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Exhibition Review: ‘Not Just Ned’

I visited this temporary exhibition at the National Museum of Australia while visiting Canberra last week and with a free afternoon to kill:

I found the choice of title a little odd: for me at least, Ned Kelly isn’t high up on the list of things that sprint to mind when I think about the Irish in Australia. Perhaps it reflects the extent to which I paid attention (or not) in high school history, but to my mind the Kelly story is primarily an Australian one; the origins of the people involved is an incidental detail. (I wondered if it was a deliberate decision to link into (and then dissociate from) the Kelly story as a marketing ‘hook’, although from what I have since heard this wasn’t the case.)

Given my current research interests, my focus in visiting the exhibition was to think about the overall atmospherics and impressions that the space created rather than to concentrate too much on specifics or details. However, I got the distinct impression that the exhibition was designed with more of a Studier* type of visitor in mind. To be fair, these visitors were not in short supply – one older couple who entered about the same time I did stopped to carefully study every label and object; I tried to keep tabs on them during my visit but by the time I was done (some 20-25 minutes later) they were barely 1/4 of the way through the exhibition. Whether they continuted at this pace throughout the visit or run out of steam will have to remain a mystery. (In general, the exhibition did seem to be attracting an older demographic, although this could be just as much due to the fact it was a weekday afternoon.)

The exhibition’s layout was broadly thematic, with themes presented in a rough chronological order: arriving, settling in, etc., culminating in a display of more recent Irish migrants and the ongoing sense of shared identity with both the old country and the new. There were also displays dedicated to the Irish contributions to different facets of Australian life, such as politics, agriculture, sport, entertainment and so on. Another strong theme, obviously, was the role of Catholicism in shaping the outlooks of Irish migrants, the perception of Irish migrants by other Australians, and attitudes to political events unfolding back in the old country. Certain chapters in Australian history with strong Irish links, such as the Kelly Gang, Burke & Wills exhibition and the Eureka Stockade, had their own dedicated mini-exhibition areas.

The exhibition was very object-rich and while some of the objects were organised to illustrate specific stories or reflect the life of a certain key personality, there was no obvious logic to the juxtaposition of other displays. I gather this was a deliberate choice, but sometimes this approach a little unnerving as I’m not sure if there is meant to be some broader message that I’m somehow failing to ‘get’.

There was a seating area roughly in the middle of the exhibtion area with four comfy swivel chairs, each with an iPad (built into a rigid frame) allowing you to select different music, audio recordings, letters home and so forth (a good use of off-the-shelf technology). Speakers embedded into the chairs worked well, providing good sound but not interfering with other seated users. I liked that the swivel chairs meant you could choose which part of the gallery you wished to overlook while you listened. One downside was that the chairs were definitely a single-user experience – fine as a solo visitor like me, but I noticed couples having to either take turns or with one person standing leaning over the chair to be in aural range of the speakers. Maybe it would have been a good idea to make one of the chairs  double-width to allow shared listening.

As I mentioned before, I was primarily looking at the exhibition from an atmospheric perspective, and the thing that struck me was how dark the space was**. The ceiling and walls of the NMA’s temporary exhibition space are painted black, enveloping the space in a sense of gloom which is only penetrated by strategically placed track lighting (in a ceiling which is probably about 4-5 metres in height).

I find such spaces inherently fatiguing and a bit claustrophobic, making it difficult for me to focus on the displays and ensuring I’m ready to call it a day after about 20-30 minutes. (Other people I’ve spoken to are less bothered by low light levels- I’d be interested to find out whether I’m in the majority or minority on this one.) On a more practical level, the fact that the graphics are lit from a single source sometimes meant that you have to be careful not to cast a shadow on the bit you’re trying to read. This was a particular problem for graphics on any horizontal or near-horizontal surface.

Also, looking from an atmospheric perspective, there was (with some exceptions) little clear visual signposting of different thematic areas which you could determine at a glance if you were looking to dip in and out of content rather than go through the exhibition systematically. In some areas it wasn’t immediately apparent where one theme stopped and another started.  I would have preferred a bit more of a content hierarchy with a few more intermediate level take-home messages, and suspect that such an approach might even have encouraged me to look closer at the objects. In other words, a bit of  a top-down approach (i.e. higher level, big-picture messages to hook you in), to balance the object-led approach which is more bottom-up.

At the end of the exhibition was a large reading area and facility for tracing your Irish roots. Plus of course the obligatory gift shop. But by this stage, having no Irish ancestry that I know of, my visit was done and I made a welcome return to the Canberra afternoon sunshine.

*Studier in the sense of the ‘Streaker, Stroller and Studier’ characterisation of different kinds of visitors.

**Someone will probably point out that the low light levels are for conservation purposes. However, I wonder how many of the objects in this particular exhibition are really so light sensitive as to warrant this approach, particularly given it is a temporary exhibition. Conservators may be horrified at the thought, but I do think it is time to revisit the evidence concerning light levels and object care, to see if we’re getting the balance right in this regard.

