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3contents issue 6

04 EDITORIALAs the museum world braces for brutal times we must try not lose sight of the potential of museums 06 A LINE IN THE SANDNick Poole on why the museum sector must set aside old differences and come together to fight the cuts08 CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE?Are the politicians listening? Gregory Chamberlain on making the case for museum funding10 CREATIVITY AND EXPERIMENTATION Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Alvarez argue for creativity & experimentation as a continuing value in museums14 A REPUBLIC OF MUSEUMSTim Desmond on building a new shared approach to museums creating social change22 MUSEUM ARCHITECTURE RETROSPECTIVE - 1Is the age of landmark museums coming to an end? We look at a decade of remarkable architecture 28 METHODOLOGIES FOR CHANGEReflections on the practice of the District Six Museum in Cape Town - by Bonita Bennett36 FUTURE MUSEUM REPORT (by cats)The Pinky Show provide some notes on their time-travel museum expeditions - 2028-209848 HAPPINESS - CAN IT RENEW MUSEUMS?Tony Butler on why concentrating on happiness would have a profound effect on museums 54 A MUSEUM STATE OF MINDIts not just collections that define a museums uniqueness or identity argues Claire Benjamin60 WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MUSEUMS CLOSE?Paul Fraser Webb tackles the question no-one really wants to ask - the answer is of vital importance64 MUSEUMS & AUGMENTED REALITYHow Streetmuseum helped launch a new set of galleries and why it was such a huge success70 ASK A CURATOR REVIEWAsk a Curator became the hottest Twitter subject in the world by mid morning on 1 September...82 MUSEUMS AND MEWhy I work in a museum - by Kate Craddy, Director, Galicia Jewish Museum, Poland

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idmuseumAs the museum world braces for brutal times we must not allow some enforced retreat to basics consume our conviction to make a difference in society. That would be a mistake. For although some policy makers and influencers seem not to recognise the remarkable work museums undertake, those who work in them witness it every day. I was reminded again of the power of museums on a recent visit to the International Slavery Museum (ISM) in Liverpool. The place was packed school groups, teenagers, families, adults, tourists all joined in a journey of awareness, knowledge and perhaps now moved to act more robustly against injustice and to challenge contemporary forms of racism and discrimination. The provocation was clear not just to understand the past but to fight for a better future. I was at ISM for the inaugural conference of the Federation of International Human Rights Museums (FIHRM). Museums from over 20 countries were represented at the event which aimed to help museums which deal with sensitive and controversial subjects to work together and share new thinking and initiatives in a supportive environment. It was a fascinating and inspirational couple of days which reaffirmed and reinvigorated my conviction in the capacity of museums to change perceptions, raise awareness, tackle ignorance, broaden the mind and promote consciousness, responsibility and understanding. Im pleased to say Im now working with FIHRM to publish a book - Museums Fighting for Human Rights - which will allow leading voices to share ideas and approaches in an international collaboration. All proceeds from the book will support the important work of FIHRM. The Human Rights volume joins a collection of eight books Im currently editing which are due to be published next year - including The Radical Museum: democracy, dialogue and debate, and Museums and Meaning: idiosyncrasy, individuality and identity. Its a massive but hugely satisfying project with over 100 contributors from museums all over the world. Ill let you know when the books are available. In the closing remarks of the first day of the FIHRM conference, when discusing some of the challenges ahead, David Fleming, Director of National Museums Liverpool, said something which particularly resonated with me: None of this is going to be easy but we have a serious purpose and must dare to do. And thats the point. For all of us working in the museums sector the future is filled with challenges financial, political, societal but against these sometimes adverse circumstances we must never lose sight of the potential of museums and should always endeavour to dare to do.

Gregory Chamberlain

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6Muse CutsA Line in the Sand

by Nick Poole

The sad news of the proposed closure of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), UK Film Council and Advisory Council on Libraries is the opening salvo in a battle that promises to be both bloody and strangely one-sided. The Treasury has brilliantly engineered public support for a Spending Review which will most likely change the entire landscape of museum, library and archive service provision and there is little hope looking either to the general public or to the media for support in the coming months. Although many have expressed mixed feelings about the MLA and quangos in general, it is likely that people will really only see their true value when they are gone. While the worlds of strategy and policy may seem far removed from the realities of the daily grind, the world of politics

has a direct impact on how much money there is flowing through the veins of our sector. It is a tremendous irony that MLA has been most adept at playing the political game on behalf of museums in what seems likely to be its final year. There has always been a silent pact between MLA and the sector it represents - that MLA will represent and give focus to the voice of museums, but that because the vast majority of this work goes on behind the scenes and in private, it depends on the trust of the sector that its role is worthwhile. It is always important to remember that with MLA, we will also be losing a team of some of the most dedicated, passionate and committed professionals in our industry. Although, as Roy Clare says, it is important not to count MLA out of the game - its current

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7circumstances will inevitably undermine its ability to coordinate an effective defence against the impending public spending Ice Age. At a time when museums are caught in a particularly nasty crosswind - the backlash against what was perceived to be a New Labour protectorate meeting the increased public demand for meaningful cultural experiences - the departure of the MLA will leave us exposed and shivering without an effective line of defence. Because it was not the last budget, nor the bonfire of the quangos that most threatens museums, archives and libraries. It is the chain reaction that will occur following savage cuts in local budgets that will enable anti-culture councillors throughout the country to do what they have been prevented from doing for a decade

or more and withdrawing wholesale from cultural service provision. In the absence of a national strategic voice, of a positive economic case being made and re-made, of a behind-the-scenes lobby of the Local Government Association, every single individual museum in receipt of Local Authority money will be left to fend for itself. Its highly unlikely that the real motive behind the withdrawal of the quangos is economic - none of the announcements made so far have touched on the issue of how much money will be saved in the process. What it does is remove two important things, in the absence of which the cuts will be easier to make. The first is simply the removal of a standard around which people could organise themselves. If it is no-ones job to hold a national overview of who is being cut, where and how much, then it is much harder to put up the kind of coordinated and strategic response required and for which I have often argued.

Secondly, and critically, there is no one but a loosely-defined group of sector organisations and networks to draw a line in the sand and to fight to defend it in the coming years. How many museums, libraries or archives will we lose? How many collections will be hurriedly and carelessly dispersed, or sold off in apologetic racks? How many will end up in boxes under the desk of the town clerk? How many will rush into trusts and public/private partnerships with their hands tied behind their backs? How far are we willing to let things slide, and how will we coordinate our voices and the various eddies of influence we each hold to ensure that the Government knows both that there is a limit and that we are not willing to let them exceed it? Roy Clare, early in his tenure at MLA, said

we are the people we have been waiting for. At the time it was a call to arms to the sector, to take ownership of its destiny and not always be looking to others to defend us, or to find the magic words to unlock the Treasury coffers. Now, in what promises to be a dark hour for culture, I think his words resonate more than ever. It will take a considerable time before the Arts Council can reorganise themselves to provide an effective strategic coordination for culture. Until then, we have the Museums Association, the Collections Trust, AIM and a number of important professional and thematic networks. In the coming months, we have to come together, set aside old differences and agree as a professional community exactly where we will put our line in the sand. We are the people we have been waiting for.

Nick Poole, Chief Executive, Collections Trust

How far are we willing to let things slide, and how will we coordinate our

voices and the various eddies of influence we each hold to ensure that

the Government knows both that there is a limit and that we are not willing

to let them exceed it?

