This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. In the current political climate, the work museums are doing to become more human and empathic may be misunderstood both internally and externally, and the latest data by a leading museum research consulting firm already indicates a lowering of public trust in museums. In this recorded session, panelists and attendees will explore the relationship between public trust and the changes the museum field is making, using examples from various types of museums to understand how we can better formulate policies and communicate while building trust among staff, visitors, and non-visitors.

Transcript

Gail Lord:

Welcome, welcome, welcome. Well firstly, thank you very much for joining this session. The goal of this session is not just to have us talk, although we have incredible speakers, it’s true. Oh my god, it’s silent all of a sudden, but we want to have the last half hour be conversations and storytelling with you all. So, we have a room with a lot of tables, but what I we’ve had a little high-level conversation among the panel and this is what we suggest eventually, we’re going to form groups of like discussion groups.

This is just to say stay where you are now, but this is like a preview of what we’d like to happen after everyone makes their presentations about eight minutes each so that works out to about 58 minutes depending on how long I talk now actually. We’re going to use this row if you think of each think of these as rows. So, row one is going to be a themed and John Hampton is going to be the facilitator of this row and you’re going to hear him speak so you know you’ll know. This row is help me here Yvonne please help me what’s number two?

You’ll see you don’t have to remember to remember, but just think about, and you don’t even have to know now where you want to go, this row is going to be the second thing that we’re talking about. Building trust.

So, ah, this row is all about trust, right? Now, you’re going to ask you before to try and have Gadot on two tables. If you ask me about that, it’s early for me, too, by the way. Okay, So this row is going to be the basic building trust and that is going to be facilitated by Susie Wilkening. The problem is she can’t facilitate a row, so we like people who are interested in that topic to gather around the front two tables and maybe you’ll push the tables together TBD we’ll see how many people it is and this area, so the front two tables now are going to be for community and that’s going to be facilitated by Yvonne Tang. You don’t have to stay where you can move wherever you want.

Oh, you can move wherever you want. And it’s– yeah, I don’t know what I can do. I’m having enough trouble with this. God forbid when I start to talk. So, the thing is that just to tell you that you will be moving somewhere– or this is kind of good, it’s OK. I’m not one of these people who is trained to speak with a microphone and wander around. I was trained in the era where if you get to talk, you stand at the podium and you do your best. Okay. And then a different generation.

So — and then the fourth row, which will be the front two tables of the fourth row, is the theme of staff and visitors. So again, if that’s where you feel so moved to go, you will move to that row. This may not be clear, but it will become clear. Just saying, you know, when you get comfortable, it’s really horrible to be asked to move. I am somebody who will sit in the same place at the same table day after day after day. That’s my job as a consultant, that’s what I do. So, I know it’s not comfortable to move, but it’s gonna be great because we’re gonna have a discussion.

So firstly, let me welcome you to this session. You can sort of see this in somewhat crazy, oh, where’s the clicker thing? Thank you. You can see how.

A lot of symbolism here. If this looks like 1984, there is a symbol of somehow, i.e. the movie or the novel, depending on your taste. This is kind of, we’re moving in this session from a kind of faceless mass to a highly individual perception and conversation about our experiences with the subject of trust and well-being. So, we chose something will take us from this kind of neutral blend territory.  So, Anna’s not here, our designer, but she found this picture at the last minute, and I somehow thought it was shocking enough to actually like.

So, this is, oh, I should have shown you this before. I’m sorry. So, this is the order of speaking. Some of you will have seen the promotional material that we put out. So, I’m the facilitator, my name is Gail Lord. I’m going to introduce the panelists, and I’m going to tell you for about two minutes why trust and well -being are connected and why this is such an important topic, and why we’re so glad that you’re here.

And I really need to thank you, 8.30 on the last day of the conference isn’t easy.

John Hampton, pardon me, is going to be speaking about, you can see, more human museums, and that is going to be the theme of this row. Got it. Okay. The third area is Susie Wilkening. I’m going to introduce her in a minute. Yeah, thank you. And then the fourth on our agenda is putting you into community. That’s Yvonne Tang.

Susie, have a one, two, three, four, and then finally towards civility and belonging for both visitors and employees and that is what Christie is going to be talking about and then facilitating the tables about that. Now, if you think it’s easy to find a place for water here, it’s not. It’s all, it’s all like, it’s okay, I’ll be fine. Okay, so that’s what we’re doing and thank you very much for coming.

So firstly, I want to introduce our panelists and I’m going to introduce myself a little bit, then I’m going to speak for two minutes, and then we’re going to get going. So firstly, I’m overwhelmed by the attendance. Thank you all for being here.

So, you can see this. This is, I’m not going to read this, but this is why we’re here.

So, museums clearly are all about empathy and humanity. We try to be very, very hard, but there are challenges. And so today what we’re going to do is really explore those challenges, and we’re going to share experiences about them. And at the core is, of course, the theme of this conference, which is well-being, and we’re adding this word trust. And there’s a reason for it, which I’d like to talk to you about.

It’s said by philosophers that first and others like anthropologists too and other experts. The trust is one of those aspects of life that is uniquely characteristic of our species. Now, of course, I think you all know as good museum workers, that every time human beings come up with, oh, communication is unique to our species, we find out that a lot of other species, if not all of them, communicate. And then we say, OK, well, work is what’s really unique to our species, and then, of course, research shows that, no, indeed, a lot of other species work, and so on and on and on.

