Managing Museums – Vision

The difficulty in museum management is that people resist change.  The problem is that change is necessary.  As the  world changes around us, so must our way of communicating to them change.  So how do you get people to do something that is different?  The answer is simply to cast a vision.

 

If this sounds familiar to you, then you have had some sort of class or real-life experience that involved leadership.  I have heard lectures (during my days as a Masters of Divinity student) regarding church membership growth, methods in mobilizing the laity, etc that said the same thing.  I am sure this concept spills over into all sorts of disciplines.  It is one of those truisms that reflects the way we, in the current modern world, look at getting people to do what we think needs to be done but might be entirely different then what they are used to doing.

 

A recent survey showed that when people consider museums and the work that is done in them they rank these in the following order: Display work, Collection work, Conservation work, and Research work.  The reality is that the list is actually backward to what really happens in museums.  Museums do more work in Research than any of the other three categories.  Conservation is the next largest work load.  This is followed by collections.  The least amount of work that is done in a normal museum is that on displays, simply because displays are not altered often.  (This was less true at the Horn Archaeological Museum while I was there because we were trying to get the museum up and running so much of the work I did – after research, which still was the largest work load – was to create and rotate displays.)  The British Museum (by way of example) has a 20-year shelf-life for its displays (meaning, they change a display after 20 years).

 

For the manager of a museum (where research and conservation are by far the two largest types of work being done) it is important to use the helicopter method – stay in one place, trust others to do their work, and pop in from time to time to see how things are going.  Being a manager does not mean that one should be looking over the shoulder of their workers all of the time directing their every move.  Quality control is important, but the work of a manager is to provide the tools that those under you need to accomplish the tasks you have assigned them to do – and then let them do it.

 

A manager, rather, must worry about items that their workers never have to consider.  These include: museum attendance, budget, public relations, political maneuvering, and fund raising (among others).  It is the manager’s job to ensure the museum stays up and running and that it runs smoothly.  A whopping 60-80% of the budget in a museum goes to staffing.  To get funds to create new displays (or to renovate old ones), to conserve artifacts, and to educate the public takes a person with creativity and people skills.

 

However, whether the job is to supervise employees, to raise funds, or to educate the public the ability to cast a vision is important.  A vision (the direction you see the museum heading) is based on an understanding of the mission (the reason that museums exist).  The mission of the museum is in turn based on the values that those entrusted with the museum’s existence hold.  As manager, it is important to understand those values and how they influence the mission statement to show where you see the future of the museum heading and how you can get from where we currently are to that place.

 

Once this vision is cast, everyone from the supporters and visitors to the employees and administration will understand their role in getting the museum to that place and the work will be better coordinated and result in higher quality outcomes.