If you couldn’t make it to our webinar this week, “How to Keep Your Audience Engaged, Entertained, and Inspired in the Age of Coronavirus,” Cuseum's Brendan Ciecko came together with special guests Seema Rao (Deputy Director & Chief Experience Officer @ Akron Art Museum), and Scott Stulen (Director & President @ Philbrook Museum of Art), to discuss steps cultural organizations can take to engage their audiences digitally and continue their important work as trusted community resources during this public health and economic crisis, even when physical sites remain in lockdown.
You can check out a transcript of the conversation below, or view a full recording here.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you everybody for joining us today. It's been a wild last couple of days and weeks and I'm so excited to host this discussion about what museums can do to keep their audience engaged, entertained, and inspired in this age of coronavirus. I know everybody's taking a couple minutes out of their day or even this full hour, so I really appreciate your attention and your interest and overall your passion coming here today. So a couple of brief remarks before we kick things into full gear. As we all are fully aware, museums and cultural institutions are facing this uncertainty about what the next days, what the next weeks, what the next months, even the next seconds and minutes hold for them. While no official numbers have been announced, we know that several thousand museums are temporarily closed, they're facing closures and the public is being encouraged to stay at home to flatten the curve. And, so for many of us it feels like life has been flipped on its head, and for some of us it truly has been flipped on its head. It's been an absolute roller coaster ride. And so where can we turn to answers right now? Where can we turn for support? And, while museums are physically closed, what are creative and unique ways to keep audiences engaged and what does it mean to be a distributed museum? So ultimately, how can we keep our audiences engaged, entertained, inspired during this time. And for the organizations and the public that we serve, we are all here to be a resource for each other. It's been an incredible time to see the museum community come together and share. We hope this discussion today will help provide new ideas, best practices, and a forum for all of us to stay connected and make the best of these next couple of weeks in light of everything and, and be the most successful we can.
So without further ado, I want to introduce our special guests for the hour. We have Seema Rao, who's Deputy Director and Chief Experience Officer at the Akron Art Museum. She has nearly 20 years of experience in the museum field with an extensive background in interpretation, programming, digital content development for audiences of all kinds. And many of you probably know her for her work at the Cleveland Museum of Art where she led research and development on some of the most successful digital projects in the field, like Gallery One and Studio Play. I know that she probably has more MUSE Awards and GLAMIs than anyone else I know. And her work has overall impacted millions of museum visitors. So I'm so honored and thrilled to be able to engage in this conversation with you.
Seema Rao:
Thanks for having me.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. And next up at bat, we have Scott Stulen, Director and President at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Scott is the former curator of audience experience and performance at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Project Director at mnartists.org at the Walker Art Center as well as a visual artist writer and DJ. Some of you know him through some of his creative projects like the Internet Cat Video Festival. It's probably getting a lot of views right now given the nature of things, but also really creative endeavors like artist-designed mini-golf, CSA: community-supported art, and other types of creative projects. I’m barely scratching the surface with that introduction. Scott, thank you so much for joining us today.
Scott Stulen:
Thanks for having me.
Brendan Ciecko:
Lastly, I'm Brendan Ciecko, I'm the founder of Cuseum. I'll be your host and your moderator for today's discussion. So let's jump into the questions. I hope we have some good ones and I hope it sparks some engaging dialogue. So this one we're going to start with is a question to Scott.
In a conversation a few days ago, because we've been emailing back and forth and having a couple of chats, you mentioned that you formed an internal task force and urged your team to act and respond in, and I quote this, "in more creative ways than people would expect from a museum." Can you share a little bit more on that notion?
Scott Stulen:
Sure. When everything was escalating last week, and I think we all saw things move quicker than I think I've ever seen anything move. I mean we went from thinking partial closure to closure, but it felt like lightning speed. But in all of that, it was like we needed to form a team that could respond to it. And so we took a small team internally here just on Friday, got everybody together within a couple of hours and basically tasked them with the idea to find things that are quick, things that are cheap, things that can help our community and things that we can really keep the museum on people's minds when we're going to be closed physically in the space. But the biggest thing is how do we really think about what people are going to need going forward and be proactive about that. And then anything that generates some dollars out of that and some support for the museum goes to the top of the pile. Or if it's something that basically has very little budget hit to it, because all of us have that in mind as well. So, the idea is that we got everybody together and we just started riffing on some things that can go forward and it's only been a couple of days and we already have a whole list of things that we're implementing on that. Everything from curbside pickup of activity kits for kids to having our shop be able to do curbside pickup of different things from the museum shop to, we have a log cabin on our campus, so we're going to start a cabin fever concert series out there.
Seema Rao:
That's awesome!
Scott Stulen:
The musicians will be in the cabin performing. We're paying them, so we're supporting those artists that way as well. We'll be live streaming all of that and having recordings of that going forward. We started a #MuseumFromHome hashtag, and we've been putting this out to museums to basically do social media swaps. Today's the first day, we're actually swapping our Instagram account. If any other museums out there want to do that, hit us up @Philbrook and we'll get you on the schedule and we'll do it. We're basically doing a show and tell between museums with their social accounts.
Brendan Ciecko:
Who are you swapping with?
Seema Rao:
We're swapping! We're swapping this week.
Scott Stulen:
Akron's on the list. We've got dozens already signed up for it, so it's already, it's amazing the response we've had. So if anybody else wants in, let us know and we can do that. We're riffing off of what the Shedd Aquarium did with the penguins and we're letting our garden cats do a museum tour later today.
