End of season blues

Now I know how teachers feel. Or farmers, or fishermen, or... well, I can't think of any other seasonal jobs, really. I think for many of us in the heritage field, especially those that work in seasonal museums, can't help but feel that strange bittersweet tang of the end-of-season. It's a combination of relief, sadness, satisfaction, loneliness and fear of the unknown that I don't think exist in many other jobs.

First of all, it's odd enough to work in the tourism industry (and let's not kid ourselves, museums are tourism), where the busiest time is the summer months and you are the busiest when most of your friends and even other colleagues are taking weeks off to enjoy the cottage or drive cross-country. I don't think I've had more than a few days off in the summer since I was about 16 and had my first part-time job. You get used to it, although it's sometimes hard to explain to friends that you need to take your vacation in the Fall or Spring and, well it can't interfere with Christmas programs, or Halloween, or March Break, and don't forget Easter, and that week of summer student job interviews and training... It is strange to have to work when most people are off.

Today was exactly one week before the last open day of the season at my museum. I delivered the last program. The staff are writing their end of season reports and I was working on my program plan for the 2012 season when a wave of melancholy swept over me.

I could hear the girls (yes, I call them "the girls"; I can't help it) laughing down in the museum lobby and it struck my suddenly that I won't be hearing that come next week. They'll move on to other jobs, or back to school, this summer a blip on the radar of their lives. For me, on the other hand, every operating season is significant; successful programs, great visitor numbers, happy visitors, a great team of staff. I get to move back to the basement of one of my sister museums, which is nice, don't get me wrong! It has a real kitchen, a photocopier that works, reliable internet, a fax machine, is close to shops and food, not to mention the fact that it's full of my colleagues and, therefore, company.

I know someone who's writing her doctoral thesis on how heritage professionals become their museums, feel overly connected to them. Today one of my colleagues from a sister museum asked if I'd found my "forever home" at my museum. The fact that I call it my museum should be indication enough. When I sighed and said, "I can't help it! Why does this always happen?" She laughed and agreed that you'd have to drag her dead body from her museum.

The point is that if we personify and "become" our museums, I suppose that it's only natural to feel a bit abandoned at the end of the season. Staff leave, the visitors leave and you're left alone in a dusty old house with drafts and snakes in the basement. When the maintenance guys come and board up the downstairs windows it's like the nail in the coffin. Then I get to pack my office stuff in a box and move back into my off-season office in another museum's basement, surrounded by pictures of the past summer, my staff and museum.

I'll still make as many trips out to my museum as possible, though. I don't care that there's no ceiling light in my office, that the internet is unreliable at best, that I need to wear mittens because of the drafts, that there's no coffee machine, or that there are no other people.

I miss my museum already. And I like to think that it misses me.

Let's get to the art of the matter

So I took my family (parents, brother and his girlfriend were visiting) to the "Caravaggio and his followers in Rome" exhibit at the National Gallery last Saturday.


Caravaggio's "John the Baptist"

 I must admit that I'm not the biggest art fan in the universe. I'd almost go so far as to say that I just plain old don't like art galleries. But I do make a point to visit them and try to get something out of them. I find that effective interpretation is even more important in galleries, although ironically it's usually really basic. Most gallery labels simply provide you with the artist's name, location, dates and the title of the piece.
That's fine, I suppose, if you're an art specialist or student. But let's be honest, those people are few and far between.


I have a friend who wrote her masters dissertation on the use of modern art at historic sites and houses. (It's quite the movement, really. Check out the National Trust's Trust New Art for an example.) She's an artist and wanted to see if art could draw new visitors or bring old visitors back. In fact, I went to a bunch of those sites with her to serve as both chauffeur and impartial judge. I can't tell you how many times I asked, "But what does it mean?" when looking at some artsy branches bunched in a corner of a room, or overheard other visitors asking similar questions.

I saw this wrapped tree last year at Croft Castle. I'm still not sure I "get it".

