The Curator’s Egg

A train of thought stimulated by Talk Politics (again), itself prompted by the Policeman’s Blog on the subject of mission statments, and the general fatuity and indeed vacuity thereof.

Now I’ve recently had to devise a mission statement for the Museums Service (it being one of the requirements of the Accreditation Scheme, the sine-qua-non of grant aid funding), and I’m quite enamoured of what you might call the Ronseal school of mission statements - the succinct summary of the blindingly obvious.

Still in a sense it was a useful exercise, trying to sum up in a few words what it is that museums are actually there for. And I must admit that I was inordinately pleased with my effort, which essentially reduces all our activities to three words: “Preserving and presenting (our area’s) heritage.” I couldn’t get it any shorter than that, and if anyone can there will be a prize*.

But goodness me, aren’t most museum mission statements very, very, very wordy. Were they paying consultants by the syllable or something? Surely if you can’t sum up what you’re there for in a few words it indicates that you don’t actually know what you’re there for? Or am I just too simplistic? Certainly it seems to me that a mission statement should be easily comprehensible to your audience, not riddled with technical professional jargon. I mean not saying things like “engage families in unique learning experiences” or “collect, preserve, document, interpret and display material relating to…“. Always remember the KISS principle, dammit.**

*Free membership of the Curator’s Egg, worth £10,000.

**OK, I also added in a short paragraph explaining what I meant by ‘preserve’ and ‘present’. But I didn’t explain heritage.

I don’t blog from work, but as I was sat at my desk just before leaving this evening, I scribbled down a few notes to post up here. It was dusk, and after the big blow yesterday the sea was calm again. All along the horizon the clouds were pink and purple while otherwise the sky was clear. And just above the clouds the full moon was rising. Since I hadn’t got round to putting the office light on, it was pretty spectacular. So while the ancient ill-fitting windows mean it can be damn cold when the wind blows from the east, the view from my office is to die for.

Above the calm sea
Purple cloud-lined horizon
A full moon rises.

Almost poetry. If only every day ended like that.

The final event of the conference was the address by the English Culture Minister, David Lammy (that’s Minister for Culture in England, btw, not Minister for English Culture). He was down to speak for twenty minutes, but overran by a further twenty. A sort of ‘buy one, get one free’. It was very interesting. Of course, it’s hard to tell with politicians - I’m always reminded of the old Bob Monkhouse joke:

“The most important thing is sincerity. Once you can fake that, everything else is easy.”

However, I’m more than willing to give the minister the benefit of the doubt here. He certainly seems to be one who thinks culture is important. His speech ranged across the spectrum of issues facing museums (perhaps with the intention of showing us he was on top of his brief?), including non-visitors (the missing 63%) - something I have touched on before - and (we knew it was coming) workforce diversity.

This is an interesting, but by no means straightforward, issue. It is not merely a question of ethnicity, but is intimately bound up with matters of class and gender, and also has a relation to the question of non-visitors. It is quite clear that, taken as a whole, the workforce, and especially the professional workforce, in museums does not reflect the make up of the general population. I can’t say to what extent the same is true in other professionalised sectors, but it matters not. What is clear is that suitably qualified people from some groups do not consider museums as a career option in anything like the same proportions as other groups. And this matters both because museums are missing out on a pool of talent and because the situation is one which if not addressed will remain self-perpetuating.

I’m not sure that I buy the idea that any sector of the workforce nationally must exactly match the general population (this is to ignore the influence of cultural drivers operating within sections of the population). The corollary of under-representation in one area is over-representation in others. But we shouldn’t expect the substantial imbalance we see in the (admittedly small, which makes such skewing more likely) museums sector. But it’s not just a matter of ethnicity. The profession is hardly awash with people from working class backgrounds. I’m not sure where I personally fit in this. I was the first person in my family to go to university and my parents came from solidly working class backgrounds, but had ‘bettered themselves’ - but I think what was most important in this for them and for me is that they came from backgrounds that had always valued learning. Which leads me to…

The non-visitor problem. As I’ve said before, no public institution can cater for or appeal to everyone (hospitals for the healthy?), but that doesn’t mean being satisfied with the current audience. We can be sure that there are people who don’t currently visit, who nonetheless are interested in the kind of things museums have to offer. We have to find ways of reaching them, because they are missing out on something they’d like and value and we are missing out on the insights into our collections that come from new audiences. And of course it’s people who visit, use and enjoy museums who are going to consider museums work as an employment option. Which leads back, with nice circularity, to the workforce issue.

In the end this is something to be tackled from both directions, but I suspect it’s the visitor end which will prove the more significant and effective in the long run. So don’t hold your breath. Unless you can hold it for about ten years (in which case, please contact Guinness World Records).