Seema Rao:
You have a whole cat brand. You stay on the cat brand. So, you guys were emailing me first. I was trying to stay on top of email so I didn't, but I got to read all the emails afterwards. And I was thinking that Scott's, your cat video thing in some ways it's so interesting because when that happened, that was about the fact that we were seeing digital growing, right? There was all of a sudden this new little world, the digital, and we've been doing things on site and so we brought the digital onsite. And in some ways now all of us have flipped. And sometime around last week, I don't know when it was, that one group doc that you said I had started - the closure one. Because I had to figure out when people are closing and we're a mid-scale museum, so we have to look at the bigger ones and the smaller ones and everybody. And so I was thinking how interesting the world is, that somebody is right now in some place in this country coming up with cat videos 2.0. They're doing something that's going to just make us all... And maybe it is the penguins, I don't know. They were pretty cute. But there is something happening and it's because your cat video thing was something where you were allowed to go to something to do something surprising and different. And for the team, that's what we did. So we had a standing team to do social media so that we had people from different voices. And we also meet once every other week I guess. And it's people from all over the institution who talk about what's good on social, because we all read different social and some of us don't even read social. So it's a nice litmus test for is this, does this make any sense? And so then we started meeting by email, and we created Google docs and we all have these ideas. But it was also this thing where I was like, "I'm not vetting it." I'm just making sure it gets on the calendar but we're all going to do this together. And that “all in” has been something I've really been proud of for my team internally, but also everybody on social, all the museum social people have been all in. And Scott said this before we started, but I would say this again, 'cause I can see all the names and a lot of them are #musesocial people. For all the people who don't know who's going to help you get through this, the #musesocial or people are going to. Because they had been spending all of their time, all the time, looking at what people who don't come to museums do, and right now all the people who don't come to museums, this is our chance to catch them. Because people who come to museums are using digital and they're sharing it with the people who don't come to museums. And so you know all those days that you were sitting in a meeting where somebody is like, "But what are the non-visitors doing?" Well, today everybody could be a visitor and everybody is right now a non-visitor.
Brendan Ciecko:
It's pretty amazing to think of musesocial as not just social media, it's really in house R&D and you have a finger on the pulse of what the public's looking for. Scott, you want to add a couple of things?
Scott Stulen:
That's spot on Seema. The thing I always said about the cat video thing is that it wasn't about cat videos, it was about watching cat videos together. It was the thought of doing that activity together and now we're basically reversing it in a way that it's using the technology to still remain connected. So I think that's the biggest thing is how do you keep connected throughout all of this?
Seema Rao:
That is totally it!
Scott Stulen:
It’s about flipping the tools we use. The content's the same but using different tools to do it. But to the communication point, it is going to be museum social and all that is going to get us through some of this. But it's also from leadership there too - to be clear, consistent, honest, be as transparent as you can be. And communicating to a point of what you think you're over-communicating. And I think this is the point: the mistake to make right now is to turn off because your museum's turned off and think that your audience isn't listening. They need you now more than ever.
Seema Rao:
They need you more than ever and they're listening, it's every person, any other person and who's part of our community wants to hear from us. And that's your staff and that's your volunteers. And that's everybody. Because this is a time...and I don't know who tweeted it. It was some writer, "I hate living in unprecedented times." And I was like, "Yes, that's right," that we all are in this together and it's really uncomfortable for every person. And for a lot of leaders particularly, we're very focused on certain outcomes, like Scott said. I mean, I am too. I want our organization to succeed, which does mean bringing in money too at this time. There are all those things. And so a lot of those things are outward-looking, and so we often have a preference of communication to them. So the other thing about your first question and answer was that you were saying, "I came inside, I told these people, I honored these people who worked with me. I told them what I needed. They told me what we should do." You were communicating internally, and that to me has been…..I mean, I actually was saying before we got on, I have a cold and allergies and a cough and I actually emailed all the people I work with to tell them I didn't have a fever, which is something I would never do. I wouldn't even think to say it out loud, but I thought, this is a time where actually a little oversharing is not going to hurt us.
Scott Stulen:
I agree.
Seema Rao:
We're going to have to be human at this time.
Brendan Ciecko:
Absolutely. Seema I have a question for you. As I mentioned earlier you've been involved in some of the most innovative and celebrated onsite engagement initiatives in the sector; Gallery One at Cleveland Museum of Art and a bunch of other digital and audience centric initiatives. With that being said on site, what are recommendations you would make to museums looking to keep their audience engaged when clearly onsite experience is temporarily off the table? When they're physically closed, how do you take advantage of these other channels and other avenues?
Seema Rao:
I think Scott sort of said this. There are all these people out there who want something. And in many ways, they're the same things they want when we're onsite. They want to be connected. The point that he made about the cat videos and they were all together watching it. I noticed how much people are sharing, “I ate this for dinner, let me show you.” Even more than ever, people are actually using social in a collective way in separate spaces. I would say that social was one of the biggest things for all the initiatives. And I did a lot - I did digital, but I also did a lot of community engagement and lots of other ways to get collections to people's consciousness and give them ownership of it. And so they want to be with other people in some way. So even if they physically aren't, they want to share it, they want to talk about it. And I think that for anybody who's trying to figure out what, what they're going to do next, it's going back to those fundamentals. So for us, a lot of fundamentals, we had been talking about for months. Anybody who's ever heard me talk about Akron knows we have a weekly cross-departmental cookie hour, at two o'clock on Tuesdays, which everyone should do. And we solve a problem. And so we, one of the problems we actually solved is, what do visitors want from us? I went back to that and a lot of it is there are things they want to do. For example, we have been talking a lot about verbs for our audience, where we are in our region, even though digital will move you past your region, those core people are the ones you may know best. So starting with them is a good sample size. And for our people, a lot of what they wanted was to do something - they wanted verbs. So the things that we're focusing on for social are verbs: learn, explore, make. And so we decided for our audience that was the key to what we're going to do. Surprise those are the things that mattered to us.
