ROMANIA     2006  

Bucharest

Second Regional Conference
“Our Museum, Our Community: Our Partnership”
September 17-20, 2006

Consultants: Jillian Poole, Pam Myers, Louise Douglas, Klaus Müller and Patrick Gallagher

The Fund for Arts and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe, The Ministry of Culture and Religious Affaires of Romania, and The National Village Museum “Dimitrie Gusti”, Bucharest in cooperation with The Romanian National Museums Network presented a four-day regional museum conference in Bucharest, Romania from September 17—20, 2006. Sixty three museum representatives from 11 countries participated in “Our Museum, Our Community: Our Partnership.”

The conference was designed by The Fund in cooperation with the Ministry and made possible with financial support from the Getty Grant Program. It was the second regional museum conference held by The Fund in Bucharest. Designed to be instrumental in offering joint solutions to cultural institutions in the former Yugoslav countries, Albania, and others in the Balkan region, the conference offered options on ways to help strengthen these institutions in their efforts to serve their civil societies.

Faculty members included: Louise Douglas, general manager of Audience and Programs, National Museum of Australia; Patrick Gallagher, distinguished museum designer and Principal of Gallagher & Associates; Dr. Klaus Müller, a museum and web consultant, Kmlink Museum Consultancy, Amsterdam; Pamela Myers, executive director, The Asheville Art Museum; and Jillian Poole, chief executive officer of The Fund.

Conference participants came from: Romania (42 participants), Albania (two participants), Armenia (three participants), Azerbaijan (four participants), Bosnia and Herzegovina (one participant), Bulgaria (two participants), Georgia (three participants), Macedonia (one participant), Moldova (two participants), Serbia (one participant), and Slovakia (two participants). Funding from the Getty Foundation made possible the attendance of 10 participants who were unable to secure funding from other sources. Participants stayed at Confort Hotel in Otopeni and thus interacted during coffee breaks, lunches, dinners and in four discussion groups that met three times each. Unfortunately the hotel, selected by the Ministry, was far from the center of town and therefore made seeing cultural sights of Bucharest out of the question.

Sessions in this Colloquium used different formats to explore the issues at hand: interactive presentations; working groups; exercises; and plenary sessions. Each day focused on one topic that defined the work of museums today. These included: Purpose, Connecting, Evaluation, and Resources. Participants explored their own situations and those of their colleagues thus gaining skills and information, finding commonalities, and forging connections that we hope may foster long-term collaboration and partnerships.

The conference began on September 17 with welcome and introductory remarks by Dr. Virgil Stefan Nitulescu, State Secretary, Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs. He spoke in detail about the importance of the theme of the conference; the state cannot control all cultural institutions as they belong to the people and must be administered for the benefit of the people. He stressed that museums must be dedicated to their local populations and be close to their local communities. For people who travel, these institutions are the introductory ‘business cards’ of the community because to learn about the history and peoples of a place, visitors go to the museum. Museums in the Balkan area are usually not seen by their communities as belonging to them, but as citizens and museums increasingly understand this, they will get more support from the authorities. Democracy now influences authorities and elections can influence the benefits museums are able to bring to their communities. By being closely connected to their communities, the authorities will be compelled to lend support. Museums are the deposit of the memory of the community and need to meet expectations of that community. As society becomes increasingly more secular, museums may become gathering places for community celebrations, a role they should increasingly adopt. If they do not assume this role, Dr. Nitulescue warned, social dissolution will increase.

The faculty was then introduced and conference details were outlined by the cosponsors, a representative of Romanian Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs and one from Village National Museum “Dimitrie Gusti” which took over facilitating arrangements.

The keynote address was given by Pam Myers, Our Museum, Our Community, Our Partnerships. Under the rubric of PURPOSE, she discussed the changing nature of museums and their publics. Museums are now judged by whether they make a positive impact on how we remember, how we discover and how we imagine. She stressed that they don’t exist, or perhaps don’t really matter, in isolation: They are specific to a time and a place, to the community in which they exist, and to the communities and diverse audiences they serve. The effect they have may be the enhancement of an individual’s life or the cohesion of a social community. Museums must have a clear sense of purpose external to their own operations and be connected meaningfully to their communities. And they must have a clear definition of their role, articulated in a carefully developed mission statement, one which explains why they exist, for whom and with what.

