Museum Take Over (guest blogger Ginny Reynolds)

It’s about time museum folks brought others – individuals and communities – into the conversation. This year’s VAM conference addressed how museums can further promote community engagement and participation. While the conference focused on local Virginia institutions, issues relating to communities and authority are relevant for museums across the country.

And that’s where I come into the picture. My conference nametag listed “Cooperstown, NY” as my address, but I attended this year’s annual conference semi-incognito. I am originally from Greenwood, VA (a vague geographic area outside Crozet), and will graduate in May with a M.A. in Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program. Like me, I’m sure many of you continue to digest content from the conference. Sessions were jam-packed with examples of Virginia institutions encouraging broader public participation through community partnerships, innovative programming, collaborative interpretation, and social media.

What’s going on beyond the Commonwealth? I hope you’ll forgive me for sharing a brief upstate New York example. For a second year, the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown installed a “blog-curated” exhibition. You read it right: blog-curated. Online readers of American Folk Art @ Cooperstown and this year, the Fenimore Art Museum Blog, determined the exhibitions’ content by selecting their favorite paintings or objects. Using social media, the Fenimore encourages community participation virtually and intellectually, ultimately sharing the authority.

In closing, to remain important to visitors today, museums across the country are finally focusing on “being for somebody.” Engaging communities is essential to this equation, whether you’re in Virginia or beyond.

- Ginny


Virginia Reynolds

reynoldsve[at]gmail[dot]com

M.A. Candidate, Museum Studies

Cooperstown Graduate Program