The wheel thing

“In 1913 I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn.”
Marcel Duchamp

Now you can take a turn too, thanks to this interactive site. Go here and take a spin. (Thanks P)

A change is as good as a holiday

Te Papa has recently published what it intends to do over the next year or so. It's of special interest this time round given the new Chief Executive Rick Ellis's talk of big changes He's said many times that those changes will centre on digital delivery although he's not shared anything specific so far about ideas and content. The word is it will be a digital hub of some kind with a public presence inside the building that feels like more Wellington based commercial fundraising than the physical and digiatal distribution of the collections through the country. But at this stage who can tell? In the meantime, we've picked through Te Papa’s published performance expectations.

So what’s different from this time last year?

Last year (and the year before that) Te Papa North was 'a key priority’.
This year (four years after the initial announcement) the project is ‘still under consideration by Government and no decision has been made.’

Last year one of Te Papa’s strategic intentions was ‘Saving the planet’.
This year Te Papa has dumped this as a strategy.

Last year the Te Papa Board, in line with Government philosophy, was ‘leading work to increase philanthropic giving to support Te Papa’s activities’.
This year the word philanthropy does not appear in the document.

Last year the key measurements for engaging audiences were ‘the amount of time people spent at Te Papa’ and ‘reported learning experiences’ that demonstrated ‘levels of engagement.’
This year the amount of time spent at Te Papa has been dropped as a measurement.

Last year internet traffic numbers were based on site visits.
This year they’re based on page hits.

Last year the philosophy of mana taonga was ‘led and embedded in Te Papa by the Kaihautu’
This year the Kaihautu is not mentioned in the document.

Last year digital ‘access’ was to be ‘improved online and on mobile devices.’ 
This year creating a digital ‘experience’ will be ‘a major focus’.

Last year Te Papa operated within its set level of funding from government.
This year Te Papa warns that ‘redeveloping the fixed exhibitions and investing in digital requires some trade offs’

Sources: Te Papa Statements of performance expectations 2014/15 and 2015/16

Good job

This rather bleak summary of museum jobs in New Zealand sent us looking for what’s actually on offer. If you don’t think museums are going through radical change at the moment maybe this will change your mind.

Programme developer
Digital Learning Manager
Project delivery Coordinator
Content Project Technician
Customer Services Officer
Guest Services Agent
Application Manager
Digital Contents developer
Technical Business Analyst
Creative storyteller
Communications specialist
Visitor Host Supervisor

Out with the old, in with the old

Has Rick Ellis got a vision for Te Papa? Not really. Listening to Radio NZ it’s sounds pretty much like less-business-than-usual plus digital. The big idea is to ‘refresh the fixed exhibitions’ so they'll last another 15 years which (as anyone who works at there knows) has been a big idea at Te Papa for about five years now. Has Ellis any idea about what those displays will be? No, there’s to be a 'consultation process' with ‘community groups’ who might well wonder why the highly-paid experts at Te Papa can’t work out what’s needed by themselves. To do all this he is going to ‘establish a senior leadership team’ oh, oh.

One fatality will be temporary exhibitions. They'll be 'suspended for three years', so goodbye to ‘we’re showing more art more of the time’ and Sarah Farrar’s on-again-off-again Art at the Boundaries exhibition. Talking about Te Papa’s interest in art, what’s the story about having a separate art gallery? Ellis's response: ‘Not something I’m focused on to take further.’ Even the chances for the 18-month old Te Papa North project sound blurry in Ellis-speak, 'We have a bid in for a new facility. That bid is going through the budget process.' 

As to upping the level of digital output Ellis made no mention of where significant extra costs for storage and staffing were going to come from, and hard to see how it can be achieved on current budgets and staff levels.

Don’t watch this space.

His story

Te Papa Chief Executive Rick Ellis has been in the job for more than half of his first 100 days. But has there been anything in the mainstream media about how he's planning to fix (or in Te Papa Chair Evan Williams words 'transform') the troubled museum? Um ... no. Quick to have a go at the last CE when things went wrong, even the Dominion Post has been strangely silent. So if and when NZ's media does decide to put the new CE to the test, here’s 10 questions they might like to ask him. Not at all, it's our pleasure.

1. At each business you've led you've pushed through major organisational changes and you've done it fast. What more needs to change at Te Papa?

2. Your previous experience has been in growth sectors (TV, telecommunications, IT) with a lot of investment. What does that experience tell you about Te Papa's future with restricted growth and limited investment?

3. You've endorsed Te Papa's vision to change hearts, change minds and change lives. How do you think a museum can genuinely change lives?

4. The Chairman of Te Papa has also said said Te Papa needed 'a shift in the culture of the organisation.' Given that the organisation has just come out the other end of a radical restructure, what needs to change?