8Can You feel the Love?Making the Case for Museum Funding

We can now welcome a new member to the museum fan club. None other than Prime Minister David Cameron - our new cheerleader-in-chief. In a recent speech about the importance of tourism to the UK he argued it was fundamental to rebuilding and rebalancing our economy. He went on to say it was about more than economics and talked about his love of going on holiday in Britain. His reason? I love our historic monuments, our castles, country houses...I love our national parks...historic gardens...our museums. You got that? LOVE. While Im pleased to hear a national leader profess his love for museums - and not just in terms of their economic impact but because, you know, he actually likes going to them - words alone simply arent enough. Not when museums currently face cuts that threaten their ongoing success - even their survival. So, will the warm words be backed by action? And by action I mean money and my fear is they wont. With the UK Governments Comprehensive Spending Review imminent and Local Authorities looking at cutting spending hard, UK museums - national, regional and local, face a difficult and worrying time. Of course we have to acknowledge the poor state of public finances and be considered in how the UK museums sector responds sensibly to cuts. So we have to argue why museums are essential to this government. They are for two main reasons: Their role in tourism is significant to the governments economic growth strategy, and they form a vital central pillar in building a better society (Big or otherwise). There are many more reasons why museums are of huge consequence, and we need to ensure we articulate them as well, but tourism and society chime with the coalition. But this is where it gets demoralising. The case for museums is being well made by many in the sector. Its a strong case that should be making a difference. But is the advice, lobbying and economic argument simply falling on deaf ears? How seriously is the issue being considered and is it being communicated forcibly enough to the Treasury? Do they know what is at stake?

Why harm a sector which makes such a positive contribution across society - children, families, elders, the vulnerable - in such a cost-effective way, while at the same time contributing a great deal to the economy - local and national - and to the UKs standing in the world? The government needs to act carefully here. Museums are not a soft target for cuts. For the legacy of any administration is, as David Cameron says, about more than economics. So what will be this governments legacy to culture? This is the moment it will be defined. They can choose to be seen as enlightened custodians who helped steer museums through difficult times or cultural yobs who damaged civic society due to panic or some kind of outdated ideological zeal. We all know that there will be big cuts across the public sector and accept museums wont escape unscathed. But lets be absolutely clear that the level of cuts museums currently face will cause substantial and sustained harm to what is currently a world-class sector and one the UK Government should be proud and eager to invest in and continue to see flourish. Our message to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt should be that its essential the scale and ferocity of planned cuts are reduced to a minimum. The Government needs to act with care to ensure they dont jeopardise an entire sector - one which plays an important role in the future economic prosperity of the country and an essential one in the fabric of society - for short-term and relatively minor savings. They need to act sensibly. Recently Culture Minister Ed Vaizey remarked on BBC radio that I wouldnt panic yet...Im pretty certain that it wont be the kind of doomsday scenario that a lot of people seem to be depicting. Well lets hope not. But as Nick Poole argues in A Line in the Sand we all need to come together and make the compelling and convincing case for continued investment in museums. So, in an era of austerity we must accept there will be change, re-imagine the future, prepare for the worst, hope for the best and trust museums feel the love from the politicians.

by Gregory Chamberlain

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The things we fear most in organizations fluctuations, disturbances, and imbalances are the primary sources of creativityMargaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World (1999)

Fluctuations, disturbances and imbalances! As societally engaged organizations living in the midst of such pervasively unstable conditions today, museums must be able to navigate through the perfect storm that always seems always ready to assault us if, that is, we are to build a sustainable future. In such unsettling times museums will find creativity and experimentation to be vital navigational tools sustain themselves for now and for the inevitable rough patches that will always be waiting in the wings. The adoption of creativity and experimentation as an ongoing value implies the acceptance of constant vision and re-vision as standard rather than exceptional behaviour. Indeed, creativity and experimentation are not just great tools for crisis management. They must begin to characterize all museums all the time. How then, if that were to be the case, to deal with the paradox that museums do still need to represent the tried and true three legs of the stool of museum practice: preservation, collection, and exhibition? How to convey to both staff, funders, and visitors alike that the values of creativity and experimentation are compatible aspirations with the charge to protect each museums own knowledge base founded in real objects from the worlds of art or history or science. How do museums re-group, re-solve, and indeed re-cognize and be recognized for the fourth leg of the stool -- without doing a disservice to the bodies of knowledge for which we are responsible?

Fortunately museums are at a moment in history when many of their audiences have come to expect to encounter something new when they enter a museum- space. Most of that expectation has in recent years been nurtured from the steady diet of changing exhibitions the general prosperity allowed. If, now, museums can transfer what they learned about presenting exciting temporary exhibitions to how they present their permanent collections, they will make great headway toward instilling a culture of creativity in their missions and in their visitors as well. Handled carefully, it can be clear that museums have no intention of abandoning their expected traditional duties in society, but rather that they are determined to become synonymous with the qualities of imagination and openness that, after all, were the basis of the human invention and accomplishment that each museum displays. So, rather than continuing to encourage their audiences to expect a museums permanent collections to never change, museum leaders can build the expectation that they will be re-hung/re-displayed/re-considered/ and intellectually re-framed from time to time. But, unlike the madhouse of the blockbuster exhibition, permanent collections can be sites of calmer experimentation, sites of a more challenging

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Selma Holo is director of the Fisher Museum of Art and International Museum Institute at the University

of Southern California

Mari-Tere Alvarez is project specialist at the J. Paul Getty Museum and serves as associate director of

the International Museum Institute

Co-editors of Beyond the Turnstile: Making the Case for Museums and a Sustainable Future

tranquility and contemplation than they have heretofore normally been. Thus they can aspire to function as both respites from the hysteria of modern life and havens of invention and inspiration. The challenge will be, in any kind of museum, in finding the right balance between offerings of stimulation and consolation. Because some museums have concentrated their creativity on their temporary exhibitions they assume that creativity is synonymous with extravagance and devastating expense. Often these efforts have been tangential or even irrelevant to the museums mission. It has become apparent that such budget-breakers are unsustainable in difficult economic times. Although changing exhibitions will always be a part of what museums offer, museums need to re-balance now and experiment in favor of the permanent collection. These displays need to be compelling while offering a range of new opportunities for interpretation along with a variety of experiences with respect to the material for which the museum is responsible. This is not easy. It takes a creative and willing staff. It takes leadership.

Making the Case forCreativity and Experimentation asa Continuing Value for Museums

Todays audiences want to leave museums secure in that they or their children have learned something new; absorbed the meaning of something old but still of value; been exposed to another perspective than they had when they walked in; or that they have had the opportunity to revel in something aesthetically, historically or scientifically meaningful within an appropriate context and environment. They are not as easily seduced by interactivity as we might expect since it already infiltrates every part of their lives. More and more, people are entranced by an encounter with the real , a counter-experience to their world of virtual friends, stunning 3D reproductions, and cultural encounters by means of smaller and smaller devices and fewer and fewer syllables. By heralding the imperative for creative but relevant change and by getting the word out and making the case for what they are doing -- museums will find themselves reinventing compelling paths that lead to fresh interpretations of their collections and exhibitions -- for old and new publics alike.

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experimentation was nothing short of a revolution. Just to enter it was to grasp immediately that knowledge should not be contained in mere boxes or silos. It was palpable that learning could be a kind of respectful intellectual free-for-all. During his tenure, the museum became a thrilling destination for learning and playing in the sandbox of possibility. Nelly Robles Garca ends our chapter on creativity and experimentation by reminding us that an archaeological site is an open-air museum and can also profit by a dose of creativity. With a mind friendly to innovation in a very staid and bureaucratic part of the museum field, Robles Garca increased the sense of community ownership of Monte-Alban, a United Nations Educa-tional, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) world heritage site under threat of overuse and encroachment by the neighboring population. Her innovative involvement of the community that was actually potentially threatening the site resulted in them helping to protect the fragile site. For museums the overriding questions today are how to constructively use the uniquely real knowledge banks they manage and lead so as to stimulate and inspire original, critical and innovative thinking in their audiences? How do they maintain their audiences interest and loyalty and understanding of what they are doing so that they are perceived as indispensable to the sustaining of a vital society? Museums must make the case for innovation in easy or in hard times. They must let it be known, loud and clear, that their museum in question is a key player in the betterment of society through the objects it collects and preserves and the meaningful and creative connections they make with those objects. Only through the constancy of fresh interpretation and the ongoing communication of a sense of the infinite possibilities our collections can inspire -- combined with respect for traditional inquiry -- will museums captivate the creative spirit of its visitors. And every museum must make the case that it is a catalyst to creativity whether its mission is to celebrate the past or to usher in the future if it is to survive from hard times into to better ones.

