104. What Large Institutions Can Learn From Small Museums

The Murney Tower Museum (https://www.murneytower.com) in Kingston, Ontario, Canada is a small museum. Open for only four months of the year and featuring only one full-time staff member, the museum is representative of the many small institutions that make up the majority of museums. With only a fraction of the resources of large institutions, this long tail distribution of small museums offers the full range of museum services: collection management, public programs, and curated exhibits. Dr. Simge Erdogan-O'Connor (https://linktr.ee/simgeerdogan) has dedicated her studies to understanding the unique dynamics and challenges faced by small museums, and is also the Murney Tower Museum’s sole full-time employee. In this episode, Dr. Erdogan-O'Connor describes the operation of The Murney Tower Museum, discusses the economic models of small museums, and muses on what small museums can teach larger ones. Image: Murney Tower Museum Topics and Notes 00:00 Intro 00:15 Understanding the Landscape of Small Museums 02:38 Dr. Simge Erdogan-O'Connor (https://linktr.ee/simgeerdogan) 03:00 Murney Tower Museum (https://www.murneytower.com/) 08:29 Overcoming Challenges with Digital Solutions 09:46 What Big Institutions Can Learn from Small Museums 09:54 The Power of Local Connections in Small Museums 13:20 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖 (http://jointhemuseum.club) Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/museum-archipelago/id1182755184), Google Podcasts (https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubXVzZXVtYXJjaGlwZWxhZ28uY29tL3Jzcw==), Overcast (https://overcast.fm/itunes1182755184/museum-archipelago), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/5ImpDQJqEypxGNslnImXZE), or even email (https://museum.substack.com/) to never miss an episode.

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Transcript

Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 104. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.

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Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner.

Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

Let’s say you sorted every museum on earth in order by the number of yearly visitors.

At one end, with yearly visitor numbers in the millions, would be large, recognizable institutions – places like the British Museum in London. There’s a cluster of these big institutions, but as you go further along the ordered list of museums, the visitor numbers start to drop.

At some point during these declining visitor numbers, you reach small museums. Exactly where in the order you first reach