“What’s that you’ve got there?”

Way back in my early career as an organizer of museum-held stuff, I trolled through boxes of one museum's permanent collection looking for objects appropriate to include in an exhibition. I had a truly wonderful time, because there were tags saying things like, "blades of grass taken from Stonewall Jackson's grave." My thought then was, "Wow, those folks were serious about Stonewall Jackson..." my thought now is, "are you SURE this is what it claims it is?"

I'm not cynical - much :) - but do feel it is important to double-check the true history of the works in your collection. The simplest reason to do so is that truth about an object is what your visitors expect to hear from you, and what your donor has told you may not be the actual truth. Case in point from our collection: We received a be-grimed portrait which was reputed to be painted by Rembrandt or Charles Wilson Peale. In fact, this was written on a label, attached to the back of the work, by the great-aunt of the donor. While the work was being conserved, it became pretty evident that not all of the painting was expertly painted, and that the technique was not all that Peale-ish. So, back to Square One. We called the painter of this work "Unknown American," hung it in storage, and started checking in with our colleagues who were expert in early 19th-century painting. The eventual concensus was that the painting was in the style of Jeremiah Paul, an itinerant painter who worked in the mid-Atlantic region. So we say on the label, "Attributed to Jeremiah Paul" when we exhibit it.

I do not think the great-aunt was a liar, but I do think a story passed down several generations can work awfully like a message-passing game. Have you ever played one? You start out whispering a phrase into someone's ear, they whisper it to someone else, and so on around a group. The end person then repeats the message they got... which is often ridiculously different from the original. I guess we're lucky that the main confusion was "Peale" for "Paul" and we could sort it out.

Now, that example of grass from Stonewall Jackson's grave -- that's a toughie. How could you determine the real origin of that grass? For instance, has the cemetery documented the species growing there in the mid-1860s? I'm not betting on that... but you've still got the story of someone thinking that blades of grass which could possibly have come from Stonewall Jackson's grave are sufficiently significant to give a Civil War repository, and for the late 19th- early 20th-century caretakers of that collection to accept the donation. That says a great deal about the culture of the time. However, if you were offered those blades of grass today, how would you feel about accepting them? Do you think there's a strong enough story there to counter-balance the uncertainty of the grass's origin? Just asking... and you should as well.

Mary LaGue
Collections Manager

Taubman Museum of Art

Very Funky Holiday Wishes, from Your Friends at VAM

We hope that this holiday season provides you with peace, laughter, and good times. Here's a little somthing to get it started off on the right (platform-shoed) foot:

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

The Lights Are Much Brighter There; or, “These are a few of my favorite things…”

In my memory, the holidays and downtown are inseparably entwined. Every trip downtown, whatever time of year, brings the song “Silver Bells” to mind:

For me, Petula Clark’s “Downtown” will always be a Christmas carol:

My grandfather drove a Yellow Cab, and I began riding with him as a preschooler. During the holidays, Papa (known to some as “Corn Willie”) and I would make the rounds together to share holiday cheer with his many friends of all classes and colors (and sometimes deliver a little bootleg liquor). The entire city was decorated inside and out; crowds were bustling everywhere from the train and bus stations to the downtown stores and restaurants. On cabstands and in his (numerous) favorite neighborhood bars, I’d sing Christmas carols in return for loose change, Cokes, and sweets.

My mother ran (was!) the back office for the big flagship store of the Raylass Department Store chain on East Broad Street until just before I went away to college. For many of those years, my brothers and I watched from the store’s fourth floor windows to see The Real Santa Claus arrive downtown at the end of the Christmas Parade. Later, as a Boy Scout, I marched in the parade dressed as a holiday clown, carrying one end of a big banner announcing the next float or band. My favorite Christmas movie will always be (the 1947 original) “Miracle on 34th Street.”

At age thirteen, I became a weekend “change runner” between Raylass and the other stores during the Christmas rush, leaving our store with my coat pockets stuffed with big bills and returning weighed down with rolls of coins and much fatter due to bundles of small bills as we all helped each other out on Saturdays when the banks were closed. The first presents purchased with “my own money” for family and friends came from Broad Street’s five-and-dimes.

At fifteen, I got my first “management job,” running Raylass’s toy department. That year, and for the next three, I waited on Christmas Eve with the store manager until long after all the stores were closed, hoping that every last toy and gift layaway would be picked up, then nearly cried as I walked to my car because some never were.

The department stores and movie theaters are gone now, but after some sad years, the arts and entertainment are bringing downtown alive again. Holiday lights twinkle from outlined office buildings to apartment windows above the old storefronts.

In the midst of your busy holiday schedule, treat yourself with a trip downtown. Visit with the reindeer at the James Center, take in a play, shop the galleries, have a great meal, or just stroll the streets listen for the sounds of the season. “The lights are much brighter there…”

Thomas Singleton Driscoll


Wanderer, Wonderer
4200 Stuart Avenue
Richmond, Virginia, USA 23221-1943
804-353-0810
Tom@Chleire.com
http://www.chleire.com/

Making the Case for a Conference

Take ONE Minute to Be Counted: Act Now for Advocacy

From time to time, I get calls from members wanting up-to-date economic impact information for the museum industry in Virginia. I also get these requests from news reporters, state and federal agencies, and others trying to get a handle on just how important museums might be in the scheme of things.


The truth is, I have nothing to give them. The last reliable survey on museum economic impact and visitation was published in December 2000 – the “The Economic Impact of Arts and Cultural Organizations in Virginia” prepared by the Wessex Group, and commissioned by Virginians for the Arts in collaboration with VAM. Prior to that, VAM had surveyed its members and published its own economic impact study roughly every three years.

Since that time, VAM has tried three times to conduct another economic impact survey: 2003, 2005 and 2007. In each case, we received only 60-75 responses – way too few to make a study valid (there are over 1,000 museums in Virginia).

Why the lack of response? It is commonly acknowledged that such studies are important information and vital ammunition in an advocate’s arsenal. Are people just too busy? Don’t care? Think someone else will surely do it? Or – reluctant to reveal that information for fear of comparisons?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I do know this: Virginia museums have got to get over it and get counted. Yesterday, VAM sent out a trimmed-down, easy to complete economic and visitation survey to the directors of all Virginia museums. The deadline for submission of input is December 15, but late responses will be welcomed (they may not make it into the official printed report if received TOO late).

The results of this survey will be distributed to the Virginia General Assembly at Virginia Museum Advocacy Day on January 20, 2011. It is absolutely imperative that we make the case for Virginia’s museums – certainly no one else is going to do it for us. And we have recent examples of what can happen when museums are undervalued – think of the Coeburn amendment and the attempt to specifically exclude museums from the economic stimulus.

Has your museum responded to the survey? Ask your director – offer to fill it out if he or she doesn’t have time. If you have your visitation figures for the past year and your operating budget, it will take you less than 2 minutes – I filled it out as a test in 52 seconds.

Need a link to the survey? HERE IT IS! You can always email me at mcarlock@vamuseums.org if you have any questions or concerns. Please help us to make the case for museums – it is time for Virginia museums to stand up and be counted!



