Museum Audience Insight

A Really Good Rejection Letter

We've posted examples of the best and worst thank you notes in prior posts, but we have an interesting twist today:  A really good rejection letter.  

 

As some of you know, part of the team here focuses on museums, while others also work on other community-based enterprises such as municipalities.  We're working on tourism development strategy for one of them, and for that work we approached a potential partner since they had an event that fit a piece of our client's strategy.  But...the pitch didn't work.  Instead, we got a rejection letter.  And it's the best I've seen.  

 

Why did this rejection letter stand out?  

• First, it created a real connection.  It was clear that someone actually gave it consideration and cared.  
• Second, it showed that there's a real strategy behind their thinking, one worth respecting.  
• Third, they left the door open in case there's a more logical fit down the road.  
• Finally, they left me feeling even better about their brand, even though they said no.  I'm now a fan.

 

We realize this is a bit of a diversion from our normal posts, but we thought it would be an interesting example for those who have to turn down solicitations from the community, and those who want to see how a really effective marketer thinks.  (If you're interested in knowing who they are, just email us.)  Here's their (slightly edited) rejection letter:

 

Hey James,

___ passed your email along to me…I’m our events director here at ___, so I’m hopefully equipped to answer your questions!

First off, thanks for thinking of bikes, number one, and us number two. Glad to hear that you and ___ are getting more butts on bikes. That’s great. As I guess you’ve figured out, we like to do the same.

I’m guessing you’re close to right that ___ could provide a very friendly town for us to bring our bling to. We’ve spent some time in that neck of the woods as a sponsor of several other great events, and know that we’re a pretty like minded pairing.

Unfortunately, we’ve already had the hard conversations with many, many folks regarding our lineup for 2010. The toughest part of that annual discussion that we’ve had to tackle as of late has been the shift from ___ to larger urban locations. Two things have driven that for us. One, as this ballyhoo gets bigger, it’s becoming less and less cost effective to do it in ___ (not simply for day of attendance, but the power of advertising it to a broader market). Secondly, the message has become more and more about commuting (as you seem to know) and, although ANYONE can commute, we’re able to dive much deeper with that message in an urban location. I’m sure we’d end up preaching to an impressive choir in ___.

So, alas, I’m not sure that we’ve got much to offer the ___ riders this upcoming summer from the ___ vantage point. Thank you for thinking of us though. We are currently developing other events, as well as always looking for the right sponsorships, so don’t hesitate to reach out to us anytime you see something that might be a fit.

Thank you for doing so in this instance as well! Good luck!

Meredith

 

We would love to hear your thoughts.  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

School Field Trips Up in Smoke (Traveler's Rest isn't, though)

When I was in fourth grade, we were scheduled to go on a field trip to a historic house museum, Traveler’s Rest.  We gathered that morning in the school lunchroom, ready to board the buses.  The air crackled with excitement.  Someone had heard there was Indian blood on the stairs of the house from an attack!  The titillation of seeing that.

And then Miss Fannie Mae Baker, one of the teachers, came in and told us, in grave tones that, sadly, Traveler’s Rest had burned down just last night.  We were all devastated. 

Turns out Miss Baker was just teasing us (she is a lovely lady, by the way).  Traveler’s Rest is still calmly standing and welcoming visitors, mysterious red-stained stair and all (though the “Indian” story is pretty well debunked). 

I remember that trip fondly and vividly, and I bet at least some of my White County Elementary School classmates feel likewise. 

This morning, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about school field trips, sharing the excitement kids felt about taking hikes, going to plays, and visiting museums.  But, as the article continues, those trips are increasingly being cut as school budgets shrink.  Even free museums, with travel funds to give to schools, are seeing fewer bookings as schools cut back every incidental penny they can find. 

It is a shame, and could have long-term ramifications that will haunt museums for years.  Why?  Our preliminary research indicates about a quarter of Museum Advocates had seminal childhood memories of museums . . . from school field trips.  School field trips appear to be a critical pathway to lifelong learning for children who may not otherwise visit museums with their families.  These cuts shut out important experiences for children that can, ultimately, lead to a habit of learning, curiosity, and museum-going in adulthood . . . . and in future generations. 

We have posted on this subject before, and as we continue our research on Museum Advocates this winter, we will undoubtedly post again.  Bottom line, school field trips are important.

