As museums and cultural institutions prepare to reopen, many are facing considerable challenges and new hurdles. Across the globe, organizations have been tasked with rapidly creating new approaches, exploring models of operating, and serving their audiences with limited resources. To tackle these challenges, cultural professionals are turning to their colleagues within the field, as well as seeking inspiration and guidance from other industries to generate fresh ideas and leverage new networks.
To help bring together innovative thinkers from inside and outside the museum field, this webinar will take the form of a museum “Think Tank.” Join Brendan Ciecko (CEO & Founder @ Cuseum), Douglas Hegley (Chief Digital Officer @ Minneapolis Institute of Art), Effie Kapsalis (Senior Digital Program Officer @ Smithsonian Institution), Bob Mason (Co-Founder @ Brightcove / Managing Partner @ Argon Ventures) & Claude Grunitzky (Visiting Social Innovator @ Harvard Kennedy School) as they break down some of the most pressing challenges currently facing the museum field and offer up interdisciplinary solutions and ideas.
View the video recording here.
Read the full transcript below.
Brendan Ciecko:
Hello, everyone. My name is Brendan Ciecko, and I'm the Founder of Cuseum. First off, I want to say thank you to everyone who is joining us today, as well as say thank you to our special guests. I hope that you're all staying safe and healthy. And if you're joining us for the first time, welcome. And for those of you who have tuned in, in any of our past webinars, welcome back, it's always great to see you.
Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge the injustice and civil unrest. I know many of you are feeling a range of emotions, sadness, anger, tensions, uncertainty, and I recognize how hard and how heavy this time has been, especially in conjunction with the pandemic. In the upcoming weeks, we will bring together voices from the museum and cultural community to engage in a deeper conversation on the museum's role in social justice, equality and uplifting communities. I'm no expert in that area, so we're going to do our very best to bring together those who are and amplify their voices. We stand with those raising their voices in support of justice and equality, and we're here in solidarity.
For today, we'll be experimenting with a completely new approach and format, and welcome to our first live thinking, brainstorming session with voices from both inside and outside of the museum and cultural field. Over the upcoming weeks, the voices of museum leaders will converge with entrepreneurs, social innovators, inventors, artists, trustees, and more, to discuss a few issues and ideas in hopes of identifying new solutions, models and approaches. And today, close to 2,000 people have registered for today's conversation, and I hope it will bring some unexpected ideas, some unexpected joy and some new sparks of ideas for all of us.
So without any further ado, I'm excited to introduce our special guests. Joining us, we have Claude Grunitzky. Claude is the Founder of TRACE and TRUE Africa, a media tech platform championing young African voices all around the world. He currently serves as a visiting social innovation scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School and a visiting faculty at Sotheby's Institute of Art. Claude is a board member at MASS MoCA, one of the largest contemporary art museums in the world and one of my favorite museums in the world. And he received his MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management as a Sloan fellow and was named a finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2007. Thanks so much for joining us today, Claude.
Claude Grunitzky: Thank you so much, Brendan, for the kind introduction.
Brendan Ciecko: Thank you. And also joining us, we have Effie Kapsalis. Effie is the Senior Digital Program Officer in the Smithsonian's Office of the Under Secretary for Museums and Culture, and leads the digital strategy for the American Women's History Initiative, the first Pan-Smithsonian initiative launched under the Smithsonian strategic goal, reach one billion people a year with digital-first strategy. She leads open collections and data initiatives and is working to incorporate audience-centered development practices to digital work all around the Smithsonian. She has over a decade of experience in the private tech sector, in educational and training software development, and received her masters in industrial design in 2003 where she developed a lifelong love for human-centered design. Thanks so much for joining us, Effie.
Effie Kapsalis:
Thank you. Great to be with you guys.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. And also joining us, we have Douglas Hegley. Douglas is the Chief Digital Officer at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. He's been working in the museum field for more than 20 years helping organizations and their staff adapt to a changing world, especially to the rapid pace of innovation in digital technologies. His primary goal is always to help others succeed, and Douglas has previously held roles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was President of the Board of Directors of Museum Computer Network, MCN, an organization dedicated to the advancement of digital transformation in museums. Thanks so much for joining us, Douglas.
Douglas Hegley:
Great to be here. Thank you.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. And last but not least, we also have Bob Mason joining us today. Bob is a Managing Partner at Argon Ventures, leading seed stage investments in Boston with a mission to amplify the energy of founders to launch cutting-edge technologies and build impactful global businesses. He held roles as Managing Partner at Project 11 Ventures, as well as part of the Techstars Boston Team and a Mentor at Hack.Diversity where he's collectively worked with over hundreds of founders and entrepreneurs.
Before his career as an investor, Bob helped found and build industry-shifting products and businesses for two highly successful public companies, ATG, a leading e-commerce and personalization platform, and Brightcove, the market-leading online video platform for enterprise and premium media. I know a lot of museums use Brightcove and I know Brightcove sponsored a lot of great museum conferences over the years. He currently serves as a member of the Board of the Directors for the Trustees of Reservations, the nation's first and Massachusetts' largest preservation and conservation nonprofit with a mission to preserve and share places of natural and historical significance and beauty with everyone, forever. Thanks so much for joining us, Bob.
Bob Mason:
Thank you, Brendan, for convening everyone together.
