So this year the National Conference was here in Perth (yay!). A fellow devotee of the popup museum idea, Suzanne Jess, and I were asked to run a session on the idea. Originally we had decided to actually do a popup museum and then report on that, then time went by and it wasn’t feasible, so we decided to run a popup museum during the conference and have a workshop we’d call a ‘live case study’…time went by and then it was the week of the conference. So, last minute creativity and not a little bit of stress, we managed to pull off a very interactive and well-received workshop that was really fun to be a part of.

I’m going to put below the bit I read out (to limit my tendency to excitedly waffle) at the start of the session. We also had people discuss the ideas in groups, which allowed people to engage with the ideas, not just listen to them (I’m all for that sort of stuff).

One of the best parts of the session was when a participant from a funding body thrust their card into my hand and said “I want some submissions from you”. Woot! Later, other participants and I planned and schemed and hopefully we can get ourselves organised to run a touring popup museum across the Goldfields area of WA. Even better!! And then, I got an email from someone who can’t do the popup museum idea at their organisation but is thinking of doing one on the side, as it were. Awesome!! Exciting times ahead for this idea!

Okay, here is what I said in the session:

This session is really about exploring the idea of using non-permanent spaces to exhibit museum objects by and for a community. I had the germination of this idea at the National Conference last year and have developed it further in discussions with various people, but especially Jane King and Suzanne Jess at Museums Australia (WA). We really wanted to present a case study of how running a popup museum went but….well, you know, a year goes by too quickly! So what we are going to do instead is present the ideas we already have and then ask you to run with them, to generate your own ideas, think about your own communities and how this idea can help you to generate engagement in your community through museum exhibits. We also want to give you the tools to start thinking practically about how to do this as well as how to keep in touch with each other and keep collaborating.

Just by the way, I’m an Historian who focuses on local heritage so my interests lie there, but there is no reason that natural history, maritime history, archaeology, ethnography, anthropology or any other discipline that is relevant to your area couldn’t be treated in the same way. I know almost nothing about natural history, but it seems to me that many people collect specimens of things they find in the environment that could be developed into exhibitions.

Okay, so as you can tell, this session is about ideas. After the National Conference last year I wrote a post on my blog about popup museums. I also did a google search for popup museums and found nothing. In preparation for this workshop I did another search and found…well, quite a bit! I really want this idea to be non-proprietary – I want people to take ownership of it, use it how they like and develop it further so I’m very pleased to see that others have had the idea and actually developed popup museums. One of the key aspects to the ideas Suzanne and I have discussed is about developing citizen curators – about community members taking control of the telling of their own stories (and I’m not talking community exhibition spaces here, but a much more structured experience) and about us as professionals supporting that and continuing to build strong communities through that. We also want to support useful, practical and cost effective ways for communities to develop collections.

So, first I want to show you some of the ideas I came across online and then I’ll tell you about the ideas Suzanne, Jane and I have discussed – especially to do with regional museums and collections.

Popup around the world

Leeds Popup Museum – allows the museum to travel to those who can’t . Exhibitions in nursing homes with hands-on objects, opportunities to reminisce, talk, debate and then for a small exhibition to stay at the nursing home for a while. Fantastic idea! (think about audience – sitting down! – cater for this!)

Australian Museum Popup Museum – developed by Michelle DelCarlo, a University of Washington Graduate Student in Museology who has been working on this idea. She ran a popup museum in Sydney working with school students who bring in their own objects, write labels and then discuss. After the day the objects go home with their owners.

Coffs Harbour Popup Museum – after a flood in 2009 and the temporary storage of museum items, the museum worked with a local shopping mall to use an empty shop to exhibit some items.

History of Queer History Popup Museum – with limited interest in this topic by the major museums, a group formed to put on the Queer History Popup Museum. How’d you like attendance like that?!

North Perth Share House (Popup) Museum – run last weekend during the Beaufort Street Festival, this was a chance to reminisce about experiences living in Share Houses in North Perth as young and broke. People were invited to contribute and others to bring items on the day.

South West Seattle Historical Society Popup Museum – also by Michelle DelCarlo, she worked with members of the historical society to run a popup museum similar to the one in Sydney with people bringing their objects associated with a theme (thanksgiving) and spending the day writing labels and talking.