Paula Popoiu – director of The National Village Museum “Dimitrie Gusti”, Bucharest, Romania, discussed how museums in Romania must constantly be expanding the community concept. And they must continually ask themselves ‘Who is the community?’ The Village Museum asks itself, ‘Are they the people of Bucharest? The citizens of Romania and its towns and villages? The visitors? Tourists? To address the broadest community they urge dialogues, particularly among young people, on such widely ranging topics as environment, good and bad plants and drug education.

Angela Dobrescu, project manager at the CORONA Local Initiative Group, Brasov presented several programs created and implemented by the foundation that were coherent with the conference topic. The programs were designed to mediate and reinforce the relationship between museums and community and managed to materialize the idea of the museum as an alternative educational space. The success of these programs created the opportunity for a partnership with the British Council, so that the foundation could extend the area of implementation to other several cities, apart from Braşov (Iaşi, Bucuresti, Sibiu, Sighisoara).

Dragos Neamu, National Museum of Literature and president of the National Network of Romanian Museums, presented the project U.R.M.E (in Romanian: footprints, tracks) – Urban Remembrance and Memory of Europe that proposes the reactivation of the urban memory of seven European cities, through multidisciplinary studies that re-create the cultural atmosphere at different moments in their historical development. Using contemporary methods, URME intends to track urban sites as part of the literary and cultural heritage of the city. The project was presented as a successful experience of accessing European Community’s Funds and also as a potential framework for cooperation between local communities and educational and cultural heritage institutions.

Louise Douglas later presented a developmental case study of the National Museum of Australia, which celebrates Australian social history in a unique way by revealing the stories of ordinary and extraordinary Australians, promoting the exploration of knowledge and ideas, and providing a dynamic forum for discussion and reflection. Her session Relevant to Your Time and Place: Exploring the Land, Nation and People addressed such issues as visitorship, why people come and why they don’t, as well as programming for special populations. Following her presentation, working groups were established to discuss critical issues raised in Ms. Myers’ and Ms. Douglas’ presentations and their pertinence and applicability to museums in the region.

The second day’s topic CONNECTING proved to be most popular. Patrick Gallagher discussed Creating Exhibitions and What to Look For: Design as Communication. He explored how to organize teams and engage creative talents to create outstanding and effective visitor experiences. He demonstrated how design becomes integral to communication. He showed how the visitor experience is shaped by the exhibition plan which also becomes an experience plan. He stressed the importance of storytelling and the uses of different voices to tell this story. The design must allow for visitors who are cruisers and for those who are grazers, and for students who may use a museum quite differently. He talked about critical issues of relating to standards of learning. He showed a variety of slides of museum projects on widely differing topics. And he stressed the importance of community partnership in planning and evaluating exhibitions and even described website use to facilitate this.

His presentation was followed by Q&A then working groups’ sessions to explore Connecting and discuss ways the ideas could be adapted to participants working experiences.

Klaus Muller then presented Connecting Museums online and explored the challenges of the Web as a new venue of exhibiting culture and the consecutive emerging relationships between museums and their visitors. The digital transformation of museums is fundamentally changing traditional ideas of what museums are about, both online and on-site, and our sense of purpose, audience, ownership, collaboration, internal integration, sharing and communication.

Again, this was followed by Q&A and a continuation of working groups on Connecting as the groups developed exhibition outlines to illustrate certain themes. It was gratifying to the faculty that each group developed a story first and indeed some of the stories were very compelling.

Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Müller responded in the plenary to an exemplary exhibition idea in a 30-minute development of storyline and thematic planning. The working groups further investigated the necessary choices and strategies and presented their exhibition plans in the plenary session in the evening.

The faculty also asked the participants to make a list of suggested topics they felt were important and might not be addressed by the faculty in this conference. The topics mentioned grouped under the following five headings and the faculty agreed to address them during sessions in the remaining days:

1. Evaluation of exhibitions and evaluation of the visitor experience
   
2. The challenges of a historical building, including renovations and exhibition expansion
3. Intellectual property rights, copyright demands vs. promotion needs
4. Legislation relating to loans and object mobility
5. Professional staff development

On the third day, the topic was EVALUATION. Pamela Myers and Louise Douglas presented Your Audiences and Your Community: Being Relevant and Gaining a Seat at the Table and guided participants in assessing their situation (purpose, means, collections, ability); identifying stakeholders; defining audiences; testing their assumptions; partnerships and collaboration, and creating an appropriate, engaging and relevant constellation of programs.