Well, the latest thing is that trust is unique to our species. I don’t know if it’s true or not. Most likely, we’re going to find out that whales, especially because they’re the mammals with the biggest brains, also experience trust, but that research hasn’t been done yet. Trust is really an important, relatively new arena of research. But let’s say that it is very important to our species. And it’s said to be essential to both our well-being and our survival. And I’m not going to rehearse all the information. I’m sure you’re going to find it. But what I thought was extraordinarily interesting for us, because we’re here to talk about trust and museums and well-being of museums, trust among our staff and ourselves, if you’re a staff or you’re a manager, you’re a leader, and trust with the public. We’re interested in what is the museum situation, that’s why we come to this conference.

And then of course, we’re interested as individuals and also for our staff and our visitors, how does this relate to well-being? Because that’s why we came to this conference in the first place. And I think that What I’ve deduced from my little bit of research is that in trusting, and this is where perhaps it’s very especially human, we are showing our vulnerability to others. Trust and vulnerability go hand in hand.

And that’s tough. And I think we’re all experiencing that in our work, how difficult that is. This trust vulnerability access, if you like, is essential to our capacity to work together, to live together, to solve problems together and that is a very great superpower of human beings, our ability to work together to solve problems. So today we’re all here as museum people, we’re going to explore the relationship between trust, our institutions, and maybe our vulnerabilities as well, and certainly our well-being and I welcome you to it and I especially welcome having such a brilliant panel.

So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to introduce each member of the panel, and we’ve given cards at your table so you can see their pictures. My picture is 15 years old. No, this is a good one. My picture on the book leaflet is 15 years ago, those are the days, and my picture on the card is actually, I believe, as I look today, but everybody else is really as they look.

So, the first person is John Hampton. John is the executive director and CEO of the McKenzie Art Gallery in Regina. They entered the arts through studio practice and then started their career in the Artist Ron Center community as a curator at Neutral Ground. He was an artistic director at Trinity Square Video, so he has a great background in the arts and technology. Then they previously served as curator-in presidents at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and Executive Director of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba. Now some of you may not know where those places are. I myself live in Toronto, so I know where those places are, but as John will tell you, someone who lives in Toronto doesn’t know where any of those other places are, so just feel comfortable. Most of them are in Western Canada, which you might call Central U.S., I don’t know, but It’s a slightly different world from the one that we’re in right now, and an important one.

Hampton is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, and he examines in his work the intersections of Western and Indigenous culture through his practice, policy, and theoretical writing. So, John, we’re so pleased to have you here, but you don’t get to speak because I’m gonna interview everybody, I’m gonna talk to everybody at once, and then you just kind of follow along so that we’ll be the maximum efficiency of our time.

I think Suzie Wilkening requires no introduction to most of you. She does the most interesting research, in my opinion, most valuable, on the museum sector, has been doing work of this type in our sector for over 25 years. The thing about Suzie that’s so amazing is that she actually makes data understandable. And for people like me, that’s actually a big challenge, and she’s going to present some amazing slides that take us through all the situation today, which is changing all the time about trust in museums and the importance of it. So, Susie, I’m not giving you a full introduction, but it is so impressive and so wonderful.

Yvonne Tang is a colleague of mine at Lord Cultural Resources. Yvonne is the director of our visitor experience group work that we do which includes interpretive planning which is the weirdest word of all because what does it say it says that we museums for all the trust people having us we still think of our work as translation we have to find  another word for it but anyway that’s something that might come up today she’s had 25 years of experience in museums including nearly 20 years leading custom projects for museums and groundbreaking national research on the role of museums in communities. And her focus, and she’s also in the book, is all about museums and communities. And she calls it putting the you in community.

And that’s great. And then, and I know, I wanna talk a little bit about Christy Coleman. We think we met each other, but in fact, I’m such a big fan of hers, and I was so thrilled that she could make time to be on our panel. And she accepted right away. And Christie has spent over 35 years in museum and cultural work. She served as the chief executive officer of some of the nation’s most prominent museums. She’s a tireless advocate for the power of museums. Narrative, this is a good one, narrative correction. And I think what you do always, what you used to do on, I don’t think, are you active on Twitter still? Somewhat, less. Yeah, I know we all feel the same way about it, but what’s the replacement? Anyway, it’s so corrective. I think that that’s really fantastic. She’s always correcting the record with real research. She’s a tireless advocate for the power of museums and diversity and inclusiveness. And we’re just thrilled that she’s part of this panel.

So, I think that we have an amazing group of people, but we’re about to meet. We’re going to each speak for like six to eight minutes so that we can have your insights and I think probably you’re even more amazing. So, I’ll just say, oh my God, that wasn’t too bright. I was supposed to do that when I introduced the people. 8:30 is not my favorite time, guys. No matter what time zone I’m in. So, there we all are. And you see, it’s not a bad picture of all of us and you’re gonna meet us all.

Okay, I have to say a worried about my company, Lord Cultural Resources. Many of you will have heard of us. These are where our offices are. We started in the log cabin. It’s really true. 42 years ago, my husband and I, and we have grown. And thanks to so many people in this room, we are quite successful in our goal, which is to make the world a better place through culture, which includes city planning, urban planning, cultural planning. But our big focus always has and from day one, and always will be the museum sector.

And we contribute books to the field, and those are some of the books. And yes, there is a new book. And yes, you can get it online. And yes, you can get a 30% discount. And no, we are not publishers. And no, we don’t earn our income by selling books. But we write books because we love the sector. So that’s me. And I’m going to ask John to please come up and start us off. And We’re going to proceed with this wonderful meeting. Thanks. I don’t follow.

John Hampton:

Oh, there’s the book plug there. [LAUGHTER] Can I just say one thing?

Gail Lord:

Yeah. All right. Everybody now knows I’m left-handed. That’s my big excuse. And I have a real problem coordinating things. But I somehow managed. OK. (audience laughing)

John Hampton:

Okay, thanks, Gail. (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) That means, the last one means I look after art. That’s our translation for being an executive director, a curator, any role, really, within an art gallery. So, I’m very grateful to be here, thanks you all for coming. I say them pronouns and I’ve been asked to start us off with a little bit of a story as well.

