Christmas is a time to think of car parking

I usually blog about the absurdity of museums, but at this time of year my thoughts (as well as those of millions of others in the western world) turn to car parking.
Admittedly I am constantly thinking about car parking spaces, but in a campaigning sense. I will not rest until the first real museum of car parking spaces is created. But in a world that lacks car parking space museums car parking is in need of cloudy thinking.
Christmas shopping is a time of good will towards all men, except in the shopping centre car parks when some sort of atavistic free for all exists. This is not because we become bad people but because car parking spaces do not reflect the different needs and character of the human Christmas shopping population.
Planners acknowledge people with disabilities and parents with young children by giving them their own spaces but what about everybody else? The vast majority of us. It would be too painful to deliberately disable ourselves and too criminal to kidnap young children. So what do we do? Here is my suggestion for car park planners across the globe.

• Keep disabled spaces
• Keep parent and child spaces 
• Add parent with parent spaces - for those of us taking aged mother out for her annual shop who then makes you carry around 12 months worth of shopping for the next 4 hours. 
• Add aged parent spaces - for the fiercely independent octogenarian, extra wide spaces with large numbering on posts as far away from everyone else as possible
• Add 'I've forgotten something and just need to pop back for 10 minutes and don't want to spend half an hour finding a space' space. Each with its own warden equipped with a stopwatch.
• Add  slimmer expert parking spaces nearer the shops for regular users and wider novice parking spaces near the aged parent spaces to prevent delays waiting for slow parkers
• Flashing spaces for people who can never find their car
• Males left in car listening to the football spaces - two lots colour coded spaces on opposite sides of the car park to keep fans apart with adjoining pie refreshment cabins
• Childless couple spaces - areas of calm away from crying children where couples can bicker in peace
• Singleton spaces - a chance to meet your future partner in mistletoe shaped spaces
• Reserved spaces that you earn by collecting frequent parker tokens

The result - car parking harmony full of yuletide spirit

Merry Christmas everyone

Museums Rocking in Partnership

Museums have been encouraged to work in partnership lately. Perhaps the news that 70s US rockers Cheap Trick have decided to open a museum/restaurant combo in Chicago is the way forward. See:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/10/us-museum-cheaptrick-idUSTRE7A96YB20111110

Cloudy logic has the Museum of Unreason exploring its accessioned collection of vinyl rock in the store (cardboard box in the attic) and has come up with the future for bands that no longer attract the younger listener and therefore ripe for museumifying in partnership with appropriate organisations.

Those of you of a certain age will now be itching to get on to iTunes to relive those days when you had hair, energy and an unforgivable fashion sense

• AC/DC & AGL (Australia's leading integrated renewable energy company) to create the Powerage Museum
• Can & the Wehrmachtskanister company (the Jerry Can to you and me) to open the Flow Motion Museum
• Deep Purple and the Meteorological Office will predict the Stormbringer Museum
• Black Sabbath and MIND are bound to open the Paranoid Museum
• KISS and BAE Systems must open the Love Gun Museum
• Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Received Pronunciation Society may open the Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd Museum
• The Clash & O2 will have London Calling museum very soon
• Bad Company and any banking organisation can reproduce the Bad Company Museum any time they like

For those of you under 40 this will be meaningless to you (just like museums) - just remember in 30 years time you will be blogging about JLS's partnership with the new space mission to Mars to create the Outta This World exhibition. Thus the Museum of Unreason proves itself to be ahead of its time yet again.

Next week comedy singles and philosophy featuring Bertrand Russell's Authority and the Individual: meditations on 'Ernie the Fastest Milkman in the West'










   

Tweet To Who

It is time to reflect on the Twitter experience.

The Museum of Unreason has been active in social media for 84 days. Why is this significant? 84 days was the record breaking amount of time for a man to spend in space (Jerry Carr on Skylab in case you were wondering). So as we are poised to break his record for time spent in (cyber)space where is the Museum of Unreason in this brave new virtual world?

