Are Museum Educators Still Necessary?

m
Mary Ellen Munley and Randy Roberts

Abstract Over the last two decades, the role of education in museums
has shifted from being the purview of a specific set of individuals charged
with creating programs and activities for school children and other visitors
to being the central purpose of our institutions. This new paradigm distributes education responsibilities across the museum. Given this situation, many thoughtful museum educators are grappling with issues
of role definition and identity. The work of the museum educator has
expanded beyond crafting programs suitable to particular audiences to
that of providing linkages between a museums resources and a communitys needs. Today there is a leadership challenge for museum educators comparable in importance to the revolution about audiences and
access begun in the 1970s. The challenge is for museum educators not to
retreat to the comfort zone of technical acuity, but to step forward with
new strategies, new alliances, and new ways to forge civic engagement
and demonstrate public value.

These are the best of times and the worst of times for museum educators.
Many are engaged in projects that profoundly change the lives of young
people, assist communities in addressing timely issues like race and evolution, or partner with schools to use museum exhibitions and collections
in the campaign to increase literacy among our children. At the same time,
museum educators are called on to produce programs, of almost any genre,
that draw large audiences; generate earned income; and stay away from controversy that could damage attendance or jeopardize relations with powerful
donors. Given these daunting, and often incompatible accomplishments and
demands, many thoughtful museum educators are grappling with issues of
role definition and identity.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd raised eyebrows with her recent
Journal of Museum Education, Volume 31, Number 1, Spring 2006, pp. 2940.
2006 Museum Education Roundtable. All rights reserved.

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book whose title brazenly asks: Are men necessary? She posits that following
the dual events of womens liberation and the sexual revolution, women (and
men, though this is our addition, not Dowds) are faced with the challenge
of shaping a new identity. She argues that few, if any, women have found the
perfect balance between being feminist and enjoying its liberating freedoms
and opportunities for development and self expression, and being feminine
and experiencing its associated pleasures of physical attractiveness and fulfilling personal relationships. Given the challenges of forging a new role and
identity, too many of todays young women, Dowd argues, are falling back
on the familiar comfort of the pre-feminism 1950s and placing disproportionate weight on the differences between the sexes and reliance on physical
appearance.
We submit that a similar set of conditions and challenges face todays
museumsand especially museum educators. The dual events of many
museums adopting education as a museum-wide responsibility and the
pressures on museums to turn all activities into profit centers best managed
by those with marketing and business acumen, has some wondering: Are
museum educators still necessary? Over the last two decades, the role of education in museums has shifted from being the purview of a specific set of individuals charged with creating programs and activities for school children and
other visitors to being the driving purpose of our institutions. What was once
seen as an almost peripheral activity often relegated to the basements of our
institutions is now firmly positioned at their very cores, reflected in all aspects
of museum work. In his 1999 essay Transformed from a Cemetery of Bric-abrac, Stephen Weil describes the shift from inward focus on collections and
preservation to outward focus on education and visitors as a revolution in
museums.1 Just a few years later, the revolution had settled into a new paradigm
that distributed education responsibilities across the museum and begged the
question: What has become of the role of the museum educator?
Educators as Museum Change Agents
The mid-1970s marked the beginning of a shift of power within museums.
The dominance of the curatorial voice was starting to be questioned from
both inside and out. The understanding of museums as political arenas
in which the power of dominant groups is asserted was just beginning
to surface.2 It was within this atmosphere of shifting power and priorities
taking hold in many parts of American society that museum education, and

