Welcome to our weekly museums in the news roundup! Attendance spikes at nuclear museum (National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, Albuqueque, New Mexico) Museum will occupy former Real World House (Laogai Museum, Washington, D.C.) Bieber-worn kicks enshrined at Toronto shoe museum (Bata Shoe Museum, …
You might well have seen this already – it’s gone viral in museum circles – but just in case you haven’t: King Philip IV recently signed autographs in front of his Velazquez portrait at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Well, sort of. Scroll down and …
This week’s professional organization information is about some very useful and specifically targeted workshops for young and emerging museum professionals. We’ve talked about them before, but the first one, called “LEARN,” is coming up soon and you don’t want to miss it. Information below.
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The NEMA Young and Emerging Museum Professionals (YEPs) PAG understands that new and emerging museum professionals have limited budgets to attend workshops, and frequently are unable to miss work for professional development and/or networking events. To break down these barriers faced by those with less than ten years in the field, and those who wish to network with new and emerging professionals, the YEP PAG Chairs have planned a series of workshops that break the mold. Learn, Laugh, Love brings together numerous individuals from various professional positions and levels of seniority, both of local and national stature, to encourage those who are just entering the field, especially career changers, students, and those who are seeking to further their current position, in three informal learning situations, where networking at peer to peer and peer to mentor level are key components. Register for all three and save!
All workshops will be held at Historic New England’s Otis House Auditorium.
Each workshop includes light refreshments and is $15 for NEMA and Historic New England Members, $25 for Non-Members.
Members can register for all three workshops for only $40, a savings of $5!
NEMA memberships start at $35 (students/job-hunters/volunteers). Non-members registering for all 3 workshops
LEARN: How to Interview “Big Wig” Speed Dating Style (March 23, 2011)
There’s no better way to learn but trial and error. Using the speed dating format, participants will have the opportunity to “interview” with seasoned museum professionals, including Directors, Curators, Educators, Board of Trustee members, and other senior ranking individuals. Each seasoned professional will be armed with a mixture of “favorite” interview questions collected from those who hire in the museum field; workshop participants will rotate between professionals, thus opening the door to meet and learn from those who have immense advice to share on the interviewing process, making the best first impression, and creating a lasting mark with interviewers that leads to a new position.
LAUGH: How to Break into a Tricky Field in a Tough Economy (April 20, 2011)
Sometimes laughter is the best medicine, but how does an emerging museum professional break into a tricky field when museums are facing budget cuts and staff reductions? What does a museum want from a new hire? What skills are needed to be successful in the museum field in 2011? Should you go back to school, attend workshops, and learn how to post to Facebook? When is a job a great fit, and when should you run away if it isn’t perfect? These questions and more will be discussed, with an emphasis on making your current skills and abilities appealing to employers. Hear stories from seasoned professionals on starting off in the field, surviving layoffs, and transitioning to new positions. Translating job descriptions into inspiring cover letters and highlighting key resume accomplishments will also be discussed.
LOVE: How to Build Your Resume through Internships, Articles, Conferences, and Presentations (May 11, 2011)
Climbing the museum ladder is definitely labor intensive, but it is a labor of love. Learn how to build your resume by gaining experience beyond traditional nine to five positions. Publishing, presenting, and volunteering are ways to uncover unknown or new museum positions, make contacts, and build a strong resume (and a strong museum professional!). Discover the strategic steps you can take to make yourself more appealing to future employers, and find the best route to positioning yourself for promotions and opportunities throughout the field.
Directions to the Otis House will be emailed with your registration confirmation two weeks prior to the workshop.
Questions? Call NEMA, 781-641-0013.
This is a move-fast kind of alert. I just completed the process outlined here by the AAM, and it took two minutes and twelve second. (Yes, I used a stopwatch.) That two minutes and twelve seconds included composing the following paragraph, which I offer here …
Those of you who don’t listen to NPR regularly might not know that the public radio organization has been in quite a bit of hot water lately. Most recently, its former head of development was caught on tape saying some rather…ill-advised things. He believed he was talking to representatives of a potential donor; he was actually talking to political activists. As part of the fallout of those revelations, NPR’s board of trustees asked for and received the resignation of NPR’s CEO, Vivian Schiller.
What does this have to do with museums?
Well, a lot, actually. One of the hot-button issues in public radio right now is whether or not it should receive government funding. Museums are also in danger of losing their public funding; indeed, they already have lost quite a bit in recent budget revelations. Public radio and museums both find themselves juggling many of the same difficult issues: relevance, money, appeal, and message, among others.
One subject that has been talked about a lot in the museum community is audience: who is our audience now? who should it be in the future? how should we best identify, communicate with, and appeal to our audience? (should we do these things?)
For these and many other reasons, a recent commentary by Sue Schardt, executive director of the Association of Independents in Radio, really struck a chord with me. Among the really interesting things she said was this:
We have built an extraordinary franchise. It didn’t happen by accident. It happened because we used a very specific methodology to cultivate and build an audience. For years, in boardrooms, at conferences, with funders, we have talked about our highly educated, influential audience. We pursued David Giovannoni’s methodologies. We all participated. It was his research, his undaunted, clear strategy that we pursued to build the successful news journalism franchise we have today.
What happened as a result is that we unwittingly cultivated a core audience that is predominately white, liberal, highly educated, elite. “Super-serve the core” — that was the mantra, for many, many years. This focus has, in large part, brought us to our success today. It was never anyone’s intention to exclude anyone.
But we have to accept — unapologetically — that this is the franchise we’ve built.
Read the whole thing. It’s extraordinary.