46 out of 100 must do better
www.tweet.grader.com has marked the museum as 46 out 100 - we fail! Although I'm sure the modern education system does not allow failure, so we can claim alternative success. Further inspection bears this out.

5,902,876th out of 175,000,000 go to the top of the class
The Museum is ranked 5,902,876th is this good? Yes, why?
Twitter claims 175m. accounts. This puts the Museum in the top 5% (3.37%) of users. Success!
There are 56 million people following no-one. The Museum is following 31. Success!
There are 90 million people with zero followers. The Museum has 30 followers. Success!
Over 50% of accounts have 2 followers or fewer. The Museum is therefore in the top 50%. Success!

Best Tweeters starting 84 days ago

Hats of to @austinadderley1 7,795 followers and 10,507 updates (125 tweets a day) (1 every 5 minutes). Epic commitment and he deserves all the followers he gets. This is a 100 out 100 tweeter.

Hats off to @CondeElevator 88,663 followers from only 36 updates (2,462 followers for every tweet) based on things overheard in lifts. Has a museum tried this?

Hats off @andrewtmccarthy 7,982 followers from 390 updates. Alright I've only included him as he is a famous person that started the same day as the museum. The world should be grateful to him for 'Weekend at Bernie's' anyway

Best museum Tweeters

Hats off to @TacomaArtMuseum 5,062 followers for 786 updates. The top museum scoring100 out of 100 using the tweet.grader.com system

Hats off to @smithsonian 535,732 followers from 5,074 updates. epic numbers 100 out of 100

Museum of Unreason Social Media Forward Plan

The Museum of Unreason plans to be the best the museum on Twitter therefore we will have to have 600,000 within another 84 days. How?

We will tweet every 4 minutes, about the things overheard in a museum, whilst making a comic B movie about a dead body.

MA Conference - President's Abba inspired speech (apparently)

My accident prone conference experience meant that I missed the Presidential Address (needless to say a manhole cover and a pair of rollerblades were involved), but I was led to believe her speech was inspired by Abba after which she led the audience in a tribute singalong. So in the noble tradition of historians who accurately describe events at which they were not present and of which they have no knowledge, here is a verbatim transcript of the President's introduction which led to the sing along.

"Fellow conference delegates, since the last general election change has been the name of the game. Nothing is certain; the sector has tipped head over heels and is under attack. Has the museum sector met its Waterloo in the shape of Ed Vaizey? The cuts go on and on and on while he continues to be obsessed with the visitors. I say to the Minister, does your mother know what you're doing? Why not give her a ring. Ring her and I wonder what she will say? I do, I do, I do, I do, I do really think the winner takes it all culture is alien to museums. We do not want to encourage a gimme gimme gimme frenzy for hard pressed heritage organisations.

I can reflect back on the pre-election landscape. The day before you came, unaware that this would be our last summer of certainty, I dared believe museums were making a difference. The eagle of hope soared. As the Rugby Union world cup is being held in New Zealand can we be inspired by their badge of identity, the fern, and do the impossible by surviving the next five years? Is it possible that I have a dream that these good times will return? Or is it now just pub talk nostalgia in the way old friends do when they meet?

Am I a Cassandra? When all is said and done museums are something you can take a chance on. Me? I believe it strongly. I plead with the Minister that museums are super. Trouper that he is, I'm sure if we tell him about the great work museums do he will fight our cause in Government more strongly. As President I hope for all museums that you will be persuaded to lay all your love on. Me? I will work hard to deliver an SOS on behalf of the sector. I won't give up knowing me. Knowing you I am confident you will all back me up on this.

I say to the Minister one of us is here to stay and it is the museum sector. In five years you will be gone and we will be dancing. Queen of culture the V&A will be saying 'so long' Vaizey in a new exhibition titled 'The Departure'."

"So can I ask you all to stand and circle your handbags  and sing along with me.....