Do you have fond memories of childhood field trips?  How has your museum dealt with school budget cuts?  We would love to hear your thoughts.  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

 -Susie

What Not To Do (or, why I hate (most) guided tours)

It was, as a friend of mine would say, a GD.  A Great Disappointment. 

Yesterday another dear friend, Pauline Eversmann (retired from Winterthur Museum), and I were on one of the worst guided tours either of us have ever experienced. 

Now I have made no secret that while I love historic house museums, I dislike their standard interpretive format – the guided tour.  I am not alone.  Turns out many Core Visitors to museums are not fans either, as our previous research has shown. 

So what made this tour so egregiously awful?  It wasn’t the house and was completely the guide, who in this case was a (supposedly) trained professional.  Based on this tour, here is a “do not do” list for guided tours.

• Don’t shut out your audience.  This guide never, not even once, invited us to ask questions.  He did not even hold out the possibility of asking.  He totally missed out on the opportunity to engage his audience by sharing information about the things, and stories, that may have interested us more.
• Don’t talk about yourself.  Not only was he disinterested in us, he was supremely interested in, well, his interests.  And was constantly interjecting his preferences and thoughts into his spiel.  I really didn’t care how many languages he could speak and/or read (this is relevant how?).  I don’t mind a guide saying “this is my favorite room” or “this is my favorite object,” and lending personality to a tour, but this was constant, irrelevant, and annoying.
• Don’t gripe.  Yes, it is too bad that the property is much reduced and is now surrounded by heavy traffic.  Acknowledge it, tell us why, and move on.  Don’t constantly gripe about it.  Of course, on this tour, it was only one of a few things he griped about.  Unnecessary and off-putting. 
• Don’t mumble.  Enunciate.  Pauline cannot hear out of one ear, and she struggled to understand what he was saying.  There is a reason why many older audiences prefer audio tours – you can control the volume, direct it in the ear, replay if you miss something, and the narrators tend to speak clearly. 
• Don’t look at your watch.  OK, yes, you can sneak a peek once or twice to make sure you are pacing yourself.  He looked at his watch in every single room.  In an obvious way.  It made us feel that we were being herded, almost like an unwelcome intrusion that must be dealt with and gotten rid of. 
  

I also have four more “don’ts” from other terrible tours I have suffered:

• Don’t tell us about your own genealogy.  Especially when it is totally unconnected to the house and the people who lived there.
• Don’t start your tour by singing the theme song from Gilligan’s Island.  Enough said.
  
• Don’t make bad jokes.  Including the sexist ones. 
  
• Don’t forget to bathe.  Honestly.  I cannot believe I had to include this one. 

While most tours I have been on have been indifferent at best, I have had stellar guided tours (thank you, Drayton Hall, for the best tour I have ever, ever experienced).  And I have been on supremely funny ones (bless the guide at Boscobel who said that Thomas Jefferson had the “hots” for Campeche chairs – which is, by the way, true).

But, ultimately, our research tells us that guided tours are not a preferred form of interpretation for many of our visitors, and our experience yesterday illustrates why that is so.  I certainly do not want to return to this house museum, or take other guests there, even though the house, and the story of the truly remarkably family that lived there, is absolutely fascinating. 

With many historic house museums struggling to survive, guided tours may be a contributing factor to their diminishing audiences.  I realize that, for small organizations, they are the most cost effective way of securely sharing a property, but isn’t it time to find more compelling, and engaging, ways to do so?

Do you have any do’s or don’ts from guided tours you have experienced?  We would love to hear your thoughts.  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

-Susie

Okay, you have GOT to check out that bathroom!

This summer, when visiting the Newseum for the first time, I stepped into the restroom.  And it ended up being one of my favorite spots in the museums.  Why?  It was tiled with giggle-inducing headlines like this one: 

Restrooms.  We all have to have them, we all have to use them.  We have talked about restrooms before on this blog, primarily in the context of how clean they are.  Totally important.  (The Newseum's restrooms were very clean.)  But is there an opportunity for engaging our audiences more deeply . . . in the loo?  

Well, yes.  In some recent research we conducted on behalf of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, one young woman made the case for also having a remarkable restroom:

Everyone loves a clean restroom. I like an interesting restroom. It bugs me when I go to an art museum, for example, and the walls are bare white. It's like a blank canvas - couldn't they even find a university student to come in and do a mural for them or something? Or maybe even put some of the collection that's rotated out in the ladies' waiting area (and gentleman's equivalent, if they have them). Or at a science museum - paint the periodic table on the walls, tile in the Fibonacci sequence. It just shows such attention to detail, and how neat is it to come out and tell your friends, "Okay, you have GOT to check out that bathroom!"

