HOW TO SURVIVE A PANDEMIC: MUSEUM EDITION PART ONE

Museum Innovations | Sara Fontes

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Throughout this pandemic, times have been tough. Things have looked bleak. You have been scared for yourself, friends, and family. You have been going stir-crazy locked up in your houses.

And what do we do in frightening times? When things are dark?

Photo courtesy of Rahul | Source

We look for a light in the dark.
We look for things that we can control.
We look for comfort.

When we look for comfort or something fun to do, we often look to our cultural institutions. Museums are one of those places. Through social media and technology, we can stay mostly connected right now. As almost everyone has a smart phone or a device to access the internet, it is a good and safe way to connect to a lot of people (although we must be aware that it does not connect us to everyone).

Our cultural institutions are closed right now so how do we use them to stay connected? How do we use them to feel human and humanity?

We must be creative, and many museums have done just that. Many museums are providing online content to directly combat these issues and connect with their communities. Hamilton Civic Museums, such as Dundern Castle, have been creating excellent digital content. They have shared recipes through Instagram and made videos about how to make those recipes on their Youtube channel. 

 

Family Christmas at Dundurn | Source

It’s important for museums to stay relevant to their communities during this time away so that visitors will be excited to come visit in-person when it is safe to do so. I have noticed a trend with smaller museums where all of their online and virtual programming is free. Meanwhile, larger institutions, like the Toronto Zoo, offer a mixture of paid and free online programming. While it can be hard for smaller museums to charge for their content, paid online programming would help to bring in some money during this time. Factors such as size, manpower, and popularity of a museum might affect their ability to offer both paid and free online programming. Small and medium sized museums simply have less resources available to them. Regardless of size and manpower, small museums can still take inspiration from larger museums by following trends and using social media to become more popular and perhaps get some money coming through the doors.

Many museums have taken to popular websites and apps like Twitch and TikTok to keep things more upbeat and give people a break from worrying about the pandemic. The Toronto Zoo shows a stream on twitch of different animals on different days from gorillas, to penguins to giraffes. There are a few museums on TikTok such as the MET, but one small UK museum has blown them out of the water with followers: Black Country Living Museum in Dudley, UK. Check them out: @blackcountrymuseum!

Nothing like a bit of chloroform to get you through a bad cold eh? #victorian #history #learnontiktok 

Social media and connectivity are not the only things that we can adopt from large or popular museums. For example, take an idea that has been widely used in zoos: adopt-an-animal programs. Why couldn’t the same be done with museum objects? To adopt a museum object for a year (or two or five) could help pay for its conservation and donors could see first, before anyone else, photos of what it looks like during the conservation process. While I have scoured the internet I have yet to find a museum running a program like this or similarly titled. I do not believe, however, that no one else has ever thought of this idea but perhaps they go about it in different ways or do not advertise it beyond donations. This pandemic has pushed museums to find innovative ways to keep people connected and interested in their programming, and I'm looking forward to uncovering those innovations in future articles.

Thank you to Mallory Mahon and Jefimija Vujcic for sharing the Toronto Zoo twitch stream and the Black Country Museum TikTok respectively.

ANIMALS TOUR OTHER ANIMALS

Technology Tuesdays | Val Masters

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Hello! On this week's edition of I Spend Way Too Much Time On The Internet, I noticed a fabulous phenomenon: zoos, aquariums, and science centres posting on social media about their animals touring other animals' exhibits. This kind of species-to-species interaction actually takes place regularly as an enrichment activity in many institutions that care for animals, but it is usually done behind-the-scenes. Since the threat of COVID-19 has caused all museums, science centres, aquariums, and zoos to close their doors to visitors, animals at these institutions can spend more time exploring out of their enclosures.

Magellanic penguin Tilly meets Kayavak the belgua at Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. As a warm-weather species, Tilly would never encounter an Arctic creature like a beluga in the wild. Source

I came across this recent outpouring of documentation of animal interactions since I've been looking out for how staff at cultural institutions are managing during the crisis. As an emerging cultural sector professional, it is important to me to know what operations are ongoing in a dire situation like the one we are facing. In many institutions, the crisis response has consisted of canceling nonessential operations, communicating changes with staff and visitors, and continuing essential operations as safely as possible. Others have gone beyond this and taken the opportunity to engage the online populace with fun and educational content.