Brendan Ciecko:
My pleasure. My pleasure. And lastly, I'm Brendan. I'm the Founder and CEO of Cuseum. I will be your host for today's conversation. So, I'm going to have, Effie, I'm going to have you introduce our first talking point for today.
Effie Kapsalis:
All right. So, this was something that I've been thinking about a lot with the new added wrinkle that's been happening with police violence in the U.S., and I think this was captured really well with what our Under Secretary for Museums and Culture, Kevin Gover, said. He's also the Director of the National Museum of the American Indian. And he said we're right now dealing with two sicknesses, one very old and one very new, so, racism and COVID-19. So there's that. There's also the fact that digital teams are being asked to pivot rapidly and really take on a lot more and from a lot of studies, especially looking at the research of the one-by-one team in the UK, we are very under-resourced as digital teams.
So that's sort of the context for how the five of us. And so I'm going to open it up to the group and ask how can cultural organizations be facilitating dialogue right now? And how do we best leverage digital in doing that? More broadly, what could cultural organizations lend to society right now?
Bob Mason:
Well, if I was to jump in, and I know Claude probably has even more to say, it's really about the storytelling. It's actually about connecting our past to present. And for all of us in a wide variety of different cultural institutions, there's just an unmanageable amount of content and stories and connectivity between what people have struggled with in the past, what they have overcome and how those stories can actually be shared in a pure digital context. And in fact, having an even bigger impact to be able to produce content that people can read, to create content that people can watch or listen to, you can get your message out much wider, and in more impactful than within the physical confines of any one of our institutions.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. And Claude, from your background in the media space, but also social justice and other initiatives that you're involved with, from the perspective of content and production and media production and journalism, what are some ways that you think museums have some untapped opportunity, really great ways to leverage themselves as a platform to facilitate some of these dialogues right now?
Claude Grunitzky:
We've been dealing with the major prices, as many other cultural institutions have, so I'm speaking now with my MASS MoCA hat on and I'm the chair, I'm a trustee at MASS MoCA, but I'm also the chair of the institutional advancement committee, and it's been a tough season. A very tough season because quite frankly, there's a bit of anguish right now, given that 2/3 of our staff, really, we had to lay off 120 of 165 employees effective April 11th. And after that, there was only a small staff that was left to work on reduced hours just to maintain and secure the site, to raise money and also come up with a digital transformation. So, it's almost as if we had to completely relaunch this organization, and- and think of how we could be relevant to various digital communities around the world, not just in Western Massachusetts.
And we've had to rethink everything. We have an annual gala that takes place in New York City, Lower Manhattan, that usually is a seven-figure fundraiser for us. Now we're thinking of ways to perhaps imagine a virtual gala that people might participate in on an invitation basis. And then we also had to manage quite frankly the trolls and the people in the community who just don't understand why a museum with 27 trustees, including a couple of high net worth trustees, on the board are not just cutting a check to save the museum just immediately.
And I guess the whole point in responding to these trolls online and managing the social media rumblings is the museum can't just be the property of a few rich people, they need to, be embraced by the community, which is why we launched an appeal for members and for locals who actually been chipping in $50 here, $100 there, and we feel that's a much better solution than just having one savior who will write a million dollar check to "save the institution" because in this world that we're living in, inequality has become the major issue and I don't want to be a trustee in an organization that feels like a gated community for billionaires.
And so I think it's really important for us to educate museum-goers and cultural participants and operatives on how things actually work and why we make certain decisions. I mean, the FreshGrass Festival, which is a really important part of our calendar which takes place at MASS MoCA every year in September has just been canceled as well, and that's a major visibility thing for us. So now, we have to think about how we reimagine that experience, which is all about community. So there is a crisis on every level, but as you all know, with crisis comes opportunity, and this opportunity is clearly for reinvention.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. That's a really powerful statement. And I have to say, Claude, this is the first time we've ever had folks from the board or trustees side of the institution, so it's really insightful to hear and of how you're looking at this scenario with the broad background that you have, but also being feet on the ground at that level with the institution. And Douglas, I know that you've been focusing on a lot of these challenges, both at a leadership level, but down kind of in the trenches around digital for the past two decades. How do you respond to some of the points that Effie brought up, Bob chimed in about storytelling, and Claude mentioned from just the sheer kind of challenges and uncertainties that are being faced right now?
Douglas Hegley:
First of all, Effie, thanks for the topic. I think it's really salient and a difficult one, right? You used the word dialogue, and I think museums founded in a sort of like colonial conquest culture aren't about dialogue, generally. They're about broadcast, right? So we have experts who know about stuff and they talk about it and you're supposed to be engaged. And if you're not interested, it's your problem. That's been the sort of founding value in the museum sector.
And I think as we, as digital technologists, think about transformation, Claude, you mentioned relaunch, I love the concept of relaunch, storytelling, fantastic. I'm going to question voice. Museums have, for so long, centered on the academic scholarly, white supremacy culture perspective on all of these things, lived experience matters too. We have objects in our museums that come from every culture, every time period in human history, who gets to talk about them? Whose voice are we centering on?
