This presentation has been prepared for CMA 2014, the Canadian Museums Association's yearly meeting taking place in Toronto from 7-11 April 2014. It focuses on inclusion of audience as co-curators and co-creators of added value to museums collections, on digital engagement (Jasper Visser & Jim Richardson) and "stepping down" from curators as opinion makers/leaders, to focus towards museums (and museum professionals) as enzymes of under-the-surface-lying creativity in the communities they wish to address, facilitators for new values and new visions to emerge. The presentation, quoting case studies from Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Italy (the Visual Arts Research and Documentation Centre at MACRO Contemporary Art Museum), was discussed on April 10, 2014 at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel (Imperial Room).

2. “Come gather 'round friends and I'll tell you
A tale
Of when the red iron pits ran plenty
But the cardboard-filled windows and old men
On the benches
Tell you now that the whole town is empty...”
Bob Dylan
(Newport folk festival, 26 July 1963)

3. The Future of MuseumsThe Future of Museums
2014 CMA National Conference
Toronto, 7-11 April 2014
* * * * *
Thoughts for a Lean Museum
Musings on Times of Crisis
by Alessandro Califano
Visual Arts Research & Documentation Centre
Rome (IT) - @crdav_macro / @a_califano

4. ANAI (National Association of Italian Archives)
recently explained: “...in 2016, archives will
operate with only 50% of the staff they’d need
to properly work.”
[ Quoted @ Digital Youth of Central Asia Forum,
Dushanbe (Tajikistan), 13 November 2011 ]
ANAI had however been quite optimistic: already
by the start of 2013, our institution was run with
only 42% of the manpower available in 2011...

5. ...and the trend appears to be the same
elsewhere, too...
What could be an effective answer
to this challenge?
Many approaches are being tried...

6. Increasing sustainability (no waste!)
Downsizing (and doing more with less)
Optimizing existing resources
Volunteering
Identifying new stakeholders...

7. ICT – Information and Communication
Technologies – help us in stepping further:
We can search for new segments of potential
audiences more effectively, reaching out for them
in their own (virtual) environment.
This has been called “fishing for our audience”
(Ken Coates, Whitehorse – CMA 2013)
Perhaps we could go even a little further...

8. ICT – Information and Communication
Technologies – help us in stepping further:
We can search for new segments of potential
audiences more effectively, reaching out for them
in their own (virtual) environment.
This has been called “fishing for our audience”
(Ken Coates, Whitehorse – CMA 2013)
Perhaps we could even take another step
forward...

9. In fact,as long as we consider “the world outside”
as “our (potential, at least) audience”, we are
implying that WE are those in charge of providing
content and expertise to THEM.
How about somewhat changing the rules of the
game, instead, and shifting our perspective?

10. Opening Keynote Speaker Jasper Visser wrote
(with Jim Richardson) about
Digital Engagement
in cultural heritage related institutions,
that ought to become social institutions
“where audience and employees systematically
work together to co-create value”.
This should however not be limited to the digital
world and its tools and strategies alone...

11. In fact, though ICT – and FOSS! (Free and Open
Source Software solutions) – can help us a lot in
this, we shouldn't focus that much on tools to
achieve our aims.
Without a change in functions, roles and mental
attitudes, our “new” aims will be pretty much
similar to the old ones...

12. Participation, crowd-sourcing, maybe even
fostering a decentralized approach to curatorship
might be ways to put new life into museums
activities. But what we should scrutinise most is
the very system upon which our cultural
institutions are based.

13. This doesn't mean we should imply that we as
museum professionals, or curator-based museum
practice as such “are to be discontinued”.
It merely means getting familiar with the idea that
curator-based museum practice is not the only, or
universally valid, practice and system.
Two examples might make this clearer...

14. Samarkand – at the Registan

15. Heritability – a family line

16. I could interview twice the young ladies in the
previous picture (2006 and 2008). Both had
entered their Cultural Heritage positions at a
mausoleum in Samarkand following in the steps
of their mother:
First as sweepers, then as assistants, eventually
as responsible of a location. The younger one
(right) was eventually in charge of a historical
mosque nearby, when I again came to visit.

