Conner Prairie recently hosted the Association of Indiana Museums (AIM) annual conference, August 24-25. Ellen Rosenthal, president and chief executive officer for Conner Prairie, welcomed approximately 100 members of the association to the Strengthening Community: The Museum’s Role conference, which featured a keynote address by Dr. Ford Bell, president and CEO of the American Association of Museums (AAM).
In her introduction of Dr. Bell, Rosenthal praised him for his commitment to museums in Indiana.
“He knows that several Indiana museums stand as national examples of innovation and positive impact on the cultural and educational lives of their communities,” she said.
During his keynote speech, Dr. Bell recognized Conner Prairie for its “great history experience in America” and how Conner Prairie and 17 other accredited museums in Indiana have demonstrated their commitment to excellence.”
Additionally, Dr. Bell discussed AAM accreditation, the need for the AAM to define its role in supporting and promoting museums in America, and how the AAM needs to continue to enhance and embrace the many educational challenges and demands of the 21st Century museum visitor.
After the keynote address, Dr. Bell answered questions. Attendees then proceeded to an array of programs and breakout sessions.
For more information about AIM or AAM, visit www.indianamuseums.org or
www.aam-us.org, respectively. To view the text of Dr. Bell’s speech, scroll down.
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Indiana Association of Museums
August 25, 2008
Ford W. Bell, DVM
We have this very sensible policy at the American Association of Museums whereby we are prohibited from commenting publicly on any particular museum. You are about to bear witness to my breaking that taboo - willingly, blatantly and unashamedly.
What the people of Indiana have at Conner Prairie is one of the great history experiences in America. Starting in November, when the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History re-opens on the National Mall, I will be able to walk a few blocks from my office in Washington, D.C. and see some of the most significant artifacts of the American chronicle, ranging from the original Star Spangled Banner to Thomas Jefferson’s writing desk to Julia Child’s kitchen. These objects expand our imaginations and move us with the power of their authenticity.
And here at Conner Prairie, our imaginations take flight. The history of America is on offer here, from the Lenapi settlement to the Conner household to Prairietown, visitors can enjoy a compelling, inspiring experience of what America really was, of the daily challenges of our forebears, and of the culture of the people who harvested and nurtured this earth long before a European ever graced - or disgraced, depending on your point of view - this continent. All associated with this museum should be proud of what you do each day, and the people of the region are lucky you are here.
And like 17 other accredited museums in the state of Indiana, Conner Prairie has demonstrated its commitment to excellence in all it does through its recent re-accreditation by AAM. Accreditation is indicative of a museum’s determination to fulfill its obligations to the public, and to meet its mandate to educate, engage and enlighten audiences of all descriptions. In short, to serve the people of their community, their state, their nation.
Now, the staff here at Conner Prairie and the other similarly designated museums in this state can testify to the arduousness of the process that leads to accreditation. But we are working on that. At the most recent AAM Board meeting in July, we approved an initiative to re-formulate Accreditation into a National Museum Standards Network, which will be designed to streamline the process and make it more accessible to museums of all sizes. This new approach to accreditation is important, because it will be the cornerstone for the way that AAM will work going forward.
Let me explain.
As you know, the American Association of Museums is the only organization in the field that represents museums of all types and sizes – from historic houses to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from the Smithsonian Institution to the Jell-O Museum in LeRoy, NY, from the California Science Center to the Young at Art Children’s Museum in Davie, Florida. Representing museums of every stripe, along with zoos, aquaria and public gardens, is no small feat. I’m not going to say it’s like herding cats, but maybe there’s a reason the board hired a veterinarian for this position.
But our base is very diverse, and what that means from a practical standpoint is that AAM needs to thoughtfully define its role in supporting and promoting America’s great museums. Clearly, that role does not call for us to try to compete with, or override or ignore, our fellow national museum service organizations – AASLH, AZA, AAMD, ACM, APGA and ASTC and our colleagues in the state and regional associations. But it does call for us take advantage of every opportunity to offer to our colleagues, and to the field, resources which AAM, as the largest museum service organization, is in a unique position to provide. Conversely, we need to look carefully at our service offerings to insure that we are not trying to do things that the state and regional associations, or the other national service organizations, are far better suited to provide. And, it is absolutely incumbent on AAM to look for every opportunity to collaborate.
