Every once in a while, I find myself in a round of “Fantasy Museum. “The rules are simple: What would I try if money and practicality were no object? A lot of my ideas are predictably extreme, but more than once those impossible ideas have filtered down into something plausible and even reasonable. The other day I…
When I was in Iceland last year, I noticed a pattern with the guest books I was signing. As I visited museums and cultural sites I saw plenty of standard guest books – the ones on tables, the ones next to exits. The standard guestbooks usually had standard entries – names, hometowns, “Great museum,” “What…
There have been some fantastic conversations about museums, visitors, and empathy happening online lately (see here, here, here, and here). These are compelling discussions, looking at the ways museums demonstrate compassion, and the reciprocity and generosity that can exist between institutions and visitors. And they’ve left me thinking more about the role that asking plays in…
Museums Askew 