While it is of course important to take note of the more formal educational resources being promoted remotely by cultural institutions, it is also interesting to observe the role that these institutions can play in maintaining our mental health. My colleague Melissa Mertsis recently reported on how online collections, tours, lectures, and tutorials can ease feelings of loneliness and anxiety, and I think less intellectually stimulating content has a role to play as well. 

When you got no game at the #StaringGame but your animal enrichment is on point. pic.twitter.com/dbp67i3mu3

— Mystic Aquarium (@mysticaquarium) March 19, 2020

The keepers can also take the opportunity to insert sweet animal facts, as the Shedd Aquarium did to give context to this interaction:

The penguins aren’t the only animals taking field trips around the aquarium! Tyson the prehensile-tailed porcupine visited the penguin habitat while munching on a hard biscuit, which helps file down his constantly-growing teeth. pic.twitter.com/X2PpEHt1L3

— Shedd Aquarium (@shedd_aquarium) March 19, 2020

I encourage you to follow suit and enrich yourself via animal viewing with some amazing livestreams.

Did looking at this make you feel better? Have you taken advantage of any online museum content this week? Let me know in the comments below!

LETS GET SOCIAL: A DISCUSSION OF MUSEUMS USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Heritage Moments | Carly Wolowich

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Museum professionals are constantly questioning how to democratize the museum, yet many don’t realize that the answer could be potentially lying at their very fingertips. Not requiring a definition, social media is something all of us utilize or come into contact with daily. Engrained into our everyday routine, museum professionals are now faced with determining how to effectively utilize public digital platforms to support the museum and enact their contemporary mandates of inclusivity and engagement.

(Source)

As Carol Vogel notes, social media is turning museums into “virtual community centres”. On platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or any museum’s website, everyone has the opportunity to voice their opinions. Digital technologies create new possibilities for museums to utilize their collections and create value by reaching visitors in new and accessible ways. For example, by digitizing collections and archives, heritage institutions can expand audiences and share culture with original owners of objects now acquired by the museum.

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On October 27, 1997, 126,000 of Ontario’s public school teachers, awalked off the job to protest, ‘The Education Equality Act’, which became better known as Bill 160. . Bill 160 which was put forth by the Mike Harris Tory Government consisted of cuts to as well as an overhaul of the education system, which by 1997 had already seen $1 billion cut from it. The bill would essentially take decision making control away from elected school boards, to the Government and its representatives. It stripped teachers of bargaining rights for things such as class size, took control over budgets, and permitted non-certified instructors to teach some programs. . With overall support from students as well as the public teachers would strike for two-weeks before voting to return to work, as they felt they had made their point. During the strike the provincial government would spend millions on attack ads framing the strike as illegal and teachers as selfish - a response to try and reverse public opinion. And by the end of the strike, Bill 160 would go through as intended, as Harris and his provincial Tories refused to back down. However, the situation left a bad taste in the mouths of many, creating a mistrust between the public and the Government. . In a 2007 article reflecting on the Bill 160 strike, Eileen Lennon who was President of the Ontario Teachers Federation at the time said, “although we did not defeat Bill 160, we won the hearts and minds of the public. We caused people to reaffirm their belief in and support for public education. We exposed the Harris government’s true agenda of wanting to centralize power and remove billions of dollars from public education. We talked about our students, about what went on in our classrooms every day. We talked about how much we loved our jobs and cared about our students’ achievements. We all spoke from our hearts and we were believable. We advocated for our schools and our education system. We were never prouder to be teachers.”. . 📸: “Bill 160 - Students, teachers, parents” Tony, Bock @thetorontostar . . . . . . #Toronto #osstf #ontario #teachers #onted #onpoli #cdnpoli #ontarioeducation #instaontario #torontoteachers

A post shared by MYSEUM OF TORONTO (@myseumtoronto) on Dec 4, 2019 at 10:19am PST

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Watch our expert conservator Lee Ann Daffner as she explores the sensitive chemistry involved in restoring one of the oldest photographs in the #MoMACollection, an 1842 daguerreotype slowly being engulfed by tarnish. Head to link in bio for the full video and see the conserved photographs in Gallery 502! Within two years of the invention of photography, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, a French aristocrat, assembled a team to travel the Mediterranean and make over a thousand images of the region’s cities, people, and ruins. These early daguerreotypes projected images directly onto silver plates, like a mirror imprinting a reflection onto its polished surface. Akin to Polaroids, they were unique photographic objects that offered no convenient method of replication. The daguerreotype Daffner is restoring here captures two separate images—the Arch of Septimius Severus and Capitoline Lion in the Roman Forum. #MoMAMagazine #MoMAConservation #Conservation