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31

increasing numbers of museum educators, emerged as a driving force for

change. Seeking to counteract their image as elitist organizations with little
relevant role in the mainstream of society, a new generation of leaders actively worked to establish museums as vital institutions reaching out to serve
multiple and diverse audiences. Educators were at the forefront of these
efforts establishing scores of special programs to address the needs of those
who were considered non-traditional or hard-to-reach audiences.
The once familiar collect, preserve, and interpret mission that dominated twentieth century museums shifted toward a new audience-centered
focus. Across the field, museums have increasingly identified themselves as
community-oriented, outwardly-focused centers of education dedicated to
reflecting and serving broad and diverse audiences. This shift, which finds
its roots deep in the American museum movement with forward-thinking
leaders like John Cotton Dana in the early 1900s and Theodore Low in the
mid-1900s, began to take on new life in the 1970s with the emergence of
a new generation of museum leadership. This new generation of museum
workers, marked by an influx in the number and influence of museum educators, was committed to inclusion, respect, building relationships with
a broad range of visitors, and giving voice to the disenfranchised. In many
ways this new generation brought the wave of change into the profession
that was reflected across society at that time.
Within a decade, the American Association of Museums Museums
for a New Century Commission Report declared: If collections are the
heart of museums, what we have come to call educationthe commitment
to presenting objects and ideas in an informative and stimulating wayis
the spirit.3 Published in 1984, this report marked a turning point for the
field, focusing a spotlight on the important role of education as an essential
and cross-institutional function of the museum. We want to stimulate talk
about the museum as a place of learning wrote the Commission. By diverting attention from the specifics of programs and materials, staffs and
budgets, we want to encourage museum professionals to see learning as a
museum-wide endeavor.4
This directive was more clearly defined with the publication in 1992 of
the AAM policy statement, Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public
Dimension of Museums. The proposed framework for action centered on
ten recommendations based on three key ideas: a public service role based
on education articulated in every museums mission and fundamental to
every museums activities; increased inclusivity and diversity both in terms of

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audiences and internal structure; and vigorous leadership dedicated to pursuing

the public service role of museums in society. Perhaps most importantly
Excellence and Equity defined the public service role of museums as providing an educational experience in the broadest sense: by fostering the ability
to live productively in a pluralistic society and to contribute to the resolution
of the challenges we face as global citizens.5 This bold policy statement and
its adoption by the AAM Accreditation Commission, granting agencies, and
private foundations gave new currency to programs of inclusion, diversity in
audiences, multiple perspectives, and even ways to more fully engage the public
in conversations concerning science, humanities, and issues of the times.
Now in 2006, some 20 years since the publication of Museums for a
New Century and Excellence and Equity, many museums are taking on essential roles in their communities. This was never so apparent as in the days
and weeks following 9/11 when museums opened their doors, joined their
communities, and depending on the local needs, offered a variety of public
services. In Chicago, the Field Museum became a community gathering place,
inviting residents to take solace in its comforting environment where global
understanding and human creativity abound. The Tenement Museum in
New York City, located very near the World Trade Center site, became a safe
haven and first aid station for those fleeing the immediate area and needing
attention. This engagement in the life of people and community is not only
evident in crisis. Every day across the country, and in every type of museum,
exemplary programs that are undeniably relevant are taking place.
The Levine Museum of the New South, for instance, deals directly with
timely and challenging issues facing its community. Actively engaged in
Charlotte, North Carolinas civic life, the museum is dedicated to providing
historical context for contemporary issues and a community forum for
thoughtful discussion. Its award-winning exhibition, Courage: The Carolina
Story That Changed America, and the associated discussion series Conversations on Courage, focused on the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown
v. Board of Education and involved existing management teams from
business, government, and nonprofits in dialogue about the courage demonstrated during the struggle for school desegregation. Using that example as
a springboard, participants discussed the issues facing todays Charlotte and
explored how they could work together to apply lessons of the past to their
daily lives. The program was a collaboration of the museum and Charlottes
Community Building Initiative.
In another example of a museum working with civic groups and city

