Theatre Museums Faced with a Paradox.
Don't just sit on your assets.
Hanna-Leena Helavuori
Theatre Museum, Helsinki, Finland
Documents et Temoignages des Arts du Spectacle: Pourquoi et
Comment? / Collecting and Recording the Performing Arts: Why and How?
Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des
Arts du Spectacle / International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing
Arts
20ème Congrès International / 20th International Congress
Antwerp 4-7 September 1994. Acta. Antwerp :
1995, pp. 27-28
Museums have enjoyed considerable expansion
coupled with growing interest from the general public. The museum boom has caught on
during the favourable years of economic growth. Visiting museums has become one of the
postmodern society's leisure pursuits and ways of experiencing new things. The public has
demonstrated its enthusiasm for and interest in museums.
Museums are no longer only repositories for
things, in which visitors admire priceless relics of the past in respectful silence.
School curricula emphasize the importance of museums. The cooperation that has been
carried out with schools has been felt to be ever more important in the pedagogical sense.
The media scene has expanded in recent years. New media offer new requirements and new
challenges for wider cooperation. Museums live in a completely new kind of visual
environment: they are able to employ all the potential of the new technology, including
hypermedia and multimedia.
Simultaneously, museums must cope with problems
of funding and organization and even questions regarding their ultimate purpose. In
seeking the time of pleasure-oriented citizens, museums have to compete with shopping
centres, television, sports competitions and other alternatives. The attendance figures
will be under pressure.
I am trying to explore the solutions which can
be found to meet these challenges and to survive when faced with the deep paradoxes
mentioned above. At the Theatre Museum in Finland, the entire staff including its
administrative bodies and close constituent groups have participated in strategic
planning. We are trying to seek out unbiased answers to the problem of how the Theatre
Museum as a human "living time machine of theatre history" can find nourishment
and sustenance. This means practical solutions bearing on how the museum will become a
genuine, spontaneous arena for dialogue midway between professional thespians and the
public or publics, how the museum can boost the quality of its various functions and
stimulate further interest, how it can increase its revenues and how the staff's rich flow
of ideas, creativity and motivation can be fostered.
A new kind of conceptual approach is needed.
Museums need to be in the public eye. Publicity comes as a result of interesting
exhibitions and of the programmes, publications and fund-raising activities that museums
initiate. The Theatre Museum is more than just a museum in the traditional sense. It
should evolve into a centre for exhibitions, documentation and information. This naturally
requires better facilities for temporary exhibitions, workshops, lectures, conferences,
multimedia and performances.
We must have a strong commitment to the
principle of visitor orientation. We need to employ modern exhibition design, interactive
electronic media, educational programmes and activities designed for special target
groups. To succeed, we must know who we are trying to reach with our plays and services.
We must be willing to shape our message in a way that enhances the communication between
us - the museum staff - and our visitors.
Our aim is to get more visitors and to improve
our image. A museum is not only a place where you learn. It is a place for entertainment.
We try to give our visitors the opportunity to see the museum as a place of interest and
adventure. A museum has a direct obligation to live in the present day and be engaged in
building the future. The ideas for museum exhibitions and the form of the exhibitions will
in future tend increasingly to be one-time or disposable products. This calls for an
inexhaustible flow of ideas. A museum must be able to tackle highly timely topics. This
means that an exhibition programme cannot be planned in detail very far ahead. The staff
must thus be able to stand up to pressures and continual change and they must have the
will and ability for self-renewal.
I think we have to move from specialization to
coherence. We believe that there exists a growing demand for a generalist approach, a more
coherent vision of the world. As a museum, we can be a place that offers experiences which
bring specialized areas together. Our aim is to give people a general understanding of the
processes in the theatre world and at the same time to place issues in a wider context. I
believe that we must increasingly take into consideration the changes in the public. There
is a clear difference between scholarly perception, specialized knowledge and visitor
perception, with the emphasis more on the social event. We try to plan our exhibitions in
such a way that we can bring forth and encourage questions, stimulate discussion, make
people curious and arouse wonder.
Museums are more and more in business. We have
to publish, we have to organize programmes for special groups, we are faced with
profit-making requirements. We need to give a great deal more thought to what the products
of the museum are and what they can be. Exhibitions, publications or some other individual
subfactor can no longer be considered the sole product of a museum. We must try to see
ourselves as a product package which a visitor receives when he or she opens the door and
spends a certain period of time in a museum.
If we want to escape the general financial
downturn, we must use methods of marketing, fund-raising, sponsorship and public relations
- just simply in order to survive. We must also be able to market ourselves correctly. I
believe that to some extent the exhibitions need a higher profile in their give and take
with the media. Exhibitions need to be treated as new items, events. We should be able to
offer contributions to programmes, make timely statements and present short interviews in
order to achieve close cooperation. Visitors are sophisticated in their demands. We have
to be able to locate small new target groups.
One of the most difficult tasks for us to learn
is how to raise additional funds. As a non-profit organization, we need new tools to
generate resources. We have to look for new partners in the future. We have to develop a
better relationship with education, the tourist trade and business. We have to be creative
and find ways to exploit our collections to generate income and to create our own branded
merchandise in the best case. We also think that children are in many cases our best
customers.
We have also noticed that different art
institutions in close geographical proximity have a mutually strengthening effect; they
generate synergetic effects. Museums should increasingly regard themselves as a partner
that works together with other institutions.
All this requires a new kind of museum policy
and lively activities in order to create a dynamic and active image. Last but not least,
we have to renew our organization or management, which should be better suited to helping
us to fulfil our new, much more demanding and challenging role.
I am thoroughly convinced that in the period of
transition in which museums, libraries and archives in the theatre field find themselves
at present, Sibmas will play an increasingly important role as a vehicle for cooperation
which supports its members' operations, handles common tasks and sees to their best
interests. I can readily think of a large number of development and cooperation projects
which we can and should undertake together.
20th Congress
URL:
http://www.sibmas.org/congresses/sibmas94/antw_7.html
|