I think dialogue, if you're on a really well-structured museum guided tour, you get some fabulous dialogue. Any object, any relic, any historical concept is an opportunity for dialogue. That's easier person to person than it is digital dialogue can be a little bit difficult. But I think one opportunity we have for innovation in our sector is to think about voice, to think about elevating and including lots of different voices, perhaps voices that disagree with one another, so that we're not so focused on being encyclopedias of authority, but we're more focused in sort of community, embedding in community perspective.
Bob Mason:
And Doug, I think that's really wonderful to think about the dialogue around the stories and different points of view. And I think one of the things that lends itself well for digital is the ability to actually support multiple points of view around a topic or a dialogue and be able to sort of collectively organize those in a coherent way that allow people to actually see multiple points of view. They could literally be multiple essays written by people affiliated or interested in a topic the museum curates, so instead of curating an object, it's creating voices around objects and sort of topics at hand, but you could also start aggregating content from outside the museum walls to lend new perspective to these different stories as well.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's really interesting. And I mean, just even thinking about one of the most traditional attributes of the museum going experience, like, the most traditional thing, the object label, it's one directional and this concept, I remember the first time shared authority as a concept was introduced to me, and thinking that, yeah, when I walk through, just getting an English text kind of pseudo academic or academically written piece of information isn't making it more relevant to today's environment. And all museums, to some extent, I know that Minneapolis has done a great job of this addressing certain things over the years, and the Smithsonian does that as well.
I think digital can play a role in that by, to some extent, being the extension of that one voice and showcasing as many as people wish to contribute. But I know that's obviously a challenge. I think that's something that we'd want or hope that the sector moves towards. And- and I know in your role at the Smithsonian, you've been focusing on digital-first to a lot of the different initiatives that you've been a part of. Can you talk through what this entails and what kind of the concept of digital-first might look like in the years to come, especially with a lot of the challenges we're facing today? Just kind of from a broad perspective.
Effie Kapsalis:
Yeah. So one thing to keep in mind is the American Women's History Initiative is not a museum yet, so that's giving us a lot of flexibility to step back and think about this a little differently. So, one of the immediate things that stood out was looking across our organization with the 19 museums and research centers and libraries and archives in every discipline. We've collected in a way that has inherent biases based on the time that the collecting was done and culture at the time.
So we're taking a step back and assessing what representation looks like throughout our organization, and that's stimulating some really good dialogue around ongoing issues for women at work and right now, with COVID-19, a lot of women are in the front lines with healthcare work and trying to pivot to digital education. So it's a group that's really challenged during this time too.
So that's one part of it. But I also want to go back to what Douglas said about transformation because this is the paradox, right? So, we are digital-first, but a lot of the points that I have to hit on over and over again with being digital-first in a fairly traditional bricks-and-mortar organization is that it takes resources, it takes digital literacy for more than just digital teams, and the budgets also have to be balanced in terms of the more kind of traditional exhibit and publication side of the house versus what we call diffusion, education in the digital sides of the house.
So, I'm excited to think about big ideas we can tackle with this initiative, but we also have to fix some foundational things to be able to do this in a nimble way.
Brendan Ciecko:
Interesting. And I'd love to hear from everyone on this next notion that having board members and trustees that are some level of technically savvy or business savvy or understand digital transformation because they've led it with their own organizations or lead it in their daily professional lives, I know that historically, that hasn't necessarily been the case when you look at the board makeup, and I know there's a tremendous amount of work to be done in the overall diversity of museum boards all around the globe right now.
But zooming in specifically to folks like Bob and folks like Claude that have a background, an extensive background in digital transformation, in building platforms, and also the networks that they possess, are kind of leading a lot of these charges, I'd love to hear kind of everyone's thoughts on what they're seeing from the board side, kind of being in that seat, but also from the museum side around the role that plays, specifically.
Bob Mason:
Well, I think from my perspective, and obviously, this is just one individual's perspective within one institution, I felt like it was really imperative that given the resource constraints within the staff of the organization, that it was imperative for me as a board member and others that I know that are volunteers and those engaged to actually step up and take on a leadership role, to provide some vision, to gather resources, and to be at the front of that process, obviously, in conjunction and with full authority and alignment with like key executive stakeholder, but there's opportunities for all of us as volunteer and leaders within these cultural institutions and beyond supporting an institution with financial support, the knowledge that we can bring to bear in actually rolling up our sleeves and doing the hard work is really valuable and important.
So, a couple of things that we've done within the Trustees of Reservation in support of this digital transformation, as part of a strategic, five-year strategic review process, we actually created a series of forums to talk about different topics, and those forums are open not only for internal staff, but for members, stakeholders in communities, and we brought in experts. And we actually had a public forum around the future of digital technology within the realm of a conversation organization. And so we brought in some key experts from political campaigns on how to do engagement with stakeholders. We brought in stakeholders and experts in raw technology fields and created a forum and a dialogue around what transformation could mean, but then got incorporated within our five-year strategic plan.
And with that digital initiative embedded in our five-year strategic plan, it was imperative then for all board members and all staff members to get aligned with that initiative. And once we had put it within our strategic plan, we then went through a process of looking for experts within our membership to essentially form an internal technology task force that was primarily led by and staffed by board members, advisory council members and other volunteers of the organization. And we play a very active role in advising, reviewing, and sort of educating internal staff members on the possibilities of technology and help guide them through that process.
