Tag: The Wider World (Page 3 of 4)

Summer is often a time of change. Many recent graduates of the Tufts Museum Studies program are either already in, or in the process of finding, jobs that will take them to places they have never lived. Many of us are interning somewhere new to us. It’s great!

If museums are community institutions, and I believe they are (or should be), then when museum professionals are new to the community their museum serves, getting to know the neighborhood isn’t just a fun part of a new adventure in life. It’s an essential part of being  engaged and responsible in your new role. Here are some resources for getting to know a new area.

If your new area has a substantial population of a different ethnic background from you, or a significant low-income population, the series of “How Not to Be a Gentrifier” articles that were going around the internet a few months ago can be quite useful, especially if your own background includes racial or economic privilege. The most well-known and perhaps “original” version of this article refers specifically to Oakland, California. For a more generally applicable version, I recommend the one on Alternet. Both were written by Dannette Lambert.

Image by RedJar on Flickr, some rights reserved.

by columnist Tegan Kehoe

A couple weeks ago, I was a part of Boston’s first History Camp, an “unconference” that was organized by volunteers and a wiki. One of the panels was on means of publishing for history books, and Boston historian J. L. Bell made point I think applies just as well to museums. He said that people — particularly writers — are used to thinking of publishing houses as the gatekeepers: people who control what gets inside, people who has to please, appease, or even depend on the whims of. With e-books, inexpensive self-publishing and other text formats flooding the market, he proposed, it makes just as much sense to think of gatekeepers (whether they are publishers, reviewers, or others) as ushering readers in through open gates, helping them find what’s good and what suits their tastes. I think the same metaphor can be used to talk about museums as gatekeepers of knowledge, stories, and images or artifacts.

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by columnist Tegan Kehoe

This weekend, I went on a creative retreat of sorts, an annual event that I love. Two and a half days of intense time in a community I care about, several hundred friends and strangers in a hotel, being silly and collaborative, telling great stories and sharing what we’ve made. It’s one of the few points of connection I have with how I spent my non-work time before grad school. It’s a convention for Live Action Role-Playing, or LARP, which is a little like what those murder mystery dinner party in a box games would be if they weren’t so often thin and hokey.

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by columnist Tegan Kehoe

Sometimes, you just need to get up on a soapbox for a moment to get something out of your system. I have some thoughts rolling around in my head that have been bothering me for … I don’t know how long now… and maybe if I blog about them, it will be a step towards being less antsy and more pragmatic about the issue. Maybe readers will be able to help me figure out where to go from here.

Why don’t more loud museums have quiet days? We’re all familiar with the growing trend that museums are becoming more active, interactive, and generally loud. There’s also a fair amount of buzz about the backlash, from people who go to museums for retreat and respite, or who like to observe museum objects in silent reverence. (Recently, this controversial article and the many responses, including this one.) On the whole, I agree with those who say that noisier museums are a good thing, and I’m frustrated by the overtones of elitism that sometimes creep into the arguments for more quiet. Still, we know that many people do like museums for their ability to provide retreat (think of John Falk’s category of “Refreshers”) and I wonder if there isn’t some way we can compromise. Continue reading

by columnist Tegan Kehoe

You’ve met the rude tourists who come to Boston. Sure, there are good tourists, too, but every city has its own magnets for the bad. These tourists are the ones who think they’re clever by saying, “Pahk ya cah in Hahvahd yahd!” to anyone they meet. They also say, “But it’s the Freedom Trail, shouldn’t all the museums be free?” Usually, the people who say this can comfortably afford the price of museum admission for their family, but that doesn’t mean everyone can.

So what do we do? Library passes, free days, and coupons are great, but each of them has limits. As graduate students, most of us are familiar with the fact that there’s often a huge gray area between “I can’t afford that” and “I’ll pay any price as long as I am confident I’ll get my money’s worth,” but museums often see their potential visitors as falling into one category or the other – it’s the free admission model or the market-value model. The “suggested donation” or “pay as you will” model of admissions has a lot of advantages, when it works the way it’s intended. I have some personal experience with this model, as I used to work at the front desk of a museum with a suggested donation. The front desk was the museum’s general information desk, staffed by museum educators when we weren’t on the floor, but a big part of our job was welcoming everyone as they arrived, counting them, and informing them that our suggested donation was $5. This was part of the museum’s strategy to ensure that donations stayed high. It was clear to me that a lot of visitors understood the model, but many — perhaps the majority — didn’t. I spoke with one couple who were very apologetic for not donating, to the point of shrinking away from me as we talked. “I would if I could,” the woman said, “But I actually can’t.” I remember responding, “That’s okay, that’s why it’s a donation and not mandatory!” but wishing there was a better way to make her feel comfortable.

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