Brendan Ciecko:
Let's talk specifically about some of the online channels from the remote connection side of things. What are some of the must-do, must-have channels right now that your museum is tapping into that you're watching other museums tapping into, and specifically what would a week's worth of content look like during the week-long shutdown? I don't want to paint a picture of a month-long shutdown. I know that's clearly happening, but for a week, for someone who's maybe never put together or been in a scenario like this, which is probably all of us, what does that look like? I know we're seeing some amazing things happening at The Shedd and at other museums, leveraging different channels, having a #MuseumMomentOfZen and offering relief for people. So let's talk about what those channels are and specifically, again, what does that week look like? Seema Rao:I'd have to say for both Scott and I, we don't have living collections. My museum is a modern contemporary collection that is quite awesome but for a lot of people a little bit challenging. And I saw somebody from The Shedd tweet out his penguins. And I was like, "Oh, you've got penguins, I don't have penguins. I don't have cats." I have a Sol LeWitt, which I love. But, for some of us, it's a little bit more of a jump, and one of the things we did figure out was, well the penguins are going to win right away. All those living things, they’ve got their videos. I really didn't want my staff to go back into our building after we went to work offsite. So whatever video we had is what we're working with right now. We're trying to….we're just dealing with what we’ve got. So that was the first thing about scheduling. We figured out what our resources were. Like Scott said, what we want to do, how much we can actually accomplish, what it will cost us, what it would earn us, that kind of thing. So that was our first step.
Scott Stulen:
We're using the channels that we already had of course. We're using Instagram and Facebook and Twitter like we always have, using Facebook Live, and this isn't the time to invent something new, this is the time to use the platforms that we already have in place. But it's, how do we use them a little bit differently? We recycle some content we already have, which is one thing we've looked at. Everybody's doing the live streaming and tours and things like that, that are easy go-to’s, but we're also trying to see what we can do that's unique. So we're leaning into trying to do some slow live streams. So all of our tulips are coming up with the garden and nobody's here to see them, so filming tulips growing, for example. And ways that we can do some things that maybe stand out a little bit that maybe go the slow TV route rather than the fast route. 'Cause the biggest thing is this: people are looking for things they can do that are educational as a distraction to teach their kids 'cause everybody's at home. Or they're looking for things that are an escape from everything that's happening. So how can we fulfill some of those things.
Seema Rao:
Actually we're in a very similar situation, so we were talking about what's something that actually is great natively in digital? And I do think details of artworks are something where... I mean I have terrible eyes and I also know that every garden in America wants me not to stand too close. So digital is a great example of that. And we were talking about meditating on the surfaces of....we have a wonderful American modern collection. And those surfaces are so polished - that a human could do that is amazing. And that's something where on digital that would be great. We were also talking today, thinking about when an artist makes a lot of stuff we can't fill rooms full of all of it. But putting all of those on digital, allowing people to see a slice of an artist, for example, maybe it's something we're doing. So we are trying to figure that out. And Scott's right, this is not the moment to reinvent. We were working on a podcast pretty actively and then it wasn't finished, and it's not finished, and we're not going to do that right now because we're not physically together and I'm trying not to overstress us. Right? I’ve been saying, "It's a marathon. We have to survive this, we need to be open at some point." So we're using the tools we already have. And there’s another thing Scott said, which I would ask all of you to do. Go back to your staff and ask them what you already have. And that's what we did. We said, "What do you have in your camera reels? What do we have on our VPN that we can get access to? What tools did we already use for educators, for example, that we could re-use for families?" For scheduling [social posts] to go back to Brendan's thing, we've figured out that it's going to be fluid a little bit, because we don't know what people's rhythms of usage are. So where you used to schedule only one [social post], now you can't over-schedule. Now people seem like they want to be online all the time. And so right now we're trying content like tour content - stuff like that in the morning for the people who are trying to work but thinking, "Oh my God, I'm at the ‘office’ but I'm in my bathrobe at home." So we gave them something deep and thoughtful in the morning. And then we did afternoon content for the people who have now spent a few hours with their children and they've lost it. So we try to think about what people's daily rhythms are.
Brendan Ciecko:
I love that, the concept of that!
Seema Rao:
Another thing that I invite everybody to participate in is museum games. We're going to do games, we're doing an initiative and you can just reach out to me and I'll help you with that. We'll be working together across every platform. Scott started by talking about distributed. We are not in competition with each other. We are all in this together. And so we're doing a crossword puzzle, we're doing games like on Sundays, like the Sunday crossword puzzle. We're going to launch one on Sunday with Mar Dixon and lots of lots of other wonderful institutions. But we're sharing some of the work because that's the other thing. This is a huge amount of labor for our teams.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's a really interesting point you're making about being in it all together. And I want to take this moment to just add a couple of quick bits. There are over 3,000 people on this webinar which is blowing my mind! Thank you everybody for showing up. I know we're 20 minutes in, and, here are some great questions coming in through the comments and Q&A. I guarantee that we'll be able to answer a bunch of them, but not all of them. Add those to the general channel and we'll loop back on those if not today, in the next hour, then I can assure you we're going to create a sheet and we're going to share it with the community at large so that if you have a question someone from the community surely has an answer.
On the point Seema was making about we're all in this together, I want to actually jump into a question that came in from Laura Freeman at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. She said, "We don't have anything like museums at home that it seems other museums already had in place. Do you think one of the first things we should do is create an FAQ of sorts that has links to things that other museums are doing that they can view and listen to? Is it for us to share links and images of collections and other museums?" I just want to add from, from my side, what I saw yesterday that was really exciting, and partially answering that before you guys jump in is, MASS MoCA is one of the largest contemporary art spaces in the world, over here in Massachusetts. And they don't have a true permanent collection. One of the coolest things that I saw on their Instagram stories was they were giving shout outs to the Williams College Museum of Art, The Clark, all of their neighbors and the Berkshires. They were saying, "Our neighboring museums have great content.” They're looking for eyes. You're looking for inspiration. I thought that was the coolest thing to see that level of camaraderie.
