Today is “Ask a Curator” Day!

by Terry Burton, Digital Media Coordinator

I work with a bunch of museum curators, and let me tell you, they know a LOT of interesting things. Multiply that by all the museums in the world, and you’ve got a major collection of smarty pants.

Today marks the launch of a cool online project called “Ask a Curator Day.” The project is using Twitter to give people a chance to ask curators all over the world those burning questions that only a museum geek can answer! Over 100 museums in the U.S. alone are participating, plus museums from all over Europe, Canada, South and Central America, Africa, and Australia. If you can’t get your question answered by one of these folks, well, I just don’t know what to say.

You can find out how to participate by visiting the “Ask a Curator” website. There you’ll find directions for using Twitter to ask your question, and see a list of all the museums that are part of the project. If you find out anything interesting, let us know!

Note: This from Wired.UK — “The #askacurator Twitter hash-tag has proven to be very popular, currently ranking as the sixth most popular trending topic in the UK, and the fourth worldwide. However, popularity on Twitter is as much a blessing as a curse, with the tag’s real-time results overrun with spam and joke messages. You’ll want to follow the tweets of a specific venue to receive any worthwhile answers.”

Advertisement

Behind the scenes: Curator of Cultural Interpretation, part II

by Terry Burton, Digital Media Coordinator

This is the second part of a recent interview with Katie Bowell, the Museum’s Curator of Cultural Interpretation.

More to Explore: Tell us a little bit about your background.

Katie Bowell: I did my undergraduate in Canada at the University Guelph, and I wanted to be a zoologist, I wanted to be a researcher and work in a lab, until I actually got to be a researcher and work in a lab and learned that I was really, really bad at it. It’s a long process. Usually, you think of a question and then it’s a long time until you get the answer, and it’s a lot of work, and the people who can do it and do it well, that’s fabulous, but I wasn’t good at it. What I found I really liked doing was, once someone had figured out the answer to a question, I liked getting to tell people about that answer. And so about halfway through my degree in zoology, I also decided to get a degree in English, because I figured that if I wanted to tell people about stuff, I probably needed to be a good writer, a good communicator, and that seemed a way to do it.

And so I graduated, and then I couldn’t get a job anywhere. Finally I found a job at this little tiny butterfly conservatory. And I had never worked with insects, and I was terrified of insects, petrified. My mom used to tell the joke that I would never, ever walk around outside in my bare feet because the ants would get me. But I had to pay rent so I started this job as an interpreter of insects, and I got to practice what I thought I might be good at, which was interpreting and sharing information. And I actually discovered that insects were really cool, and I loved it and stayed there and became their director of education and interpretation. But I got a little tired of some of the things about the job, mainly that I was always dirty and sweaty, and there were cockroaches, and so it was fun but it was  gross. So I decided, maybe I can work in a museum, because it’s clean and air conditioned and they still have animals, they’re not alive, so it’s not quite as fun, but they have fewer cockroaches, so I thought that was a good way to go.

The University of Colorado in Boulder has a natural history museum and a very good Museum Studies program that I got accepted to, with a Zoology focus, because I was very sure I was going to work in a natural history museum. I did that for two years and ended up with a really cool thesis that looked at intersections of animals and people. I looked at art installations, fine art installations, in zoos and aquariums, and what happened when you had these human-created pieces that were side-by-side with animals, how were visitors responding to it? It was a really fun study and got me interested in this intersection of content. And then someone was smiling down on me and the clouds parted, because just as I was graduating this job opened and I applied.

MtE: How will your work feed into the new museum?

KB: I think my work is going to play into the new museum in a couple of ways. One of the really exciting things we’re planning for is really highlighting those interconnections. Like the way that the processes of the river affect how people were farming here, and affect what organisms are living there and where the cottonwoods are found and why Camp Collins was first established here. We really are helping people see these connections and that really is my big focus, that every story is a part of a larger story. I think that as an interpreter, the more connections you can highlight, the more you can help connect current visitors to what you’re talking about, and the more likely they are to remember what you’re sharing with them and get excited about it. And so I’m really excited to get to continue to develop those.