So, I feel like about maybe two or three of you know this story but because I’m from way up in Canada then there’s plenty of people won’t have heard of it, but so I call it the Northern Great Plains, and my nation’s from the Southern Great Plains there, and looking at that unity across Turtle Island and that continent is how I like to think about that territory.

So, this is where I’m situated, it’s the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, in Oskanika, Zategi, which means pile of bones, named for the genocide of the buffalo there in the forced starvation of the local nations there.

But my story starts with a site visit from an artist that was coming to do a studio visit — or coming to do a visit for their solo exhibition looking at the West’s simultaneous obsession with defining and consuming the other. The artist is Divya Mera, based out of Winnipeg, Manitoba. And while she was there, she wanted to do a little research into our collection and the site and get some context for the exhibition.

And she came across this peculiar item in the collection, which was labeled Vishnu knew and people who might recognize that this is maybe not a male deity up there depicted and so she her interest was struck by that so she started doing some research and then she came we went for dinner that night and she came just all fired up and then shared what she had found and she had gone through our big leather tomes, which I’m sure many of you have around your early acquisitions.

This was from — this object was from the original bequest from our namesake, Norman McKenzie, and he had dictated the story in the book, in his own words, talking about how he came by this object. And so, he said that, you know, like a lot of his contemporaries, he had these high ideals of gathering the culture from around the world and sharing it with the local community in Regina and building a museum one day. And so he traveled mostly to British colonies and collecting objects as well as European artworks and he was visiting India and traveling down the Ganges River and they pulled up to a got and saw an active shrine there where there were three idols that people were currently worshiping at. And he told his guide, “I need an idol, just like one of those.” And he got in an argument, and they said, “No, no, I think the word’s here that a Hindu will never part with their God.” And so, after that he saw somebody had overheard and knew what they were talking about. So, he went and talked to the shadowy figure, and later that night that that man showed up to his hotel room with a box and then revealed the very three idols that were in that shrine.

And he said, “No, very benevolently said, ‘No, I can’t possibly take these.’ This would be a great affront to the British government for he to take these idols. And so, then if you take them all back, go return to the shrine, reinstall two of them, and then if I see those two installed, I’ll buy the small one. And so that’s how this ended up in the McKenzie collection.

And so, she told me this story and shared the documents over ramen and said, “For the exhibition, I would like to have that object return to India.” And I said immediately yes, because I was naive. I wasn’t CEO at the time. I was director of programs, so without much experience with repatriation. And so, I immediately said, “Yes, that’s amazing.” And we started thinking about impossible scenarios of finding the original shrine where it was and reinstalling it. So, then we got into the actual work of that.

What’s my next slide? Oh, there’s Divya there. And so, Divya, through her research, she talked to Sadatasha who helped identify that No, this was not Vishnu, this was Annapurna, who is actually the queen of the city from which the idol was taken, Varanasi, which made it even a worse offense. And then I started doing the back behind the scenes work, got an updated appraisal. The appraisal came back at 1500 Canadian dollars, is what they said that this idol was worth. And it’s an object, we haven’t exhibited it much, but we had it a couple times, but it primarily lived within the vault. And so, we said, does anyone really even want this back? But we persevered and said, this is important. And then the artist was producing our work around this process too. And boy, we were just completely wrong about that assessment would anybody want it, because when we went through that process and talked, oh here, automatically changed.

[Background noise] So here it is upon the return to India that 24/7 media coverage happening around this, millions of people gathered to pay respect. It traveled on the Silver Palaquan here. A four-day journey, visited 12 communities, and they renovated the Annapurna Shrine at the most sacred area near the original site of where it was taken, and then they reinvested her into the idol because upon breaking that idol, then you lose that presence of the God there, and it was just fundamentally profound to see this disconnect between the different ways of valuing these objects.

So Prime Minister Modi made a national address there saying It was a proud day for all Indians.

And then– and we had our exhibition. And Divya produced, as part of this project, this new artwork called There’s Nothing You Can Possess, Which I Cannot Take Away, Not Vishnu, New Ways of Tarasana. And this is– that’s it. On the left in the exhibition, she exhibition, she purchased that sack from a

Hollywood memorabilia store and put it on the shrine and then filled it with sand.

That’s the equivalent weight of that statue. And there it is in storage in the drawer, in the outline of

where that’s idol used to be kept. And so, it retains the links to those records. It still has the same accession number from the original piece, but then it has that full story and holds that space to cover that history and that story and allows us to talk about our institution’s founding and those movements through time.

And one of the things that’s, I find really interesting about this work is that the idol was displayed 15 years before this project in an exhibition called Raiders of the Lost Vault. And so, it wasn’t a secret that that same story was included in there as well. And it was, but it was displayed under a different context.

It was an adventure. It was Mackenzie buying things from Edgar Banks, who supposedly the influence for Indiana Jones was put as an exciting story to tell.

And I’m sharing it like an interesting story. But so, the object hadn’t changed. The story hadn’t changed, but how we view it had. And so, we no longer were viewing it from that objective distance of the museum effect, but we had new eyes on it that hadn’t been conditioned to view it in that detached theme, but approach, but then to see the human elements within that, and that it was a sacred idol stolen from an active shrine, mislabeled and undervalued for over a hundred years.

And so, in these types of processes and movements within our institutions and these individual actions, there can certainly be fears about loss of objects, about loss of reputation around using, you know, the name of our institution, for example. And sometimes there’s just that momentum of business as usual that can blind us, but we’re all charged with caring for culture at our respective territories. And sometimes that means that we are in the business of giving things away, giving things to others who can care for them better than we can. And when we are able to do that, then we can see audience engagement at a level that’s more profound than we were able to do for that object in any iteration of our institution.