Unsurprisingly, her dissertation found that art at historic houses could bring in more visitor numbers, but that effective interpretation made the difference between a total flop and a great success. Surprise, surprise.

I have the personal motto that "there's no such thing as a stupid question or an obvious answer". Generally speaking, I think it's our responsability as museums to do our utmost to engage our visitors and making them feel stupid just alienates them. I'm not saying that I think that galleries and museums do this on purpose, but that sometimes in an effort to provide people with endless information and details we forget that most of our visitors just want to enjoy our institutions on a surface level and can be turned off by endless text or obscure references.

Getting back to the Caravaggio exhibit, I was struck by the balance of interpretation and simple viewing that the curators had struck. I was able to learn a little bit about the paintings and was encouraged to look deeper based on the info on the tiny labels. Kudos.
I was terrified that my brother (a 25 year old who had never before visited an art gallery) wouldn't enjoy himself and would later tease me for my decidedly geeky choice of activity. And that was a strong possibility after the science museum disaster a few weeks ago...
I couldn't have been happier when he found me near the end of the exhibit and started to excitedly inform me what he had learned from previous interpretive labels and proceeded to interpret the art I was looking at. "These labels are awesome," he said, "It makes you think more about the paintings. They're not just pictures; there's more to them. I didn't realize art was like that."
Much to our chagrin, he spent the rest of the day sitting in a corner reading the Caravaggio biography and interrupting our conversations with "interesting" tidbits about the man and his art.

Score one for effective interpretation.

And for providing fodder for annoying little brothers. Who knew?

Easiest job ever? Sure...

So, perhaps it was a terrible, terrible idea to start a blog in the days leading up to my biggest event of the year. I kept feeling the guilt that I should be writing something, but those feelings were always surpassed by sleep, food, or general vegetation in front of the TV. On the rare day that I got in before 7, all I still wanted to do was get out of my uniform (yes, uniform), put on my jammies and sit in front of the TV with my junk food of choice.
Pre-event is also a bad time to try and eat well.
Now that it's over I don't know what to do with myself; which is certainly an odd feeling to be sure. I've spent the last month trying to be as productive as possible (I can't remember the last time I actually took a lunch break), but now I can't seem to be productive. Bah. Hopefully it will only take me a week to recover.
What struck me the most during this whole ordeal is the amount of times people commented on how lucky I was to have an awesome, fun job. Now, don't get me wrong: I love my job. Wouldn't want to be doing anything else. But the fact that people imply that my job is easy gets to me; especially when I'm working my butt off.
It always happens the same way. First, I have a stressed moment and decide to leave my office for some fresh air. I come into the museum lobby and gaze outside at the gorgeous scenery or, as was especially the case these past weeks, go weed the garden.
Then, visitors come by and comment on something. I say hi like a good interpreter. Then they exclaim how gorgeous the area/site is and how lucky I am. Usually something along the lines or implying, "What did you do to land this job?" Implying that a)it must be an easy/cushy job and b)that I must not have a lot to do.
I usually answer with some smiling platitude like, "Well, it's a lot of work, but at least it's in a nice place." I just can't bear to leave them with the impression that it's an easy job. I can't.
I think a lot of the problem is that we're (and I'm speaking of heritage professionals in general) just too good with the visitor experience now. We try so hard to make visitors think that things just fall into place; that castles never erode, that programs write themselves and that effective interpretation is as easy as following a script.
We all know that it's not.
I wrote my Masters dissertation on engaging the public by showing them what it is we do. Both because people are interested and because I think that the museum field is far, far too secretive. I don't know why that is exactly. It's one of the old-school legacies that we still cling to and, personally, I'd like to see that change.
No one ever assumes that a psychologist has it easy because all they do is talk to people all day; why is my job any different?

If it's broke... fix it!