Seema Rao:
I think definitely we have lots of resources and we're still deciding to share other people's resources, because this is the time to do that. And, part of it is, we’re to our visitors like Starbucks. You walked into a Starbucks, you don't know if it's a franchise or if it's a company, you don't care, you want your Starbucks. We're museums, we're all doing the same thing and it actually deepens the offerings of medium-sized modern contemporary museums, which have only one of X. We have all these wonderful institutions that I linked to for something. I linked to the Smithsonian American Art Museums - the archives of the artists. I don't have that. Our national institution did it, why should I double that work, you know?
Scott Stulen:
Yeah. I'm all for sharing whenever possible. We are definitely not competitors, we're in this together. And what goes even for people that are in your own region and city, is that we really need to be able to partner with each other. And this is a great time to be able to do more of that. And I'm seeing that happen. I will say locally, we've been doing that with all of the cultural organizations here in Tulsa. And I know that's happening in other cities too, but it's a great opportunity for that to happen. I think we really should be using what's out there, sharing it where we can and helping each other out.
Seema Rao:
Absolutely.
Scott Stulen:
I want to throw one idea just from the last question in there, so I'm thinking we're all looking at different people's homes basically through these webinars and other videos. Now, there's this opportunity that we can show off the artwork that's in our own homes...
Seema Rao:
We're going to!
Brendan Ciecko:
That's a great idea!
Seema Rao:
We're doing that. One of my educators, Caitlin was saying, “we have a wonderful collection of Ohio artists, and we could look at what Ohio artists collect in their homes?”
Scott Stulen:
That's it!
Seema Rao:
So that's one of the things she brought up and actually I don't know if it came out of all these things we’re already involved in or if she just came up with it when you brought it up in a meeting the other day and I thought that was a great idea. The reason she thought of it is you started by saying, "We're all in our own homes." And, I would say for all of us, start with where we are. That to me is, “you said you didn't have X? start with what you have.” That's the other thing I would encourage you to do. I would guess that you have a deep body of knowledge about your space, or you took pictures when you were in meetings on your phone. I invited everybody to go to their camera reels. That was the first thing we did. I was like, "What you got? What pictures do we have? Who has videos?" You know? "What was interesting to you?" Those kinds of things, I bet you have a lot that you don't know you have
Brendan Ciecko:
This question is to both of you. Are there any museums that you're specifically keeping an eye on or keep an eye on that do an effective job of mixing education and entertainment in their digital engagement efforts? I know just in the last year I've been really blown away by the work of the Hammer Museum with Will Ferrell. And then also the La Brea Tar Pits, also with Will Ferrell. And I know not all of us have a big Hollywood comedian and actor...we don't all have Will Ferrell in our, in our backyards, but I think those are obviously examples where education and entertainment have been merged together in an effective way because the reality, and I know this has been probably said a million times over, is that people choosing between Netflix and Hulu and Amazon and other forms of entertainment, and obviously those have their fatigue, and we want that fatigue to kick in so people are, are relying more on the educational and the inspirational content. Who are some of these museums? What are some of those campaigns? And I know Scott, you probably have a ton of ideas on this just based on the work that you guys do at the Philbrook right now.
Scott Stulen:
There's a lot there. I mean there's a lot of museums doing good work there. And I do think though, looking outside of our field a bit is, is where to look. Because you're going to see some things there, they're even forced to be more radical with it. I also think living collections, looking there is another thing too, because they have things that are immediately accessible and also are free of the stuffiness that at times the art museums are part of. But they're freeing of that. I think we should be looking and be able to borrow things like the penguins - that is a good model we keep coming back too. The other thing is I think looking in the podcasts and seeing how podcasts have been able to do this. We can use an example that is giving a shout out to a podcast called Brains On! That's a kids’ science podcast, that's based on Minnesota Public Radio. And they just had an episode yesterday about the coronavirus explaining it to kids. And I had my kids listen to it yesterday. And it was a great way of explaining what's happening and explaining it on that level. I think we can look at some of those things and really think about how we borrow from that and think about how we mix really heavy and really good content while making accessible for our audience.
Seema Rao:
I think you're right. So, I mean, there's so, so many and, and I almost feel bad, 'cause I know so many of these people and I think there are lots of good people and some of the names are escaping me. So there are lots of people I love but I can't remember right now. But I do think for Monterey Bay Aquarium, the thing I like about their tone is that it's very kind and gentle. I think each institution is working on their own tone. The Getty has done a really great job with their tone. I think New York Historical Society does a really good job of bringing you really great surprises. So what I like about all of those three examples, and I mean I know that there are so many other people I'm just not thinking of at this minute, but each of them figured out what they have and how they can beat them. I mean, I can't be the New York Historical Society. I'm not in New York. I don't have a historical collection. I don't have, as we started with, penguins. And so instead of starting with what you don't have, it's starting with what you have and what's your brand within it. But Scott said something else that I think we should all think about as a field right now. Nina Simon put it in her newsletter just this morning. That it's a good chance for us to think about what the future is going to be. And I had written yesterday on my blog post about, there's all these divergent roads that are ahead of us, and we don't know which one we're going to take 'cause a lot of it does deal with funding and money and lots of other kinds of service sector stuff and all kinds of things. But we do get some choice in it. Ira Glass once came to speak many, many years ago at our NPR station WKSU and he said one of the things he thinks is the biggest problem NPR stations have is that they want to be “brain fuel.” And so they brand themselves as smart above other things, when really people are there to get so many things beyond smart. And I think the best of social branding across the board is when they decided they were going to blend smart and entertaining. They were going to blend funny and curiosity. They weren't just going to be the smart guys and the snotty ones, they were going to be with the people for the people.