Sincerely,

Margo Carlock
Executive Director
Virginia Association of Museums

A Mission to High River - A MEST Story

I had the privilege and pleasure of sitting down last week with Louis Bowman. Louis is an active member of the Richmond MEST (Museum Emergency Support Team) and holds a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) and amateur radio operator license. As a retired professional who spent years of his career at Morgan Stanley, Louis now has some time and flexibility to help out as a MEST member. But more importantly - he cares.

So much so that when the Museum of the Highwood, in High River, experienced a devastating fire, Louis showed up to help. He spent several days organizing and cataloging items in boxes that had been saved from the fire. Refrigerated 18 wheelers and a school auditorium had been enlisted to help house the items that had been damaged by smoke, flame, and water. Without volunteers who make themselves available quickly and act fast, those items would have been lost forever. Items of local importance ranging from a Superman II VHS tape to an 8x10 photograph of the Duchess of Windsor w/ a local class of students.

That there are people who care enough about others to make the time to get trained on what to do in various emergencies, and then who actually put the knowledge to use is heartwarming. I failed to mention one fact - if the name of the museum and the town don't ring a bell - Mr. Bowman traveled from Richmond, VA to Calgary (that's Alberta, Canada) to pitch in what he could. Think about that. An airline ticket, a rental car, several nights in a hotel room - for folks he had never met in a town he didn't know.

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Why did he help? Mr. Bowman relayed a story to me from the month after the World Trade Center bombings on 9/11, when he was in New York City. He stopped in to a nearby fire station to thank the firefighters who had lived through so much horror and given so selflessly. The first man he spoke with was a firefighter who had done just what Mr. Bowman would do nearly nine years later - he had flown out from Los Angeles to help in any way he could. The staff of that small fire station in New York City had lost 15 of their own. Louis never forgot his visit, his gratitude, or the firefighter from L.A.

Similarly, the folks from the Museum of the Highwood in High River will never forget Louis Bowman. At first, when they found out he was coming they asked, "What does he want?" But they came to realize that the trip was selfless and borne of a sincere desire to help and a heart full of gratitude - one that they now share. Says Louis, "There will always be a soft spot in my heart for the town of High River." We learn so much about ourselves - and gain so much - when we give of ourselves.

*If you are interested in joining a MEST team in Virginia, Contact VAM.


Heather Widener
Communications Director
Virginia Association of Museums

Connections from the Past Nurture Ties for the Future

VAM and its members continue to reach beyond Virginia to make connections and connect common threads. As you may have seen in the news, a group of African-Nova Scotians visited Virginia last month to attend the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Nova Scotia Best Practices Trade Mission Forum and to visit sites in Virginia that interpret African American and American slave history. The group was hosted by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities in partnership with Nova Scotia's Black Business Initiative, which seeks to foster the growth of business and cultural sites owned by Nova Scotia's black community.

The trip was the first in what will likely be an ongoing exchange and dialogue between Virginia and Nova Scotia on the challenging subject of interpreting African history in the Americas. In fact, Virginia museum professionals have already been invited to Nova Scotia for a follow up exchange program based on African history.

Most people do not realize the links between black history in Virginia and that in Nova Scotia, where Halifax has been called the “birthplace” of the black Canadian population. Whether they were loyalist refugees at the time of the American revolution or escaped slaves on fugitive ships, many of Nova Scotia's African-Nova Scotian community have ancestral ties to Virginia.

In addition to the VFH, VAM took an active role in the VFH Forum (ED Margo Carlock gave a presentation on Best Practices and Standards in Museums). Several of its member museums were highlighted in the Canadian group’s tour around sites in Virginia that interpret African American history (museums involved, included Monticello, Colonial Williamsburg, the Robert Russa Moton Museum, Legacy Museum of African American History, Alexandria Black History Museum, Black History Museum and Cultural Center in Richmond, Virginia Historical Society, and the Christiansburg Institute). We all look forward to a developing dialogue and relationship with our Nova Scotian colleagues. Planning for a reciprocal exchange visit to Nova Scotia by VAM members is just beginning – let us know if you would like to be involved!

VOTE NOW FOR OUR 2012 CONFERENCE SITE

Every year as fall approaches, the VAM staff begins the process of determining where our next conference is going to be. Making this decision is a balancing act, as we need to travel around the state, make sure different museums and communities get the chance to serve as local hosts, and keep to a very tight budget and a very specific need for space. In the past couple of years, many members have asked us how we choose a community or a hotel, and so we decided to show you "behind the scenes" of our decision process.

There are several things we need to keep in mind as we look at hotels:

• Do they have enough meeting space to provide our participants with ample classrooms and our exhibitors with a large enough exhibit hall?
• Is the hotel able to provide us with a room rate for our participants that fits into their tight budgets, and conference food prices that fit within VAM's tight budget?
• What does the area around the hotel look like in terms of museums--how far is it to area museums, and is there a good variety of museums for our participants to see?

When VAM was "younger," we were small enough to be able to spread our meetings across many of the communities in Virginia--Fredericksburg, Lynchburg, Staunton, Charlottesville, even Alexandria. As we have grown into the largest state association in the country, our choices for hotel and location have shrunk. There are now only eight cities in the state that have hotels with appropriate meeting space in which to hold our meeting--Richmond, Roanoke, Hot Springs, Reston, Crystal City, Williamsburg, Portsmouth and, with a brand new hotel, Newport News.

With a goal of going to Roanoke in 2013, 2012 gave us the opportunity to look into Northern Virginia for a conference site--we haven't been to this part of the state since 2004. At the same time, the new hotel in Newport News, as well as the museums in Newport News, offered us a wonderful chance to try that site.

Let us know what you think. Because the 2011 conference is in Portsmouth, we do not want our members in other parts of the state to feel slighted by returning to the Tidewater two years in a row, and we also want to do what is best for VAM and for our members.

We'd love to have your opinion on 2012 VOTE NOW!

Welcome to the 2011 VAM Conference

Welcome to historic Olde Towne Portsmouth, Virginia, site of the 2011 Virginia Association of Museum’s annual conference. Known for its charm and central location in Hampton Roads, Olde Towne Portsmouth is visited by travelers and residents alike for its abundance of museums and attractions, restaurants, specialty shops, and arts and antiques galleries. Its pedestrian-friendly atmosphere offers visitors a chance to stroll its streets to view scenic waterfronts, historic homes, beautiful churches, lush gardens and more. Conference planning will take VAM participants through this cultural locality during the four-day conference period.



