The View from this Tower

I want to encourage everyone to do a something if at all possible: take a behind-the-scenes tour of your favorite museum.

I had the opportunity to take such a tour today at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. As anyone who has been to the museum knows, the building is not only incredible, it is also historic. Parts of the building that were open to the public many years ago have now been converted to other uses and are hidden from the layman's eyes. These parts of the building are beautiful and it was fascinating to see them and to hear them talked about by someone who clearly loves the building and knows more about it than I could ever hope to.

The best part of the tour, however, was being on the roof.



To be honest, I had been to the PMA's subbasements before. I knew that they had as much beauty as the rest of the building. But to see the view from the roof was to understand the building in an entirely new way. The view from the top of the building impressed on me not only the sheer size of the building, but also its height.



In short, find a way to take a behind-the-scenes tour of your favorite museum. Having seen the storage areas and hidden nooks and crannies of several museums and historic sites I can assure you that the most interesting stuff is the stuff most people never get the chance to see. I would also like to encourage museum staff to try to find a way to allow more people to see their museum from this unique vantage point. Don't limit this experience to staff and those with sufficient disposable income to purchase high level memberships. After all, you never know who you may inspire.

*My apologies for the less-than-stellar quality of the photos; rather than using a real camera I used the only thing at hand, which happened to be my cell phone.

Your Time Has Come

Lately I have been wondering if I will ever make it out of the world of visitor services and into collections management, the area of museum work for which I trained and in which I find the most enjoyment. Trying to find one of these positions is time consuming, frustrating and seemingly endlessly disappointing.

I was therefore thrilled to be handed a copy of Nina Simon's short article called "Doing Time on the Front Line" published in the July-August 2010 issue of Museum. (You can find a copy of the article here) It is so reassuring to hear someone say what I already think to be true - that working in the museum's front lines beneficial is not only beneficial, it can also lead to other opportunities in the future.

Selfishly, I hope that my time on the front lines at the Philadelphia Museum of Art will prove to be beneficial in terms of future employment opportunities. But I also hope that this article can inspire in others what it has inspired in me: hope.

Ramblin' Man

After two crazy days of tramping all over Philadelphia with my parents, I have some comments to make.

First up: the Eastern State Penitentiary



Let me preface this by saying that I was completely skeptical about this place before visiting. The prison's website is something just less than good and I was afraid it would rely too heavily on its reputation as a haunted historic building. I decided to visit the penitentiary more as a means of entertaining my parents than anything else.

I now wish to retract my previous assumptions. The audio guide (included in your ticket price) gives a good history of the building. There are about nine introductory audio stops, and then you can wander around the rest of the grounds as you choose. Most of the "optional" audio tour stops have labels giving at least minimal background information, meaning that one could choose to continue without the audio guide. The audio guides are thus flexible and affordable. Plus, Eastern State is unique. Although Philly has plenty of historic buildings and museums, to my knowledge there is nothing quite like Eastern State anywhere else in the city.



The penitentiary is also close to some other great cultural institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and any of the other BF Parkway Museums. The Fairmount neighborhood also has some great dining options. I recommend Figs, located at the corner of 25th and Meredith Streets.

Next up: the U.S. Mint



The Mint is one of those government buildings that just makes me sigh. The exhibits are shabby. The glue holding some of the exhibits together is beginning to fail and its obvious that the exhibits have not had an overhaul in years. That said, the tour is free, somewhat informative, and I did learn how coins are made. Plus, everyone likes to see the coin-making process live from the gallery windows above the factory. My final assessment: don't snub the Mint, just don't expect bells, whistles, or anything fancy.

Last but not least: the Wanamaker Organ at Macy's



I have to give my mother the credit for tracking down this little gem. The organ is included on one of the walking tour cards I mentioned a few weeks ago. In 1874, the Wanamaker Department Store moved to what is now the Macy's building at S. 13th and Market Streets. John Wanamaker installed the world's largest pipe organ in the store's seven-floor Grand Court. The organ is still played two times each day.



First of all, the building is worth visiting even if you could care less about the organ. Its an absolutely beautiful building that is still used for its original purpose. Second, the organ itself its gorgeous and its size is simply overwhelming. It is difficult to comprehend just how impressive the instrument is without actually going to see it. Third, you get to hear a really great organist play the organ for free in an amazing setting. The experience is entirely worthwhile, and even more so since it won't cost you a cent. Unless, of course, you can't help yourself from shopping while you're there.

