Communities Building the Museums of the Future

• By Matthew Fisher
• July 1, 2009

I recently had the pleasure of presenting for the board of the nascent Envision Peace Museum regarding my ideas on how they might utilize the web to support their mission. It got me thinking about social media, online community-building and envisioning the future of museums, both online and off, and I am posting my thoughts here for those who are interested:

When considering museum missions these days, I am struck by an emerging movement. Many missions go something like "We collection and preserve X to educate and inform for the betterment of all". But others are more along the lines of "bringing objects and people together to produce dynamic experiences" or "inspiring curiosity and creativity by engaging the public". This is more than a shifting of emphasis from being collections-centric to becoming visitor-centric. No longer are museums simply collecting and preserving, or simply informing and educating. Instead, museums are sources of inspiration and transformation. While they have always embodied these principles at their core, they did so through the prism of collecting and preserving, educating and informing. But a museum is not its collection, nor is it simply its people.

Rather the true realization of the museum is the intersection of ideas and people, and the transformation that this catalytic relationship produces. The museum experience is this oft intangible, sometimes unexpected and always vibrant thing that is created when the two are brought together in innovative and engaging ways. Museum theorist and author Hilde Hein conceives of museums, all museums, as works of public art. Not public art in the conventional sense, but rather the theoretical concept of the evocative relationship between art and the public that inspires us, reflects back both on us and to us, and changes us – fundamentally. Some examples that come to mind are Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Gates, The Bebelplatz Book Burning Memorial in Berlin or the Mural Arts Program right here in Philadelphia. Public art that engages us in dialog, inspires us to think and act differently. In short, an experience that transforms us.

I think museums are at a crossroads, once again, in their history. One the one hand, funding has never been more competitive. The U.S. has over 17,500 museums which is, from what I understand, more than the rest of the world combined. And current economic factors are such that fewer funding resources are available than ever before for which this growing population of museums must compete. On the other hand, expectations of the museum experience have never been higher. Beyond collections of objects, beyond engaging exhibitions with audio, video and interactivity, now museums feel the demand for immersive experiences. Museum-goers expect to feel the wind in their hair, the earth shake and their spine tingle. Meeting these expectations is becoming increasingly costly and time-consuming. Many museums feel they must compete with Disney, but with a fraction of the budget. They put all of their efforts into animatronic actors, immersive theaters and sound and light shows, as if to make their visitors feel that they are the ball, bouncing around the pinball machine.

This is, in my opinion, a fundamental mistake. Museums will never compete with Disney. And while engaging, visitor-centric exhibits are certainly a worthwhile direction to go in; the core transformational potential that museums offer can only be partially realized through these efforts. Instead, museums must focus on facilitating, encouraging and evoking connections to, and among, their visitors. It is not enough to tell stories, but to elicit them. To ask questions and listen to the answers. To enable participation that not only impacts the participant, but other visitors, and the museum itself. In short, it is about transformation through dialog.

Now these concepts are not new – they have been around for decades. But it wasn’t until the Internet came along that the democratization of ideas moved from being a concept with limited application to a reality. And even then, in the Web 1.0 era the Internet was still dominated by traditional thought-leaders and institutions involved in a one-way communication. Which brings me to Web 2.0. For museums, until recently, the Internet was also largely about presenting collections surrounded by dynamic storytelling, immersive games, video and audio. Don’t misunderstand me. Similar to onsite immersive experiences, I think these online immersive experiences have a wonderful and vital role in fulfilling the museum mission. But they are not an end in and of themselves. It is not enough to simply tell your story and exhibit your collection, online or off.

Thanks to the recent advances of Web 2.0 and social media, we have entered into a fundamentally new era online. This is a true democratization of ideas and a platform for dialog unlike any before it. It is redefining community, participation and voice. It is redefining every aspect of our lives, and museums are no exception. But here, with many museums, there is significant resistance. Social media can be messy, and museums at their origins are about order – catalogs and collections and archives. Social media challenges our ideas of authority and trust, two key pillars in museums’ foundation. Social media is dominated by younger people, folks under 40 (I cast a wide net). The core community for museums – including leadership, funders and members – is primarily baby boomers and older.