And with that, I want to say this artwork, originally it was just going to be an individual artwork, but Divya, just right before they and realized she wanted to conceptualize it as an addition of 10. And so, one has been sold, that’s this one here. So, there’s still nine available.

That’s the end. Thank you.

Susie Wilkening:

Does it sound good? Can y’all hear me in the back? Okay.

So, we’re going to change gears a little bit, but we’re still thinking about trust. And one of the things we really want to think about too is all this polarization, how that might be affecting the trust that individuals have with our organizations. And when that trust, some people may feel it’s violated, how that may end up affecting you and your staff and those of you who are individuals who are close to your organization.

So, let’s just look at the numbers because, you know, I’m a numbers person. This is from 2021, this was the last time we were in the field looking at trust specifically with the American Alliance of Museums. And the question we asked was how trustworthy do you find, and then we asked about all these different things on a scale from 0 to 10. And we have some good news, museums do really well. We have an average score of 6.4, this is a broader population sample of U.S. results around the country. 6.4 were number two to friends and family. Not really sure how I feel about that, but, you know, that can be trustworthy, too. But we do better than practically everything else.

A lot of questions why. This might be some, as a whole another conversation, not in eight minutes, but we have some, it seems to be some resilience here. So, this is some 2021. So that So that was now three years ago.

This is brand new data. This is from the 2024 Annual Survey Museum Goers. This was in the field this winter, and this is from the broader population sample we did concurrent with all of y’all’s museum samples that were collected during this winter. And what we found was that 92% of U.S. adults think museums are nonpartisan providers of educational content.

So, this feels kind of good in some ways too, right? That we have resilience. There are so many things out there are feeling not so resilient when it comes to trust. When we think of media, we think about libraries and we think about K-12 education. Museums are proving fairly resilient for now.

So, then we go and look at the data over and over and go, okay, what we tend to find consistently is that most people want us to do really good work in our communities. They want us to share science. They want us to build healthy communities. They want us to connect us to one another. They want us to explore shared history. They want us to be thoughtful and maybe return things if we need to. Most people are on board with that.

So, what’s stopping us? And I think we all know what’s stopping us. And it’s a segment of the population that we’ve started calling the resistance because they resist a lot of the things that we may be trying to do as institutions. And so here are some numbers, these are mostly from the 2022 and 2023 annual survey museum goers looking at the blue here is frequent museum goers going across and the red here is U.S. adults in the broader population and looking at who’s resisting content around climate change?

Who’s resisting content about inclusion, you see that one’s highest of those.

Who’s resisting us talking about civil society and civics? There they are.

Who’s resisting us talking about and cultivating a connection to humanity?

It’s a lot. I mean, as the majority of people no. But we’re all kind of in this 20% range. We’re adding a new one this year. Resisting us talking about hope. So, what happens when there’s about 20%? Oh, sorry. I have to have this quote first. They say things like this.

Stop catering to woke people who only impose their thoughts and not the majority. And this is a really clever little trick that this resistance malice 20% percent groups do, which is they are trying to project that they are the majority mainstream opinion.

They’re not, but they’re trying to project that. I think some truly believe they are, because they’re in their bubbles, and some know they’re not, but they’re trying to project it. This is called the false consensus effect. And it’s, I like how I word it, so I’m going to read it. This is when a small group of people projects the idea that their values and attitudes are shared by the majority of people. Typically, in our modern discourse, it’s used to shut down conversations that a small segment doesn’t want us to have or to stop a behavior they don’t approve of. And it’s clever. Oh my gosh, it is very clever and it’s insidious.

So how do we know when the false consensus effect is coming into play? And how do we assess whether a topic is likely to be polarizing or to start a controversy? Because I’m going to keep talking about that 20% number. That’s a certain critical mass that ends up being important. How do we know?

So, this is something that I’m playing around with in this kind of framework where we’re looking at the content that we’re sharing and assessing, is it neutral or not neutral, and what we mean by neutral or not neutral in this particular case is neutral as in facts, not neutral as in values. So that’s kind of a narrow definition for this. So, we have what’s neutral and what’s not neutral, facts, values, and then what’s partisan and what’s nonpartisan.

And so, here’s the theory that broadly accepted facts when about 95% people are more agree, those are neutral and nonpartisan, but the facts that are not as commonly held where you get that 20% pushback, those are partisan facts.

And then for values, commonly held values, those where virtually everyone agrees, those are not neutral but they’re nonpartisan, and then partisan values is where you have that critical mass pushing back. So, you may still have 80% saying that is a great thing but you have that 20% pushing back. So here are examples.

Nonpartisan neutral fact would be germ theory. The Earth’s round or it could be historical facts. You know Civil War began in 1861, historical fact. It can also be things like aesthetics around ideas and what is beautiful. Because you know pretty much most people think that Monet painting is pretty beautiful, and that’s pretty much fairly agreed on as a kind of fact.

Partisan facts, though, are around whether the evidence around racial disparities in our society, or around vaccines, or climate change, civics and hope, I put in this category too, just whether those are things that should be supported even if we’re not saying what to do with those civics and hopes ideals.

And then for values, creativity, imagination, education, and do no harm, those are commonly held values. They’re nonpartisan. Most everybody agrees with those things. And then the partisan values are inclusion, climate action, connection to humanity, abortion, immigration. You can probably come up with other things. Those would all be partisan values. So, you kind of get the sense of thinking through, okay, what is a value? Is it partisan? Is it non-partisan? Where is the controversy going to come? And the controversy is going to come in this partisan column overall.

