I went to my 10 (soon to be 11) year-old’s talent show on Friday night. As a compulsive viewer of American Idol, X-Factor and So You Think You Can Dance (Dance, Dance…), I am a big fan of this kind of thing. I love watching the American Idol auditions in particular, to witness the culmination of decades of high praise from a mother or father for a kid who is completely talentless. I think its the total disbelief in their eyes, which is hard to fake, when they’re told that they can’t sing a note, that makes it compelling viewing for me. I blame the parents.

However as it happens, my 10-year-old is hugely talented. Her role as third-zombie-from-the-left in the expertly choreographed “Thriller Redux” – a far superior re-imagination of Michael Jackson’s ground-breaking Thriller video – was a sight to behold. Naturally, all the other kids were far outclassed in stage presence, style and zombie-grace.There was some amazing talent on display during the show. The kid playing “You Are My Sunshine” on the harmonica while bouncing on a pogo stick was, in all honesty, worth giving up my Friday night for. As was the Recorder duet with Elvis Presley singing “Love Me Tender”. I have no idea what the kid with that hat and that round thing was attempting to do, and in truth I don’t think he or the teacher’s did either. But it was compulsive viewing.

This talent is wasted in the Multi Purpose room of an elementary school in the Los Angeles ‘burbs and its the second time I’ve seen talent wasted in the space of two weeks. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know I was at MCN last week presenting with Messers Edson and Iannacone from the Smithsonian, both of whom are awesome talents. Mike talked about the Smithsonian 2.0 initiative and how they brought in peers and colleagues from outside the SI walls to help them think through the issues of being a cultural institution in the 21st century, particularly how they engage with their audiences.

The immensely talented SI staff have spent a considerable amount of time thinking this through themselves already and so it should come as no surprise that one recommendation from this outside group was that SI should listen to their in-house talent on the topic, since they had already made deeply smart, thoughtful and perceptive recommendations about all of this stuff.

This was an underlying theme that I picked up on at MCN which is both troubling and insulting: the propensity for museum executives to bring in outsiders to comment or advise on issues in areas of expertise that the museum already has. WTF? The hiring process can be lengthy and time-consuming, presumably a museum selects the best talent from the applications they get for the position they want to fill. The implication is that they trust the employee that they’ve picked to do the job that they need. So what is it about bringing in a consultant to validate or invalidate a talent that you already claimed was the best talent?

I’m not rubbishing consultants, I’ve been one, they provide much needed expertise to our field, we use them ourselves for expertise that we don’t have, but I just don’t get what it is about bringing someone from outside when that skill and expertise is already there. Can’t blame the parents this time…