Community Engagement- The National Palace Museum(Taiwan) as an example

In light of the strategies we talked about in class and seen in museums and sites, I think it would be interesting to look at how museums in other countries are carrying out community engagements. The examples we have seen and strategies we talked about were mainly in developing new visitors from various communities. By means such as developing convenient access for different communities or invite community members to involve in exhibition development. What about strategies to make an existing community improve their museum visit experience? The National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan will be an example for this situation. The discussion is based on the 2011 National Palace Museum Annual Report.

As the major museum in Taiwan, The National Palace Museum had a brilliant collection of chinese artifacts. In the 1960s, in contrast of the communist Mainland China, the NPM in Taiwan under the rule of a right wing government opened with its representative collection of Chinese Artifact. As basically the only accessible Chinese arts collection, the NPM acted as the major resource of Chinese art history research at the time. The significance of its selective but comprehensive collection in Chinese arts remains recognized today. Recently, the components of potential audiences is experiencing a fundamental change. With the government policy canceling the restrictions posed upon tourists from Mainland China, the visitor number in NPM multiplies all of a sudden. Instead of considering the needs for communities and making efforts to engage them into museum visits, the NPM is facing a huge amount of new visitors from a new community that had it had never encountered before.

Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan often take the NPM as a must-seen tourist sight. Many of the tourists are not museum goers, to them, visiting NPM is merely one of the many stops in their fixed touring schedule designed by the travel agency. However, this new community is becoming the largest portion of visitors in the NPM. Thus, the NPM is currently dealing with problems such as large amount of visitors in specific galleries, noise, viewing order...etc. The most urgent issue will be maintaining the quality of visiting experience to all visitors, on the base of that can the NPM talk more about giving a rewarding museum visit experience.     

     

Below are the strategies the NPM is taking to cope with the situation:

• Extend opening hours

In 2010, 3,440,000 people visited the Museum. In 2011, 3,840,000 people visited. (According to the visitor number statistic chart, they main increase of visitors are from Mainland China.

) To alleviate the crowds and to improve the visiting experience, starting July 1, 2010, the NPM prolonged its opening hours. The museum now opens at 8:30 am (instead of 9:00 am) and closes at 6:30 pm (instead of 5:00 pm). 

• Cooperation between organizations

The NPM also maintains close contact with the Tourism Bureau. Any information regarding the Museum’s exhibitions or visitation can be relayed to tour group staff through e-mail. Short films promoting the Museum are also sent to tour groups and tour guides to show on buses. The Museum will continue working with the Tourism Bureau to strengthen the tour guide training process to ensure the quality of each visitor’s visit. (NPM annual report, 2011, p. 69 )

• Order Management in Exhibition Halls

•Circulation route for each gallery are planned and implemented to guide visitors.

•To improve the quality of each viewer's visit, a counting system was installed to monitor the visitor flow in and out of the Main Exhibition Hall.

•Hand-held signs by gallery assistants subtly instruct visitors to lower their voice and avoid verbal or physical conflicts.

•To improve the quality of visit, measures were taken to resolve the noise issue of group visitors.

•To maintain orderliness of the exhibition “Landscape Reunited: Huang Gongwang and ‘Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains,’” the number of viewers in the exhibition at one time was limited to 20. This allowed the Museum to appropriately manage the visitors and to enhance the viewing quality.

It is clear that order management is a major issue in dealing with this community. The NPM is also making efforts to reach other organizations to deal with the situation. In all, I think the positive attitude to embrace this the new community is encouraging. 

Other than the passive community engagement above, the NPM has its outreach programes aiming different communities in Taiwan. Here are some examples:

• When Young People Meet the NPM: The Saturday Night at the NPM

The event was sponsored by the Dinxin International Group

and the Wei-chuan Foods Corp. A total of 52 shows were presented this year, with 53,955 attendants. Another 2 shows were put on during the Lunar New Year and Lantern Festival, with 1,000 attendants.

• New Melody from the NPM

New Melody from the National Palace Museum is held in the Wenhuitang Auditorium every Wednesday between 2:30 pm and 4:00 pm. Starting From July 2009, Lanting Kun Opera Troupe, Taipei Li-yuan Chinese Opera Theater, the Comedians Workshop, and the Chinese Opera Troupe of National Taiwan College of Performing Arts have performed at the NPM. From April to June 2011, the NPM extended its “Fragrance Fills the Courtyard: Chinese Flower Paintings through the Ages” and invited the Taipei KunQu Society to present the late Ming dynasty playwright “The Peony Pavilion.” From July to September 2011, GuoGuang Opera Company presented the “Legend of the White Snake.” From October to December 2011, to coincide with the exhibition, “Emperor Kangxi and the Sun King Louis XIV: Sino-Franco Encounters in Arts and Culture,” the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts featured three plays performed during Emperor Kangxi’s 60th birthday: “Drunken Rage in the Temple of Wutai Mountain,” “The West Chamber – Temple Encounter,” and “Guan Yu’s Daring Escape.” From July 2008 to December 2011, a total of 93 shows were shown, attracting 16,624 attendees.