We’re also continuing to work with Natural Areas, they’re going to have a space within the new museum, a dedicated visitor’s center, and I’m helping them develop that. As well we’re going to have all the outdoor experiences around the museum and the opportunity to interpret there. So that’s what I see myself doing now with it, but I’m sure that more things will pop up.

MtE: What are you looking forward to in the new museum?

KB: A window [in her office]. Well, this is the second museum I’ve ever worked in, and both of those were buildings where we had to squeeze our experiences into those spaces. With this new museum, I am so excited that we get to plan out exactly what we want, and we’re going to have room for it. And I think that that can do a lot for the visitor experience that we end up having. I am most excited for everyone else to get to see this brand-new museum, full of really neat things. And it’s really dorky, but I’m excited to watch their reactions to it. One of the things that I do here, at least a little bit, is visitor evaluations, visitor studies. I’m really curious as to how people use our spaces, how they interact with what we have on the floor, what they think about what we’re doing, because we’re a community museum, we exist for our visitors. So I’m so excited to see them seeing our new museum. I think that’s really going to be cool.

Behind the scenes: Curator of Cultural Interpretation

Next in our series of behind-the-scenes looks at what makes the Fort Collins Museum & Discovery Science Center tick, the roving More to Explore reporter ambushed interviewed Katie Bowell, Curator of Cultural Interpretation and frequent contributor to this blog. Part I of a two-parter.

Curator Katie Bowell (in ball cap) leading an interpretive program at the Lindenmeier overlook, Soapstone Prairie Natural Area. Photo courtesy City of Fort Collins Natural Areas Program

More to Explore: What does a Curator of Cultural Interpretation do?

Katie Bowell:  My primary job is to be the liaison between the Museum and the City’s Natural Areas Program, and so I help to interpret the historical and cultural stories of our natural spaces. And I also help bring biology, ecology, and other natural processes into the interpretations we’re doing in our museum. Since I’ve been here I’ve also helped develop a variety of interpretive resources, and I work on the Digital Media team and have a lot of fun with our blog and our website and Facebook. So I get to do a little bit of everything, but the main focus in almost everything that I do is still that intersection between history, culture, nature, and science, how to create interdisciplinary narratives and interpretations. It’s really interesting, I haven’t done anything like this before and when I mention what I do to most people, usually they’re surprised, and then they think it’s really cool.

MtE: What are some of the projects you’ve been working on?

KB:  The very first thing that I did when I got here was to work on the Soapstone Prairie project, which had been something that the Museum and the Natural Areas department and the City of Fort Collins had been working on for a couple years before I got here. It’s an incredible shortgrass prairie property, and on it was the Lindenmeier Archaeological Site, one of the largest Folsom-complex sites in all of North America and one of the most diverse in terms of the artifacts found there and the people who lived there. And this is where the Museum-Natural Areas partnership really started, working on the Soapstone project. Mmy first job was to help develop the interpretation up there. So we have interpretive panels, and we have volunteer-led programs that go on all summer long, and in our first summer I think it may have been the most visitors to programs that they had at a natural area—somebody told me that, but I don’t know for sure. And so it’s been very successful. I’ve worked on that, and I worked on the Lindenmeier booklet [recently published by the Museum], and did a whole bunch of interpretations with Natural Areas. We re-did interpretive panels and developed a booklet for Bobcat Ridge Natural Area, focusing on the pioneer and early European history of the property, and interpreted some of the buildings that are still there.

One of the things that I’m really proud of is our blog. I have loved being a contributor to it, and it’s so fun. It’s a great way for me to keep learning too, because along with writing about things that I know, I’ll hear something on the news that I don’t have a background in and half an hour later I have just enough knowledge to be dangerous, and I get to write about it.

