1. Cultural symbols are valued.
Sydney Opera House CEO Louise Herron kicked off the conference to the oohs and aahs of international delegates taking in the view from the Utzon room over Sydney Harbour. She pointed out that the Opera House is Australia’s most recognisable symbol and is visited by 8 million people each year, the same number who visit the Eiffel tower, and twice as many as the Empire State Building.
‘I love the fact that this conference is about optimism and it’s being held here because I do think the Sydney Opera House is, among other things, about optimism. The sense of Australia as a young country, bold and willing to give something impossible a go, is embodied in this building.’
Herron described the building of the Opera House as ‘a collective act of dreaming’. ‘It is amazing to me that a nation that is usually associated with a rugged physicality, a beach culture and weird-looking fauna has – as its most recognisable symbol – a work of art.’
Architect Richard Johnson, a trustee of the AGNSW, also emphasised the importance of cultural institutions in giving cities and countries their identities. ‘It’s hard to think of any significant city without simultaneously thinking about its cultural institutions.’
Johnson said national and local identity was becoming more important in an increasingly global world. ‘There’s a growing realisation that to compete in a global world our cultural institutions are essential.’
2. Creative institutions matter more than they used to.
‘Reading the tea leaves’, Deputy Director, Dallas Museum of Art Robert Stein, identified global trends that indicate museums are providing new value in a world characterised by fast population growth; massive urbanisation; a growing disparity between rich and poor; and the increasing power of machines to take over roles previously occupied by humans.
In this environment Stein said museums have a greater civic value. ‘Culture creates better citizens. Museums remain a place where on equal footing we can meet with people who are different from us.’
Stein said the ‘big picture’ context of the museum allowed visitors to come to terms with a changing world. ‘Museums are places to thrash out big ideas.’
Stein said social and creative intelligence will be more important in a highly technology world, where robots take over mechanical jobs and free people for both leisure and creative work. Museums are well placed to nurture this creative intelligence.
3. Museums meet human needs.
‘A museum is not a building, it is the relationship between content and its audience,’ Kingsley Jayasekera, Director, Communications, Marketing & Digital, West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong told the Conference.
As our everyday human contact is replaced with driverless transport and our manufacturing sector gives way to 3D printing, futurists predict we will look elsewhere for social intercourse and ways of connecting with the world.
Creative experiences are increasingly valued for their capacity to meet human needs. Michael Loyd-White, Chairman of the Australian arm of the World Kindness Movement, said artists were essential to social change. ‘That’s why we reserve one seat on our peak body for someone from the arts community.’
Art Gallery of NSW Director Michael Brand said viewing art in an art museum was an optimistic experience. ‘It gives you a connection with human experience, an affirmation of civic purpose, the possibility of lifelong learning and, if I’m being very optimistic, inspiration for social change. It’s sharing communal civic space. It’s very different from a lone digital experience.’
4. China is building 100 new museums a year.
The museum sector in China is booming: 1198 new museums were built between 2000 and 2011, an average of more than 100 museums a year.
The growth shows the world’s economic powerhouse is recognising the value of cultural institutions and is investing heavily – some $800,000 million in museums in the past decade.
Clare Jacobson, author of New Museums in China, compared the current environment in China to the late 19th Century museum building boom in the United States, which gave the US many of the museums it has today.
She said the boom was providing a forum for innovative architecture, with 11 Pritzker-winning architects (winners of the world’s most prominent architecture prize) commissioned. ‘The rate of construction is astronomical,’ she said. The new museums are not uncontroversial – President Xi Jinping last month called for ‘no more weird architecture’. There have also been widespread reports of a focus on building without sufficient attention to what will go inside the new museums.
But Jacobson said the boom showed a new valuing of public museums, not a traditional institution in China. ‘It expresses the aspirations of a changing society as a church or a town hall might be the centre of a city in the west, museums and other cultural institutions are becoming the heart of new towns in China.’
5. Louvre Abu Dhabi takes Da Vinci to the desert.
Think Abu Dhabi is all about oil? Not anymore. The Emirates are diversifying from oil and cultural tourism is a key part of that. The entire district of Saadiyat Island is devoted to culture and the arts including a Louvre, scheduled to open in 2015; the Zayed National Museum, scheduled to open in 2016 and the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim, scheduled for 2017.
Communications Manager for Museums, Culture Sector United Arab Emirates Emma Cantwell said Louvre Abu Dhabi was the result of an unprecedented international collaboration. Not only the Louvre but also 13 institutions including Musee d’Orsay, Centre Pompidou and Musee Rodin will loan 300 works for the opening, among them the first Da Vinci to ever leave Europe.