• National Treasures Ballot

From September 23 to November 22, 2011, the“National Treasures Grand Selection: Splendid Treasures Online Ballot” was held simultaneously with the special exhibition“Splendid Treasures: A Hundred Masterpieces of the National Palace Museum on Parade.”Everyone was welcomed to vote online for their favorite national treasure in the NPM. The online ballot was combined with the physical exhibition to showcase the most representative Museum artifacts. Web links were provided to show related information regarding the artifacts. While voters were selecting their favorite objects, they could learn more about the NPM’s artifacts. The result of the ballot will be used planning the route of student group tours, developing lesson plans for teachers, in hopes of promoting the Museum’s artifacts, enhancing the cooperation with schools on all levels, and increasing the cultural value of the Museum’s collections.

• The Good Neighbor Program

To promote the Museum’s educational outreach, in 2011, the Museum invited local communities to appreciate “The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece,” “Celebration by Marc Chagall” and “Emperor Kangxi and the Sun King Louis XIV: Sino-Franco Encounters in Arts and Culture.” Guided tours were available to help them understand the artifacts better. This year, Linxi, Xishan, Cuishan, and Fulin village were invited. The program received enthusiastic remarks and responses from the residents.

With these community outreach programes, the citizen visiting number did increase from 1,443,204 to 1,643,200 in three years. However, the number of Mainland Chinese visitors were in almost the same number, wich lead the focus back to the necessity to successfully engage them without disturbing other visitors‘ visiting experiences. 

There are many more informations in the annual report, I think it is a very well organized material for us to have a glance of what this museum is doing. The pictures inside are definitely worth a look :)

ArtLab+

            This week, I visited the Smithsonian’s ArtLab at its location in the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden. ArtLab is a digital media studio for teens. It is a space where teens can partner with mentors, be creative, and develop marketable skills for the future. ArtLab is open Monday through Friday from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm.  These hours make it convenient for teens to go to ArtLab after school.  For the first two hours, ArtLab has Open Studio where the teens can take advantage of the space and materials in the ways that they deem fitting. The last two hours consists of Artist Studio, which includes more structured workshops on video/animation, photo/design, audio, and critical reviews.

What ArtLab offers is truly unique in terms of museums partnerships with school-aged children. This uniqueness comes with its own set of challenges. To gain a better understanding of ArtLab, I observed an Open Studio hour and spoke with Amy Homma, ArtLab educator.  

My initial observations of ArtLab consisted of watching the Open Studio portion of the day. The Open Studio is basically a drop-in hour for local teens involved in ArtLab. The teens can work on projects, explore new technology, and discover things that interest them. For most of the hour that I observed, the majority of teens were playing Xbox and Playstation video games.  While playing video games may not seem like the best way to build relationships with mentors, create new things, or develop new skills, the teens were freely choosing how they wanted to engage in the space, which is the theme of Open Studio. They were also developing social skills and mediating any conflicts that occurred over which game to play or length of playing time. In addition, the teens are being exposed to technology that they may not have access to at home or school.

One or two were working on projects of their choice. These students were harder to observe. They were working quietly by themselves drawing, working on computer graphics, or practicing in the sound studio. Even for the students working on projects, free choice was something that defined their experience. The overall atmosphere of the Open Studio was comfortable and the teens were encouraged to express themselves freely.

After my observations, I spoke to Amy Homma about ArtLab. We discussed the things ArtLab has to offer, as well as the challenges that face ArtLab, and ArtLab’s ability to connect school-aged children to museums. Ms. Homma explained that the mentors were of key importance when trying to engage the teens. She said that the building the mentor relationship can be  a “slow process”. But the process allows for a “tailored experience” for both the mentor and the teen. The relationship between the mentor and teen is built upon the foundation of personally knowing each other and then expands to a “fun, productive, rewarding” relationship where the teens are supported in “self directed learning”.

            According to Ms. Homma, in addition to the mentors, ArtLab also offers a space that is truly unique. It is through this space that ArtLab is able to fulfill their mission and engage the teen audience. ArtLab offers a space that is full of choice and self-direction, while providing the supporting structure to allow the teens to be productive, creative, and ultimately be rewarded for their work.  ArtLab provides a space where the focus is not on the “output” but rather on the “process”.

