"I can touch things!"

My friend, Heidi, and I visited the new Colorado History Center recently and I LOVE her reaction.  "I can touch things!"  See, she worked in a fine art museum where there is nothing to touch.  Just look.  Paintings on bland walls with little to no explanations.  I work in history and science museums where touching is expected and encouraged.

This is where the Orlando Museum of Art succeeds where her art museum fails.  OMA has the paintings on bland walls with don't touch and no photography signs in abundance.  Their signs are abundant in verse.  Everything from artist's intent to materials used to open ended questions designed to inspire conversation right then and there.  OMA also has areas where kids (and adults) can touch certain sculpture, try our hand at oils, sketch with provided pencils and pads.  Her former museum doesn't allow for that.  No touchy!  No talking!  No imagination!

Ah, but that is the key to making museums the spark of the future as well as guardians of the past.  At the CHC, you could get in a vintage Ford with a quick movie and motion (little vibrations in the seats) and drive through the prairie to the homestead.  You could take "eggs" from the chicken coup to the "general store" (quite literally).  You could sit in school desks designed to look and feel like the ones used in the late 1800s and take a virtual class, complete with digital chalk pads.

And let's not forget the spectacularly awesome lego exhibit on the second floor!

Also on the second floor is a walk thru of the Japanese internment camps of Colorado.  I had no idea they existed here.  It gave an immersive look into what it was like, complete with objects in casing showing where they would be seen.  On the portion going into the history of skiing, you can "experience" a virtual ski jump without having to drive the 2 hours to the mountains and go through the years of training to do so.

Now, how do you go about immersion in an art museum where the stereotype is no touching, no pictures, no talking, and afterwards, we're meeting Muffy for martinis in the Hamptons?

Actually, taking the Walt Disney approach would suffice.  According to Disney legend (I used to work at Walt Disney World, so this is where I heard this and, given trying it myself, believe it), Uncle Walt would walk around DisneyLand regularly looking at things from a squatted down position.  This made him eye-level with small children.  If it looked intimidating, bland, or uninteresting, then it was scrapped.  Now, I'm not saying to install the Dumbo ride in the middle of a Renoir display.  I am saying to put some fun in functional.  For instance, at the Astor House in Golden, Colorado (granted, not an art museum but displays art within the historic boarding house), there are actors that portray the different patrons of the house by reading in accents from their memoirs and letters via pre-recordings to give a feel for what it was like.  At OMA, there is a sign I remember seeing the disgust on artist felt towards the Nazis in a very Roberto Begnini "Life is Beautiful" sort of way.  Also, like OMA, place areas for people of all ages to create simple art projects with provided materials.  I have yet to find anyone that is so fiscally tight that they cannot afford a couple boxes of generic crayons and paper in their business budgets.  If you can't, then maybe you should eliminate Doughnut Fridays.

So what happens when someone defaces something from museum provided crayons?  It doesn't.  Why?  Because OMA had docents and security (all volunteer from what I could gather) staffing the area.  The areas that didn't have art supplies were unstaffed.  In other words, no staff means no materials.  They were put away.

Hands off the Mona Lisa, but make hands on inspiration nearby.