3. Museums Tell Stories
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Intro Chapter 3: Museums Tell Stories
If you want to build a Museum, where do you start? You can start with a collection of books, photos or objects that you want to display. Or you start with a story that you want to tell. In the past, Museums were collections of paintings and artefacts. They were like encyclopaedias: a lot of information that visitors could browse in any way they wanted to. In recent years, this has changed. Now, Museums tell stories. Stories that you can experience with all your senses.
Why start with the story that you want your Museum to tell? Because later, it will help you make choices: what are you going to display and how? You also need a story when you apply for funding for your Museum. This is often called the Museum's Mission Statement. What story will your Museum tell? What is the objective of your Museum, what do you want visitors to see, to learn, to remember? Who are the people behind the Museum? Where will it be located? How will it attract visitors?
The good thing about starting with a story is that anyone can do it, even if you only want to build an imaginary, dream Museum. What story do you want to tell with your imaginary Museum? Make a storyboard, add rooms and exhibits. Decide how you want to present your exhibits. Next step, maybe: use an app to create an online 3D Museum. Then, who knows, you can find people who can help you to convert your virtual Museum into a real physical Museum!
In this chapter we will tell you more about stories and Museums.
3.1. Museums Tell Stories
In the past, a Museum or exhibition was a collection of paintings, artefacts, instruments, objects, animals. A Museum was like an encyclopaedia: a large number of items that you could browse through, in any order.
In recent years this has changed. Museum professionals now want to tell stories. Each exhibition is a story, a Museum is a collection of stories.
source: https://www.amsterdammuseum.nl/en/info/about-us
Why?
Ultimately, storytelling is a marketing trick. Everything these days tells a story: products, food, clothes. Museums have followed this trend.
But it is also because stories help visitors understand what they see. A story can provide context. A story can help people remember.
"Stories share personal experiences in an authentic and easily accessible form. They feel familiar, yet enable us to step into the shoes of others. They are full of detail, but leave space for us to insert our own thoughts, feelings and memories.
We use stories to make sense of the world. While we see ourselves in them, it is through stories that we encounter new perspectives that change how we think and feel."
How?
Museums and exhibitions use their exhibits and displays to tell their stories.
Sometimes the story is very obvious. The name of the Museum or the exhibition will tell you what the story is about. In other cases, visitors can use the displays to recreate the story for themselves, or to create their own personal story.
In some cases, visitors and community members are asked to contribute to the story: materials such as photos, objects, or their personal stories. This is called a 'participatory' or 'community centred' approach. You can read more about this in chapter 6.
"In recent years we have been focusing our work with communities or groups which are emerging, or which have previously been under-represented. Communities work with curators to identify the message they wish to transmit and the stories they wish to tell and curators aid in organising design, media, and presentation, as well as co-creating public programs to increase community reach."
Source: Corinne Ball, Curator, Migration Museum, 2020
Further Reading:
3.2. Selecting a Story
Some stories just need to be told. The main task for Museum professionals then is to decide how to tell this story and what they need to tell this story: what materials, people, what format and maybe: in what location.
Other stories follow from the materials that a Museum has in its collection or in storage: paintings or artefacts from a certain period, exhibits that have not been shown for some time. Exhibits are selected, grouped according to a theme, a story is developed around that theme and exhibits are added or removed to tell the story even better.
This is what it says in 10 Top Tips for Museum Interpretation:
"Key components for storytelling in museums…
Just like a narrator, your displays can use dramatic techniques to draw your audience into the story. You can use lighting, dramatic pauses, images etc. Consider who your visitor will empathise with – and therefore, who will they care about the most?
Checklist:
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What kind of emotions will your characters evoke in your visitors? How does that support your interpretive objectives and messages?
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What does the development of the main characters tell your visitor about your chosen subject?
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Historic or thematic research is likely to give you a good start (setting the scene) and a proper end (the final outcome). Given the characters involved, plot your story along the main events or milestones to develop your storyline.
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What is the most dramatic moment in the development of your story? How do you communicate your story’s climax?
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Does your story offer an opportunity to surprise your visitors?
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How much do you help your visitors create the world of your story in their minds? (Images, using evocative language, etc.)"
Further Reading:
3.3. Perspectives
In the past, Museums told their stories from the perspective or point of view of the majority culture. Usually from the personal perspective of a curator: an expert who knows a lot about the topic of the story and about the objects and materials that are on display.
This has changed. Now, Museums more often take the interests and needs of the visitors into account. Not: what does the curator want to tell about this object? But: what does the visitor want to know? Museums changed - or are changing - from a paternalistic perspective to a participatory approach.
This means that Museums now also take the perspective of the original owners, makers or users of an object into account. The story - or the information panel attached to the object - is not told by an 'all knowing' expert, but by a person who can tell the story from a first-person perspective: I was there, I have seen it with my own eyes, used it, experienced it.
"New relationships between museums and source communities based on more democratic, empowering and egalitarian principles and practices have been established in recent years.
However, it can be argued that many museums continue to establish and maintain one-sided relationships with communities through which research (for curatorial purposes or to inform education or audience development initiatives) is undertaken to address topics and questions decided upon by the museum.
Thus, when consulting or conducting research with disabled people, questions might be framed primarily around museum-oriented concerns (what do you know about this object in our collections?) rather than through a more open and equitable agenda which begins with the priorities, interests and concerns of the disabled person."
Heather Hollins: Reciprocity, accountability, empowerment. In: Re-Presenting Disability, Activism and Agency in the Museum, 2010
Further Reading:
3.4. Mission Statements
A mission statement usually is a short version of the story that a Museum wants to tell, with some additional information.
It is a short text that describes the 'guiding principles' of a Museum. Mission statements are important for fundraising: they tell people what a Museum is about and why it should receive funding.
At a later stage, the mission statement can keep a Museum on track. It can help with future decisions: what to include in a Museum and what not?
- Why must this story be told? What does the museum want to accomplish with this story, what is the objective or goal?
- What is the objective of your Museum, what do you want visitors to see, to learn, to remember? Who are the people behind the Museum? Where will it be located? How will it attract visitors?
According to the American Alliance of Museums, a mission statement
".. is the beating heart of a museum. It articulates the museum’s educational focus and purpose and its role and responsibility to the public and its collections."
and
"A mission statement drives everything the museum does; vision, policy-making, planning and operations are all extensions of a museum’s mission."
When you want to collaborate with a mainstream Museum, for instance to build an exhibition about Deaf history or Deaf art, you can look at the Museum's mission statement to find arguments to convince them that this is in their interest, too. This is what Nina Simon wrote about this in 2015:
"In some institutions, your strongest weapon is a core strategic document - typically, a mission statement.
If your mission statement talks about serving "all Minnesotans" or "creativity for everyone," that's a mandate for inclusion.
Even if the mission statement is primarily used in your institution as an aspirational ideal, it's still something that theoretically everyone from top to bottom is working towards.
If you can use the sentence: "We can accomplish XX part of our mission by doing YY," people at the top have to listen to you. They may not agree with you, but if you can couch your goals in the context of agreed-upon strategic language, you can use that language as a shield as you pursue action."
source: http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2015/09/fighting-for-inclusion.html
Further Reading:
For examples of the mission statements of mainstream museums, see: https://www.slideshare.net/vina/museum-mission-statements