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More on museums and social media

When I wrote yesterday’s blog post about Museum Next’s survey about attitudes to social media, I didn’t realise that the study was just one of a series of that Museum Next had recently completed. (As a testament to the value of social media, I was  very quickly made aware of these additional studies when I posted a link to my blog on Twitter.)

There are in fact four surveys:

  • What do people want from museums on Facebook? (results of an online survey)
  • What do museums think Twitter is for? (responses from 361 museum professionals)
  • Museums on Twitter (results of an online survey from non museum professionals)
  • Social Media Audiences and the museum (which was the subject of yesterday’s post)

There are interesting similarities and differences between the results of the different surveys.

Whereas the social media audience survey appears to be of a random sample of UK residents, it looks like the other survey samples were more opportunistic. Thus the age spread does not reflect different age groups’ social media usage (as reported in the first survey), and women outnumber men by nearly 2 to 1! (I’m not sure if this means women are more interested in museums, more inclined to social media, or that they are more likely to complete online surveys, but I digress . . .)

Of the sample, 82% of respondents ‘like’ at least one museum on Facebook and nearly 90% follow at least one Museum on Twitter, with most following several (i.e. This survey population is clearly different from the social media audience survey, where only 10% of respondents were fans or followers. By contrast, this sample is highly aware and engaged, and findings should be considered in light of this).

The reasons respondents gave for liking or following were similar across both Facebook and Twitter, with the top three being: to learn about exhibitions and events (76% Facebook, 98.9% Twitter); to show support for the museum (64% Facebook, 51% Twitter); and to help promote the museum (47% Facebook 35% Twitter). Based on these percentages, people overwhelmingly use Twitter to get information and news about museums, whereas Facebook has a greater promotion / supporting role. This does make intuitive sense given the way that each platform works, in that Twitter is more immediate and open while  Facebook is more about sharing between people you already know. Although interestingly, 93% of people said they would be more likely to visit an exhibition that a friend recommended on Twitter compared to 83% on Facebook, which would seem counter that interpretation.

Roughly half of respondents had visited the museums they liked or followed; a further 35-40% had visited ‘some of them’, indicating that the physical audience and the online audience do not completely overlap. This might mean that a proportion of people are happy to have a purely online relationship with a museum, even if they do not visit in person.  (I would imagine the nonvisiting fans and followers live some distance from the museum, but this could be an incorrect assumption on my part.)

If this is the case, and there is a small but significant proportion of fans and followers who are unlikely to visit in person, this might have interesting implications for museums’ social media strategies – how can social media be used to add value for visitors and non-visitors alike?

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Social Media: Implications for Museums

I was recently sent a link to the results of a survey of 500 UK residents, investigating their social media habits and awareness of museums on social media.*

The survey, commissioned by Museum Next, explored respondents’ current social media use as well as their awareness and expectations of museums in this realm.

First, one for the social media sceptics: more than three quarters of respondents said they used social media websites (how ‘social media websites’ was defined for the purpose of this research was not made clear, but more on that later).  And while usage declined with age, this drop in use was nowhere near as marked as some people might expect – just over half of the over 64s used social media (compared to 95% of the 18-24s).

However, the over 64s were far less likely to be a fan or follower of brands on social media – 21% compared to 83% of 16-24s (again, the percentages fell for each age bracket). Put another way, 16-24s are four times as likely as over 64s to interact with brands through social media. This potentially points to an interesting generational shift with respect to how people associate with brands and products (or alternatively says something about which brands have a social media presence, and the target markets of these brands).

In keeping with the “what’s in it for me?” principle, the most common reason for following brands was to access promotions or special offers (54%). Other popular responses related to getting advance information about new products or events (37%), or that the brand supplied interesting content for its followers (33%).

So far, so generic. What does all this mean for museums?

Well, for a start, nearly three quarters of the sample said they attended museums and galleries, and this was roughly evenly spread across ALL the age groups. However, only 18% were aware of museums using social media, and only 10% were a fan or a follower of a museum (i.e. roughly half of those who were aware of museums on social media were fans or followers).

Interestingly, the reasons people gave for following museums were different from those given for ‘brands’, with the most common response being a wish to support or promote the museum (47%), followed by a desire to tell friends about an impressive visit (38%).

However, while 83% of respondents said they would be more likely to visit a museum which had been recommended by a friend (the question doesn’t explicitly state ‘recommend by social media’, but this may have been inferred from the context), 66% thought that their friends would be ‘indifferent’ if they became a fan of a museum on Facebook.

A couple of broader observations about the survey:

Firstly, although most of the questions refer to  ‘social media websites’ generically, it’s not clear how (or indeed if) this term was defined for respondents. I know from experience that there are often different understandings about what constitutes a ‘social media website’, so depending on what was said and how that was interpreted this may have affected the results.