Ideas for regions

Collections

Where and how does a regional museum keep its collection? Does it have access to the best objects of the region? How does it limit the collection of unwanted old stuff? What is their collection? Do they have important regional objects with clear provenance? Can they look after these objects? What kinds of barriers impact on a museum telling the stories of the region?

I would suggest these are some of the key questions for regional museums. Regional museums are typically run by volunteers with limited expertise but enormous passion and dedication. In my experience in small museums the passion and dedication are not enough to make up for limited expertise, which means the stuff they have cannot be thoughtfully massaged into a meaningful collection that can tell the stories of the region.

Probably the key barrier to telling these stories is the collection itself. While bogged down with washboards and ploughs, volunteers look for the stereotype of history and skip over the really interesting stuff. They aren’t thinking in terms of stories or themes.

For a popup museum then, where does the collection come from? Well, the community for a start, but objects are loaned, not given. They physically live in the collection for the length of the popup museum or exhibition, are photographed and recorded into the collection database at this time, they remain digitally within the collection but return to their owner at the end of the popup museum. This way a museum does not need to house, conserve or care for the collection in the same way it does now, donors don’t need to let go of their objects and the community gets to see relevant, interesting objects that say something about a story or theme around which the popup museum is created.

If we think of the volunteer’s relationship to the collection differently, if the community sees it as a privilege to have an object included in the collection, if volunteers don’t need to look after the physical collection, if we don’t call them volunteers – what would happen then?

Citizen curators

David Milne from QLD Museum spoke briefly about citizen curators last year at the National Conference. Initially I was thinking about citizen curators that arrive at a popup museum and are given license to re-curate the exhibition to tell a different story during their visit. I still think this is a good idea, although how many people could just come in off the street and engage to this level is debatable. In discussions with Jane and Suzanne, we came up with a more structured approach that included inviting community members to be citizen curators for a particular exhibition/popup museum and to support them with training and guide them through the process. The aim is to have a group of people with a range of useful skills (including design, building, project mgt, administration as well as knowledge of the topic/themes, creativity, interest, technology skill etc). The group are not volunteers who commit their lives to an interest group such as a historical society, but a group of people who come together for a project, bringing their skills and experience with them. There is a whole lot of thinking around this approach to volunteering on the net. It is commonly known as using Free Agents – you can google it! But also check out this and this.

Themes and stories

The group then, made up of those from the community, work around a theme or set of stories to create an exhibition or popup museum. This could be a significant event in the community, a group (new or old) that are part of the community, linked to a larger state, national or world event or idea, a passion/idea of the members of a community or their own stories in their own right. Depending on the type of support the citizen curators get from professionals, I see the popup museums they create as being highly engaging, passionate, challenging – like nothing seen in regional museums!

Exhibitions

These are really the popup museums – the exhibitions created with the objects from the collection and the identification of new objects around the themes or stories identified. Other key aspects are the opening of the popup museum for a period of time (say a month), all day every day, the location of the popup museum in the places were the community are (rather than trying to make the community come to the museum, take the museum to them!), the collection of the communities engagement with the popup museum (feedback, audience research, recording conversations, blogs or wikis), the recording of the process of creating the popup museum and including that in the collection, online support, partnerships with local businesses, opening night, late-night museum openings with late-night shopping nights, events, workshops, lectures, tours, education….really the list is endless! I got some more ideas yesterday hearing about wonderful projects at the Powerhouse, National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of Australia.

Conservation

I wanted to take a breath for a minute and touch on conservation. How can a museum properly care for objects if they don’t physically look after them? Obviously there are some objects that will need conservation and ongoing care. I still think these would need to be collected – but only if the museum can provide the care! If they are doing just fine in someone’s cupboard then perhaps it is better to leave it there rather than house it in a shed out the back of the council building. There will also be objects important enough to be collected by a larger collecting institution, it is important that popup museum groups identify these and act accordingly.

If the number of objects requiring conservation and care (especially in regards to temperature control) is small then it will be easier to find a place to put them; a storeroom in the library or council building for example. Perhaps there are local businesses with facilities that can help in conservation – the supermarket’s freezer section for killing bugs maybe – with a chance for some interpretation right there in the shop?!