But consider this: By 2010, Millennials will outnumber Baby Boomers in the U.S. Already, Gen X and Millennials together exceed boomers in onsite museum visitation, according to a recent Smithsonian survey. Even if you ignore that more and more Boomers are on facebook and blogging, and thus are closing the digital divide from their end, it is clear that museums must utilize social media to reach their emerging target audiences. And with Millennials raised on the Internet and video games, simply reaching them is not enough. You must engage them, allow them to participate, to have a voice, to make an impact. Social theorists are calling this generation the "hero" or "civic" generation. They are doers, not simply visitors.

And this new generation have very different attitudes about power and authority. They embrace non-hierarchical communities and the wisdom of the crowd. And while these new models of knowledge construction certainly challenge conventional ones, as one of the public’s most trusted sources of information according to the IMLS, I would argue that museums are not in danger of losing their coveted status as authorities by embracing these new models. In fact, one could argue in this age of radical trust and the wisdom of the crowd, a surefire way for museums to lose credibility in the eyes of the emerging demographic is to shun social media, the blogosphere and crowdsourced knowledge communities (like Wikipedia). Because knowledge construction is no longer solely in the hands of the elite. Instead the community builds it through dialog, just as the community can and should build our museums through dialog, both onsite and online.

And this is what I propose to you today. To effectively build your museum you should begin with building your community and fostering dialog within it. And while I encourage you to do so locally, face-to-face, I recommend that you reach out internationally, online. Your website should not be a marketing brochure about your museum, a repository for online exhibitions, or even a resource for visitors to plan their visit and learn about your programs. It should be a hub that encompasses all of these things within a framework of dialog, discussion and engagement. Your online community, like any locus of community, should be a platform for the exchange of ideas, a forum for debate, storytelling and sharing.

As the Envision Peace Museum builds support over the coming years, your only “site” will be your website. Rather than a hindrance, I think you should consider this an advantage. For in building a vibrant and engaged online community you will be better positioned to understand the needs of your visitors, elicit their input and their support, and design your building with truly participatory community involvement. And nothing will better prepare you for building a truly participatory museum than this.

But your website is much more than a means to an end, be it a building or otherwise. As digital connectivity skyrockets in the years to come through mobile devices and social media, the lines between online and offline will continue to fade. You will find yourselves building a physical museum that shares more with its virtual presence than you or I can possibly imagine today. And with your museum in particular, a museum of ideas, this is even more applicable than for those rooted in physical collections and objects. Again, rather than seeing this as a crutch, embrace it as an opportunity to truly build a museum without walls, one that the visitor can participate in and contribute to from anywhere.

So how do you go about this? Well, like any community-building effort, it is a multi-faceted approach. It begins with your mission and builds out from there. How is your museum going to act as a catalyst, a transformative agent? Is it through inspiration, education, or action? If so, then compelling online exhibits about contemporary and historical peace movements are essential. Thought leaders in the field should be blogging about contemporary and commemorative events. A social network of like-minded members should be brought together to share profiles, stories and discussion threads. Online programs and initiatives supporting and enhancing global peace efforts should be implemented. And within and around all of these should be opportunities to comment, to dialog and to contribute. Your site should become a hub for participation and action in addition to a resource and an inspiration.

But you should engage your community online beyond the walls of your website, just as we engage our community in the physical world beyond the walls of our homes. On the social web we engage in many places in a variety of ways, just as we do in the physical world. So there is facebook to network and connect, promote events and initiatives. There is twitter to communicate with your followers in real time. There is wikipedia, where you can contribute to the shared knowledge and perception of your organization and related topics. There’s youTube and flickr, where you can engage like-minded communities through photos and videos. In short, the sum of your organization’s influence online will be mapped to your involvement across all of these communities, not simply your own. And this involvement should not be relegated to the PR team, but rather it should be a commitment across your entire team – curators, educators, development – to participate in the global dialog. And likewise, through RSS, email subscriptions and social bookmarking you should allow your community to access and share your message beyond your site, allowing them to foster community for and with you.

Filed under: trends