I've recently discovered Malcolm Gladwell. I did my time working at a bookstore while I was an undergrad and I vaguely remember seeing his first book pass by me at some point. But let's be honest: what 21 year-old gives a sh*t about business/self-help/leadership books. I was probably more concerned about finding a way to convice my Renaissance poetry professor that I could bullsh*t my way through an English assignment. (Thank you OED!)

Anyway, I was on my way camping and at Walmart to pick up a trashy vacation book when I was captured by Outliers: The story of Success. I couldn't put it down! It was about how seemingly random things can align to put people on the path to success. That is, that people aren't successful without a series of coincidences and opportunities that allow them to become successful. I loved it. Lots of logic and stats to explain something sociological.
Last week, I picked up one of his other books, The Tipping Point. Reading it this weekend, I was struck at how much of it was useful to me.

One of my favourites was the "Broken Window" theory that Gladwell explains in a chapter on how New York subway crime was significantly reduced by doing a few simple things. Little things.
The "Broken Window" theory states that if people see a broken window, they actually see so much more. They see a place/building that no one cares about, an unsupervised or policed area, they think, "Hey, someone else got away with something, what would it hurt if I did it as well?".
It's a lot about group mentality and how we perceive things.
I think that everyone in the heritage sector understands that we're all struggling financially. There's just not as much money as there used to be and things fall to the wayside. I think we've all got little things (and sometimes big things) that have broken and we just haven't had the time nor money to fix. But we need to think about how these things affect the general visitor experience.

I recently visited a national museum with my brother and his girlfriend (not museum people, for a start) and was shocked at the number of interactives that were not working or broken. I don't know what was worse: trying to get it to work and feeling stupid when it didn't, or all the "Sorry, out of order" signs.
I kept thinking, "Wow, don't they realize how bad this looks? Don't they care?" My brother and his girlfriend, on the other hand, just kept walking past, trying the defective interactives and shouting "Hey! This one works!" when one was successful. Overall, they had a poor experience and I was even embarassed for taking them there in the first place.

Now, I'm sure they care. I know that I for one would cringe in shame if "find the working interactive" was a popular at my museum. But we've all got those kinds of things, scratched signs, out of date websites and brochures, that door that you keep latched with a string... Historic sites are the worst for that, probably because of all the approvals that it takes to get anything done, but still we need to pay more attention to these things.
I often overhear visitors at my museum saying things like, "It's too bad they don't have any money." or "Wow, they've really let this place go." Not to mention that the general attitude of some visitors is reflective of the state of the site in general. What does it matter if I litter if the site is in such disrepair anyway? I'll just let my toddler run around and scream bloody murder; guessing from all the broken toys and games, that's what I'm supposed to do. The overall message is: you don't care, why should I?
I'm not saying that we should all hold hands and pray for money to fix all our problems, but that we need to be more aware that perhaps visitor perceptions of our sites and museums, and their resulting attitudes, are a direct reflection of the state of the museums themselves.

In the meantime, I'm going to grab a screwdriver and fix that sign that's been hanging off its hinges for the past few weeks.

So... a blog, eh?

I don't know how many times I've started, or tried to start, a blog in the past few years. I've mused with the idea of a travel blog, a history blog, a movie blog, a museum blog, a food blog... I'm chatty, I like to talk, but I also happen to have the attention span of a gnat, which leads me to abandon many projects before they even begin to reach their potential.
I've found in recent months that my passion truly is heritage and finding ways to deliver this to the world at large. I find myself rambling on and on to my non-museum friends (much to their dismay) and felt that I needed an outlet of some kind - why not a blog? I'm a big fan of other blogs, whether they be humour or museum blogs, and I, like so many others, figured, "Hey, why not me?"
Ideally, people will respond to my musings and ramblings with advice and their two cents; we'll see. At least I'll be putting it out there for people.
What do you need to know about me? I work in a museum, specifically a historic house museum located in a park, which lends to its own issues that will undoubtedly come up a some point. I love history, books, movies, travel and food, all of which will undoubtedly creep up at random points.