                                                        - 25-year-old woman

The USS Constitution Museum has been using their restroom as an interpretive tool for years (an interpretive panel can be seen in the image below; why my beloved dog, Shadow, is posing with it wearing a holiday scarf is a completely different story).  Asking, and answering, where the sailors "went" is educational, funny, and gives people something to talk about. 

Yet there is something else about this restroom that makes people talk.  As Robert Kiihne, the museum's Director of Exhibits, recently posted on their excellent Family Learning Forum, their restrooms are also ". . .  dark, grey . . . and poorly ventilated. Visitors complain about them - even when the restrooms have just been cleaned. I am sure that for every visitor that complains 10 more are just turned off."

Which takes us back, of course, to cleanliness.  So clean restrooms, yes.  You do not want to be remarkable for your dirty (or just dimly lit) restrooms.  But now that you have that covered, what can you do to make your restrooms remarkable in an exciting and creative way? 

(Finally, the excellent Elizabeth Merritt of AAM would likely badger me if I neglected to mention the splendid Art Museum Toilet Museum of Art.  Check it out.)

Are the restrooms in your museum remarkable?  Why?  Or have you seen particularly remarkable restrooms?  What makes them so?  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

And if you do have remarkable restrooms in your museum, send us a photo and we'll post it for you.  Send photos to susie (at) reachadvisors (dot) com.

-Susie

Check out these fantastic photos from the Pacific Science Center.  These Grossology restrooms are truly remarkable.  Felicia Maffia, the Director of Exhibit Development, shared with us, "It's really fun for staff to overhear some of the great conversations that happen when visitors encounter these two restrooms."  Thanks, Felicia, for sending these along!

 

 

'Curating' in a new world?

Interesting article on the cover of this week’s SundayStyles section of the New York Times on how the “curating…has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to pass it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting.”   The article mentions ‘curators’ who run sneaker stores, flea market swap meets, consignment shops, music websites….  It’s such a sought-after moniker that the article mentions that serving as a guest curator of a design blog, craft fair or department store has become an honor.

It’s easy to write this off as a fad, but in the past few years that we’ve been talking about the concept of the public embracing the role of ‘curating’ their worlds outside the museum sphere, there are a few points that have been fun to kick around:

The obvious driver behind this is the continued acceleration of the internet.  Sure, some of us of a certain age may have made mix tapes in our younger years, but it’s a rather different ballgame when the depth and breadth of creative inputs are far greater than ever before, as is the potential to build a sizable following.  Simultaneously, in a digital world where we’re bombarded with inputs, there’s a real role that these new ‘curators’ fulfill.   Given that we don’t see the internet slowing down anytime soon, this shift clearly fits in our model for fundamental trends likely to continue rather than short-lived fads likely to fade away.

But perhaps a bigger driver behind this shift is that there’s a generation under 30 years old that’s simply far more likely to be wired this way.  That might mean they assume that the curators in their lives are their peers or strangers online…or they think of themselves as curators for their peers…or they view their digital time as a means to curate their own lives.  In part, it’s a logical extension of how young adults have always tried to separate themselves from prior generations.   But our museum audience research and our broader consumer research is pointing towards an entirely new level of generational separation.  The segment within this generation that we call “Extremely Creative Consumers” is a real force, dramatically reshaping the definition of creativity for themselves and those around them.   We’re pretty certain that this shift will end up as one of the defining characteristics of this generation of young adults, even as they progress through later life stages.  The folks at the AAM's Center for the Future of Museums have cleverly coined this as part of the "MyCulture" trend, and we view this as a real force that we're going to see play out for decades to come.

So here are a few interesting questions to ponder:

First:  Does the use (or overuse) of the word "curator" help or hurt museums?  We would argue it might be negative for museums that simply ignore this trend.  Likewise, acknowledging this trend could really help open up the eyes of the public about the role and value of the curating that museums do...but that might take some 'curating' of the work of curators to help audiences see more of how the curating work of museums really matters.

