The Museum Team
Overview:
When planning a new program, keep in mind the impact on other departments and the need for coordination. In this module, we suggest the different departments to consider in developing your program, and we provide tips for successful communication and coordination of your museum team.
Practical Considerations: The Museum Team
Funding Strategies! Low Cost. No Cost.
Contributors and Reviewers:
Rebecca McGuinness, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Deborah Jaffe, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Practical Considerations: The Museum Team
Depending on the size and structure of your institution, many individuals and departments will play roles in developing and executing your accessibility program. The departments most commonly involved in accessibility issues are education, visitor services, curatorial, facilities management, security, design, human resources, and the volunteer office.
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Mariann Smith, Curator of Education, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY on Accessibility as a Museum-Wide Initiative |
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Deborah Cardin, Education Director, Jewish Museum of Maryland in Baltimore on How the Museum Built a Museum Team for Accessibility. |
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Debbi Hegstrom, Associate Educator, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN on how MIA created a Museum Team for Accessibility. |
Curatorial staff may be surprised to be included in accessibility programming. However, curatorial departments are responsible for much of your museum's content development and design decisions, so their input is essential. It will affect the exhibition and gallery layout and therefore the way visitors with disabilities can use the space. Ask curators to help with touch tours and workshops. They may be very interested in engaging visually impaired people and making their collections accessible to people with a broad range of disabilities.
Communications |
Creates clear information with appropriate and appealing language, coordinates publicity, acts as a liaison to the public. |
Counsels Office |
Ensures institution meets or exceeds legal obligations according to federal, state, and local statutes for accessibility. |
Curatorial |
Helps select objects appropriate for people who are blind or visual impaired. |
Development |
Researches and writes grant proposals for program funding. |
Education |
Brings in audiences, coordinates staff and volunteers, teaches and evaluates the program; organizes record keeping, essential for grant proposals and annual reports. Accessibility coordinators frequently work under the aegis of the education department. The education department may also hire and coordinate consultants. |
Facilities Management and Design |
Coordinates and supervises design, construction, and maintenance of accessibility features of the building. |
Human Resources and Volunteer Coordinator |
Screens, hires, and trains staff and volunteers. |
Museum Director and Board of Trustees |
Promote awareness of the need for accessibility programs, as well as garner funding for programs. |
Publications and Design |
Create visually clear information, tactile/braille texts, and labels. |
Registrar, Collection Management and Conservation |
Responsible for the protecting and maintaining the collection, and selecting objects that can safely be accessed by touch. |
Security |
Sensitively guides visitors who are blind and visually impaired, while safeguarding collections. |
Visitor Services |
Provides physical access to a variety of audiences; schedules tours; integrates program into the museum-wide schedule and events calendar. |
Communication is essential
While developing your program, make connections with your colleagues. Find out what everyone else does; get to know them and their points of view. Efforts to communicate your needs and anticipate theirs will produce good results. It will facilitate special requests and accommodations you may need, and encourage participation in accessibility programs. This will help the administration understand how the museum can and should integrate your position and accessibility into the museum's mission and daily functions.
According to Rebecca McGuinness at the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
“The goal of an access person is to do away with his/her job – to make it clear that everyone is responsible for accessibility. You need to draw on your colleagues to make it clear that it is everyone's responsibility. You have to instill it into everyone because if it's all you and you leave…it's dead. You also need to do formal training, but the personal connection is the most important thing .”
One step in creating this open communication is inviting all-staff participation in Art Beyond Sight's annual Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month.
Also, in our Accessibility Tools training you can find a range of resources, including guidelines for braille, large print, audio description, exhibition design, Web accessibility, tactile graphics, and universal design.
Sample Agendas: The Museum Team
Agenda: Introductory Meeting
Program Introduction:
Why Teach Art to People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired? (15 mins.)
- Museum educators discuss benefits of teaching art to blind and visually impaired people. Introduce tools for creating access for visually impaired people, and discuss a range of educational programming in other museums. For more information about this, read the first chapter of Art Beyond Sight. A Resource Guide to Art, Creativity, and Visual Impairment, ed. Elisabeth Axel & 2003.
Introduce Pilot Program and Outline Departmental Involvement (30 mins.)