Evening Socials
“Ain’t we got fun?” Three evening events beginning on Saturday will allow you to explore beyond your interim stay at The Renaissance.
• Evening 1: This year’s scholarship reception will take place at the Hill House, headquarters of the Portsmouth Historical Association and the only historic residence in Olde Towne that is open to the public. This 1825 four-story English Basement type home contains all the belongings and furnishings of the Hill family who lived here for over 150 years.
• Evening 2: Enjoy food, fun and frolic along the historic Seawall where events will take place at the Lightship, Naval Museum, Skipjack Nautical Wares and Riverview Gallery. Pirates, music, naval and maritime history, art and “The Colonel” will be featured. For sports lovers, Selection Sunday will take place at the Sports Hall of Fame.
• Evening 3: Relax and have fun strolling from the Courthouse Galleries to the Visual Arts Center, Children’s Museum of Virginia and Virginia Sports Hall of Fame. This progressive event includes hors d’oeuvres, dinner, dessert and musical entertainment. And, if you need further enticement, bring your loot—all the venue gift shops will be open.

Daytime Activities
Whether you enjoy art or history, two concurrent afternoon events on Saturday will keep attendees engaged.
• Event 1: On the roof of Tidewater Community College’s Visual Arts Center, Ed Francis, Chair of the Glassblowing Department, will demonstrate the glassblowing process and work with attendees in the creation of a paperweight.
• Event 2: Author and historian Dean Burgess will take a group on a Steeple-to-Steeple Church and Synagogue Tour that will feature the unique architecture and interiors of St. Paul’s Catholic Church, Trinity Episcopal Church and the Jewish Museum and Cultural Center.

Remember VAM's last conference in Portsmouth?



Shelley Brooks, Co-chair, Local Arrangements Committee, VAM Conference 2011

Visitor survey work: What did our visitors think? (3 of 3)

In my first two blogs, I wrote about our recent work with surveys and visitor tracking. In this column, we’ll take a look at what the data had to say about customer satisfaction.

In our first quick exit survey, we simply asked for an overall judgment from our visitors about their experience that day. We gave them a scale running from outstanding to dissatisfied and asked them to select one of the 5 gradations on the scale. Pretty shallow, but it provided a snapshot. The AASLH survey, however, asks many questions from a variety of angles to get at visitor satisfaction, value of the visit, quality of education and entertainment, the difference the visit made. We received valuable feedback, and much of it is also useful for marketing purposes and for donor/grant appeals. In 2009-10, we re-asked some of the AASLH questions on an on-line survey. Here’s some of what we learned from visitors to the National Museum of the Marine Corps:

When is came to overall satisfaction with their visit, 76% reported that the Museum was outstanding; 22% excellent; and less than 1% reported satisfactory, marginal, or unsatisfactory each. This rating is supported by the AASLH data; of a possible high score of 10, those surveyed gave the Museum a 9.5 as an overall rating.

When it came to visitor satisfaction with staff and volunteers, 71% reported it to be outstanding; 21% excellent; 5% satisfactory; less than 1% marked marginal and unsatisfactory each; 2% had no opinion. This rating is supported by the AASLH data; of a possible high score of 10, those surveyed gave the Museum’s staff and volunteers a 9.3 rating.

When asked if they would return for another visit, 81% indicated that it was very likely that they would do so; 15% said it was somewhat likely; while 4% said no. This rating is supported by the AASLH data; of a possible high score of 10, those surveyed gave the Museum a 9.3 rating for a return visit.

When asked if they would recommend the Museum to others, a very high 98% said that it was very likely that they would do just that! This rating is supported by the AASLH data; of a possible high score of 10, those surveyed gave the Museum a 9.6 rating when it came to making a recommendation to others.

Other AASLH data points of interest include a rating of 9.4 out of 10 for its unique learning environment and a 9.3 for the positive impact it had on visitors. We also learned that our “brand name” wasn’t very familiar yet; that people had difficulty once inside the Museum navigating from one gallery to the next and within the galleries; and most people heard about us by word of mouth (so is all that expensive advertising, rack card distribution, and other marketing efforts worth it?).

The on-line survey was by invitation as explained in an earlier blog, and we were not consistent in how we passed out our keepsake postcard invitations to Museum visitors. Our first game plan was for docents to hand out the card to every 5th visitor every day during mid-day hours until 250 cards had been passed out. Because of the variations in docent schedules and assignments, there is a revolving door of docents, students, and Marines at the information desk. It proved impossible to stick to our plan. For two early months, we under-executed our invitation give-aways. And then we ran out of cards because we weren’t paying attention to our stock, resulting in another few weeks in which we had little data. We spent most of the year-long cycle, passing out our daily allotment along with the Museum brochure as folks entered. And sometimes, over-zealous information desk staff passed cards out all day long, not just to the first 250. Thus, the exercise was not as scientific as we had planned.

And I was disappointed in the small number who responded on their computers once they got home, although our statically minded colleagues tell us that capturing feedback from even 2-3% of our visitors is “statistically relevant.” We did much better than that, but I was hoping for a 10% rate, not the 5 to 8 that we got.

The survey is still active on our site; we’re letting folks who find it on our home page take it, so that we continue to get a trickle of feedback around the clock. Survey Monkey is not expensive; the reported data is usefully presented; it leaves the heavy lifting to others (but we did have staffing support from the institutional assessment team at Marine Corps University, and it would have been much more labor intensive without them). You also have to know how to write the questions and portray the answers, so you get the data you’re looking for. I think this automated tool has much promise. Next time, I want to use terminals in our Museum itself for the survey, along with trained staff and volunteers who will direct traffic to the stations. But I think we’re asking the right questions. Take a look for yourself on www.usmcmuseum.org and tell me what you think.

And our visitors are not shy. I bet yours on just as vocal. On both the AASLH survey and the on-line instrument, we left opportunities for folks to give us their comments. And comment they did! And while the stats are valuable, the staff made greater use of these comments. We have gone over them periodically, spotting trends and repeat suggestions. Senior staff members are taking the lead on being responsive to these comments. We’ve tried new approaches to signage and way-finding based on the surveys; we’ve added benches; we have altered some of our information desk procedures to be more helpful to guests with special needs; and we have a growing list of suggestions for new exhibition topics (in spades!!). We definitely want to keep those comments coming (in addition to the comments cards available at the desk).

What have you done in the way of on-line or in-house computer-based surveys? What was the most useful suggestion you ever received? What was your worst mistake, one that we might learn from and avoid ourselves? I’ll let you know more as we continue at the Marine Corps Museum to get to know our visitors better. We are in the education business. But we are also in the business of providing customer service, and we’ll keep on trying to get better and better at both.

—Lin Ezell, Director, NMMC, and VAM Council Member.

Three Scholarships Available

The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities is offering three free tickets (normally $575 each) to edUi 2010 for cultural heritage organizations serving Virginia. edUi is a conference on web design and development specifically aimed at web professionals serving institutions of learning happening November 8-9 in Charlottesville, VA.

Preference will be given to small museums, cultural heritage organizations, historical societies and similar organizations serving Virginia with budgets that make attending edUi impractical. Additional consideration will be given to individuals or organizations poised to put what they learn to use on specific projects that will forward VFH's efforts to discover and share untold stories, encourage lifelong learning, and promote civil discourse through:
Commonwealth Outreach
Public events, seminars, exhibitions, educational resources, and long-term initiatives statewide.
Scholarship Serving the Public
Opportunities for scholars to reach broad audiences in Virginia, the nation, and world.
Digital and Media Initiatives
Culturally relevant content produced for public radio and Internet distribution.

