Museum Archipelago

Dr. Simge Erdogan-O'Connor has dedicated her studies to understanding the unique dynamics and challenges faced by small museums, and is also the Murney Tower Museum’s sole full-time employee.

In this episode, Dr. Erdogan-O'Connor describes the operation of The Murney Tower Museum, discusses the economic models of small museums, and muses on what small museums can teach larger ones.

Image: Murney Tower Museum

Topics and Notes

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:15 Understanding the Landscape of Small Museums
• 02:38 Dr. Simge Erdogan-O'Connor
• 03:00 Murney Tower Museum
• 08:29 Overcoming Challenges with Digital Solutions
• 09:46 What Big Institutions Can Learn from Small Museums
• 09:54 The Power of Local Connections in Small Museums
• 13:20 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖

Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or even email to never miss an episode.

Support Museum Archipelago🏖️

Join the Club for just $2/month.

• Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don’t make it into the main show;
• Archipelago at the Movies 🎟️, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies that take place at museums;
• Logo stickers, pins and other extras, mailed straight to your door;
• A warm feeling knowing you’re supporting the podcast.

Transcript

Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 104. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.

Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner.

Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

Let’s say you sorted every museum on earth in order by the number of yearly visitors.

At one end, with yearly visitor numbers in the millions, would be large, recognizable institutions – places like the British Museum in London. There’s a cluster of these big institutions, but as you go further along the ordered list of museums, the visitor numbers start to drop.

At some point during these declining visitor numbers, you reach small museums. Exactly where in the order you first reach a small museum doesn’t really matter – one definition of small museums from the American Association of State and Local History is simply: “If you think you’re small, you’re small.” You could do the same sort by number of staff members or by operating budget – the effect would be more or less the same. The point is that once you reach the threshold where small museums begin, you still have the vast, vast majority of museums to go.

Simge Erdogan-O'Connor: You just realize how many small museums are there in the world. Unbelievable numbers, right? They're everywhere and they hold such an important space in local cultural landscapes. Even if I dare to say more than large institutions.

The sorting exercise illustrates a long tail effect – each small museum, while attracting fewer visitors individually, collectively hosts an enormous number of visitors. There’s just so many of them. ...

Today, as Vice President of Exhibits and Experiences at the Adventure Science Center in Nashville, Rehnberg continues to refine and expand Exhibitera, which he previously called Constellation. The software is crafted to enable institutions to independently create, manage, and update their interactive exhibits, even between infrequent retrofits. The overarching goal is to make sure that smaller museum’s aren’t “left in the 20th century” or reliant on costly bespoke interactive software solutions.

Exhibitera is used in Fort Worth and Nashville and available to download. In this episode, Rehnberg shares his journey of creating Exhibitera to tackle his own issues, only to discover its broader applicability to numerous museums.

Image: Screenshot from a gallery control panel in Exhibitera

Topics and Notes

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:15 Computer Interactives in Museums
• 01:00 Dr. Morgan Rehnberg
• 01:40 Rehnberg on Cassini
• 02:14 The Adventure Science Center in Nashville
• 03:30 A Summary of Computers in Museums
• 05:00 Solving Your Own Problems
• 06:30 Exhibitera
• 07:45 “A classroom teacher should be able to create a museum exhibit”
• 08:30 Built-In Multi-Language Support
• 09:30 Open Source Exhibit Management
• 10:30 Why Open Source?
• 12:30 Go Try Exhibitera for Your Museum
• 13:20 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖

Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or even email to never miss an episode.

Support Museum Archipelago🏖️

Join the Club for just $2/month.

• Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don’t make it into the main show;
• Archipelago at the Movies 🎟️, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies that take place at museums;
• Logo stickers, pins and other extras, mailed straight to your door;
• A warm feeling knowing you’re supporting the podcast.

Transcript

Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 105. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.

Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner. Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

I’ve spent most of my career building interactive exhibits for museums. These are all visitor-facing: touchscreens for pulling up information or playing games based on the science content, projection walls for displaying moving infographics, and digital signage for rotating through ticket prices or special events.

Dr. Morgan Rehnberg: Well I think most computer interactives in museums are pretty bad. And I don't think that's ...

Barrett Huddleston first encountered these exhibits as a wide-eyed elementary school student in the 1980s, mesmerized by the talking puppets, giant electronic heads, and interactive displays that taught how regulation stifled freedom. Years later, he returned as a tour guide during the museum's final days, maintaining those same animatronics with duct tape and wire cutters, and occasionally being squeezed inside the two-dollar bill to repair Thomas Jefferson.

He joins us to explore this collision of education, ideology, and visitor experience, and how the former museum shapes his own approach to teaching children today.

Cover Image: Children watch audio-animatronic portraits of America's founders, as framed on U.S. currency, sing a song about freedom. [Photograph 2012.201.B0957.0912] hosted by The Gateway to Oklahoma History

Topics and Notes

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:15 Buzludzha Again
• 00:46 Enterprise Square, USA
• 01:32 Barrett Huddleston
• 02:05 The Origins and Purpose of Enterprise Square
• 03:09 The Boom and Bust of Oklahoma's Economy
• 05:47 The Disney Connection and Animatronics
• 07:54 The Decline of Enterprise Square
• 11:42 Huddleston's Reflections on Education
• 13:41 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖

DIVE DEEPER WITH CLUB ARCHIPELAGO 🏖️

Join Club Archipelago

Start with a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime.

• 🎙️Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don't make it into the main show.
• 🎟️ Archipelago at the Movies, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies and other pop culture that reflect the museum world back to us.
• ✨A warm feeling knowing you're helping make this show possible.

Transcript

Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 109. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.

Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner. Museum archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes. So let's get started.

Buzludzha comes up a lot on Museum Archipelago. The monument was built in 1981 to look like a futuristic flying saucer parched high on Bulgarian mountains. Every detail of the visitor experience was designed to impress, to show how Bulgarian communism was the way of the future. Once inside, visitors were treated to an immersive light show, where the mosaics of Marx and Lenin and Bulgarian partisan battles were illuminated at dramatic moments during a pre-recorded narration.

But within a year of Buzludzha welcoming its first guests, all the way across the world in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, another museum opened to promote the exact opposite message. And it even had its own flying saucer connection.

Barrett Huddleston: The framing device of the museum is you have these two alien puppets that crash down in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and they need to get fuel for their spaceship so they can go back. I saw these animatronic puppets and I was like, oh, well this is just like Disney World, except they're talking about having to commodify their space technology so they can buy gold to put in their spaceship so they can get back to their planet or whatever.

This is Barrett Huddleston, who first visited Enterprise Square, USA as an elementary school student in the mid-1980s, and later worked there as a tour guide.

Barrett Huddleston: Hi, my name is Barrett Huddleston. I am an educational enrichment provider. I own a business called Mad Science of Central Oklahoma and Finer Arts of Oklahoma. I travel all over my state and a few others, delivering STEAM based workshops and assemblies to elementary school students. But In this instance, I also worked as a tour guide for Enterprise Square USA f...

And I’m not the only one with fond memories. When the museum announced that the exhibit would not move over to the planned new museum down the street, the public reacted negatively. Dr. Ellen Censky, president and CEO of the MPM, describes the reasons why the museum can’t – and most interestingly shouldn’t – move The Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit. It’s a story involving cherished memories, the distinction between collections and exhibits which isn’t always at the top of visitors’ minds, and public trust.

In this episode, we explore why the Milwaukee Public Museum decided to move (it’s the fourth relocation in its history) and Milwaukee Revealed, the planned new immersive gallery that will be the spiritual successor to The Streets of Old Milwaukee, which will cover a much larger swath of the city’s history. Plus, we get into the meta question of whether museums are outside of the history they are tasked with preserving.