Second:  As more of the public (at least among younger audiences) redefine the role of curating in their lives, does this mean that museums will have to redefine that role as well?  While it’s highly unlikely that this trend gets to the point where we’ll see people mounting their own Calder or dinosaur exhibits from home, is there a way to help passionate amateurs engage more with museums?  We’ve seen some museums start to engage community groups to help curate exhibits or even ‘crowdsource’ some of the key decisions for an exhibit.  Will we see museums enlist amateur 'curators' to assist with online efforts?  Or will we see curators become a far more prominent public face of museums, where a younger audience that is increasingly migrating to a new type of curator can cultivate their passions someplace unexpected...like a museum?  (Any examples out there of where rethinking the role of curating is having positive -- or negative -- impact?)

Third:  We’ve seen in many fields how these shifts have decimated the role of the 'expert.'  The relevance of the editors at Britannica and the World Book has been completely blown to bits by the Wikipedians.  In many markets, for many subjects, the power of the newspaper editor has been usurped by bloggers.  One of the differentiating factors here is that museums deal with more than digitizable bits; there’s also a physical component that’s rather important to many out there. But it’s undeniable that we’re in the midst of a fundamental shift in public attitudes and expectations of the role of the ‘expert’ and their relevance in the lives of the audiences they serve.

A bit frightening…but also sort of exciting to think about ways museums can serve an audience that is increasingly hungry for curated work that enriches their lives.

As always, we look forward to the conversation…  Simply click on “comments” below (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

What Happens in Vegas May Not Stay in Vegas (if you are a smart marketer, that is)

Reach Advisors is pleased to welcome a new guest blogger, LeAnne Ruzzamenti, Director of Marketing Communications at the Crocker Art Museum.  We have long been impressed by LeAnne’s work at the Crocker, and are delighted to learn where she finds inspiration.  Thanks so much, LeAnne, for contributing to Museum Audience Insight!

A few days in Las Vegas had me inspired: what lessons can museums and marketers learn from the marketing and retail pros? Here were some of my impressions:

These people know how to get a message across. From the moment of departing the airplane, I couldn’t help but be taken in by the advertising that appeared everywhere: in baggage claim (posters, billboard, standing signs on my carousel), on the “subway” within the airport (ads wrapped around the standing doors), on the cabs (roof signs AND trunk signs), and then as we approached Vegas Blvd.: billboards everywhere (ones with video, that light up, change, boast really great creative), buses completed wrapped with beautiful ads (the cost of producing the wrap alone probably accounted for one-third of my museum’s advertising budget). Over stimulation for sure, but after all the goal for the casinos is to get you to come through their doors – to play slots, eat, and shop in their high-end shops, and every message is strongly leading you to that end. As a marketing maven, I couldn’t help be impressed. I was hooked into reading nearly every billboard, video, cab, and bus ad and trying to decide who had the most powerful messages and creative.

They deliver on brand promise. Vegas promises that if you come, you are guaranteed to have a great time and feel good even while you gamble your money and spend sums of money on items that you’d consider outrageously priced back home. They know their brand now, “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas,” and they hit it from every angle. Everything points to entertainment, and rest assured you will find the activities that energize, refresh, and entertain you.

Customer service is supreme. I was impressed when we walked 8 feet from the parking garage and were met by a hotel host who escorted us to the specific check-in line that we should join. After that I was harder to impress. A security officer stood outside the guest elevator doors and greeted us each time we went to our room, a presence for our safety, to feel as though we were “approved” to leave the casino floor and enter the guest room area, although they didn’t check keys or question us. Beautiful girls in matching suits wandered the casino floor and pool asking what we’d like to drink. Waiters, maître d’s, bus boys, sommeliers, all attended to our needs while dining.  Why the emphasis on customer service?  There are lots of options. I can easily walk across the street to another casino.

They sell in smart ways. While I snacked on nachos at a shopping mall, I heard a woman sell and upsell frozen daiquiris in such persistent ways, it made me want to recruit her to sell memberships at my museum’s front desk. We were offered opportunities to join frequent players’ clubs, spin wheels for free gifts, upgrade our show seats to premium location, shop during special hours, attend clubs with VIP status. They ask and sell and most of the offers were to customize our experience. 

So while taking all this in, I still wasn’t finding the direct ties to the museum field. After all, the Las Vegas Art Museum closed early this year and the Guggenheim at the Venetian closed nine months prior to that, closures that were blamed on Las Vegas abandoning the family and cultural tourist and not committing to greater cultural experiences. Then I happened by the Ferrari dealership in the Wynn Hotel where they charge $10 admission (most museums I frequent have admission rates at $10 or less) and this was a car dealership. It was then that I realized that there was much museums can learn from Vegas.