5.   The last CE was criticised for picking exhibitions people didn’t want to see. What kind of exhibitions do you have in mind that will be more successful?

6. You've talked about using digital to transform Te Papa. So far Te Papa's digital presence seems to be a standard museum website and traditional interactives. What are your priorities over 2015 to transform Te Papa with digital?

7.   You're known for insisting on expertise. Will the current curatorial staff be able to produce the sort of digital content you envisage or will you need to hire new specialist staff?

8.   When can we expect to see some effects of Te Papa's digital transformation?

9.   Can you name a couple of museums in the world that have adopted the kind of digital focus you are proposing for Te Papa?

10.   What percentage of Te Papa’s funding do you think should be raised by Te Papa? Currently it's 46 percent. Can you give some examples of projects that will increase Te Papa's non-government income?

PS

"We'll be moving away from the passive physical engagement of the past and looking to technology innovation here out of New Zealand, as well as what others are doing and learn from that and hopefully bring something quite magic alive."

Te Papa CE Rick Ellis interviewed by TV1 on 10 November 2014

OK…well, good luck

The new CE of Te Papa Rick Ellis starts work today.

"The board and chairman, Evan Williams, have reassured me that the issues that have been widely publicised over the past 18 months or so have been addressed and the organisation is actually in great shape for a new leader like me to come in and take it forward," Mr Ellis said.
Te Papa CE Rick Ellis interviewed by TV1 on 10 November 2014

“The Te Papa Board is faced with considerable challenges over the near term, as it reconciles a necessary period of fiscal consolidation with the need for significant capital investment in the museum infrastructure, and a desire to share more of the national heritage and scientific collections with the nation. These challenges are accentuated in the short term, as the museum goes through a period of capability rebuilding following its recent organisational realignment.” 
Briefing to the incoming Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage October 2014

If I were King of Timbuktu ....

Imagine for a moment you're Rick Ellis and you've just been made CE of Te Papa. Whoops. Just kidding. Get up off the floor. After our pretty successful attempt at guessing the kind of person who would be picked as Te Papa’s next CE let's look at his track record and take a stab at what he's likely to do.

Ask questions. Ellis will quickly discover there's a big difference between what Te Papa claims to be doing and what’s actually going on. Basically it’s a kid's museum with scholarly pretentions, so an easy model to change so long as he doesn't get lost in the current echo chamber. Asking real questions and expecting real answers at Te Papa? Brutal.

Focus. The current mantra "Changing hearts, changing minds, changing lives" would suit a neighborhood bookstore just as well as Te Papa. Expect Ellis to take up the challenge and shift scale. The 200 (+ however many) staff of Te Papa makes it a giant in the cultural arena but in media and tech it's a minnow. As he’s done in the past look to Ellis to focus on attracting bigger audiences in the right demographics, and with no advertisers to satisfy. Brilliant.

Bring in some friends to help. It's what professional CEs always do. If he's only got three years to sort things out he's going to need help fast from people he knows can deliver. The current staff spend their time tip-toeing round in what's being called a 'toxic' culture. Rick Ellis is known to be impatient when he's slowed down by anything (especially the incumbent culture slowing things down). Watch for the rapid departure of top-level staff.

Play the game he knows. This is someone experienced in media production, communication and digital services. He'll see Te Papa as an under-utilised brand property with commercial potential as a digital platform. And why wouldn't he.

Play the game he knows Part II. Ellis is a money guy. He's going to expect return on the building and the assets. He believes in the logic of the market. Conventional museum shows don't bring in big profits (especially when you take into account the costs) so what's a new CE to do? Branch out, that's what.

Learn from the Giant Squid. No big secret that Te Papa’s most popular events have all been based on the cabinet of curiosities principle. More, bigger, stranger stuff. Bring on the society of the spectacle. 

Franchise, partner, whatever. Developing new stuff from the ground up takes too long and it's too expensive. The proposed movie museum and WETA are obvious targets for Ellis's media experience and connections. Peter Jackson’s skills can bring people and cash to Te Papa and Te Papa can put the Jackson story round the world with classy packaged exhibitions in premium venues. Born for each other. And Ellis will have many other friends in the entertainment culture industries to play with. He will be furious though about the mega Gallipoli exhibition being held in the old National Museum and Art Gallery and not on the waterfront at Te Papa. But what are the chances of the government changing NZ's remembrance date for him. Not high.

Go national. The drumbeat to serve the whole nation is sounding loud and clear. Sticking the lesser collections and a few classrooms in Manukau City was never going to do it. Talking digital and interactive isn't either but guess he'll figure out the ROI and problems with content soon enough.