And I think that the three-step process that we followed is something that could be really instrumental for a lot of organizations' transformations, where you create a public forum and dialogue of what transformation could mean. You then get internal stakeholder approval, and essentially, creating a charter around what that transformation should be over multiple years and realizing it's going to take investment and that commitment to do it, and then continue to look for the follow-up where internal volunteers and other related stakeholders actually do work and help the internal staff augment their day-to-day activity.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. And I'm sure a lot of people will be emailing me for tips and tricks about that specific strategy. Claude, Douglas, Effie, I know that we want to try to tie a bow on this specific topic or this beginning topic. Are there any specific points that anyone has made that resonated with you, or could provide some path forward for the museum and cultural sector? I'd love to hear everyone's closing thoughts before we go on to the next topic.
Claude Grunitzky:
I want to talk, again, specifically about my experience at MASS MoCA, and Joe Thompson, the Director and Founder of MASS MoCA, said something that really resonated with me. He said that the MASS MoCA's core mission is to gather large audiences around acts of creativity, and that really spoke to me because as somebody who's been quoted by cultural institutions pretty much all over the world for a long time, I've always felt that the reason I didn't really align myself with many of these cultural institutions is because there was this stratification where the trustees were at the top of the totem cone, then you would have the senior leadership, and then you'd have junior employees, and then you have the general kind of public.
And I think that this crisis is a wonderful opportunity, as I said, as we restart and relaunch to get active participation from what we'll call different kinds of stakeholders. And the reason I'm excited about doing that within MASS MoCA is because it's very difficult, as somebody who's been pretty much a first generation founder my entire career, it's very difficult for a founder and director like Joe Thompson to give up control and to let the decisions to be made from the ground up as opposed to a very kind of regulated top down of approach that has worked very well in other institutions.
And so, I think that this is an opportunity to tap in to fresh ideas. We don't have much of a choice anyway because we're working with a skeleton staff and we're going to have to find ideas wherever they may be. And one of the things that I'm trying to do is perhaps find bridges that we can build with the other institution that I'm aligned with, Harvard, on the eastern part of Massachusetts, because I've been so inspired by some of the students at the Kennedy School that I've been working with, where we work in a program called the social innovation and change initiative. And these students are not looking, for the majority of them, they're not looking to join large institutions. What they want to do is build their own micro organizations that can partner with larger organizations.
And so, I really would love for us to ideate around how students, who are mostly digital natives, can invent solutions that can help larger institutions, like MASS MoCA, like Smithsonian, and help them to reinvent themselves with some of these digital strategies that will, as Joe Thompson said, help to gather large audiences around acts of creativity.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. I want to hold that very note as we dive in to the kind of the second half of the webinar today because I think that's a really powerful idea that these ideas will be incubated externally and they might be kind of a fix to an external property, like a museum or a historic organization or an institution that's been around for a hundred plus years that, I don't want to call it a rocket booster, but definitely, that outside influence playing a role. So, I love that idea, Claude, and I'm so happy to hear about it. And I want to talk more about it after we hear from Douglas and Effie before we turn the page to part two.
Douglas Hegley:
Hey, thanks, Brendan. Sitting here thinking about boards and having worked with museum boards for a very long time, there's always that balance between how deeply they get involved in the sort of operational functionality of a business unit and a museum, and how much you're providing overall strategic guidance. So, I mean, I like to poke the bear. One of the things I like to talk about trustees is that we don't have a digital strategy. There's no digital strategy, okay? There's a strategy. There's an overall museum strategy. Digital can support that strategy in very specific ways, including transformational and innovative ways.
But there are parts of the strategy that digital has nothing to do with and shouldn't be interfering with or messing around with. I also don't really believe in calling out digital as a separate thing because then, the tendency is to put it in a silo, make it a department, hire someone to run it, under-fund it, disrespect it. And I think our next question is we're going to explore some of that a little bit too. So, just to be slightly controversial, I'm not a big fan of digital strategy.
Effie Kapsalis:
I love that about you, Douglas. I think what's coming around for me is the audience, and knowing where our sweet spot is so we can go after that and let go of other things, right? And that can cross digital and physical. And that's where the institution isn't heavily resourced for digital. We're a wealthy institution in a lot of ways in terms of collections and history and everything, but I don't have a U.S. person. I don't have a data scientist to compute against our dataset to recognize where the odds are in representation.
So, we have to be focused. And I also want to hit on a chat question around access. I think we also have to think about the reality of connections for people. My daughter's school, when this whole thing started, there was a survey that went out about what technology was at home and connections and bandwidth, and she goes to a Title I school in D.C. So, that's really important.
Another point of audience feedback is understanding their context and access in all this stuff. So, they're not having the same experience as my daughter right now, who has access. So, I want those things top of mind for people.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. Thank you. Let's shift gears to topic number two. So Douglas, can you take us away, take us in the right direction?
Douglas Hegley:
I'm usually bad at going in the right direction, but I'll go in any direction.
Brendan Ciecko:
You can take us in the wrong direction too. I think we're all cool with it.
Douglas Hegley:
Yeah. So, I think with my fingers on the pulse of a lot of colleagues, especially around North America, a lot of them, what I'm hearing from them is like, "Hey, Douglas, my board just discovered digital," right? Like, I've been here for 10 years, no one's ever paid attention to me. Here's the problem, they expect magic. They expect techno magical solutions. They want us to go from, they say, "Well, wait. You said you were Agile, right? So, can you spin up revenue producing digital content, like, Tuesday?" So, we're in this mode where we're trying to be innovative and experiment and try things, and one of the issues I think in our sector is that we go from experiment to production without a lot of thought or a lot of time or a lot of iteration in between.
