Museum Practice. Группа авторов

Practice: Selections from the Journal of Museum Education, edited by Joanne S. Hirsch and Lois Silverman, 222–225. Indiana University: Museum Education Roundtable.

      Rice, Danielle. 2003. “Museums: Theory, Practice and Illusion.” In Art and Its Publics: Museum Studies at the End of the Millennium, edited by A. McClellan, 77–95. Oxford: Blackwell.

      Sahlins, Marshall. 2005. Culture in Practice: Selected Essays. New York: Zone Books. Salzburg Curriculum. 2013. Accessed September 12, 2014. http://salzburg.hyperlib.sjsu.edu. Sandell, Richard, and Eithne Nightingale, eds. 2013. Museums, Equality and Social Justice. London: Routledge.

      Schatzki, Theodore R., Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike von Savigny. 2001. The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. London: Routledge.

      Schjeldahl, Peter. 2011. “Of Ourselves and Our Origins: Can We Speak Sensibly about What We Like about Art?” Frieze 137: 104–105. Accessed September 12, 2014. http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/of-ourselves-and-of-our-origins-subjects-of-art.

      Shelton, Anthony. 2013. “Critical Museology: A Manifesto.” Museum Worlds 1: 7–23. Silverman, Lois, and Mark O’Neill. 2012. “Change and Complexity in the 21st-Century

      Museum.” In Reinventing the Museum: The Evolving Conversation on the Paradigm Shift, edited by Gail Anderson, 193–201. Lanham, MD: AltaMira. Originally published 2004 in Museum News 83(6): 36–43.

      Simmons, J.E. 2006. “Museum studies training in North America.” In Museum Studies: Perspectives and Innovation, edited by S. L. Williams and C. A. Hawks, 113–128. Washington DC: Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections.

      Spiess, P. D. 1996. “Museum Studies: Are They Doing Their Job?” Museum News 75(6): 32–40. Stam, Deirdre C. 2005. “The Informed Muse: The Implications of ‘The New Museology’ for Museum Practice.” In Heritage, Museums and Galleries: An Introductory Reader, edited by Gerard Corsane, 54–70. Oxford: Routledge.

      Starn, R. 2005. “A Historian’s Brief Guide to New Museum Studies.” American Historical Review 110(1): 68–98.

Teather, Lynne. 1991. “Museum Studies: Reflecting on Reflective Practice.” Museum Management and Curatorship 10(4): 403–417.

      Teather, Lynne. 2009. “Critical Museology Now: Theory/Practice/Theory.” Muse 27(6): 23–32.

      Thompson, John M. A., ed. 1984. Manual of Curatorship: A Guide to Museum Practice. London: Museums Association/Butterworths.

      Townsend, Melanie, ed. 2003. Beyond the Box: Diverging Curatorial Practices. Banff, Canada: Banff Centre Press.

      Turner, Stephen. 1994. The Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge and Presuppositions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

      Watson, Sheila, ed. 2007. Museums and Their Communities. London: Routledge.

      Associate Professor Conal McCarthy is Director of the Museum and Heritage Studies program at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Conal has degrees in English, Art History, Museum Studies, and Māori language and has worked in galleries and museums in a variety of professional roles: educator, interpreter, visitor researcher, collection manager, curator, and exhibition developer, as well as sitting on the boards and advisory groups of a number of institutions. He has published widely on museum practice, including the book Museums and Māori: Heritage Professionals, Indigenous Collections, Current Practice (2011).

PART I Priorities

1

      THE ESSENCE OF THE MUSEUM

      Mission, Values, Vision

       David Fleming

      I once began a new job, and asked the museum director a couple of starter questions. What happens when you aren’t here? Answer: “Nothing, absolutely nothing.” What are the big things coming up next? Answer: “I’ve done everything.” This was in the dark days – not that long ago – when museums were run by an amateur cadre of egotistical directors who had no truck with accountability, or social value, or even with the notion of management, if that meant anything other than issuing orders. I have known very good museum directors. But I have also known directors lacking in spirit, courage, judgment, and integrity – and the one thing they had in common was their failure to have any vision.

      Why does a museum exist? What is its purpose? What is it trying to achieve? What are its goals? Nothing is more important for a museum to sort out than its mission. The answers to these questions are to be found in the museum’s values. Add together the mission and the values, project forward, and you identify the museum’s vision.

      These are not just clichés, management-speak jargon, used by different people in different ways, so that none of us is altogether clear about exactly what each of the words means. They capture the essence of the museum, its worth, its social value. They define for museum staff, and for others, exactly what it is they are trying to achieve: a shared sense of purpose. This is of fundamental importance in that museums are (mostly) non-profit organizations, and so they do not have the aim of making money as their ultimate goal.

      Museums are not profit-driven, but value-driven. We are here to deliver services to customers, not profits, nor dividends to shareholders. Our work is not solely about our financial performance, and is, as a consequence, hard to measure and judge. Missions in the non-profit sector are complex, the values are profound, the visions are, or should be, inspiring.

It follows that being clear about a museum’s mission, values, and vision is the primary responsibility of the museum’s governing body, and, therefore, of the museum management team. It is this clarity that enables museums to demonstrate their success, to set themselves apart from others, to offer themselves as worthy of support, to earn and win dedication and commitment from their staff and other interested parties. In this chapter I consider these issues, drawing upon the experience of the corporate (profit-driven) sector as well the non-profit sector, including detailed reference to Tyne and Wear Museums and National Museums Liverpool, so as to throw light upon what museums are for, and how best they might promote their value in a world that is changing at a remarkable speed, and which remains largely ignorant, even skeptical, of the worth of museums. In doing so, it should be pointed out that I have been closely involved in both these institutions and offer this personal view of the internal process of revising mission and vision in order to show how this work can be carried out practically on the ground. I also wish to stress the need for the museum to understand its context before setting out its mission, and the importance of the research necessary for a museum to understand that context.

Mission statements

      There is nothing especially new-fangled about mission statements. The first mission statement, it is often claimed, can be found in the Bible (Genesis 9:7 – “be fruitful and multiply”). The Preamble to the US Constitution is also cited frequently (“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America”).

      Today the world is full of mission statements. Look up “mission statements” on the internet and you will find a mass of references. Here are the first three American business examples from the alphabetical list of the Fortune 500 companies (Missionstatements.com 2011):

      Advanced Auto Parts, Inc.