It's International Museum Day and all I hear are crickets....

As the title says, today is International Museum Day!  Everyone go out and visit a museum today or this weekend!!!  *crickets*

Really?

I follow about 100 major and minor museums on my facebook page as well as twitter and no one mentioned it.  The only entity that did was the AAM.  I took a look at the official IMD page and scrolled thru the pictures and activities.  Most of the action is in Europe, the Middle East, and the Caribbean.  Some action in Canada is observed.  But Stateside?  Not so much.

http://network.icom.museum/imd2012

So, for the US museums that did say they were doing something for IMD, what did they do?  Answer: mostly nothing.  Some had free days.  Whoopee.  If you look at what the other countries' museums did, they held parties, ceremonies, and events! 

The thing about museums is that, by and large, they are an international medium.  They are seen as great holders of knowledge, storage of history, display areas for art through the ages.  Therefore, most museums (including niche museums and historical houses) have objects and stories that draw from around the world. With the world getting smaller and international law getting easier to abide by (see NAGPRA for an example), one would think there would be cooperation and exuberance between museums.  I proved this wrong in my dissertation when investigating why museums don't turn to each other in times of need for disaster recovery.  Just because this is the norm doesn't make it right.

Another issue I see is the lack of utilizing social media as a tool to market museums.  Many museums have facebook/twitter/g+ accounts and post occasional information.  This was brought up in summer school at the University of Leicester's Museum Studies program in forum while I was there last year.  The feedback is a shunning of technology as a whole from the establishment.  Why?  All three services as well as other social accounts (foursquare, tumblr, etc) are free, even to businesses.  You only pay if you want to have an ad show up from time to time on people's feeds.  Then, as far as facebook is concerned, you pay by the number of times "like" is clicked on the ad.  I can't speak for the others as I have not worked with them yet on a professional level.  What few museums that did something with the IMD stated their events on, you guessed it, facebook.

I remember the old Spaceship Earth ride at Epcot (back when it was still EPCOT - the acronym).  It is a slow moving ride through the history of communication, from cave paintings to papyrus scrolls to transcriptions by monks to the telephone to video conferencing.  At the end of the ride, you "fall" backwards past lines and lines of neon strings that represent people talking to each other from opposite sides of the globe.  This is supposed to be a good thing.  A GLOBAL community. 

I am too much of a Polyanna about this.  I am of the opinion that most people are so overwhelmed with the rigors of basic survival that they are so bogged down with simply getting through the day (or fiscal year) and cannot look forward into the beyond. 

We are no longer a nation of dreamers and doers.  We are just trying to survive and falling behind the rest of the world in the process.  Which brings up the old biological axiom:

Evolve or die.

My generation, gen x, is stepping into the management positions and bringing our cynicism with us.  But, mark my words, we are a transitional generation.  We started with no computers and now are masters of IT.  We started with incandescents and now design with LEDs.  We are the evolution in process.  We are stepping into roles long held by an establishment that hasn't changed in generations.  Behind us are the Millenials.  Those who have never gone a day without computers and cell phones.  These two generations and their children are the new audience.  The challenge is to evolve to fit their needs, to make them aware of museums, what museums are, and why collections are important: a marriage of transcendence and tradition.  I see this not only in budget and design battles but in the current political climate.

So, where do we, as museum professionals, go from here? 

Forward.  We go forward.