'I work all night I work all day to pay the bills I have to pay, ain't it sad.....' "

Taste and decency does not allow me to describe the 70s inspired gyration that followed.

(Prizes available to guess the number of Abba tracks referenced in the speech)

MA Conference Reflections 1 - The Keyhole Speeches

Supreme fortune befell me in the dying days of September. To cut a long story short a botched bank robbery in the High Street enabled me to attend (for the first time) the Museum Association's Annual Conference in Brighton on 3rd-4th October.

It was such an amazing experience that it may take several blogs to do it justice. So I will concentrate on the main keyhole speeches in this blog.

Starting first thing on Monday morning, in my haste to be on time I had a near death experience involving a megaphone and an old age pensioner. I entered the auditorium a little flustered, a little late and a little deaf. Placing myself strategically on the floor I asked my neighbour who was the man speaking on the stage. The whispered reply seemed to be 'Edge Vaguely Sinister Couture' -well at least that explained his tie. But he helped me define that a real museum spent ££££ to get 000s of visitors and did not waste its time engaging with communities, making collections accessible and generally providing 'culture'. What a relief. My ears cleared to discover it was Ed Vaizey our Minister for Culture. Oops

I wanted to attend an ACE briefing which turned out to be less exciting than it sounded. In my haste to be on time I had a  major incident with a canister of helium and a contrabassoon. I entered the auditorium a little flustered, a little late and a little deaf. A dapper gentleman seemed to be suggesting you would be popular if you had a designated collection. I asked my neighbour who he was. The whispered reply seemed to be 'Deadly Swine' which I thought was a little unfair. Anyway I took his advice and stuck a label to my forehead saying 'I have a designated collection' to see if it would make me more popular (for some reason people tend to avoid me). I abandoned this idea after a slightly frenzied encounter in a toilet cubicle with the Head of Service from a neighbouring district. During this incident I discovered the dapper gent in question was Hedley Swain Director of Museums and Renaissance for the Arts Council. Oops

It was going well so far. In my haste to be on time for the next speech I had a  minor scrape with a shopping trolley and a pneumatic drill. I entered the auditorium a little flustered, a little late and a little deaf. My neighbour on the floor informed me it was a Trim Ship from the Garden of Eden (surely its marketing campaign should say 'World's Oldest Museum'). But I was in time to hear that we should 'fake rusks'. I think that constitutes child abuse. However he seemed to go down well so I suggested to my boss that we are only selling plastic food on our children's menu from now on.  Much later I now realise it was Tim Smit from the Eden Project who wanted museums to 'take risks'. Oops

The final keyhole intrigued me as it was to be from the first green imp in Brighton (what colour are they usually?). In my haste to be on time I got a little confused with a tube of superglue and a cd of the speeches of the Reverend Ian Paisley. I entered the auditorium a little flustered, a little late and a little deaf. Confusion arose as the imp was taller and whiter than I had presumed (note to self - must attend more equality and diversity training). I must have really mis-heard this time when the imp mischievously expressed more concern for museums and the planet in general than all the humans I had mis-heard previously. Demon logic? No longer will I indulge in cloudy thinking I will now pursue 'demon logic'.

My report back to the boss after the conference has suddenly left me on extended gardening leave. This will give me much more time to reflect on the rest of the conference for next time.

Guarantee yourself 'Major Grant' funding

This week has seen much excitement at the higher echelons of the museum world in England. The Arts Council will take over funding of museums from 1st October and they have announced the criteria for major museum grants. Excited conversations are taking place behind closed doors and the usual toilet reading matter of the Beano and/or Jackie has been temporarily replaced by the newly published 'Culture, knowledge and understanding; great museums and libraries for everyone' (like the Beano but without the pictures or insight).

To save everyone the trouble I give you the cloudy guide to a successful major grant bid.