Working groups were then created for a Creative Exercise. Each group was given a bag containing a selection of varied everyday objects the faculty had collected from their hotel rooms and purses. This became for each group representative of “their collection”. Groups schematically designed a project identifying community, audience, assumptions, online component, partnerships and collaborations, relevant themes (related to critical issues), and constellation of exhibitions and programs. Participants were asked to consider the evaluation tools discussed during the seminar and apply them to museum visits. The workshop reports were lively, creative and relevant.

During an afternoon trip to four museums in Ploieşti, participants were introduced and briefed by respective museum staff. The widely different museums visited included the History and Archeology County Museum Prahova, Museum of Art, the Clock Museum, and a Merchant House Museum.

The fourth day began with breakout groups preparing their evaluations of the museums they had seen. The faculty were gratified that their lessons were evident and well reflected in the group reports of what they saw, learned and what they would do differently.

Under the topic RESOURCES Jillian Poole discussed Being at the Table and Finding the Support: More Ways to Fundraise. She involved the faculty in a lively presentation on ways in which the group might apply the basic lessons of fundraising to their own situations.

The final afternoon session was cancelled to give participants a chance to visit museums in Bucharest. Because the conference program was tight and the hotel far from the center there had been no time for museums visits in Bucharest. The final dinner was generously given by the Village Museum, a splendid feast on a lovely late summer evening.

Special thanks to the Getty Foundation who made much of this conference possible through their generous financial support.

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Bucharest Conference September 2006 Evaluation Summary

Participants were very enthusiastic about their experiences at this seminar. Many of the positive responses are reflected in the comments below which they gave on the benefits of the seminar:

• Networking
• Practical exercises which will directly impact change in our institution
• Interest in bringing an exhibit from Skopia (works from the Louvre) to Tbilisi, Georgia
• Many opportunities to discuss the following issues with other museum reps:
• How to reach out to the public
• The importance of museum websites and on-line communication
• Importance of internal communication in the museum
• Information on how to build partnership relations with business and public organizations
• Received information about existing literature on museum management and the philosophy of the Museum’s role in modern society
• Explored ways of constituency building
• Received information about new technologies for exhibitions as well as ideas on how to organize exhibits which were not expensive
• Discussed how to develop a new exhibition
• Learned about ways to fundraise for museum activities
• Visited museums in Bucharest

Nineteen evaluations were received, and the responses were tabulated. When asked how to rate the conference, nine respondents said it was “excellent,” eight responded “very good,” and two responded “OK.” One did not respond.

To the question, How would you rate the presenters, 14 answered “excellent” while six responded “very good.”

All said conference objectives were clearly explained.

A good gauge of the value of a conference was whether an attendee would attend another one. Of the respondents, 14 said they would be “very” likely to attend another conference, five said “somewhat” likely, and one said they “might” attend another conference.

Every single attendee said they would recommend a Fund for Arts and Culture seminar. A strong endorsement!

Comments on the areas of the conference which provided the strongest value included connecting, fundraising, and exhibits. Web design was also mentioned.

Suggestions for future seminar topics included networking and museum education. Participants would like a formal introductory session among participants to present their institutions, more informal time with the faculty, more printed materials, would prefer in-town location and time for more informal conversation. In terms of seminar preparation, they suggested developing a better system to get invitations out to the widest audience. They also would have preferred an in-town location.

One comment said that as a result of this seminar “I will try to be more focused on priorities.” A tough challenge in this fast-paced world!

Impact the seminar will have on future work of attendees included:

• I will establish a website using the information I learned
• I will plan a professional development program for my museum staff—particularly in the area of communication with visitors
• All exhibits should be labeled in English
• Work with the Museums of Macedonia and the Louvre to bing an exhibit to Georgia which I learned about in Bucharest

The participants became very enthused about changes they could make in their museums which would not be financially taxing but would have a dramatic impact on their visitors.

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Conference web site

The conference was designed to help participants become aware of ways in which international best practices can address their basic needs and to explore as a group what their future possibilities can be and ways in which they can work together to achieve these. It was hoped that the very process of this exploration might also serve to mitigate some of the barriers created by years of war and hatred.

Electronic discussion information (pdf)

Electronic registration information (pdf)

The Fund's FUNDLINK information
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