I would especially love to hear from other panelists about that concept of ambitious and unrealistic goals, and then how do you meet them? How do you sometimes walk back from this digital magic myth?
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. I love this, and I'm excited to have Bob here to jump in, because I know, Bob, you have some interesting thoughts and actionable real world ideas around some of the things that are happening at the trustees, but also, you're a venture capitalist. You're around people with unrealistic amazing unicorn, moonshot ideas every single day of the week, so how do you frame things?
Bob Mason:
Yeah. I mean, there's always a healthy tension between being naively optimistic and really sort of pragmatic around what can be done. Sometimes, you need people to have some naivety on what is possible because then, that gives them the opportunity to experiment and succeed, but also experiment and fail. And so I think there are some cultural components that institutions need to embrace, which is really empowering individuals within the staff or organization, to take some chances that recognize that some initiatives as an experiment, will be successful and other ones will be a failure, and that's okay. Like, we can learn through those processes.
Ultimately, in many ways, it sounds like in the classic MBA school teachings of innovator's dilemma where things often feel like they're going good enough and that you have a good enough audience engagement and stakeholder engagement and audience growth, but if you don't take the opportunity to take a step back and we'll get broader secular trends, thinking about the world shifting to entire mobile experiences and all these new platforms that you may actually, over time, lend itself to have you be in sort of a dark hole.
So, I think the biggest element is around this, actually, internal cultural transformation. And so one of the couple of fun things that we've done at the trustees to try and enable or foster creativity and experimentation is to create an internal like micro-genius grant model. It can be relatively modest, a few hundred dollars, a few thousand dollars, but basically, anyone in the organization can propose a project. They write up information, they encourage team members to collaborate, sometimes across disciplines, and all they need is a little bit of resources to go do that experiment and figure out if it's a file.
So for example, one team at the trustees, us being a land conservation organization, wanted to buy and invest in a drone so they could then do reviews of conservation restrictions from the air and actually look at how to build efficiency into their model versus having to actually physically walk the land all the time. So that was like an innovation and technology and digital transformation that has nothing to do with audience engagement, but it really was around internal efficiency's operational scale. And I think that's one of the critical things that we need to recognize is sometimes, the experiments are really easy to start out, but to scale to have the impact is actually a systematic level of platform that needs to be invested in.
You may need to improve your CRM database. You may need to improve your internal communications platform, your publishing platform for all those things to be really sustainable in the long-term.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. And I know there are a few other museums around the globe doing somewhat similar things. I know the San Diego Natural History Museum has what they call the evolutionary venture fund, which is an exciting way to roll off the tongue in the museum context, and it's shown to be successful in encouraging experimentation and growth. So I love the fact that I think the first time I heard of this concept was from you, and then I'm like it's kind of like a mini Awesome Foundation, which I know is something that you're also involved with that's first.
Bob Mason:
Yeah. It was part of the idea when I had shared some of these concepts internally. For those that don't know, the Awesome Foundation is actually not a nonprofit but basically, it's these collective chapters all across the globe where 10 individuals come together, each promising to give $100 for a thousand dollar micro, genius grant once a month. And they get submissions collected in an organized, fashion for really creative ideas that could be about cultural arts or social impact, but this concept of like bringing a- a group of people together, just giving them a little bit of resources, it's not always about a lot of money, but it allows them to move an initiative forward to get started and to really understand what's happening.
And for us, within an organization, we've also used these grants as a way to build a stronger culture within the organization, so people have full visibility into all the grants that are being asked for. People get to vote, and engage with them as well. So it's a really celebratory way to foster innovation and creativity within an organization.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you.
Douglas Hegley:
It's also fundable, Bob, right? I mean, we did something similar at MIA. We've actually spent all the money at this point, but we had basically grants of up to $2,500 available to anyone on staff who would sort of pitch an idea. And then we had two or three trustees who actually formed a sort of committee that would go over the applications. Didn't reject a lot of them. Sometimes, they were asked to maybe be refined or make the goals a little more specific than, "I'm going to Costa Rica. It's going to be great."
And I think a little bit of funding, even a pool of money that's for our sector, especially for the larger art museums, the amount of money invested in innovation is a rounding effort, but it can be impactful even when it's that small.
Bob Mason: Well, that's the parallels with venture capital in businesses. Like, these major businesses that are worth hundreds of millions of billions of dollars, they typically started off with just a few people, an idea, and just a little bit of capital to get started. And from that, you can grow and learn and really drive transformation.
Douglas Hegley:
That's right.
Effie Kapsalis:
So, two tweaks on this model. One is a free idea, for those, I assume we have a lot of small organizations in the chat, but I come from an industrial design background, and we were partnered with the water company in Philadelphia to do a 48-hour design charade to solve a challenge they were having. So, teachers especially, as they move to virtual, are looking for those partners.