Secondly, the only specific social media platform mentioned (at least in the data published on the website) is Facebook. This may have been the scope of the survey, but personally I would have liked to have seen a bit more unpicking of different social media, in particular Twitter. (I must admit I’m a more prolific Tweeter than Facebooker, and so might be a little biased here!) Moreover, museums are having a growing presence on social media beyond the Big Two of Facebook and Twitter, including YouTube channels Flickr groups.

But then again, given the low awareness of museums’ presence on social media at all, getting the word out there in general must be the first step.

[UPDATE: I have since found out that there are more MuseumNext surveys, which are the subject of a later post]

*Thanks to Mel Loe for passing the info on!

 

 

 

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‘Fun’ and ‘edutainment’

How many times have you seen slogans along the lines of:

We make [insert ostensibly worthy-but-dull topic here] FUN!!!

Science centres and museums are repeat offenders in this regard. And I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with this habit, although I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on why. Is it just because it sounds so trite, or is there something deeper at play here?

What is ‘fun’ anyway? Some people think that throwing themselves off a bridge, tethered only by a flexible piece of rope, is the pinnacle of fun and excitement. They part with hundreds of dollars for the privilege. Personally I couldn’t think of anything worse!

When it comes to museum visiting, ‘fun’ is a particularly problematic word. And again, it’s because fun means different things to different people – for some it implies mindless entertainment (and possibly things going ‘bang’); for others it has a more nuanced meaning. To some extent, what people mean by the word ‘fun’ means seems to depend on their age and cultural background.

The lesson here for me is that we have to be careful of the terminology we use (and hear) when speaking to visitors – just because we’re using common language, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re all talking about the same thing. It makes it even more important that we let visitors describe and elaborate upon things in their own words as much as possible in our research, and avoid too many pre-defined (and maybe inadvertantly loaded) categories.

Having said that, for some visitors at least, museum visiting is something they definitely would describe as ‘fun’ (as this paper by one of my supervisors, Jan Packer, demonstrates). Drawing from visitors’ descriptions and reflections on their experiences in museums and other free choice learning settings, the paper describes five key aspects of learning for ‘fun’ in museums:

  1. Learning for fun encompasses a mixture of discovery, exploration, mental stimulation and excitement.
  2. The majority of visitors to educational leisure settings consider learning to be, more than anything else, enjoyable.
  3. Although most visitors don’t come with a deliberate intention to learn, they do seek or are unconsciously drawn into an experience that incorporates learning.
  4. Visitors identify four conditions (a sense of discovery or fascination; appeal to multiple senses; a sense that the learning happens ‘effortlessly’; availability of choice in the experience) that together are conducive to the learning for fun experience.
  5. Visitors value learning for fun because it is a potentially transformative experience (i.e. it helps people see the world in new ways and appreciate things differently).

Looking at this paper, I think it starts to nail what my problem with the “making xxx FUN!” schtick is. It betrays a lack of confidence in our material, as well as an underestimation of our audiences. It assumes people will only want to engage with the watered-down and sugared-up version of what we have to offer. Yes we need to find ‘hooks’ with which to engage our audience, but this doesn’t necessarily require ‘dumbing down’ (another horrible term!) or sensationalism.

Which brings me to another rather nasty neologism from the museums and science centres world: ‘edutainment’. Several years ago, it was not uncommon to go to a conference presentation where the words ‘education’ and ‘entertainment’ were put at opposite ends of a spectrum.  ‘Education’ was serious, worthy-but-dull stuff; the ‘bitter pill’ which needed sugarcoating by mixing in some whizz-bang, nonchallenging ‘entertainment’. But, as the research shows, Education and Entertainment are not polar opposites!

Entertainment is another word that we need to be careful of, however: it’s not a word that visitors often spontaneously offer up to describe their experience. I’ve read other research (not all of it published) which shows that ‘enjoyment’ is a word that comes up more often.

Either way, when you look at visitor learning in the museum as a function of their stated motivation for visiting, both ‘entertainment’ and ‘education’ motivations are good indicators of learning. That is, those that say they come for enjoyment are just as likely to learn something as those that say they’ve specifically come to learn (e.g.Falk et al, 1998).

So people might come to the museum as some gentle exercise for the mind, considering it an enjoyable way of spending their leisure time, in a similar way that a walk along the waterfront is an enjoyable way to get some exercise for the body. They may not even consider it learning, especially if they define ‘learning’ in terms of being drilled and tested as in formal education. But from a museum’s point of view, learning is exactly what it is.

Yet another reason we need to mind our language.

 

References:

Falk, J., Moussouri, T. and Coulson, D. (1998) The Effect of Visitors’ Agendas on Museum Learning. Curator, vol 41, no 2, 106-120.