17. Kabul – at Babur Gardens
(on my right, in a green robe of honour, Gen. Director
of the National Museums, Omara Khan Massoudi)

18. Traditional positions: the key-keeper
(in the picture, a colleague from Jalalabad at the
National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul)

19. Though the General Director of the National
Museums of Afghanistan, Omara Khan Massoudi,
is proceeding towards a curator based
organization in museums,
traditional roles going back to the times of the
Mughal Empire – like that of the key keeper for a
museum safe, responsible with his (and his
family's) own estate for the integrity of the goods
he has in custody – are still commonly in use.

20. There is no need to do without the system we are
best familiar with, of course.
But maybe, getting acquainted with different
realities can make our shift more easy from being
at the centre of proposals addressed to the public,
to being facilitators and catalysts for under-the-
surface lying creativity.
Our new role should thus be to become an
enzyme for our community of reference...

21. To give you an idea of the initial steps the Visual
Arts Research and Documentation Centre has
been doing in Rome, two very recent case studies
are presented in the next slides.
One shows the strategic alliance with a new local
stakeholder – a design bistro named “la
Portineria” that opened further down the road
where our Centre is located.
The second focuses on the process of the
exhibition “Architecture and Memory. How Real is
Real” that opened at our Library on 27 March
2014.

22. Integrating with the Community: a
design-bistro and our Library

23. “La Portineria” is a design-bistro, led by a food
designer and an award winning young chef, that
opened in Rome a couple of months ago near the
MACRO Contemporary Art Museum.
We established contact, agreed on setting up for
them a micro library with contemporary art
volumes from our stock, and obtained from them
a free catering for the opening of our exhibition at
the Library.
This synergy (design in food and art) should, in
our intentions, lead us to further common action –
the presentation of a book at their location,
maybe, or a round table about food design at
ours.

24. Planning an exhibition: co-creating
value in a 1:6 ratio (at zero costs)
L – A preparatory meeting; R – With photographer
Jaroslav Poncar at the Library

25. “Architecture and Memory: How Real Is Real?” is
an exhibition of pictures and photographic books
featuring three photographers (Oscar Savio,
Sergio Pucci, Jaroslav Poncar) that has been set
up with a less-than-minimal budget, curated by an
external curator (Simona Corsetti), a long-time
assistant to the Centre (Elisabetta Bianchi), and
myself.
It opened on 27 March 2014 and has been the
first outcome of an externalised research project
about the new photographic Pucci fonds acquired
by our Photoarchive.

26. “LETTING GO”
Previously known paths, routines, and answers,
giving control to others in our work and in its
outcome,
May not be too easy.
So, before proceeding to the conclusion of this
session, let us do a little experiment.
It is called...

27. “the Sound of Silence”
( this exercise consists in the audience being
perfectly silent, just listening for 45” )

28. What did you hear?
( Discussion follows – thanks to Paul for keeping
track of it! ) ...and the good new is:
There's no such thing as a wrong answer!
What we just did was co-curating an event (and
one participant's mention of “seeing coloured
forms” was a very welcome extension of options).
By the way, this is an introductory exercise for a
soundscape workshop... :-)

29. Thus, going back to what have been
“les mots clés”
for this year's meeting in Toronto:
If is is our INTENTION to stay relevant for today's
audience and for tomorrow's society,
Then we will have to INNOVATE our role as
museum professionals, stepping down from the
privileges of an “opinion maker” position,
And to INVENT new ways to share responsibilities
as co-curators, and co-creators of added value for
our collections.

30. In this way we might be able to avoid our story to
end with the final verses of the song I introduced
my session with:
“My children will go
As soon as they grow,
Well there ain't nothing here now to hold them”
Since in reaching out to our audience for help and
co-creation we should rather always keep in mind
the Poet's words...

31. “We few, we happy few, we bandband of
brothers”
Kenneth C. Branagh in “Henry V” (1989)

32. And “Brothers” may there be, aplenty!
Thank you, merci !
Toronto, 10 April 2014