So, what happens is when we have a challenge around the trust issue and when people get angry, particularly is when we as museum staff, of whom 70 percent of us identify as liberal think oh well here we have this topic and we might put it in one quadrant but there is a segment of the population that would put it in a different quadrant and then the messaging is a little off right and then we’re surprised when there’s controversy.

So one of those exercises we’re starting to recommend is you know when you have a new topic coming up, take a moment and assess where it’s going to fall on that chart, that framework, and if you think that the public might put it in a different quadrant or even a segment of the public, think about why that is and be ready and thinking through in advance what that pushback might look like and how you’re going to prepare for it.

We don’t want that false consensus effect to scare you from topics that we all need to talk about. Most people want us to talk about climate change and want us to be inclusive and want us to support civics and all of those things. But instead, we want you to think through the best approach to be effective and

prepare your staff and your stakeholders for pushback. There’s a process called disinformation inoculation that you can go through before you have a program, before a four-year exhibition to prepare everybody for that pushback so that it minimizes the conflict.

Keep in mind that goal posts shift really quickly. What may be considered non-partisan today may be partisan tomorrow. Things we asked about four years ago that 20% segment of the population, we’re like, we want museums to do this, now they’re telling us are to woke. So those goalposts shift really quickly. So, we are always constantly looking for what we call canaries in the coal mine for things that might end up becoming issues that are okay today.

So, it makes it really hard for y’all to be brave, right? especially when you’re thinking something big might come up. How do you be brave? But what does it mean to be brave? It’s understanding your audiences and their values, practicing disinformation, inoculation with staff and stakeholders, assessing and calibrating content to bring your audiences along with you, which I would love to have that discussion with you at some point. How did you do this stuff?

Practically caring for your colleagues and yourself and preparing and having all that in place before something happens. And that’s what’s going to really enable you to be effective and serve your audiences, your community, and broader society. And I’m going to leave you with a quote from a museum goer because it’s just so lovely. And this is what we get a lot more of because most people are agreeing with us on this. “Museums should be a social gathering place, oh there’s a type of there, so

people can build relationships with those in their communities, so we can care more about those we live and work with building a stronger community.”

And that’s a geeky methodology thing. Okay, passing on.

Yvonne Tang:

Thank you, Susie. Perfect segue. Appreciate it. So, I just wanted to talk a little bit about putting you in community and what that means. And before I start, I’d really like a few people if you can raise your hand and let me know what you think your community is or who you consider your community.

Anyone?

No? You don’t know who your community is? Okay, please. Thank you.

Audience member:

But in a very democratic bubble in a very grand state. And we are in a disinvested downtown environment. And our population is majority, I would say, High school educated in a crumbling infrastructure making under $40,000 a year with 2.3 children they’re caring for in one-parent households.

Yvonne Tang:

Thank you very much and being brave for speaking first. Anyone else? Okay. Thank you so much. So, before I get into my few slides and my few minutes, I am going to thank my community, who I worked with to develop this chapter in the Manual of Museum Management and part of my talk today. It was co-written by Munna Faisal Elgerg, who’s the CEO of the Museums and Heritage Sector at Dubai Culture and

Arts Authority. It was also co-written by Terry Nyambé, who’s the curator of ecology at the Copper Belt Museum in Zambia, and who’s also the vice president of ICOM.

I also interviewed Ilana Altman from the Bentway in Toronto, Jessica E. Banks, who’s formerly from the National Gallery of Cayman Islands, Lance Wheeler, who’s formerly at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. Laura Van Brooke-Hivind, who’s the director of the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University. Leewee Gracioso, who’s the director of the Museo Miraflores in Guatemala City.

And Orit Sarafati, who was formerly at the Evergreen Brickworks also in Toronto.

So, they are my community. And so really wanted to think about what puts you in your community and how we can center ourselves. And to me, thinking about community is much more than the people that are around you in your institution. If you think about it, our community is also other institutions that have the same topics and types and themes and stories that we also tell. It’s all the people that come into your institution. It’s all the people that talk about you when they leave. It’s everyone that you work with every day. And so, I think really thinking about your community much broader than just your locale but all the connections you have in the world and also all the different partners and institutions that you surround yourself.

And so really having a visitor forward community is important to first of all create a welcoming environment and all of that is you know from making sure there’s proper signage to washrooms and seeing people feel comfortable walking in your doors to feeling like even before they walk through their doors that they’re welcome and available and part of your story. And so also includes, you know, I say visitor forward, but I mean visitor in terms of anyone that walks through your doors. So that’s your staff, even before you hire them. So, the children that come in, it’s your volunteers, your docents, And really every interaction is the potential for your future.

You don’t know if that four-year-old is going to, you know, staring at the mummies of the dinosaurs is going to be up on stage one day giving talks at the AAM. And so really investing in a lot of the things in your community, whatever that community is, and embracing those multiple stories and multiple ways to do it and really thinking about communal growth. You know I wrote this about a year ago and I am still growing and learning and thinking and considering and making a larger community for myself and the people that I work with.

So, there are ten ways to incorporate community that are listed up here but I’m going to focus on the

first four.

So shared visioning a visioning is something I really like to do with my clients and think about From the beginning of your project from the beginning of your museum from the initial thinking of things making sure you’re inviting a variety of voices to the table, and that’s not necessarily just for new institutions Or new projects or new ideas, but making sure There’s a lot of people from education all the way to directors, really having that sense and a chance to be heard and a chance to share. Then also collaboration and co-creation, ensuring there’s a lot of collaboration and opportunities to be integrated. it really gives you a chance to humanize your co-workers and the people you work with and sharing stories.