Packer, J (2006). Learning for Fun: The Unique Contribution of Educational Leisure Experiences. Curator vol 49 Issue 3, 329-344

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Gone to GoMA

While I was in Brisbane last week, I was surprised to learn that I was sharing a city with Australia’s most visited museum in 2010: the Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), twin museums which together drew crowds of some 1.8 million visitors last year.

Once I found that out, I had to drop by and see what all the fuss was about. GoMA in particular came highly recommended, with its 21st Century: Art in the First Decade Exhibition which dominated the museum’s three (I think!) vast levels.

Rather than give a comprehensive review of such an exhibition (when others can do it far better than me), I thought I’d just take the chance to share some images and general observations.

View of the entrance lobby: the space immediately opens up across multiple storeys, feeling bright and open but also dramatic. The display on the right hand side is a wallpaper made up of NASDAQ figures, and is part of a piece making commentary about the Global Financial Crisis. Beyond are twin slides - and you ask yourself: could I really ride these?? This is an art gallery here!! (You can; but I didn't)

First off, the fact that I can share images at all is probably worthy of a comment in itself: art galleries in particular are often loath to allow photography (usually for copyright or conservation reasons). This might be understandable, but also confers a type of ‘hands-off’ reverence to the experience.

As a society, I think we’re becoming more accustomed to documenting and sharing our experiences through photos via social media and other networks; this ability to share becomes often becomes an integral part of the experience itself. I wonder if this relatively permissive attitude to photography is a contributing factor to making the museum feel more open and welcoming, and consequently appealing to a different type of audience (I think I saw more teenagers in the space of one afternoon than I’ve seen in all my other previous art gallery visits put together – and no they didn’t look like a school group).

Teenage girls at a display which allowed visitors to apply bindis to themselves

Another thing which was unusual in the context of an art gallery: queues. While queues to enter a whole exhibition are common enough, these were queues to see particular exhibits or take part in certain experiences which were only available to small groups of visitors at a time.

I’m usually a studious avoider of queues – probably a sign of an impatient temperament – but since I was on no fixed timetable and was feeling perfectly content to happily wander and lose myself amongst the displays, I did something I almost NEVER do: join a queue when I don’t know what it’s for:

 

Almost alone in the centre of a large gallery, the brilliantly lit spheres are surrounding a reflective black box that is almost lost in the darkened room; it makes a kind of infinity mirror for the spheres surrounding it. Notice the queue lining the far wall.

The queue was to enter the box in the middle of the room (4 at a time) which closed and surrounded you in a reflective UV space:

The view from inside the box: the floor is a small peninsula surrounded by a layer of water. The UV reflective (ping pong?) balls are suspended by fishing wire.

This was just one of several immersive exhibits, for instance the ‘swimming pool’ which was more than it first seemed:

School children at the bottom of the pool. . . .?
The view from the other side: the water is only an inch or two deep and the rest of the pool is accessed by an almost secretive rear entrance.

As well as the room filled with balloons:

 

The Balloon Room, or to give it its proper name: Work No. 965: Half the air in a given space (purple) by Martin Creed

This one in particular got me thinking about the blurred boundaries between interactive science and interactive art (in many cases, it’s all in the interpretation). I happened to overhear a young girl say as she left the room: “you could really feel the static electricity in there”, thus spontaneously articulating something which science-based balloon shows have long demonstrated (and may she’s seen that before and made the connection?)

Overall, these exhibits created a sense of fun and delight which you seldom see in the hallowed ground of the art gallery, and in some ways reminded me of the spirit of the science centre. This creates its own challenges – art isn’t made to be bulletproof the same way interactive exhibits are – as was demonstrated by this exhibt made from plastic bags, and which school children couldn’t resist getting under:

The school children loved getting under this installation and pretend to be holding it up while one of their friends took a photograph

But this was one of the few exhibits I saw which was keeping the security guards busy as they tried to direct the enthusiasm of the school kids into non-destructive outlets.

Not all exhibits allowed photography, but I’ll mention just one of these: From here to ear by Celeste Boursier-Mougenot. This installation contained a couple of dozen live finches in a room which incorporated a series of perch structures made from wood, coathangers, harpsichord strings and a sound system. It’s a bit hard to describe but here’s the label which was at the entry to the exhibit:

And that label leads me to my final observation: the technology side of things. The whole museum had free wi-fi access and several exhibits were accompanied by QR codes (like the example above) which allowed you to access podcasts and short movies about particular works. Before this exhibition, I’d never actually got around to experimenting with QR codes. But thanks to the available wi-fi, I managed to download a QR reading app and found it very easy to use. This options also gives you the opportunity to save materials on your phone for future reference.

The 21st Century: Art in the First Decade exhibition closes on April 26. While I wasn’t sure which exhibits were part of that particular exhibition and which might be there on a more permanent basis, I’ll definitely want to visit GoMA again for a second look next time I’m in Brisbane.

 

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It’s the way they make us feel

Things have been quiet here for a few weeks as all my writing energies have gone into producing a chunk of my literature review for my PhD. The good news is that my supervisors think it’s a good start!