As a first step in implementing this approach, AAM has begun engaging our partner organizations in a new, shared vision of museum excellence. By linking museums to standards and the various assessment and recognition opportunities that exist within the field, not just within AAM, we can create a true “network of excellence.” As the national museum association, this is the role AAM should be playing. The network concept will emphasize collaboration and AAM’s role as a unifying force, leader, convener, facilitator, and partner committed to fostering field-wide collaborations and to addressing common issues affecting the field. What we will create – with your help, and that of museum professionals from every part of the country – is the “gateway” that allows museums to become a part of our new network of excellence, as opposed to the “accreditation or nothing” model that has been in place for the past 37 years. The “gateway” will consist of tools, services, products, and education provided by the entire ecosystem of museum organizations, with AAM as an important partner, but not the “owner” of the process. The “owner” will be the museum field – the discipline-based museum service organizations, regional organizations, and state organizations, with AAM playing a prominent role as convener, facilitator, unifier and partner. That is exactly where AAM belongs.
We are only at the beginning of this journey and you’re going to hear a lot more about it going forward. I hope many of you here today will be involved in helping us create the museum field’s new commitment to excellence. After all, that commitment is ultimately, and inevitably, about sustainability, since the message that we want to be able to take to elected officials and policy-makers, corporations, foundations, school administrators, and the press is that museums are committed to the highest standards in everything they do.
My travels this summer took me to Houston for the annual meeting of the Visitor Studies Association. Somewhere, I have a T-shirt that says, “I survived Houston in July.” I hope none of you was actually there, because this speech is going to sound eerily familiar. Anyway, at the VSA, one hears a lot about the “informal learning environment,” a concept that is very important in any discussion about the critically important role that museums play in our society. The problem, as I pointed out, is that the phrase “informal learning environment” means something very specific, and important, to each of us here in this room. But to the average person on the street here in Indiana or anywhere in the United States, the concept of “informal learning” is likely to mean Larry King Live or Oprah!. How many people understand the important role that museums, zoos, aquaria and public gardens play in teaching young people – and indeed all of us – about creativity and critical thinking, about global warming, about the importance of genetic diversity, about why mathematics matters every day, about reconciliation, about visualizing and understanding humankind’s great artistic or historic heritage, about the joys of chemistry, about the tragedy that is the loss of any single species from this planet, however small and seemingly insignificant to our daily lives. There is nothing more important for the 102-year old organization that I work for than the task of communicating to our key audiences why museums matter. We want to do a far better job of promoting and highlighting the critical role that informal, lifelong learning opportunities play in helping our children learn. Having been a teacher for a significant part of my life, I am keenly aware of the importance of experiential learning, especially for young people for whom the traditional didactic learning environment may be challenging or perplexing, as it has been at times for my own 15 year-old son. At AAM we believe that museums are inextricably woven into the social fabric of our society, and that they are as critical to the success of communities large and small, all across this country, as are libraries, schools and utilities. And in the months ahead, AAM will be working in new and different ways to communicate the important value proposition about museums, and we’ll be reaching out to new and different audiences, as well. For example, next year we are going to have our first-ever Museum Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill, February 22-24, to enable us to get the message of why museums matter in front of what will be a very new and different Congress. Gail Silberglied, our new director of government relations, has planned a day of advocacy training on the 23rd and an assault on House and Senate offices on February 24th. Already, the Council of Regions and the Council of Standing Professional Committees have changed their meeting dates to coincide with Museum Advocacy Day, and I hope many of you will join us, as well.
There’s always good news on the museum front, and part of the good news, as you all know, is that museums remain tremendously popular. Recent studies by the federal Institute for Museum and Library Services have estimated the number of annual museum visits in America at 850 million. And growing. That’s more than the attendance at all professional sporting events combined.
The public keeps coming back to museums because of what I like to call “Museum Moments.” I’m sure everyone in this room has had these over the years, although for me, these days, the senior moments are competing for ascendancy with the Museum Moments. Whether it is standing in awe before a fascinating new science center exhibit; or the moving emotion of a Rembrandt portrait; or being struck by the dignity and grace of the jungle cats at the local zoo, these Museum Moments are those that enable us to get beyond ourselves, to transcend the everyday, and to begin to grasp the unfathomable scope of life on Earth. These Museum Moments nurture our minds, our spirits, and our souls.
For many of us, that first Museum Moment likely came as a child, when an exhibit reached us in such a way that we for the first time realized that there was a world out there beyond our block. Which brings me to the depressing part of my remarks, and a disturbing trend that is of concern to all of us who work with museums.
