Creativity is not only for the artists. A patron interfaces with an arts institution long before they get there, and time and time again the visitors guidelines and etiquette policies read as though buying a ticket is a passport to not being able to do anything coupled with an assumption that you know nothing, and that we are all 5 years old! We belittle patrons before they walk through the door, we simply have to get creative with this. My Audience Connection class took this on last week……(Update: response from Indianapolis below)
Probably my favorite (actually most cringeworthy) visitors guide is the Guggenheim in which 7 times they bold the words Do not. When theater companies and Symphonies send out their tickets, it’s usually accompanied by a sheet listing all the things a patron CAN’T do with those tickets. Someone just sent you several hundred dollars for those tickets, so I can only imagine that it might turn some people off!
I assigned my class to work in pairs to find an etiquette policy of a major Arts organization and to change it to make it accessible, respectful, but most importantly creative. One pair nailed it they being Loren Casteel and Kayla Gradecki. They decided to rework the Photography Policy at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Click here to read it (not the worst by far) and read their version below:
Indianapolis Museum of Art: Photography Rules: reworked by Loren Casteel and Kayla Gradecki Audience Connection Class Drury University 2011
- Take as many pictures as you want! Take them anywhere you want, we just ask you to be courteous of others, like mom always says: “Treat others with the same respect that you expect!”
- Sculptures and other forms of artwork are there to look at and pretty much only that!
- No nudity (flashing) in any pictures, we like to preserve the innocence of the artwork!
- Pictures that are taken by you should be kept …. by you!
- In our newer exhibits, photography is a thing of the past! If you want to keep the memory of the artwork, google the title and save it to your computer! :D
- Photography passes allow you to set up equipment and should always wear their pass; just like in high school!
- If you don’t a permit, you may purchase one. Otherwise, You may only take pictures during store hours, but you still have PLENTY of time!
- A single day permit costs $50 and a full year permit costs $250; more bang for your buck, or shots for your buck, but the non-alcoholic type. Also, with the full year permit, your purchase includes two named photgraphers from one company!!
- Students are welcome to use their ID for a free single-day pass.
- We do protect our artists at IMA, so our collection is under copyright. We invite you to enjoy the collection as an exciting personal experience.
- The experience you have at IMA is important to us, but please be aware of our other patrons as you enjoy your photography outing.
- Please don’t touch the plants! (. . . We don’t know which ones are poisonous.)
- The sculptures are for looking. The fountains are for looking. And hearing. So, please don’t touch or sit on the sculptures or in the fountains.
- As there may be children at IMA, we invite you to keep all of your clothes on for the duration of the visit. Boudoir photo shoots must be kept in the boudoir. Preferably of your own home.
- Your wedding photos should be taken outside so as to best complement the bride’s gown. Plus, we don’t let you take them inside anyway.
- Your wedding photos should not include strangers walking around in the background. So refrain from taking wedding photos between four and seven on Saturday afternoons.
- Group photos can be a lot for us to accommodate, especially with a whole museum to run! Please let us know three weeks ahead of time that you’re coming so we can best suit you. And be aware that this extra work may mean a little extra cash.
What I like most is that it makes me laugh, which makes it memorable, which is the point! It is creative writing that is remembered, I am going to send it to the museum to see what they think and I would love some examples of restrictive visitor/etiquette policies if you have any links to send along!
I have podcast the last 3 years of the Audience Connection Class. 2011 podcasts coming soon.
Update – response from the Indianapolis Museum of Art (posted with permission):
Dear Mr. Spigelman,
Thank you for sharing your blog post about the assignment you gave your students. We are glad to hear that the IMA’s photography policy has at least gotten people talking. While we can appreciate where your exercise is coming from and the humorous re-write it was given by your students, this is not overall the tone we wish to impart – particularly when these are professional photographers coming to our grounds who honestly want to know what they can and cannot do. Many of your student’s rewrites came out of areas that revised this summer in response to the questions and concerns that professionals and visitors were raising wanting more clear information. Since introducing the policy earlier this year, we have had a very positive response and not turned visitors off from coming here. Our 150+ acres had become overrun with every individual with a camera trying to do a photo shoot that the general visitors to the IMA could no longer enjoy a nice stroll on our grounds. Since instituting the policy our visitors have been happier with more areas for them to enjoy on the grounds and that they no longer feel they are in the middle of someone’s shoot. Our professional photography community has responded very positively. We have actually had several photographers return to our grounds to shoot, which they told me they had avoided in the last 3-4 years because of the free-for-all that the area had become.
I do appreciate the idea of not “talking down” to visitors to make them feel like children, but please note that most of these guidelines came out of questions we were repeatedly asked or situations, which seem like well-duh don’t do that things, happening to our sculptures/grounds (i.e. – visitors climbing and jumping off sculptures, nude model photo shoots happening on our grounds, etc) and when those people were approached by our Security and Visitor Services staff they acted as though they had an entitlement to continue with their actions.
Again, thank you for sharing the post with the IMA.
Best regards,
Anne
Anne M. Young
Rights & Reproductions Coordinator
Indianapolis Museum of Art
4000 Michigan Road
Indianapolis, IN 46208-3326
I’m all for couching policies in friendly good-humoured terms and it’s great to see this being done as an exercise, but I’m not convinced by this particular rewrite. Some of the individual points are nicely expressed, but the excessive use of exclamation marks makes me feel like the writers think I’m 5 years old. (Oops.) And the humor often takes on a labored tone instead of a relaxed, light-hearted tone.
The thing that bothers me most, though, is the lack of organization. The original mightn’t be perfect, but it includes clear, logical headings dividing up the information and instructions, and the points follow a sensible sequence within each section. That means I know where to look depending on whether I’m a general visitor, a professional photographer, or whatever. I don’t have to read the whole list of points in case there’s one that will relate to my situation.
To give one example of where the lack of logical organisation really makes this fall down: try reading point 3 from the perspective of a genuine, ordinary visitor. Nudity? People flash at this museum? What the…??! That point makes perfect sense when it’s read in a section relating to *photo shoots*, because we can all imagine a scenario where a professional photographer might be making nude shots, and we can also see it doesn’t apply to us. But as point number 3 for an ordinary visitor. Perhaps the intent is to be funny, but most readers will just be perplexed by it. (And then it’s more or less repeated at point 14, but again suggesting that it might be the visitors who are planning to take their clothes off, when the original policy is clearly about photo shoots using nude models.)
Related to this, I think there’s value in keeping policies relating to commercial activity in fairly “straight” language. Not legalise, but formal. Unlike instructions for general visitors, those policies need to be referred to by professionals who do in fact want to know what the rules are and what they’ll need to do to abide by them. The jokes and cuteness will simply make them work harder to work out what their obligations and permissions are.
Angela
I appreciate your points, this was an exercise and I’m not expecting the IMA to adopt it, only to point out that we need to be creative and respectful so that we don’t turn people off before they attend a museum/concert/play etc….Humor is great way to do that which is why I thought their reworked policy was a good example to publish.
Ron
I agree that maybe this list of do’s and don’ts may not work for everybody, but I don’t believe that’s the point Ron was trying to make by this. I remember your class Ron, and one thing that always stuck with me was that making patrons feel inferior is not the way to go. For example, if a new patron attends a concert and they *gasp* clap in between movements, and they are greeted with shushing, there is the large chance that they will never come again. I think the point is to embrace people and give them restrictions in more gentle way that doesn’t make them feel like a 2 year old.