I should probably start off differentiating art museums from educational museums - science, nature, history, etc. I work at an Art Center. Educational museum culture is foreign to me. Art museums are typified by white cubes, where individual objects are allowed some room to speak for themselves. Educational museums are typified by Disneyland. The American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting, held in Indianapolis, is primarily aimed at the latter.

After I arrived at the Indianapolis Convention Center, checked in for the conference, and collected my funky smelling nylon tote bag (FSNTB) full of papers, brochures, and catalogs, I headed to my first presentation. On the way I played Museum Professional BINGO in my head:

• Museum Fundraiser/Marketer: typically a woman in her late 40’s-early 50’s with “funky” eyeglasses, short, spiky, dyed-red hair, dressed all in black except for a shock of color in her earrings/scarf/handbag.
• Museum Preparator: a man with greying hair, a rumpled button-down shirt tucked messily into his denim pants, sporting work boots or white sneakers.
• Historical Society Director: Man or woman with closely cropped hair, tweed jacket, earth toned outfit, and enough perfume/cologne to close an airport.
• Hipster Junior Staffer: dark plastic rimmed glasses, messy hair, pointy-toed shoes, neatly pressed pants (even if they are wearing jeans), and untucked shirt.
• Natural History Museum Education Developer: a woman in Björn clogs, a purposefully wrinkled skirt, plenty of polar fleece to guard against the freakishly cold air conditioning in the sessions, and just a hint of patchouli
• Museum Director/CEO: a man in a tailored suit, dry cleaned white shirt, conservative tie, and shockingly white hair and teeth intensified by his Oompa-Loompa skin tone.
• BINGO!

For weeks prior to the conference, I had scoured the pages of the AAM presentation catalog to find some interesting sessions to attend. Presentation after presentation was aimed at museum education departments and the marketing/fundraising departments that fuel the Disneyesque edu-tainment. Sessions entitled “What the Heck is Experience Design?,” “Transforming the Visitor Experience: Immersion Programs to the Max,” and “the Young and the Restless: Retaining the 20-to-30 Somthings After the Party’s Over” littered the catalog pages. Each offering was trying to sound pitifully hip by tossing off terms like “to the max,” and “what the heck.” I was half expecting to run across “Straight Up, Yo: How to Lure African Americans to Your Exhibits.” The first session I saw that seemed even vaguely grounded in reality was entitled “In or Out: A Crossroads for Exhibition Design” (despite resorting to the use of “crossroads” in its title).

This session set the tone for the rest of the conference. The presenters never spoke of the nuts and bolts of exhibition design, but instead waxed long about their companies that offered exhibition design services to museums. It was an infomercial and I was in the audience. These exhibition consultants were there shilling for themselves and educating us on what to do within our museums to prepare for their inevitable presence. “The public must be entertained and the youth must have recognizable brands, like Clifford, to lure them to museums,” was the thrust of their argument. One presenter even winkingly made a comment about the “Crossroads for Exhibition Design” being a Robert Johnson-esque experience where you make a deal with the Devil (exhibition consultants). Indeed.

I will agree that most people do not willingly attend museums on a regular basis. So what? Does the material have to be so dumbed-down and drowned out by flashing lights and interactive computer touch-screens to be enticing? Do museums have to spend millions of dollars expanding their buildings to make room for the trickle of visitors? Do education departments need to entertain in the ivory tower of the museum instead of getting out in the trenches and actually getting people excited about art or science? Education departments don’t seem interested in educating the public that art/science/nature isn’t scary and confusing, instead they seem more afraid that their institution will come off as stodgy. Objects are thought to need more pizzaz, more educational text, more edgy display backgrounds, more faux rock, more fake trees, more neon, more computers, more flat screen televisions, more interactivity, more, more, more! Museums are contextualizing objects to death, and it’s only getting worse.

My second session just reaffirmed my fears. The presenters spoke of hiring their companies to direct visitor polls and involve the community in museum decisions (despite admitting that they had already charged forward with their own agendas before consulting their public). Are we that out of touch with the public that we have to hire independent firms to conduct surveys in malls and over the telephone so we can know how best to serve them?

Numbed to vendor’s commercial advances, I made the rounds in the EXPO, nabbing every free logo-emblazoned goody I could get me hands on*. I was physically startled twice by frightening animatronic characters who were spouting off about electricity or the Revolutionary War with all the humanity of a politician. The majority of the EXPO was inhabited by merchants hawking audio tour guides or interactive animated presentations. There were a handful of art shippers/handlers and regional museum organizations, but the majority of the vendors who had set up shop were there to enhance the “visitor experience.” I was attending a conference not to participate in the exchange of ideas, but business cards.

* I made out like a bandit. I now have 15 ball point pens, 3 tape measures, 3 luggage tags, 1 compass/watch/carabiner, 1 multi-tool, 1 pair of white gloves, 1 sketchpad, and 1 exhbition catalog (retail $30).