Image: Bartender in Streets of Old Milwaukee at Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Flickr user JeffChristiansen

Topics and Notes

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:15 The Streets of Old Milwaukee’s 2015 Renovation
• 01:17 The Streets of Old Milwaukee’s Visitor Experience
• 03:40 Dr. Ellen Censky, President and CEO of the Milwaukee Public Museum
• 04:10 The Decision to Move the Museum
• 04:45 AAM Accreditation
• 06:21 The Current Museum
• 07:42 Funding the New Museum
• 08:55 Milwaukee Revealed
• 11:14 Milwaukee WTMJ4 from January 11th, 2023
• 11:40 The distinction between collections and exhibits
• 12:45 “We owe future museum goers the opportunity to see something different”
• 13:44 Local Talk Radio Coverage
• 14:07 Museum Designers
• 15:29 Closing Thoughts and the “Next Best Thing”
• 17:00 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖

Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or even email to never miss an episode.

DIVE DEEPER WITH CLUB ARCHIPELAGO 🏖️

Join Club Archipelago

Start with a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime.

• 🎙️Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don't make it into the main show.
• 🎟️Archipelago at the Movies a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies and other pop culture that reflect the museum world back to us.
• ✨A warm feeling, knowing you're helping make this show possible.

Transcript

Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 106. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.

I first learned about the impending closure of the popular The Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum, or MPM, back in 2015. The news came in the form of an email from a family member who had lived in the Milwaukee area her whole life. It was only a year after I started working in the ...

Today, González is executive Director of the Panama Canal Museum, and she’s determined to use the Canal and the struggles over its authority to tell a broader story about the history of Panama – one centered around Panama as a point of connection from pre-Colonial times to the present day.

In this episode, González describes the geographic destiny of the Isthmus of Panama, how America’s ownership of the Canal physically divided the country, and how her team is developing galleries covering Panama’s recent history.

Topics and Notes

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:15 The Panama Canal's Politically Sensitive History
• 01:20 Ana Elizabeth González, Executive Director of the Panama Canal Museum
• 01:35 Opening of the Panama Canal Museum in 1997
• 02:44 Making the Museum About Panama, Not Just The Canal
• 03:10 Geography is Destiny
• 03:30 The Isthmus of Panama as a Point of Connection
• 04:20 A Brief History
• 04:50 French Attempt at a Canal
• 05:10 Treaty of Hay–Bunau-Varilla
• 06:30 Construction of the Canal
• 07:00 "Gold Roll" and "Silver Roll"
• 08:00 Martyrs' Day
• 08:50 Work In Progress: Galleries of Panama's Recent History
• 09:10 Panama's Recent History, Briefly
• 11:10 The Museum's Future
• 11:15 Museum Archipelago's 100th Episode Party 🎉
• 12:20 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖

Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or even email to never miss an episode.

Support Museum Archipelago🏖️

Join the Club for just $2/month.

• Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don’t make it into the main show;
• Archipelago at the Movies 🎟️, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies that take place at museums;
• Logo stickers, pins and other extras, mailed straight to your door;
• A warm feeling knowing you’re supporting the podcast.

Transcript

Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner. Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

When Ana Elizabeth González was growing up in Panama, the history she learned in school about the Panama Canal told a narrow story.

Ana Elizabeth González: The history of the canal that was told here was told in a way that was very politically sensitive at the time. So it didn't want to ruffle any feathers.. it's mentioned in schools, but not in depth.

Up until 1979, the United States fully controlled the Panama Canal and a 5 mile zone on either side, and until 1999, the United States jointly controlled the Canal with Panama. The presence of the United States, and the politics of the Canal, meant that the safest story to tell was one that was mostly focused on the technological feat of building it.

Ana Elizabeth González: The history was very carefully constructed so that it praised the engineering feat of the United States, but it completely ignored the fact that Panama was home to people from 97 different countries...