The other idea is looking externally for innovation, and some of you may know me from Open Access from the Smithsonian, and we released close to a few million images this past February as Open Access, CC0. Now funding is looking a little dire for our next phases, but in the meantime, we're working with our design museum, the Cooper Hewitt in New York, to put out a few seed grants for developing innovative interfaces. And so we're going to gather staff around the organizations to help our culture and be more collaborative across our different museums and post challenges for this group.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. And it loops back to what Claude was talking about in some ways, which I'm personally excited about, thinking about these social innovators, these students that are working on solving problems, looking at all types of conditions and thinking about how those can be either a catch or woven into or disrupt traditional models. I'd love to hear a little bit about, Claude, what you think or what you're seeing and how that might relate to museums, to cultural institutions. I know when we spoke recently, you said a lot of these students in the cultural realm are looking at how that might intersect with the museum, for instance.
Claude Grunitzky:
Yeah. I'm really happy that we're able to talk about this and spend a few minutes dissecting this because specifically, this bridge that I've been talking about between western and eastern Massachusetts, between MASS MoCA and Harvard, a lot of it came from a very local, hyper local, I'd even say, thing I noticed at MASS MoCA, and it's the fact that MASS MoCA as a museum now has 37 commercial tenants. And those 37 commercial tenants now generate more than $50 million in economic activity for the region annually. And the fact that the museum has become a bit of a hub for a hybrid use of space that will help to create and cross pollinate in a bit of an interesting artistic ecosystem, I feel that thing that is happening physically should also be happening digitally.
And so what I'm finding with a lot of the digital products that my students at Harvard have been developing is that they have great ideas that they might've incubated in their bedrooms or on campus, but they don't really have anywhere to truly disseminate them. They don't really have a place where they can test them out in real life, outside of theory. And I think that an institution that is even a little bit entrepreneurial, that has even a little bit of spunk should look at how they can empower these young innovators by giving them space to experiment with, digitally.
And so in the way that MASS MoCA was a leader in attracting these 37 commercial tenants, then I think that we should also become a leader in tapping into the creativity of students who really haven't had a chance to demonstrate what they can do on a larger scale. Because I believe that if you're an institution that has over 300,000 annual visitors, which is where MASS MoCA is right now, and out of those 300,000 annual visitors, maybe 1/3 come from for the performing arts. That means that your custodian of a certain responsibility to not only local environment, but to the people who actually, bring in those 300,000 annual visitors, and I believe that there is a way to actually aggregate additional audiences by tapping into the pent up demand for some of these innovations that are coming from students and young entrepreneurs, and then applying them to a very prestigious institution that is a leader in the museum space.
So that kind of passion is I think what museum directors and leaders are going to have to engage in because it's about music, it's about the arts, broadly, but it's about how do, as many people as possible, experiment with what the music is reinventing through, and then how these young entrepreneurs can be the ones who are leading the charge with respect to bringing fresh, new ideas that may not be there when you actually speak to the trustees or even some of the senior leaders.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. And it has me thinking about even the visibility or the optics of, "Hey, we have a sandbox," or, "Hey, we're yours. Come play in the sandbox." We're open for these new types of ideas and hosting things around that. So, museums have been, not frequently, but there has been a trend of museums hosting hackathons. And I have a general sense that we're going to start to see these things more frequently, just based on the reality that resources are thinner than they ever have been and the need or the kind of thrust forward for innovation is certainly there due to everything that we've experienced.
So I do wonder how this will play out, and I think, Claude, what you were saying, and Effie, some of the points and some of the things that I've been seeing around Smithsonian Open Access will come together on that. So I'm curious if anyone has anything else to add off of what Claude and Effie were saying there.
Claude Grunitzky:
I just wanted maybe to add one more thing. MASS MoCA is right next to Williams College, right? So they already have that pool of talent that they can tap into. What I'm saying is that the pool is there, it's accessible, it's local, but there might be ways to align with initiatives statewide and maybe nationally and maybe internationally so that the best ideas rise to the top is what I'm saying.
Effie Kapsalis:
I've also been thinking about that in terms of data. I think there's an appeal to get our data out as in as many ways as possible, but, like, we can't even predict what happens to it when it leaves our doors. And I'm a big proponent of Open Access and sharing our things, but I'm wondering if the sector could come together in a way that Claude was talking about around have data trusts or repositories that are in perpetuity because we're often giving off our things to commercial organizations, and partnerships that help us. And partnerships are super important, but I worry a little bit about us having the final say with our things.
Bob Mason:
I guess, Effie, I'm curious, what do you mean by having the final say? I guess, well, I'm thinking about kind of remixed culture and actually the creativity that emerges when people don't have a final say and there isn't a single authoritative voice if you have a pool in lots of different contexts and remix, digital content, or whatever, in new ways.
Effie Kapsalis:
Yeah, that was a poor choice of words. More persistence and preservation around digital data.
Brendan Ciecko:
Awesome. Well, it sounds like the last couple of things that I've heard from many of you is this idea of tapping in to a more global or a more distributed audience. I know over the last couple of webinar conversations, just due to the reality that the physical spaces were closed, we're hearing from like the Museum of African Diaspora in San Francisco that they didn't know that their audience was as global as it is. And I know a lot of organizations have been saying similar things based on what they've seen from the digital outlet of it all.
So whether it be with broadcasting or distributing content and messaging, but also kind off of what Claude was saying, reaching new people and giving them opportunities to incubate an idea off of existing content or off of a platform of creativity, which is near and dear to a lot of museums' mission statements. I think it sounds like there has to be an opportunity there. I'd love to see that play out this year.
