Display Case - A Little Help From A Friend

A Little Help from a Friend

By Stephen Wood

My name is Steve, and I’m a museumaholic. Things could be worse, I suppose.

I’ve lived in Connecticut since I went to school here in 1991. Since then, I’ve lived in seven different towns across this small yet surprisingly diverse state. I’ve hiked and camped and biked all over. I thought I knew this state pretty well. After all, one can drive across the state along I-84 from Union to Danbury in about 90 minutes. But it turns out I didn’t know anything about my home state.

My wife and I had our first child in late January 2006. Among other far more important things, this meant that our previously enjoyed lengthy vacations would be put on hold for a while. I shifted my daydreams and sought new, closer-to-home activities.

Day after day on my way to pick up my son in New Britain after work, I would pass a particular sign just off the highway. It said, “Youth Museum ... Museum of American Art ... Industrial Museum.” I knew what the Youth Museum was, and the New Britain Museum of American Art is fairly well known in these parts. But nobody I knew had any inkling as to the Industrial Museum’s existence, let alone what it was all about.

This got me thinking. Why not try to visit all the museums in Connecticut? Sure, it would take a while, but I had time—and how hard could it be to visit maybe 100, 150 places tops? That’s when Connecticut Museum Quest came to life.

I began scouring the Internet to gather my list. Days turned into weeks as I searched for hidden gems, historical societies and out-of-the-way collections. The list grew to 200, 300, 400. There are gray areas—small historical societies in tiny town libraries with a few old maps as well as the various small art galleries and questionable collections. My arbitrary system of “museum worthiness” is always subject to change and impossible to quantify. This is my quest after all, and really, with more than 430 places to visit, who’s going to complain?

That’s it—the genesis and growth of a slightly insane idea. I’m just over two years into this adventure and am often asked the same series of questions from docents, friends, local editors and random e-mailers. I’ve come to believe that I represent a unique focus group—a focus group of one, who can provide some valuable insight into what works and what doesn’t for museums in 2009.

Why are you doing this?I get this from the museum guides more than anyone, and I don’t begrudge them this question. Ask yourself how many times a lone 36-year-old guy comes into your historic house museum armed with a camera, questions, pen and paper who is not a reporter for the local free paper. Never? I’m always happy to explain that this is my hobby but ask not to be treated any differently than anyone else who may just happen to ask to see the storeroom.

What’s your favorite museum or type of museum? So far, I’ve visited more than 80 museums in the state, and I don’t have an answer to this. I’ve been to great children’s museums with my son, and I’ve been to some pretty uninspiring ones. I’ve been bored out of my skull at one historic house and wowed by another one on the same street. I think the different genres of museums are so distinctly unique that it’s impossible to fairly compare them.

What’s your least favorite museum or type of museum? That’s easy: Ones that are closed during hours when they are supposed to be open. This happens far too often. If you want visitors, please be open when you say you will be—or at least post a letter of apology. Not many people are going to make a second effort to visit you.

Okay, but what type of museum needs the most help?Historic house museums. I’m not sure how non-New England states stack up to our 190 or so house museums here, but I’m sure Connecticut is near the top of the pile. That is a lot of old houses with gambrel roofs, stone hearths, wide-planked flooring, root cellars, spinning wheels and “sleep tight” beds. Trust me, they tend to bleed together after a while. The ones that stand out are those with personality. Tell me about the people who lived there. What did they do on a daily basis? What did they see through their windows 200 years ago? How did they survive our harsh winters? An old chair is just an old chair until you tell me who sat in it. If you don’t know, hypotheticals are perfectly fine.

Which museum cliché do you hear the most? There’s an old joke of a cliché that has probably been told countless times up and down the Atlantic coast between Virginia and Massachusetts—something about “Washington slept here.” In reality, there’s one thing that is said and printed more often: “Washington may have slept here.” Please stop that.

By blogging about each museum, are you potentially limiting visitors? Some think that people will read about a museum online, see my pictures and feel as though they’ve visited. My response to this is, “How was that lobster risotto at the new restaurant that was just reviewed in the paper? Oh, you haven’t had it yet?” I’m confident I’m generating interest in a broad audience of Web-savvy readers who most likely hadn’t even heard of your museum previously. I’ve gotten countless e-mails from readers excitedly telling me that they will now visit a particular place I wrote about. I’ve not once gotten the opposite response.

So, how can we promote ourselves online better? Ah, good question, because there is a huge opportunity for most museums online. When I set out to compile my list, I figured a few online searches would do the trick. This was far from the case, as I’d guess about a third of museums have no Web presence at all. In the interim, Wikipedia now has a pretty solid list of Connecticut museums—thanks to me and another dedicated list-compiler. But that still means there are many museums devoid of any meaningful Web content. If your museum doesn’t have a dedicated site, people are not going to find you. (Unless a blogger has visited, of course.) If nothing else, at least, create a Wikipedia page with a few sentences about who and what you are, along with your hours, a contact phone number and an e-mail address.

You can promote yourselves online for free with a minimum of know-how. I was shocked to learn that museums pay to stick their brochures in the racks at rest stops. Online exposure will be infinite and not limited to weary travelers stopping to use the bathroom.

What can museums do better in general? Partner with other local or similarly themed museums. The smaller you are, the more you should do this. If there are two little museums within a couple of miles of each other, and you each charge $2, why not charge $3 for both? Of course, this requires you knowing the existence of the other museum—something that rarely happens. If the “buy one get one half price” works at the Piggly Wiggly, why not at the Washington May or May Not Have Slept Here and the Washington Totally Slept Here and Even Used the Facilities museums?

Museums could also create “passport” or “trail” programs. Connecticut has an “Art Trail” consisting of 15 museums, but this is in name only. Why not print little booklets that visitors can get stamped at certain museums and, upon completion, they have earned free passes for a future visit or two ... or three? There are many ways to creatively partner with your brethren—scavenger hunts spring to mind—and there are plenty of people who like to complete lists for fun and for free things.

Thanks, Mr. Know-It-All. Are you done? With this article, yes. But my very rewarding and ceaselessly fun Museum Quest is far from complete. I think the work that every museum professional and volunteer does is invaluable and incalculable. My wish is for no museum to have to close (thus far, two I’ve visited have been shuttered), and by promoting what you do through my blog, I hope to spur some ideas to keep them all up and running.

Stephen Wood lives in West Hartford, Conn., with his wife and three-year-old son and works in the insurance industry when he’s not visiting or writing about museums. His blog can be found at www.ctmuseumquest.com.