Challenges for Directors of University Natural Science Museums

Universities and natural science museums have a long, productive history; however, this has been an uneasy alliance in the United States at least since the 1880s. Decreasing resources and increasing expectations have made the position of all museum directors extremely difficult, but the situation for university natural science museum directors is probably the most complicated among these because they direct museums that are small administrative units within larger university organizations. Some of their challenges include conflict between museum and university missions, governance issues, relationship between director and the university administrator/board member, lack of understanding of museum functions, middle management role of the director, lack of control of staff time, lack of staff support, public access to museum, and limited public and fiscal support. Solutions offered to meet these challenges include a written mission statement, recognition of education as the primary goal of the museum, a written strategic plan, accreditation, a highly active faculty/staff, documentation of the museum's economic impact, the creation and building of a public support organization, the formation of alliances with local cultural organizations, continuing education for staff, and an open decision-making process.     

发达国家图书档案事业结盟与合作战略规划综述

基于数字环境下图书馆与档案馆在文化遗产保护与继承、公共信息服务提供、政府信息管理等方面职责的一致性,通过战略规划文本的内容,分析国际组织、美国、英国、加拿大等发达国家图书档案事业的结盟、合作、合并态势,综述评价了国外图书档案战略规划及合作的若干经验。主要包括:公共文化服务机构的共同愿景与职责的定位与认知;应对数字技术与文化变革挑战的强烈的职业使命感;内涵丰富且注重实施绩效的规划体系;作为公共文化服务机构的图书馆与档案馆的实质性结盟与合并。国外图书档案事业结盟与合作的经验可供中国借鉴。参考文献44。     

Museums and the Agency of Ideology: Three Recent Examples

Abstract Museums are not neutral organizations; they are active social participants. While museums serve many social purposes, fundamentally they define and express major social narratives. Museums are important collections of ideological symbols and perform a special communication as well as legitimizing role. The narratives conveyed by museums are observed as definitive and authoritative, and the objects displayed are understood as emblematic or normative culture. This article examines two museums and a historic site in the United States in the context of their social narratives. Attention is paid to the political implications of recent program decisions. The social and political interactions that accompany these institutions' program decisions demonstrate the ideological purpose of the museum.     

新时期科技博物馆的发展趋势:提高科学教育能力

科技博物馆在传播前沿科学知识、提高公民科学素养、营造城市科技文化底蕴等方面发挥着重要作用。近年来,我国各类科普场馆数量逐年上升,观众参观量与日俱增,教育活动内容不断丰富。同时,新形势下国内科技博物馆也面临科学教育创新的转折点与急迫点。本文在分析国外科技博物馆发展现状的基础上,总结思考它们在新阶段教育研究、藏品管理、社区公众等方面的优势及创新特色,为国内场馆结合馆情突破现有瓶颈,对标世界一流提高自身科学教育能力提供借鉴。     

提升科技博物馆展教结合水平的五大对策与建议

展览、教育作为博物馆的主要公共文化服务形式,得到了越来越多机构的日益重视。但由于科技博物馆在历史、观念、人才等方面的影响和制约,仍存在发展偏差和不足,其中最突出的是机构在理念上重展轻教,在实践中有展少(无)教或以展代教、展教分离等。本文将聚焦展教分离问题展开探讨,并就如何提升科技博物馆的展教结合水平,提出五大对策与建议。     

Play For All at Chicago Children's Museum: A History and Overview

In 2004, Chicago Children's Museum founded the Play For All initiative, which creates a community where play and learning connect for visitors of all abilities. The Play For All team discovered that families with children with disabilities were looking for an opportunity to explore and enjoy the museum without limitations and the fear of being judged. CCM also learned that being ADA compliant was not enough; being accessible and inclusive meant going above and beyond the ADA. Children's museums are a rare treat where almost everything should be interactive and ready to be played with. The Play For All team has made significant changes to the exhibits, staff training, and programming at Chicago Children's Museum by working with local families with disabilities and partner organizations. A culture shift has taken place within CCM. Play For All is now a top priority when decisions are being made.     

“Let's Go to MY Museum”: Inspiring Confident Learners and Museum Explorers at Children's Museums

Abstract Not a month goes by at the Brooklyn Children's Museum without a call or visit from a group of enthusiastic educators and community leaders on a mission to start their own children's museum or gallery. Recent guests have arrived from as far away as Israel, Ecuador, Japan, and Australia, and as nearby as the Bronx. In the United States, children's museums represent one of the youngest and fastest growing cultural sectors. Our field was founded in 1899 with the opening of the Brooklyn Children's Museum. Anna Billings Gallup, an influential curator and director at the museum from 1902 to 1937, spoke widely about the value of bringing the child into the forefront of museum activities. In the United States, the field grew slowly but steadily to four children's museums in 1925 and to approximately 38 by 1975. In the last three decades, sparked by the groundbreaking work of Michael Spock at the Boston Children's Museum, the field has been energized by an extraordinary boom in new and expanding children's museums. Today there are approximately 350 worldwide.     