Brendan Ciecko:
Let's dive into that aspect of the melding of different dynamics, whether it be educational, entertaining, funny, all of those different dynamics where in many ways I think some of the projects that have had the biggest impact on audience engagement have been in that realm and they all started with really small ideas. Let's rattle off Send Me SFMOMA and a range of other things. Really small ideas that turn into big things, like the Internet Cat Video Festival and other things that sound in some degree, in the traditional realm of the institution, to be a crazy idea, a wild idea, a radical idea when in reality they are not.
What advice would you have to the museum community here today, which is obviously full of ideas and sometimes you need to pull out all of the ideas and show me your worst ideas to get to your best ideas. So this community is full of ideas of creative ways to keep your audience's attention during the coronavirus, but how do they navigate the pace of the traditional organization or general sensitivities around how we communicate or position ourselves? What would your recommendation be to that educator, that social media manager and, and so on?
Scott Stulen:
You gotta blow it up.
Seema Rao:
Yeah!
Brendan Ciecko:
Gotta blow it up. I like it. Hashtag #GottaBlowItUp!
Scott Stulen:
So going back to the cat video festival as an example of it. Part of that was looking at already existing behaviors. People already watched them, we just put it in a different context. So, and Seema said this several times, it's understanding who your audience is, what do they want, what are they actually doing? Instead of what we wish they were doing. So back to that point just a little bit, I think as far as we're dealing with it here in this context, what we're dealing with now, we need to get rid of some of the processes that we normally have in place that don't allow anything to move quickly. We need to make things move much faster so you can go from idea to approval to execution within days, if not hours rather than weeks or months like we normally run. That's not how museums normally operate. Our risk tolerance has to go way up, and we need to be able to reward things that do work and learn from it as we go forward. So it's a whole different atmosphere and certain staff will thrive in that and some won't. It's understanding, not forcing people in a place where they just aren't going to be able to operate, but those that can, let's support them. Let's put them in a position where they can run with things in this. And I like to see this as being...it's a challenge, but it's also a huge opportunity to do some things differently. And maybe there are some things that you've been trying to get done or been wanting to reset or do, and this could be the moment to do it.
Seema Rao:
That is exactly it. This is the chance, we're going to take it, we're going to run with it, we're going to do our best with it, but also we're going to be okay if it didn't work. I mean, right now is the time where our audiences have the least expectations of us. That is so empowering. That's what we were saying and I think we can try lots of things. I mean people can barely make it through the day 'cause their kids are home with them. So I said in all of my internal webinars. We should be okay with webinars with people's cats coming in and kids. Can I say something though, about Send Me SFMOMA?
Brendan Ciecko:
Yeah, absolutely.
Seema Rao:
The other thing I would say is, run with it. Encourage people to experiment, fail, and be okay with that. Learn from it. Also, don't kill everybody by doing too much. For Send Me SFMOMA, one of the things I remember is Keir Winesmith and Marla Misunas and Jay Mollica talking about when they have presented it, and I feel like I'm missing a name. I'm sorry, whoever. I've just forgotten. Maybe Chad? Marla had been tagging artworks and she'd been talking about how she had already been thinking about collections and so they used something they already had and then did this really groundbreaking thing. But they did actually start by looking at what they had. And so for so many of us, and figuring out what they can accomplish with what they have. Obviously SFMOMA is one of the largest institutions and their have is a lot bigger than my have or haves. A lot of us, all of us potentially, are in our houses as Scott reminded us. And we have maybe just our VPNs if we're lucky and our phones and the pictures we took. We have all this imagination. So this might be the time. For example, you have no pictures of the new exhibition that just opened on the 29th of February that you want to show everybody because it's so incredibly wonderful. And so what are you going to do to solve that problem? And I think if you can get into that situation where you're like, "Okay, there was a different way we solved it before the deluge, now we're here. How are we solving this?" And I think that's where you start changing the mindset of communication too, that this is the problem we have, these are the things we're solving for, these are the ways we could potentially solve it. And lots, lots fewer nos', "No, we couldn't do that. We couldn't possibly do that," because right now there's a lot of opportunity.
Brendan Ciecko:
Let's talk about the tactical underlying foundation that enables some of that work to be done. We have a question from Jacques Haba from the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas. So he asks, with such an influx towards digital, there will no doubt be other departments that are not used to working with digital tools and assets who will need to adopt new modes of working. What are some good workflows, methodologies, one-on-ones, and practices that can help those folks be successful in this time?
Seema Rao:
I know Jacques, and I feel like he could answer this question better than me, but I would say for us internally we started having lots and lots of communication, conversations about communication and people who communicate best by email and who likes to text and what goes into an email, what's in a meeting. And we’ve all been living that, “this meeting could have been an email” situation. But then when we got to this world, all of our teams have tried out Zoom to see if we can all do this together. We have articulated which of our meetings can be emails, which ones can be Google Docs. We sat down... Everybody has been working on work plans. So we knew time would be different for everybody all of a sudden because people are chunking hours because of husbands and kids and partners and wives and spouses. So we moved to a place where we've been more outcome-based to help us not talk about time quite the same way, 'cause everyone's time has just become fractured. We wrote down a lot of policies. Like we wrote a work at home policy and an email policy. We actually had the email policy, how best to work on conference calls. Many people were joking on Twitter, if you've been part of Museum Computer Network, you know to mute your phone, but not everybody does. So, those kinds of things, getting everyone up to speed to the same are all things I would recommend.
