Museums are like Independent Schools....

The past two week in the museum administration class I'm taking we've been reading about the museum's relationship to the audience -- the museum as an authority but also as accountable to the audience.

Part of the accountability is engaging the audience. Another part is being a trustworthy source. Another part is serving the mission. Another is meeting the needs/expectations of other stakeholders, such as the board or the auditor or the powers that enforce the non-profit laws....

While Nina Simon pushes us to think about revisioning the museum audience as participatory, and while Simon and other people (Grove, Robin Cembalest, Jim Richardson, Daniel Spock, Anderson, and Carol Scott (and Carol Scott) just to name a few), "reshape" thinking about museums as places of shared authority, I found myself thinking the same thing, over and over again:

Running a museum is like running an independent school.

Why do I say this?

Here is a list of "Why a Museum is like an Independent School":

1) Both are non-profit institutions.

2) Both are mission-driven.

3) Both are responsible to multiple stakeholders.

4) Both, in their essence, are learning institutions.

5) Both have retention as a major concern along with the "yield rate" (memberships from admissions for museums and returning students from admits for schools) but neither has all of their program primarily funded by "receipts" (gate receipts/admissions for museums, tuition for schools).

6) As a consequence, both are actively involved in courting additional sources of funding

7) This means that both institutions need
a) additional "profit centers"
(like a summer school or a golf course for a school, and a cafe or a gift shop for a museum)
b) a talented and active development office
c) a head who knows how to
-- schmooze and smile
-- read a balance sheet, an income statement, and other financials
-- hire talented others who can raise money and delegate to them
d) a SWOT analysis performed on a regular basis
e) a "theory of change"
f) an understanding of "backwards planning" on an institutional level
g) an ability to "curriculum plan" (a la Heidi Hayes Jacobs) on an institutional level -- perhaps also known as the "logic model"
h) an ability to develop and use "metrics"
i) an understanding of the "implicit messages" or "hidden curriculum" that the institution sends
(like, the education department with a tiny budget and housed in the museum's basement or toilet door signs that read "Men" and "Ladies" in an all-girl school)
j) the ability to sector the potential markets and constituencies


8) BUT, in both cases, the institutional head needs to be someone who understands the institution and its people (i.e., cannot be just a "numbers-cruncher") because

9) Both museums and schools are creative fields, with their own complex institutional cultures which shapes the people and the perceptions, within and without, of how these institutions work. The CULTURE and the PEOPLE are ignored at the leader's and the institution's peril.

Because creative people are not driven by the same priorities as and do not have their thinking shaped in the same ways as business people/mba's, which is why the creative folk went into the non-profit sector in the first place! The monetary incentive while important is not the primary inducement for a teacher or a docent.

10) Both would benefit from an infusion of Web 2.0 technologies and techniques...

11) But both, as mission-driven institutions with their own histories and with budget limitations, are hard-pressed to implement said technologies but need to do so as a tool to realize the mission goals.

12) Both benefit from a CONSTRUCTIVIST approach to their programmatic design.

13a) Programs that are more like "play" or "leisure" are better received.

13b) The audience of each comprises more than just children.

14) They are products of their community.

15) Both are accountable to their public, yet the audience/student population changes with each generation...

16) And therefore, at the end of the day, both are participatory institutions, because without the people whom the institution and its mission is supposed to serve, there would be no institution. Ergo, both museums and independent schools are service organizations, who must SHARE authority because they are accountable to audiences, whom they must entice to return, with the prospect of a value-added experience.

Running a museum is like running an independent school.

This thought is actually, strangely, liberating for me.

You see, I'm trained to run an independent school.

But I'd rather run a museum.