Transformations in Cultural Communication: Social Media,Cultural Exchange,and Creative Connections

Abstract Throughout the cultural institution sector, shifts in audience participation call for new ways to share knowledge and view partnerships both online and onsite. Increasingly, this “transformation in cultural communication” suggests that a new type of mutually beneficial exchange is required between audiences and museums; and that those acting as agents of cultural change must be cognizant of how a participatory culture will drive our future institutional missions. This paper offers two examples of how the implementation of strategic social media programs can drive online cultural exchange and create new connections with diverse communities. It presents a convergence of initiatives undertaken within the sector over the past five years while offering a frame through which to view future innovations. Based on research undertaken with multiple organizations, it recognizes that the time is right to merge existing innovations with strategically developed communication programs to achieve a demonstrable, verifiable basis for the value of our museums.     

Hyperconnection: Natural History Museums,Knowledge, and the Evolving Ecology of Community

Abstract Interviews conducted during the summer of 2006 with people in and around the international museum community suggest that the interests natural history museums share in common with each other and with other kinds of organizations and communities are creating an array of new links across institutional, social and cultural boundaries. These links are active, complex, networked relationships directed toward common purposes. Museums that are taking advantage of this emerging environment are becoming “hyperconnected hubs” across which knowledge is exchanged and action initiated. In forging a multitude of “weak ties” outward at different institutional levels, museums are finding that their shared activity with others brings to themselves new and often unexpected value across the “strong ties” that bind them together internally as institutions. Those natural history museums most able to participate as members of larger, interconnected entities are finding powerful new opportunities to more vigorously engage the world they study and the constituencies they serve. In the process, they are becoming increasingly open, active and relevant.     

From Period Rooms to Public Trust: The Authority Debate and Art Museum Leadership in America

A recent lecture series at the Harvard University Art Museums titled “Art Museums and the Public Trust” marked the eightieth anniversary of the founding of Harvard's famed Museum Course. A graduate seminar begun in 1921 by the Fogg Art Museum's associate director, Paul J. Sachs, the Museum Course became the primary training ground for art museum leadership in the first half of the twentieth century. The 2001 commemorative lecture series was intended to foster a healthy debate on the place of the art museum in Anglo‐American culture. Instead, the speakers, veteran directors of America's and England's most prestigious art museums, invariably returned to one concern: authority—theirs and that of the art museum itself in contemporary society. Authority was at the heart of the Museum Course decades earlier, tellingly explored in annual debates around two significant topics. The first debate involved the pros and cons of including period rooms in American museums. In the second, students argued about whether America's established art institutions should collect the work of living artists. Questions of how museums should respond to the interests of audiences and communities, their responsibility to contemporary artists, and the meaning of a public trust trouble America's museum leadership now as then. This article explores the common ground between the Museum Course debates of the 1930s and Harvard's recent commemorative “debates” by America's contemporary museum leaders and comments on its significance for today's museums.     

Crafting Museum Experiences in Light of Research on Learning: Implications of the National Research Council’s Report on Informal Science Education

Abstract In this article, the editors of the recent National Research Council report Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits discuss the report’s implications for museum professionals. The report is a synthesis of some 2,000 studies and evaluations of learning in non‐school settings such as museums. Here we focus on three specific topics discussed in the full report, which we see as particularly important for museum professionals. These are: a framework for developing and studying science learning experiences; cultural diversity as an integral resource for learning; and assessment of learning. Many museums include “learning” among their goals and many researchers concern themselves with how museums and other settings can be organized to support learning. Yet this wealth of research is rarely brought into focus and offered as guidance to the museum community.     

A History of Ways of Seeing the Land: Environmental History at the National Museum of Australia

One of the distinctive features of the National Museum of Australia is the prominent role of environmental history in the Museum's programs and in its organizational structure. Environmental history is a field that operates best at the boundaries of science and the humanities, where the natural sciences and social history meet. The National Museum is one of few museums that facilitate this, drawing historians, geographers, archaeologists, earth scientists, and biologists into program development as members of the one curatorial and design team. This article discusses the advantages of environmental history as a strategic focus for the Museum, and looks at one of its major exhibitions.     

Cueing the Visitor: The Museum Theater and the Visitor Performance

There are an estimated 17,500 museums in the United States. If people think these institutions are pretty much the same once you get inside or that the differences between them are unimportant, it might be hard to persuade them that all 17,500 are needed. Exhibitions can have great transformational power; why don’t they exercise that power more often? Have museums not fully understood exhibitions as a medium? Have we not devoted enough attention to the full repertoire of visitor feelings? Have visitors been telling us this and we have failed to listen? For many people, museums play many roles in their lives; for most others few or none. How can this be? “Museum‐adept” visitors seem to prize museums as theaters in which their own emotional and spiritual journeys can be staged, but what about the non‐museum‐adept? Can the museum‐adept teach us how to realize our medium’s full potential?     

