The Best Museums

Many people ask me, 'what is your favourite museum?' and I always answer, 'mine'. But I have to acknowledge that there are other museums out there that are nearly as good as mine. So in the interests of communal solidarity I thought I would select some that I would invite to join me in the Democratic Republic of Museums (see the Independence Special blog). I've done the list in alphabetic order to avoid accusations of bias and illiteracy.

Beamish Open Air Museum (Stanley, Co. Durham)
Possibly the reason why I now work in the sector, having first visited when it opened in the 1970s. It was the first museum 'experience' I had - by which I mean I wasn't looking at something in a glass case; I was touching, smelling, tasting - 'experiencing' the past. It has continued to grow and develop ever since. No museum can be entirely bad when you get the opportunity to eat fish and chips and ride on a tram etc. This museum is the very definition of 'a day out' and yet in a structured safe enjoyable educational non-museum 'museumy' way.

Coventry Transport Museum (Coventry)
Nobody in their right mind goes to Coventry, right? And especially not another museum that is really just a car park for knackered old vehicles, right? Well go to Coventry and go to this museum. If you never thought of transport as the embodiment of civilisation's development and ingenuity - you will after visiting here. It puts all other 'transport' museums to shame. Engaging, full of stories (and iconic objects). It just keeps getting better.

The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge)
Hugely small and intimately magnificent. A real contradiction of a museum. As befits its great age as a museum the whole of civilisation is in there. A place of revelation, discovery and learning. Think of  it as a version of the British Museum that's shrunk in the wash. i.e. more manageable and with less queues.

The Great North Museum (Newcastle)

Don't tell me the prospect of playing with an interactive model of Hadrian's Wall doesn't tempt you. The British Museum has leant this museum lots of great stuff so that you can think of this as the British Museum with Georgie Accents (whayaye!!). The entrance just blows you away ( I won't spoil the surprise, but it is the best entrance to any museum in the world) and when you are knackered go into the planetarium - mind blowing.

The Horniman (London)
Do you want to see a great natural history collection that isn't in the Natural History Museum? Do you want a museum that knows it has a tourist audience and a local community to serve? Have you a young family? Then the Horniman is the place to go. To put it bluntly they don't just put up a display and forget about it until hell freezes over - it is alive, vibrant and current. Clearly the team there care about their museum and the audience.
PS There's not just natural history there - but it does have a great aquarium.

Manchester Museum (erm... Manchester)
Not another red brick Victorian university museum...ho hum... No! It is alive (quite literally in the case of the vivarium). It is probably the definition of exceeding expectations. It is difficult to describe, but nothing is as you would expect it to be. Please visit it and come out, surprised, refreshed and stimulated. I'm beginning to think university museums are turning into some of the best family friendly intellectually rigorous museums around.

The Mary Rose Museum (Portsmouth)
Having seen this develop over the years, the latest incarnation is astounding (and still not finished at the time of visiting). This has possibly been my best experience in recent memory. From the building, to the displays, to the interactions with volunteers everything works, engages and illuminates. A true sense of place and time is delivered.

The Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford)
It was a toss up between this and the Ashmolean (world's first purpose-built public museum). Why not visit them both - they're practically next door. But the Pitt Rivers is different. It is a treasure trove, it is a museum of a museum. It seems like the whole world is on display and is asking to be discovered. I felt like I was entering an Indiana Jones movie (without the Nazis) frozen in time.

The Royal Albert Memorial Museum (Exeter)
Here's what a great reinterpretation can do for a 'traditional' gothic museum. Somebody there doesn't take themselves too seriously. Although it is a crazily wide-ranging eclectic collection, it has a lightness of tone that keeps your eyebrows raised and a permanent smile on your face. If only more museums could bring fun into the core interpretation in the same way.

SS Great Britain (Bristol)
One big object (another ship) but multiple interpretations and stories. Possibly the scariest adventure awaits for anyone without a head for heights, or fear of being underwater. Multiple award winning attraction and understandably so. I like the fact that its whole story has been articulated in an inclusive way. I left humbled and shaken - not the usual range of emotions felt when leaving a museum.

This list is entirely personal and reflects my prejudices and biases, so if you disagree then you are obviously wrong even though you think you are right. Seek help - or better still visit the museums and know the truth of what I say.