Time Will Crawl

A time capsule recently discovered in nearby Atlantic City, NJ got me thinking about the burial and discovery of these little gems. What makes time capsules so amazing, you ask?

1. Typically, "normal" people bury time capsules and dream about their future discovery. These capsules are not left behind by movie stars or CEO's. Instead, John and Jane Smith in Nowhereville prepare and hide items they believe might be interesting or useful in the future.

2. To imagine who buried the time capsule is amazing. What were the people like? What did they do? Who did they envision finding and opening their time capsule?

3. A time capsule is a study in what makes the history of objects (rather than art) so fascinating and important. Time capsules not only come from very ordinary people; they show us what ordinary people found worth sharing. We can investigate why each object was chosen and what it means.

Thanks, as always, to Matt for passing this article along. Here are a few more to whet your appetite:

North Platte, NB Time Capsule
YouTube Time Capsule
Pierre, SD Time Capsule

Final Answer

My memory is terrible.

I want to recommend a fantastic podcast from the BBC called "A History of the World in 100 Objects." Anyone who agrees that historic objects are central to an understanding of ourselves and our past can't help but enjoy the podcast.

Look for the podcast through iTunes or on the BBC's website.

Money Honey

My source of all interesting news stories passed this very unfortunate one to me this evening. It seems that financial problems have forced the State Museum of Pennsylvania to cut hours and raise admission prices.

This story is heartbreaking. A lack of state funding forced the museum to begin charging admission fees last summer, and the situation has only gotten worse in the meantime. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has continued to slash state funding to museums, to the point that the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission barely has any staff left. I strongly support appropriately funding cultural institutions of all kinds so that everyone can afford to visit.

It is a travesty that the state of Pennsylvania cannot do any better than this.

Quite Free

I want to praise the Philadelphia Museum of Art (my employer, in case you have forgotten) for providing a day last week free of charge. The museum waived the cost of general admission last Saturday in honor of the museum's late director Anne d'Harnoncourt. I love these kinds of days because they make museum collections accessible to large portions of the population who may not normally be able to afford a trip to a high-quality art museum. Days with free general admission help a museum to accomplish one of its most important goals: educating the public about its collection.

But nothing can be that simple.

Without fail, free admission days mean that museum staff will spend much of their time asking visitors not to eat or drink in the galleries, to turn off their camera flashes, and not to touch the art work. Children will run and scream. Parents will yell. Everyone will talk too loudly. Generally speaking, the people who come to museums on days with free admission spend very, very little time inside museums. The visitors lack knowledge about museum conduct.

Let me be quite clear: I do not fault these people for being unaware of proper museum protocol. Many people just do not know how to behave in museums. The reasons for this are complex and not easy to pin down. Many children attend a museum of some kind while in their elementary years, and should, in theory, learn how to act at museums on these trips. However, these trips are probably too infrequent and brief to make much of an impression. I would also argue that the dynamic of school trips is different than on a regular trip to the museum. The students often eat in a separate location and are provided with stimulating activities. This kind of stimulation is likely to occur on a weekend visit with their parents or older siblings.

Part of the problem may also be that museums tend to be minimalists when it comes to signage. They fail in many cases to make people aware of the rules upon entering the museum. In my mind, listing the rules on the back of the museum map in small print simply doesn't cut it.

I'm quite sure that I'm missing a host of other reasons for people's bad behavior, but I want to make some observations about potential fixes for this issue. The first is obvious: make museum attendance a more common theme in every child's formative years. Make sure that these trips extend beyond the elementary years and well into middle school and high school. I am not talking about more trips for kids whose parents are likely to take them to art museums anyway. I'm talking about the kids whose parents have probably never been to a museum since their own school years.

Museums should also not feel shy about posting the rules in a more obvious way on days when the building will be flooded with visitors coming more for free entertainment than for the museum itself. A couple of well-placed signs will certainly intrude less upon a person's experience at the museum than screaming children and irritable security guards. (For some great journalism about the importance and necessity of good signage, read this series of articles by Slate's Julia Turner.)

In the end, museum etiquette is no different than etiquette at the symphony, the opera, or a church service. The way people behave in any public situation comes down to knowledge. If people are not aware that a code of conduct exists, how can we expect them to follow it?

In the name of spreading the word, here are a couple of good references for proper museum behavior.

http://www.artagogo.com/reviews/learn1/learn5.htm

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/397360/museum_etiquette_how_to_behave_when.html?cat=2