So out of all the research and musings I’ve read so far, what’s coming out as the main themes worth exploring in my own research?  What’s struck me so far is the importance of understanding the museum experience from a psychological perspective, in particular the emotional or affective dimension. In other words, it’s not just what museums have to show or to tell, it’s how they make us feel.

People visit museums for all sorts of reasons. Other people don’t visit for all sorts of other reasons. Peel back some of these reasons and you find it’s more about how the museum communicates with us on an emotional level: do we find it relaxing or exhausting? Exhilirating or baffling? Friendly or exclusive? Exploratory or didactic?

Following from this, my interest is how the design of museums (architecturally as well as within different exhibitions) sets up some of these emotional responses, and thus creating an internal mindset well before we’ve had a chance to figure out what the museum is all about on a cognitive, content-centred level.

This perspective creates interesting new territory for visitor research, and an area where we can challenge accusations of ‘dumbing down’ in response to focus groups and front end evaluation, for instance the recent “nastygram” the NY Times gave the Brooklyn Museum.

That post (from the Asking Audiences blog) neatly summarises how focusing on the purely fact-based aspects of an exhibition can have us miss the point:

. . . we’re starting with a narrowly cognitive, educative purpose in mind. We’re interested in what visitors know about [a subject] rather than (for example) what they feel, what they wish, what they fear, what they find beautiful, what they find sad. We’re looking at a single, isolated aspect of human connection to the material. It’s not necessarily the most interesting aspect, but it’s the one that museums, as Enlightenment institutions, have traditionally cared about most.

Based on what I’ve seen in the most recent museum research, the shift from testing facts to exploring feelings already underway. And it’s an area I hope to contribute to.

 

 

 

 

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Museums and (community) memory

Australia is no stranger to extreme weather, and recently such events seem to be increasing in frequency and intensity. Just in the past few weeks, vast swathes of Queensland have been swamped by flooding. Brisbane, a city which only a few years ago was under severe water restrictions due to drought, was inundated and low-lying suburbs completely submerged. Shortly afterwards the north of Queenland was battered by Cyclone Yasi; while at the same time there was flash flooding in Melbourne and bushfires in Perth.

Living in Australia, the forces and vagaries of nature are a part of life. The effects of punishing droughts, catastrophic floods and devastating fires have all seared themselves into the national consciousness. Or have they?

ABC Radio National’s Rear Vision recently aired a program titled “Deluges that have gone before: floods in Australian history” (transcript available). Drawing upon historic major floods, in particular the 1893 and 1974 Brisbane floods, the program looks at what happens as these events fade from living memory and to the back of the collective consciousness.

 

Aerial view of the 1974 Brisbane Flood (State Library of Queensland)

 

Early European settlers ignored the warnings of Aboriginal inhabitants by building towns on flood plains. As historian Emily O’Gorman said:

“It seems to have been listened to with interest, but largely ignored. Later kind of retrospective accounts after a number of floods, people from outside Gundagai who knew about these warnings speculated that there was perhaps an element of racism at work, as well as I think the validity of oral testimony itself was in question, where the records of floods needed a numerical height to be taken seriously at that time.”

But even when prior events have been in the written historical record, and the subject of Government enquiries, lessons have not always been learned. Richard Evans, a historian who has specialised in the aftermath of natural disasters, has found a pattern in the way lessons fade from memory and are eventually lost:

“Reading the reports of various official inquiries . . . they are eerily similar. They will almost inevitably find very similar contributing factors to the severity of the disaster; they will make very similar recommendations, and they will, sad to say, usually be largely ignored in the longer term. In the short term there will be interesting commitment, but it doesn’t last more than a few years, certainly it doesn’t last decades. What really strikes me is how we have the disaster, we have the inquiry, we find out the same painful bitter lesson that too many of the people who live here don’t understand the nature of the place they’re living in, and then they forget it again. And then in the course of a generation or generation-and-a-half, the disaster recurs . . . and again we forget”

The problem, it appears, with enquiries, reports and recommendations is that they lack a permanent presence. Eventually they are retired to a shelf somewhere; there is nothing to keep the experiences and lessons learned fresh in the minds of communities over a period of decades or generations.

So can museums play a role in keeping these memories fresh and ever-present, thus helping us prepare and avert disasters better in the future? This was something that historian Helen Gregory suggested during the program:

“. . . because natural disasters are such a feature in Australia, it struck me that for instance, Victoria could have a museum of the bushfires, Brisbane could have a museum of the floods . . . there is a real, not just a community memory function in having a museum, to cover all the floods . . .because this is very much part of the city’s history and its relationship to the river. Not only is that important for the memory of the whole community, but to give people the opportunity to have their stories recorded . . . I think that Brisbane has a wonderful opportunity for developing a special repository for floods . . .”