Application deadline is Friday October 8th. Apply online at http://eduiconf.org

Visitor survey work: Who are our visitors? (2 of 3)

In our first discussion, we looked at the National Museum of the Marine Corps’ first experiment with visitor tracking within one of its exhibit galleries. Now we look at data collected during a quick exit survey and the Museum’s participation in a more formal program. In 2007-08, the Marine Corps Museum signed up for what is now called “Visitors Count!” with the American Association for State and Local History. Their survey has been used by a wide range of museums across the country during recent years; the instrument is tried and true, statistically proven, and allows for museums to compare their results with other organizations in their field or region. Participants have the option to include a few questions of their own, specific to their needs, but the instrument is provided by AASLH, the results are analyzed by AASLH’s statistical partner, and AASLH provides very specific guidelines on its execution. Institutional members get a discount on the survey program’s fees.

Our third major initiative was to use Survey Monkey, inviting our visitors to go to our web site upon their return home and answer some questions about their recent visit. We used an attractive keepsake-quality 5x7 postcard as our invitation, which we handed out to visitors either as they entered or as they exited. Most of the questions were similar to our earlier survey work; others were tailored to help our foundation partner gather data about visitor satisfaction in the museum store and food venues. We added a question about family income for the first time at the suggestion of our development team, who kept seeing that question come up on grant applications. And we ran the survey for a full year (June 2009-May 2010) to see if there were seasonal differences (there were not many). And we looked at zip code information gathered by the store. We learned a lot!

Male:female visitor ratio ave = 64:36 (for the on-line survey it was 67:33).

Of visitors surveyed on-line, 22% were in the 26-45 age group, 47% were 46-65, 17% were 66-75. While the age categories were slightly different, this data coincided with that collected during the AASLH survey: 34% were age 19-34, 25% 35-54, and 25% 55+. Surveys generally did not include the large numbers of active duty Marines, who are generally younger than 26, nor organized school and youth groups. These percentages reflected the general adult visitor population.

Overwhelming percentage of our visitors was white (89%). Again, surveys generally did not include the large numbers of active duty Marines and school groups, whose ethnic backgrounds are more diverse than our general adult visitor population.

Many of our visitors hailed from VA (21%), followed in decreasing order by PA, MD, FL, NC, NY, CA, NJ, and TX. Most of our visitors traveled from nearby Mid-Atlantic states and from those states with the largest overall populations and largest populations of retirees. These numbers coincided with zip code data collected by the Museum Store.

Of the visitors surveyed, 36% reported being Marines, past or present. Again, surveys generally did not include the large numbers of active duty Marines who visit the Museum in organized groups. Slightly fewer visitors reported being Marines during the first half of the year.

In 2009-10, 41% of visitors reported staying in area hotels and campgrounds; in 2007-08, the number was 22%, a marked change.

Our visitors were generally equally distributed across all income levels, with a small increase of visitors reporting an annual income of $46-75K in January-June and a slight increase of those reporting $100k+ in September-December.

Our visitors spend several hours at the Museum: 1% was here less than 1 hour; 21% spent 1-2 hours; 34% spent 2-3 hours; 25% spent 3-4 hours; and 19% were at the Museum for 4+ hours!

In 2009-10, 64% of our visitors were first-timers. (The reported number in 2007-08 was 79%; we would expect this number to be highest shortly after opening and decrease thereafter if the Museum is attracting repeat visitors.) In 2009, 16% of those surveyed were on their 2d visit; 11% on 3d visit; and 10% reported having been at the Museum 4 times or more!

61% of visitors surveyed indicated that they had visited NMMC’s web site.

37% of visitors surveyed indicated that they had eaten in one of the restaurants on their visit, and 70% reported buying something from the Museum Store. Both these numbers are significantly higher than the reported capture rates reported by both revenue-generating venues; capture rates are based on total visitation, to include Marines, students, and other populations not surveyed.

You’ll recall from my first blog that we first used a quick 6-question exit interview. Of our 6 questions, we wasted one. Obviously, having just opened, most visitors would be there for their first time. No need to ask that one. Age ranges differed a bit from survey to survey. We recommend using the AASLH breakdown so that all data meshes; they came up with this breakdown based on years of research; no need for us to try something different. Our interns should have been trained more thoroughly; a mix of older docents working with the interns may have also netted us more validity with our older visitors, some of whom seemed not to take them seriously. And we believe that we could have gone up to 10 questions and still remained within most subjects’ comfort zone with a stand-up interview.

For the AASLH survey, we needed a relatively quiet space where our visitors could take this longer, more complex survey. Randomly selected guests fill out this multi-page questionnaire themselves; it takes several minutes of careful reading; many of the questions require a sliding scale answer; some questions are asked more than once from a different perspective. We chose to use one of our restaurants for the survey site; about 25% of our visitors visit one of the two restaurants on the second deck. Visitors, especially during the first 18 months or so perceived the Mess Hall to be over-priced. By conducting our survey upstairs, we biased the results toward visitors who could afford the prices and the time to eat at the Museum. It was also hard to be completely random, and we may have gravitated to visitors who seemed more receptive and friendly. It’s hard not to, because you’re asking for a valuable commodity: their time. If they appear cool or unhappy, you believe your chances of success are not good. We will repeat this survey next year, and we’ll find another physical place for the interviews and work on our objectivity. And our little appreciation gift—a laminated bookmark—is definitely a gift not appropriate for all age groups. This survey was also executed on weekends and weekdays, primarily mid-day, over two seasons.

Who has exit survey experiences they would like to share? Check out AASLH’s site for more information on “Visitors Count.” Next blog will look at how we measured visitor satisfaction and the National Museum of the Marine Corps’ experiences with an on-line survey.

—Lin Ezell, Director, NMMC, and VAM Council Member.

Visitor surveys work: How many and who are they? (1 of 3)

Whenever museum staff get together, one of the first topics of conversation that comes up is visitor counts. Even if we’re a free attraction, like the National Museum of the Marine Corps, we live by the numbers, or so it would seem. Grant applications ask the question of us; so do donors and marketers and our boards and bosses. For that question, there is an easy answer. We count electronically at Quantico; many use the clicker method or count sales if they have paid admissions. After last year’s rough economic times, the Marine Corps Museum’s numbers have picked up. Since we opened in late 2006, we had the best ever months in 2010 for May through August, and we welcomed visitor # 2 million this summer. But the “who” question is much harder to answer!

Visitor research and analysis is a specialized art in which I, for one, have had no formal training, and that is now high on my professional improvements to-do list. But we didn’t let that stop us from trying to find out who was visiting the National Museum of the Marine Corps, where they were coming from, why, and anything else we could glean from survey data. And we’ve probably made mistakes at everything we’ve tried. The good news is that even with the learning curve, the data we’ve collected since summer 2007 have all meshed and have been validated from one survey to the next. Here’s what we’ve done and what we learned—and what we could have done better.