And through those, you build stronger relationships, making sure that then you understand where people’s strengths are, maybe their interests that you didn’t know before, potential for, you know, moments of healing or moments that you need to reach out to certain communities that you hadn’t really thought about or considered at the time.

And finally, creating a connected sense of purpose and a goal to accomplish. And it doesn’t mean, you know, you can’t make mistakes along the way, but maybe making sure that there’s a fortified sort of idea and a goal you’re working towards and that each time you’re learning and each time you’re building from that.

And key to every great relationship is communication, and it’s exactly the same here. So, it’s not just information gathering, taking the information from people and gathering it and using it in your institution, but making sure that these stories are continually reciprocal. It’s always happening. It’s a circular conversation. You’re hearing what they say, reflecting, changing on what you want to do at your institution and then pushing it back out again and so that’s totally part of that trust building process and creating a sense of belonging that way they really feel like they’re part of your institution, you as individuals, as representatives and everywhere you go out in the world and making those connections is so key.

And finally, empowering youth. I think, you know, no matter where you are in the world, it’s such a significant portion of the of the population and really they can flourish by developing skills you can create opportunities for them to create their own programs to their peers but also to provide insight to any of the products that we’re putting ahead giving us hope, Susie for the future and really building

future museum goers, future museum donors, future staff, and giving them that opportunity to really become invested in what we are doing. They might not know the process, but you can help them through that, but they can for sure do a lot of amazing things if you allow them to participate.

And then I’m going to hand it over to Christy?

Christy Coleman:

Okay, I’m often known for my candor in talking about some of these interesting things. I went the wrong way. Okay, so I have to start by talking about my institution. I joined the Jamestown Yorktown Foundation in January of 2020. And this organization is a state museum. We have a budget of roughly 25 million. We have 400 plus staff and 900 plus active volunteers, operating two museum sites and a central support facility. This institution had a reputation of being rather insular. In fact, those of you who may have been around for a while may not have seen very many JYF people that would come to AAM. There were a few that would show up at ALFAM or AASLH, mostly they hung out in Virginia at VAM.

On top of that, the institution for 25 years marketed itself as historyisfun.org and then wanted to know why others didn’t take their work seriously. And so, when I came in in January of 2020, six weeks into the job, the pandemic hit. And it was interesting because, as a state institution, there are a lot of compliance, a lot of state-mandated training that I had to do as an agency head, as they call me. And all these other things that needed to happen, of course, that didn’t happen. And It enabled me to — I had to make a choice. I could seize the disruption caused by COVID and try to reinvent the place really fast.

And I kind of tried to do that.

And because what was interesting is all of these state people around me who had been in the system. I mean, my leadership team had an average service of something like 29 years, right? So, their instinct was to lay everybody off immediately and shut the place down. And I said, “Oh, we’re not doing that. Well, how are we going to pay them?” I said, “With that million-dollar surplus we have. Figure it out. Well, what about the wage staff? The wage staff in particular. Until we have some instructions about how to move, this is what we’re gonna do. And then I realized I really was gonna have a challenge with my leadership team, which I don’t have anymore.

And it was interesting because one of those leaders who had created history as fun as the marketing, right, told me in my first meeting with her that she set the agenda, that she would tell me what my talking points were wherever I went and that the vision belonged to her.

So anyway, she was the first, and so, like I said, this disruption piece, right? So, what I decided to do, I knew that, like I said, use the disruption to disrupt the institution, to try to stir some things up. The board had told me in the hiring process that the staff really was looking for some innovation. The staff was really looking to feel more engaged in the institution in a very different way. My predecessor had been there 32 years. And so, I decided that strategic planning was not going to involve anyone in a supervisor, manager, or director level.

[Applause]

Now, that was — you can imagine, right? The response to that. Because I set up these sessions where it was just me, and we did this in August because we reopened in late June. Everybody was trying to get their mojo going and we started having these strategic planning sessions and I really wanted to know what the staff wanted to do.

And you know, the managers and leaders were really put back. I mean, they were like, “What do you mean we’re not involved?” I said, “Not yet. Not yet. I need to hear from them. I need to hear what they want, what they see, because I can guarantee you these folks see far more than you do on any given day. Because I used to be an interpreter, I mean I know what I saw versus what my leadership saw.

And so, we did that, roughly 15 sessions with staff members from every level of the organization except, right? And when I say every level, I mean the housekeepers, the landscapers, the interpreters, the museum gift shop, the ticket sales, reservationists, everybody that did not have that title was in that room in 15 different segments over the course of, so basically five sections for each phase of the strategic planning. And then as we got past phase two, where they had identified three pillars that they wanted us to work on and that we were refining what we were going to focus on. That’s when I brought the directors back in. And their job wasn’t to change what the staff had done. Their job was to figure out how to make it happen.

And so that’s how we operated for the first three years. And the pillars for us were people, program and communication. And it’s been uneven at different points in time. In the two areas that I think that we’ve struggled—I just want to say struggled– that we have to revisit. Because now, I’ve been here now four and a half years. It’s time to revisit. Does this still work for us, et cetera?

But what we are discovering and what I am learning is that because there has been change in personnel, and I will say this to anybody that’s a leader or aspires to be a leader, whenever there is change in your top leadership, there is at least three phases of organizational change, okay? And that first phase is when everybody’s still excited, you got some skeptics, you got that person, occasionally that’ll say, “Well, I’ve been here longer than– and I’ll be here when they’re gone. We’ve got those, right? So that first phase is really like people trying to– it’s kind of honeymooning. OK, let’s see how it all works. And then you, as a leader, get to that point where you have to make some decisions. And those decisions are determining who can cut it, who doesn’t want to cut it, right? Right and who’s trying to undercut it. And you have to make some decisions right away and so Fortunately enough in the first real phase of things a lot of people self-selected themselves out They chose to leave the organization, which is really lovely.