Independence Special

This morning we know the result of the Scottish independence referendum - they bottled it! It was a weird referendum when the independence movement was arguing that the best bits of the union would be preserved by leaving it and the unionist side pushing increased Scottish autonomy by staying in the union. So you could argue that the nationalists won when they lost. A suitable topic for debate in the pub this evening after a few pints.

However, if you want strength of purpose wrapped in romantic wishful thinking then look no further than the museum sector. So is it the time, at last, for museums to also declare independence from government interference and the vicissitudes of the political expediency. In fact we will be better together separately. So I am going to start a petition to create the Democratic Republic of Museums (DRUM).

Out manifesto? Inspired by the SNP (www.snp.org/vision) - with minor improvements

Better Museums
Museums can be more successful. In DRUM's first four year term, we will have record school visits, shorter waiting times in our cafeterias and reduced crime in temporary exhibition spaces. This is only a start. There is so much more we want to achieve for our museums. So much more to do to create the sort of museums we all know they can be. Now is a time for museums to keep moving forward, and if we do, prosperity and accreditation will come.

Wealthier Museums
“Creating and protecting jobs is at the very top of our agenda for the next four years”
In the years ahead DRUM will be working hard to deliver new jobs and new opportunities for museum professionals young and old. As we take the first steps on the road to recovery, our vision for museums is of a sector that increasingly benefits from high-paid and high quality jobs in the emerging initiatives, like digital interactives, WW1 commemorations and collection disposal.

Healthier Museums
“I want you to visit safely and quickly”
Our vision is of a museum service that continues to deliver fast interpretation, as baffling to you as possible. The hard work of our staff over these past years has seen visitor numbers fall to record lows and we have pledged to continue this progress.

Greener Museums
Rural communities that are well served, with a vibrant local museums, and which have new and growing collections. (Unfortunately I'd misunderstood the idea of greener museums and bought industrial quantities of army surplus green paint - any buyers? Anybody?)

Fairer Museums

“My ambition is to deliver continuing reductions in visitors by maintaining the extra police in our museums”
Levels of crime in museums are now at a thirty five year low. However, fear of crime is not falling as quickly as crime levels and so over these next four years I want a particular focus on actions that will not only make you safer, but as importantly will make you feel safer in your local temporary exhibition space.

Smarter Museums
“Museum success will be built on education and the skills of our volunteers.”
My vision is of museums where more and more volunteers are able to fulfil their ambitions and take advantage of new opportunities in their work or in our stores. I want to see a Learning Museum, where volunteers strive to develop new labelling techniques, understand pest control systems and to push the limits of thermohydrographs.

Creative Museums
“Our vision is for museums that nurtures its creative talent and where creativity infuses all aspects of our life and work.”
Museums are blessed with a wealth of creativity and a cultural heritage that makes me proud to be a museum professional. Over the next 5 years, DRUM is determined to build a more vibrant sector with creativity recognised and promoted new support and encouragement to excel in what they do.

Does this all sound wonderful? Of course it does, so sign up as a YES and don't put up with bullying from Westminster and the MA/ACE/AIM etc. and march to the beat of a different DRUM .

The Future Will Be Better Tomorrow

September is a time for resolutions, reflections and lots of other words beginning with 'r'. I have been reflecting since the start of the year on my almost weekly blog on the world of museums (give or take the odd month or relaxing at Her Majesty's pleasure) since I rediscovered the 'lost' first posting outlining my cloudy vision and reposted in 'Ave Atque Vale'.

I set up this blog for a number of reasons:
to question what we understand as heritage through the medium of car parks
to question museum organisational management approaches through the medium of farcical incompetence
to think generally think about museums in new and unreasonable ways
to achieve fame and notoriety by blogging pseudonymously (on reflection I need to have thought that one through a bit more)

After 3 years of tirelessly sacrificing myself in the crucible of 300 words of weekly (should that be weakly) original text, have I been successful? In many ways my blog has been incredibly successful, in other ways a hopeless failure, but undeniably always average. Let us start with the success.