LeAnne Ruzzamenti is the Director of Marketing Communications for the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California. 

Have any thoughts or comments?  Share them with us by clicking on "comments" below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)

Intellectual Intimacy . . . Gone Virtual

I had a chance to chat with Terry Davis of the American Association for State and Local History at an event last week, and we were reflecting on their recent annual conference that also included a bold experiment to run an 'online conference' as well.  The online conference was designed to increase the number of museum staff members that could engage with the conference programming, even if they couldn't travel to Indianapolis.  By my rough calculations, more than a quarter of the AASLH conference 'attendance' was in the online conference rather than in person (and that's probably heavily underestimated since many of the online registrations included the participation of multiple staff members).

 

Having presented online, and in a regular conference session with Connecticut Landmarks and the Connecticut Humanities Council, I noted a few things:  The live session was a small audience, but had a very senior level of rather engaged attendees.  The online session had about five times more attendees, almost equally engaged.  It ended up as a really great way for AASLH to leverage the content prepared for the conference, extending the reach to a much broader audience.  (I'm really curious to see if the session reviews are any different for the online vs. the live presentation.)

 

Afterwards, we had a more casual online chat with the online producer and Greg Stevens, who runs AAM's online professional education, and talked about how the online experience can be far more engaging than one might expect.  For example, Greg and I realized that we had a strong rapport and working relationship even though we had only met through work on one of his online programs . . . never face-to-face until that moment.  Online isn't such a bad medium for building social glue compared to face-to-face, actually even making it easier to do that with more people.

 

But here's the big question this left me pondering:  It's clear that serious content can be delivered in an engaging manner online.  Could this be a tool that helps museums expand public access to their knowledge and expertise, while engaging a larger audience that is curious and hungry for the kind of stuff that museums are so well suited to provide?  Some universities are doing this as a means to re- engage alumni...with the end goal of supporting their development efforts.  What might this mean for museums? 

 

We'd love to hear any thoughts or questions!  Simply click on “comments” below (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

- James

Is Art Really Asynchonous? What About Museums?

Recently, marketing guru Seth Godin posted this chart on his blog:

Godin explains how to read the chart:

Here are a dozen or so forms of communication, arranged on two axes.

On the horizontal, they rank from asynchronous (meaning the creator and the responder are separated in time--like a letter) and synchronous (meaning the creator and the responder are in real time proximity to each other--like a phone call).

Up and down, I've charted the quality of the medium. Quality in terms of density of information exchanged. The 140 characters in Twitter is about as low density as you can get other than a stop light. A movie, on the other hand, is loud and bright and two hours long and there's audience reaction and it is edited and designed to evoke a response.

To be clear, then: movies take a long time to make, but they're high impact. Twitter takes a second to do, but there's not a lot of info there. One on one coaching is high enough bandwidth that it can change your life and make you cry, in real time, and the Mona Lisa, while less bits per second than a TV show, has enough emotional bandwidth to matter, even if it's 400 years old.

(To read his entire blog post, click here.)

When I saw this, my initial reaction was to think that museums need to move themselves into that upper right quadrant.  But, is that the right place for a museum to move?  Is the role of a museum to provide transformative experiences for its audience (transformative in the sense that one’s beliefs or understanding or knowledge about the world is changed as a result of the visit)?  And, if a museum seeks to be a place for transformative experiences (for those who seek such experiences) how much of the experience needs to be directed by the museum and how much of it can people accomplish on their own through their interactions with the museum’s objects?  Godin places one type of museum object, art, in the lower left quadrant (and nowhere near my initial thought) - do you agree with that?

Where do you think museums should fall on the chart?  Does it vary by type of museum?  Or type of museum experience?  To share your thoughts click on “comments” below (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment). 

- Sally

"Museum going as compulsive consumerism?"

Michael Kimmelman’s recent New York Times article, At Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but Few Stay to Focus, sparked some discussion at Reach Advisors. While the point of the article was interesting, even more interesting were the reader comments that followed. They raised again the questions of why people should visit museums, and what a museum’s role could (or should) be in today’s society.