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33

agencies to address pervasive needs, the Public Museum of Grand Rapids,

Michigan, formed a partnership with area school districts, the Kent District
Libraries, and the City of Grand Rapids Office of Children, Youth and
Families to develop Read and Connect, an innovative literacy enhancement
program. Reaching children in grades K7, the program uses the museums collections to help students develop literacy skills. Other museums
provide career training and jobs for youth; still others mount exhibitions
and programs on such timely topics as genetic engineering, evolution, and
the legacy of slavery in the North. New Yorks Natural History Museum of
the Adirondacks is a partner in the Adirondack Cooperative Loon Program
along with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation, the BioDiversity Research
Institute of Gorham, Maine, and the Audubon Society of New York State.
In this citizenscience research project local residents study the migration
of Common Loons to and from the Adirondack Park. Working with local
scientists and educators, participants gain an understanding of the threats
facing key species and help to identify ways to address those threats to the
species, the environment, and their community.
The institution-wide embrace of educational responsibility and public
service, or the new paradigm as Steve Weil described it, has transformed the
place of museum education and called on museum educators to re-imagine
their roles both within their institutions and their communities. The work
of the museum educator has expanded beyond crafting an effective range of
programs suitable to particular audiences to creating dynamic, inspirational
experiences that are both timely and relevant to the museums community.
The museum educator is called on to work both within the institution and
within the community connecting institutional resources to community
needs.
Accountability and Public Service
Despite outstanding programs like those described here, museums are too
often at a loss when asked to articulate and demonstrate their public value in
terms that are accepted as credible. Museum leaders struggle with demands to
articulate their institutions value and demonstrate return on investment.
Understanding expectations for demonstrating value and finding ways to
satisfy those expectations is critical to the discussion of museum education,
public value, and relevance.

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Concurrent with the transformation of museum education during the

1980s, and into the new millennium, was a period of increased competition
for scarcer public and private funding and the existence of a political environment calling for results-oriented accountability. Given these expectations to produce tangible, convincing evidence of success and value, many
museum leaders are struck mute and find themselves ill prepared to describe
their institutions contributions to larger social issues in anything other
than an anecdotal fashiona standard of evidence deemed too soft in an environment of business-like, results-oriented accountability.
The response by most museums is to embrace business models, metaphors, and indicators of success. Continual attendance growth, increased
market reach, balanced budgets, and new and better ways to increase
earned income have swept museum practice and now dominate reports of
successful management and accountability. For many, adopting financial
and attendance bottom-line standards of success has resulted in strategies
and programs focused on attracting larger audiences and understanding
of the museums relationship to its audiences as one of payment for
services rendered. Admission fees rise, exhibitions and top line programs
become specialmeaning they are available for a special fee, and business
operations like stores, food services, and rental facilities take on increased
importance.
Many comprehend the practical necessity of large attendance and earned
revenue, and yet most museum professionals and supporters struggle to reconcile the bottom-line standard with the recognized and touted values of education and public service. The museum world is engaged in what feels like
a perpetual dueling match as attendance and earned revenue face off against
advancing knowledge and educational value one more time. To compound
the situation, even the best museum education offerings, research projects,
or community partnerships do not contribute substantially to total museum
attendance, and nowhere do these activities generate earned income that
compares favorably with revenues from shop sales, rental fees, or general
admission. Many museum activities, including education and community
projects, cannot demonstrate their merit using a business rubric. Thus, in
the perpetual duel, the fight is fixed.
Yet, in spite of the increased emphasis on bottom-line measures, our institutions are not in the peak of health. A reality check reveals that attention
to market shares and embracing of crowd-pleasing exhibitions and business
enterprises notwithstanding, museums are faced with erratic attendance and

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35

severe financial challenges. Attendance varies from year to year based on the
popularity of a given exhibition or changes in school policies for field trips.
Does that mean the museum is not successful? A twenty-year-old woman
reports that her experience as a Gallery Explainer and research assistant
prepared her for college and changed her life. Because this outcome is important only to a single person and does not increase attendance or impact
the museums earned revenue, does this mean that the museums investment
in this young woman was ill-conceived and not sustainable? Conversely, just
because an activity raises money, does it indicate that the museum is successfully fulfilling its mission?
Given the nature of their work and accomplishments, it has never been
about the numbers for museum educators. It has always been about learning,
education, community service, and public value. It has always been about relevance and connections to peoples lives. And now, the conundrum of having
to demonstrate success and worth using measures that do not fit the task or
nature of the contribution faces the museum as a whole. Embracing their
public responsibility calls on museums to define success in terms not just of
effectiveness and efficiency, not just in terms of attendance and revenue, but
more importantly, to demonstrate substantive outcomes that contribute to
improving the quality of life for individuals and communities. Yet a deafening
silence remains on the topic of public value in discussions of demonstrable
success attributable to museums. If that silence is not broken, decades of advances in connecting museum resources in meaningful ways to people and
communities could be lost. What happens next is unclear. What is apparent
is that there is a leadership challenge for museum educators comparable in
importance to the revolutions begun in the 1970s and capable of improving
museums and communities.
Educatorsand MuseumsAs Community Change Agents
As museums take on the challenge of articulating and demonstrating their
public value, the good news is that museum educators have been working in
this arena for a long timeand they know a great deal about it. Educators are
once again positioned to add great value to museums, if they look beyond
their duties as technicians. Museum educators will continue to design
programs, facilitate lessons, write educational materials and gallery guides,
conduct tours, and serve on exhibition development teams. These are the
fundamental tasks and products of educators, and they require