You know there were a few people that I was disappointed pointed to see go, but at the end of the day, it was the right thing to do. The people who are can’t cut it are the hardest, because you really have to do

everything you can. At least, I feel like I have to do everything I can to help them be successful, which meant part of our people pillar was rethinking HR instead of being just compliance and termination into HR and professional development.

And so, we did things like instead of each department having memberships in various organizations, we consolidated the ones that were most impactful, and we created institutional memberships that then allowed every single employee to take whatever workshop, training, et center, either for free or at reduced cost. And we built that into the budgets.

But there’s still going to be the person who can’t cut it. Now the undercutters are really a challenge because they’re often the longest serving. They often feel like they know better than anybody else how the place works. And they know the system exceptionally well, especially the state system, really,

really well, and they are the most dangerous to growth. Because these are the individuals, I could give you some, cite you some examples that are just mind-numbing, but nonetheless, the Commonwealth of Virginia does have civility in the workplace as a policy has always had it. It was not always practiced in this institution. And in fact, this institution had different pockets where active bullying of other employees took place, threats of physical violence, actual physical violence, that had just been looked the other way because the person committing it was a good employee.

I mean, do y’all tolerate toxic in your space? Of course you do. You know who they are. I don’t. I try really hard to get rid of that in the space. Because, again, the undercutter can poison so much. And like I said, we’re really uneven right now. Some areas are doing really while other areas are not. And we’ve been diversifying.

And that’s another thing about JYF, right? When I came into the institution, 12% of our employees were people of color– indigenous, African, Asian Pacific Islander, 12%. 90% of them were in housekeeping or landscaping. Today, well, we’ve had a little modification because of some toxic behavior, but we were up to 23 percent and represented at top leadership all the way through.

So, all, you know, we were intentional about where we were recruiting, how we were recruiting, how we were trying to build an environment that would be welcoming and then the undercutters show up again. We have one area of our institution right now that we’re working through where an individual was hired into a director role, came to us with lots of experience, a black male, coming into a department that was all white. And they immediately said he was unqualified for the role because they liked the other guy. The other guy who couldn’t keep two sentences together during his interview, as far as I was concerned, right? You know, talented, yes, but not the best candidate.

But these staff members, because this black man was now their boss, and they did everything, literally did everything like actually saying to each other, oh, and the previous director who had moved on, one of those people who needed to move on, was telling the staff at my institution, “Well, just don’t help him. Make him figure it out for himself.” I mean, still was him putting themselves into the environment. I mean, this is real stuff that happens in museum space.

And I’m telling you that as we look at these questions about what civility looks like the staff did tell us some things about how they wanted to work together but they also said we also have some issues with visitors who come through here and we’ve always been told the visitor is always right we’ve always been trained to this idea and so our new museum senior director of museum operations and education came she said yeah we were having these conversations on staff and they would like us to think deeply about this idea of civility so going back and looking at you know how we were presenting ourselves to the public and all of that we completely rebuilt our marketing materials a couple years ago we actually brand by our name JYF museums org instead of historyisfun.org. We completely redid the website to make it more navigable. I mean, the website was a hot mess. You know, on the very first page, you could click on hotels, and it would take you right off the site. And then they wanted to know why they couldn’t sell tickets.

And then, so we put up onto our website and very easy right up front what we are, right? Educational Agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Our mission, which I remind people, this was around before I showed up. I’m just amplifying certain sections that you’ve ignored. Right? So, the mission is to foster through its living history museums, and we’re changing that to museums, programs, and outreach.

Right? Jamestown Settlement, American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, an awareness and understanding of the early history, settlement, and development of the United States through the convergence of American, Indian, European, and African cultures, and enduring legacies bequeathed to the nation.

Now, there were some who were like, “Well, that’s just the rah-rah, we say, “Pledge of Allegiance, we do that.” No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It’s, the legacies of this are really quite complex and beautiful and troubling and an opportunity in all of that and so our programs have been more reflective of that but the question that the visitors of visitor behavior especially in the environment that we’re in where staff were sharing with us especially like indigenous staff were sharing with us you know visitors saying to them calling the females Pocahontas and the males calling them chief and just being just disrespectful and them not feeling like they had a recourse that management didn’t have their back.

So coming out of Moe this was created and we the manage the leadership team we talked through these and tried to refine it and what kind of imagery that we want. And we aren’t the first to do this our neighbors at Colonial Williamsburg, they have these little placards where they have like 15 things you shall not do right, we did our we wanted ours to be different we wanted ours to be more about more about sort of again this idea of belonging collaboration etc.

And so it’s real simple and that’s that visual that you see on the side is on every door every major entry point into our museum spaces it’s on our website. And we ask that visitors be open to learning in a shared space, create an environment free of harassment and threatening behavior, engage in dialogue without discriminatory language, show respect to staff, fellow visitors, and museum property. And then we say, we will not tolerate racist, sexist, or homophobic comments, vandalism, physical contact, or harassment of any kind at our museums. Guests who cannot comply with our Code of Conduct will be asked to leave the museum premises.

And we will put you out. And you have to. If you’re talking about really protecting your staff and other visitors, you have to be willing to take that step. And if they want their money back, give it to them. Because guess what? That builds trust for the people who are there, both who are working there and who are visiting because they will know not only, we met what we said but I’m safe here.

And safety is sort of the first thing that we’ve been trying to focus on. How do we create safe space and you got to do that before you can really talk about welcoming space. And this is something that I don’t have the answers to, I will tell you. I mean, I’ve seen things in this institution that I haven’t seen in others. And I think, again, I think it’s part of it as a nature of its size.