To question what we understand as heritage through the medium of car parks

I can state quite confidently that no other blog in the universe has focused on the heritage of car park art. I have inspired reflection and photographic art submission of car spaces. In other words, success beyond my wildest dreams. I have proved that everything and anything can be of worth if it is looked at unreasonably. My work here is done and there seems little point in continuing the blog. The creation of a museum of car parking spaces seems irrelevant now. I have moved heritage's aesthetic paradigms forward sufficiently to know that, in the fulness of time, the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (at least once it has been re-separated from English Heritage's populist heritage fascism) will have a car parks division. We must give thanks to the Americans who submitted the car park art. By which I mean celebrating the space for what it is, totally uncontextualised, not for what it might be, not for what it contains or as the starting point for a conceptual flight of fancy. Glorious! Perhaps it is time for me to emigrate and find kindred spirits in the land of the free parking.

Marks out of 10 - 11


To question museum organisational management approaches through the medium of farcical incompetence

My gentle mocking of management theories and practice during the course of this blog seems to have backfired spectacularly as my most popular blog post was 'Five Management Secrets I Learnt from My Cat'. In fact this post was 5X more popular than the next most read one. It was designed as a riposte to all gurus expounding on how to run companies/organisations/life more efficiently and more effectively - such generosity in the face of a no doubt modest management fee. It reached the height of absurdity with a serious article that based management development on a pet dog. He cannot have seriously learnt 'loyalty' in business from an animal. Barking! My more generally failed attempts to write farce based management has given me a a renewed respect for the writers of 'Are You Being Served?' It is difficult. It is much easier to be po-faced and pretentious (and probably attracts a higher fee). So I've decided to give up and join the guru game properly. So in 2014 watch out for my DK published dvd, cd and flip up book 'I Can Talk to the Animals: Anthropomorphic Management for Museums'

Marks out of 10 - 1


To think generally think about museums in new and Charles Handy inspired unreasonable ways

As regular readers will know, one of my heroes is Charles Handy. His 1989 book 'The Age of Unreason' is one of the original 'think outside the box' organisation books. He recognised that new technologies, different ways of working and social change meant that leaders of the future had to think about new business models. He called it discontinuous change. He foresaw the internet, outsourcing, social media etc. etc. The fundamental issue that he realised was that the way we communicate with each other was going to change and organisational structures needed to adapt to survive.

Have museums gone through that change of thinking? We have tried to reach new audiences, become more participatory, interactive and engaging. BUT has the core of what a museum is changed? Have we truly seen a radical new way of thinking about the way we preserve and present the past as Handy encouraged us all those years ago. Have we begun to communicate with each other and our constituents all that differently? I don't think so.

We still need a Museum of Unreason. We need to unthink the museum and rebuild it in the light of public sector cuts, economic downturn, an ageing population, digital natives, the I'm a Strictly X Factor Get Me Out of Here Dancing Academy entertainment generation. We cannot preserve the past if we cannot create a sustainable future for it. We can have all the ethics we like, right up until the point that our collections are put up for auction and our lovely listed building is transformed into a hotel.

Thus my blog in its modest little way has taken a contrary view as to what good management is, what heritage is, what a museum could be. From nonsense to good sense one day perhaps?

Marks out of 10 - 2


To achieve fame and notoriety by blogging pseudonymously

Hmmm.

Although convincing myself that I am some sort of Howard Hughes character sitting on the top floor of my museum constantly washing my hands and cackling loudly gives me some sort of solace.

Marks out of 10 - 11


Conclusion - mixed results.

Enough of looking back, As 2014 begins to wind down I have realised the year actually adds up to the theosophical number '7'. Seven days to create the world, seven colours of the spectrum, seven principles of man, seven major chakras in the human body and seven pints of Theakston's Old Peculier is my limit nowadays (as I discovered on New Year's Eve). I've done 70 blogs, 7 of which were any good and sometimes as many as 7 read my blog each week and I feel 70 years old.

It seems then that the omens are good to retire this blog. I hope you have enjoyed meandering along the byways of the museum world with me and look out for the great car park artists of the future. Who knows, I might regenerate like a certain fictional character and resurface as Emeritus Curator of Parking Lots in Uriah, Alabama.

So in the unfathomable words of Dan Quayle, 'the future will be better tomorrow'


Adieu!