Museum on the Move

LIB: What does this mean for your management and organisational structure?

B. Misof: If a natural history museum considers social science and humanities aspects as well, the compartmentalisation of specialist disciplines can be softened. Finding ways to do this on an organisational level involves management issues that are completely new to a museum.

K. Vohland: That’s right. On the one hand, you need technical expertise, and on the other, people who think outside of the box. For me, this means that you can’t just manage the museum on your own. I see myself in the role of a leader who needs to empower her employees. We strive to offer formats in which we develop joint strategies while considering the impact are we looking for as a museum.

B. Misof: Do you think that your visitors understand what we are doing and how we are changing?

K. Vohland: Many visitors have this rather dusty image of us. Our self-perception and the discourse with other museums really differ a lot from this. We run an innovation hub, we cooperate with industries, we invite politicians. We discuss conflicts of interest in the area of nature utilisation, we negotiate on the protection of nature. We have some highly modern methods here at our centre. Our scientists communicate their research to the outside world using professionally organised science communication formats. For example, this is fully implemented in our Deck 50 experimental platform. We offer the training courses to match. None of this is immediately visible to the public.

B. Misof: We have precisely the same problem. Visitors are astonished when they hear us talk about what we do internally in our collections, how we handle the theory of our subjects, or the current state of affairs there. However, we are fighting against an image that we have not yet been able to change successfully.

K. Vohland: I think people’s ideas of the museum will change once it impacts their own lives, when there is actual educational success and they find themselves inspired and understanding what they are told about, and when they share their experiences in the museum with their friends and colleagues. It may just need a little more time.

B. Misof: I’ve recently been looking at art more closely because I started out with the thesis that some forms of artistic expression may be the quickest and most radical way to recognise societal transformation processes. This brought me to graffiti, an art form that reflects people outside the museums. We now want to start working with graffiti and see if that is a language that can benefit a museum as well.

K. Vohland: This is another thing that we’ve been thinking about. How can we break out of our bubble? We want to keep the educated middle classes involved. They form the pillars of society, after all. How do we reach the more remote groups? We are trying to understand the scope at which museums can also support language development and self-efficacy. What role does the museum play as a location? What about the objects in it? What about its place in the development of young people?

LIB: How does the museum cater to different interests?

B. Misof: Museums must create opportunities for people to interact, to express themselves, to move towards a possible consensus or at least closer to the point of dissent in order to deal with it.

K. Vohland: We provide a forum for negotiating interests. This is where we can see dissent, formulate conflicts of interest, and look at what underlies them. We are poised at the interface between scientific knowledge, expertise, and the negotiation of interests. We set topics and proactively bring scientific expertise to society. However, we stay out of party politics. We will not allow ourselves to be instrumentalised.

B. Misof: Yes, we provide a place where negotiation about values becomes possible.

LIB: How political can or must museums be?

K. Vohland: We understand the relevance of animals, plants, and fungi for the entire ecosystem and for human well-being. We also have to be political enough in this respect to say that our current loss of biodiversity has become a problem. It has become a problem for humanity, and we know what has caused it. We can present these issues and their consequences. It’s about more than just values. Land and land use are often involved. What are we actually doing with the land? Is it meant for growing animal feed or the site of a new shopping centre? Is it a nature reserve? We need space. That, I think, is the main conflict. We are political, even if we claim to be the opposite. The very fact that we deal with natural raw materials, minerals, and the evolution of people makes us political.

B. Misof: That is so true. In our last visitor structure analysis, we asked if people expected us to take a political stance. An astonishingly large majority of our visitors actually expect statements from us that are socio-politically relevant. What does climate and the biodiversity crisis mean? What are the drivers of this biodiversity crisis? Another socio-political statement would be that we need to change our consumer behaviour. That was amazing for us. In the past, we have always said that science, including museums, must remain politically neutral. That just isn’t possible if we look at the subjects we work with. That means that we have to take a clear position here and are expected to do so.

K. Vohland: The question is about where the responsibility of science ends and the responsibility of the individual begins. What is the responsibility of politics, which is essentially responsible for the framework conditions?

LIB: What impressions should visitors take home with them?

K. Vohland: I am always happy when people who visit our museum learn something about nature and the processes of evolution. That should always be viewed as something positive. They should come out of it feeling more firmly anchored in what they think and wand to do for good of nature. This is an inspiration they should take home with them.

B. Misof: I can only quote from our guest book in Bonn, where the majority of entries now read: We would like to go home with some solutions that we can implement privately in our garden. People are looking for a positive takeaway. And I think that’s really what it’s all about.