As in China, the new museums are a forum for ‘starchitecture’ – the Dome of Louvre Abu Dhabi will weigh as much as the Eiffel Tower.
Cantwell said Abu Dhabi had long applied the expression ‘Build them, they will come’ to its luxury hotels. It is now taking the same approach to cultural institutions.
6. Australia is experiencing major museum investment.
MONA, Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art, is the talk of the US Museum Sector, according to Stein from the Dallas Museum of Art. The private museum founded by David Walsh was cited repeatedly during the conference as an example of rethinking museums.
But Tasmania is not alone in new investment. Michael Brand and Richard Johnson shared plans for Sydney Modern and will double the size of the AGNSW in a massive project scheduled to finish in time for the gallery’s 150th anniversary in 2021.
The WA Museum also has a massive project in its $438 million rebuild WA Museum CEO Alec Coles said the investment represented a massive repositioning for the Museum. ‘We were in a victim culture that said the government had to provide us with a new museum. That has changed. Instead of an argument based on entitlement and need, it now has an argument based on worth.’
7. Technology is providing new access points.Augmented reality, digital story-telling and tailored smart phone apps are enhancing the experience of the museum.
Nina Barry-Macaulay, Independent Dramaturge and Theatre Maker, creates narratives that take museum visitors on a journey, incorporating story and sound effects. Coming from a performance background she brings a multi-sensory experience into museum visiting. Her work has been used at the Queensland Museum and the McClelland Sculpture Gallery.
Barry-Macaulay said using narrative provides a more intimate and human experience for museum visitors. ‘The audience enjoys a sensory experience where the sounds that they hear not only match, but amplify and enhance the museum experience.’
New Zealand-based company story.com now has 350 museum clients around the world using a content management system that allows them to create their own guides and deliver them via smart phone. The app is location-based so that museum visitors do not need to key in a number or follow a pre-determined route but can hear information, music, soundscapes and stories delivered according to the object they are looking at.
8. Young audiences are finding new ways to embrace museums.
Tate, which runs four museums in Britain, has been successful in attracting the hard-to-reach 15 to 25 year-old market. Audience Research & Insight Manager Sabine Doolin said engaging with young people not only expands current audiences, it increases diversity and provides future audiences.
‘There is a lot of research showing if you engage with arts at a young age you will continue to do so and that is independent of ethnicity or class. Those things come in later and if you get people at a young age you can do something about those other issues later.’
Doolin said young people were attracted by music, social opportunities, more immersive exhibitions and spaces they could hang out in. A sense of ownership is also vital.
Tate Collective offers young people a chance to work collaboratively with artists on programs. For example they created a salon style wall based on the design you might see on Tumblr or Flickr, lower lighting, sofas, a social space and soundscape rather than gallery quiet.
But she warned it could be hard to make the link from event visitors to the broader program and from social media communication to the organisation’s broader identity and to manage the different dynamics of a young audience. Other visitors don’t always appreciate the noise and vitality of young people and galleries are not always ready for the crowd-management challenges of a gig.
‘You need to look beyond events to building relationships, learning together, evolving practice.’
9. Museums are losing the walls.
Projects to take art outside the institutional context have been highly successful. In both Britain and the US, Art Everywhere projects took favourite works out of galleries and onto outdoor advertising spaces.
Art Everywhere US showed for the first time in August, with 58 major artworks displayed at more than 50,000 sites across the US including bus stops, roadside signs, digital, static, Times Square, Sunset Strip, Route 66. The public chose the artworks from a list of 100 nominated by the galleries and voted on a winner.
The project used donated media space and was a partnership between the Outdoor Advertising Association of America and the galleries: LA County Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Whitney, Art Institute of Chicago and the National Institute of Art.
Another example of collaboration and art beyond the museum is the Museum of Everything, a wandering museum which displays work by untrained and unintentional artists in non-traditional settings. MOE is a registered British charity and acts as an activist and archivist as well as exhibitor.
From its recent Russian collaboration with Garage – an art gallery in a garage – founder James Brett cited artists like the Russian man who has painted the same view every day for 15 years and the woman who paints naive depictions of animals and humans mating, often across species.
His advice: speak as widely impossible, as loudly as possible and as often as possible.
10. We are all optimists
To give a little insight into optimistic thinking Communicating the Museum founder Corinne Estrada come up with this gem.
A study which asked people what is their favourite day of the week found more people nominate Friday than Sunday. They are happier anticipating the weekend than having it and anticipating the week.
‘You see we are all optimists in our personal lives. We have to be that way as museums too,’ said Estrada.