Bob Mason:
Well, I still think the early point that Doug brought about dialogue, and you link that with Claude's vision and model around engagement with outsiders, students, like, there's something that's sort of magical that can come out of that, I believe. And though we're talking a lot about digital, I actually think the cultural institution as an overall platform, including the physical plant and capability can become a really powerful amplifier to allow the fostering of these dialogues and to bring external viewpoints and to do that.
For the trustees, our properties range from beaches, to forests, to sculpture parks, to public gardens, to historical homes and art museums. And so we actually look for a really wide gamut of international artists, scientists, to really physically come on to our properties and transform them or to learn from them in really interesting ways I think can feed back into our mission and allow us to create new stories and connect those stories back to our mission and back to our stakeholders.
Brendan Ciecko:
Yeah. It feels to me a lot, the worlds that we're at least bringing together in this conversation, like, Bob and Claude, in our world, we would say entrepreneur and residence. In the museum, they might say visiting a curator or artist in residence. But I think we're talking about a lot of the same things, which is exciting. It's just kind of the who and the what.
Bob Mason:
The nice thing about Claude's model was like thinking about students, right? Like, a student is necessarily going to have the formality of being a visiting curator. But they're going to have, once again, in a positive way, a naïve point of view, to tell a different type of story. And so if you can create these really interesting forms by which they can engage with you, I think you're going to create all sorts of new points of view.
Claude Grunitzky:
Yeah. And the other thing too, Bob, to add to your point, the students have ideas but they're very well aware of the fact that not all those ideas are great and that most of those ideas will fail. And it's fine so long as expectations are managed at the beginning and that the institution knows that perhaps the majority of these ideas will end up failing, that's okay because that's the process of experimentation anyway.
Bob Mason:
And it can actually help with community development and socioeconomic effort as well because, like, then these students actually get real world job experience. They get projects to put into a portfolio that can lend a lot of credits to their ability to have an impact in the world longer term.
Claude Grunitzky:
And it's better than an internship.
Brendan Ciecko:
For sure. Douglas, what do you think about this kind of merging of students and the institution or outside experimenters and the institution? I know MIA has done some interesting things, not only with the, what is it, a 3M technology or art technology prize, but other things that you've either been involved with or seen. I'd love to hear your thoughts on just kind of what we're diving in through right now.
Douglas Hegley:
Sure. I want to sort of also add on to a couple of points that should be made. Students are fantastic, but we were sort of lumping visiting curators, visiting artists with students. One of our issues as an organizational field is we don't show the same respect. So a visiting artist, a visiting curator is the sort of god or goddess who's given like free housing and can run every meeting that person walks into. Then we bring in these brilliant students and they're treated like interns. I hope no one's asking them to go get coffee, but I think it can feel that way. So the barriers they hit and the cultural inadequacies of our sector can be pretty frustrating, and we really should think, our equity lens needs to be turned in every direction. That's one of the directions that we need to do.
In terms of partnerships and things, absolutely. I was watching the chat too and someone, I'm going to paraphrase, someone wrote something like, "Hey, innovation rewards, that's great. So what?" Right? So one got some money and some people did cool stuff, what's the real impact? I can tell you what the impact was for us, it was a real mindset shift. It was getting people to think very differently about their jobs, get off the railroad tracks, go outside the sector, do something entirely different, open your mind to other possibilities. We encourage people to do this In pairs so that they can bounce ideas off one another.
We also require them to come back, write a report about what they learned and discovered, present that to an all staff meeting, then to try something leveraged or using that innovation as a diving board to try something afterward, if it failed, that's great because we'd have like a failure fest and we talk about all the things that didn't work, all of those to shift the mindset of people saying like, "Take a shot on goal," right? You're going to miss most of the time. Michael Jordan missed more shots than he made, no one thinks of them that way, right?
So, Effie, you guys have done some hackathony stuff and worked with students too. Have you been able to incorporate them and value them in the way that you think is right?
Effie Kapsalis:
So my most recent experiences with the Wikipedia community, because we're trying to address some of the gender imbalance there, I don't think we're great at using. I've been open to outside perspective and because just to pull back even on a layer further, so, like, people, I know when Brendan came and talked to us during the Open Access development, the entrepreneur and residence landed really well with some people, did not land well with other people. That pushes us out of our comfort zone. So I think the students need some cover.
And I just want to respond to one comment in the chat too about small teams and how to do this. And I think Carina said it, like, "Join your local friend organizations and even not cultural organizations, but who are partners that could help you get there faster with similar values and missions." So if you're a staff of two, like, definitely team up with another organization.
Douglas Hegley:
Can I jump on that too, Brendan? Because I think, practically speaking, very small organizations, part of the issue is the expectation has to be different when you're talking about digital. I mean, first of all, places like the Smithsonian or MIA, we have staff who can build stuff, that's their full-time job. We can innovate, we can do all kinds of new things. There are plenty of platforms out there where people are already hanging out, where you can engage with them, and some of them are slightly evil, but if you approach them in the right way.
