Remember our post a while back about skills every museo should have? Well, one of them was grant writing. In that spirit, we’ll be talking about a few ways to educate yourself about writing grants. They may not be the flashiest, quickest way to fundraise, …
Welcome to the weekly Museums in the News roundup! Beirut Cathedral Museum reveals layers of Christian history (St. George Orthodox Cathedral, Beirut, Lebanon) Washington State History Museum finds support (Washington State History Museum, Tacoma, Washington) Lady Gaga exhibition in Dutch Museum (Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands) …
The AAM Facebook feed just congratulated Hancock Shaker Village on receiving a $1 million grant from the Kresge Foundation.
Read the original article. There are some really, really interesting things going on in there amidst all the business-speak.
“[The grant] recognizes the living history museum’s work as a visionary organization pursuing transformational projects designed to shift its business model and to serve as a field-wide example of leadership.”
Here’s what I see when I read that: grantmakers, and those who are interested in helping museums with money and resources, don’t want to see museums rest on their laurels. The museum is “visionary,” “transformational,” and a “field-wide example,” and that’s why it just got a check for a million dollars.
“Appropriate levels of capitalization that allow an organization to grow or reinvent itself is standard in the for-profit sector, but has not routinely been considered best practice in the nonprofit sector. Kresge wishes to reverse this trend by supporting cultural organizations that have completed the thoughtful, exploratory process to reinvent their business models. ” – Alice Carle, program director at the Kresge Foundation
Venture capital firms exist to throw cash at good ideas that need a push. (The hope is then that the good idea will take off and offer a substantial return on the initial investment.) I love that the Kresge Foundation is looking at nonprofit funding in the same way. Too often really brilliant ideas – that may succeed or they may flop – are implemented on a shoestring budget that practically guarantees their failure. When a great idea fails, is it because it was a bad idea or because it wasn’t supported in the right way? Maybe one. Maybe the other. You never know unless you analyze its failure honestly.
“The Village will use half of the Kresge grant to seed its Building Reserve Fund and half to research and launch promising new business initiatives. “We are taking steps to move away from the outmoded museum business model of dependence upon admission and gift shop revenue,” said [Ellen] Spear, [President and CEO of Hancock Shaker Village].”
In this and other sections of the article, the museum’s programs, outreach, and education efforts are clearly outlined in business terms. They’re business models, initiatives, and product development. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe both. Depending on admission and gift shop revenue isn’t a long-term sustainable economic model for a museum. But does it somehow violate the spirit of a museum to engage directly in naked capitalism?
In the end, though, huge congratulations to Hancock Shaker Village. Receiving a grant of this magnitude is a big vote of confidence. They know what they want, they know how to get there, and now they have the resources to take that path.
[Amanda’s note: This is the first of what we hope to be many posts by other members of the Tufts Museum Studies community. If you are a member of our community, and are interested in contributing your thoughts, please let us know! If you need …
Everyone’s telling you that you have to network. Go out there and meet people! they say. Make your voice heard! Introduce yourself and make connections and do favors and it will all pay off down the road! And you say…that sounds great. Where on earth …
Welcome to a new occasional series on the Tufts Museum Studies blog. We’ll be interviewing all sorts of interesting people with intriguing perspectives on museums and issues that touch upon museums. If you would like to conduct an interview or suggest someone to be interviewed, let us know!
First in our series is Nicholas Merkelson of Culture in Peril. Nicolas holds degrees in religion, archaeology, and cultural heritage. He’s worked with both the National Museum of Natural History and the National Museums of Kenya, and is currently interning at Adventures in Preservation, a non-profit sustainable historic preservation company specializing in hands-on volunteer opportunities to conserve the world architectural heritage. His blog is a fascinating overview of preservation issues faced by cultural sites around the world.
Without further ado, let’s get to the questions!
The title of your blog is “Culture in Peril.” How do you define culture, and at what point do you consider it to be in peril?
I realize that after nearly a full year of blogging at Culture in Peril, I haven’t yet provided my readers with a definition of ‘culture.’ Frankly, I’ve never felt obligated to endorse a single definition or even to come up with one of my own. I’ve read Geertz and Levi-Strauss and Durkheim, so my thoughts draw heavily from social-cultural anthropological theory, and I’ve also practiced field archaeology and studied material culture, which demands a more objects-based perspective. I hope my readers recognize that ‘culture,’ as it’s used in the title of my blog, applies to both tangible and intangible human creations (or “cultural property,” as it were). If I had to give you the most simple of definitions for my blog, ‘culture’ is constituted in “things and thoughts.” These “things and thoughts” become imperiled when one or more factors compromise their status, quality, or nature — e.g. a historic building collapses, a language is lost, a painting is stolen, or a tradition is no longer practiced — the end result being a loss to all of humanity.
What do you see as some of the biggest issues worldwide facing cultural objects?
The issues facing the world cultural heritage are interrelated, so it’s difficult to pinpoint a single one, but I think one of the biggest problems is that of loving it too much — by which I mean humans are the greatest threat to protecting our past. As with the condition of the physical landscape and the environment, humans are hugely responsible for degrading our heritage landscape in irreversible ways. We visit archeological sites, we photograph street performers in foreign cities, we purchase reproductions of museum objects — no doubt, as a global population, we are ravenous consumers of heritage resources. These acts are socially, economically, and culturally virtuous, but the opportunity for genuine appreciation to become mass exploitation is too real. Today we can find observable proof of our over-consumption in the form of unsustainable tourism, illegal production and distribution of property, and a global market for stolen and fake artifacts. Combine the exhaustion of heritage resources with a seemingly willful ignorance of the harmful affects we inflict on sites and communities and you find us in our present state.
How do you see museums helping to save cultural objects?
I don’t necessarily think museums “save” cultural objects, because one might infer that everything in museums is in some sort of danger. This is clearly untrue. For centuries museums have been excellent at gathering objects (collection) and either conserving them in an archive (storage) or displaying them to the public (exhibition). But in the last few decades, with the passing of major international legislation on rights to cultural property — a very basic human right, I think — museums are increasingly seen as institutions for the masses and not just the wealthy and the educated. Museums are very democratic like that, so as much as we say they are “saving” objects museums are also responsible for establishing identities, engaging principles of humanity, and conveying who we really are.
What do you think the next big step needs to be? How can we help?
The next big steps involve money money money — or is that too obvious? Not enough funding is devoted to cultural heritage preservation and education initiatives. I suppose you could say the same of a lot of things, but there needs to be a more substantial investment of human and financial capital from both the private sector and state governments. Our heritage resources will literally continue to crumble without the support of a well-funded, sustainable, long-term management plan.