Firstly don't waste time, are you a big museum service? There are lots of measurements for this, don't worry about looking these up, just ask the next visitor that comes through the door, and if they emit an involuntary laugh you are not a big service and you should stop worrying now. If you really want more disappointment ring up the head of the nearest large museum and ask if they will consider you as part of a consortium bid, they will also emit an involuntary laugh before putting the phone down on you.

So you've passed the mirth test, that means your visitors are serious, therefore you are a proper museum and you will be expected to bid.

The Arts Council has 5 goals and you are only expected to match 2
1. Excellence
2. Audiences
3. Resilience
4. Leadership
5. Children

You will put in a good application so you will cover all 5.
1. Excellence - use the word 'quality' in every other sentence, interspersed with 'standards'. Use the phrase 'quality standards' every paragraph. For example, 'the recent sacking of all our curators has enabled us to reach new quality standards of collection care'.
2. Audiences - (just to remind you, these are the people who get in the way of you doing your job properly) - this time use 'diversity' in every sentence (twice if you can manage it) with the word 'engagement' liberally scattered throughout. For example, 'the incredible diversity of our audience is so diverse that our engagement with them has been incredibly engaging'. 
3. Resilience - in other words say you are not going out of business. This is a lie. Every museum is financially unsound with unrealistic budgets. You avoid this tricky problem by immediately sacking the accountant and shredding the business plan. Point out that all the other museums are lying and pick holes in their business plans whilst say you've made large cuts in none essential services that the others have failed to do. (It may be advisable to keep a small cash kitty hidden, just in case the plan backfires and you need to go on a sudden holiday to Bolivia).
4. Leadership - now play the 'partnership' card, firstly refuse offers from other museums to create and consortium (see above, be sure to laugh). Then put in words like 'disseminate', 'support' and 'develop' for the miserable little museums that clutter up your region. Not being part of the bid they cannot contradict any of this.
5. Children - time to announce the clincher - free museum object with every McDonald's Happy Meal

Millions of £££ will now be winging its way to your museum. You will now have 3 years to come up with excuses, or find a new career.

Bloggling: Can Museums Help Tech?

Museums are beginning to engage with 21st Century technology in the same way they failed to embrace the 20th Century. Naturally this leap is causing some problems. What do we do with social media?

As befits one of the world's great museums of the world the Smithsonian has been leading the way. They are fortunate in that they can have a Head of Mobile Strategy. At the other end of the scale we have a member of staff who knows what a smart phone is. So we need to learn from the big boys.

The Smithsonian's offering is mind bloggling (my new word for mind-boggling blogging) mobile & crowdsourcing apps, but also visual recognition and augmented reality systems.

What can be done on a fraction of the budget and yet still be up with the times? Cloudy thinking is needed.

Museums traditionally over time have redefined themselves to reflect the world around them. A pro active museum in the 21st Century should redefine the world to match the museums world. The world for most museums = no staff, no money. So get a grip of new technology by redefining what it is.

New museum definitions for social media

1. Facebook = a book with picture of the author on the front
2. Twitter = pre-pubescent conversation

3. Mobile app or application = using a caravan
4. Crowdsourcing = get the public to your work for you
5. Visual recognition = not ignoring people you know
6. Augmented reality = just make it bigger

Having redefined the digital world its time to put into practice the new museum digital agenda. Here is the alternative manifesto for the digital world for museums with no money.

1. Write a guide to the museum, but instead of a glossy publication do a cheap photocopy with a picture of you on the front, fold it carefully and sit on it. The boss comes and says we should be on Facebook you can legitimately say 'I'm on top of it sir/madam/you cretin'* (*delete as appropriate for the set of values inherent in your organisation)
2. Record the next school group that comes through your door and put it on a sound loop and play it regularly. The boss comes in and says we should be tweeting (see 1 for appropriate response).
3. Tell your boss you need to be given time to work on a mobile app then hire a caravan and go on holiday to the seaside.
4. Before leaving ask the next customer to mind the desk for you while you pop out (its up to you whether you mention the seaside trip). If the cash till is empty and the customer gone by the time you return you can write a report on the problems of community engagement and blame the boss.
5. Say good morning to the boss for the first time and actually use his/her real name (look it up and practice it beforehand).
6. Advertise the new augmented reality exhibition and charge visitors for magnifying glasses.