Now obviously there are practical issues: museums are a significant capital and operational undertaking, not to be entered into lightly. But if something like this helps us better prepare for disaster in the future (perhaps in the context of an existing museum, if a dedicated museum is not feasible), it would be worthwhile.

In this vein, the theme for 2011’s International Museums Day, which is held around May 18 each year, is  “Museums and Memory”. The purpose of this theme is to highlight the role that museums can play in collecting and preserving the objects and stories which constitute a community’s memory.

Australia’s relationship with its history of natural disasters is a timely example.

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Museums and your Worldview

Does who you are affect what you can talk about?

Exhibitions don’t exist in a vacuum: people experience them in the context of the institution in which they are located. And often that institution has a long-standing reputation (call it a ‘brand’ if you like) which will influence what people expect to see there. (You wouldn’t expect an exhibition in Questacon to be the same kind of thing as an exhibition at the Australian War Memorial, for example).

To explore this idea further, let’s consider museums of science. Does an audience’s expectation-arising-from-reputation mean that science museums are obliged to present only a scientific, empirical view of the world in their exhibitions?

I’d like to explore a case study: the ‘The Science and Art of Medicine’. exhibition in London’s Science Museum. I’ll say up front that I haven’t seen this exhibition, but it is described on its website thus:

The Science and Art of Medicine gallery, one of the world’s greatest collections on the subject, reveals the history of medicine across the world and across cultures . . . A newly redisplayed section deals with other living medical traditions, including African, Chinese, Indian and Islamic practices.

17th Century Acupuncture teaching doll, one of the items on display in the exhibition (From Science Museum website; image no 10284604)

Its coverage of alternative medicine, in particular homeopathy, has apparently caused a bit of a ruckus. As one blogger said:

Depressingly, the [Science Museum] seems to have pandered to the whims of quacks by allowing them to create their own exhibit, and it looks like there was no quality control . . . [this] matters because the [museum] is supposed to promote science and understanding, not fuel an ever increasingly tiresome debate between those that painstakingly research and collect data and those that appear to pick any old idea then try to convince people it works.

The blog post closes with the statement:

Institutions like the Science Museum unfortunately do not have the luxury of sitting on the fence with issues such as these, especially when they hold a huge responsibility of informing the public.

This statement is telling – the writer seems to be just as vexed by the location of the exhibition (in a science museum) as he is about the exhibition’s content. Implicit in his statement is the assumption that the science museum is vested with a sense of authority, and from this comes a responsibility to ensure only scientifically verifiable facts are presented. Indeed, this writer and others suggested the museum should go further and expose unscientific and unsutstantiated claims wherever it can.

There was sufficient a wave of discontent for the museum and the exhibition’s curator to release an official response to the criticism, explaining their rationale for its inclusion of ‘alternative’ medicines in the display:

we take an anthropological and sociological perspective . . .we do not evaluate different medical systems, but demonstrate the diversity of medical practices and theoretical frameworks currently thriving across the world. Our message in this display is that these traditions are not ‘alternative’ systems in most parts of the world. Instead they currently offer the majority of the global population their predominant, sometimes only, choice of medical care. We do not make any claims for the validity of the traditions we present . . . We consider that these ‘alternative’ medical practices are of considerable cultural significance. We also recognise that some may consider the inclusion of these practices in the Science Museum controversial.

This statement in turn triggered its own flurry of comments, such as:

I strongly believe that something so fundamentally unscientific, really has no place in a science museum, no matter how anthropologically and sociologically interesting.

Again, the problem seems to be that the exhibition is presented in the context of ‘science’, more than the fact that the story is being told at all.

I first came across this controversy on Twitter, when someone (a scientist) posted a link to the Science Museum’s response, calling it ‘appalling’. When I retweeted the link, one of my colleagues (a historian) wondered what the fuss was all about, thinking that the inclusion of this content in a science museum was a refreshing dash of ‘anti-imperialism’.

In these different responses, I think I see a bit of a philosophical clash regarding what a museum (particularly a museum of science) is for.

One the one hand there are those who wish to promote a scientific viewpoint of the world, with all the benefits and knowledge science has brought to our lives. They might see the inclusion of alternative medicince as a kind of  slippery slope towards giving airtime to misleading claims and scare stories, leaving society the worse for it. (For instance the consequences of the so called MMR ‘scare’, where the conjuring of a false risk led to a decline in vaccination rates, thus exposing children to the real and deadly risk of diseases like measles).

On the other hand, the ‘march of progress’ narrative which is often implicit in science and technology exhibitions makes some people (in particular some museum professionals) feel a bit uncomfortable. Other experiences and perspectives can appear to be marginalised in a ‘technology trumps all’  kind of triumphalism. Science and postmodernism do indeed make odd bedfellows!

(But this is all getting a bit philosophical . . . and if I sound like I’m sitting on the fence it’s because I think I have a better view of the whole landscape from there . . .)

So let’s bring it back to visitors. What do they expect from a science museum?