Part 1. Using summer college interns during our first season, we did a quick exit survey and then some visitor stalking because we wanted to know what was going on in our galleries. The exit survey work was pretty straight forward: where from, age, military background or not, first visit or not, length of stay, level of overall satisfaction. And we observed the sex of the respondents. Our interns interviewed every 10th person as they left the Museum, over a combination of mornings, afternoons, weekdays, and weekends. And then with clipboards in hand and with signage in place advising visitors that we would be observing them in the WWII gallery, we tracked how long our guests lingered in various locations, whether they seemed to be reading labels or not, if they looked up at the aircraft and other visuals overhead, how long they watched videos, and how much conversation was taking place among visitors who were mingling with others. That was all a lot harder than is sounded!

In part two of this series, we’ll look at the exit survey data as it compares to a more formal collection of visitor information. The visitor observation work we did in 2007 is the only exercise of this kind we’ve tried. We followed visitors over a combination of mornings and afternoons, weekdays and weekends. Over 40% of our visitors spend 3+ hours in the Museum; that year we had three historical galleries in place, including WWII. Of the visitors we tracked, they spent about 25 minutes in this gallery, our largest. Videos, some of which run as long as 8 minutes, kept visitors engaged for 90 seconds. Very few folks picked up the headsets to listen to oral histories; fewer seemed to look up and notice the artifacts and signage above them. Our guests did seem to read labels and share their reactions with others around them. They “socialized” the experience. Apparent families and assumed veteran groups discussed the exhibitions with the most animation.

Because we were in the midst of tweaking the design of three new galleries at the time, we used this information right away. We shortened new videos; angled aircraft hanging in the ceiling as much as possible, dramatically lit them, and included engine audio; “dressed up” oral history stations and shortened run times; and made the new galleries more navigable for groups where we could. We left text length alone.

We need to do more visitor-tracking, but our “stalkers” need more training to develop their powers of observation. The form on which we record our observations needs to be more streamlined and more inclusive (we made observations at a limited number of “stations”). We need to engage the subjects as they exit the area to capture actual data about them, rather than make assumptions. And we need to plan on observing for longer periods of time; it is a labor intensive exercise. We seriously underestimated the time factor. Young college students clearly stood out; we should consider using a combination of older and younger observers. We did not see any significant variations in the observations based on time and day.

Who has experience and advice on visitor tracking? What training aids have you used that were especially helpful? What did you do as a result of the data collected? Next time, we’ll look at visitor demographics.

—Lin Ezell, Director, NMMC, and VAM Council Member

Save the Date!

'Ask a Curator Day' on September 1st 2010 will open the door to field experts with a unique worldwide question and answer session which will let interested members of the public put questions to museum and gallery curators. Check it out at http://www.askacurator.com/about.html.

- Heather

Curating up a storm…

I curated up a storm this week. There was a film series, several music playlists, and an exhibition.

Wait. I think I heard a chorus of voices – crying out in the museological wilderness. Are they trying to tell me I didn't curate anything but an exhibition?

See – This is my problem with the curatorial profession right now. There is a certain jealousness about the title that needs to be overcome. And there is a redefinition that must be acknowledged if museums are to (in the grand old words of Freeman Tilden) be relevant to their visitors.

We need to allow those who may not be traditionally be thought of as 'curators' to co-opt the title. And we need to look at what they are doing. Because I think we might just learn something.

I remember when I first assumed the mantle of 'curator' a few years back. A dear friend of mine called to congratulate me. She was effusive about my new job and very happy for me. But she paused during the call – and asked, quite sincerely – 'so, what exactly *is* a curator, anyway?'

Funny thing was – I really couldn't answer.

Oh – I could tell her what the dictionaries said, and what other curators told me. And I knew how I thought others would define it. But as I thought about her question later – I realized that I needed to codify it for myself. And what I wrote and said was not what many curators believed. Yet I steadfastly hold to my definition, despite the heartache and thousand natural shocks that the profession is heir to. To do otherwise is tantamount to treason in my book.

Curators need to be open to possibilities beyond their collection of watercolours, arachnids or (in my case) bits of Civil War ironclad. And they need to get out of the collective snit that the profession has adopted about the way that other people have coopted the title. Personally, I LOVE the fact that musicians curate music festivals. I LOVE the fact that designers curate collections of shoes or clothes or whatever. I LOVE the fact that people think enough of the title to take it for their own. We should be happy about this – not crying out that we deserve the title and they do not. As our colleague N. Elizabeth Schlatter from the University Of Richmond Museums wrote in a recent AAM article about the rapper/DJ Ludacris curating a show: "So if Ludacris is a curator, perhaps curators should become DJs."

I love you, Elizabeth. You've hit it on the head.

Heck – I think I was a curator before I even knew what one was – principally because I was a DJ. And no matter what you have done in your museum world – whether you are a curator, conservator, educator or custodian – chances are you have performed a curatorial act at some point in your life. Let's dissect it, shall we? A 'curator' researches things in the collection, cares for things in the collection, and ultimately chooses things from the collection which have meaning for an exhibition. Then creates a forum in which those things have context. Have meaning.

Hmmm. I researched songs, cared for the records, CDs and now mp3s in mine and others' collections, and then carefully chose those musical moments for a particular radio show. And I gave them meaning and context by juxtaposing one song against another. I was connecting one artist or song with another in that same way a paintings curator places two works of art in proximity to one another. Curators write labels. Good DJs speak them.

So I ask you - Have any of you or your friends or your families ever carefully crafted a mixtape, CD or iTunes playlist for someone or some event? Then have you not curated it? Is it any different than an exhibition when you really look at the bones of What. It. Is?

I know not everyone out there will agree with me. And that's ok because you don't have to. But I do welcome the discussion that this post may bring.

So what did I curate this week? Well – you'll just have to come to my museum to find out. I can tell you that it involved some bits of Civil War ironclad, arachnids, watercolours, radioactive dinosaurs and Blue Oyster Cult.

Yeah. I curated up a storm this week.

What Types of Fundraising are in Opposition to a Non-profit's Status?

This is a question from a member—I have made it anonymous, at their request. Any collegial comments, suggestions, advice would be greatly appreciated!

For many years our museum has held quilt raffles, contests with prizes, and challenges to raise funds. We now have a new president who opposes such activities, saying they are not compatible with being a museum and with non-profit status. Does anyone there have an opinion, or can you direct me to resources to help find the answer? I have looked at other museums’ web sites, and many do these activities, but it is not clear if this is a museum activity or a “friends of” sort of thing. Thanks for any advice!

Heather

Governing Council Retreat 2010

The VAM Governing Council met in Luray from Wednesday, July 7th - Friday, July 9th to discuss strategic planning, opportunities, and challenges for the organization over the next couple of years. We will soon be looking for feedback from our membership at large to help guide and inform our decision-making. Look for more on that soon!

Richmond Tourism Summit, July 28th

Registration is now open for the Richmond Tourism Summit, hosted by the Virginia Hospitality & Travel Association (VHTA). The Richmond Tourism Summit will take place on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 from 9:00 am to 12:00 noon at the Virginia Historical Society.