Many of these childhood Museum Moments likely came on a school field trip. Well, with soaring gas prices, school budget cuts, and the mandates of No Child Left Behind, the school field trip is in danger of becoming extinct. Teachers have to teach to the test, and administrators have to make the budget balance. The real losers in this scenario, of course, are the children.
For museums, this issue is critical. Field trips constitute a substantial portion of museum attendance each year. More critical still is that if museums cannot reach school-age children on a regular basis, it makes it more challenging to fulfill their mission of education and their charge to serve the public interest. Finally, field trips are, as I’ve noted, often the vehicle for hooking young people on museums. And when you capture them young, you have a museum visitor for life.
Yet it is not all doom and gloom. Museums, as is their wont, are responding. In order to meet the math and reading mandates of No Child Left Behind, the Field Museum in Chicago has incorporated the math elements of many of its exhibits into its education materials and wall text, demonstrating that education means more than taking a test. The Denver Art Museum has initiated a program where local teachers are instructed on how to integrate art into their daily curriculum. This program reaches teachers of all subjects. In Kansas City, the museums are working with teachers and school administrators to make field trips more productive and cost-effective, so that the children may still get this opportunity for informal learning.
Museums have always shown themselves ready to adapt to new educational mandates, but I have to say that I agree with Dr. Joe L. Frost, Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas. Some of you may have heard him speak at the Association of Children’s Museums Annual Conference in Denver this year. He said, and I quote, “No organized program is inflicting more harm on physical education, the arts and spontaneous free play than the groundless, irrational, wacky No Child Left Behind. High-stakes testing is contrary to a century of research on education and child development. It is based on mechanized, industrial-type models for producing spinach, dog food and industrial products. If it were about excellence it would be about educating highly creative individuals, capable of reflective, visionary thought and action. It would also be about ambition, pride, collaboration, morality, and imagination.” Who is better prepared to contribute to the development of “highly creative individuals” than our country’s great museums?
We at AAM hope to add to the exploration and resolution of future problems through our Center for the Future of Museums. Scheduled to be formally launched later this year, the Center will be a forum to explore where the profession is headed and what issues will emerge over the short and long term, drawing on the experience and expertise of people from diverse fields – scientists, educators, business people, elected officials, academics, futurists, demographers, architects and planners and, of course, museum professionals. The formal launch of the The Center will take place in 2009, but we’re holding a “sneak preview” on December 2nd at the Newseum. We are pleased that our speaker will be Jane McGonigal, a futurist and renowned designer of alternate reality games, who has pioneered the use of massively collaborative games to probe the future and its problems. Her project, World Without Oil, is the first such project designed to solve a real world problem. I hope some of you will be able join us for what will be a fascinating talk.
We are all keenly aware of the sad fact that many institutions in our country today inspire cynicism. But museums just inspire, period. By way of evidence, and in closing, I offer this story, of two Philadelphians for whom museums were both an inspiration and a lifeline, first reported in February of this year in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Some of you may know the story. It is only about two people, yet it is the kind of story that is replayed in museums across this country every day, in every type of institution, with people of all ages and backgrounds. It is emblematic of the ability of museums to become special places – places of learning, of reflection, of growth, of comfort – and it is just one in an infinite array of stories about why museums matter.
Bill McLaughlin and Dick Hughes are World War II veterans. Bill fought his way across Europe in 1944 and ’45. Dick was on Iwo Jima. Both are in their 80s. They attend the same church in Philadelphia, but were not really close friends. When Bill’s wife was losing her battle with Alzheimer’s, Dick thought it was his “Christian duty” to pull Bill out of his despondency.
They spent an afternoon at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. They enjoyed it, for the intellectual stimulation and for the way it diverted their attention from other pressing matters. The following week, they visited the battleship New Jersey. And they continued to visit Philadelphia area museums and historic sites − for three years and a total of 203 museums. Their journeys ranged from the sublime - the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Independence Hall, for example - to the somewhat quirky - the Mario Lanza Museum, for one.
The result was a handy guide they recently published, entitled Travels with Dick and Bill, sales of which benefit their church. But more importantly, the result of these travels included a love for museums, an appreciation of their hometown, and an enduring friendship that will undoubtedly last the rest of their lives. This is a poignant example of how museums bring us together, and of how these public institutions served two men who had served their country so honorably. It is a great Museum Moment for them, certainly, and for all of us, as well, because it is so illustrative.
If we in the museum field can continue to provide the kind of experience to our visitors as enjoyed by these two gentlemen from Philadelphia, the future of our enterprise looks bright indeed.
Thank you for inviting me.
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