The Museum of the Future

30 Aug, 2019 • Inspiration • 1154

A How-to Guide for Museums and the Sustainable Development Goals

In what is no doubt a case of professional distortion, it seems the pace to achieve the 17 ambitious Sustainable Development Goals is picking up. When climate action champion Greta Thunberg arrived in New York this week after a carbon-neutral crossing of the Atlantic, 17 brightly colored SDG boats welcomed her. Influential business leaders are trying to redefine the role of business in society — and make it a force for more good. Municipalities are looking into their past to take forward-looking action. This week, I learned the tap water I drink is en route to being 100% green in 2020, making Amsterdam tap water even better than it already was.

For museums — and other heritage institutions — wanting to contribute to this global movement towards a fairer, greener, and more sustainable world, museum activist Henry McGhie published a free how-to guide which I highly recommend you download.

The guide helps museum professionals “put the world on a path to a sustainable future, through working to support the Sustainable Development Goals.” Helpfully, Henry places the Sustainable Development Goals in a broader framework of human and environmental rights and the dimensions of sustainability. The combined agenda of 17 SDGs, 169 underlying targets, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a full set of environmental rights give museums more than enough opportunities to act in a way that fits their current practice.

The importance of museum and culture in achieving the sustainability agenda is ever more widely acknowledged. As UNESCO states in its pivotal 2015 Recommendation concerning the Protection and Promotion of Museums and Collections, their Diversity and their Role in Society, “The protection and promotion of cultural and natural diversity are major challenges of the twenty-first century. In this respect, museums and collections constitute primary means by which tangible and intangible testimonies of nature and human cultures are safeguarded.”
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17 Jun, 2019 • Strategy • 1869

A non-judgemental assessment of your organization

Anyone who has ever traveled knows that what is true in one city, may be unheard of in the next. When and how much you tip, for instance, or the definition of a black coffee. The diversity of approaches to everything from the length of a lunch break to the way decisions are made becomes even more evident when you work in an international context. For me, this is one of the great joys of working in a global, multi-cultural context.

This diversity demands a certain humility when it comes to offering solutions. What works in one context may not work in the next. This also — and maybe especially — applies to the organization of culture. The ubiquitous black box and white cube notwithstanding, how people organize culture (in museums, libraries, theatres) is shaped by geographical location, natural resources, technology, politics, and by trends and developments in society.

Equally, this diversity implies that when you start mapping the future of your organization, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The future of your organization depends on its specific situation and needs.

With this in mind, we developed the Quantum Culture method. The workbook starts with a self-assessment of your organization. In line with the values of the method, this self-assessment is non-judgemental. It does not rate your performance on some absolute scale but instead helps you discover the specific mix of approaches that currently exist in your organization and where this mix is different from what it should be given your particular context.
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15 May, 2019 • People • 5308

Intangible Cultural Heritage and Museums

Intangible cultural heritage is the practices, representations, expressions, as well as the knowledge and skills that people recognize as part of their cultural heritage.

Intangible cultural heritage is living heritage. People pass it on from one generation to the next. It is everywhere in today’s society; it is a source of cultural diversity, gives people a sense of identity and continuity, and contributes to sustainable development.

“Intangible heritage is the cultural equivalent of biodiversity: a range of creative solutions that people have come up with over time about how and where we live together.”
— Workshop Intangible Heritage

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is part of the museum definition since at least 2007, and part of the museum practice for much longer. Museums as diverse as Norway’s Coastal Heritage Museum, the city museum of Rotterdam, the Alpine Museum in Bern, and the Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie is Aubusson preserve, document, research, and present different forms of living heritage for current and future generations. There are similarities between the new participatory method to museums and approaches to ICH.
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9 May, 2019 • People • 7201

When your museum isn’t attracting people
It might be that they do not know about you

(Which probably doesn’t have to do with the number of advertisements you put in front of them. People may not care to know about you.)
- Because the story you tell is not essential to your audience
(The fact that your peers think your story matters doesn’t mean it matters to anyone beyond your immediate peers. And they may be lying.)
- Because you are telling your story to the wrong people
(There is a vast difference between a story that matters to tourists, locals, designers, businessmen, activists, students, job seekers, etc.)
- Because the story you tell is not something people are buying right now
(You may be selling a product (contemporary art, local history) while your audience wants an experience, or an experience when they’re looking for connections, or relationships when they need a place to be alone.)
- You may be telling your story in the wrong place
(Your building may be a barrier to success.)
- You may tell it in the wrong way
(You may be authoritative when you ought to be humble, explaining when you need to be listening, doubtful when you’d better take a clear position.)
- You may tell it at the wrong time
(Most people work during office hours.)
- You may not be the one who is supposed to tell your story
(In which case it isn’t ‘your’ story at all.)
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28 Mar, 2019 • Technology, Thoughts about museums • 4027

A museum for humans

“Prohuman art and culture question the value of pat narratives. They produce open-ended stories, without clear victors or well-defined conflicts. Everyone is right; everyone is wrong. The works don’t answer questions; they raise them.” — Douglas Rushkoff in Team Human

Douglas Rushkoff’s Team Human is a quick and compelling read about how our technology, our markets, and our major cultural institutions have become embedded with an anti-human agenda, and how to fix this. The book reads like a manifesto and comes packed with catchy quotes (“Engagement through digital media is just a new way of being alone.” “The very purpose of the capitalist operating system is to prevent widespread prosperity.”).

Earlier, I wrote about what a museum for robots may look like. One possibility was that robots would keep museums around merely as a way to entertain the large groups of humans who they have replaced. Rushkoff may concur. Yet he sees another role for museums. In Rushkoff’s analysis, cultural institutions should be places where we rediscover and strengthen our humanity and ability to work together as humans—against robots and the anti-human values that are embedded in them.

Art and culture, in Rushkoff’s world, are at the frontlines of an uphill battle for the future for humanity.

The anti-human agenda

In Team Human, Rushkoff posits that after an initial wave of optimism about the internet, its “tremendous social and intellectual potential was surrendered to short-term market priorities, turning a human-centred medium into a platform for manipulation, surveillance, and extraction.” This has happened with every medium.

The added problem with digital technologies is that they are so pervasive, that they have already begun to change the world. Instead of having technology serve humans, we now serve technology and the values and interests of a tiny group of people that are embedded in them, which are not at all in the benefit of all of us.
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