Posted on No Comments on NEMA at 100 – Museums on The Move Centennial Conference, 2018

NEMA at 100 – Museums on The Move Centennial Conference, 2018

By: Kristine Malpica

At the ripe old age of 100, the New England Museum Association (NEMA) seems to be going stronger than ever. That’s my impression, based on this year’s centennial conference in Stamford, Connecticut, attended by nearly 1000 people from the northeast region. This year’s theme, Museums on The Move, offered attendees a reflective look at the history of this organization, from its humble origins as a philanthropic project begun by Delia Griffin, founder of the Boston Children’s Museum, and a handful of colleagues, to its present status as one of the nation’s leading advocacy organizations for museums (www.nemanet.org).

So, what’s changed since NEMA’s inception? This year’s conference featured for the first time TED-talk style “storytelling sessions,” presenting 20 minute case studies. Also new was the “Collections Corps” service project, organized by the Registrar and Collections Care Specialists and Conservators PAGs, which assisted Connecticut’s  Shelton Historical Society with a collections project.

NEMA at 100 featured some new and unique presenters, too. Instead of the usual keynote address by a single individual, several speakers, representing a cross-section of disciplines and fields offered short reflections on a wide range of topics including “Art as Healing,” “Museums and Civic Dialogue,” “Diversity, Youth and Museums,” and “The Future of History.” These talks culminated in a multi-media performance by Kledia Spiro, who recounted her compelling personal and professional journey from war-torn Albania to becoming a competitive powerlifter and now an emerging professional at the Fitchburg Art Museum. Her performance was anything but traditional!

So, what did I learn at NEMA? One of the biggest challenges at any conference is choosing what to attend. The NEMA conference offers many sessions specifically focused on career development, especially for emerging professionals. At the informal Independent Museum Professionals Affinity Group for established and emerging professionals, I learned about the challenges faced by independent museum contractors, including how to create an equitable project budget and fair price for contract labor. Uncovering Your Inner Compass, an interactive workshop focusing on discovering core values that help navigate our paths with purpose, took a more personal approach to career planning. This provided an opportunity to reexamine my motivations and core beliefs, as they relate to my academic and career goals. In a Career Conversation with Larry Yerdon, Executive Director of Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth NH shared his specific career path through a variety of cultural organizations. This helped me to better understand the real life journey of a museum executive, serving as a useful professional model. At the Newcomer’s Reception, a mix and mingle of young and emerging museum professionals, I met students and museum staff, with whom I discussed academic and career-related topics of mutual interest.

NEMA at 100 also offered opportunities for guided experiences at local museums. Bridgeport’s P.T. Barnum Museum staff led a group tour of the exhibit The Real Deal: P.T. Barnum’s Legacy in Bridgeport. The exhibition revealed Barnum’s entrepreneurial career as an innovative museum proprietor and visionary big top circus promoter, who exhibited and represented some of the most fantastical and novel objects and people. However, we also learned that Barnum was not just an exploitive capitalist; he was also a progressive politician and ardent supporter of abolition and women’s rights, who worked for social change. Our visit included a special hardhat tour of the building badly damaged by a tornado, leading to  an in depth discussion of the challenges of natural disaster planning and recovery for museums. We were also treated to a behind the scenes visit to the archives and collections, where the curator showed us a range of artifacts not on view to the public.

Full-color poster, “Scenes from a Long and Busy Life,” featuring a portrait of P. T. Barnum, surrounded by vignettes illustrating highlights of his life and career. Ca. 1881. Courtesy of the Barnum Museum. This image may not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the Barnum Museum.
Scene from the NEMA tour of special collections held by the Barnum Museum, Bridgeport, CT. Courtesy of the Barnum Museum. This image may not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the Barnum Museum.

Perhaps most importantly, I learned about recent community engagement and cultural preservation efforts in the museum community.  The session Museums in Puerto Rico, focused on Hurricane Maria’s devastating impact on museums and socio-cultural institutions across the island in 2017. The panel was moderated by museum professionals working in Puerto Rico and the mainland at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico; Harvard Puerto Rico Winter Institute; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, and Boston Children’s Museum. This session presented current museum outreach and community engagement projects, post-hurricane recovery efforts by museums and their role in preserving cultural resources and identity.