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specialized knowledge, talents, and skills. Beyond these basics, however,

what value does the educator bring to the institution? In recent decades educators were prominent and persistent audience advocates calling attention
to the need for audience diversity, and for creating a welcoming environment
with physical and intellectual accessibility for visitors of all ages and backgrounds. These efforts are taking hold and the changes are evident in nearly
every aspect of museum practice. Museums are visitor-centered; quality
customer service is a priority. With the aid of focus groups and surveys, more
museums know their audiences demographics and preferences than ever
before. Museum educators were among the first to embrace evaluation, with
its focus on effective communication, clarity of message, and visitor satisfaction. Now exhibit development frequently includes front-end, formative,
and summative evaluations as developers and designers take care to ensure
that their goals register as intended and meet visitor expectations and needs.
Audience focus and rigor in demonstrating success in terms of visitor experiences and assessments are becoming standard practice. Work in these areas
is far from complete, but attention to diversity and accessibility is now well
established. It is implausible to imagine a credible, accreditable museum that
does not include them in every aspect of its work. The mindset and internal
operations of museums have been fundamentally changed, and museum educators were at the forefront of that change.
In an era of demonstrating public value the focus shifts from internal
attention to external attention. The measure of a museums worth is no
longer an internal appraisal of what it possesses, cares for, researches, and
presents with clarity and attention to the diverse needs of its audiences. The
measure now is an external appraisal of the benefits the museum provides to
the individuals and communities it serves. J. Gregory Dees and Mark Moore
argue that these outcomes are public institutions bottom line, and not to
understand how to achieve and measure them is as absurd as a business not
attending to its profits.
Museum educators are best positioned to lead their institutions in defining, achieving, and documenting public value. Excellence in Practice:
Museum Education Standards and Principles, the American Association
of Museums Education Committee official statement of the educators
roles and responsibilities, outlines the technical competencies for museum
education practice. It also articulates a new leadership for educators as it
positions the educator as the critical point of connection between the community and the museum. The competent museum educator, the standards

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document declares, promotes the wide public service role of museums within
our changing society and develops and maintains sound relationships with
community organizations, schools, cultural institutions, universities, other
museums, and the general public. It is the responsibility of the educator to
reflect the needs and complexities of a changing society by shaping content
and interpretation toward relevant issues and creating broad, informed, and
respectful dialogue among citizens.
This set of standards calls on museum educators to move beyond understanding audience needs to understanding community needs. It calls on
museum educators to move beyond knowing content and pedagogy to understanding the full range of institutional resources available and to craft
them into experiences and partnerships that result in an improved quality of
life for individuals and communities.
This change in role for museum educators and new approach to program
design has already begun. The Journey Museum in Rapid City, South
Dakota, for instance, faced a city council and public perception challenge to
demonstrate its contributions to the community. Perusal of program calendars and responses from visitors demonstrate that the museum is a
lively place that receives high marks from those who tour its galleries and
participate in programs. Yet, those internally-focused measures of success
were not convincing in the larger public arena. What has garnered attention
and support is a museum planning initiative that involves scores of people
from the community and centers on the question: What do the city and its
residents need in order to improve quality of life? From that foundation,
citizens learn about the museums resources and together the museum and
members of the community craft a strategic direction for programming
that has public value. The change in strategic direction is still new, but in
its earliest stages, calls for diminishing public monies have quieted and
support for the museum among city leaders has become more evident. The
new program direction will focus on work with a relatively small number
of youth. Attendance figures are not projected to rise dramatically; earned
income will not soar; but a case for public value is being built in close partnership with community leaders and agencies.
At The Field Museum in Chicago, as with other large and outstanding
museums in the country, school group attendance registers several hundred
thousand school visits per year. Yet somewhat surprisingly, even these staggeringly large numbers do not necessarily translate to the view that such
museums are essential to public education nor do they result in substantial

