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Stephen E. Weil (1925-2005) was one of the museum community’s most insightful commentators. Weil was an art law expert, foremost scholar on the philosophy and ethics of museums, mentor, and “guru” of museum management who left his mark on the field. Weil’s published works are staples in museum studies curricula.  The annual Weil memorial lecture was established at MAAM’s 2005 Annual Meeting in Baltimore to honor Stephen’s contribution to the museum field. This year’s invited lecturer was Nina Simon, Executive Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz, author of The Participatory Museum, and blogger at Museum 2.0.

In her introduction, Wendy Luke (Weil’s widow), described Nina Simon as a “pusher, prodder, thought-leader—and sometimes thorn—asking museums to behave differently and think in different ways.”  Nina introduced herself as someone “agitating for change” and set out the objective of her talk: to examine why museums need to make change and explore the idea of being a museum revolutionary.

A museum revolution?

Nina, trained as an engineer to solve problems, says she thinks of a museum revolution in scientific (rather than political) terms—revolution as a breakthrough invention or discovery that changes the game and how we understand our world. She asks, what would our field look like if we were focused on achieving the museum equivalent of the Nobel Prize?

Her line of questioning was spurred by re-reading “You and Your Research,” a 1986 speech by Richard Hamming, a mathematician who made major research contributions to the fields of computer science and information technology. Hamming’s talk addressed the question of what makes some scientists achieve great things.

If you do not work on an important problem, it’s unlikely you’ll do important work…The average scientist, so far as I can make out, spends almost all his time working on problems which he believes will not be important and he also doesn’t believe that they will lead to important problems.

According to Nina, the crux of his argument is: make sure you are working on the most important problems in your field. There are many important problems already being talked about: social equity, sustainability, access, etc. She prompted the audience to consider that not every problem is out there to just be discussed and thought about; instead, she encouraged the audience to find a problem you care about and work on an attack.  So, what if museum practitioners decided to focus on the important problems that fundamentally change our field?

From being about something to being for someone . . . to being with someone?

In her work, Nina focuses on community engagement—making museums places for visitors to make, share, and connect with each other around museum content.  Her office wall at MAH features comment cards as reminders of the work that has been done (and is still yet to be done) to address visitor needs. She believes that museums will be the best community spaces they can be when we invite every person who walks in the door to contribute.

In a 1999 article for Daedalus, Stephen Weil wrote about the transformation of museums in America after World War II. Weil describes a typical post-war museum as taking “as its basic tasks to gather, preserve, and study the record of human and natural history.” But as the end of the 20th century approached, Weil posited that the future museum “will have shifted its principal focus outward to concentrate on providing a variety of primarily educational services to the public.” This transformation is what he summarized as a shift “from being about something to being for someone.”

A little over a decade later, Nina Simon suggests that relevant museums are those that are not “for someone” but actually “with someone” or even “by someone.”  In 2005, Internet thinker and publisher Tim O’Reilly described a key Web 2.0 principle as a thing (usually software) that gets better the more people use it. So, Nina posits, how can museums get better the more people use them? In her work as director of MAH, she wonders: “How can the museum get incrementally better every day based on what people bring in and have to offer?”

Supporting revolution

In describing her own recent personal transformation, Nina admits that her current role as an administrator means that she is spending more time focusing on her local community and less on the museum field as a whole.   She finds herself spending “a lot less time on revolutionary thinking” and “more time on conventional things” like fixing leaks and making payroll.  As her focus shifts, she’s begun to think about how the museum needs more people to challenge the field and keep us going.

In the final part of the talk, Nina urged audience members to think about how to spend their extra time on revolutionary acts for museums and pleaded for practitioners to consider being less “well-behaved.” Within her staff, she’s interested in cultivating courage, curiosity, passion, and humility. She referenced several models for change being undertaken by museums around the globe including Beck Tench’s framework of space-makers supporting risk-takers and the Ruru Revolution project, a group of staffers working together on change at Puke Ariki in New Zealand.

She ended her talk with this prompting slide for audience discussion:

In the remaining half hour, the audience interrogated and expanded on the ideas Nina raised during her talk. Discussions formed around such topics as:

• “the adjacent possible” as a way of thinking about revolution
• whether Hamming’s ideas about “important problems” are have merit or are relevant to museums
• deciding between a “world class” or community focus
• what museums really are for in today’s world
• and how to balance the “integrity” or “seriousness” of a museum with openness to participatory experiences

[See Nina's blog for additional discussions about important problems facing the museum field.]

How do you want to change museums?

During her talk, Nina suggested that we honor Steve Weil by acting on his ideas, rather than simply discussing them.  What do you think are the most important problems facing museums? How will you tackle the problem of your choosing?

Share your thoughts with us in the comments.