Professor Pedro Reina-Perez, professor of history at the University of Puerto Rico San Juan and the Harvard Puerto Rico Winter Institute, warned of the startling possibility that much of the island’s cultural patrimony could be lost, through a combination of natural disaster and the auction of university and museum collections to repay debts. He spoke about the importance of culture– “Culture equals identity. For colonial people culture is the most important thing.” This stark reality check was by far the most impactful moment of my NEMA experience. It also prompted me to speak with Professor Perez about ways that students and museum professionals might provide assistance or support to universities or cultural institutions on the island, and closer to home. As a father of a current UMass Boston undergrad, he was eager to engage in further discussion of how history students might help. I look forward to continuing this dialogue and hopefully connecting our communities in creative and compassionate ways.

So, why should you go to NEMA? It’s a great opportunity to meet and engage with new and seasoned museum and history enthusiasts from around New England, share your stories and experiences and learn from others as a student and emerging professional.

There are also a number of sources which can fund your NEMA conference professional development. For more information about NEMA scholarships: https://www.nemanet.org/conference-events/conference/2018-nema-conference/scholarships/.

I would like to thank the Graduate Student Assembly for funding my NEMA conference. For more information: https://gsaumb.wordpress.com/programs-and-grants/professional-development-grant-pdg/  

Posted on No Comments on Keg to Cannon: Adapting Education Programs from the USS Constitution Museum to USS Constitution

Keg to Cannon: Adapting Education Programs from the USS Constitution Museum to USS Constitution

By: Genevieve Wallace

I moved to Boston from California two years ago because of a love of old boats and cobblestones (yes, really). Fortuitously, I sat next to Jennifer Zanolli, Manager of Interpretation and Visitor Services at the USS Constitution Museum, during a session at the New England Museum Association (NEMA) conference in November 2016. A year later, I was lucky enough to work with Jennifer as a museum education intern at the USS Constitution Museum.

My primary responsibility was brainstorming educational programs to implement on USS Constitution. The goal was to create a program on the ship itself based on an existing program at the museum. We envisioned this complimentary program as a way to help visitors identify and make connections between the museum program and its context in this historical setting. Since hands-on learning is a hallmark of the USS Constitution Museum, any new program required appropriate and meaningful strategies for audience participation. I faced this new challenge right away, since the precise details, or even the general structure, of this program were unknown at the start of the internship. Previously, the Constitution Museum had not had access to the ship for its educational programs, so my task was unprecedented. However, the format of the program would follow that of existing gallery guides for programs in the museum. This exciting new opportunity became possible through the combination of an amenable commanding officer, and a grant to fund collaboration between the US Navy and the USS Constitution Museum.

150416-N-XP344-048 CHARLESTOWN, Mass. (April 16, 2015) NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy SEAL Capt. Christopher J. Cassidy conducts an all-hands call with the crew of USS Constitution during a visit to the ship. Cassidy’s visit to Charlestown Navy Yard was part of an East Coast tour that included him visiting Boston and New York City public schools, the New England Center for Homeless Veterans, the Boston Museum of Science and the 9/11 Memorial. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Victoria Kinney/Released)
“All Hands” call, US Navy on the USS Constitution. Public domain image.

The USS Constitution Museum has won numerous well-deserved awards for their interactive and highly engaging exhibits since they opened in 1972. The museum’s primary focus is USS Constitution and everyone whose lives were touched by the vessel’s construction and commission. It is located next to the ship itself, in the Charlestown Navy Yard. The museum’s mission statement boasts a commitment to scholarship and innovation, as well as providing hands-on experiences that keep the stories of USS Constitution and those associated with her relevant.

Because of the intimidatingly high bar the museum has set for engaging and interactive exhibits, I had the challenge of creating ideas that would be within the realm of possibilities, but also the encouragement to think big. I approached the task by researching and brainstorming programs suitable for the ship, interacting with and observing the different galleries and programs in the Constitution Museum, and attending museum educator meetings.

Genevieve Wallace posing with 1812 Marine reenactors during the USS Constitution Museum’s annual fundraiser. October 18, 2017. Courtesy of Genevieve Wallace.
Genevieve Wallace posing with 1812 Marine reenactors during the USS Constitution Museum’s annual fundraiser. October 18, 2017. Courtesy of Genevieve Wallace.