Beyond the Turnstile: Making the Case for Museums and a Sustainable Future (Published by Altamira Press in 2009)

By allowing for a variety of encounters, their respective realms of the real, museums will guarantee their future as being niches of unique sites of learning and authenticity. In our book, Beyond the Turnstile, Making the Case for Museums and Sustainable Values, we highlight a few recent successes in the world of creativity and experimentation, even as we recognize achievements in the past such as, for example, The Peoples Show in Walsall, England which initiated a phenomenon in the early 1990s when it broke the mold of museums as temples of high art. By encouraging the citizens of a smallish town to take ownership of their local museums and to participate, beginning with showing their own personal collections, the museum launched a wave of uniquely creative museum involvement throughout England, much of it by people who had not been museum goers before. We highlight also, in our book, in New York, Dia:Beacon, that immense showcase of the most ambitious modern and contemporary installations. Dia Beacon unabashedly conceives of artists as its primary stakeholders. The mostly huge artwork is presented generously with the implicit understanding that there is a place in the world where artists can think very big and that their work will speak for itself. Implicitly, the museum communicates the essential, sustaining value of creativity to anyone who takes time to make a visit. On the other hand, David Wilson, director of the tiny Museum of Jurassic Technology lives beyond the normal typology of museums, in a kind of parallel universe, Wilson forces us to consider the first element that characterizes a museum, an element beyond the object itself: the casework. He argues that this ostensibly humble foundation for display in a museum is, in the case of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, the tangible point of origin for its own enormous creativitythat the casework can be the opening to the vast and oftentimes elusive potential of the object on display. Wilsons is a provocative essay is meant to prod us into looking at the smallest parts of our operations and giving them the respect they deserve as synechdoches of our institutions. We also dedicate an essay to Marco Bassolss transformation of the Natural History Museum in Mexico from a drab conventional museum to a lively laboratory of creativity and

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A shared approach to creating Social Change

A Republic of Museums

With David Camerons announcement of the Big Society comes an interesting challenge for the UK museum sector: How with the abolishment of the Museums Libraries and Archive Council (MLA) and a resulting reduction in funding can museums play their part? There is no doubt the potential is there. Museums have the infrastructure, the themes and the breadth of content to contribute greatly to societys learning through its rich heritage. If the MLA is to be merged with the Arts Council museums can well claim to be more relevant to the Big Society than other cultural organisations such as theatres, opera or cinemas. Paraphrasing George Orwell - another old Etonian: Who controls the past, controls the future. These words help illustrate how great and powerful resource museums have in their buildings and collections - if it is used beyond the detachment of viewing. The challenge we now have is to prove to the new government that we can translate the Big Society idea into action. To do this we must first look beyond the status quo of measuring success as increased visitor numbers with its self

by Tim Desmond

congratulation of bringing more minority groups to museums. Rather there is an opportunity to design exhibitions and activities that educate and galvanise all participants and aspire to bring about a change in society which segues with the bigger picture represented in social reform. Whilst museums can have an impact across the community, it is with the young that there is the most potential to engage the disengaged. Children visit museums as part of their school experience but it is those children who are lost from school through exclusion that would most benefit from the safe neutral space that museums provide. Young people who fit into the NEET category (Not currently engaged in Employment, Education or Training), aged between 16 and 18 and younger, desperately need nurturing and giving the opportunity to map out their future with new positive experiences and skills. Museums as institutions can fit the gap not only because they are used to providing learning but also supporting volunteers - one of the noted aspects of a Big Society which will have to form without the previous level of support from the public purse.

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As a starting point museums can offer young people the chance to broaden their experience by understanding past lives and how they have been formulated. As organisations we provide a safe, stable environment with professionals who on the whole love their job and enjoy conserving and educating. What better place to be than a museum for a teenager who has spent his/her formative years learning about failure and beyond the prospect of basic work, having no sense of their surroundings beyond the small bubble that they live in. However with all its strengths as a positive environment for learning, like many other

public institutions such as schools and hospitals, museums are not very good at promoting their social purpose within our society. Museums tend to see their goal as sharing the secrets of their collections to the lucky visitor, but engaging the young outside the national curriculum will require finding out what young people need and what they are not getting. Bearing in mind the majority of young people pass through museums at some stage, we now need to illustrate to government and society that our organisations can teach young people about the past so they can construct their futures.

Museums x Funding = Visitors Museums can in broad terms play a more active role in socialising young people, but this will only begin to truly happen if there is a radical change in the structure of museums and how they are perceived outside the sector. In recent years we have seen many of the larger national museums achieving record visitor numbers, for example the 35,000 visitors to the British Museum to take part in the Chinese New year day and view the Terracotta Army exhibition.

This went on to add up to 4.8 million visitors in total in 2007 - a staggering foot fall by any standards. Further success is measured by the sector through the amount of funding for Renaissance which has received 149 million over the last five years. But should this additional funding be seen as a measure of a successful museums sector? Matthew Tanner, CEO of Brunels ss Great Britain in Bristol and vice Chariman of the Association of Independent Museums (AIM), has been quoted as saying Renaissance has proved that investing large amounts of money in a small number of museums can increase audiences at

those museums. What Renaissance has led to is increased levels of staffing - 188 new curatorial posts for example - and a rise in visitor numbers, particularly at the larger Hub museums. The difficulty is whether museums should see their criteria for success measured by visitor numbers and funding received. Significantly there is a need to understand that these measurements and evaluation do not translate outside the sector to organisations that are serious about learning and young people. Clearly the investment in Renaissance is not going to continue and museums need to have more measured outcomes as well as sourcing private funding to help deliver their work. Museums: Changing Peoples Lives?Are museums changing peoples lives and, just as importantly, are they perceived as institutions that can change peoples lives? Although government recognises the importance of heritage it is unlikely that they register the social function of museums, ironic as this is how best museums fit into their strategic thinking.

Are museums perceived as institutions that can change peoples lives? its unlikely government registers the

social function of museums - ironic as this is how museums best fit into

their strategic thinking

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Museums are now more accessible for people and particularly young people; however the measures of success i.e. increased visitor numbers have great limitations. Perhaps more important is the learning that takes place and the relationship that is created with the visitor or participant. In recent years the sector had MLA, Renaissance and Inspiring Learning for All. We will now need to go it alone and therefore political advocacy will be essential as will a commercial awareness to replace public subsidy. There is a desire and a focus on educating

young people, but this message is not reaching young people or the agencies they are connected to. Within government cross department communication is not always fluid and museums do struggle to reach beyond the Department of Culture, Media & Sport where their educational value is seen as more cultural than social. The challenge, and indeed opportunity, now is to look beyond visitor numbers and exhibition development to create a facility for social change and to do this a new way of thinking is required.

A Case Study: NCCL and the Galleries of Justice MuseumThe Galleries of Justice Museum in Nottingham is a charitable trust which occupies the heritage sites of the Shire Hall with Victorian Court rooms,

a Georgian prison and an Edwardian police station. In 2002 the museums education department of five full time staff self-proclaimed itself as the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law (NCCL) with the strap line Learn from the past, act in the present, change the future. The aim was to bring together the formal and informal learning programmes in the museum - including the History based day school visits and the community based social inclusion programmes. The social goal was Citizenship Learning so that all young people who worked with the museum

would gain an understanding of legal literacy, community involvement and their rights and responsibilities. Organisationally NCCL was conceived both for philosophical reasons and practical business purposes. As the Education Manager at that time I saw the potential for us to develop our learning programmes through funding from sources outside the museum sector and use citizenship to look beyond a history market which was shrinking in the curriculum. The importance of teaching children emotional and social skills, and developing their creativity and critical thinking was self evident by my previous work as a Drama teacher. The museum I now worked in offered the perfect backdrop. Citizenship education in the former prison and courtrooms would have value within

There is a desire and focus on educating young people, but this

message isnt reaching young people or the agencies they are

connected to. Within government cross department communication

is not always fluid and museums do struggle to reach beyond the

culture Department

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Primary and Secondary schools and could also be targeted at young people at risk of exclusion from mainstream education and involvement in crime. My experience of coming straight out of teaching in a very deprived inner city school was greatly contrasted with the environment I found myself in; a positive museum (capital funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund), rich in resources and well supported by well trained motivated staff. As Education Manager I was encouraged by the organisation to source funding and the education grew rapidly, allowing me to appoint dedicated staff and run programmes and projects both in the museum and through outreach across the East Midlands. The Galleries of Justice - with its courtrooms, police station, prison and its wealth of exhibition and activity spaces - offers a perfect setting for stimulating learning. Add this to a sympathetic core staffing and the ability to bring in specialists and you have a real opportunity to take children out of their environment and facilitate learning. The understanding we came to at the Galleries of Justice was that the word museum counteracted our social purpose to deliver citizenship and crime prevention programmes and stopped us accessing the funding we needed. The solution we came to was to brand the National Centre of Citizenship and the Law as a separate entity from the Galleries of Justice. Whilst the NCCL was seen to deliver the education programmes at the museum, it also had a life of its own when delivering its crime prevention projects across the country. Having made the transition from Education Manager to Chief Executive I was able to steer the process to allow the NCCL to gain in status away from the museum and form the trustees into two sections to represent two sides of the business. Also within the culture of the organisation the role of education was changed to have a purpose beyond the collections. From a training perspective NCCL staff undergo specialist training which gives them the knowledge and skills they need to work with young people. With our wider staff in the museum we did need to provide in-house training particularly to deal with children with behavioural problems. In addition we encouraged a culture of greater

acceptance to the wider community and their different ways of interpretation and responses to the new programmes we offered. In 2010 the NCCL is on the verge of becoming a stand alone charity with bases at both the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham but also the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Over the last five years the NCCL has attracted over two million pounds in funding for citizenship and crime prevention programmes from a wide variety of funders including the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, the Foyle Foundation, the Batty Trust, Lloyds TSB, Government Office for the East Midlands, New Deal for the Communities, The Treasury and CJIT. Whilst the NCCL has a number of partners outside the museum sector such as Crime Stoppers, the local youth justice board and the youth offending team, it also works with museums such as Imperial War Museum North and the Oxford Museum Service. The objective is to deliver projects rich in social outcomes and that have access points to young people which other organisations can fit into. It is unlikely that the NCCL would have made the progress it has over the last few years had it been branded as a Museum education department. Relationships would have been more tentative with other Crime Prevention and learning agencies such as the Citizenship Foundation and importantly funding bodies would have complained of mission drift.

A Model for progressionUsing the Galleries of Justice/NCCL as a model I believe that museums now need to restructure themselves so that they have subsidiaries to deliver their education programmes and allow them access to funding and the prospect of cross domain and sector partnership work. My name for this concept is a Republic of Museums, whereby the sector focuses its shared skills on an educational output and shares resources to deliver it. The model I propose will replace Renaissance and look to different sources of funding. Its structure will be to create educational subsidiaries attached to museums which will deliver learning to local communities. Because the work will be standardised museums will benefit from the economies of scale and allow them to share resources across the sector.

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The offer is that museums are rich in collections and facilities, tend to be stable organisations; are well managed with a range of high level skilled staff and volunteers which provides them with a good reputation in the community. By changing the dynamic of how education is structured within the sector there is also the opportunity to make museums stronger and more vocal in their engagement with government and local authorities. Museums invariably have education departments with their own suites which could

carry out a similar function of offering young people a neutral safe environment in which to learn. Beyond these units participants would be able to access and importantly use the exhibition areas as resource spaces to aid their development. Ideally museums would use the space they have within the museum but where this is impractical learning areas could be at other locations, as long as they were formally linked and managed by the museum. In terms of curriculum and subject matter managed by the museum education departments, the possibilities are endless and currently already in action across the sector. Museums can within their teaching cover a range of academic and vocational disciplines: understanding the collection and its historical significance can teach values which

are transferred to modern day communities; learning technical and artistic skills of putting on exhibitions and constructing them; experiencing on at first hand the running of a visitor attraction including corporate hospitality and caf and retail work. Museums offer all these routes to learning and employability. At the Galleries of Justice Museum, our subsidiary the NCCL is a chief provider of interns who work within the museum. These interns are made up of volunteers, students and noticeably prisoners from HMP Sudbury, an open prison. The 925 project offers placements to

prisoners and Young Offenders at the museum where they are engaged across the departments gaining training and work experience. In addition they are encouraged to feel very much part of the museum team and indeed the wider community by their public facing delivery. Whilst the sector currently offers positive action traineeships by providing ongoing internships, a far wider range of participation can be managed. The key element to creating education subsidiaries annexed to museums will be to standardise delivery and increase understanding of what is on offer to the community and draw in funding. These subsidiaries whilst linked to the museum (or a group of smaller museums) would need to source their own funding through philanthropic giving and income drawn from

By changing the dynamic of how education is structured within the museums sector there is the

opportunity to make museums stronger and more vocal in their

engagement with government and local authorities

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statutory bodies who would commission them for tendered services. Like schools that now have applied for status as technology, performing arts etc. museums could also have their own specialist areas which would obviously be influenced by the content of their collections. This would of course provide choice and opportunity for learning from students, with opportunities to specialise in science, performing arts, leisure and tourism etc. Obviously museums operate in different ways and at different scales and there would be a

need to join some smaller institutions together in cluster groups where appropriate. Further to this as the model starts to take shape there could be development outside the sector to draw in partners such as libraries, theatres, art galleries and even sporting organisations. The key will be to standardise the offer through a shared national curriculum albeit one that allows room for interpretation, but culminates in the recognised qualifications which were transferable. One of the benefits is that this shared outlook would be translated to Local Authorities who would direct young people to those museums which best meet their learning or social needs. Museums have the breadth of collections and subject matter to cover a range of disciplines: from natural history through to

art design and citizenship, to name but a few. The objective though is not to bring young people to museums and put them in classrooms but to use the sites and collections to stimulate learning and enhance the communication of ideas. The subsidiaries would offer a menu of programmes which could be bought in by local authorities for example to serve the needs of young people be they excluded, or needing access courses to complement their studies. The central benefit is creating a mechanism for museums to offer a standard service which fits into youth education provision

and fills a gap currently not served by schools and colleges. In conclusion the creation of a Republic of Museums would commercialise the delivery of education in the sector, it would need to achieve a blend of private and public funding and would rely upon a network of volunteers to run it. If this could be achieved it would allow museums to play a key role in the new Big Society and give us a purpose that can really change our country for the good.

Tim DesmondChief Executive of the Egalitarian Trust, with leadership responsibility for both the NCCL and the Galleries of Justice Museum

a republic of museums would commercialise the delivery of

education in the sector. it would need private and public funding and would rely upon volunteers. it would allow museums to play a key role in the new Big Society

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V & A CerAmiCs study GAlleries OPerA -A msterdAm.Nl

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Museum Liaunig, Austria. Opened August 2008. Situated Neuhaus, Carinthia, Austria. Houses the industrialist and art collector Herbert W. Liaunigs collection of contemporary art. Note: The museum is accessible through guided tours by appointment only. Architect: Querkraft. Image Museum Liaunig

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museumarch-itetureretro-spective

part 01

Is the age of landmark museums coming to an end? We look at some of the most remarkable museum architecture from the past decade - from iconic signature buildings to the sublime and restrained. Add your suggestions for part 2 at http://museum-id.ning.com/

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MAXXI, the National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Italy. Opend May 2010. Located Rome, Italy. First Italian national institution devoted to contem-porary creativity and conceived as a broad cultural campus. Architect: Zaha Hadid. Image MAXXI Museum

National Museum of Australia. Opened 2001. Located Canberra, Australia. The architecture was a milestone for a building of its type, designed to reflect the diversity of the Museums collection and characterised by vivid colours, unexpected shapes, angles and textures. Architect: Howard Raggatt. Image National Museum of Australia

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Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain. Opened October 1997. Situated Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. Built alongside the Nervion River in the industrial town of Bilbao on the Atlantic Coast, the Museum is credited with the economic regeneration of the area. A new phrase - the Bilbao effect - was coined and has since been used by many provincial museum directors to persuade

potential funders to invest in new cultural projects. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is one of several museums belonging to US-based Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The museum features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists. A key

signature style building by Frank Gehry the building was most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in the 2010 World Architecture Survey.

Architect: Frank Gehry. Image Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

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Denver Art Museum, USA. Opened October 2006. Situated Denver, Colorado, USA. The 146,000-square-foot Frederic C. Hamilton Building increased the Denver Art Museum galleries by more than 40 percent. The project was Daniel Libeskinds first completed building in North America. The Hamilton Building links to the Museums North Building, a 1971 castle-like structure designed by

Gio Ponti, via the second-story Reiman Bridge. Architect: Daniel Libeskind. Image Denver Art Museum

Museum of Modern Literature, Germany. Opened June 2006. Situated Marbach am Neckar, Germany. The Museum of Modern Literature (Literaturmuseum der Moderne) won the Stirling Prize in 2007. The museum stands on a rock plateau in Marbachs scenic park, overlooking the valley of the Neckar River. It displays and archives 20th century literature. Notable original manuscripts include The Trial by Franz Kafka and Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Dblin. Architect: David Chipperfield Architects. Image Chritian Richters

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BRIGHT 3D8TH FLOORTHE SUGARBOND2 ANDERSON PLACEEDINBURGH EH6 5NP

+44 (0) 131 553 0920ENJOYOURVIEW@BRIGHT3D.COMWWW.BRIGHT3D.COMCREATING INSPIRATIONAL EXPERIENCES

THEIR BELIEF IN LISTENING NOT ONLY TO THE CLIENT, BUT TO THE AUDIENCES AND POTENTIAL AUDIENCES, SET THEM APART FROM OTHER DESIGNERS WE HAVE WORKED WITH

DR IAN EDWARDS HEAD OF EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN EDINBURGH

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An elderly couple are on their knees on the floor map in the District Six Museum, scrutinising the street names as they try to locate the site where their family home was situated before it was destroyed. The woman jumps to her feet and does a spontaneous dance of joy, celebrating the fact that they have found it. The man quietly marks the spot and remains kneeling, lost in thought and possibly in another time.

A rowdy group of schoolchildren wearing tags identifying them as white, coloured, black and Indian whizz around the building trying to find information for a project they are working on. They are lost in the task assigned to them and oblivious to the quizzical stares from visitors.

A group of people of all ages walk solemnly out of the Museum doors, through the city streets to the largely derelict site of District Six. Each one places a stone with a message on a growing pile. A respectful silence engulfs them.

A group emerges from one of the few remaining buildings on the site of District Six, trailing kites which they have just constructed from scratch. This is one of the times when the Cape south easter is welcomed and they offer them excitedly to the wind.

Methodologiesfor change

reflections on the practice of the District Six Museum, Cape Town

What each of these seemingly disparate scenarios have in common, is that they all form part of the District Six Museums programme of working with memory and exploring, in community, the different ways that memory might be activated and stimulated to create new forms of engagement. The increasing challenge to modern museums to be places of dialogue has generally given rise to a number of conferences, debates and seminars. While some of this museums work has included these elements, one of our greatest challenges and strengths has been to think beyond these traditional forms and to explore other dialogic channels which are not discussion-based only. Creating the conditions for becoming a marketplace of ideas expressed through different modalities - performance, music, inscription, games, writing, discussions has emerged from a journey of exploration about how to retain and enhance that which makes the District Six Museum vibrant and unique. The description of museum has not always been an easy one, but it has come to be one which we wear with increasing ease and confidence. Peggy Delport, a founder trustee of the Museum thinks back to the origins of the term in this context: Thinking back on this problematic notion of a museum, with all the connotations

by Bonita Bennett

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of collections and displays, the term seems at odds with the intense six-year life of the museum project as a living space and place for working with memory. Recalling that time, I believe that the term museum may have been evoked as something that suggested a solidity, a continuity and permanence that could withstand even the force of the bulldozer and the power of a regime committed to the erasure of place and community. The common impulse in the call, however, was for a place of memory, not a monument but a focus for the recovery and reconstruction of the social and historical existence of District Six. Looking back to this choice made in the late 80s, it was a powerful one and an assertion of our right to be a museum as we understood it. It has allowed us to trouble the boundaries of the definition and question, together with more traditional museums, how to be a museum in new, inspiring and inspired ways.

Some broad principlesThere have been some attempts, I believe, to underplay the District Six Museums authority to speak with its museum voice. Some have tended to emphasise the categories of site of conscience, place of remembering and healing, place of activism, site of education, tourist destination and site of return, for example. However, just as the above descriptions accurately describe various facets of the Museums character, the category of museum is the one which captures the need of the founding community to be all of the above, and also a structure reflecting their need to assert permanence and solidity. The District Six Museum has also been spoken of as a community museum, tacitly implying this to be a lesser form, not a real museum in some contexts. We embrace the description of community museum as a powerful source of inspiration, and I propose to paint a picture of how the notions of being both community and museum have been

while the desire for permanence is strong, equally strong is the desire to retain fluidity and

movement as central to our work

strengthening and enabling features. I refer now to a seeming contradiction: while the desire for permanence and presence is strong, equally strong is the desire to retain fluidity, open-endedness and movement as central to our methods of working. We actively embed these principles in all that we do and to a large extent it accounts for the Museums particular nature and impact. The broad community with whom we interact consists of ex-residents of District Six and other areas of forced removals, school children, scholars, researchers, tourists, other organisations and the general public at large. The District Six ex-residents are afforded a special place in the range of people with whom we interact and are at the centre of who we are and what we do. They drive our work and shape our programmes and are sometimes unrelenting in their demands to be heard through the channels

that we have created. Maintaining this relationship has not always been easy, but investment in its careful and respectful nurturing has contributed to a climate where we are able to comfortably present what we dont know and what we have not been able to understand. Maintaining this dialogic relationship with ex District Sixers as co-researchers and co-producers of knowledge rather than informants and tellers of quaint stories of the past, has been as enriching as it has been hard.

Digging deeperThere are elements of the Museum which on the surface of it, are fairly standard in terms of what one can expect from a museum. There is an exhibition; there is a collection and there are archives. An education programme forms part of the offering. However, there are a number of methodological differences which continue to fuel the life of this Museum in a particular way.

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We work from the premise that the past has an existence and life

in the present - one which speaks to those involved

To signify the unfinished business of representation, the permanent exhibition is called Digging Deeper, indicating a framework which allows for an always further uncovering of facts, meanings and perspectives. It requires visitors to be involved in its story. There is the physical drawing in; there is the first-person testimony by ex-resident narrators; and critically, there is the experience and orientation brought by the visitor. An intimate entering into the physical and metaphoric space is invited by the photographs, the fragments of peoples lives and homes, the voices - and as a visitor you are challenged to form an opinion. You are presented with the horror of the forced removal and you inevitably react to it. The central map on the floor of the Museum is one of its best known features and I would like to take a moment to reflect on its significance. Faded and worn after many years on the floor, the map continues to be a powerful tool

which draws people physically and symbolically into the centre of the story. Like the ex-residents in the opening vignette, those who lived in District Six before its destruction, gravitate in the first instance to the street where their homes were situated. The family name is marked where the home had been, serving as a signifier for what once was and had been erased. At the same time, relational others are sought on the map: friends, neighbours, extended family members. On occasion they have even met in person on the map. Main routes are traced with hands and feet, and inevitably a story emerges. This inscription into the symbolic substitute for the land often stimulates an assertion of presence, a statement about the right to be and for some marks the beginning of involvement in the ongoing work and storying of the Museum. A culture of learningSo, what does the Museum teach about the past

and how does it happen? How do we facilitate individual as well as collective learning? Enabling people to learn from and not only about history requires a particular orientation which invites them on a journey into the past. It requires creating the conditions for those engaging with its programmes to place themselves within that context it may be bodily, it may be metaphorically through a series of questions or activities and to make connections with other situations as well. We work from the premise that the past is not a past event only, and that it has an existence and a life in the present, one which speaks to the present-ness of those involved. Meanings may be arrived at in due course, but may never be concluded or finally settled. New future realities may speak differently to the same past, and may yield new insights and new lessons. Our memorialisation projects are thus designed not to freeze history but to open up the important discussions about how the past

continues to live with us and within us. The children described in the opening section, wearing tags identifying them according to racial classification, are school visitors to the Museum involved in an activity called Re-imagining the City. Through a process of immersion into an experiential role-play in which their assigned identities shape the nature of their access to or denial of privileges, they get to learn inductively about the experience and impact of racial classification. They are led into a process of questioning the past apartheid system and are required to make judgements about the present in terms of what similarities might be observable in their current lives. They get to think about and state what nunca mas / never again means in their contexts. Roger Simon (et al) in an introduction to a collection of essays on trauma and remembrance, reflects:Remembrance is, then, a means for an ethical

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Special Effects | Exhibitions

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learning that impels us into a confrontation and reckoning not only with stories of the past but also with ourselves as we are (historically, existentially, ethically) in the present. Remembrance thus is a reckoning that beckons us to the possibilities of the future, showing the possibilities of our own learning.

Research and archivesThe Museum has a large archive of artefacts related to the everyday life of District Six, recipes from the kitchens of District Six, stories, street signs and music. It consists of traces of consciousness, inscriptions of visitors from every corner of the world on rolls of calicoit has sound recordings, video recordings and it has oral histories The archive that is underway is not defined entirely by the contents of its collection but by the shape it gives to community, to a democratic public sphere. The opening account of kite-flying emerges from our archive of peoples stories. Childhood memories of former residents are largely about how leisure time was spent, and how creative energy was channelled into entertainment. On Heritage Day in 2009, one of the activities which formed part of the intergenerational component of the programme was kite-making, where ex-residents - mostly in their seventies and eighties taught young people how to make

kites. The activity in itself became an opportunity for storytelling, and many wonderful snippets emerged from this differently constructed session for recording narratives. Wishes, dreams and desires for the return process were etched onto the kites and these were released into the wind. The act of release symbolised the communal yearning to engulf the site with positivity and hope. Stories from the archive inspire the programmatic work of the Museum. The bearers of the narratives are involved in translating these into opportunities for others to engage with the content of their experiences in different ways. Tina Smith, Museum exhibitions manager and facilitator of a project called Huis Kombuis describes some of the methodological elements of this intervention: Huis Kombuis took elements of the collection to the participant group, encouraged memory stimulation and recorded these in their own hand through various media: interviews, drawing and writing. These were then handed back to the participants, privileging the narrators rights to edit and have ownership over their own stories, and then creatively to reconstruct whatever fragments of memory the participants wished to explore within a broad framework of food and memory. In a sense, the methodology of the Museum was the starting point for the project but the narrative ownership,

Textile and memory work takes places at the District Six Museum, Cape Town. Image District Six Museum

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story construction and creative techniques shifted this project into reminiscence craft work. These examples serve to illustrate some of the ways that the Museum manages to keep its archive and research strategies, coherent and alive.

Memory and voiceVery closely linked to our approach to research and archives are the aspects of memory and voice. Formal research tends to enter into relationships with the researched in ways that are unequal and often exploitative. In the current knowledge economy where the privatisation and ownership of knowledge often knowledge extracted from others is a contested sphere, information and interpretation thereof often ends up being packaged outside of the contexts of the people who were central to generating it. The example of the West African griot comes to mind. The griot as the storyteller is

revered as the custodian of history. However, many research contexts have relegated the storyteller to the realm of being an informant, and the researcher or writer has come to be regarded as the historian or custodian of that history. One of the ways to mitigate the ever-present danger of usurping peoples voices and speaking on behalf of people, is through creating an internal culture of critical engagement and a practice which is consciously self-reflexive. The return of agency to the community closely engaged with the Museums work is an important part of our agenda. The Museum is well-known for its oral history practice. Its expertise, however, is not only located in its wisdom about correct methods for story-telling gleaned over mane years of experience. Rather, it is the expertise gained from an increasingly robust discussion about the challenges of conducting oral histories and research that is co-operative. Our research

relationships are defined by collaboration and contestation between storyteller and listener-interviewer, and the form of public history that emerges is negotiated and nuanced. This contributes to a space which is able to hold multiple narratives whether in the form of dialogue or contestation - and which is constantly on guard against developing a singular frozen narrative.

And the land remembersDuring the earlier phases of the Museums life, one of the main functions that it performed was as a support to the land restitution process. It became a space which vociferously asserted the rights of ex-residents and their descendants to submit a claim for their loss in land rights, and practical support was provided in terms of documentation for the verification of family claims. It also served as the backdrop to a number of land restitution meetings, affirming the Museums place as a

living centre of the movement geared towards redressing the displacement of the thousands of people who were forcibly removed to the barren wastelands of the Cape. A shift to hands on District Six has initiated questions around the methodological integrity of the Museums practice in relation to work on the site i.e. how does the redevelopment of the site affect the ways in which memory work is practiced, and how do we redefine memory work in relation to a changing site? How do we ensure that the land restitution process continues to be a place for ongoing reflection and transformation? We continually explore these questions with ex-residents on walking interviews through District Six, memory methodology workshops and by documenting both the joys and challenges of the return. Memory work in the latter context is both difficult and necessary as conflicting emotions and varying approaches to re-settling the site come to the fore. Ex-resident experiences of the

The return of agency to the community closely engaged with

the Museums work is an important part of our agenda

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site are often disorienting and alienating but also triumphal, and the re-mapping of the site through participatory forms of memorialisation needs to heed these experiences. A walk of remembrance takes place on 11 February each year, the day on which District Six was declared a White Group Area in 1966. The solemn laying down of stones brought from the areas to which people had been forced to live, constitutes the end of the walk. It is the scenario described in the opening paragraphs of the chapter. This act of memorialisation, re-enacted each year, keeps the displaced community connected to the land and keeps the process of memorialisation alive. Like individual memory walks undertaken from time to time and which the Museum documents, the unlocking of memory resulting from orienting the body physically on the land and in relation to significant landmarks on the vacant site, has resulted in powerful recovery of individual and collective memory. On the scarred landscape dotted with remnants of the built environment which once was the setting for a bustling community, peoples recollections are crucial to understanding what is absent. what is physical and material is by a strange contradiction largely the intangible the empty remaining space and the memories that the people of Cape Town have of the former area. In conclusionAt this point we feel strengthened in our attempts to focus on democratic and critical citizenship based on a strengthened and robust civil society: one that is hope-filled, that recognises the strength of diversity and that is underpinned by a

strong sense of solidarity and care. What the District Six Museum has learnt through its own recent past, is that consciously breaking boundaries between disciplines and modalities can yield powerful engagements which give rise to new dialogues and critical debates. Creating the conditions under which these can be enriching, not polarising, has strengthened the Museums practice. It has required a degree of open-endedness and risk-taking in project planning and implementation. It has required individual staff and board members as well as practitioners in partnership, to channel their personal skills and expertises into processes which are collective and collaborative rather than individual. This has been hard. It has demanded a giving up of self, both in the individual and organisational sense. The Museum has demonstrated though, that, even in a competitive and threatening environment, it is viable to bring together creative and critical people from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, to work collaboratively and respectfully, on programmes and projects.