Objects collected for a popup museum can also be correctly stored using the proper materials for return to their owners. A fact sheet about how to care for the object can be returned with it. When necessary, annual visiting of objects to identify new conservation issues could be done.

Digital and online resources

Having the collection always available online is another key aspect of the popup museum. We still want to have a collection and to be able to access it. I suggest using collection databases like Omeka that make it easy to put collections online and for others to use and interact with the collection (adding tags and stories for example) and to use social media to drive people to visit the collection in this way. Perhaps a volunteer/citizen curator’s job for  a month is to post one story to facebook each week that highlights an object in the collection. This sort of thing can be ongoing so that the community continues to engage with the collection in between popup events.

Collaboration and sharing

And of course, this makes the collaboration and sharing of objects, collections and ideas within and importantly between communities possible. Maybe a community in Albany is doing a popup on fishing stories and see that the Port Headland collection includes a 1970s fishing bag that would be perfect – they can not only see that Port Headland have that but can contact them to arrange a loan. Maybe Albany and Port Headland will collaborate further, perhaps develop twin popups or a travelling popup that can go around the state…

So after I rambled on about all this, we set everyone to talking – and talk they did! I commented at the time that I’ve never run a group discussion session where I couldn’t get a word in edgewise with the groups – fantastic!

Suzanne then explained some of the practicalities around setting up museums in non-permanent spaces, especially using the fantastic work of Renew Newcastle. You can download the handout we gave out here: The popup museum project.

I’m really keen to keep this conversation going so please use comments below and stay tuned for more ways to join in!

Special thanks to the people that came along to the session – many more of you than we’d anticipated too .

I just came across this tumblr (note to self: learn more about how people are using Tumblr these days). My first reaction was ‘No…what?!’ then I had a bit of a browse and the whole idea has grown on me. It is, as they say ‘where early photography meets extreme hotness’.

I found this site because the State Library of NSW facebooked about it. Ahh, the joys of social media!

So, head off and have a perve (is that how you spell perve??).

http://mydaguerreotypeboyfriend.tumblr.com/

In the meantime, I’ve just become aware that the WA State Government has released its first ever State Cultural Heritage Policy. NSW has had one since 1996. Qld released a 10-year strategic plan in 2009 (no doubt after years of work).

The most exciting thing about this tiny document (at just 4 pages, 3 of which are pictures) is that the words intangible heritage appear. And, this is actually pretty exciting. I’m pleased to see that both the Heritage Council and the National Trust (WA) worked on this document and will continue to work together on ‘Action Plans to underpin this policy’. I know that NTWA has been heavily involved in the collection and interpretation of intangible heritage in the last few years. Why am I so excited about intangible heritage? Because that is the place where most women’s heritage is found.

My thesis, written last year, discussed the representation and inclusion of women’s sites in the Register. In it I argued that because of the ways the database is structured, the practices of collection, catalouging and sorting heritage and a focus on ‘place’ have led to a serious underrepresentation of women in the Register. This is further compounded by the ways history is researched for the Register. If you’re interested you can read the entire document here (make a cup of tea before you start!).

The Register of Historic Places is also being reviewed and public consultation is open until June 10. You can read the consultation paper here or complete two online surveys here and here. I’ll be sending in my written submission (in the form of my thesis) regarding these issues.

Oh and in other news, the National Trust (WA) has updated its website - now nice and shiny! Hooray!

I imagine that when working on an exhibition for a state museum, the stakes are higher. So when I went to see the fascinating Femme Fatale: the female criminal exhibition that had travelled here from the Police and Justice Museum in Sydney, I was very surprised that some of the text jumped out at me as uncomfortably written given the context. This led to a fairly critical (as in analytical) viewing of the exhibition and I came up with some interesting questions.

The exhibition seemed to have at its core the juxtaposition of the mass culture image of the femme fatale and the reality of Sydney’s female criminals. These two sides were somewhat chronologically mismatched – the femme fatale section used 1940s-60s films mostly, while the criminals were from the 1920s. While I loved the two sections of the exhibition – both were fascinating – it was like being in two different exhibitions at once. Except for some introductory text, there was little connection made between these two ideas. Visitors were left to wander from screen sirens to poverty-stricken women with hardly anything to guide them.