Brendan Ciecko:
Seema, can I ask you something based off of what we're talking about here? it's obvious for many folks working in the field and really industry, this might be the first time they're working remotely. And I know, in addition to the self-care aspect, which is a topic you've absolutely led the dialogue on in the museum field, what are some tips you have to the team building and keeping morale high internally? I almost see that as equally important. Keeping everybody's eye on the ball, keeping them motivated, keeping the morale high. How do you do that remotely?
Seema Rao:
Yeah. I know, I mean we're all in a brave new world, right? I honestly feel like my team is doing amazing. Scott said at the beginning, this is the time to be truthful and transparent. So I've just been like, "Hey, I'm so glad. Thank you for doing this. We have to send this emergency press release this minute." Well, you're going to get sugar before the world ends or whatever. And so I think being honest with them is good. I have been saying to us, but I haven't been modeling it, “The #MuseumGames is exciting and you should join us.” But writing a crossword puzzle for a lot of museums is hard. And so I was at home last night thinking, "Oh my God, I have to give a talk about wellness and I'm not doing wellness." I would say that one of the things for me is giving ourselves grace. We should be okay with the world being a little bit wonky. We should be okay with people getting on the webinar. We have to. We don't give ourselves a lot of grace because most of our organizations have a certain level of finish we have to have, that's just how our field is.
And what donors expect. But in this brave new world, that grace can be good for us and we should give it to ourselves too. I've been trying to say to them, "What do we NOT need to do if we’re pivoting, what are we not doing?" And hearing your leaders say that...I don't remember very many of my managers saying, "What are you not doing when I add this task to you?"
Scott Stulen:
Yeah. I think that's really important. And I think from the leadership side, it's to really understand that you need to be honest, be as transparent as you can without freaking people out. But being consistent because right now, because this is moving so quickly and there's so little that is known, the more of a constant that you can provide will help a lot and it will let staff be able to do their work. But also it's, I think on the other side of that, and I've said this several times in meetings over the last few days with staff, is that there's certain things that I honestly don't know. And to be able to say that and be honest with “I don't know.” And we're going to figure it out together and we'll know more in a few days, but I don't know right now.
Seema Rao:
That’s right. Me too. I felt like I said it in every meeting today. And I think also for us we're on this call, everybody is from many different countries and many different states and many different regions. And I don't remember who I was meeting with today somewhere else in Ohio. But I was asking, "Oh, what's it like down there?" And Ohio is a medium-sized state. It's not that far away where this person was sitting, but it was far enough away that it was very different than it is up here. And so not knowing is compounded in our field right now because I'll talk to somebody in Monterey and their world is like this and my world is like this, and being honest about that sort of uncertainty, I hope it's good. I mean it feels like the right thing to do.
Brendan Ciecko:
Yeah. It seems like if there was ever a time for your leadership, for your directors to be a little vulnerable and to open up and let people know what they don't know and be honest about it, I think that there's absolutely no better time and I think that's a value that's really hard to come by obviously given the polished nature as you guys were talking about.
Shifting gears to another question from the audience. This one comes from Arianna Bayer at the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco. She wants to know, and I know Scott, you answered part of this earlier, which I loved. How do we continue to support the artists and educators who are the authors and facilitators of just the kinds of rich programming we're all scrambling to, to shift online?
Scott Stulen:
Yeah. Let me just add a little bit to that. I think one thing we're going to have to be comfortable with is allocating resources a little bit differently, so that may happen in some areas. One thing that we haven't really even talked about is exhibitions. This can have a dramatic impact on the exhibitions. Timelines get shifted, but it also means moving budgets around for some things too. So should that be moved over to areas of the actual stuff that we're doing here? And I know it's going to be more disruptive than people realized, in terms of what’s going to happen at the exhibition level as things keep going. But it's something we need to start planning for now, but on a really smaller level, it's also looking out there. Are there other partners, other organizations, other businesses that we can be partnering with to help out each other? So for example, we're still letting some people in very small groups into the museum. So we may look at actually having a local yoga, then do a live stream in our gallery. So we're doing something together.
Brendan Ciecko:
When everything's closed until further notice what role do you see live streams playing over the upcoming days and weeks? And I know we can talk for an hour just about livestream, or recycling content. But you, Scott, you're talking about yoga. What are some things that we might be seeing museums livestream in addition to their docent curator or director walkthroughs of the museum?
Scott Stulen:
Well, I'll just... And then I'm sure Seema's got a bunch of good ideas too. We're doing everything from the slow TV idea of putting a cam in an artist studio for eight hours and just watching them work, or to being able to just watch our garden grow, to the other side of things of doing behind the tours and curator tours as a lot of people are doing. But it's also, what can we do in this unique environment? And this is where I come back to being in people's homes. You would rarely say, "Hey, let's go look at somebody's personal art collection" unless you're in this scenario.
Seema Rao:
It's true. So we thought not about live stream from the site, but rather the home things…those we've been thinking a lot about. Because it's this...it's the situation we're all in together. I do think there's something about museums...we are definitely spaces that are purposefully different than your home, right? We are for lots of reasons. We don't put artwork together because it looks nice. Brendan and I were talking about how my daughters made this thing behind me and I just like my daughters. That's why I put it up there. That's not why we put things in the museum, you know? And so we work very hard to help people understand spaces and the reasons artwork is together, and curating.
Brendan Ciecko:
Could you see a museum having a livestream exhibition comprised of works that belonged to their members and their local audience? It almost seems like someone is going to do that.
Seema Rao:
Yeah. We were talking about maybe not a live stream but sharing so that people could take over a handle. One thing for me that I've been very careful about is, live stream does take some effort. So we're thinking about videos. We have one of our studio artists who is a wonderful screen printer and I said, ‘I think somebody who's lost their mind would just enjoy watching you screen print for an hour.’ Just, there's something very meditative about that. So we talked about video because then we could use that and she could do it when she needs to and whatever.
