Museum Studies Blog at Tufts University

It’s hard to get out of our bubbles. Sometimes we don’t want to. Or we don’t have time. Or maybe we just forget. We can get so comfortable in routine that we forget we’re even in a bubble. Hoping none of you are at that point, I still thought it would be valuable to take this post a little beyond our normal scope and highlight a museum outside the United States.

While we often hear people talk about the Tate, the British Museum, and the Louvre, voices go strangely silent on the many other museums around the globe. It’s not like we don’t care; I think we do. But we get busy. Busy with the museums we work at. Busy with the museums we partner with. And busy with the thousands of museums right here in the United States. So let us help you out. By periodically highlighting an international museum on this blog, we’ll help you add a whole new set of museums to your mental file cabinet while only giving up 5 minutes every few weeks.

Ready to start? I hope so, because today I want to take you to the GeoFort in the village of Herwijnen, in the Netherlands. Winner of the 2016 Children in Museums Award, this museum is a goldmine of adventure. Built in an old fort on the New Dutch Waterline, a defense line, the museum engages visitors with the history and techniques of navigation and cartography. Through exhibitions, quests, tunnels, mazes, and outdoor adventures, GeoFort claims that, “after a day at GeoFort you know how salmons find their way, why the north pole shifts, how an iPhone knows where you are, how maps can lie and much more.”

Since 2011, the Children in Museums Award has been given to a museum that demonstrates innovative spaces and programming for children. The recognition has been provided by a collaboration between Hands On! International Association of Children in Museums and the European Museum Academy. Judges of the 2016 Children in Museums Award stated that, “GeoFort is an active, realistic and enjoyable complex where children learn by doing while having fun. It is an inspiring place and a worthy winner of the 2016 Children in Museums Award.”

To learn more about the many activities offered at GeoFort, click here.

Has anyone ever told you “it’s okay to fail” or “failures are the pathway to success”? My guess is yes. It’s pretty common rhetoric these days to hear the advice to admit failure. Which is why, when I went to read this article, I was skeptical about reading much that was new. I was wrong. As she does often, Colleen approaches her topic with fresh eyes and new arguments. In Cultural Organizations: It Is Time to Get Real About Failures, Colleen spends more time questioning how, to whom, and when, museums admit failure than she spends discussing the benefits of admitting failures in general.  Riddled with hard data to back up her thoughts, the article confronts readers with challenging questions to ask themselves and their institutions when talking about failure:

• Are all ‘successes’ presented at conferences really successes or are some “mediocre outcomes” masked as successes? Who might we be trying to impress by making something look more successful than it really was?
• What failures do we admit and which do we still hide from view?
• Whose responsibility is it to call out failures? Where is the line between calling out and shaming fellow institutions?
• Are failures that are shared actually helping others in the field? What can we do better to prevent colleagues from making the same mistakes?
• How can we turn the focus of admitting failures from us to those it would help?