I also do training with Natural Areas staff. One of the things that the Museum is very passionate about is that if you’re going to interpret history, if you’re going to interpret people, that you do it with care and consideration,  respect for the stories you’re telling and the people they’re about, and with as much accuracy as you possibly can. So we’ve had great cultural training sessions with Natural Areas staff, so now the people out there are not only fabulous interpreters of biology and ecology but are great interpreters of history too. I’ve given a couple of presentations throughout the state on how to do this as well, for Colorado Open Spaces and even the Colorado Preservation Society, so we’ve gone to people who normally interpret nature and said, how can you add history to this?, and we’ve gone to people who interpret history and say, how can you add some nature and biology to this? And so we keep smushing everything together.

Since I’ve started here, the last year and a half, I’ve gotten to learn the history of Colorado and western America. I’ve been really immersed in learning about the native cultures we work with and their histories, and getting really a much broader and more interesting perspective on our experience here in northern Colorado than I would have ever thought about, I think, if I had lived here and just continued to be a biologist. So I love that part of my job is that I get to keep learning all the time.

Bruce Springsteen and Museums—More in Common Than You Think

by Brent Carmack, Assistant Director, Fort Collins Museum

Last week I had the pleasure of seeing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in concert in Denver. Why, you might ask, am I writing about my Springsteen concert experience on a museum blog? In thinking about the show I realized that there are a number of lessons that museums can learn from Bruce’s continuing career and his consistent presentation of a great product.

1. Visitor Expectations. Springsteen has always treated his fans with respect and has been the consummate professional in his field. He always provides a first-class experience for the people that pay to consume his product. Much like a museum visit, most visitors have some preconceived notions about what their experience will be like. They have a set of expectations that must be met otherwise they won’t come back to the museum in the future and they won’t tell their friends about the positive experience they had visiting the museum. So Bruce has to play “Born to Run” at each concert or people will leave disappointed. But like Bruce, museums should exceed visitor’s expectations by providing surprises that will make their visit special. Bruce played “E Street Shuffle,” a song not often heard anymore in concert but one that die hard fans know and love.
2. Consistency of product and experience. I first saw Springsteen and the Band almost twenty-five years ago after camping out 4 days and nights for tickets. It was one of those college experiences that make college what it should be. This time the ticket experience changed (10 minutes on the internet) but the concert experience did not. He delivered as well as he did way back when with a mix of new songs, old hits, and a showmanship that is unmatched in the business. What tricks can museums learn from Bruce? Many museum goers can remember that special moment when they were kids, going to a museum and seeing that special artifact or having that experience that turned them into museum fans for life. Much like hearing Bruce play “Thunder Road” twenty-five years ago and again the other night, it served as a tie to a special memory that helped make me a Bruce fan. When I took my family to Colonial Williamsburg, we first had to go to the magazine where the colonists kept their arms and ammunition because that’s the place that fascinated me as a child. Many visitors to our Fort Collins Museum first go to the cabins in the courtyard because that’s what they remember from their first visit.
3. Opportunities for inter-generational experiences. Almost all museums are designed to provide opportunities for families to have positive educational experiences. Often the key to these positive experiences comes from older members of the family interacting with and passing down information to a younger generation. Artifacts in museums serve as connecting points and touchstones for these conversations. The same thing happens at a Springsteen concert. Because of the way that Bruce meets his visitor’s expectations, and consistent quality of his concert experience, he has been successful at what he does for over 35 years – and because of that success, my wife and I could take our fourteen year-old daughter to the show and shared an experience we had from our youth with her. And by the looks of the audience the other night we were not the only inter-generational audience members in the house. The fact that as parents we could share this experience with our daughter not only brings us closer together as a family, it also proves to our daughter that her parents are not as uncool as she thinks! There are other common themes between Bruce Springsteen and museums: cultural relevancy, historic landmark status, heritage tourism, competition for leisure time and money, to name a few. It doesn’t take much of a leap to make the connections. I’m just glad I work in a field that can consider going to a Springsteen concert as “professional development.”