Pull a rabbit out of the hat. Work out how to pay for a serious digital presence and not leave the current building as a run down brand-embarrassment? (see staff cuts below).

Cut staffing levels (duh) and move to part-timers for basic operational services. He's done it before. He definitely knows the way.

 Interrogate the scholarly staff and peer review their outputs. Move them out of the building, give them targets and genuine accountability. Threaten them with absorption into the tertiary sector as Plan B. Sorted.

Get all that pesky art stuff the hell out of the building.  There’s no money to be made on it and precious little thanks (Rick Ellis pauses, looks out his window at the old National Art Gallery building in the far distance .... hmmm … he thinks to himself .... maybe after that Gallipoli exhibition…..)

Finding gold in the Triennial maze

How do you find out what’s going on at the Auckland Triennial? There seem to be three web sites as well as a Twitter stream and Facebook. Search for the Auckland Triennial 2013 and as you'd expect you get as the number one hit aucklandtriennial.com But hang on, it turns out this isn't the site you really need. After a bit of is-this-the-best-we-can get action we literally stumbled on yet another Auckland Triennial website. Not easy to find as it isn’t mentioned on the Auckland Art Gallery site or the main Triennial site either and forget Google. But, if you scroll back to January on the FaceBook page it is mentioned a couple of times (and then never linked to again – they usually link to the other site). This much more informative site is called rather mysteriously triennial.sons. Is it some cunning ploy worked up by marketing? Will Triennial and Sons fool us all by stepping up and stepping out when we least expect it? In the meantime you can check it out and bookmark it here.

Digital dreams

The art museum world has been pretty slow at coming to terms with the digital world. Even now, and after a considerable amount of encouragement and enthusiasm by Best of 3, they are still really only just at the getting-the-collection-online and maybe-blogging-once-in-a-while stage. 

The exception is of course the Christchurch Art Gallery who blog regularly, sometimes provocatively and often amusingly once a day at least and have introduced My gallery image sets as a way of life for many of their fans. The fact is the digital world is fast and rapacious so blogging once a week or putting up a future exhibitions programme that’s just a list, or not having pics of your latest exhibition up three tenths of a second after the show opens (well at least before EyeContact puts them up for you) is kind of lame.

Here’s a list of things we have assembled from talking around and asking people what they would like to see on art museum web sites.

• A constantly updated and annotated list of the latest art books. With no art bookshop left in Auckland (or anywhere else for that matter) this information is now hard to get unless you are professionally engaged.
• Images of the current exhibitions on show (videos would be nice too). It won’t stop people coming (honest). 
• Use Tweeting as a communication tool not just a promotional one - it's hard to respond to things that are just about how-amazing-we-are.
• YouTube movies of all talks and lectures the day after they are given. And what with Skype being free and all how about including some off-shore people into some of these discussions.
• The opportunity for the public to join in on cataloguing your collection with tagged information and stories, the Smithsonian already does this on Flickr
• Regular posts, tweets or sets on great objects in the collection you don’t have space to show. 
• Pdfs of all your printed catalogues from day one (Volunteers will do the scanning for you)
• A personal report with pics from any curators who’s scored an overseas trips, telling us what’s going on out there (doesn’t have to be formal or the opinion of the institution and could start with Tweets or posting during the trip).
• At least one thing that will give people a laugh once a week 
• A chance to donate toward purchasing specific art works for the collection Kickstarter style

There’s plenty more where that came from (thanks G and M), but that’ll do for now.

The even more anxious object

No one loves objects more than we do but it’s hard to avoid the thought that their domination of the visual arts might be on the decline. Invisible: art about the unseen 1957-2012 is an exhibition of absences at the Haywood Gallery in London curated by Ralph Rugoff. It feels like another twitch in this growing anxiety. The re-examination of the subject of objects (starting with whether more objects should even be added to the world’s load) is definitely heating up.

 It was in the breeze that wafted through four almost empty galleries in a work by Ryan Gander at Documenta, in Bruce Nauman’s sound piece Days at the ICA in London, and has been heralded for some time by the renewed fascination for non-object conceptual art of the seventies. It is also apparent in the growing concern of public art museums about storage overload in the face of their expanding collections i.e. objects as a management problem. And then there is all the talk about what objects mean to a generation living in its laptops.

We do live in an analogue material world of course surrounded by objects (shoes, buildings, forks and yes laptops) and there will always be artists who won't, or can’t, let the object go. (“I’m trying to capture the individual’s desire for the object” – Jeff Koons). While you can certainly count on the auction houses and dealers not going down without a fight there is a rising tide. Too many artists are challenging the centrality of objects, and the boundaries between subjects and objects, to think that we will avoid these traditional relationships unravelling.