You are now offering the same facilities as the Smithsonian (make sure that goes into the marketing leaflet) at a fraction of the cost for a fraction of the audience.

Battleship Becomes Museum: what are the possibilities?

In the long tradition of ship museums the US battleship Iowa is to become a museum in Los Angeles.

The UK has many warship museums (HMS Victory, Mary Rose, Warrior, Belfast). The Iowa, although even older than me, was still an operating warship until relatively recently. Controversy has inevitably followed "a peace-loving city was no place for a battleship."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/07/MNNJ1L1F7R.DTL#ixzz1XXhojwG7
This begs the question, should the battleship go to a war-loving city? This obviously narrows the field slightly. Most city authorities actually try and promote safety along with their cultural offerings. The idea of 'safe' heritage is perhaps a topic for a future blog. However, back to the problem at hand, where is the ideal place for a battleship?

A war-loving city near the sea? How about Mogadishu? Its on the coast and probably needs a boost to its tourist economy and culturally there are thin pickings there. The business plan clearly cannot rely on tourism to fund it, the tourist economy can grow (well it cannot get any smaller), so the battleship needs to earn its keep in some other way.

Somalia has a little local difficulty with pirates so there are two options.
1. The battleship can have a practical use against local pirates. Much bigger guns should make it a one-sided contest
2. The battleship can have a practical use for local pirates. Much bigger guns and greater range will make them much more effective.

Which will generate more income? Defeating pirates and increasing tourism? Or encouraging piracy and encourage a culture of philanthropy from newly wealthy pirate entrepreneurs?

I don't have the answer, but look out for the privately funded National Museum of Piracy coming to a war-loving city nowhere near you (if you're lucky).

Justin Bieber Car Crash - Heritage Implications

Some of you may be aware that the "teenage pop sensation" Justin Beiber has been in the news lately having survived a car crash in a Ferrari. There was some initial speculation that he was critically injured or worse still, dead. But it seems all parties involved were unhurt and that can only be a good thing.

I've not heard any of Beiber's music personally but nothing can be so bad as to wish ill fortune upon a person (with the possible exception of Jedward). However I digress.

Closer investigation of this sensational story reveals that the Ferrari and a Honda Civic bumped in a car park the result of which according to the police, "Neither cars suffered any visible damage." So, you may think, its just some news creation by the media pandering to our need for a celebrity culture fix. In which case you miss the point entirely.

What is upsetting is the total lack of coverage for the car parking space involved. As a passionate, ok obsessive, promoter of car parking space heritage - the wanton lack of interest in the location of the incident is indecent. The only description of the location I could find was, 'underground parking structure.' This sounds a glamorous and dangerously sexy car park. So a pop star, a car crash and a sexy car park is the ideal opportunity to promote the importance of car parking heritage. As it is in the USA it should be made a national park NOW. A whole new sub category of 'national car park' could be created in the wake of this.

I realise I may be ahead of public opinion in this matter, but if you ignore me just think ahead. When the oil runs out and cars are consigned to history and boring stories told by grandfathers, car parks will pulled down, destroyed and built over in their thousands without a murmur of protest. You have been warned. So start the 'Save the Bieber space' campaign now. Sign up and make a difference.

Income Generation and Car Parking Museums

Recent figures showing that car parks generate tens of millions of ££s for local councils. E.G.

Norfolk and Waveney councils receive £11m in parking charges

see http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/norfolk_and_waveney_councils_receive_11m_in_parking_charges_1_1007197

It appears that only a fraction of this income is spent on the maintenance of the car parks.

