Via Richard’s Twitter feed, I have a new favorite blog, Museums Suck. OK, I should clarify: I mean by “favorite” that it’s wince-inducing, snarky, sarcastic, biting, cuts a little too close to the bone for comfort and filled with good old-fashioned insults. So it rocks in that kind of “I hate you” sort of way. But he’s totally right about some things (like how some of us actually DO think about mission and program relevance while standing in the shower).
From the intro post:
To be clear, I’m agnostic on collections v. interactives and I’m very pro-technology. (I began and continue my career as an interactive exhibit engineer and developer.) My point is if your museum had the Venus de Milo, your museum wouldn’t suck. A priori. And you’d never have to stand up and tell the room your name, the museum you work for, and a little bit about your background before joining in a provocative group exchange session about how to stay relevant by leveraging Flickr.
But you don’t have the Venus de Milo. So… what do you have instead?
It’s a fair question. Nay, it’s the question. The Louvre has Venus. What do you have instead? If you can answer that question confidently and concisely without a lot of stimulating-the-following-target-audiences mission statement hooey–and your answer isn’t on SecondLife, then you may be one the few museums that doesn’t suck.
You’re a museum, right? You’re not an outreach summercamp. You’re not an Imax theatre lobby. You’re not a social networking iPhone app. Be a museum. And try harder not to suck at it.
You want a real lesson the museum industry can learn from successful web 2.0 initiatives? Be really good at what you’re interested in and other people who are also interested in that will get excited and involved. Be really good at what you’re interested in and other people who aren’t also interested in that… will do something else. Let them.
Wow. Talk about tough love. I’m going to go wallow in my existential Drupal-induced angst now…
