Next up in our Museum Professional Organizations series is one near and dear to all of our hearts. In fact, if you’re in your first year as a Tufts student, you’re already a member! Let’s talk about the New England Museum Association. To quote from …
Just a quick note to say that the Emerging Museum Professionals event yesterday morning – a highlights tour of the new MFA Art of the Americas wing followed by lunch – was an absolute blast! If you’re not on the Boston EMP mailing list, then …
Welcome to our weekly museums in the news roundup!
New York’s Museum of Sex Launches Comic Book Exhibition (Museum of Sex, New York, New York)
Most beautiful museum gardens around the world (Various Museums)
[yes, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is in there!]
On a tour of the Phila. Museum, Director Timothy Rub points out his favorites (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
Church History Museum opens up exhibit for children (Church History Museum of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah)
Hall of Opium, A Mesmerizing Museum (Hall of Opium, Chiang Rai, Thailand)
When the subject is race, Museum of Science takes multimedia approach (Museum of Science, Boston, Massachusetts)
Historical museum to honor winners of essay contest (Tulare Historical Museum, Tulare, California)
Cleveland Museum of Art to auction 32 old master paintings at Sotheby’s (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio)
Toilet-shaped house is now a toilet museum (Seoul, South Korea)
Beatles memorabilia museum opens in Buenos Aires (Beatle Museum, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Step right up to Fraud Museum in Austin (Fraud Museum, Austin, Texas)
Architecture of the new Danish Maritime Museum (Danish Maritime Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark)
Heard Museum receives major Navajo textile collection (Heard Museum of Native Cultures and Arts, Phoenix, Arizona)
A Guggenheim Helsinki? Finland pays $2.5 million to be the museum’s latest suitor (Helsinki, Finland)
Texas foundation to sell Matisse set “The Backs” (Burnett Foundation, Fort Worth, Texas)
Mansion unlocked after 100 years (Maison Mantin, Moulins, France)
US Senator blasts national museum selling statues of US presidents…made in China (National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.)
Museum can’t access grant yet (African American Museum of Southern Illinois, Carbondale, Illinois)
Museum price tag could go up $1M (proposed Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum)
[especially interesting in light of Cynthia’s recent post.]
Napierville helps children’s museum stay afloat (DuPage Children’s Museum, Napierville, Illinois)
We talked about Guidestar not that long ago, and remember at the bottom of that post shared some of Guidestar’s resources for nonprofits? Well, there’s another one coming up soon. Guidestar is running a free webinar called “The Compensation Checklist for Nonprofits: Are You Prepared …
Just reminding everyone that there will be a NEMA informal meetup at O’Connor’s Restaurant and Bar in Worcester next Monday. 4:00 – 6:00 p.m on Monday, January 24, directly following the Orphans in the Collections Workshop at the Higgins Armory. Any Tufts students planning on …
In early December, AAM sponsored a webinar on social media and museum advocacy. Led by Stephanie Vance of Advocacy Associates, the presentation provided basic lessons in how to use newer tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to cultivate supporters and engage elected officials. Here are some of Vance’s suggestions:
Blogs: If you’re writing on behalf of an organization, Vance advises avoiding politically partisan messages, but there’s no reason you can’t talk about legislation that affects your museum or ask your audience to let their representatives know how important your museum is to them. She cites I Heart Art: Portland, Small Museum
Association, and Exploratorium Explainers as examples of blogs that do a good job informing and inspiring their audience beyond just marketing.
Twitter: Search for your museum’s name to see who is already talking about you, and respond to those people. Cultivate followers and let them know about issues your museum is facing, locally or nationally. You can follow AAM (@AAMers) to get advocacy action alerts that you can share. Sign up for your legislators’ Twitter feeds and tag them in relevant messages. For example, Michael Capuano (@mikecapuano) is the congressional representative in Tufts’ district, so you might ask your audience to retweet a message asking him to support FY12 funding for IMLS.
LinkedIn Connect to your city councilors, congressional representatives, mayor’s office, etc. and see if you share any 2nd-degree connections. You may find that a former classmate or colleague has a connection that could help your message find its way to a legislator’s desk more quickly.
Facebook The fastest-growing demographic on Facebook are users who are 35 and older, Vance says, and more and more legislators are using it as a major communication tool. You can “like” your legislators’ pages and post on their walls about upcoming events and community partnerships. Search for your museum on Flickr or YouTube and repost links to any user-generated content that shows their constituents are engaging with your organization.
Once you get the hang of in social media as a way to communicate with legislators and cultivate community supporters, make sure you teach these tools to volunteer committees or friends’ groups who are already valuable “real-world” advocates for your museum.
Speak Up for Museums is AAM’s museum advocacy initiative. Check there for more tips and webinars, and to find out more about AAM’s Museum Advocacy Day, February 28 and March 1 in Washington, D.C. You can view a recording of this webinar as part of AAM’s advocacy trainings website.
Kris Bierfelt is a student in the Tufts Museum Studies certificate program, and works as a freelance writer and editor.