A post shared by MoMA The Museum of Modern Art (@themuseumofmodernart) on Dec 6, 2019 at 9:35am PST

However, with many benefits, an issue many museums now face is having visitors disengage with such networking services when they are actually in the museum. As Thomas P. Campbell, the then director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art said, “we’ve got to keep people in a heads-up mode, to make sure they are looking at art”. I am sure many of us have experienced the ‘Mona Lisa Moment’ during our time in museums, as visitors can be seen fighting to take a photograph of a given object rather than view it with their own eyes. As noted by Philip Kennicott the ‘Mona Lisa Moment’ involves “the annihilation of one of the essential components for viewing art, which is extended individual contemplation”. While not only faced with logistical constraints such as the staff and resources to operate the constantly changing needs of social media platforms, heritage institutions must weigh how much the public should influence what goes on their walls, and how to invite social media usage in the museum space itself.

While attempting to spark a social shift in museums, social media engagement also possesses potential financial benefits for institutions. Advertising the museum and its various merchandise, being active on social media aids in building relationships with younger audiences who are also viewed as potential new donors and patrons to the museum. This implementation of social media for monetary gain is exemplified in the Art Gallery of Ontario’s recent crowdfunding campaign for the acquisition of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room Let’s Survive Forever--now poignantly a hotspot for AGO visitors to take Instagram photos in. While the AGO did not raise its intended target of $1.3 million, $651,183 was raised from contributions made by more than 4,700 donors. Exemplifying a level of success in promoting material on social media, the AGO’s Instagram posts for the campaign also clearly exemplify the power and presence of users’ reactions. One user wrote on a post by the Gallery, “this is disgusting. What were the revenues from the exhibition? How much are you paying interns? Let’s see the books before we have this gofundme bullshit conversation”. While AGO staff were able to influence a wider audience to elicit donations, such comments reflect the inherent challenges of participating in such online platforms. With supportive comments also come the critical, but the question remains if museums are ready to listen.

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Toronto, you loved #infiniteKusama and we know you want more of one of the world’s most significant contemporary artists. Now it's time for us to come together again, and bring a new Kusama Infinity Mirror Room to the AGO & our city - FOREVER. Donate now for early and exclusive access. Those who donate before November 5 at 12pm will be entered to win an AGO sleepover. Together, #infinityAGO is achievable. Head to our website for more information on how to give. • #crowdfunding #kusama #yayoikusama #infinityrooms #artist #5womenartists #contemporaryart #contemporaryartist #torontoart #toronto #yyz #mirrorrooms

A post shared by Art Gallery of Ontario (@agotoronto) on Nov 1, 2018 at 4:03am PDT

The opportunity to involve new voices poses a necessary challenge for museums, in particular, art museums, as they must step down from their position of exclusivity. Heritage institutions are faced with dismantling the traditional colonial spaces that have persisted for centuries as they now share their historic practices with critical contemporary users. While it is visible that many museum mission statements now emphasize education and participation, rather than preservation and presentation, the organizational frameworks that have previously supported biased practices are being forced to actively change.

While seemingly mundane, heritage institutions’ interactions on social media must be critically analyzed as any exhibition or program physically inside the museum would be. While this article just scratches the surface to the necessary conversation regarding museums and their presence on social media I hope everyone will take a look the next time they are scrolling through their feeds to analyze and engage with what museums are putting out into the world wide web.

Also, if anyone has any recommendations of museum related social media accounts please comment them below!

MUSEFLASH: RISK TAKING AND DIGITAL STRATEGIES WRITING WORKSHOP

Weekend Edition | Samantha Kilpatrick

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In our first ever Musings Writing Workshop, we were joined by Sarah Hill of Lord Cultural Resources to talk about new spaces for museum writing and content delivery in the digital era. "Soon," she notes, "we're not going to be talking about museums that are using digital content and museums that aren't. We're just going to be talking about museums."

Sarah Hill discussing digital projects in museums across the country. Photo courtesy of Amy Intrator.

