If you love museums and you love social media, then you will have loved this year’s Ask-a-Curator earlier in the week – the biggest Q&A session with museums worldwide, via Twitter (if you’re hearing about it for the first time, I wrote a bit more about what Ask-a-Curator actually is in a previous post). This was the first time in three years that I wasn’t actually working or tweeting for a museum during Ask-a-Curator. Previously, I had only been able to join in with my own questions in the evenings, meaning that my questions were mostly directed at museums in the Americas as the European museums were already offline by the time I finished work. But this year I had a whole day ahead of me – and what better way to spend it when stuck at home with builders tearing down your walls – and decided to focus on European museums this year.
Yay, it's #AskACurator today! There will be a lot of tweeting from me. Followers, you have been warned ;)
— Jenni Fuchs (@jennifuchs) September 17, 2014
As I did last year, I decided to ask the same 3 questions of different museums, so I picked 20 museums from the list of participants including some old favourites, and others that just sounded interesting. The countries I ended up with were: Austria, Belgium, Catalonia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland and Wales. The Migration Museum in Australia was then also added to the list, after responding to my tweeting asking ‘who to pick?’, bringing the total up to 21. At the end, I also threw the questions wide open to any museum that wanted to answer, and a few more responses came in that way.
Question 1: What is the most unusual object in your collection?
A total of 41 museums answered this question. Here are my three favourite responses:
@jennifuchs sewing machine, mangle… Only joking. Actually have a 100yr old beef sandwich found in a settee in Worcester #AskACurator DF
— Museums Worcs (@worcestermuseum) September 17, 2014
@jennifuchs: We have a quite a few unusual objects. E.g. pieces of beard from a prisoner fight and fake boobs (in a male prison!)
— Fængselsmuseet (@PrisonHorsens) September 17, 2014
@jennifuchs @PrisonHorsens @Postimuseo @jmberlin @MfNBerlin In our Museum it's probably the portrait of Mona Lisa, 100% made of chocolate !
— Musée du Chocolat (@MuseeDuChocolat) September 17, 2014
Also, this one made me laugh:
@jennifuchs A1: A pouch of condoms from the 2008 Beijing Games because we encourage all kinds of sport ;) pic.twitter.com/DmZ4Q8qeAg
— The Olympic Museum (@olympicmuseum) September 17, 2014
You can find a short summary of all answers to question 1 on Storify.
Question 2: If there was a fire & you could save just one object, what would it be?
A total of 25 museums answered this question. Here are my three favourite responses:
. @jennifuchs @MfNBerlin our salvage plans always state 'PEOPLE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN OBJECTS" not sure everyone entirely agrees!!
— Amgueddfa Library (@Amgueddfa_Lib) September 17, 2014
@jennifuchs @CeredigionMus @britgolfmuseum A fire extinguisher to extinguish the fire! ;) #AskACurator
— MSU Poznań (@msupoznan) September 17, 2014
@jennifuchs @riversidemuseum @olympicmuseum The child mummy, to let him live on a little bit longer in the next life. /Carolin #askacurator
— Världskulturmuseerna (@worldcultureswe) September 17, 2014
And then this tweet made me feel bad I’d asked the question – luckily there was a good outcome!
@jennifuchs @Honnunarsafn @maritiemmuseum @QWoo We had one 1 year ago. Fortunately we saved every object http://t.co/qbyEWOYVY0 #AskACurator
— Rakstn.un mūz.muzejs (@RunMmuzejs) September 17, 2014
You can find a short summary of all answers to question 2 on Storify.
Question 3: What exhibition have you always wanted to curate but never had the chance?
A total of 13 museums answered this question. Here are my three favourite responses:
@jennifuchs @medicalmuseion @Postimuseo ooops – there's many. But most important is an exhibition about children of prisoners #AskACurator
— Fængselsmuseet (@PrisonHorsens) September 17, 2014
.@jennifuchs I've always wanted to do a show that revolves around sound. Tuning the architecture of PMA could be pretty great! #AskACurator
— Phila Museum of Art (@philamuseum) September 17, 2014
@jennifuchs As our Museum explains the history of cocoa and chocolate, we don't have this kind of situation :)
— Musée du Chocolat (@MuseeDuChocolat) September 17, 2014
You can find a short summary of all answers to question 3 on Storify.
For those of you who like statistics, of the 21 museums targeted directly, 11 museums answered all three questions, 7 answered two questions and one museum answered one question. Only two museums did not respond to my questions at all. In total, I received answers from 46 different museums, including 27 who responded to my open questions.
You can find a full transcript of all answers to my questions, including follow up questions and discussions, on Storify.
Have a great weekend everyone, and happy museum-ing!
September 19, 2014
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