But yes, I do think that the underlying thing of your question, Brendan, is, are we going to change the paradigm of what is shared and what is included and what is permissible in our spaces digitally? I think so.
Brendan Ciecko:
When everything gets back to normal, which we all probably hope is as soon as possible, do you think museums will see that as an opportunity to re-welcome their audience in some sort of special and unique way? And, and what might that look like? Are the 2.0s and the 3.0s of, of our organizations coming?
Scott Stulen:
I think they are. And the thing I would say is that - and this isn't for me to sound like dire or anything too - is I think the normal we're going to come back is going to be a new normal. It isn't going to go back the way it once was. And I do think this is going to last longer than a few weeks. And what's going to be really critical right now is that people understand what's going to be in the future rather than protecting what it was in the past. And it's to be able to move forward and see it as an opportunity in a way of really anticipating what things might be, and it could be a small disruption. It could be a major one. We really don't know. But we also know this is going to impact funding streams. It's going to impact the audience. It's also going to impact ways that we do things going forward for quite a foreseeable future. And who's going to do well in that environment is the people who right now are already thinking about that rather than when it's on their doorstep.
Seema Rao:
That is true. So one of the things we've been working on before all of this started was that we were planning our centennial, which is in 2022. And when we first started we said, "It should be about the future." And somebody said, "Actually the future is really hard to think about." And so somebody else on our team, and I'm sorry, I would call them out because it's a good idea, but I can't remember who said it, was that ‘the future is tomorrow.’ And they were talking about how like the future is continuously being built in very small chunks of time, incremental chunks of time. And I've been thinking a lot about that for this situation because yes, I do think we read dire things that your dad put on Facebook or whatever and they're pretty scary. And so they're so overwhelming I would say, "I can't even watch the press releases. I just don't even... I can't." So you're right that we need to know that the world is changing. But I would say, for my team right now we're focused on the tomorrow and the near future, and we are thinking about the very future. But we're trying to build that very future by the things we do in the near future.
Brendan Ciecko:
So expanding on that just a little bit more, what can we learn from this and how can we use that to plan for the future? And in some ways you're talking about it in a way where it seems like our timelines are being greatly condensed. The things that we maybe thought we were going to experiment within five years… I love strategic planning. “Five years out, we're going to do this.” But five years out there's going to be self-driving flying cars! Probably a little hyperbole there, but moving that closer where, as you said, the future is tomorrow. So it seems like we're building that while we're going today, but it seems like everyone's learning a lot. How do we use that to plan for the future if the future is now?
Scott Stulen:
The speed of everything is...I mean let's just use this last week. I think I wrote four different press releases and statements that immediately were outdated within hours. And just the unprecedented speed things are moving at, it also to me is this a little bit of a challenge about how do we operate normally that doesn't keep up with that speed. And so I think it doesn't mean that we need to be running at this incredible breakneck speed all the time, but I think at times the speed of museums has been an issue that comes up. We think about it, we plan for it, and then two years from now we're going to do something in response to it. And by then it's gone through a thousand different news cycles and it's out... So how do we respond more quickly?
Seema Rao:
I totally agree. I think that's one thing we'll definitely learn. The other thing you said is like, "I had to throw out three through press releases." I think as a field there’s this “impressiveness” to our work that we're going to have to lose a little bit. We're going to have to be okay with just the way it's going to be. And that I think will be a real positive for our audiences. I mean, I think that there are core competencies that are precious and they should stay that way, but there's other things that I bet we could have made a little bit more colloquial, more approachable, and we're going to have to do it now.
Brendan Ciecko:
This is maybe going to be one of our last questions from the audience and then we have a couple more. This comes from Ryan Dodge over at the Canadian Museum of History up in Quebec, Canada. Outside of museums who already have virtual tours, fully digitized collections, what can museums do to keep their audience engaged, especially if their staff is locked out of the museum and they don't have that content we're talking about? I know we did talk a lot about taking what you already have. What do you do if you don't have as much digital content produced? What do those campaigns look like and how do you do that without the access?
Scott Stulen:
Well, I think we've mentioned this a little bit. I think it's meeting people where they are. So if people are in their homes, how do we use some of the content that's there and how do we do some of this through us being all scattered all over different places? Which is a different challenge, but some different opportunities in that too. I think the other thing too is it can be really analog in a lot of ways. It can be as simple as sharing something to Instagram or to a Facebook page, putting a prompt out there and having people share. It doesn't have to be a really complicated thing either. The biggest thing is just staying in people's consciousness and being relevant, and how do you use those things that are out there?
Seema Rao:
I was also thinking about how a lot of times you don't have maybe the picture of the object, but what else do you have? So you have people who've seen the object who might've taken a picture. Somebody in our staff was saying, "You know, if we need a picture for a tour, what if we crowdsourced it? Anybody take this picture in this gallery?" So that was one thing. There are probably local illustrators who could really use the work for example. Write down your questions on a piece of paper. What did you really need to get at and what can you do that you don't have? I suspect we will see a lot of memes for museum accounts for example.
Brendan Ciecko:
Yeah. I'm waiting for those memes. And I saw something with little old Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone on the “Chillbrook” channel yesterday or the day. So it's already happening. Are both of you up for a little bit of rapid-fire? I want to get through these 50 plus questions.
Brendan Ciecko:
I'll rattle them off and we'll try to give quick concise responses, and anything we don't get to as mentioned, we'll throw those into a doc that we share. So someone's asking, “members are calling left and right asking for extensions on their memberships? Is it too early to make a decision about that? If not, what do you recommend? Do we extend a month, two months, 90 days?” Quick, quick answer on that.
Scott Stulen:
Too early.
Seema Rao:
I mean and it's not just us. Right? Disney is saying, hold on. Disney waited two weeks before they told us, so we're within the paradigm of what every other organization that's like, "Wait, wait." In unprecedented times that includes trying to wait to make the best decision for everybody.
