Here are 8 things I learned after spending the last three months posting about art and museums of my personal Tiktok. With 50K followers, 34 Million videos, and 3.4 Million likes, I’ve learned some things. People are interested in art, but they want the information to be served up in an interesting way. I rarely post videos longer than 30 seconds. And when I do them I think of all the “well actually” folks who work at museums. I mean the people who’d tell me I’ve “dumbed it down.” And I’ve absolutely simplified things. But I work hard to make sure I’m factual. And I’ve learned if you make i ..read more

 I asked my friend, Paul Bowers, to share some of his thoughts about leaving museums. If you have thoughts about leaving museums or why you're staying, reach out. I'd love to share your thoughts here. This post is so good. Give it a slow read. Or if you're me, tear through it and then read it slowly later. Also note, Paul is a Brit living in Australia. He spells things that way. Allow for the s instead of z.  --- Beyond the walls – a post-museum career There’s a lot of talk about people leaving their museums jobs – if you’re thinking that way, this might help. I did 20 years in muse ..read more

 I think half of the work problems in museums come from the fact that most staff feel trapped. And if you don’t want to move and you don’t live in a huge metropolis, you basically have very few choices.  So what’s to do? One option is to leave the field. Listen, I’m just a few moments out. So, I’m not sure how good it is.  But, I’d like to share my thoughts on how I got out.  I’d really thought I wanted to stay in museums, but then the level of ridiculousness got too much. I decided I needed to look at other things. I would say this is the first step. You need to want to ..read more

 Knowledge is power, they say. This is certainly true in many workplaces. Think of the three types of people you find in many office settings: the gossip, the hoarder, and the source.  The source is the go-to person, who knows the locations of things and the ways to do things. People who are the source can be in any tier, but usually got a start in an administrative role. In other words, they got all those deets through hard work. These people are often happy to share their info.  The gossip, again, can come from any tier, but the difference is that their knowledge doesn’t nee ..read more

These days, like many extroverts, I feel the ache of loneliness. I’ve been thinking about planning to connect with people again. Imagine if despite my great need to see people, I set up the hours when they’re usually at work and also made them feel like they needed to study up before meeting me. How likely are my friends to show up? And is it my friends’ fault? Or mine? In many ways, we’re setting up the same problem.  A couple weeks ago, I asked people on Twitter what is one thing they’d like to change to make museums better. Many people focused on improving amenities. One person, howev ..read more

There’s been a great deal of sports fanfare in Ohio lately. Bengals went to the Super Bowl and then Cleveland hosted the basketball all-star game. I don’t often think about sports, truthfully. But all the sports made me reflect on our own field, oddly.  AAM has often noted more people go to museums than sporting events. It’s a good stat, and one I like to trot out when speaking to politicians. But I suspect it’s a false number in a way. Museums are open more often than not. Even with my rudimentary knowledge of professional sports, I know that most pro sports teams have shorter seasons. S ..read more

Last week, some colleagues asked me how a Sip and Paint is different than a marbling workshop. I’d had my mind on something else, and I wasn’t able to reply then. A week later, with the clarity of a caffeinated mind, I’m easily able to rebut them. (Isn’t it always like that?) Most museum educators know that the work of bringing people into collections requires some magic. Good educators make their work look easy or not even there so that people focus on the learning. Studio engagement in art museums, particularly, is usually about the process.   Sip and Paints are product focused, in a se ..read more

 Yesterday I gave a talk about if museums are cults for Museum Computer Network. I’ll put my notes at the end of this blog post. The talk had come out of a Twitter thread, as too often happens to me. I’d been sitting in a meeting, listening to people discuss if the labels should match the wall color, and I was feeling very strongly on the subject. And, I couldn’t help but laugh at myself. How had I come to this point in my life? I’d drank the Kool-aid, I suspect. But like so many of us, it’s truly wearing off. I’m still pretty hyped about labels, but more and more I see that I’ve long mis ..read more

The start of a fiscal year for me holds the same promise as new day planners and brand-new shoes, and at the same time, the trepidation of blank pages and wide-open stages. I love the idea of planning and doing great things, but there is also the fact that you must plan and do great things. This start of a fiscal year, though, is quite different than previous ones, I’d suggest. We’re a bit like the tiny mammals looking out onto the land after the destruction of the dinosaurs. Life did go on, of course, and in fact proliferated, as evidenced by me sitting here typing this mediocre metaphor. I u ..read more

My team and I have wanted to do TikTok since 2019. We launched into the platform, finally, in February of 2021. This weekend marked our three-month anniversary. In that time, we had 1.5 million views and 112 K likes. We are definitely still a small museum account with only one thousand followers, but we have the seventh and eight most viewed #museumtok videos. (Also, you can watch TikToks on your browser if you can't get yourself to download the app.) @akronartmuseum ##duet with @anouarchelabi_ ##arttiktok##arthistorytiktok##learnontiktok##museumtok ♬ SugarCrash! - ElyOtto Here are my ref ..read more