Writing for a museum's social media accounts is a chance to help a museum develop its voice just as much as internal content like text panels and labels. To stand out in a digital landscape saturated by content requires risk. The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL), for example, has developed a distinct, irreverent and extremely recognizable online voice.

Ladies, if he:

- won Male champion at the 1948 Royal Counties Show, and was owned by P. Prest, Chapel Farm, Malton, Yorkshire

Then that’s not your man, it’s a Berkshire Boar, Male champion at the 1948 Royal Counties Show, owned by P. Prest, Chapel Farm, Malton, Yorkshire pic.twitter.com/t5IEcP6XQY

— The Museum of English Rural Life (@TheMERL) November 25, 2018

Image via the MERL's twitter. The MERL has 75.5 thousand twitter followers.

However, one can imagine how arguing for the twitter voice of the MERL to be witty and light on its feet enough to respond to the meme of the day would have been a risk.

In a digital age, every interaction the visitor has with the museum matters. Interactions on the website, on Twitter, on Instagram, through their app, in person, all affect visitor perceptions of the museum. Omnichannel communication requires that every touch-point is in the spirit of your museum, and that, more than anything else, is what digital content requires-- a unified voice across every medium.

A post shared by Musings - MMSt Student Blog (@musingsmmst) on Nov 28, 2018 at 9:59am PST

Image via the Musing's Instagram. Sarah Hill, running the show.

In the museum industry, we often speak of meeting the visitor 'where they are'. Is where they are now online? Should we assume that every museum visitor is equally interconnected? Of course not, but it's certainly worth remembering that writing content for digital requires flexing different muscles than writing static panel text. Neither is better or worse. We are just meeting the audience in different places. Online, people skim and can tab away from your content at any moment, whereas in person, visitors are spending significant time in your space, but perhaps not stopping at any of your panels. This is a challenge. It's always been a challenge and will continue to be a challenge in perpetuity. These complications make our field more rich and interesting, not less.

Our writing experience is richer for having had her. Thank you again, Sarah Hill.

GIRLS WHO LIKE ‘URBAN DECAY' AND SOCIAL THEORY: THE JOY OF ATLEIGH

OBJECT OF THE WEEK

BY: KESANG NANGLU

Halloween is over, and this year I spent my favourite holiday finishing up a mid-term paper and falling asleep with a belly full of Aeros and Kit Kats. Weeks ago, when I still thought I'd be spending my halloween out partying, i.e. before I came to fully realize the level to which I would procrastinate on my assignment, I thought about last-minute costume ideas. My friend, artist Atleigh Homma had me covered.

Homma is a Toronto artist working in painting, video, and performance. Her practice is concerned with issues of identity and feminism, explored through popular culture. Since 2016, she has been creating Youtube videos on her channel, “The Joy of Atleigh" (after Bob Ross' legendary instructional TV show, “The Joy of Painting"), where she assumes the role of a blogger and “beauty guru".

Source.

Using the framework of Youtube beauty culture (and a fair bit of kitsch), her videos recall other new media artists who have broken ground through working within the social media sphere (think Ryan Trecartin's early YouTube videos or Jon Rafman's “Kool-Aid Man in Second Life" project). Homma's videos distinguish themselves through their approachability – they combine silliness with sincerity, responding to the social issues that most deeply impact her personal life.

In her “GRWM" (Get Ready With Me), she combines a makeup tutorial with a candid discussion of the politics of social climbing in the art world. In “What Inspires Me", she gushes about her love of Instagram, name-dropping in her list of inspiring people, Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, sculptor David Altmejd, and photographer, Rineke Dijkstra. As a YouTube personality, Homma rejects the idea that women are ever one-or-the-other – selfie-taking makeup-lovers or smart, critically engaged social theorists.

“Costumes For Artists" is a playful examination of the practice of paying homage, and how we risk losing meaning and intention through the act of reproduction. Beginning with a demonstration of how to recreate Matisse's Green Stripe painting with face paint, Homma describes the work like a newbie art-lover (“I love the Fauvist movement!"), before abruptly switching gears to an off-beat DIY Dijkstra costume, recommending that viewers don a bikini and stand contrapposto (green screen, optional).

Screenshot still from "Costumes For Artists"

Her final costume has Homma dressing up as contemporary painter and social media celeb Chloe Wise, who has since seen the video and shared her reaction on Instagram (in a sense, bringing it all full-circle):

See other videos from the series on her Youtube channel, and don't forget to “like, comment, and subscribe"!