Thanks to my fantastic teaching assistant, Julie, for bringing this article to my attention, from Intelligent Life magazine (Winter 2009).   In it, professional cricket player, Ed Smith, asks the question “Are we too professional?” I’d be the first to admit that museums don’t have a lot in common with professional cricket, but I nearly fell over laughing when I read the following anecdote:

I will never forget my first week as a professional sportsman. Our home ground in Canterbury basked in warm and sunny March weather, but we did not use the perfect practice conditions to hone our batting and bowling skills. Instead, we locked ourselves in a room for three days deciding on the precise wording for a team “Core Covenant”.

So what does this have to do with museums?  Just this.  Many of us went into museum work because we loved art, or science, or natural history, or anthropology…(and on, and on, and on).   In our dewy youth museums seemed like the perfect place to work, we’d get to be around objects we loved and thus we would love our work.  Today museums are big business and as such are necessarily obsessed with strategic plans, mission statements, vision statements, branding campaigns.  We all know these things are important, they just aren’t much fun for the bulk of us.  Just as pyramid building was generally a lot more fun for Pharaoh, strategic planning is generally a lot more interesting for the folks at the top of heap.

The sun is finally shining here in Cleveland–I’m going to sign off now and  go find someone to teach me how to play cricket.

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