The Museum of Unreason therefore proposes that every council renames each one as 'The [insert name here] Car Park Museum'. The income will then go into the cultural budget and subsidise the non-profit making museums owned by the councils. ERGO there will never be any need to close a public museum ever again. Simple.

Car Park for Jewish Worshippers Planned on Palestinian Land in East Jerusalem

See my earlier blog 'It's All in the Name' - I had hoped car parking may be one way of bringing the communities together in this troubled part of the world. Alas, and with a heavy heart I am proved wrong.

Once completed I will unofficially name it 'The Car Park of Tolerance''

More details are available here.

http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/topics/jerusalem/3783-car-park-for-jewish-worshippers-planned-on-palestinian-land-in-east-jerusalem-

Time for the Ecomuseum Museum?

Another week another museum closure. Another week another book shop closes. Another week in the gradual erosion of our cultural assets. This must stop.

What happened in the wake of the collapse of our industrial base? Industrial museums. Open air museums began to celebrate a past that had gone forever. The problem now is that museums are closing as part of a general cultural contraction.

It seems that the only place where there is an expansion in museums is China where the ecomuseum concept is buoyant. What is an ecomuseum?

"An Ecomuseum is a dynamic way in which communities preserve, interpret, and manage their heritage for a sustainable development." Trento declaration 2004

Now is the time for 'The Ecomuseum of the Late Twentieth Century' in the UK.

Does anyone know of a High Street where a book shop still exists, perhaps next to a record/music shop, next to a butchers, next to  a publicly run museum, next to a post office? Need I go on. That is prime real estate for an ecomuseum. The Museum of Unreason will happily engage the inhabitants to let them know they are now all museum curators of their own ecomuseum and as such they must:

1. Go to a shop to buy things - buying on line is forbidden
2. Shopping must be done on foot, a bicycle is allowed, in line roller blades are not.
3. Supermarket shopping is banned (make sure your grandchildren are able to ask the question, "What was a Walmart?")
4. Buy music in vinyl if you they are over 40, under 40 cds are allowed
5. Read one book a month, a book is something made of paper that you turn pages of text to see what happens next
6. Send letters and receive post delivered by the Royal Mail (or if in USA send and receive mail delivered by the Postal Service)
7. Go to a phone box to make a call if you need to contact somebody when outside your house
8. Know the first name of your grocer, baker, butcher etc.

The High Street museum can then concentrate on what it does best - animatronic dinosaurs and tenuous links to Jane Austen TV adaptations.

Keeping Traditional Skills Alive – Is It Safe?

A recent newspaper article got me thinking about the museum’s role in preserving traditional skills. Commendably museums and heritage sites have encouraged the conservation of traditional arts and crafts: dry stonewalling, thatching, hedge laying... I could go on.

At the same time museums have often been accused of indulging in safe heritage, making the past easy to digest for audiences. The process of selection goes on when selecting objects, perhaps less consciously museums are also selecting safe traditions and skills to preserve. Which brings me to the newspaper article.

Reading the Daily Telegraph on 11^th August 2011. I appreciate this may be seen as an act of rebellion in itself in a liberal profession and I’d like to think a deliberate choice on my part (in reality the paper shop was sold out of The Guardian). However, I digress. The paper showcased the training (for a price) to fly a Spitfire. Not just any training, but the actual combat training RAF pilots would have got in 1940 before being let loose on the Luftwaffe.

Naturally safe heritage being what it is, the trainees are then not allowed to shoot down any German planes which have the temerity to cross the Straits of Dover. This is because we are not at war with the Germans; we just bask in the glow of having defeated Hitler and refuse to move on.

However, in keeping with the new economics of museums how can they earn money and keep skills alive that may have relevance today. A museum declaring war on a foreign country is not feasible, although I admit I haven’t seen the forward plan for the Imperial War Museum.

The simple, cloudy and unreasonable solution is torture.