A final note - I wonder what the figures are for Scotland…?

Earnest, serious, dull. That is not, however, the definition of professionalism. Overrunning your time, stumbling delivery and reading from a script. I’m not going to name names, but the general quality level of the presentations at the conference was really low. I’m not talking particularly about the content, but rather the presentation and delivery, many of which I thought pretty unprofessional. So here’s a few handy hints to keep the audience engaged, interested and alert.

1. Don’t read from a script. Let’s be honest, if you’ve typed it all out and all you are going to do is read it, it would be quicker and more effective to photocopy it and let the audience read it. They wouldn’t have to take any notes, either. And if you really feel you must read it out - at least practice beforehand so you know you aren’t going to overrun your allotted time, and so you can put a bit of life into your delivery. Honestly though, if you really have something to say, I feel that a few notes should be all you need.
2. Pictures. You need pictures of wonderful, quirky interesting things, people or events to break up the talk, hold the attention of the audience and illustrate what you’re talking about. Museums are full of such things - use them.
3. Humour. Jokes are good - even bad jokes. Remember the audience is on your side and is looking for excuses to support you. Jokes do not detract from the seriousness of your message, and they will make it more memorable.

To sum up - what we want is pictures and jokes.

I believe the appropriately-named “Nick” Winterbotham may be stealing another of my one liners… but I suppose that is a sort of fame. I wonder whether it counts towards the FMA?

There’s certainly occasional food for thought, but as far as I can see precious little thought went into the food.

Meanwhile a variant on an old joke:

Q. What’s the worst thing about an interactive computer in a gallery?
A. The incessant whine that comes from the curator.

Continuing the Clash theme… well I am in a hotel in County Hall, which is after all by the river, and I can see the top half of the London Eye from my window…

So, here I am. And I take back what I said about the lunch - there were seats! Admittedly they were for people to watch presentations in the trade show section, but there was no show on at the time. Just as well, since I had spent the whole of the previous session standing up as all the seats were taken. As were the tables and window ledges, and most of the floor too.

So how was day one? Not too bad. I was surprised at the number of people here from Scotland - I thought I’d be all on my tod, but there seem to have been quite a lot of last minute decisions to attend. This means that we can all get together and complain about how everything is relevant only to English museums, or how even when it is of wider significance, the particular circumstances prevailing in Scotland aren’t addressed. Which makes us all feel better, and lets us bond more closely. Group hug.

I was surprised that the second keynote address overran by 12 minutes - impressive in a thirty-minute time slot. It made me wonder if the presentation had actually been gone through beforehand (surely a pre-requisite). Nonetheless it was interesting, though someone should have pointed out that a background image makes the text very hard to read. Especially when there is so much of it.

The session on conservation (the one that was very crowded) gave an interesting perspective. It seems that all the time we curators were blaming conservators for stopping us from displaying or otherwise using the collections, the conservators were blaming us for making them take these decisions about whether it was safe to use them. Of course they seemed all too happy to take that responsibility, and curators, I suspect, were just as happy to be absolved of it.

After lunch, a good keynote address from Jude Kelly of the South Bank Centre (hint to other presenters - humour works). It almost made me look forward to London 2012. Almost. Then ‘Ten Golden Rules for virtual collections’. Funny, to the point, but some of it obvious to us old hands. Good to see that others have identified graphic designers as the main barrier to usability. I would suggest an eleventh golden rule, though. Always check the spelling on your powerpoint slides.

On to ‘Revolutionising Museum Archaeology’, which was, well, weird. One presentation about disposals, one about keeping everything, but maybe not in museums (but where, exactly, then? and who will pay for it?), and one from a manic Welshman, which I enjoyed enormously, though I’m not exactly sure what the point was.

Meanwhile, back in the hotel, I decided to buy 2 hours of inernet fun @ £3. Not bad I suppose, but at home I get 24 hours for about £2.50. Oh, and the fun? Checking my email, sending messages to my kids and reading a few of my regular blogs. Sad, isn’t it?

I wonder how tomorrow will go?

Hmmm, I suspect that the Clash reference may date me rather accurately. No matter. Despite what I said here, I am going to the MA Conference in London, though I expect the Scottish contingent to be somewhat smaller than in previous years. We shall see if any of the interesting-looking sessions will live up to their promise. Certainly the last conference in Edinburgh was extremely disappointing, the keynote speakers in particular being, on the whole, very poor. Not that they necessarily lacked anything interesting to say, rather that they seemed incapable of making what they had to say either interesting or entertaining - and even at a professional conference there is a ‘showbiz’ element to public speaking. Frankly, there were not enough jokes, and too much stumbling and bumbling.

Who knows - if I can get internet access down there, I may even be able to blog from the conference. Now how exciting would that be?