There is research to suggest that visitors do see Science Museums as venerable, authoritative institutions. And this does affect the way they perceive exhibits they see there: they expect to be told clear facts and a scientific view of ‘truth’. In this context, a science museum would need to tread carefully: display does not necessarily mean endorsement, but visitors may take what they see at face value unless authorship is made extremely clear.

What this means for this particular exhibition at the Science Museum I can’t say, although I do know that the museum generally conducts thorough audience research during their exhibition planning process. It would be interesting to see what their research says about this one.

UPDATE: Sometimes you get so caught up in planet Interwebs you forget what’s sitting on your bookshelf! Following writing this blog post and others, I’ve once again picked up my copy of “The Politics of Display: Museums, Science Culture” edited by Sharon MacDonald. It looks at the political consequences of scientific displays and argues that they cannot claim to be apolitical. Have a look if you want to explore this topic further.

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More on Museum Funding and Staffing

This is another post in my series looking at the ABS’s Arts and Culture statistics, again trying to get to grips with what the published statistics are saying about the sector. Here I focus on the statistics about museum income, expenditure and staffing as detailed in Chapter 8 of the report (the ‘museum’ chapter).

As noted previously, around two-thirds of museum income comes from Government sources: either Federal, State or Local. The report breaks down income and expenditure by museum type; I’ve also shown income and expenditure streams as a percentage of the total:

Summary of Income and Expenditure by Museum Type (Source: ABS)

(Note that the income categories are a little different from that in the chart shown previously – the Government figure is the same and I’m assuming the discrepancy is down to other categorisation differences.)

This shows considerable variation in the funding mix for different museum types, with the differences between Historic Properties and Natural /Science /Other showing the biggest contrast. Whereas less than half of Historic Properties’ income comes from Government sources, Government provides three-quarters of Natural /Science /Other museums’ income. The fact that Historic Properties are far more likely to be paid admission (see here) is consistent with this and explains the higher proportion of income coming from admissions.

There is also a marked contrast in the proportion of income from fundraising, with Art Museums taking in more than triple that of Natural /Science /Other when taken as a proportion of total income. Given the fact that both of these categories are likely to represent some of the larger and national museums (the reasons for this are given in the previous post), it seems that either Art Galleries are punching well above their weight in the fundraising stakes, or Natural /Science /Other museums are lagging behind somewhat (or maybe a bit of both). Another possibility that cannot be ruled out is that one-off capital grants (which are included in the Government funding total) have skewed the figures in this particular financial year.

On the expenditure front, I was surprised at how little (as a proportion of total expenditure) is spent on exhibition and display development. Given exhibitions are the main public face of the museum, and that exhibitions are typically quite expensive to produce, I would have thought it would have come in much higher than a tiny 4% (on average) of total expenditure.

The other thing that surprised me was the relatively high proportion spent on exhibitions by Art Museums (7%) as opposed to the much lower figures spent by other museum types. I can’t think of anything inherently more expensive about mounting art exhibitions and wonder whether the increased cost is down to an increased frequency of exhibition changeover in Art Galleries, rather than anything inherent in the cost of mounting a given exhibition. (Assuming Art Galleries do indeed change over exhibitions more frequently, that is!)

It should also go without saying that having a category called ‘other’ that accounts for half of museums’ operating expenses makes interpretation or generalisation from these data somewhat difficult.

Just to see what would happen, I took these income figures from above and divided them by the number of museums and number of visitors (paid and free admission) to each museum type (as provided earlier in the ABS report and summarised here).  Among other things, this shows the amount of Government subsidy per visitor to each museum type:

Income per museum and per visitor by museum type (as derived from ABS report, Ch8)

(I should add a disclaimer here: these figures have been derived by combining numbers from two completely separate tables in the ABS report. This may or may not be a valid way to treat these data. You have been warned . . . )

This bears out what the other table indicated – Historic Properties gain a higher income from their visitors ($6.95/visitor) ; Natural /Science /Other museums attract a greater Government subsidy for each visitor they attract ($34.65 per visitor).

Presenting Government subsidy in this way is pretty sobering in general really: with Government (Federal, State, Local) support coming in at an average of $21 per visitor, I can see the need for us to demonstrate real value and benefit. Conversely, it would be interesting to see how this figure relates to per-visit / per-use subsidies for the rest of the arts and cultural sector – that $21 may well represent excellent value when the full cost-benefit and comparison analysis is done.

So to look at expenses more closely, manipulating expenses in a similar way to what I did with income, it seems that the main reason Natural /Science /Other Museums are more expensive to run is due to staffing costs:

Museum expenses expressed per museum and per visitor (as derived from ABS figures)

As indicated previously, I think the Natural /Science /Other category is more likely to include large institutions (I’m thinking the Australian Museum, SA Museum, Melbourne Museum, etc. would all fit into this category); all of which have relatively large public programs teams, design departments, and so forth. The Art Gallery category would also include its fair share of large insitutions, but this is probably balanced by many other smaller and regional galleries.