Many regimes, including our own fair government, have indulged in what might be regarded by more sensitive souls (Guardian readers rather than Telegraph readers) as infringements of human rights. Many museums have collections that point to a past, which suggested this kind of activity was relatively common. Ask yourself, have you used your stocks/scolds bridle/iron maiden/rack  (delete as applicable) lately – do you even know how to use it properly?

An email to the intelligence agency of your choice offering your equipment for use (for suitable remuneration) will increase access to your collections, improve the income generation of your collections, keep traditional torture methods alive by getting dubious confessions the old fashioned way.

In the immortal words of the torture scene in Marathon Man the phrase ‘Is it safe?’ now need not always be applied to museum and that can only be a good thing.

How I Wish This Were True

Paleoanthropology Division 

Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled “211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid skull.” We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents “conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago.” Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the “Malibu Barbie”. It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to it’s modern origin:

1. The material is moulded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilised bone.
2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.
3. The dentition pattern evident on the “skull” is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the “ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams” you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time. This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, let us say that:
   
   1. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.
   2. Clams don’t have teeth.

It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in it’s normal operation, and partly due to carbon dating’s notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results. Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation’s Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name “Australopithecus spiff-arino.” Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn’t really sound like it might be Latin.

However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your back yard. We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation’s capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the “trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix” that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.

Yours in Science,

Harvey Rowe

Curator, Antiquities 

http://www.bestcleanfunnyjokes.info/index.php/site/comments/smithsonian_museum_rejection_letter/

Museum of Car Parking Spaces

A complete lack of demand should never get in the way of creating a new museum. The world needs more museums. Lets get together and create the Museum of Car Parking Spaces. Please visit the museum and submit your favourite car parking spaces and develop a world collection. They can be unusual ones, favourite ones, ones typical of an area - or any use of space by a car. This will enable us to build up a rare and beautiful collection of the world's hidden heritage.
https://sites.google.com/site/​museumofcarparkingspaces

Would you visit movie museums?

• The Godfather Museum - A visit you can't refuse 
• The Terminator Museum - You'll be back 
• The Gone With the Wind Museum - You won't give a damn, but tomorrow is another day 
• The Psycho Museum - Take your best friend and mother 
• The Field of Dreams Museum - If they build it you'll come 
• The E.T. Museum - Make sure your family don't leave without you 
• The Wizard of Oz Museum - Visit here and you'll realise there's no place like home 
• The Taxi Driver Museum - You visitin'? 'Cos I see nobody else visitin'! 

Mishandling Collections

Museums nowadays are faced with two pressures (among many).

• How do we increase visitor numbers? 
• How do we increase access to collections?  

Its important to remember that the public only ever see 10% of the collection a museum holds, and, although the audience has increased through specific project funding to identify non-visiting communities, there has not been a sustained general increase in museum visitors?

Lots of money has been thrown at the problem, but what is really needed is some cloudy thinking.  In the Museum of Unreason we can rationalise the collections, increase the access and visitor numbers in one fell swoop without spending a penny.

Museum ethics do not encourage the selling of collections, but a lot of ‘stuff’ in the stores is of little monetary value anyway. Some museums rationalise their stores and create handling collections for schools for their less important objects. This has more promise but needs cloudy development.  Add to this the research that shows women make the cultural decisions in the household. So unless you are lucky to be a military/railway/engineering museum how do you attract that great lost audience - the working class male? The Museum of Unreason has the answer.

The solution - develop a mishandling collection.

      Invite the public to come up with interesting ways to mishandle objects with the ultimate aim of destruction. The winner gets to do it. Exploiting inherent male violence.
2.     If you’ve go a lot of one type of object, invite teams to compete to destroy objects against the clock and award the Unreasonable Object Care Trophy to the winners. This exploits inherent male competitiveness.
3.     If other museums take this up get your friends groups to compete against each other. Men like team games.
4.     Establish trails around the museum  ‘supermarket sweep’ meets ‘demolition derby’ – tickets could be sold to watch it. Fun for all the family.

