Image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Minneapolis_Institute_of_Arts.jpg

Do Museums Matter?Art

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Ignite

June 1, 2015

Rustic

Museums People

Technology 21st Century

StuffSafe

StudiedShared

Thomas Struth “Audience 1 (Galleria Dell Accademia), Florenz”, 2010.51.2, Minneapolis Institute of Arts

“ … experiences of awe redefine the self …”

Connection

Cooperation

Sharing

Giving

From “Why do We Experience Awe?” New York Times, May 22, 2015

Language processing

Language comprehension

Smells

Emotions

Emotional reactions

Memories

Motor cortex Visual Images

Your Brain on Facts Your Brain on Stories

The Magic of Narrative

> USE > TOGETHER > TIME> EXPERIENCE > ART

An invitation

Let’s Make Some AweLet’s Change the WorldTogether

The 3M Art and Technology Award - sponsored by 3M - with support from Accenture

Entries open June 15

@artsmia @dhegleyartsmia.org

Thank you!

“Script”Slide 1I’m honored and excited to be here, although I confess I’m a bit intimidated by the talent in the room. I’m Douglas Hegley, Dir of Media & Tech at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. For the next 5 minutes, I’d like to explore a question with you: Do Museums Matter? I’ll focus on Art Museums, because that’s my arena. At the end, I will extend a special invitation to all of you. Here we go.

Slide 2I’d like to weave in a story, a story about a boy. Born with natural curiosity, perhaps a bit excitable, clearly well-fed, friendly! He’s been on a journey, a winding road, never really traveling in a straight line.

Slide 3The journey starts in the 1960s, generally agreed to be a rather funky era in US history. He grew up in a hippy household, well-meaning but often splintered and sometimes confusing. Still: core values of questioning (always questioning), the importance of curiosity, sharing, and caring.

Slide 4His parents? Dad was a High School art teacher, twice suspended for violating facial hair and dress codes. By the way, those are actual yearbook photos. Mom … well, mom dabbled, but mostly she was mom. She made her own sheet cakes and she even made her own clothes. Hated having her photo taken.

Slide 5Family vacations were fun, if simple. Log cabins, fresh air, cool water, no electricity. Let’s call it “rustic”. And no indoor plumbing. Ah, the good old days. You know, like 1865.

Slide 6And … Art Museums! Special trips to Chicago, to the Art Institute. To a young boy, it was all a bit impenetrable – big, impressive, important, but how to understand it all? Luckily, he had his own private tour guide, always on hand.

Slide 7As puberty set in and those hormones began to rage, art museums got a lot more interesting. Boobs! Balls! Butts! And you’re supposed to look! Awesome!

Slide 8Of course, time moves on. The boy grows up, explores, grad school, stumbles around plenty, eventually gets married, has kids, and ends up as the guy in the suit with the fancy sounding title – in an ART MUSEUM (surprise, surprise). The path was anything but linear, with plenty of mistakes along the way. Such is life, right?

Slide 9But, somehow, life has this way of circling back, or perhaps allowing you to find a place where your favorite things finally seem to come together. One day you wake up and you realize that all the peripatetic wandering and stubbed toes have somehow resulted in a meaningful pursuit!

Slide 10So, museums and digital and people … I am going to argue that – despite a dark potential to isolate and anonymize – technology is also capable of: engagement, delight, surprise, connecting people and ideas, moving you emotionally, and opening doors into new worlds.

Slide 11But, just what IS a museum? All non-profits have mission statements. In fact, they are so uniform that one of our developers has written code that can build one for you. But the MISSION itself isn’t superficial – what it boils down to is the stuff, kept safe, understood, and MOST IMPORTANTLY shared with the public. Without that last bit, a museum is just a dusty warehouse.

Slide 12Perhaps more importantly, museums have the potential to be “cathedrals of awe”. Providing those jaw-dropping moments of “Holy sh*t, that’s amazing!” Stopping people in their tracks, halting time, resonating somewhere deep within.

Slide 13But who cares about awe? Why would awe be important? Well, psychology research has found that people who experience awe in their lives are REDEFINED by it. Think of that. REDEFINED! They are more connected to others, more generous, more caring. They are BETTER PEOPLE. Wow.

Slide 14Furthermore, we don’t have enough awe in our lives. We get all tied up in busy-ness. Fretting, complaining, falling behind, working late, checking email, checking twitter, checking facebook, checking email again .. Argh! Without awe you become: more individualistic, self-absorbed, materialistic, and LONELY. Yeesh!

Slide 15So, do museums matter? HELL YEAH MUSEUMS MATTER! In fact, I think it’s our RESPONSIBILITY to provide AWE to as many people in as many ways and as often as we can!

Slide 16How? We can’t just unlock the vault. We need to be GREAT storytellers. Telling stories is magical! Your brain is lit up when you are engaging with narratives. This leads to deeper emotions, better brain functioning and memory, as well as actual empathetic sensations.

Slide 17At the MIA, we make digital platforms to share our stories. We make our storytelling software open source and free, because we are ALL in this TOGETHER. We provide stories on your device, on our devices in the galleries, on any browser anywhere. We work hard on story crafting, so that it’s not just dull academic palaver, but engaging & interesting. “How is making beer like making babies?” Did you expect that from an art museum?

Slide 18We don’t just push content, we do formal evaluations to see if it matters. What have we found? In a nutshell, people USE the digital devices, TOGETHER – laughing and talking and sharing, they spend MORE TIME with the collection and they remember the EXPERIENCE and ART (not the technology). Cool!

Slide 19My time is winding down, let’s remember why we are here at EyeO. “Converge to Inspire”. I invite you to join us. I hope you are inspired. There is no way that we museum people have it all figured out! I am officially announcing for the first time the Art and Technology Award contest at the MIA. With sponsorship from 3M and support from Accenture, we’re offering a $25k cash prize for the best idea, and then resources to make it happen. We seek an innovative use of digital tech to engage and connect people with art and the MIA.

Slide 20We are finalizing all of the details, entries will open on June 15. Keep an eye on social media, and please spread the word. Let’s make some awe, let’s change the world, and let’s do it together. Thank you!