In fact, the only reference I could really find was around beauty (I use that word deliberately, rather than ‘appearance’). The underlying message of the femme fatale part of the exhibition was (as usual) how beautiful women can be dangerous, even deadly. There was an incredible collection of film clips and posters that clearly played on this – this is, after all, the popular idea of the ‘femme fatale’. In the female criminal section there were sometimes – not always – references made to the relative attractiveness of the woman as part of a very small piece of text. Sometimes this was a direct quote from contemporary sources (either police files or newspapers) and sometimes a curator’s observation. This disturbed me. Where they looking for a real femme fatale? What were they trying to do here? In addition, there were many images of women who would not be considered attractive with no mention of their appearance. The conclusion was obviously that these were not beautiful women. But what did that mean? Where they making some comment on reality? On poverty?

“Australian authorities have grappled with how to control wayward women from the moment the first female convicts stepped ashore. The brutal reality faced by notorious female offenders such as ‘the man woman murderer’ Eugenia Falleni, sly grogger Kate Leigh and poisoner Yvonne Fletcher is in stark contrast to the glamour of the noir seductress and pulp novel siren. This exhibition examines these extremes, traversing criminological theory, popular culture and the true stories of some of our most notorious female criminals.” – Introductory text from the exhibition

While this issue was the big one for me, there was a single sentence that I also wanted to highlight.

“Until 1804 there was little separate accommodation for unassigned female convicts [in Sydney], which inevitably led to promiscuity and prostitution.”

This is a messy sentence. I’m sure they didn’t mean that all these convict women without somewhere safe to sleep either slept around (negative connotations intended) or slept around and charged for it, or that this would happen in the general course of things; that it is “inevitable”. I’d like to think that they meant that without somewhere safe to sleep, it was difficult for the convict population to maintain the moral standards expected of them at the time.

This sentence disturbs me because it places the blame for the situation on the women (while acknowledging that the unmentioned colonial government hadn’t done its job properly). I don’t like the way women are held up to be unable to control themselves in this situation and the suggestion that any woman put in this context would inevitably turn to promiscuity (do we really even use that word any more?!) or prostitution.

It is language like this around women’s lives - contemporary and historical – that I think needs to be pounced on, held up and examined. I won’t go into a big rant here about why I think this is necessary. Suffice to say that I think it has lasting impacts on how women’s lives are understood and controlled in Australia. So, this is me saying: I think this sentence should never have made it through the review process.

Even though I had some issues with the exhibition and the way it was presented, I’d much prefer this than a bland exhibition that has everything correct. I was at the exhibition with a bunch of awesome curators and heritage people and we chatted about it then and last night over dinner with two other star heritage ladies we talked about it more. Gotta love an exhibition that does that!

PS. Can someone please explain to me the thinking behind the seemingly blanket ‘no photos’ rule in big Australian museums. I don’t get it. Hence, no cool pics for this post. And I really wanted to show you the monster dildo!

And, just by the way, have the balls to do in the first place. It does take courage to be the testers, the early adopters and the developers. Not only do you set the standard or approach of what comes after you but you get to take all the crap about how badly you did it as well! There are some seriously clever people out there and some of them get the chance to play around with their ideas. The organisations that allows this should be commended.

But, I’m going to pick a few bones (you knew that was coming, right?) about this stuff. In particular the apps I used when I was in London. It seemed to me that perhaps these apps are being outsourced with very little curatorial control or much thought about the actual application of the app. Perhaps, initially, it was a case of ‘we need an app in the app store!’ but by now it really needs to be more than that. This stuff doesn’t start with the app itself either. If you want people to use an app in your building (and you should) that needs Internet connection, for goodness sake, provide that connection. As a traveller who was hyper-aware of roaming charges and with a locked iPhone, I only got Internet in wifi areas. I didn’t go into one gallery or museum that provided it. And, by the way, it should be completely free and sign-up-less. If you want to collect details, ask nicely for them, don’t use blackmail. I went to a pub here in Perth the other day that had wifi that was as easy to connect to as mine at home, actually, easier because I didn’t need a password. This is how it should be.

The app store allows updates. This feature should be used. It is very disappointing to go to a gallery to see, say, a painting of Germaine Greer, and for it not to be on display, even though it is in the (otherwise very nice) ‘Writers’ themed audio guide.