How to Find Out More: Informational Resources for Your Staff (10 mins.)
- Accessibility Lunches
Question and Answer Session (10 mins)
- Invite discussion of the program.
Communicate! All the following suggestions contribute to open and thorough communication among members of the museum team.
- Create contact lists for different departments. Create an e-mail group for general memos about your program. You can adapt the weekly E-mail Alerts from Awareness Month for this purpose.
- Curators
- Education
- Curatorial/Collection Management
- Conservation
- Visitor Services
- Publications and Design
- Communications
- Security
- Development
- Volunteer Coordinator
- Facilities Management
- Counsels Office
- Director
- Consultants or Contractors May Be Kept Apprised at Different Points of the Process:
- Education Professionals from Blindness Schools
- Artists
- Local Advocacy Professionals
- Researchers
- Write an introductory memo about your program.
- Generate department-specific memos outlining impact. Try to anticipate each department's concerns, such as how the objects might be selected and protected for conservation, and provide possible options or solutions.
- Invite your staff to participate in Art Beyond Sight's annual
- Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month. Request and review press releases.
- Write and review publication guidelines for large-format or braille texts.
- Schedule awareness-training programs with security, visitor services, curators, and any other staff who will be working directly with program participants. See our Disability Awareness Training.
- Keep security and visitor services apprised of group visits.
- Write monthly or annual reports on program (as appropriate) and distribute to contact departments.
Troubleshooting Tips: The Museum Team
- Increase awareness. Staff members may have assumptions about what people can or can't do, leading to discomfort or indifference to the idea of making your institution and programming accessible. Help overcome this obstacle with open and clear communication about your program and its benefits and goals. An e-mail newsletter is an easy way to accomplish this. (See below.)
- Hold informal accessibility brown-bag lunch meetings. G ive staff an opportunity to learn more about accessibility and disability. Staff members may have personal as well as professional interest in the subject. The attendance at these meetings may be small, perhaps just three to five people. However, this will gradually increase and give you new opportunities for outreach and relationship building.
- Create an e-mail forum or newsletter. This is a good way to navigate scheduling conflicts and share information. It is difficult to coordinate a meeting time for many busy people. An e-mail newsletter allows flexibility in response times. Always stay in contact about successes as well as problems. If someone says something positive, tell the people in charge: if the labels are great, let the designers know. Include a Tip Of The Month or a “Did you know…?” fact about your program or accessibility in general.
- Use your staff newsletter or membership journal to create a higher profile for your program. Submit an article about your successful projects, and encourage your museum team partners to do the same. When one department submits an article on accessibility, it sets a model for other departments. Also use the newsletter for useful information, such as parking awareness, and other items your staff needs to know. This is another good place for your Tip of the Month or “Did you know…?”.
- Ask staff members, such as curators and conservators, to get involved. That is, in ways other than selecting and preparing objects from the collection. They have a wealth of knowledge and most are eager to share. Someone might want to speak, to give verbal descriptions, or to teach. Rebecca McGuinness, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, observed:
"Often people who never thought about it, once they participate in a program the education department invited them to, become involved and excited about the idea of accessibility. If you say, “Would you like to take part?” they get to observe and develop an investment in the project. That often really grabs them."
- Your hard work will pay off! Often an initially reluctant department becomes really supportive after an introduction to programs for people with disabilities. They may start thinking of new uses for their collections that you might not have considered.
Funding Strategies: The Museum Team
Low Cost
- Insert a line for access accommodations in as many departmental budgets as possible, such as special exhibitions, education, visitor services, publications, curatorial, and security. For example, gallery talks could include sign language; group tours could include a verbal imaging tour; publications could include braille signage; security could include training. By doing this you are spreading the cost, responsibility, and participation of your accessibility program among different budgets instead of having an independent program.
- Your Advisory Board is essential. They need to be in contact with design, or other departments, depending on who you're working with. The departments must meet directly with the advisory board – if the access person is just a conduit, there is no awareness. This works both ways: the board becomes familiar with how the museum works, and the museum employees get to hear the firsthand accounts of the people concerned.
- Use internal publications, such as a training manual, as informational tools.
- Publish your work in a professional journal used by curators, educators, visitor services, or other administrators, such as the American Association of Museums, or the College Art Association journals and newsletters.