            While the mentors, space, and mission are the defining features of ArtLab, they are also the things that pose the greatest challenges. Offering the correct mixture of support and freedom is what Ms. Homma describes as the “constant push and pull”. The informality allows ArtLab to appeal and work for teens, but it also provides institutional challenges. Ms Homma said that they are “Constantly asking what success is.’ and “What are we looking for?”  Since it is hard to define success, it is even more difficult to measure and evaluate the success. ArtLab faces these difficulties in a variety of ways. They conduct team surveys, and the foundations supporting ArtLab plan to conduct several longitudinal studies following different ArtLab participants.

            Other challenges that ArtLab faces are the physical restrictions of their building and the location on the National Mall.  Artlab’s building is a small structure on the grounds of the Hirshhorn’s Sculpture Garden. Since it is not located in the Hirshhorn Museum building it can be hard to maintain that connection, but the teens are encouraged to explore the Hirshhorn. The teens recently made a Halloween zombie music video that was filmed in the Hirshhorn. The video can be viewed on the ArtLab’s Facebook page.  I highly recommend watching it.

            Artlab’s location on the National Mall can also be problematic. Like many other museums on the National Mall, ArtLab struggles with not being built into a community. ArtLab’s mission is to engage local teens, but the National Mall is not a residential community.  The teens have to commute to the National Mall to take advantage of ArtLab. This makes ArtLab less convenient than other programs that try to engage teens in their own neighborhood, which often take place in libraries or community centers near the teens’ homes.

            After talking with Ms. Homma and observing the teens during the Open Studio, it became clear that many of the things that allow ArtLab to engage their school-aged audience are also the things that provide the greatest challenges. ArtLab is trying to define itself as a learning space outside school. For museums attempting to engage school-aged children, the museum must understand and embrace the wants and needs of this audience and offer something beyond what is offered in school. 

ArtLab website:

http://artlabplus.si.edu/

ArtLab facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/HMSGartlabplus 

Teen Nights

When designing programs for teenagers, museum educators—no matter how talented, resourceful, educated, experienced, understanding, or creative—are all lacking in one crucial characteristic.  We are not teenagers.  Yes, we once were, but we are no longer.  In fact, many of us have actually put quite a bit of effort into repressing certain aspects of those years in our memories.  As noted in our earlier post about teenagers, adolescence is paradoxically both social and isolating, both confusing and potentially empowering.  We all experienced these feelings to varying degrees, as do teenagers today, but our memories of those trying times do not necessarily resonate with how actual teenagers, still very much in the moment, are processing these developmental advances and conflicts.

When it comes to designing programs for teens, the museums that are most creative and successful at doing so are those that work not just for teens, but with teens.  Museums all over have developed Teen Councils and teen volunteer programs charged with helping the museum bring other teens to their respective institutions through meaningful experiences.  A later post will explore these councils and other programs for highly invested teens in greater depth.

One increasingly common result of these collaborations between museums and teens has been the museum Teen Night.  Catering exclusively to teenagers (usually with a school- or government-issued ID proving so), these Teen Nights often feature live music, DJs, dancing, performances, crafts, art projects, exhibit tours, and gallery activities, blending the social with the creative.  By linking the evening’s activities to a specific special exhibit or part of the collection, the organizers help emphasize and take advantage of the unique qualities of the museum.

For example, at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, the upcoming Teen Night builds the party around the Brazilian artists Os Gemeos by focusing on their inspirations, namely hip hop culture and dreams, through spoken word and break dancing tutorials.  

But even museums with less obviously “teen-friendly” collections can successfully host such events.  By partnering with the Museum Teen Summit, museums, in New York, as diverse as The Frick Collection and the New Museum, have featured similar events.  And museums across the country, with teen councils or consultants of their own, have also done so.

Many of these events also seem to return to the common teen question of identity, whether through art-making and personal expression or gallery discussions.  Teen Nights can further build focus on this theme, as the Brooklyn Museum and We Are the Youth did in creating their Teen Night Event for LGBTQ Teens & Allies.  The organizers used the special HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture exhibit as a launching off point for the event, which featured DJs, voguing lessons, gallery activities, dancing, and performances.  

As Nina Simon writes in a post on her Museums2.0 blog, museums can act as the sort of safe space teens seek and need.  Incorporating opportunities for fun and creative expression only strengthen these qualities.

Teen Nights also provide a way for museums to invite and pique the interests of teens who perhaps do not normally go to the museum.  Teens who do not have the interest or inclination to commit to a teen council or multi-session program have the chance to be involved in the museum for a night.  And if they are so inspired, participants may even seek out opportunities for more involvement or education at the museum.  If anything, Teen Night participants get to have a night to themselves, with friends (a key motivator for teens), to try new things and learn in a special space.