Is It Necessary to be Clear? An Examination of Strategic Ambiguity in Family Business Mission Statements

Family businesses comprise the largest portion of organizations in the United States. Although much is known about how individuals interact in these businesses, little is known about how family businesses function at an organizational level. Family businesses are likely to use strategic ambiguity in their mission statements to allow for multiple interpretations of the same message by their stakeholders. This study analyzed the mission statements of the 20 largest family businesses in the United States to explore their use of strategic ambiguity. Family businesses used strategic ambiguity for the purposes of unified diversity, promoting varied understandings of goals, and for facilitating organizational change, but not for the purposes of deniability. This research begins to provide an explanation of the potential driving factors of family business mission statements.     

One Hundred Strong: A Colloquium on Transforming Natural History Museums in the Twenty‐first Century

In February 2012, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) convened 100 colleagues from 43 organizations to initiate a collaborative learning research agenda focused on examining important areas for innovation to better serve twenty‐first‐century audiences. The conference organizers anticipated that scientists, educators, exhibit professionals, and other members of the natural history community would identify and prioritize research questions about what, how, why, when, and where people learn about natural history. We prepared to engage in a conversation about how natural history museums could change what they do. The participants' overwhelming passion for their work, and for natural history museums and their transformative potential for society, quickly turned the conversation toward how natural history museums should change what they are. The result was an emergent learning research agenda situated within a broader vision for natural history museums.     

Chiming in on Museums and Participatory Culture

Abstract The deep trove of information available on the Internet and the expanding connections it affords to new communities online have been a transforming force in museums in the recent past. A single individual can publish thoughts and ideas to an audience of millions with a few simple clicks of a button. The cultural sector has made great strides in adopting these same methods to advance the missions and content of our organizations; however, a rise in participatory culture poses a number of challenges for the role of museums and our place in the evolving culture of our community. A debate surrounding the changing nature of authority and the participatory expectations of society is central to defining how museums can meaningfully engage with contemporary audiences. When making decisions that define how audiences play a role or not in their organizations, museums must consider the far‐reaching consequences of these choices on the relationships they have with their communities.     

Investigating the Development of the “Mobile Museum” from the Perspective of Service

During economic development, modern museums face competition from various leisure activities and entertainment sites, and to achieve sustainable development, museums should reflect on providing high‐quality service to satisfy visitors’ expectations. Based on service design‐related theories, this research team conducted a case study to explore the planning, implementation, and meaning of Mobile Museums. It investigated design development from the perspective of public service design and summarized the policy, design, and service satisfaction results for Mobile Museums. Finally, the similarities in service processes are discussed between Mobile Museums and the general service industry. According to this study, attracting more visitors is the biggest issue facing museums today, as are the ways in which museums must actively provide service and become recognized to compete with others. This study identifies the onstage and backstage support of museums as well as their cultural features and non‐profit services.     

博物馆:我们共有文化精神的前沿实验室

当代公共博物馆在经历了250余年的发展演变之后,其发展的社会、文化、专业甚至经济环境,都在发生着重要变化。新的趋势无疑为博物馆带来新机遇、新可能,同时也伴随新挑战。在今天博物馆需要回答的诸多问题中,有一个始终处于核心位置:我们的博物馆机构是否对社会很重要？无论是眼下还是长远的未来。围绕于此的相关讨论,让当代博物馆新的文化观逐渐清晰起来,让博物馆为适应新形势而进行的战略选择有了新的坐标,并最终引导出关于博物馆价值体系可能的重构以及新的运行规则。     

有意义的故事，有意义的展览——科技馆展览讲故事的难点和对策分析

科技馆展览如何讲故事,是近年来探讨的热门话题。在分析展览讲故事的作用和意义的基础上,重点剖析和归纳了导致科技馆展览讲故事的五个难点:演示“科学现象”与“叙事性”的矛盾、科学“共性”与故事“特殊性”的矛盾、展品“碎片化”与“故事线”的矛盾、“大题目”与“小故事”的矛盾、疏于文献研究与讲故事所需丰厚素材的矛盾,提出了针对这五个矛盾的解决方法,并强调更重要、更紧迫的是转变传统的观念意识和设计思路。     

Reinventing a State Funding Program for Museums

While state funding represents a primary source of support for museums, its characteristics and significance have eluded recognition and analysis. Programs and funding mechanisms vary considerably among states, ranging from support for specific projects in museums by agencies that fund multiple types of cultural institutions to state agencies exclusively devoted to museums. The Museum Program of the New York State Council on the Arts, which supports all disciplines of museums, faced critical challenges to its leadership role as funding was restored following a period of severe retrenchment. It engaged in open dialogue with the museum community as it developed new initiatives and services to the field. The Program worked with service organizations to create new approaches for professional learning about museum practices, made revisioning permanent collections an overarching guidelines theme and challenged exhibition applicants to explore neglected topics. It also emphasized multiple interpretive perspectives, mutual engagement with communities and sequential educational activities that provide in‐depth learning experiences.