The Richmond Tourism Summit will provide an opportunity to highlight the economic contribution of tourism. Industry experts, policy makers and members of the tourism community will foster discussion on recent industry trends, forecasts and how federal and state policy affects all tourism large and small. Participants will hear from the American Hotel & Lodging Association; National Restaurant Association; Greater Richmond Convention & Visitors Bureau; Virginia Film Office; Carrie Cantrell, Assistant Secretary for Policy to the Secretary of Commerce & Trade; The Honorable Delores McQuinn (D-Richmond); and The Honorable Chris Peace (R-Mechanicsville).
The Richmond Tourism Summit is hosted by the Virginia Hospitality & Travel Association (VHTA) at no cost to participants. All are encouraged to attend and bring a colleague. Please make your reservation today by filling out and returning a registration form to Veronica Briggs by email, veronica@vhta.org, or fax, 804.285.3093.

Great Marketing Opportunity for VAM Members!

We have partnered with Highway Information Media, LLC to bring you a great marketing opportunity, right when you need it most! We have heard wonderful feedback thus far on this program. Many of our members are wasting no time taking advantage. But act fast - we are only offering this great program through July 2010. Find out more.

VAM's Mission and "About Us" Statement as a Word Cloud...

advocate association authorities brings columbia common community concerns cultural decision-making development disciplines district education established facilitates forum foster gives governmental grow historical inclusiveness individuals information institutions issues learn members membership museums non-profit organization primarily process professional provide relating resource serves services share sites staff support together training vam virginia voice

created at TagCrowd.com

Fundamentals Forum - Day 2

I'm a bit late getting yesterday's information up - it has been very busy here in Blacksburg!

Day 2 (Wednesday, June 16) started early - Scott Harris talked me into getting up for a morning constitutional (walk around campus). It did wake me up, and got my appetite roaring for breakfast in the dining hall. Hmm - French toast, omelet to order, belgian waffle or just good old eggs and bacon?

The first session was a general session on Museums and Boards presented by A.T. Stephens, Mike Henry and Doug Harvey. Breakout sessions followed for the rest of the day, 2-3 at a time: Daily Museum Operations, School Programs, Basic Marketing: Working with the Press, Outreach and Partnerships, Collections Management 101, Annual Fund and Membership, Technology and Social Media in Small Museums, and Administration: Personnel Issues.

We ended the day with another general session that basically provided an opportunity to explore some of the things that had come out of earlier sessions, get questions answered and to talk about our "aha moments" so far.

The faculty have been great - all the sessions have been outstanding, and they have provided a wealth of information and tips, referral to other resources, and generally the benefit of their years of experience in the museum world. They have made themselves available during breaks and mealtimes to answer questions, suggest options for specific situations our participants bring up, and have gone out of their way to be helpful.

After dinner, we had a special treat. Terry Nicholson, Museum Manager for the Town of Blacksburg, and Terri Fisher, Executive Director of the Giles County Historical Society, led the group on a walking tour of the Virginia Tech campus. Particularly moving was the memorial to the students and professors lost during the terrible shooting tragedy a year ago.

We also got to see the preserved Odd Fellows Hall, a museum celebrating the history of the African American inhabitants of Blacksburg,

and the GeoSciences Museum (thanks to Lyn Sharp, the Outreach and Collections Manager) where the highlight was the black light room showcasing the fluorescent and phosphorescent rocks.

Far out, man!

After our hike around campus, many folks came back to the dorm and headed for bed - it had been a long and full day. But there were a couple dozen folks who decided to continue the conversations from the night before in the Third Floor Lounge. On tap this evening was the movie "The Magnificent Seven", with contributed commentary. Quick - name the seven hired guns.

Did you remember Horst Bucholtz???

Margo Carlock

At the Museum Fundamentals Forum in Blacksburg

Fundamentals Forum - Day One

One of VAM's most popular programs is taking place this week in Blacksburg, Virginia on the campus of Virginia Tech. The Virginia Museum Fundamentals Forum, otherwise known as "museum boot camp" is a three-day, intensive seminar on every aspect of running a museum. Cost of the program is an incredibly low $85 per person, and that includes three days of instruction, a reference manual that will be an invaluable resource for the rest of your career, PLUS all meals, lodging and linens for the duration. This low cost makes it really affordable for just about everyone, and is made possible through a generous grant from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

Yesterday, June 15, was the first day. After the flurry of "move-in", with everyone unloading their bags and pillows, finding their dorm rooms, and in some cases meeting their roommates (a single room was available for an extra $40), we launched right into the meat of the matter. A general session on museum history, issues (past, present and future), and ethics kicked things off, followed by breakout sessions on: Starting a Museum; How to Plan for a Disaster; Public Programming 101; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Financial Management; Volunteer Management; and Family Programming. Faculty teaching these sessions included John Verrill (museum consultant), Mike Henry (Colvin Run Mill), Scott Harris (New Market Battlefield), Jeanne Niccolls (collections consultant), AT Stephens (Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh-Durham), Linnea Grim (Monticello), and Lori Blackwood Robert Russa Moton Museum).

What people really like about the Forum is the casual atmosphere and the focus on interaction - getting questions answered and learning from real-life situations. The ethical conundrums we were asked to explore really elicited a lot of back and forth, and it was clear why determining just what is the ethical position to take can be tempered by different factors. I sat in on the Starting a Museum session because we help a lot of museums with these issues (and forms!!) at VAM, and a refresher course is always a good idea.

Dinner in the dining hall was a bit unreal. I say that because there were so many choices, and all of the food was definitely restaurant-quality. Everyone was looking at each other and saying the same thing - we never ate this well when I was in college!! I chose the Pan Asian station, and had won ton soup, an egg roll, and Szechuan Beef with rice. Coconut cake for dessert, and that was a real tough choice because they also had German Chocolate cake and apple crisp. I can see why freshmen gain weight - I'll have my own "Freshman Fifteen" when I leave I'm afraid.

In the evenings we like to get everyone together to socialize, network, continue the day's discussions, and generally let off some steam and relax. The dorm lounge was packed, and as I looked around the room every single person was engaged in a deep conversation with their colleagues - just what we were hoping for!

But there was plenty of silliness, too. We discovered there was no microwave but A.T. and I rummaged around the kitchenette and found a beat-up skillet and a cake pan - and "cowboy popcorn" was born. Rip open a package of microwave popcorn, put it in a skillet with the cake pan as "lid", and voila! A little smoky but definitely popped corn.

Which came in handy for the movie. Mike had brought a copy of the remastered "Story of a Patriot" from Colonial Williamsburg (longest running film in history, it was filmed in 1957). With the sound not great from our laptop speaker, the group contributed running dialog that I suspect was not actually what the actors were saying. I did say silliness, right?

Well. lights out at 11pm and with the group all tucked away in their dorm beds time to look forward to tomorrow! I'll try to blog each night to let you all have a peak into the Forum experience.

Margo Carlock

Executive Director and Interim Hall Monitor, VAM

Check out this Blog Post from Stratford Hall...