So how do these staff costs break down? According to the ABS report, 7,856 people were employed in museums (June 2008).  At the same time, there were 23,426 people working as volunteers in museums:

Overview of employees and volunteers by museum type (Source ABS)

As with all the figures which are averaged out ‘per museum’, interpret with caution as it’s a pretty blunt instrument. That said, there is a marked difference between categories with respect to the ‘average’  number of employees and the numbers of volunteers (and their ratios to paid staff). These differences would definitely appear to explain the differences in staff costs.

I also wonder whether the cause of the difference in volunteer ratios is supply-side (i.e. social history museums are more willing to take on volunteers), or demand-side (i.e. people who wish to volunteer are more likely to choose social history). It could also be a bit of both: social history and historic sites tend to be smaller, local organisations with relatively low staff numbers and more dependent on volunteers; conversely because they are ‘local’, they may be more attractive to volunteers either through geographic convenience or because their impact is more visible than it would be if they part of larger institution’s ‘machine’.

Museum employees are broken down by category; I’ve shown the supplied numbers and have also presented them as a percentage of the total number of employees by museum type:

Breakdown of museum employees by job category (Source: ABS)

So for instance, the bottom row of this table shows that 31% of Art Gallery employees fall within in the ‘Security’ category, whereas this category only accounts for 20% of Natural /Science /Other Museum employees; 26% of museum employees across the board are ‘security’ personnel.  I’m not sure if any of these proportions leap out at me for being noteworthy or unusual, however.

As always, your insights and comments are very welcome . . .

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Museum visits in Australia: breakdown by type

It’s taken me a while to get back to it, but here is another instalment of my review of the ABS Arts and Culture statistics for 2010 (previously referred to here and here).

Chapter 8 gets into museum attendance in more detail, breaking down visits to Art Galleries, Social History Museums, Historic Properties, and Natural, Science & Other Museums (in some cases categorised as ‘Art Galleries’ and ‘Everything Else’).

The ABS recognises a total of 1183 museums across Australia; 14% of which are Art Museums/ Public Galleries. The most common museum type is Social History Museums, comprising some 60% of the total.

In the 12 months leading up to when data were collected, 7.2 million people aged 15 years or over (45% of the population) visited museums or art galleries. (This figure and the age breakdowns are essentially the same as reported previously, so I won’t elaborate again here).

Approximately 55% of these museum and gallery visitors were women. The proportion of women rises to 57% in art galleries, falling to an average 53% to all other museums types.

The statistics also report total number of admissions to each museum type, and whether they are paid or free admissions, and I’ve reproduced and manipulated these figures (summarised below) to see what would emerge.

Australian museum types and attendance figures (Source: ABS, Arts and Culture Statistics 2010, Ch8)

NB: The base numbers this table is derived from came with a health warning, as things like free admissions are notoriously difficult to measure with confidence. There are also a number of caveats associated with the reported number of each museum type – so interpret these data with caution!

The first thing I did was take the reported figures for free and paid admission and see how the proportions of each compared by museum type. As you can see, Art Galleries lead the charge with 83% of admissions being free, whereas only 31% of entries at Historic Properties were free. (Given the typical operational and funding models of these respective organisations, there is no real surprise there).

Then I took the attendance figures and divided them by the number of museums in each category, to get a mean attendance for each. Taking this very crude measure, an ‘average’ Art Gallery attracts 78,500 visits a year and Natural/ Science/ Other museums attract 89,200 on average. This compares to 12,300 at Social History museums and 15,100 at Historic Properties. Again this makes intuitive sense, given the majority of the big state and national museums fall into one of the former two categories.

The final thing I did was to see what ‘share’ of the total museum attendance each museum type was attracting. This essentially reflects the same data but just in a slightly different way – and it shows that Art Galleries and Natural/ Science/ Other museums attract about 3x more visitors than if visitation were spread evenly among all museum types.

Ok, so no real surprises in those numbers. The real surprise for today came from back in Chapter 5, which was about employee earnings and hours worked in the cultural sector.

There are statistics for full-time adult non-managerial employees (i.e. excludes self-employed) in the broader ‘cultural’ sector. So pretty broad-brush stuff, but still some stark results. In the category of ‘arts professionals’  (which is not defined more specifically in this report), it reports that in August 2008 males were working an average of 33.2 hours per week, and earning $1,454 (in other words, $43.80/hr). By way of contrast, females at the same time were working 35.1 hours per week and earning $967 ($27.55 / hr). So for ostensibly the same category of work, women are earning only 63% as much as men.

The category is so general as to make it hard to draw conclusions, but the gap is so great it’s hard to interpret it in any other way but that women in the arts are being seriously underpaid relative to their male counterparts. And for a sector that has a reputation for being female-dominated, that really shocked me.