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.