ELAN member and Arts Administration graduate student, Carrie Morton reflects on her experiences at the the Western Museum Association Conference in Salt Lake City.
____
It was a whirlwind road trip from Eugene to Salt Lake City for the Western Museum Association Conference. This comprehensive symposium offered a wealth of diverse session topics, excellent panelists, engaging networking activities, and opportunities for exploring the city’s many incredible museums and attractions. One of the highlights of our visit was an evening event at the Natural History Museum of Utah. We wandered starry eyed through the museum’s impressive collections and stunning exhibits until we found ourselves, glasses of wine in hand, in the Paleo-Prep Lab. The museum’s incredibly welcoming and informative paleontology team allowed us to witness up close the process of excavating dinosaur fossils from their casings. We were elated; this may be my pinnacle museum geek-out moment.
The splendor of the NHMU is inherent in its new building, beautifully nestled into the landscape, which eloquently reflected the motif surrounding the conference. The theme this year was Drive On: Museums of the Future, which informed dozens of diverse breakout sessions spanning the four day event. Two dominant ideas continuously bubbled up to the surface: 1) The museum field is changing (rapidly) and 2) the visitor is the center of the museum experience. It became evident from the many case studies presented that these two widespread commonalities are fundamentally tied. Among many transformations in the industry, one that remains central is the refocus on the visitor. I attended a pre-conference workshop titled Strengthening Leadership: Museum Educators Sharing Strategies led by Tina Nolan, Educator in Chief, Journal of Museum Education. Tina stressed that museums have to do business differently by thinking of the visitor as a learner first, and a consumer last. The visitor is the reason museums exist as public institutions. Eugene’s own Alice Parman presented in a session called Stories in Space, Design Strategies for Museum Interpretative Materials, where she referred to Alfred North Whitehead’s book, The Aims of Education, wherein he breaks down the learning process into three stages: romance, precision, and generalization. Alice charmingly reminded us that museum visitors are looking for romance, and it is our job to romance them. To Cynthia Taylor, Assistant Director of Public Programming at the Oakland
Museum of California, “at the center of every decision is the visitor experience.” She explains that the guiding principles of what she calls the “Museum of the People” include: active engagement, enhanced access, equity, and identification of community needs. The Oakland Museum of California shifted their organizational perspective along these principles to ensure they are equipped to appropriately respond to the community it serves.
One of the most valuable sessions I attended, titled Reflections and Projections: Perspectives on the Museum Profession, provided wise guidance from three of the industry’s more experienced leaders. Steven Olsen, Senior Curator of the LDS History Department, summarized five major changes of the museum industry:
- Embrace of community
- Recognition of the need to be a service
- Embrace of diversity on all fronts
- Context as a vehicle for interpretation
- Embrace of the notion of process (focusing on how we go about doing things in museums)
All five of these transitions support institutions that are willing to recalibrate in order to place higher value on the visitor experience.
Perhaps the most inspiring panelist of the entire conference was Gail Anderson, President of Gail Anderson & Associates. In Reflections and Projections, she supported Olsen’s assertions, championing equity, inclusion, and leadership. Underscoring the importance of professional will, Gail urged the audience to set personal agendas aside, declaring “It is time for serious humility.” When asked how students can prepare for a career in museums, she offered some compelling advice. “Be a leader. Be self-reflective about your own strengths and weaknesses. Find your voice.”
