are all here. It’s a call to action.

ROMCAN has brought 700 000 visitors to the ROM for free since it began ten years ago. It has partnered with 100 community groups to provide services, programs, and access to members of our community who otherwise may not be able to visit. The most invigorating part of my morning is talking with those community members and hearing what role the ROM plays in their communities and their lives. Listening to what this museum means to so many different people is like visiting the ROM for the very first time.

The program ends with the most heartfelt choir performance I have ever heard, as the Bruised Years Choir sings R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts.” This choir is comprised of people living with mental illness and addiction. Their lived experiences shine through their voices as they sing about loneliness, pain, and community. It is the perfect way to end this program. We, the audience, are reminded that although museums have been places of hurt, they can also be places of healing.

Members of the Bruised Years Choir sing R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts." Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers.

I catch up with some choir members after they sing to ask what they thought of the event. “It felt like an honour,” Julie Crann tells me. “It feels good to be contributing to things like this,” Dorothy Laxton adds. As much as people are excited to be invited in, they are excited to be giving back. I speak with J’net AyAy Qwa Yak Sheelth, the Indigenous Outreach and Learning Coordinator at the ROM, who tells me about the various initiatives the ROM’s Learning Department has developed to engage with Indigenous communities. She is particularly excited about the ROM Youth Cabinet, which is Indigenous-led but welcoming of all young people, and which allows young people to collaboratively develop programs in the ROM. With this group she is facilitating exactly what I and many other young museum professionals are hoping to facilitate in our own careers; a place for communities to heal and grow together.

As I pack up my too-bulky backpack and step out into the now-open museum, with school field trips bustling around me at whirlwind speeds (though stopping to admire the bat display), Yasmine’s words ring in my ears. “Diversity is a reality. Inclusion is a choice.”

Attendees mingle and chat following the program. Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers.