Book Review - Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust

This spring/summer ANSM partnered with Saint Mary's University to teach a course on museum fundamentals and decolonizing collections. As part of the course, students were invited to read and review a related book from ANSM's reference library. Here is Claire Mercer's book review.

image from amazon.ca

What role do art museums hold within Western societies? How, and why does art, of all subjects, set certain standards for the relationship between public trust and museums? And what is public trust? James Cuno, former director of the Courtauld Institute of London and his colleagues attempted to answer these questions, and many others in the 2004 edited work, Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust. Cuno, the editor of the book, along with other prominent museum “elite” like Neil MacGregor, John Walsh, James N. Wood, Glenn Lowry and Philippe de Montebello each contributed an essay on different aspects of modern art museums and public trust. The focus of each essay varied, and considered concepts like art museum authority, deontological theory, emotion, art museums as an object and how these institutions fit into the daily lives of individuals. The volume concludes with a roundtable discussion between all the book’s contributors.

Each of the authors bounce their ideas off of one another and build onto the previous essay, and the stories introduced. Importantly, the stories being relayed encourage you, as the reader, to ponder your own emotional and physical experiences at art museums, and museums in general. Whose Muse? is therefore a worthwhile book to read if you are interested in museums as a whole, not only art museums or galleries. With that said, there were both highlights and shortcomings within Cuno’s book that can be further explored.

A few elements of Whose Muse? encourage positive assessment of the authors’ thoughts and contributions. One of these assessments’ centres on one of the themes that carries through the book, which is the emphasis on the importance of the layperson’s relationship with art and art museums. True consideration of the public, not only the population who were previously well versed in art, strengthened the book’s topic of public trust. By placing weight on the critical contribution of many visitors to museums, it allows you to continue reading Whose Muse? with confidence some confidence that the authors are looking at the larger museum landscape, and not solely from a top down approach.  

Public trust in art museums is best explored in Lowry’s essay, “A Deontological Approach to Art Museums and the Public Trust.” Museums in American are considered and perceived to be non-profits, but Lowry thoughtfully breaks down how certain institutions have challenged this mandate. Lowry’s essay is arguably the most impactful in the book and enables the reader to understand the consequences of museums becoming performative institutions in attempt to increase their profits. This deontological discussion situates itself nicely among the book’s explanations of museum politics, like how they are funded and what relationship they have with government in both the United States and France, for example. Wood’s essay, “The Authorities of the American Art Museum” expands on the politics of American art museums and discusses government the most. Wood’s essay is informative on a number of matters, including the ties between democracy and the risk of tyranny among the authorities of art museums in America.

In considering the highlights of the book, Wood makes an assertion that is seemingly relevant to the current situation with museums: the two main challenges facing museum “authority” are strong intellectual theory and extreme commercialization. According to Wood, intellectual theory can cause stagnation in a museum’s goals and their ability to enhance the visitor’s experience. Commercialization on the other hand can be dangerous for public trust in several fashions, but one of the main ones that Wood introduces is the situation when replicas are put on display to attract visitors. When scandalous situations like this come out, it erodes the public’s trust in art museums, and the institution of museums as a whole. Each of the highlights in Whose Muse? are worth pondering, and for every reader there would be undoubtedly different highlights, depending on their interests. However as previously mentioned, there are problematic elements of the work which could deserve critiquing.

Two main issues presented themselves when reading Whose Muse? and both relate to the book’s ignorance of colonial legacy within art museums. To preface, this book was written in 2004, and so I write this with some hope that terminology and ideas would have adapted based on social differences now in 2022. Whose Muse? reflects colonial museum discourse that current museum “authorities” are hopefully all striving to move away from. Some problematic terminology within this discourse includes “authorities” and “mission,” among a variety of other colonial terms. This terminology was likely amplified by the first larger problem of the book, which is its focus on Western art museums and an almost unjustified emphasis on American institutions. The title doesn’t indicate the exclusivity that would carry through the theme of the essays. In one sense, it’s understandable that the authors were explicitly aiming to write on the scope of their knowledge. But in another sense, there were generalizations made about art museums as a whole that are simply not applicable to what every individual would understand and experience as an art museum. Therefore, what the authors of Whose Muse? perceive to be elements of public trust toward art museums may fall out of line with what the public believes to be indicators of trust.

The other major critique applicable to Whose Muse? is the authors’ suggestion, or unwritten assumption that all are welcome into art museums, regardless of their status in society. Although the authors consider all visitors to museums, Whose Muse? doesn’t discuss the experiences of marginalized communities with art museums, and the possibility that they don’t even feel welcome to visit in the first place. In failing to address this exclusivity, Cuno and his co-authors don’t assess the ways in which marginalized communities have been potentially misrepresented by curators and directors alike, particularly in Western institutions. What does this demonstrate about Whose Muse?’s discussion of public trust? Well, without addressing the unique experiences of marginalized communities and public trust in their representation, Whose Muse? has fallen short of relaying an accurate depiction of the very topic it wished to claim expertise.

This brief review of Whose Muse? is intended to encourage my peers to read the book, however with skepticism. The social and political climate in Western society, and across the world has certainly shifted since 2004. This means that it could be time to revamp Cuno and his colleagues work and intentions, with a fresh perspective and a more informed sense of the relationship between public trust and art museums.

Click here to request this book from ANSM's reference library. 

November 2022 Update

TRACK Updates

Pilot sites are working through the draft assessment document and meeting with us to talk about the assessment process. 

Thank you to the 70+ people who joined us for Mi'kmaq Community Engagement Day. We've heard very positive feedback from the facilitators and participants, so are talking with community partners about doing similar training in other parts of the province. This is such an important learning journey. Stay tuned for more! 

Also keep in mind that in January we are partnering with SMU to delivery an online workshop called Unearthing the Impacts of Unconscious Bias and Microaggressions. Dr. Rohini Bannerjee and Deborah Brothers-Scott will lead participants through learning and self-reflection with the goal of mitigating the impacts of these issues in your museum. Click here to register for the January 17th workshop.

If you want to catch up on TRACK news or access previous training recordings, visit our website.

Regional Meetings

We had a great time travelling around the province for regional meetings this month, and really enjoyed the conversations we had with everyone. We know that there are questions about some of the advocacy and TRACK decision-making discussions; people waiting to hear about decisions and follow-up actions. We are working through input from the meetings with the TRACK working group and board. We know you're eager for news and will share more as soon as we can. 

Unlocking Museum Collections

We ended up postponing our Amherst session. The ANSM office got hit by the cold/flu plague going around, and our community partners wanted more time to build interest in the session, so we will be rescheduling in the new year. 

The next step for this work is to write the 'digitization strategy'. As we've said before, the conversations extended far beyond collections and digitization, so we are know this document won't be what was originally planned. It will be more of a roadmap for decolonizing museums. Yes there will be a heavy focus on collections and digitization because we need to make sure information gets back into communities, but there will be other elements too. 

We will also be sharing an update before the holidays so that everyone can see how we've been making progress on this work. There are a lot of calls to action and things to do that won't happen overnight, but we're all in this together and have some great collaborations in place and in the planning stages. We heard loud and clear that some communities have consultation fatigue, and feel like people come in and make promises and are never heard from again, so we want to make sure that we don't do this to anyone. So again, stay tuned for more info. This is exciting work. 

CollectiveAccess Updates

The exciting news about CollectiveAccess is that we're in the process of migrating two museums so will soon have a lot more Acadian and African Nova Scotian content on NovaMuse; thousands of new objects and stories to share. In addition to this, we've seen a decent amount of activity in the databases this month, with 585 new records and 1,588 new images being entered. That means that collectively, there are 361,314 records and 334,805 images entered in the databases.

Here are the regional stats:
Southwest: 154,763 records and 109,673 images
Central: 110,016 records and 115,003 images
Northeast: 63,074 records and 83,358 images
Cape Breton: 33,461 records and 26,771 images

Your image lesson of the month is a bit of a laundry list...reminders about how to get a good photo. The object is a small black address book with gold accents. The cover is fairly glossy and reflective. If I were digitizing this object, here's what I would do:
- Use a flatbed scanner rather than camera
- Using the preview mode, I would crop and adjust the image before making the actual scan
- If there are any markings or decorations on the back cover, I would scan the back. 
- I would repeat this process for key pages, but depending on the age of the address book would not make these images accessible to the public. 

If this were a 3-dimensional object rather than a book, here's what I would do:
- Swap out backdrop fabric so that a white or light cloth would contrast with the dark object. This will make it really pop to the eye. 
- Move the scale to the lower left corner, hugging the object without actually touching it. 
- Use umbrella lights and turn off the camera flash so there is no flash burn - the bright spots in the middle and bottom of the book cover.
- Change the orientation of the camera so that it aligns with the shape of the object, and fill the frame neatly and tightly.
- Crop any uneven edges.

Educational Partnerships
We said goodbye to Olivia last week as she wrapped up her MSVU Child & Youth Studies placement. We are so proud of all that she accomplished and are slowly releasing her new and updated resources to NovaMuseEd. 

It's that time of year to prepare for our annual Fleming College data cleaning project. Emails have been sent out to the next museums in the list, so if you received one, please respond asap and let us know if you want to participate. If not we'll move on to the next museum in the list. This is a great project that gets an extra set of eyes and research hands in your database, and this year we'll be linking it up with our Unlocking work. We are already looking forward to what the students have to say about this next group of 220 objects. 

We are about to make our pitch for a summer 2023 intern to several museum studies programs. If you have ideas for internships but aren't sure who to talk to, feel free to reach out. The students will begin searching for their placement in January so now is the time to plan.

In case you missed it...

Karin writes a reflective blog post for Remembrance Day. This year it reflects on the message we heard over and over again at Unlocking sessions - museums need to tell the whole story, to tell the truth even if its uncomfortable. To read the post, click here. 

Museums and Remembrance Day - 2022 Edition

This has been an interesting year at ANSM; a year of change and a year of growth. We have been building bridges with people and communities, and stretching our perspectives as a result. The readings and resources that have crossed our desks have kept us awake and helped us sleep at night. And last week one article perfectly stated:

"Speak the truth even if your voice shakes."

This was in the context of decolonization and reconciliation, but I ended up pondering the statement more broadly, as it applies to every aspect of museum work. From working conditions to choosing which stories and voices to highlight in exhibits, we need to always remember that museums are not (and have never been) neutral. Everyone outside of the museum sector recognizes this; our community conversations have consistently included calls to not shy away from uncomfortable history but instead tell the whole story. We need to use our voices to speak the truth, whatever the truth may be. 

Remembrance Day feels like the perfect time to reflect on this call to action. So often in our commemorative exhibits we focus on stories of heroism and bravery and the men and women in our communities who served overseas or made significant contributions on the home front. We need to ask ourselves: Do our voices shake when we tell these stories? Are they the whole truth? 

As I thought about this, stories from my father kept swirling in my head. Family stories. Private stories. Telling the whole truth would most certainly make my voice shake. It is not comfortable. But it is important, so let's go there. Let's talk about Grandma's brother Fred.

Fred drove a tank during the Second World War. While serving in Italy, he and some friends were walking through a town. They encountered some local women who invited them into a house for some 'socializing.' As soon as the men were inside, the door closed and the women attacked them, stabbing them each multiple times. I don't know what happened to the other men or women, but Fred survived, and spent a long time recuperating in hospital. While in the hospital, Fred's tank was destroyed and the entire crew lost. He never forgave himself for not being there for his buddies. Having not one, but two traumatic experiences that were so intensely personal in such quick succession would damage anyone. Fred was no exception. If this happened today he would undoubtedly be diagnosed with PTSD. In the 1940s, 'the war changed him.' 

Fred made it through the war, came back home, married and had a son. They have richer and fuller and more positive stories to share with you. He was also especially close with one of his sisters who ended up living in the United Stated. In her eyes he could do no wrong. But from my father's childhood perspective, Fred was scary. He was unpredictable and volatile. He drank a lot, threatened people with knives, threw things, and was incredibly hurtful in his words and actions. He was a person in a lot of pain and in need of help. 

Relationships and family dynamics are complex. When I unwittingly mentioned the sad state of the family Bible to my great aunt (Fred's favourite sister) and that I was going to get it repaired, she was horrified to hear that it wasn't in the pristine condition she remembered. She asked what happened, so I relayed that Dad told me Fred had thrown it down the stairs. She gasped, denied, and then swung into sisterly protective mode. She would pay for it, she would handle it, no need to focus on or worry about how it got damaged. I imagine this kind of family response happened more than once after Fred returned from the war. 

This is not the kind of story you see in museums' Remembrance Day exhibits. Of course Fred's story includes heroism and bravery. But it is far more complex than that. It also demonstrates the impact of trauma on an individual and their family. It is private, uncomfortable, and makes my fingers shake as I type and think about my father's relaying of these stories and the fear he still feels so many years later. It is important to speak this truth. It is important to tell the whole story; the other side of Fred's military service.

Circling back to what we heard and talked through during this year's community conversations, some people look to museums as the trusted source of information while others have no trust in us at all. In both cases, we need to prove that we are trustworthy. And one of the best ways to do that is to speak the truth, even if our voice shakes.

October 2022 Update

Strategic Planning

This month the ANSM board and staff gathered together to talk all things ANSM. There was good food, a lot of laughter, and a lot of serious conversation about where we are and where we need to go as an organization. We worked with a graphic facilitation team this time, which means we have a really cool infographic-style poster to share with you in the near future. As we talked, information and ideas were added to the poster. We all left feeling optimistic and even a little excited about the future of ANSM, and how we can better serve museums. 

TRACK Updates

The long-awaited assessment document has been circulated to pilot sites and meetings with these museums have started. We've been really enjoying getting out to regional meetings to share updates and brainstorm about this new program. 

Two more learning opportunities are coming up. First up is M'ikmaq Community Engagement Day at the Mi'kmaw Native Friendship Centre in Halifax. Theresa Meuse will be our facilitator for a day of discussions around Culture 101, Truth and Reconciliation, bias in the workplace, how we can work together, and more. This session will run from 10am-3pm and the small registration fee of $25 will cover lunch and nutrition breaks. Click here to register.

The second is our rescheduled Unearthing the Impacts of Unconscious Bias and Microaggressions workshop. Our friends at SMU are facilitating this one. Dr. Rohini Bannerjee and Deborah Brothers-Scott will lead participants through learning and self-reflection with the goal of mitigating the impacts of these issues in your museum. The workshop will take place on January 17th at 1030am. Click here to register.

If you are looking for general information about TRACK, or want to access recordings of previous learning opportunities, visit our website.

Regional Meetings

Last week the Fall regional meetings kicked off in the southwest at the Queens County Museum. These meetings are such a great chance to connect with museum peers and to learn about what's going on around the province. As mentioned above, we're going to talk about TRACK, and we will also be talking about an important advocacy opportunity. 

The Central Region meeting is tomorrow, Cape Breton's is Thursday, and the Northeast meeting is Friday. If you haven't yet registered for one of these meetings, visit our website. Meetings are free to attend and lunch will be provided. Hope to see you there!

Unlocking Community Museum Collections

We had a lovely time in Chéticamp this month to talk about how museums can better serve the Acadian community. As we've said with other sessions, this one was unique and fascinating. It was another step towards building bridges of understanding. The final Unlocking Collections session is happening November 17th in Amherst, with the Cumberland African Nova Scotia Association and Black Cultural Centre. To learn more and register, click here. 

CollectiveAccess Updates

Now that so many museums are closed for the winter, database activity has slowed down even more. What's really encouraging though is that the disparity between number of records and number of associated media files continues to lessen. There are now 360,729 records and 333,217 images entered in all the databases.

Regionally, here's how that translates:
Southwest: 154,717 records and 109,506 images
Central: 109,739 records and 113,927 images
Northeast: 62,812 records and 83,013 images
Cape Breton: 33,461 records and 26,771 images

We've talked before about the need for a methodical approach to collections management work - to build a good foundation first so that additional details can then be added in a logical way. A number of years ago we worked with museums to develop customized game plans so that workers would have specific and unique instructions on conducting database, inventory, and digitization work. If you don't have this, reach out! We will help you develop one. We've seen such great work from museums that use this approach. Game plans get everyone on the same page and working toward common goals. If you don't like the the building analogy, think of it like reading a book with your colleagues. It's a tome, but that's okay because you're all getting through it together.

Our image lesson of the month is seasonal. Fall in Nova Scotia means apple picking, right? And one of the wonderful things we have in museum collections that links to this tradition, is the barrel stencil. These are functional, artistic, and full of fantastic historical detail. You can learn about company names, families involved, business or farm location, and see logos or other branding in use. These are super cool. But because they are made out of very thin, cut metal, they can be really hard to read on an angle. This photo is a great example. We can tell that words have been cut out of the metal, and we can even read a few. But we can't easily decipher the entire object. Imagine the frustration of your online audience, staff member, volunteer, or researcher when they are looking at your museum's collection on NovaMuse or reviewing records in your database. Everything else in the shot is great - good framing, good lighting, good scale placement. But you can't truly see the object. 

Now let's look at the same barrel stencil with a slight adjustment. Wow right?! Treating this stencil like an artwork and shooting straight-on makes a beautiful, legible, amazingly clear shot. You can frame this and hang it in your home. Maybe without the scale, but you get the idea. Someone took the time to set up the shot and the result is impressive. Now imagine those same people looking at your record online, or working in your database in-house. You've sent a message to your external audience that your museum is professional, respectful, thoughtful, and an excellent caretaker of the collection. They may not sit there and think these things about you in a conscious way, but they will be understanding them on the subconscious level. Don't minimize the power of that message. 

Educational Partnerships

Last week we all went to the Social Studies Teachers Association Conference to share NovaMuseEd with teachers. The response was overwhelmingly positive; teachers like what they see and are excited for more. They also shared some ideas on how we can further improve this resource. So with that in mind, the great news is that Olivia has finished up four educational resources for NovaMuseEd this month. She has lots of ideas and is excited to see what else she can do before she wraps up her practicum in early December (that's the bad news...she isn't with us forever). If anyone wants to get their museum's educational programs online, feel free to reach out. 

In case you missed it...

We've quietly pre-scheduled a number of blog posts over the coming months. These were written by our recent interns, SMU students, and ANSM staff. So in case you missed it, we want to draw your attention to one written by Madeline on cleaning up the culture field in CollectiveAccess. Click here to read about what we found and how we can all use this field to its full potential.

Culture Cleaning

 Hello!

As part of the Unlocking Community Museum Collections project, one of my tasks this summer has been to 'clean' the CollectiveAccess Culture field. This has meant looking through each museum's database to see what has been entered into the culture field (that's a total of 349,748 records!). I have been making note of all the different cultures entered, keeping track of common trends, and correcting outdated language. 

One of the long-term goals of this project is to make the Culture field public on NovaMuse, thus making records searchable by culture. This project has a special focus on Nova Scotia's four founding communities: Acadian, African Nova Scotian, Gaelic, and Mi'kmaq. Ideally, all records associated with one of these cultures should be linked together and easily found. In order for this to work effectively, it is important for the field to be filled out correctly using consistent language. I thought I would share some trends and tips that I came across in my cleaning that might help us to make better use of the Culture field moving forward. 

Stats

Out of the 349,748 total records, only about 6% of them included a Culture field entry. Of the 56 databases, 8 of them included no culture entries at all and the rest had very few entries. We are hoping to increase use of this field in order to link as many objects to their cultures as possible. 
 

Language

Making sure the database records are as accurate and respectful as possible means using the most up-to-date and preferred language when describing cultural communities. It is also important to remain consistent with spelling and terminology. For instance, Acadian, African Nova Scotian, Gaelic, and Mi'kmaq are the preferred terms used within CollectiveAccess. 

A resource that I found to be very helpful when doing this work is Indigenous Peoples: Language Guidelines, created by the University of British Columbia. 

Culture vs. Group

The Culture field is meant to identify the culture associated with the object based on its social or geographic origin. Terms should be entered using the adjectival form. (ie. Scottish, German, Mi'kmaq, etc.)

The Group field is used to connect objects with associated groups or organizations. Political parties, religions, sports, fraternities, and clubs are all examples of grouping options. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that CollectiveAccess also has a Military Unit field, so this type of information does not need to be entered into either the Culture or Group field. 

Overall, the Culture field presents a great opportunity to improve access to information on NovaMuse and create a more user friendly experience for the public. Keeping in mind that this is an ongoing effort that will take time, we are already making exciting progress towards being able to link cultural records together. Next time you are entering or editing a record on CollectiveAccess, take a quick look at the Culture field to see if there is any information that could be added or updated. 

September 2022 Update

Hurricane Fiona Relief Funding

Is it just us or did we blink and September was gone? And what a way for it to end. If anyone needs help with recovering from Fiona, please reach out. You may also be eligible for provincial or federal funding assistance. Our friends at the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia offer small grants to cover repairs to historic buildings. The province has launched a Disaster Financial Assistance Program to help households, businesses and non-profits. There is also some federal Emergency Assistance funding available through the Museum Assistance Program, so if your collections suffered any damage due to Fiona please contact our office and we will put you in touch with a program officer.

TRACK Updates

This month has been full of meetings and conversations and forward momentum. With so many moving parts and so much other work on the go, things have gone a bit slower than we had hoped. But we are so happy with how this new program is shaping up. We will be sharing news at the regional heritage group meetings in October and November, so be sure to come out and we'll do our best to answer all your questions.

We postponed one training opportunity because of Hurricane Fiona, so stay tuned for updates on it. If you want to learn more about the program and check out upcoming training opportunities, visit our website.

Unlocking Museum Collections Sessions

We had some amazing conversations at the M'ikmaw Native Friendship Centre session this month. And once again this session was totally unique from the seven previous ones. In order to start wrapping our heads around all of the experiences and our many, many notes, we spent a day talking and pouring over everything. This was so incredibly helpful. We discovered some trends in key messages and calls to action, and feel like we have a much better sense of how to move this work forward. We will be sharing some of this at the Interpretation Canada conference session on Monday. 

We have two remaining sessions; in Chéticamp on October 14th and Amherst on November 17th. The Amherst session has been added by request of the community and will be held in partnership with the Cumberland African Nova Scotian Association and Black Cultural Centre. 

To learn more about this work, visit our website.

CollectiveAccess Updates

September was a busy month for CollectiveAccess. We are prepping for a number of technical upgrades as part of our Unlocking Collections work. Included in this is translation work as we prepare for our first French-language user to come on board (hooray!). Our friends in New Brunswick have shared some of their bilingual resources, so if anyone wants a French user manual, let us know. We also ran a manual sync of NovaMuse this month while we await for the new sync process work to be finished.

With all the museums shifting into fall mode, database work dropped off significantly this month...a normal reflection of our seasonal activity. As this month's stats were reviewed, I couldn't help but think back to our Unlocking sessions and one of the messages we heard over and over again: "We don't know what museums have." Rather than stress about our backlogs, let's be proud of how far we've come, how much we've learned along the way, and just keep moving forward. Slowly but surely the information about our collections is getting better, stronger and richer. This month 247 new records were entered into databases, and along with them 438 associated images. This is good progress.

Educational Partnerships

In case you missed it, we welcomed someone new to the office in September. Olivia has joined us from the MSVU's Child and Youth Studies program. She's already working away on new resources for NovaMuseEd, starting first with our stockpile of files sent in previously. If you have ideas for resources or want to learn more about this work, feel free to reach out! You can read her intro blog post here.

With so many of our museums closing for the season, and schools reopening for the school year, be sure to reach out to your local teachers and schools to let them know they can access your resources online, for free, any time they want. And keep an eye on the NovaMuse Twitter and Facebook accounts for #NovaMuseEd announcements about new resources. 

Introducing Olivia!

Hello everyone! I’m Olivia LaPierre and I’m currently in my fourth year of the Child and Youth studies program at Mount Saint Vincent University. I’ve done three practicum placements previously, however all three were in classroom environments, so I’m beyond excited to try something new. Planning and creating are two of my strongest suits, especially designing activities for children. I also visited a few of the province’s many museums as a child, mainly the Acadian House Museum in Chezzetcook (I have family roots there), Pier 21 on class field trips, and the Fundy Geological Museum, as I’ve always loved rocks, crystals and fossils. I’m very excited to learn more about these places, as well as some of the other museums in the province. I think it will be an amazing experience to create activities in museums that will help children learn and engage with the rich history museums have to offer. 

Outside of school, I love doing any type of arts or crafts, as well as hanging out with my pets. I’ve also worked with children since I was fifteen years old, but recently left the field to work part-time at a pet store, while in school. As much as I love working with children, it was flexible hours-wise while I’m still in school, I have a huge passion for animals as well! I’m also working part-time at school in the curriculum resource center, helping my peers do research, find books, and managing the library. 

Thank you so much to ANSM for having me here to do my last practicum, and I’m beyond excited to get started working with everyone!

Come Along with Me - Cape Breton Trip with Summer Intern Madeline

A few weeks ago, I was given the opportunity to travel to Cape Breton for two of the Unlocking Community Museum Collections community sessions; one in Membertou and one in Iona. I was also able to tag along with Brittany on several advisory site visits. 

LeNoir Forge Museum

It was great to meet and chat with so many lovely people during the advisory visits. We learned about the local history of Guysborough at the Old Court House Museum, explored the interactive exhibits at Old Sydney Society, took a ride on the virtual mine experience at the Cape Breton Miners Museum, and enjoyed the stunning scenery at LeNoir Forge Museum. During these visits, we were also able to have some great conversations about CollectiveAccess and share digitization tips and tricks with museums. We were especially impressed with the great database work that some summer students have been doing and their enthusiasm for learning more about CollectiveAccess! 

The community sessions built upon the information gathered at the previous two sessions, but also opened up some interesting and important new areas of discussion that will help inform the future of the project.

Sydney Waterfront

We finished our trip with many fun new memories and lots to think about. Driving back to Halifax, taking in the beautiful scenery of summer in Nova Scotia, I thought about how my time at ANSM is quickly coming to an end. I am so grateful for all of the incredible opportunities and experiences that I have gained during my time here and I want to thank everyone that I have met for being so friendly and welcoming. I look forward to visiting more museums across the province in the future and maybe even crossing paths with some of you again! 

- Madeline

August 2022 Update

TRACK Updates

August saw the TRACK working group meet and discuss the program developments to date. The assessment document is being released next week to pilot sites, and we are looking forward to several fall training opportunities. To learn more about these and to register, visit our website.

Unlocking Museums Collections Sessions

We've had three more community sessions this month and continue to learn A LOT as we sit together and listen to community members. As with the previous sessions, Millbrook, Cherry Brook and Antigonish were each unique but we came away feeling like this relational, conversational path is the clear way forward. We are so inspired by the openness and honesty of this work; of the communities we are meeting with and the desire of new friends to go down this path together. 

As you can imagine, the pages and pages of notes that we mentioned in last month's update have grown substantially. We are still processing and pondering, and we're not done yet! We still have more sessions to go, one of which will be held during the Interpretation Canada conference. This one will be a sort of recap of what we've done and learned so far. It will be held on October 3rd in the afternoon. If you're interested in attending, let us know.

To learn more about this work and upcoming sessions, visit our website.

CollectiveAccess Updates

We've been getting a lot of questions about the databases synchronizing with NovaMuse, and I'm very pleased to report that we're about to push "go" on the new sync. Everything is now set up and next week we will start working our way through all the databases, one by one. As you can imagine this will take some time since there are more than 50, but that's okay. We're finally making this important switch and improvement. 

Almost every museum was busy in their database this month, adding and editing records and images. There are now 359,960 records and 332,076 associated images and media files. Regionally, here's the breakdown: 
Southwest: 154,556 records and 109,395 images
Central: 109,519 records and 113,252 images
Northeast: 62,424 records and 82,658 images
Cape Breton: 33,461 records and 26,851 images

Your image lesson of the month is a bit of a funny one. We've been talking a lot during our community

sessions about the importance of taking our time and getting high quality images of items; that this is a way to respect the community of origin as well as the object itself. There is always general agreement on this, as well as recognition that previous photographers and digitization technicians may not have taken this approach. Lately we have noticed a particular kind of these older images, where it seems that people were trying to get as many items photographed as quickly as possible. So rather than photographing each item individually, group photos of exhibit spaces and storage shelves were taken. As you can tell from this example, that makes it very hard to focus on the desired object. So as you are looking through your database and digitization needs, keep an eye our for images like this. Then you can go and find those objects, photograph them on their own and give them the respect they deserve.

Educational Partnerships

We said goodbye to Emma and Madeline this month, and the SMU students wrapped up their coursework, so it feels quite different around ANSM these days. We'll be meeting with our SMU partners to debrief and discuss next steps, and are also speaking with other educational institutions about opportunities for their students. We are also looking forward to being actively involved in the social studied teachers association conference this fall, where we will be promoting museums and NovaMuse and especially NovaMuseEd.

Keep your eye out for some blog posts from our interns and students in the coming months. They left us with a lot so we've prescheduled them...the gift that keeps giving.

Approaching Collections that Evoke Trauma

This summer has been incredibly busy, with lots of projects on the go. Even when work feels like this, we know how important it is to seek out learning opportunities. We asked our interns to do just that, and to also write some reviews of their favourite webinars. Here is the first one from Madeline. Happy reading!

Hello! I hope everyone’s summer is going well so far.

Between all of the projects we are currently juggling at ANSM, I recently took some time to sit down and watch a webinar hosted by the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation. The webinar is called “Approaching Collections that Evoke Trauma” and it discussed a lot of really relevant information about how to deal with cultural collections and difficult information. As our Unlocking Community Museum Collections consultation sessions are underway, I thought I would share some helpful tips that I learned from the webinar: 

Be Honest: When acquiring a potentially traumatic artifact, it is important to be honest about the abilities and limitations of your museum. Does the object align with your museum’s vision and purpose? Do you have the understanding and the resources necessary to do justice to the object and its story? In some cases, it may not be appropriate or feasible for your museum to tell an object’s story and that is okay. 

Never Work Alone: Collaboration is essential in all areas of museum work, but it is especially important when dealing with trauma-based collections. Before deciding what to do with an object or how to tell a difficult story, it is essential that you seek out partnerships, ask questions, and create open dialogue with related communities. 

Take Your Time: Show objects and stories the respect they deserve by not rushing to complete work. This is easier said than done when exhibit deadlines are fast approaching, but it is important that research and planning be thorough and diligent. Take the time to gather all of the information necessary to tell the story properly and respectfully. 

Empathy for Everyone: When your museum is dealing with objects that may evoke trauma, all staff members need to be properly taken care of. Anyone who may encounter difficult images or information needs to be appropriately prepared and given the space and support necessary to process any emotional response they may experience. Consider storing objects in clearly labelled boxes or including warnings or restrictions within your database to limit the people who have access to sensitive information. 

Exhibit Etiquette: If the object is on display, use signage to prepare visitors for potentially difficult images and information. Consider having interpreters or educators present to provide context and support to visitors. When deciding to display an object, it is also important to consider the physical space. Exhibits should be designed in such a way that people can decide whether they want to enter the space or not. For those that do choose to view the exhibit, providing space for reflection can be helpful. You may also want to consider restricting photography and media within the space to prevent sensitive images from being shared. 

Encourage Safe Engagement: Museum visitors should be encouraged to participate and interact with exhibits in a way that is safe and productive. If people feel welcome to share their stories and experiences, they will feel more connected to the exhibit and the museum. Allowing people the opportunity to share can help to gather a wider narrative and provide a healing space. On the other hand, when allowing for open discussion and sharing, you must also be prepared to receive ignorant or hateful comments. It is helpful to have a plan in place for how to deal with negative interactions in a respectful and thoughtful manner. 

Keep an Open Mind: The most important thing to remember when dealing with traumatic or sensitive objects in your collection is to be open to new ideas. Actively listening to community feedback, subject matter experts, and research findings should inform how an object or story is handled. Be open to stepping outside your comfort zone, asking for help, and doing things differently than they have been done in the past. 

Overall, difficult stories are not something to be afraid of, but they do need to be handled with care. Done thoughtfully, engagements with objects related to trauma can contribute to more open discussions, create larger social awareness, and lead to necessary change. 

If you are interested in learning more, I would encourage you to watch the webinar yourself here. 

July 2022 Update

 TRACK Updates

A few more museums registered for TRACK this month which means we're approaching the 100 mark! If your museum hasn't yet registered, there's no time like the present. Upcoming offerings include an EDI webinar on August 17th, accessibility webinar on September 14th, and a more in depth EDI workshop on September 28th. 

The final draft of the assessment document is almost ready for release. Feedback has continued to come in from friends and colleagues and we look forward to testing it out with our pilot museums. 
Visit our website to learn more about TRACK.

Unlocking Museum Collections 

It's hard to believe how much has happened since the June update. We delivered our orientation session for museums and have held four community sessions. We won't lie; some of these have included some difficult conversations. But this is all part of relationship building and recognizing the legacy of museums and history in general. We are learning so much. 

We have pages and pages of notes and completed survey forms, and are seeing some consensus in the ideas and feedback. and we're only halfway through the consultations. This week we will be in Millbrook and Cherry Brook, and then we'll have a little break before heading to Antigonish on August 22nd.

Thank you to all of the museums that have been coming out to these sessions. Your presence is noticed and appreciated by the community. If you are a member of ANSM's Advisory Service and haven't yet registered for a session, visit our website to find one nearby.

CollectiveAccess Updates

Rather than focus on how much progress has been made since last month, I wanted to talk about something a bit different in this update. The Unlocking Collections work has revealed a number of things that are important for us all to be aware of and keep in mind during our work:

1. Collections work is never done. Even though the Advisory Service has been around for 20 years now (!!!), we have much to learn, and much to improve. Whether it's catching up on a backlog of data entry, researching items in the collection, digitizing, or doing an inventory, every museum has work to do. And that's okay. As we eat the elephant one bite at a time, we are making very steady improvements.

2. We have to do better at training & monitoring the work of staff and volunteers. While steady improvements are being made, we are also seeing a lot of situations where a student or volunteer has been "handed the keys" to the database, given very basic instructions, and then left alone. The problem with this is that without proper training or monitoring, they end up making a lot of extra work for the museum. This means not being able to find items easily, items being misidentified, and poor quality records being entered into the museum's permanent and public record. No one wants this. So let's give our people the support and confidence they need to give the museum's collection a big boost. 

3. We have to do better at sharing where/how community members can access collections information. As we've worked with partners to host these community conversations, we've met people who don't know about NovaMuse, Artefacts Canada, or other websites that host museum collections. What a missed opportunity! Since we hold these collections in public trust, we need to make sure people are aware of these websites. 

4. We need to work with our entire communities to preserve our shared history. This means not just the physical objects, but also the songs, stories, customs, traditions, and so much more. Imagine how powerful your museum's collection and interpretation would be with this kind of richness. 

Educational Partnerships

Our intrepid interns continue to work through a variety of tasks with us. It's hard to believe how quickly their placements are passing. Similarly, the SMU course will soon be drawing to a close as those students wrap up their research projects and job shadows. We always love the enthusiasm and perspectives that students bring to the table. 

Interpretation Canada Conference

Have you heard that a national conference is coming our way? October 3-7 will be a time to talk all things interpretation with colleagues from across the country. We recognize that it isn't every day this happens, so we are very pleased to be offering a few bursaries to help offset the cost of registration. Visit our website to learn more about this conference.

Come along with Me - Site Visits and Community Sessions with Summer Intern Emma

We hope you enjoy this lovely blog by one of our ANSM interns, Emma Bronsema. Emma shares with us her perspective on her first museum visits with ANSM.  This included Advisory Site visits, which she went on with Brittany Houghton, our new Members Services Coordinator.  

Emma also shares her learnings from attending our very first two Unlocking Community Museum Collections community engagement sessions.  Our first two sessions, with the African Nova Scotia community in Digby and with the Acadian community in Pubnico, were successful and full of important learnings that will drive this project forward.  We are eager to continue these sessions this summer and hope to see you at the ones nearest your museum.  https://ansm.ns.ca/unlocking-community-museum-collections/ 

- Maggie 

On the Road 

Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia. What a beautiful province to drive through. The rolling hills, lakes, rivers and Atlantic ocean, not to mention the greenery and wildlife. I lost count of the deer I saw in the fields on my travels with ANSM. One of my absolute favourite places in NovaScotia has become the garden behind the Musee des Acadiens des Pubnicos et Centre de recherche. The sugar peas are absolutely divine, and the gooseberries positively tarte.

This past week I had the privilege of travelling to the lovely towns of Annapolis Royal, Digby, Pubnico, Shelburne, and Liverpool. This provided a lovely opportunity to check in with museums, meet new staff members and members of the community, as well as introduce them to our new hire, Brittany. Each place we visited was warm and inviting. During the site visits, we were able to look at their sites, figure out where these museums are at, what their needs and wants are, and walk them through instructions, and possible concerns, surrounding digitizing their collection and imputing data into CollectiveAccess. Shelburne really impressed us with the work they have been doing for their artifact storage. It looks amazing!

In addition to our site visits, we held two unlocking museums sessions with the local museums and community members. What we learned In these sessions the importance of collaboration and being there for members of the community was stressed. And communities would love for museums to start, and in some cases continue, to strive to make museums and historic institutions a place for community and not just tourists and school groups. Museums are more than just history, they are a service, and as such, they need to better meet the needs of their community and provide access to more varied perspectives and information.

What we are hearing

After discussions with community members we are hearing that there are many stories missing from the artifact, that the artifact itself is presenting to be limited; the missing narratives would liven it up. On a similar note, there is a need for more access to varied perspectives on information, artifacts, and historical events. Displays and artifacts on display are not telling the whole story. Contributions and perspectives are missing. Representation of different perspectives in a range of times and contributions to, and involvement in, society is also missing and wanted.

Next steps

Following this trip, ANSM is continuing its travel and visits and looking to continue the conversations surrounding digitizing collections, collaboration, representation and decolonizing collections. We hope to continue to work with communities and their museums in a collaborative manner. A large way to aid this process is through digitizing collections and making them accessible to community members.

June 2022 Update

 Phew! What a month! We had more meetings than we could count and juggled a lot of different projects in our small team. Some days it felt like we were moving mountains and winning all the battles, and other days it felt overwhelming and almost impossible to manage. I know that we are not alone in these feelings. They are unfortunately very common in the museum field. During the difficult days it is important to use some healthy coping mechanisms to get you through. At ANSM we have two go-to's - humour and food. We crack jokes and laugh over cake. This month we had several cake days. And one week that felt especially hectic, we celebrated our accomplishments visually and then rewarded ourselves with ice cream treats. So consider this a little reminder to embrace your own healthy coping mechanisms, whatever they may be. 

TRACK Updates

There are now 90 museums registered for TRACK, including almost every CMAP-receiving museum and Nova Scotia Museum site. We are so excited to see this momentum. We are also very appreciative of all the great input that people shared during the registration process. Knowing where museums are thriving and where they would like help means we will better be able to serve our members. We are compiling all of this input so that we can plan and prioritize TRACK activities.

The new assessment document is back from our readers and they gave us lots of great input. We are slowly but surely working through it all and having follow-up chats with readers. We are a bit behind schedule on this but our next working group meeting is scheduled and we're hoping to have the document finalized and released to pilot sites by August. 

We are also in the process of organizing some more webinars, knowledge-sharing activities and consultations as we get TRACK off the ground this year. We will be sharing more details soon, so stay tuned!

If you haven't yet registered or want to learn more about this program, you can check out our website for info, and click here to register.

Unlocking Museum Collections

We have named this year's MAP-funded project to develop a digitization strategy, "Unlocking Museum Collections", and this month we really 'unlocked' this project. We held our orientation session for museums and opened registration for the community sessions on Tuesday. 19 people have already registered! 

As we said during orientation, everyone we talk to about this project is excited about it. The past decade of collections work has been so impressive, and helped us to build so many partnerships and make so many improvements. This next step of hosting discussions with community members feels like a great and important next step. So this is what we will be doing as hub training this summer. Each session will include a presentation on Mi'kmaq, African Nova Scotian, Acadian or Gaelic culture and history, and give museums and community members an opportunity to talk about museum collections and how we can better meet community needs.  

 It is incredibly important for museums in the Advisory Service to be present at one session, but you can sign up for more than one if you wish. Whether it's the curator, manager, board member or key volunteer, you don't want to miss out. 

If you missed the orientation session you can watch it here. To register for one of the community sessions, click here.

CollectiveAccess Updates

Madeline has started reviewing Culture field entries in all of the databases as part of our Unlocking Collections project. She's correcting typos and grammatical errors, and also keeping track of trends she notices so she can share those in a future blog post. We are excited to add a new browse option to NovaMuse, but we recognize how important it is to get this right. You can do your part by monitoring the work of summer staff and making sure fields are used appropriately. 

We always see a jump in database work when summer staff arrive and this year is no exception. Throughout June, 11,268 new records were entered into the databases, along with 3,083 associated media files, for a new total of 352,621 records and 322,119 associated images. That is a lot of new content. Congrats to everyone who is working through their documentation backlog, catching up on cataloguing, and getting the collection digitized. This is great to see. How's how those numbers break down on a regional level:

Southwest: 149,453 records and 106,565 images
Central: 108,845 records and 108,000 images
Northeast: 61,268 records and 81,703 images
Cape Breton: 33,055 records and 25,851 images

Our image lesson of the month is a reminder about how cameras and computers talk to each other. When the camera is turned to take a photo, the file sometimes appears sideways when it is transferred to the computer. The computer is trying to orient the photo as if the camera were held upright. That's what happened here. The photo was attached to the database but someone didn't go back and look at the file after it finished processing. The result is a sideways image. In addition to that issue, this is a great image to remind everyone about how to photograph framed works of art. The frame should be on an easel or hanging on the wall and photographed straight on. Remember the book cover rule - think about how book covers are shown online and you'll notice that they are always scanned and only the cover is visible. No dead space around the edge, no scale in the lower left corner. Artworks should be photographed (or scanned) the same way.

Educational Partnerships

Emma and Madeline continue to tackle a variety of tasks, helping with databases, resource development, TRACK and accreditation. They are also diversifying their experience by spending some time at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in both visitor services and collections work. 

The SMU course seminars have wrapped up and next week the students begin their practicum work. This will align with our Unlocking Museum Collections project; they will be working in teams on researching cultural materials and place names and collections associated with their designated cultural group. They will also be doing a job shadow at a museum in order to learn more about how museums operate on a daily basis. Thank you so much to the museums who have opened their doors to these students. They are very excited to spend a day working on-site and to learn more about the people and cultures that have shaped Nova Scotia.

That's all for this month. We hope to see many of you at community sessions in July. Until then, don't forget to find your own cake or ice cream to get through any difficult days.

May 2022 Update

ANSM Updates

In case you missed it, May was a very exciting month here at ANSM. We welcomed not one, not two, but three new people! Brittany Houghton joined us as Member Services Coordinator, and Emma Bronsema and Madeline Hoyle joined us for summer internships. It is lovely to have some fresh faces and ideas in the office, and all three are very excited to get out to museums this summer. 

One of the first places you'll see these fresh faces is at our AGM, coming up on June 10th at 10am on Zoom. The link will be circulated this week so keep an eye on your inbox. 

TRACK Updates

Museums are slowly but surely registering for the new TRACK program, our replacement to the Museum Evaluation Program. For any CMAP recipients, remember that this is a new requirement to access that funding. The Nova Scotia Museum is also asking their sites to register. This means that in the very near future we will be reaching out to any of these museums that have not yet registered.

Feedback on the draft assessment document is now coming in. Madeline is compiling the notes as they arrive, and once we hear back from everyone we'll be meeting again with the working to finalize the document for piloting. We should again extend a big thank you to the museums that are testing the assessment tool. Everyone we approached said yes, and we recognize how significant that is. 

If you or anyone at your museum missed out on the TRACK announcement or info session, our website has lots of info for you. Click here to register for the program.

Site Visits

Brittany, our new Member Service Advisor, is undergoing the process of planning the in person site visits this summer. If you receive an email asking to confirm a date, please respond promptly. You all know what a juggling act this is, so the sooner we can settle the dates/times the better. Her goal is to visit half of the Advisory Service museums in person and meet with the other half virtually. This approach allows for better support to all sites over the course of the summer season. Those who received virtual visits last year and those who have had a change of staff at the curator level will be top priority for in-person visits this year.

There will be no Hub Training sessions this year, rather we are working on planning Community Gatherings, where we are inviting members of the founding communities of Nova Scotia: Mi'kmaq, Acadian, Gaels and African Nova Scotians to join surrounding museums at a number of different sites throughout the province. We encourage you to join us for these sessions! We're still working on ironing out all the details but more information to follow.

Maggie and Karin will also be out on the road some this summer for MAP strategizing, TRACK piloting, and Accreditation plaque deliveries. Lots of planning happening right now, so stay tuned!

CollectiveAccess Updates

We can always tell when summer staff arrive because database numbers skyrocket. This is exciting, but it unfortunately also means we need to remind museums to provide their new staff with appropriate training. Giving someone a login to the database doesn't mean they know how to use it or will do good work. So please, save yourselves the headaches later on and orient your staff, check their work regularly, and remind them that they can reach out to you and to us with questions any time. We are here to help! And it's so, so, so much easier to take the time to train now than to clean up messes later. As much as we hate to say it, we are already seeing some messes going into databases. This reflects poorly on the museum and on all contributors to NovaMuse.

To happier thoughts, 9,729 new records and 731 new images went into the databases this month, giving us grand totals of 350,722 records and 319,767 associated media files. It is so wonderful to see that gap closing. When we first started using CollectiveAccess 10 years ago, only 39% of records had images attached. Now we're sitting at 91%. Such amazing improvements both in terms of collections management practices and in public trust and transparency. Let's break down these numbers by the regions so we can see how each is doing:

Southwest: 148,013 records and 106,072 images Central: 108,509 records and 106,429 images Northeast: 61,148 records and 81,598 images Cape Breton: 33,052 records and 106,429 images

For your artifact image lesson of the month, we wanted to pull out an old favourite. This is just a beautiful photograph. To quote Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way. The teapot is lovely to begin with, but has been centred and framed in the image, a pale background used to provide excellent contrast with the dark blue and gold, and the scale perfectly tucked in the lower left corner. The shot is angled just enough to give the viewer a sense of depth and shape without feeling unnatural. Additional photos include shots of just the pot, just the plate, just the lid, and close up details of decoration. This level of artifact photography is aspiration. And achievable. So remember to take your time, train your new staff and volunteers, and encourage them to seek advice and assistance when needed.

Educational Partnerships

In addition to our summer interns, this month Karin started teaching a course at SMU. All of the students are big fans of and eager to learn more about museums. Once the spring seminars wrap up the students will be doing a summer practicum which will have them engaged in our MAP project and community gatherings. We're excited and curious to see where this partnership goes. We see so many opportunities.