The other thing is I've done some workshops with like small orchestras here in the Midwest, and their conception's like we need to be on Twitter, we need to be on Instagram, we gotta be on Facebook, we gotta be posting six times a week. Like, slow down, right? First of all, probably no one's looking for you to be posting six times a week. We're already on a digital overload. What we're actually looking for is something meaningful or pithy or relevant. Frequency matters far less than actually getting something out there that's sort of authentic and real and probably choosing your platform.
Twitter's something, and there's millions of people on Twitter, but is that where you need to be as a cultural organization? Most of what we do on Twitter is we brag to each other about what we're doing. And that's really not audience engagement. Some of the other platforms are better for that. So, limit, right? Put governors on your expectations. Slow down. You don’t have to post as many times as the MET, or be blogging constantly. People aren't even interested in it. If you can reduce it down, use existing channels, you can still do a ton of audience engagement really effectively, even with a very small team.
Brendan Ciecko:
Yeah. When I was just starting to, I don't know, I want to use the term blossom, as a young entrepreneur and made my first time in Boston, I grew up in Western Mass, kind of not too, too far from MASS MoCA, and was the first time I ever encountered real entrepreneurs, real Boston tech entrepreneurs, and kind of my mind was exploding in front of me and the ideas that I was spewing out left and right. Someone said, "You have to read this book, Focus: The Future of Your Business Depends On It." And it's basically stories of every single time, whether it be a company or a nonprofit, they've expanded or gotten their hands into far many things, they started to stray away from their mission and the negative consequences of that.
So I think a lot of that is summed up in one word is focus. And I think, Douglas, you've given some great examples specifically about how organizations should look at that, especially through like an authentic lens.
So I know we only have five more minutes, and I just want to say, after all of this webinar, this museum think tank, whatever we want to call it, this experimentation, we're going to compile everyone's questions and ideas and solutions into a living and breathing document. We're going to put it out online. Feel free to share some of the thoughts that you have in this chat or email them over to hello@cuseum, or whatever platform you're most comfortable with and the fact that you're here shows that you're taking proactive steps and interest in preparing your museum, your cultural institution, your team, and we want to support you every step of the way, even if that means bringing in outside voices and inside voices and saying, "Hey, let's talk and see what comes of it." And so I really appreciate everybody's interest and time that you've spent with us for this past hour.
So, kind of in closing, I want to try to wrap up the conversation, wrap up this thread, wrap up the overall thread, and see if there are any specific ideas or notions that stood out to any of our guests today that might be some sort of answer or direction for the museum and cultural sector, and maybe just summing that down or distilling that to one idea we can bring back today. What's one idea we can bring back today? So let's start with you, Douglas, and then we'll go from there.
Douglas Hegley:
That's great then. Not all the good ideas will be taken when I speak. I think I would circle back on partnerships. I think we under utilize the potential of partnerships. And we can think very creatively this way, a partnership can be with your neighbors, it can be with a university, a high school, it can be with private organizations. So think really widely and broadly and look among your fans and members and connectors of your organization to look for those kinds of partnerships, whether they're formal or informal. It's really a terrific way to move forward and do work that maybe helps you think outside of the normal box.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you for that, Douglas. And Effie, what's one idea we can bring back to our organizations right now?
Effie Kapsalis:
Talking to your audience and your stakeholders and starting to create that buy-in across organization.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you.
Effie Kapsalis:
Just, that's all that helps you focus. Go back to your focus word.
Brendan Ciecko:
Excellent. Thank you. And Bob, how about you? What's one thing you'd want to leave the audience with today?
Bob Mason:
I think it's the very notion of transformation that makes it feel like you can be quick and efficient. And I think it's really important for people to manage expectations and to realize that even if you drive an initiative and get a quick hit, true transformation is going to take at least three to five years, and therefore, you have to have a sustained commitment at all levels, including deep support from your board and top supporters and key stakeholders for that transformation.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. Thank you. And Claude, how about you? What's one idea or notion you'd want to leave everybody with today?
Claude Grunitzky:
I want to build on the student entrepreneur and residence thing. To me, it's really important to also emphasize that the student entrepreneur doesn't actually have to be in residence. And with social distancing, a lot of this could be done virtually with frequent visits, but they don't actually have to be on the premises, as with most other organizations that I've seen. I think there could be a network of student entrepreneurs and residents, and that they could be tasked with figuring out specific solutions to some of these problems. At MASS MoCA, we've been dealing with canceled concerts, we've been dealing with shuttered galleries, we've been dealing with barren parking lots, and everybody being bewildered. And again, having to do the work of the entire team, which is 25% of the human resources.
So since we just don't have the money for the human resources, I think there is a way to tap into people who are willing and able and who are out there and who are just looking for a chance to show and prove. So that's how I'm looking at it now.
Brendan Ciecko:
Great. Thank you for that, Claude. Truly, I'm energized and I'm inspired by all of the ideas that have flowed freely through this conversation today. I acknowledge it's a really challenging and difficult time with layers of complexity, and so this has been really a refreshing hour for me. I hope it's been for everyone who's tuned in, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue with all of you. This has really been a treat and a pleasure.
So, thank you, Douglas, thank you, Effie, thank you, Bob, and thank you, Claude. I hope you're all doing well and staying safe. I hope to see you in person at some point in time when that becomes a reality, but it's really inspiring to have the opportunity to connect with all of you today. So I really thank you and I appreciate your time. And, to those of you who chimed in, thank you so much.
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