posted 08-18-2005 09:11 PM            

My thoughts:

I think of a museum as our civilization’s and history’s “lost and found” where artifacts of culture and society are preserved. Museums are a repository of things we will lose to the future. Museums remind us of who we were and help us to gain insights to our contemporary selves.

As philanthropy shifts and budgets tighten, Marketing/PR would seem to be all the more important. Marketing and PR are related and complimentary but should not be viewed as sharing the same goals. In an over simplification, marketing sells tickets, PR makes sure the mission statement is heard by more than the attendees to an exhibition. A good foundation of money is what allows a museum to achieve its mission. In my mind Fund Raising is more important and should lead the pack of the three. Especially since selling tickets to raise money will not guarantee a proper future. Museums have a long view into the past so when selling tickets becomes paramount the result is that the museum’s view/mission is distracted and undermined by contemporary fashions and fads.

This doesn’t mean that paying attention to contemporary fashions and fads isn’t important. I think museums need to recognize the current/recent fashions and fads such that they can start the museums collections early. This way museums will have the economical advantage and the pick of everyone’s discards before so much is destroyed and before what remains becomes collectable and/or hard to find/afford.

All of the above and more is what makes the curators job so difficult. To do a proper job, museum curators need some arms length from the marketing arm or they could be overly influenced and the long term goals for the institution will be adversely modified by the short term goal of attracting the teeming throngs.

I suppose it has got to be a very difficult balancing act. I would hope it can be done with a priority being given to the museum’s long term mission and to the fund raising efforts to support the long term goals.

I would hope the role of marketing/PR is not to steer but to support the curator, the long term mission and the Fund Raising of an ever increasing endowment.

P.S. June says the above is too wordy and “Don’t pick on the bean counters. They can be silver lovers too”

posted 08-19-2005 03:51 PM            

The difficulty with marketing is that marketers see absolute numbers as the goal, and they sometimes will do anything (including ignoring the institution's collections) to get people in the door. As a curator, my feeling is that a good marketer should be able to sell ANYTHING, no matter how dull it might seem.

Of course, the real ideal is for a museum to have enough space to be able to do "crowd pleaser" exhibitions to draw in crowds, and simultaneously do more academic shows that explore aspects of the collections. A good curator should be able to captivate an audience once it's in the room...and many curators fail at this, too, because they've never learned anything but preaching to the choir (so to speak).

Fundraising (development) is a crucial part of every museum...but again, often the development staff becomes more important than the collections staff, and collections are neglected because money is needed to hire people to raise more money.

posted 08-26-2005 05:52 PM            

A personal note - only 8 mths ago it was when I visited a number of museums in Vienna, Austria that I had my interest in silver sparked...

With regard to the debate between marketers v. te curator...

Food for a classic debate...Is there a CEO (or equivalent) in your museum? In other words, is there a "boss" or someone who calls the shots (as in pays wages, hires and fires etc). If not, you're part of a commune and I have no advice. If there is a CEO then this is the person you should be trying to influence. And if the CEO does not take the advices of his or her curator on board, then s/he is leaving themselves open to an action for judicial review...how frustrated are you? Are you being thwarted in the discharge of your responsibilities and duties. If so, see a lawyer...

Am I missing something?

Rgds,

Tom

posted 08-27-2005 08:57 AM            

If I have another frustration, it's that I don't have enough gallery space to permanently show many of the really nifty collections in my care in Newark. Thus people forget we even HAVE these things, and thus our reputation suffers because we don't promote what we have in favor of things borrowed from elsewhere.