 

Quotes pulled from the comments following the article:

 

• “And watching the young people, searching out a famous work, focusing the cell phone, clicking - without ever having even looked at the painting. Proof for the folks back home - been there, did that. Museum going as compulsive consumerism.”
• “The majority of the public only goes to museums because they think that somehow they are 'supposed' to, and beyond that, it affords some status to say that one has been to the Louvre, or wherever. Most museum goers do not engage with the art objects or pictures because they simply don't know anything about them, and don't make an effort to prepare to have a meaningful experience by informing themselves. The roots of this, in US culture especially, come from the notion that arts are merely a pleasure, a distraction, and not a necessity or something worthy of intensive study.”             
• “Museums are exhausting. If you think about it, they are a much more concentrated bombardment of images than what the social pundits like to lament we are inundated with in our everyday pop culture, because few of them are trivial, throwaway images, and most people go in believing that. Add to this that we are conditioned to think of museums as some kind of temples housing sacred relics requiring hushed reverence. It's intimidating. Let people have their own fun in the museums. Not everybody's into what you're into, and they're not necessarily the worse for it.”
• “…running from one painting to another as though each was a commodity having no personal connection to the viewer…”

 

Additionally, last week Linda Norris had a complementary blog post about what she observed visitors actually doing at one iconic art museum (including take photos of famous work as well). 

 

It seems that there is a feeling in some quarters that many members of the public, especially those visiting iconic art museums as a part of their role as a tourist, are missing the point of visiting a museum.  They are not really looking at art, famous or not-so-famous.  A Reach Advisors colleague wondered if this is this a view that is shared by any individuals in the museum field?  If yes, do they believe that the visitor is at fault for treating objects as ‘commodities’…or is the museum at fault for failing to connect with its audience?  Is there an intellectual snobbism rearing its head or is there an argument to be made that not all museums are intended to be enjoyed or appreciated by all audiences?

 

What do you think?  To share your thoughts and questions, click on “comments” below (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

Community Engagement and Objects - Mutually Exclusive?

Last week, James Chung, the President of Reach Advisors, was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor as saying "It's not about the collections anymore. It's about community."  Well, as you might imagine, this comment raised a few eyebrows (including my own, since I knew it was out of context!) in the blogosphere.  Chris Norris, of the Prerogative of Harlots blog, wrote eloquently of his visceral reaction to the comment, and we cannot help but respond.  The following is what we posted to Chris’s blog:

 

Hi Chris – Thanks for the provocative post. 

As you likely realize, when one talks to journalists one says a ton of things, and often only one snippet, one phrase ends up included in the article.  Yes, we at Reach Advisors do believe that community engagement is hugely important to museums, indeed, imperative to museums if they want to grow and prosper in the future. 

But we do not, by any means, believe that objects are unimportant.  Indeed, our research is indicating that real, authentic objects are more important than ever.  As we move into an increasingly digital age, the real object, whether a painting, a fossil, or a teaspoon, becomes more and more special to visitors, especially younger ones.  I like to spend time visitor-watching at various museums, and it is amazing how often I hear a child ask “is this the real one?” and a parent respond “yes, this is the real one.”  And both are looking at some object intently.

Additionally, in recent research we asked twenty-somethings specifically how they felt about real objects versus virtual representations, and they enthusiastically said that seeing stuff online only made them want to see the real objects in person even more.  Furthermore, their comments revolved around how important authenticity was to them because real authenticity is increasingly hard to find in our crazy world.  Yet they felt that museums were inherently authentic, largely because they have authentic objects that are unique and wonderful. 

So what do we feel at Reach Advisors about community engagement and objects?  They are both incredibly, incredibly important.  Without collections, many museums lose their core purpose – of using art, history, and science to educate and inspire our visitors.  You simply cannot replicate the experience of standing in front of a Vermeer (my favorite artist) any other way.  It is not the same, and museum visitors recognize that.  It is heartbreaking to see collections in dire need of conservation, cleaning, and simple care, and the Heritage Health Index report made me, for one, swallow hard.  I personally hate seeing curators and collections managers getting laid off during these difficult economic times.

Objects are also important tools that can be used to bring community together.  I have personally witnessed this when I was the Executive Director of the Saratoga County Historical Society in Ballston Spa, NY, where we used objects to tell the stories of our community, instigating conversation, and knitting that community closer together. 

Community engagement at the museum may not always rely on objects, but more often than not, objects are imperative to attracting audiences, engaging them deeply, inspiring them, and facilitating the connections we want museums to create not only between visitors and their communities, but also among each other. 

- Susie