Bonita BennettDirector, District Six Museum, Cape Town

Placing stones on the memorial cairn of stones in Cape Town. Images District Six Museum

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The Pinky ShowFuture Museum Report:

Some notes on our time-travel expeditions,

2028-2098

Prepared by PinkyCompiled from notes by Bunny, Kim & Pinky

Version 2.0 completed August 2010Version 1.0 presented at the

annual meeting of the American Association of Museums,Los Angeles, California, May 2010

The Pinky ShowCopyright 2010 Associated Animals Inc.

Q: What is The Pinky Show?A: The Pinky Show is the original super lo-tech hand-drawn educational TV show. They focus on information and ideas that have been misrepresented, suppressed, ignored, or otherwise excluded from mainstream discussion. Pinky presents and analyzes the material in an informal, easy-to-understand way, with helpful illustrations that she draws herself. Episodes are available on the internet for free at www.PinkyShow.org

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We, three cats from The Pinky Show, went to the future. We brought back notes & stuff.

As some of you may know, Kim is very interested in museums. She had been asking us for several months about the possibility of traveling through time to see how museums develop in the future - however we have been extremely busy and only lately has Bunny found the time to build a functional time-travel machine.

Since late March, Bunny, Kim, and I have made several brief expeditionary trips to various possible futures. However, the process of de- and re-materializing at the molecular level is filled with many hidden risks, some of which cannot be addressed even through the careful use of wax-paper. After only six trips our machine is already beginning to show dangerous signs of wear and it appears that we will not be doing any more time traveling until Bunny is able to build a new, less wobbly vehicle. Also, we lost our luggage on the last voyage.

At any rate, although we werent able to understand the significance of everything we saw on our travels, overall it was a nice learning experience. Kim is satisfied for the moment and we were all very careful to take many notes. We were also able to bring back with us a few museum-related objects, some of which we present here for your amusement and contemplation.

Pinky CatMay 20, 2010

Introduction: Museums / Cats / Time Travel

We are time travellers. From left to right: Kim, Bunny, and Pinky. Mimi was busy and could not come; Daisy could not fit in the vehicle.

Below: Scale models of the Time Travel Machine and accompanying Luggage Pod, 1 inch = 1 foot scale. The models were made by Kim.

Below right: Time Travel Machine v1.0 specifications. Capacity: 3 adult cats. Height: 9 feet (not including sen-sor). Total height: 11.25 feet (including sensor). Width: 5 feet. Leg span: 8.5 feet. Maximum speed: 4 years/second. Maximum temporal reach: +/- approx. 100 years. Luggage pod: yes. Coffee support: yes. Completed: March 29, 2010.

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One of the things we noticed when we first started time-traveling was that often there seemed to be no obvious connections between the various moments-in-time we visited. In fact, many of the futures we experienced seemed wildly different - sometimes even apparently opposite - from each other, even when separated by only a few years. We later learned from Daisy (who has time-traveled before) that the reason for this is that the future, as it relates to the present, only exists as an infinite array of possibilities fanning outward. And since Bunny did not build a Linear Limiting Device into our time machine, basically we just ended up going all over the place in near-random fashion. Which is not necessarily a bad thing - perhaps the diversity of artifacts presented here will serve as a reminder that a positive future can only be what we are willing to desire and fight for.

I. Apparently many futures are possible

2062: The Capitalism Memorial Museum

The Capitalism Memorial Museum was one of our favorite museums we visited, partly because it was so exhilaratingly difficult to relate to. At one level it was very much like any typical museum one might visit in the present - several buildings housing collections organized around specific themes, lots of artifacts in display cases, photographs and explanatory text everywhere. On the other hand, because the museum exists in a post-capitalist future, even though we consider ourselves not-big-fans of capitalism, we also found ourselves unprepared for the completely disorienting effect of seeing the world purged of capitalist logic and structure. Once capitalism was overturned, the way pretty much everything is done in society had to change - including how museums are run. For example, The Capitalism Memorial Museum had Indigenous leadership boards. Community media bureaus. Communal research collectives. What is all this stuff? And how does it all work? Were not really sure - we could only stay in 2062 for 23.9 hours. Another thing that struck us as odd about this museum: its open 24/7, 365 days a year. It was quite amazing how many people were there, just hanging out, doing their own thing on the museum grounds at all hours. There always seemed to be people swimming or playing in the many swimming pools located throughout the museum campus. In fact, the Capitalism Memorial Museum has the second most swimming pools of any museum in the world (second only to the Museum of the Swimming Pool in Las Vegas - dont go there, its boring), the result of its origin as expropriated homes of the rich and famous in Beverly Hills.

Misc. Notes: Truly delicious coffee & sweets at the cafes. We didnt see any security guards anywhere. Administrative meetings held at the cafes or even in the galleries. Not even one sign with the word public on it. Gift shops still mediocre.

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2034: The Museum of Fucking, Los Angeles

If the Capitalism Memorial Museum was one of the most inspiring places we visited on our journeys, the Museum of Fucking, Los Angeles (MoFLA) was probably the most not-inspiring. (And we are not just saying this because cats arent endlessly fascinated with human sexual reproduction... mieh...) Basically we just thought that aside from MoFLAs pushing museum-bling to impressive new extremes, in the end the museum was actually kind of boring because in lots of ways it was basically just doing the same (albeit, more exaggerated) stuff that weve been watching some of the more well-known now-museums do for quite a few years:

eye-popping admission feesoversize gift shopmuseum spaces available for event rentalcorporate partnerships, sponsorships, and tie- ins for everythingcostly, market-driven advertisement campaignsiconic-generic building designed by celebrity architectover-abundance of safe, predictable programming capitalizing on pre-existing popular desiresextra charges required to visit blockbuster exhibitionsvague, depoliticized commitment to educationedutainment strategy oddly unentertaining & often not even particularly educationalzero interest in publicly examining the ideological orientation of the institutionzero interest in cultivating visitor reflexivity regarding narratological and pedagogical methods zero attempts to self-implicate the museums own complicated relationships to power and capital too many dinosaurs and giant insects (what are they doing in a sex museum?!) the list goes on...

We wandered around the massive gift shop for quite a while, looking for a representative something to bring back to the present. As one would expect it was insanely crowded and seemed to be making lots of money. It was interesting to see future pornography next to Made in Heaven stuff next to miniature reproduction tant donns, all for sale of course. In the end Bunny just ended up collecting an XLarge MoFLA t-shirt - obviously its too big for any of us to wear but perhaps we can use it later as a blanket.

Misc. Notes: This place hurt our ears! Annoying interactive audio-visual media (mixed with LOTS of advertisements) was everywhere - even in the washrooms. Stupid expensive cafeteria with fun human genital-shaped pasta (*barf*). Kim: This is the Met on Hustler-brand crack.