Completely off the point, but I’ve seen a lot of these ‘What 80s Band are you?’ and ‘What language should you learn?’ type of quizzes. Now if there was a ‘What Asterix character are you?’ quiz I am quite certain that I would be Dogmatix. Some who know me may of course think that this is pretty obvious.

When Heisenberg announced with pleasure,
“There are some things you cannot measure.
Not simultaneously at least.”
His irritating smile increased.
“The surer the momentum’s grown,
The less position will be known.”

“But that’s not all,” intruded Bohr.
(A name quite apt. I won’t say more)
“It’s observation perhaps
That makes the wave function collapse.
Until it does it’s all just smeared.
OK, I know it sounds quite weird.
But quantum physics can’t be knocked -
Its implications leave all shocked,
Except those, on the other hand,
Who simply do not understand.”

So Schrödinger, that studious gent
Devised a thought experiment.
A box, some acid and a jigger
Set off by a quantum trigger,
A cat, whose life or death would show
Emission had occurred or no.

You wouldn’t know until you looked
If that poor feline’s goose was cooked,
And it would be, or so he said,
Alive and at the same time dead.

Well so they say, but have no doubt
He actually tried it out,
And in a box set up like that
Securely locked his neighbour’s cat

That philosophical feline
Was to his fate quite unresigned
Though in the box he chose to linger
Mouthing curses at Schrödinger
Waiting for the Geiger’s chatter
Waiting for the phial to shatter
Waits till he can’t wait no more
(For waiting’s such a dreadful Bohr)

Until at last the lid was pried
Open and someone looked inside.
Relief! Survival! Best of men! -
But Erwin clamped it shut again.

And so the cat just lay there thinking
Tail just twitching, eyes unblinking,
“Werner says you can’t be knowing
Where I’m at AND how fast I’m going.

But I exactly know my speed
(Well, zero isn’t hard to read)
And that implies,” so thought the cat,
“Momentum’s nada - which means that

My position can’t be guessed -
There, I knew you’d be impressed -
So I don’t need to mess with locks -
It’s time to think outside the box.”

Well others here will understand
The consequences, though unplanned,
Of mixing up - that cunning devil! -
The micro with the macro level.

An hour passed. Erwin came back
And opened up the box a crack,
Then wider still and stood to stare -
The box was now completely bare!

And as he stuck his head inside
He caught a whiff of cyanide
And dropped down dead (they say it hurts -
I say it was his just deserts).

No, I’m not going to apologise. This was inspired by an article on TalkPolitics, and I just took up the idea and ran with it. Right, who’s going to finish off ‘Harry Potter and the Management Consultant’?

This isn’t really museum-related, except that I am a dedicated technophile and I also work in a museum. The Opera browser which used to be available free only in a version supported by ads (you had to buy a licence to get rid of the adverts) is now available absolutely free and without ads.

Pop over to www.opera.com and download a copy of Opera 8.5. Then get the voice add-on and have a play with the voice-controlled browser (and also have text read to you by Stephen Hawking).

“What was that, Stephen?”

“Sorry. I did not understand.”

“Opera: quit application.”

I’m not sure why, but whenever I hear the words ‘MA Conference‘ my heart sinks, and my mind conjures up images of curators in football kits aimlessly running around a muddy pitch. With really bad haircuts. Am I alone in this?

Anyway, the point is that the hot topics at any professional conference always seem to run in cycles. I’ve now been around long enough that issues are being recycled. All very green, I suppose, but essentially we’ve had the spin cycle, so now we’re back to the start.

Perhaps because of that I’ve become a little jaded. It could be because I’m getting older, but maybe, just maybe, the conference programmes really are a lot more tedious than they used to be. Certainly most of the fun seems to have gone out of the proceedings. It used to last a whole week, with a full day of study tours on the Friday. There used to be time to talk (it probably wasn’t called networking then), to look round the trade show and to visit museums. Now it’s all just too frenetic - too many sessions in too little time, and the ones that look interesting always clash (so do the ones that look tedious, so this could be sorted out, you know). Time to talk is limited, and it’s all become dreadfully, stiflingly earnest and worthy. I remember hearing tales when I first went to the conference of the epic gatherings of yesteryear - not that long ago, I’m not that old - which seemed epic largely in the amount of drinking that went on, or at least in the activities that were fuelled by the drinking.

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be a curator was very heaven.

Of course they may have been exaggerating (or perhaps just unable to remember clearly).

Anyway - it’s not like that now. Oh no, indeed not - it’s strictly business from first session at 9.00am to the end of the day at 6.00pm or even later. Lunch may be provided, but you have to eat it standing up. We’re serious, we’re professional, and it’s definitely, definitely, not a jolly.

Truly there is no new thing under the sun.