Additional resources and just a few examples of Teen Nights:
The Walters Art Museum
Oklahoma City Museum of Art
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
High Museum of Art
“Why Museums Don’t Suck: The Current State of Teen Engagement”

Museum-School Partnerships

Museums are natural partners with schools; they provide opportunities that deepen formal curriculum, often in a more interactive, hands-on environment. These partnerships exist in a variety of ways - some work with only certain schools, others are more informal and open to student applicants from the area. We as museum educators need to continually advocate for this special relationship between museums of all genres and students. Our group has compiled a list of several interesting and effective partnerships between schools and museums to illustrate their benefit to students.

1. Oakland Museum of California and Korematsu Discovery Academy and La Escuelita (Oakland, California)

http://museumca.org/museum-school-partnerships

The science education department of the Oakland Museum of California partners with three fifth grade classes from Korematsu Discovery Academy and La Escuelita throughout a school year. The program, Water Striders Junior Guides: From Creeks to Coastline, helps students better understand the ecology of local watersheds and the affect their own actions can have on the surrounding habitats. Over the course of the year, students visit a creek, salt marsh, bay, and coast to observe both fresh and salt water environments. The students then use their observations and discoveries to create tours for the Natural Sciences Gallery at the Museum. Additionally, the students work with docents to design activities for younger students and lead students from their own school on tours to teach them about what they have learned during the project. Finally, the students use their new skills and knowledge to participate in a family event where they host their friends and family on a tour.

On-line exhibits of students’ work:

http://tinyurl.com/http-rosa-com
http://tinyurl.com/http-ali-com
http://tinyurl.com/http-rusche-com

2. The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum Student Docent Program (Ridgefield, Connecticut)

http://www.aldrichart.org/education/docent.php

This program is not a partnership with a specific school, but rather open to students from local schools. There are two levels of the program - Student Docents in grades 5-12, and Varsity Docents in grades 9-12. The Student Docent Program trains students in small groups to facilitate discussions with their own peers about contemporary art. The hope is that when their own classmates lead them on a tour, students are “more likely to make connections between the work on view and their own experiences.” Students who have gone through the docent program twice and are willing to make a more serious commitment are eligible to apply for the Varsity Docent Program. This program functions similarly to an internship, and introduces students to additional aspects of the museum environment, including multiple programs and audiences. This on-site experience is combined with discussions with staff members, field trips to New York, and artist workshops, and is intended to give student participants a strong foundational understanding of museum work.

3. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, Massachusetts)

http://www.gardnermuseum.org/education/school_partnerships

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum partnerships with a small number of schools each year in order to build deep working relationships. This year they are working with Boston Latin School, Maurice J. Tobin K08 School, Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers, Dudley Street Neighborhood Charter School, and Rafael Hernandez K-8 School. Isabella Stewart seeks to help students explore art in a way that they can make connections through their own experiences and knowledge. They do this using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a discussion-based pedagogy that asks three questions: “What’s going on in this picture?” “What do you see that makes you say that?” and “What more can we find?” Through this discussion, students develop skills in reading artwork, becoming more flexible thinkers, and learning ways to become better speakers and listeners. The program is a true partnership between school and museum, as teachers must  present 10 VTS lessons, and students visit the Museum multiple times. These visits last for several hours, and include an art-making project in the Education Studio or Greenhouse Classroom.

4. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (Los Angeles, California)

http://www.nhm.org/site/for-teachers/teacher-resources/education-arts-roundtable/history

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County has created the Education and Arts Roundtable, a partnership that connects Los Angeles-area schools with mid-sized arts organizations. This new initiative developed out of a strategic plan that sought to more deeply engage the community with museum programs. Staff and board members asked, “what sorts of student learning opportunities would emerge when unencumbered by practical needs and logistics.” These partnerships work with grades K-12, and they develop learning projects inspired by the Museum’s collections and resources. The Natural History Museum also includes an area on the first floor, Inter/Act which shows both the students’ work as well as the process they used to reach their questions and discovery. The goal of the Roundtable is help students learn to “use visual and performing arts as a catalyst to learn about the natural and social sciences.”

5. Early Elementary Science Partnership (Chicago, Illinois)

http://fieldmuseum.org/schools/school-partnerships

This partnership is a different from those listed above in that its purpose is to provide K-3 teachers with professional develop opportunities to improve their abilities to teach science. Ten schools have partnered with the Field Museum, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Children’s Museum, Lincoln Park Zoo, CPS Office of Science and Northwestern University as part of a two-year intensive plan of 76 professional development hours. One hundred teachers participate in this professional development, along with university-based coursework, collaborative teacher teams, and field trips, that will eventually reach 3,000 teachers. The goals of this partnership are to improve science content knowledge for both students and teachers, teachers’ ability to use museums as informal learning environments, and to pilot this cooperative partnership between schools, the University, and informal learning environments.

To finish this post, we wanted to provide you all with a website that provides a background, practical ideas, and resources for museum and school partnerships:

www.artbeyondsite.org/handbook/az-museum-school.shtml