Apps are not brochures. Don’t put the same information that is in the museum/gallery/library in the app. What’s the point of going? Apps allow for some lovely sophisticated, curated information. It is perfect for all those things that have to be left out of the exhibition due to space or for making connections between seemingly unconnected objects in clever and interesting ways. I want to see more of this.

Think about how the sleep mode of phones will affect your app – is it going to turn off when the phone goes to sleep, even though someone is listening to it?

Apps are also not audio guides. Make them better than the audio guides because that will get people through the door! An audio guide is for someone who is already invested enough to have turned up.

It is okay to charge for apps, especially if this means you’ll make an awesome one.

Apps should be publicised in the building – this might seem like an odd thing to say, but if I hadn’t already actively searched for the apps for particular places I would never have known they had any. Another good reason for wifi – ‘this is our app, download it now! (and by the way, you can ask our guides how to use it!)’.

I love museum/gallery apps. I want to see more of them and I want people to learn from the mistakes of those brave organisations that tried it first.

Room 2: A parlour in 1695

Room 3: A parlour in 1745

Room 9: A living room in 1965

It was also a great space to be in. There were children of various ages on school trips being engaged by very good museum educators, there were people walking through to get to the (very good) cafe and there were standard museum visitors. There were also clearly people working there – you know, walking around, talking about displays, working with students. It wasn’t a dead mausoleum-like museum where you never see anyone that isn’t a security guard.

Museum educator and students at the 1935 living room

Besides this glowing review that I’m giving it (and I could go on but you should really go and see it for yourself), what struck me was the way they seem to be approaching the museum as a part of the community, somewhere to come and be, sit, stay, look at displays or not. The banners outside actively encourage people to come in, the huge, welcome gardens out the front are available for loafing (although not in the cold that I was there), there is a lovely garden out the back of the building too, a garden room where you are encouraged to sit and read, the cafe, which is in the middle of the museum, not at the beginning or end (lovely idea!), spaces where large tables and chairs are provided (as well as magazines). And, naturally, being free, it just begs to be used for more than history.

Garden room

Space for sitting, staying, reading

I love this approach to a museum. I know it isn’t a new idea and many museums strive to achieve it, but the Geffrye just seemed to strike the perfect tone to make their museum a place to be and experience, not just a place to educate and entertain. I’ve certainly taken away some great ideas that I’d love to put into practice here if I get the chance!

First let me say that I’ve never, in my whole life of going to museums, ever, seen an exhibition about women’s fight for the vote. Not here in Australia and not overseas. It doesn’t surprise me, however, to see these exhibitions in the UK. Women there had to fight all the harder and longer, their fight more dramatic. Still, it is disappointing that there is little, if any, exhibition space given over to women and the democratic process in Australia (I’m willing to be proven wrong by the Museum of Australian Democracy but I’m not holding my breath).

The two exhibitions I saw were at the Museum of London and the Museum of People’s History (in Manchester). In both museums the exhibitions were part of the story being told rather than an extra special moment in history. Both where also interesting, informative and good.

The suffragette exhibition at the London Museum

Part of the suffragette exhibition at the People's History Museum

The stories these exhibitions tell are so important and incredible. Important because women’s lives were altered so dramatically when we were considered responsible and intelligent enough to vote. Incredible because these days it is hard to believe the way society thought then. That they are seriously under-exhibited tells us more about our contemporary society than I like to consider.

The Museum of London exhibition was part of the area devoted to the city of London as a site of protest. It included a lot of ephemera as well as video of suffragette marches (and arrests) and a haunting slideshow of the the photos the police took of the women they’d arrested and who were well into their hunger strikes. These photos were distributed to galleries and museums so the women could be spotted and removed before they attacked and damaged paintings and objects. The irony of learning about this through thick museum glass was not lost on me.

The People’s History Museum (up for the Art Fund Prize, which is pretty cool!) is…well, I’m going to gush about it in a post all of its own. Suffice to say it is excellent. The suffragette part of the exhibition was pitch-perfect. Set in a mock kitchen the message was about how women were both trying to be different and remained the same – the daily struggle between arguing they deserved the vote and the making sure dinner was on the table was beautifully executed. Plus, they have re-created the ‘Pank-a-Squith Game’ on the kitchen table for all to play!