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financial support from school districts or private funders. How might this
situation be changed? One approach is to ask hard questions. Are museums
doing all in their power to partner with public schools, and do they get
highly imaginative in crafting strategies to turn extraordinary museum resources into a public education asset? Framing the question in this manner
establishes a new set of criteria for successcriteria grounded not in large
attendance figures, but grounded instead in providing and demonstrating
public value.
A new generation of museum educator leaders has the opportunity to
guide museums in realizing the course of progressive education articulated
by John Dewey and pursued in museums by John Cotton Dana almost a
century ago. In this vision, the work of the museum is to provide externally
recognized public value by encouraging, inspiring, and supporting individuals and communities in finding ways to improve their quality of life. It
is a daunting, and some might argue quixotic, task. But it wasnt so long ago
that multiple perspective exhibitions, focus groups, formative evaluation,
pre-school programs, career training for youth, partnerships with school districts, and community generated exhibitions and programsto name but a
few examples of diversity and equity of accesswere not visible in museums.
There is every reason to believe that public value can find concrete expression through programming and community initiatives if a group of
leaders takes on the mission. The next great task for museum educators is
to articulate, demonstrate, and document the ways museums change individuals and communities.
Unlike Maureen Dowd, who worries that todays young women are
not up to the challenges and hard work of shaping new identities in light
of advances in opportunities and expanded options for crafting a preferred
lifestyle, we have complete confidencefounded on a legacy of leadership
that museum educators will not retreat to the comfort zone of technical
acuity, but will step forward with new strategies, new alliances, and new ways
to forge civic engagement and demonstrate public value.
Notes
1. Stephen Weil, Transformed from a Cemetery of Bric-a-brac in Perspectives on Outcome
Evaluation for Libraries and Museums. (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Museum and Library
Services, 2000).
2. Flora E.S. Kaplan, Exhibitions as Communication Media, in Museums, Media, and Message, ed. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (London: Routledge Press, 1995), p. 55.
3. American Association of Museums, Museums for a New Century: A Report of the Commission

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39

on Museums for a New Century (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums,

1984), p.55.
4. Ibid., p.58.
5. American Association of Museums, Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums, A Report from the American Association of Museums (Washington, D.C.:
American Association of Museums, 1992), p. 6.

Resources
American Association of Museums Standing Professional Committee on Education. Excellence
in Practice: Museum Education Standards and Principles. Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 2000.
Dees, J. G. Enterprising Nonprofits: What Do You Do When Traditional Sources of Funding
Fall Short? Harvard Business Review January/February (1998): 5567.
Hein, George. Museum-School Bridges: A Legacy of Progressive Education. ASTC Dimensions
January/February 2004. http://www.astc.org/pubs/dimensions/2004/jan-feb/.
Low, Theodore. The Museum as a Social Instrument. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art,
1942.
Moore, Mark H. Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1995.
Peniston, William A., ed. The New Museum: Selected Writings by John Cotton Dana. Washington,
D.C.: American Association of Museums, 1999.
Weil, Stephen E. Rethinking the Museum: An Emerging New Paradigm in Reinventing the
Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift. Gail Anderson, Ed.
(Walnut Creek, Calif.: Altamira Press, 2004).
Weil, Stephen E. Making Museums Matter. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2002.

Mary Ellen Munley is principal of MEM and Associates, a consulting firm dedicated to enhancing the role of museums in the lives of people and communities. She
served on the task force that produced Excellence and Equity and received the
award for excellence in the practice of museum education from the American Association of Museums.
Randy C. Roberts has more than 20 years of experience in museum education. She
serves as the association manager for Visitor Studies Association, recently earned a
masters degree in Public Administration from Ohio University, and was named the
2005 Ohio Executive MPA Outstanding Scholar.