I began my research began by exploring programs at other maritime museums to identify possible on-ship program models. This offered limited information, because many ship museums are able to offer sailing tours that Constitution cannot, and the ones that don’t (like the HMS Victory) offer visitors open decks to walk through, but no educational programing. I turned back to our own exhibits and programs in the museum for inspiration, but I still didn’t have a clear idea. It was difficult to decide on which aspect of the ship’s history to focus on, and how to transform that aspect to an engaging experience for visitors on deck. I wanted to explore the possibilities of dreaming big, but I soon learned about the practical limitations of some of my ideas. I have so many details about the sounds and smells of shipboard life from reading maritime literature, that I was especially interested in giving visitors sensory experiences on the ship. How about inviting visitors to dine on a tarp, like the enlisted men would have done, I suggested? As my supervisor, Jennifer gently reminded me of problems with cleanup and containment. Some of my other adventurous ideas—installing a tarp with fake blood, or salt to recreate the grainy texture from scrubbing the deck, or installing speakers in the masts—all presented similar problems.

After talking to Jennifer and hearing her suggestions, I decided to build an activity for the ship based on the existing, Ready? Set, Fire! program in the museum. Ready? Set, Fire! is a program about cannon pressure where visitors build Alka-Seltzer cannons out of film canisters. Once I had made my decision, I knew that gunpowder would be the focal point of my program, and I shifted my research focus to gunpowder and powder passing. Powder passing is the process sailors used to get gunpowder from storage kegs below decks, up to guns on the gun and spar decks. The museum has many resources for information on passing powder on the USS—the responsible crew members, as well as timing and logistics.

The most important historical resource for planning this program was the ship itself. I had an idea that a powder passing activity might be fun, but I needed to see parts of the ship I had never been to in order to in order to imagine the details. Luckily, I had the assistance and a full tour of the ship by Margherita Desy, a civilian employed by the navy as the ship’s historian. I was in a much better position to plan the logistics of this activity after my tour. I had originally wanted to start the powder line in the magazine, however after visiting it I decided that would be a bad idea. For example, the magazine, which is the room where the powder kegs are stored, is tiny! Only two or three people can fit into it at once, and it is difficult to climb down into.

The Constitution Museum emphasizes a culture of collaboration. Once I had completed sufficient research on powder passing, and had a general idea for a powder passing activity between decks, I was able to run this idea by the museum educators in a meeting. I was met with enthusiasm and several good ideas. The collaboration between educators was energizing and inspiring, and left me wanting more collaborative experiences. Working alone in the research room meant that I had to create opportunities for such experiences, but minimize interrupting staff while they worked on their own projects.

By the end of my internship with the USS Constitution Museum I was able to accomplish several of my original goals. I had been interested to learn about the job descriptions for different roles in the museum, in order to get a feel for what I might want to pursue in the museum field after graduation. I had one-on-one meetings with Harriet Slootbeek, Collections and Exhibits Manager; Robert Kiihne, Director of Exhibits; Jodie Smith, Manager of Academic Programs; Jennifer Zanolli, Manager of Interpretation and Visitor Services; Margherita Desy, Historian for USS Constitution; Carl Herzog, Public Historian; and several educators. I asked them about their jobs—their current job descriptions as well as what projects they are currently part of at the museum—and their past work experience. Though I haven’t decided what I would like to do most, I have a better idea of what is possible.

Brainstorming, research, and collaboration in the museum helped me write a gallery guide for a new education program. Although I found my professional education experience useful, I learned to create a new type of lesson plan, and discover the institutional constraints that impact program development. I volunteered at the museum’s biggest annual fundraiser—a silent auction and dinner in the Seaport—and experienced the culmination of months of planning for the ship’s 220th birthday celebration (which included a Constitution shaped cake!).

A Constitution shaped cake to celebrate the 220th birthday celebration for USS Constitution in the Boston Navy Yard. October 21, 2017. Photo by Genevieve Wallace.
A Constitution shaped cake to celebrate the 220th birthday celebration for USS Constitution in the Boston Navy Yard. October 21, 2017. Photo by Genevieve Wallace.

One of my biggest takeaways was how invigorating and inspiring it can be to work with a team of dedicated, and similarly nerdy, professionals who are all invested in the integrity of an institution and its mission. When I was working with a small team and I had people to share and build ideas with I was much happier and more productive than when I was working alone. Throughout the whole process of creating a program, I learned how much work and how many voices go into each final version.