Re-created Pank-a-Squith game

A REAL Pank-a-Squith game

When I was working on the Smirk’s Cottage exhibition I included a copy of the electoral roll that listed the women of the family who had enrolled to vote. I wrote a label that explained that it was impossible to tell whether they voted or not, but that if they did there were among the first in the world to do so. I think this is well-worth mentioning in a house museum of this time but I’ve never seen it before.

I would really like to see the history of women included in this way in exhibitions. The suffragette movement deserves its own exhibition but there is so much of women’s history that is just the history of ordinary people. I want to see more of it.

Also, you should donate to the @digitisethedawn, see details on Twitter or visit http://digitisethedawn.org/.

Oh, and Happy International Women’s Day!

I have too many museums and not enough time in London this trip so I just headed for my favourite part of the V&A – English interior design (that’s not the term they use though). The bit where I can see some William Morris and Charles Rennie Macintosh up close. I was so happy to see some great museum design just in that one section, that I ended up looking at how they’d incorporated interactivity and reflection in clever ways more than the collection. This will be another big photographic post, but you need to see these things!

Research computers - with chairs - in a foyer area

Activity box - dress an Edwardian man

'Glass' blocks to build a Crystal Palace with

A 'please touch' exhibit with braille on a slide out panel

catalogue from the era showing popular designs - another 'please touch'

Q&A 'booklets' (made from metal) for each item in the case

'Are you a collector?' Audience response station with a closed feedback loop!

Close up of the instructions, pad, pencils and post box.

'Please touch' exhibits with braille on the yellow slide out panels

A quite sophisticated task called 'Date a design' where you have to try to work out what designs below to which era

Research station with books, 'please touch' exhibit, date a design computer and chairs!

Wonderful bench audio stations. Sit and listen - so civilised!

Slide out drawers with advertising posters - access to an original but fragile collection

I know many of these sorts of ‘stations’ you will have seen before, perhaps even worked on, but I took all these shots in one tiny section of this huge museum and that is what makes it so amazing. The variety of interactive tasks and experiences just in one small area was really impressive. The V&A is still my favourite museum but tune in a few days to find out what my new favourite small museum is!

The building is most famous because Marie Antoinette was held here before her beheading. After this fantastic exhibition we went straight to cheesy with the presentation of the cells:

Hopefully this part of the museum is up for treatment by the same people next!

Anyway, both houses are just beautiful examples of the kind of Parisian artiste life I imagine. They have tiny rooms with lovely windows and doors leading onto small but idyllic gardens. Musée de la Vie romantique in particular is so peaceful I could have sat in the glasshouse for hours.

Musée de la Vie romantique

La Maison de Balzac

The rooms are wonderful to wander through and still give the feeling of the lives lived within. It is interesting that the story of both houses are told through paintings and other artworks over any other medium – especially everyday artefacts. In fact, the presentation of the rooms as they were lived in was rare – just one in each. Balzac’s study because it remained as it was when he used it, including his desk, and a standard sitting room in Musée de la Vie romantique with a collection of furniture used by the various occupants.

Balzac's study (although I'm sure he didn't have a bust of himself gazing down at his writing table!)

Sitting room in Musée de la Vie romantique

Throughout the two houses there is a obvious attempt to ‘decorate’ in the period style but this is not interpreted at all. Like house museums in Australia, we are supposed to take in the overall ‘feel’ of this idealised ‘past’. This approach has always left me cold and although I loved visiting both these museums I still had this response. These people – Balzac and Sand/Ary Scheffer – are presented as their work, not as the people they were. While I can’t argue that their work wasn’t important – it was revolutionary for its time – if I come to their house I want to find out about them. George Sand in particular had a fascinating life during which she publicly flaunted the social mores for women of the time including smoking in public and dressing in men’s clothes. I only know this thanks to Wikipedia, not the museum. Balzac had many complicated family relationships and was in love with a married woman who he finally married just five months before his death (thanks to Wikipedia again).

Coming away from these museums I was left wanting to know more about these people. I loved the houses and there was a fascinating exhibition at La Maison de Balzac and how can I really complain about visiting museums in Paris, but…coming away from a museum with more questions than I had when I arrived is not, I would suggest, a successful visitor experience.