Brendan Ciecko:
This next question comes from Kristi McMillan from Asheville Art Museum. Kristi asks, "Is anyone monetizing or asking for donations?" So is anyone monetizing any of these online activities or asking for donations along with the new online content?
Scott Stulen:
Yes, we are both, both of those things. We're looking at ways we can monetize some of the content, not all of it, some of it. And we're looking at ways we can put campaigns together too for asking for donations actively right now, knowing it's a really tough environment to do that but we are doing it.
Seema Rao:
Yeah. We're thinking about ways that we can. We have to. Museums are places that have to run, they have to pay people and they have to do all these things. So yeah, sure. I think everybody is probably looking at ways they can raise money through digital. That's the only way you're going to raise money right now. Or calls to foundations potentially, depending on what region you're in. So, sure.
Brendan Ciecko:
Great. This next one comes from Gregory Cohen. Shifting gears, I know a lot of what we talked about has actually been broad, transcending art museums and encyclopedic collections and could apply and does apply to science centers, children's museums, historical sites and gardens, zoos and aquariums. But this one comes from Gregory Cohen. He said, "We’re a children's science museum specializing in hands-on learning, how do we translate that into virtual?" How do we translate hands-on learning into virtual?
Seema Rao:
Oh, but I actually think that’s a fun problem. I can imagine your educators or somebody with a toilet paper tube and a paperclip…
Brendan Ciecko:
Seema, we can't get our hands on the toilet paper. The shelves are empty!
Scott Stulen:
[laughs]
Seema Rao:
Okay. Sorry, not that one. That's a bad example! You could also potentially share YouTube, maybe partner with a Youtuber who's already doing something. So you don't even have to have the toilet paper tubes they had, they stored them because they were hoarding them or whatever.
Scott Stulen:
I agree with that. I think you're 90% there. All it is about a delivery mechanism. That's it. You've got the content.
Brendan Ciecko:
I want to give closing notes before we give our last question, but in general, the biggest question for everybody is what are we doing as teams? What are we doing as a community to engage the audience during this time? And after the webinar and in an effort to share a lot of these ideas and again answer some of those unresolved questions, we want to compile them into a living document to share with the museum community. I know Seema has taken the lead on that for some elements. I know that my colleague, Dan Sullivan, has taken the lead on membership and fundraising. I know that MCN (Museum Computer Network) has taken an extraordinary lead in compiling a lot of these, but we're going to put together one living doc and we invite people to share some of their thoughts that they have here on the webinar. Feel free to email them over to anybody here, whether it be Scott or Seema, or myself. And I'm confident that any questions you have can be answered by someone in the community. You're not in this alone. Everybody's here to help each other. And I think that's a truly beautiful and inspiring thing. And the fact that you are here shows that you're taking proactive steps in preparing your museum. And at the end of the day, we're all stakeholders and want everybody to be successful and happy and safe and healthy during this very uncertain time.
So, with that last note, Scott, can you leave us with one big idea that we can bring back to our organizations during this time?
Scott Stulen:
I view myself and a lot of my career has been working as a change agent and disruptor in a lot of cases. And this is a case where it's being forced upon all of us rather than us going out and trying to change things ourselves. And I think the really important thing is like how you approach this. So there's a way of either approaching it as a challenge and feeling somewhat paralyzed by it and not knowing what to do. Or you can see it as an opportunity and how are we going to actually use this to be able to make some changes and be able to react to what's happening around us and control some of it coming forward.
And that takes planning. It's going to take some thinking outside the box. It's going to take people moving into areas that they aren't necessarily comfortable. Museums like things that don't change for the most part. This is an extreme change and I think we all need to brace for that in a lot of ways. So what I would say: it's still looking at your community, what can you do to help your community? What you can do in this moment, even if it's just a distraction to help your community, so when this is over that people are going to look and say like, "The museum is really a part of our community, and was important and it was there when I needed it." How do we position ourselves that way? And a lot of it is, I'll say this again, it's anticipating where we're going to be in a few months rather than where we once were and being able to work towards that medium-term future.
Brendan Ciecko:
Seema can you leave us with one big takeaway?
Seema Rao:
I would second a lot of those things, that we're in unprecedented times, and that you can take the phrase “unprecedented times” as being pretty terrible, or say “I'm going to deal with that.” And for me, I think it's the latter that we're getting to choose certain parts of it and let's just roll with the things we get to choose. Listen to your colleagues, listen together, work together, give everyone a little bit of grace and then find something that works for your audiences, for your institution that feels good for you. As positive as you can make this space, the better. We have to live through this no matter what, and we might as well live through it in a positive, constructive and exciting way.
Brendan Ciecko:
Seema, Scott, and everybody who joined in, there are over 3,000 of you from almost every continent and a wide range of countries. People tuning in at two o'clock in the morning - must be three now in Singapore! We really appreciate your time, your attention, all the hard work you're putting in right now at your museum to keep everything moving along during these really uncertain times. One last note before we part ways is the whole conversation has been recorded. The webinar is here for you. We'll have that up online in the next 24 hours. Feel free to share it around and again, feel free to ask questions and use the social media channels that are available to you to tap into the mindshare and the thoughts and the creativity of your community. They're here for you to ensure that you thrive during the coronavirus era and all of the uncertainty. But I think at the end of the day, and I'm hearing this through the conversation right now, this is going to, in lot of ways reinvent what we thought museums should be doing and we'll come out stronger, we'll come out differently, but we will come out stronger having survived this together and having tried out new things and having experimented during these trying times. So thanks everybody for joining us today. Thanks Scott. Thanks Seema. I hope you guys are well. I hope your families are well, and until next time, see everybody later. Thanks so much!
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