They participated in our workshop on planning digital projects and have this to say about it...

Check out my @constantcontact newsletter

http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs031/1101444444299/archive/1103342383579.html

NEW DISCUSSION: Outreach Programs

During the VAM conference session on Outreach to Underserved Audiences several session participants began sharing about the structure of their outreach programs and questions were posed about how do you get the word out, funding, cost, etc. Please share your experience or knowledge about outreach programs so your colleagues can develop resources to start their own. Also, feel free to ask questions about outreach programs.

Bambi Godkin, Head of Community Education, Taubman Museum
bgodkin@taubmanmuseum.org

Heather Anderson, Head of School-Based Education, Taubman Museum
HAnderson@taubmanmuseum.org

Jennifer Foley, Paul Mellon Collection Educator, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Jennifer.Foley@vmfa.museum

A Grand Finale!

Day 3 topped off another successful VAM Conference!

Show 'em the Money: Getting Good Data on the Economic Impact of Museums

Today I attended the Leadership Forum at the end of the Conference. The panelists spoke on "Heritage as a Catalyst for Community Revitalization." In the Q&A section, you could hear the frustration--and the opportunities--in the need for all of us who work in cultural institutions to demonstrate the tangible, economic impact to our communities. Michael Loveday made the same point in his keynote address this morning.

As was noted in the discussion at the Leadership Forum, we are often very good at sharing our passion for the importance of our respective missions but we aren't as good at expressing the economic benefits of our institutions. If that's true of individual institutions, it's even more so of museums in the aggregate. AAM has done done an admirable job in providing data for the national economic economic impact and encourages museums to complete an economic impact statement for members' respective institutions, all found here.

But what about for Virginia? Or for regions of Virginia? Do we have the kinds of economic impact studies that would give us the ability to "show the money" to legislators, county boards of supervisors, city councils, and the like? VTC has data that shows the economic impact of tourism, and you can break this down by county or city, but I can't find any data that would parse that information with regard to museums. You can see what they offer here. It's good stuff, in the aggregate, but not exactly what we need to create a set of talking points.

Is it time for VAM, VTC, VCA, VFH (or V-somebody else?) to commission such an economic impact statement? The most recent ones I could find, after a brief online search, are ten years old (or nearly ten years old). There are probably newer ones for specific regions or for specific institutional types (i.e., art museums, science centers, etc.) but we need to have economic impact statements for all types. If one way that we can be more successful in our advocacy is to speak with one voice about our economic influence, then we need data that can be aggregated for localities, regions, and for statewide.

Any thoughts on where this data is or how we can go about getting it? Can you show me where I can see the money?

I plan on raising this issue to my fellow VAM Council members for discussion at our May meeting.

Pix from Day 2 of Conference 2010 - We Are Racing Right Along!

Thank You Exhibitors!

Without these folks, Conference 2010 wouldn't have been nearly as wonderful! Be sure to check out their products and services, support them and let them know you appreciate their support for Virginia's museums.

Conference 2010 Day1

SO FAR, SO GOOD!!!!

2010 VAM Scholarship Reception a Success!

Question

Hello VAM Folks –

I have a question from a board member and hope someone out there can help me. I am looking for the names of Mechanical Electrical Plumbing Design firms in Virginia that have recently (in last five years) done work on smaller museum jobs (not Smithsonian-sized, in other words). If you know of any MEP firms please pass their names along to me.

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you in Richmond next weekend!

Tracy

Tracy J. Gillespie
Director of Historical Operations
Morven Park
Leesburg VA
703-777-6034

Update on Slavery Museum in Richmond

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/SLAVGAT04_20100304-192201/328396/

New Media and the Presentation of History

My son saw this in his fourth grade social studies class today. I like it.

A Moving Piece

Paulnack is the director of the Music Division of The Boston Conservatory. This was a welcome to parents of incoming students. A friend flagged it for me and I wanted to share. I found it powerful.


Karl Paulnack, Sept. 1, 2004, Boston Conservatory

One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother's remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school-she said, "you're wasting your SAT scores!" On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they loved music: they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

One of the first cultures to articulate how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940.
Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940 and imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose, and fortunate to have musician colleagues in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist. Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January
1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the Nazi camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music?
There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother with music? And yet-even from the concentration camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."

In September of 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. On the morning of September 12, 2001 I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, on the very evening of September 11th, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang "We Shall Overcome". Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heart wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn't know you had.
Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what's really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

Very few of you have ever been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but with few exceptions there is some music.
And something very predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why?
The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks. Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in a small Midwestern town a few years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier-even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute cords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?"

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. The concert in the nursing home was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life.
Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."

Update from Robert Vaughan

A message from the VFH.

- Heather

Advocacy Alert:

You are probably aware of the serious threat to the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities – the House of Delegates has voted to eliminate all funding for it as of July 1, 2011 – just over a year from now. What you may not know is that VAM’s operating support comes from the VFH, and without that support... VAM will be a far different organization than the one you have come to rely upon for professional development, resources, technical assistance, networking and leadership opportunities. Please take a moment today to call or email your state Delegate and Senator and urge them to continue funding the VFH. If you do not know who they are, go to Who’s My Legislator? on the Virginia General Assembly website.

Critical Advocacy Alert & Call to Action

Can You Come to Richmond Next Week?

Advocacy Alert - Call to Action! February 26, 2010
As Feared - Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the Virginia Commission for the Arts are both eliminated from the House Budget.

Both the House and the Senate passed their versions of the State Budget for the next biennium.

The House of Delegates voted to reduce, and then eliminate all-together, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

These two agencies provide the only state support for museums and the performing arts.

There is still a chance to change this course. The two versions (House and Senate) must be reconciled by the Conference Committee and submitted to a final vote by the two houses. It is vital that we make our case to the members of this committee.

Thank you so much to all of you who responded to our call to action yesterday. Although the House did not back down, believe me that your calls and emails were heard. But now we need to strengthen our approach.

Below is a list of the probable members of the Conference Committee. If you or your museum or site are located within the districts identified, we especially need you to act! If possible, we are organizing visits for next Wednesday, Thursday or Friday (March 3,4,5) to the conferees in the General Assembly building in Richmond. If you can join us, please call Margo at 804-788-5821, or email mcarlock@vamuseums.org.

If you cannot join us, or cannot pay a personal visit another day, please phone or email your legislators. And it would be helpful if the rest of you would also phone or email your Delegate even if not a conferee - ask him or her to please encourage the conferees to save these two agencies.

YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

PROBABLE CONFEREES FOR BUDGET BILL

House of Delegates

Lacey Putney, Bedford, 19th district:
All of the City of Bedford; part of Bedford County comprised of the Stewartsville, Hardy, Otter Hill, Cove, Big Island, Sedalia, Kelso, Boonsboro, Montvale, Shady Grove, Thaxton, Goode, Liberty High School, and Sign Rock Precincts and parts of the Forest and Jefferson Precincts; and part of Botetourt County comprised of the Amsterdam, Asbury, Town Hall, Blue Ridge, Rainbow Forest, Mill Creek, Roaring Run, Buchanan 301/Springwood 304, Courthouse, Eagle Rock, Glen Wilton, Oriskany, and Troutville Precincts

Kirk Cox, Colonial Heights, 55th district
Part of Hanover County comprised of the Ashland, South Ashland, Ashcake, Beaverdam, Blunts, Wilmington Parish, Goddin's Hill, Clay, Chickahominy, Shady Grove, Atlee, Cool Spring, Courthouse, Rural Point 502/Newman 503, Village, Mechanicsville, Farrington, Montpelier, Rockville, and Elmont Precincts

Steve Landes, Weyers Cave, 25th district
All of the City of Waynesboro; part of Albemarle County comprised of the Crozet Precinct; part of Augusta County comprised of the Verona, Crimora, New Hope, Weyers Cave, Fort Defiance, Lyndhurst, Dooms, Fishersville, and Wilson Precincts; and part of Rockingham County comprised of the Mill Creek, Grottoes, Elkton, McGaheysville, and South Fork Precincts.

Chris Jones, Suffolk, 76th district
Part of the City of Chesapeake comprised of the Camelot, Crestwood, Oscar Smith School, Geneva Park, Georgetown, E. W. Chittum School, St. Julians, Sunray I, South Norfolk Fire Station, Carver School, Providence Church of Christ, Westover, Sunray II, and South Norfolk Recreation Precincts and part of Deep Creek Precinct; and part of the City of Suffolk comprised of the White Marsh, John F. Kennedy, Airport, and Hollywood Precincts and part of Cypress Chapel Precinct.

Johnny Joannou, Portsmouth, 79th district
Part of the City of Chesapeake comprised of the Taylor Road Fire Station Precinct; part of the City of Norfolk comprised of the Larchmont Library and Larchmont Recreation Center Precincts and parts of the Canterbury, Titustown Center, and Zion Grace Precincts; part of the City of Portsmouth comprised of the Ten, Eleven, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Thirty, Thirty-Three, Thirty-Four, Thirty-Five, Thirty-Six, and Thirty-Seven/Thirty-Eight Precincts; and part of the City of Suffolk comprised of the Yeates Precinct and parts of the Harbor View and Nansemond River Precincts.

or possibly Roslyn Dance, Petersburg, 63rd district
All of Dinwiddie County; all of the City of Petersburg; and part of Chesterfield County comprised of the Ettrick and Matoaca Precincts and part of the Branches Precinct

Senate

Chuck Colgan, Manassas, 29th district
All of the Cities of Manassas and Manassas Park; part of Prince William County comprised of the Brentsville, Armory, Nokesville, Parkside, Jackson, Linton Hall, Woodbine, Park, Saunders, Enterprise, Coles, King, Dumfries, Graham Park, Pattie, Washington-Reid, Montclair, Evergreen, Haymarket, Loch Lomond, Sinclair, Stonewall, Sudley, Westgate, Catharpin, Bull Run, Plantation, Mullen, and Kerrydale Precincts and part of the Quantico Precinct.

Ed Houck, Spotsylvania, 17th district
All of Culpeper, Louisa, Madison, and Orange Counties; part of Spotsylvania County comprised of the Grange Hall, Maury, Plank Road, Frazers Gate, Belmont, Brokenburg, Todd's Tavern, Holbert, Salem, and Brent's Mill Precincts; and part of the City of Fredericksburg comprised of the District 1, District 3, and District 4 Precincts and part of the District 2 Precinct.

Richard Saslaw, Springfield, 35th district
Part of Fairfax County comprised of the Bristow, Chapel, Heritage, Kings Park, North Springfield #1, North Springfield #2, North Springfield #3, Ravensworth, Wakefield, Belvedere, Lincolnia, Masonville, Parklawn, Sleepy Hollow, Saint Albans, Westlawn, Weyanoke, Columbia, Brook Hill, Poe, Whittier, Walnut Hill #1, Bren Mar, Edsall, Graham, Greenway, Pine Spring, Shreve, Timber Lane, Woodburn, Merrifield, and Walnut Hill #2 Precincts; and part of the City of Alexandria comprised of the Hermitage, Southern Towers-Stratford, James K. Polk School, Patrick Henry School, Landmark Center, Charles E. Beatley Jr. Library, John Adams School, William Ramsay School, and South Port Precincts.

Janet Howell, Reston, 32th district
Part of Fairfax County comprised of the Reston #1, Reston #2, Dogwood, Hunters Woods, Reston #3, Glade, South Lakes, Terraset, North Point, Aldrin, Chain Bridge, Chesterbrook, Churchill, Cooper, El Nido, Great Falls, Haycock, Kenmore, Kirby, Langley, Longfellow, Mclean, Pimmit, Salona, Westhampton, Westmoreland, Herndon #1, Herndon #2, Clearview, Forestville, Herndon #3, Hutchison, Stuart, Sugarland, Hickory, Seneca, Marshall, Magarity, and Tysons Precincts.

William Wampler, Bristol, 40th district
All of Lee, Scott, and Washington Counties; all of the Cities of Bristol and Norton; part of Grayson County comprised of the Bridle Creek, Flatridge, Grant, Mouth Of Wilson, Mount Rogers, Rugby, Troutdale, Comers Rock, and Elk Creek Precincts; part of Smyth County comprised of the Seven Mile Ford, Chilhowie, St. Clair, East Park, West Park, Atkins, Wassona, Royal Oak East, Royal Oak West, Adwolfe, Sugar Grove, and Konnarock Precincts; and part of Wise County comprised of the North Coeburn, Wise, Big Stone Gap, East Stone Gap, Clinch Valley, and South Coeburn Precincts.

Tommy Norment, Williamsburg, 3rd district
All of Gloucester, James City, and New Kent Counties; all of the City of Williamsburg; part of York County comprised of the Queens Lake, Yorktown, Waller Mill, Nelson, Magruder, Seaford, Harris Grove, Edgehill, Dare, and Harwoods Mill Precincts; and part of the City of Newport News comprised of the Mcintosh, Reservoir, Lee Hall, and Nelson Precincts.

Walter Stosch, Glen Allen, 12th district
Part of Goochland County comprised of the Centerville and Manakin Precincts; part of Henrico County comprised of the Dumbarton, Glen Allen, Glenside, Greendale, Hermitage, Hilliard, Hunton, Johnson, Lakeside, Longan, Maude Trevvett, Moody, Staples Mill, Stratford Hall, Summit Court, Bloomingdale, Canterbury, Randolph, Chipplegate, Cardinal, Coalpit, Crestview, Freeman, Innsbrook, Jackson Davis, Lauderdale, Ridge, Sadler, Cedarfield, Skipwith, Three Chopt, Tucker, Westwood, Causeway, Stoney Run, Byrd, Lakewood, Derbyshire, Gayton, Godwin, Maybeury, Mooreland, Pemberton, Pinchbeck, Ridgefield, Rollingwood, Spottswood, Tuckahoe, and West End Precincts; and part of the City of Richmond comprised of the 309 Precinct.