Crazy you may say, BUT think of the benefits to the museum.

      More storage space – admit it your museum stores are crammed full.
2.     Suddenly 10% of collection on display becomes 50% by having reduced the number of items in store, thus giving increased access to collections.
3.     A general increase in visitor numbers, with men becoming empowered cultural consumers
4.     Your complacent curators are now on their toes with their research to make sure they keep the important stuff from destruction.
5.     Your exhibits are now more valuable because the objects in them are now rarer.
6.     Your acquisitions and disposals policy can be re-written to accept any old rubbish, as long the donor is made aware it might go into a handling collection. So when your front of house staff are offered the contents of granny’s attic it is accepted with glee.

          

           Remember, if you are still unsure, there is no such thing as bad publicity.

We Work Hard for the Money

A barrister, a doctor and a museum curator were discussing the relative merits of having a wife or a mistress.

The barrister says: "Certainly a mistress is better. If you have a wife and want a divorce, there are a number of complex legal problems to resolve and it will probably be very expensive."

The doctor says: "It's better to have a wife because the sense of security and wellbeing lowers your stress and your blood pressure and is good for your health."

The museum curator says: "You're both wrong. It's best to have both so that when your wife thinks you're with your mistress, and your mistress thinks you're with your wife -- you can go to the museum and accession some more objects.

Its All in the Name

Voice of America News July 13, 2011

Israel Approves Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance Project Despite Muslim Objections

Muslims groups have objected to the Museum of Tolerance being built on an ancient burial site. Is it the covering of the site, or the museum that’s the problem? Apparently part of the site was built over by a car park without objections. So it must be the museum. Museums always have a tricky task of presenting the past in places of conflict, they can help the situation but can also make things worse. In this case it doesn’t appear to be bringing both sides together. Can cloudy thinking help?

Is it the name? Is ‘Tolerance’ part of the problem? I bet the Muslim community has a different name for it.  Companies change their names when there is a commercial imperative, so why not a museum? Instantly wipe away the baggage of years of unwanted history and start again? Cloudy thinking recommends a wholesale radical museum renaming programme.

But, firstly lets fix the Arab/Israeli conflict. If a car park is something both sides can accept. Ergo ‘The Car Park Museum’ solves the problem. It will also be a world first, something both sides can share equally (as long as spaces aren’t reserved) and be a celebration of togetherness. It may not end years of conflict, but in future academics may see this as the turning point, and really clever academics will invent ‘The Car Park Theory of Social Integration’ and make a fortune – but you heard it here first.

Cloudy thinking suggests taking it one step further and make it a museum of car park spaces. Visitors will get to drive their car over a museum artifact. What museum visitor doesn’t secretly want to do this? Or any museum curator for that matter. OK, so there may be a few access versus conservation issues but what museum doesn’t have those?

In gentle old Blighty can the same strategy be applied? The V&A took tentative steps towards this a few years ago with their advert ‘An Ace Caff With Quite A Nice Museum Attached’. Should they have gone further and actually changed the name of the museum to that as well? In these times of commercial imperitves its an even better name now.

Visit the UK’s premier national museum, the British Museum. Go inside and you’ll struggle to find anything British. It is a world museum so why not call it that? However, this may lead to more requests from countries to have their stuff back appropriated in the days of Empire. If this conflict can’t be avoided address it head on – rename it ‘The Museum of Stuff That is Ours Now’. The Museum of Unreason realizes this is not a snappy title but seems to confront a pressing issue for all museums with world collections. Surely it will stop countries unreasonably asking for their stuff back, but it may actually increase conflict.

Cloudy thinking recommends the reduction of conflict rather than the opposite. So can this diaspora of collections around the world be condensed into an abstract noun? How about the ‘Museums of Tolerance’? That might work, but if not, they can always start building car parks.

Health Warning

If you take any of the views expressed in this blog seriously then you should really think about changing your name as well.