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2098: National Museum of The Sacred

While the Museum of Fucking may have been uninspiring, our visit to the National Museum of The Sacred was just confusing-depressing. Especially the depressing part. The museum itself is situated in a future-world in which, insofar as we could tell, theres no sacred anything. Granted, this was Los Angeles, but still, we were shocked. Of course there was the museum, presumably dedicated to The Sacred (whatever that means in such a context), but after being there for even just a few minutes it was clear that the so-called sacred objects in the collection were more or less just dead-objects. They had no energy to speak of. All questions to people as to how things had come to be this way were met with slightly bewildered, vacant staring. Outside the museum, we saw people, jobs, apartments, trees, restaurants, schools, dogs, squirrels, parks - but nothing sacred. (I should mention that we also did not see any signs of deep culture or nature; we were even told that the snow on the nearby San Gabriel mountains was painted on.) Anyway, seeing the world like that was just very sad. Back to the museum: The National Museum of The Sacred is an institution that is apparently almost exclusively focused on the conservation of artifacts. The galleries were filled with a fairly unattractive collection of mismatched display cases, which in turn contained a seemingly random mix of old religious and secular objects. There were no interpretive or even minimally informational labels to be seen anywhere, just objects. There were also chairs placed throughout the galleries, upon which visitors would quietly sit on - some people would sit only for a few minutes while we observed others sitting for over an hour. The people we asked about the sitting gave a very limited range of bland replies: they like to be near the objects, they thought its good to sit among the objects, etc. We left the museum feeling dejected and more than slightly confused, but not before visiting the gift shop. The contents of the shop consisted of postcards (ugly photos of boring artifacts), a bucket of umbrellas with the museums ugly logo on it, and a small wire-rack labelled with a bizarre hand-written sign: MUSEUM TOYS: THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT. So we helped ourselves to a few of the toys (we have not yet figured out exactly how we are supposed to play with them) and left.

Misc. Notes: Although we did see one unconverted church while we were there, by 2098 organized religion is no longer considered meaningful and we saw lots of churches that had been converted into schools or mini-shopping malls. Also, we looked for fruits at the supermarket but no one knew what we were talking about. And, 2098 had the worst coffee ever, almost undrinkable. Bunny: Say good-bye, were never coming back.

Top: For children: Playful Kitten psychoactive toy (front). From the National Museum of The Sacred gift shop.Above: Playful Kitten psychoactive toy (back).

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2052: Public Museums Must Belong to Everyone

We spent an evening in 2052 sitting in on a massive, contentious Institutional Foundations Areas Council (IFAC) meeting trying to understand the processes through which a new direction for elite-class institutions was carefully (painfully) being negotiated and charted. The main issues touched upon at this session:

What are the fundamental responsibilities of educational institutions in an egalitarian society? How can elite institutional forms, largely the product of predatory practices such as capitalism & colonialism, be repurposed to benefit and serve the interests of all peoples? How to reconcile a fundamentally hierarchical and classist 200 year-old institutional structure-culture with the values and practices of participatory democracy? How to accomplish the complex task of reuniting contested artifacts with their parent peoples?

One of the statements Ill always remember from that evening was spoken by an elder curator. She said the transitional process, in order to be respectful and avoid catastrophic consequences, should be expected to last at least three generations. We thought about this for a long time and decided that this kind of thinking makes a lot of sense.

II. The Movement Towards Public Institutions

Street flier announcing public meeting. Scan of photograph by Zoe Margarita Cat, near West Olympic Blvd. & South Rimpau Blvd., 2052, Los Angeles.

Above: Time travel notebooks.

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III. We find a book written by Kim in the library

A compelling book, but should it be written?

Imagine our surprise when we stumbled across a book authored by our very own Kim while browsing the Santa Monica Public Library in 2028. We literally stood there, stunned, staring at the cover for what must have been a good 60 seconds before Bunny finally picked it up and started flipping through it. We were all shocked - Kim included - because: 1) Kim has no plans to write a book; and 2) She generally spends about 50% of her day reading comic books and playing video games and the other 50% of her day napping. After some debate Bunny and I eventually decided to bring the book back to the present (not the library copy; we bought one at a bookstore) and read it. It turns out Kim is (will be?) a really excellent writer! Her book, Destroying the Illegitimate Institution, is a challenging, clearly articulated polemic, and its easy to see why it enjoyed six editions by 2028. According to the About This Book narrative on the back cover, Destroying began its influence soon after its first printing (2013), providing a theoretical framework which precipitated the formation of the Popular Revolutionary Services, a radical grassroots collective (of human beings) who between 2018 and 2026 carried out a series of occupations of several prominent cultural institutions in the U.S. and Europe. The foremost demand of the PRS was the transfer of public and private museum collections to New Society Trusts, an arrangement in which overlapping, trans-national, autonomous networks of community collectives would care for and administrate the holdings. As one might expect, these demands and actions produced deep divisions in the museum community as well as the public-at-large - political divisions which, as of 2028, remained unresolved. All of the above is actually very difficult for us to imagine - Kim is not only a huge fan of museums (shes a member of LACE and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City), shes also well-known around here to be completely repelled by all forms of stress and conflict.

So far, Kim has yet to decide whether or not she wants to read her book - let alone write it. And if she does eventually decide to read and write it, it is also unclear whether or not she should just copy it word for word (the easiest book ever written, we like to joke), or re-write it in an attempt to avoid all or at least some of the violence and repression the movement encountered at the hands of both State and corporate entities to maintain ruling-class control of Culturally-Significant Property. The decision is a terrible burden for a six-pound cat to bear but Bunny and I have total confidence in her.

ContentsA. Acknowledgements.B. Introduction.1. Capitalism, Colonialism, and the HistoricalDevelopment of Museums.2. WWWWWH: The Function of Coercive Institutions.3. Invisible Ideology / Neutral Culture.4. Museums in the Service of Empire.5. But is it justified?: Principled Responses to Injustice and Violence.6. Some Notes on the Failures of Revolutions.7. Uprising at the Lustrous Prison, Uprising in the Mind.8. Radical Services for a Compassionate Society.C. Illustrations.D. Notes.

Destroying the Illegitimate Institution: Eight essays on principled responses to hegemony. Kim Cat. Los Angeles: UoM Press, 2027 edition. Hardcover book, 146 pages.

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2052, again: In three days it was nearly all gone...

Have you ever unintentionally dialed a wrong telephone number using the recent calls feature on a telephone? Well, we did the time-traveling equivalent of that, accidentally visiting 2052 a second time when we actually wanted to visit 2076. This time, we visited the great-great-great-great-great grandniece of our present-friend, Teacup. We asked Teacup6 why so many of our favorite museums had been dismantled in the Spring/Summer of 2046. Her reply: rapidly deteriorating economic and social conditions, coupled with long-simmering resentment over ruling-class institutions continued paternalistic attitude towards the citizenry-at-large. Several-months of large-scale uprisings across the U.S. were the result.

IV. Same Year, Different Future

5/14 Update: Kim finally decided to read the book and is now re-working it.

Teacup6: I was there when [Museum X] was dismantled. I say dismantled and not destroyed because it was taken down for a good reason. Everyone was angry and desperate, but in an odd way it was fair... Theres a part of me thats sad that the collection was dispersed. The councils broke apart the collections; sent it to wherever they thought it should go. In three days it was nearly all gone. Can you imagine? But thats what the people thought they had to do to break free from the old ways of thinking - the thinking that had gotten us to this destructive, hurtful point in history. You have to understand that the suffering is immense, and this is a response to that. It doesnt make sense to try to radically transform society but still retain all the old objects of worship. But thats the privilege the museums had tried to keep for themselves, so... they had to go... The buildings themselves, they were ground up and made into roads. Except for this little piece - I saved this one because actually I loved that museum so much.

Museum creation is not a natural species response like hunting for food, building shelter, nurturing the young. It is an add-on made possible by the presence of social and economic surplus.

- Neil Harris, p. 133, from Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastesin Modern America (1987).

Museum X fragment. Collected by Teacup6 Cat, May 8, 2046, New York City.

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