June 13th, 2009
Managing Expectations
I have a confession to make, I have never worked in a museum. I’ve interned at a museum and a historic site and I’m currently employed at a temporary space that is being used to test how visitors interact with exhibits as they’re being developed but I have never been an actual museum professional. This week I had the opportunity to go to some meetings that included multiple levels of staff from various departments including exhibit design and programs, external communications, and development. One of these meetings was about managing our visitors expectations when they get to our site. We want them to enjoy their experience but also to understand that what we have open now is not a full blown museum. What I took from the meetings however, will be more helpful in managing my own expectations regarding the field as a whole.
One of the biggest issues was that the external relations staff did not feel comfortable with the museum content and were nervous when interacting with families in the testing space. We have visitors ranging from young children to their grandparents and not everyone on staff has experience with kids, especially in this kind of setting. This was news to me. I was shocked that anyone working for the museum would not feel comfortable around young visitors, since they are the main audience. One person made the point that programming staff may not feel comfortable discussing donations at a gala fundraiser and said it was the same thing.
Personally, I could not agree less. When you work for a non-profit organization you need to be passionate about the mission, and that implies some level of familiarity. I am not saying everyone needs to be an expert, clearly people in the finance office of a history museum need to be focused on numbers but they should still understand the content that the numbers are based on. The development staff at a science museum needs to be able to discuss what the museum hopes to accomplish when soliciting funds. In the same way I think staff needs to be excited about kids when working for a museum that has a mission which hopes to inspire children.
Back to the meeting, I was the only who had a real problem with the analogy and felt so strongly on the topic. It was said that the external relations staff would be given more training and would have programming staff with them to help explain the exhibit prototypes, problem solved. I can honestly say that seeing the situation handled in such a manner was a great learning experience, it gave me a dose of reality and a sneak peak of what I can expect when I do, someday, work for a museum.