I can’t be everywhere all the time. And so, there is a reliance. And there’s also a recognition that over time — remember when I said management came in to figure out how to make those things happen for the staff? Well, the staff aren’t feeling as empowered anymore in some spaces, because the managers in a super price. So, I’ve got to now go back as we go into this next phase of strategic planning to say, OK, we’re all at the table now, and we need to hear each other.

One thing that we just completed is our first– well, that’s not our first — our first independent, independent staff evaluation to let us — and it’s independent, it’s anonymous and all those things, and it allows me to see things across areas that are working and really dig into the details of things that are not, and that’s really lovely. So that’s where we are, that’s who we are, and now it’s time for you all to turn things over back to Gail to put you in your rows.

Are you doing it? Yeah. Okay, so for the rows, right? So, thank you very much.

Gail Lord:

Wow. [Applause]

Well, well, I want to just thank the panelists for doing the impossible, which is to stick to time so that we can have some time talking to one another. So, I’m supposed to move this forward. There we are. So, you replace the concept of table with concept of row, and you could just choose where you’d like to begin your conversations. I just want to say this is about sharing experiences. Maybe we’ll solve some problems. Maybe we won’t. And so, wow, this is an incredible group. Thank you all. And really, let’s give our, let’s give our panelists just another hand.

[Applause]

Well, I hate to do this, but we have the trust of the AAM to leave the room when we’re supposed to and many of you will want to go to other sessions. So, if I wonder if I could just ask, pretty much everyone has a microphone and if I could just ask the group leader, just a facilitator, speaker, or panelist to just maybe report back on a couple of the ideas that came out of each session, out of each table and then we’ll say goodbye and meet again next year. I believe it’s in Los Angeles.

Okay, I know we have a lot of problem-solving happening. Thank you so much everyone. Can I just ask you? Okay, so if I could just, just in the interest of getting people together again, you don’t have to go back, stay where you are.

Let’s see. Yvonne, can you do a quick report? Yvonne, can you just do a quick report with your microphone on, just say any ideas that came out of this session, 30 seconds and we’ll go around in that. No problem.

Yvonne Tang:

Thanks, everybody. So, my table was about community, and we talked a lot about dealing with hate or pushback or negativity in the community. Which really kind of pushed off Susie’s talk as well, and also Christie’s, which was fabulous. And so, we talked a lot about providing hope and feedback from visitors, from your staff, from within. Potentially pre-populating some controversial or difficult topics within your trusted partners.

We talked about potentially using marketing ahead of time so that all that hate, and disparagement and negativity will be received ahead of time and by the time your institution institutions ready to go, it’s everyone that is willing to pay and willing to come. And know that it is the 20 percent that you’re speaking to and including them, but there’s still 80 percent that are behind you. They might not be right there all the time, but they will come out and they will be there.

And then finding support to strengthen and rebuild and potentially look at either mediation or a civil discourse within the institution from outside help to be able to do that. And so, I really wanted to thank everyone at my table for sharing, being really open about their issues and talking about community.

Gail Lord:

Thanks so much. Sounds like maybe you’re next at the back.

Susie Wilkening:

Hi, okay, yeah, here I am. Okay, so there are four things we talked about, fairly similar overall up here. We talked about frontline staff, museum shop staff in particular, but people who are getting that pushback and how to help them.

So that segwayed into talking through the disinformation inoculation process of how do we prepare people. It’s all about that element of surprise. How do we think about that element of surprise and diminish that role in sparking those reactions.

So, we went through disinformation inoculation. We also talked about how we articulate our values as institutions, which included thinking through what our own individual biases and how we translate that to organizational values that we then then share with the public, asking them to then consider what their values are before they go into an experience and how that might be affecting their intake of information.

Which also means we have to practice radical curiosity and courageous empathy with that group that pushes back and creates that challenge because they’re coming from somewhere. If we’re radically curious about figuring out where they’re coming from and empathizing them to understand their pathway, even though knowing that does not mean we have to agree, that’s going to help us be more effective in our communications and conversations.

Gail Lord:

Fantastic. Thanks so much. John, if you just want to just tell us about your group, every discussion was fantastic.

John Hampton:

I don’t have a microphone over there.

So, our group, talking about decolonizing museums, talked about how to communicate that, and about it’s, you know, maybe the city of it’s just the right thing to do came forward as that, but then also the difficulties within some states around navigating government relations about doing that work and then trying to maintain governments that maybe aren’t on side with those goals as well.

And then we went into just a rapid fire, things of practical steps around that, which were really about connecting with community. About sometimes that’s hiring Indigenous staff, but then recognizing what relationships that you’re expecting from them, about how to value those, about building professional development for all staff within there, whether that’s through language lessons, which is one thing we’ve done at the Mackenzie Art Gallery that would bring in people to teach Indigenous values and cultures by teaching them language so that they can speak some key words especially around like, you know, to articulate hello and welcome or any Indigenous languages that you use within your institution. But also creating those professional development opportunities for Indigenous staff to be able to learn more about their own culture and relationship and that can be non-Indigenous staff, too. If you’re asking for people to come with connections and knowledge about their culture, then value their connection with culture as that work time, as paid professional development opportunities.

But I won’t go into all of our steps here because we’re — (inaudible)

Christy Coleman:

Real quick, we talked about staff and visitors. What do they need? And it came down to how are we training, educating them? How are we building cohorts for them to be able to understand, and then how do we address those in both cases who may be more toxic to the organization and trying to deploy empathy first to get them to understand the values of the institution and the goals of the institution moving forward. And then doing a cost benefit analysis. Is it worth keeping them?

Gail Lord:

Thanks so much. Thank you, everyone. [APPLAUSE]