Museums and Change Conference

It's ironic to be in a conference room here in Prague. My last conference was Greenlights' terrific Crossroads event, with all the excitement of a last minute move, and the delight of seeing old friends, hearing new spins on our work, and reflecting together about nonprofit issues.

My most recent experience has been attending the Museums and Change conference here in Prague for the past three days - a group of 200 museum professionals mostly from Czech Republic (and a handful from Taiwan, Brussels, Canada, US, Slovakia, Amsterdam...) who came together at the National Museum's grand pantheon for a nonstop series of 15-20 minute presentations about museum issues. We all had translation headphones, because presentations were in English, Czech and Slovac (the Czechs and Slovacs can understand each other, but us English speakers cause the chaos). Two amazing women sat in booths at the back and spelled each other every 10-20 minutes translating between languages....an we got very familiar with their matter of fact tone synching with the gestures and actions of the speakers.

A multilingual conference is a new experience for me, and I haven't been in such an academic conference setting for quite a while. First day was intimidating - no jokes or giggles, limited audience interaction, challenges understanding translations, and the sinking realization that everyone used a power point presentation or some slides (my talk had been planned without visuals).

So I went back to my apartment that night, looked through the photo files on my laptop, made funky power point with some cool pictures and easy to understand english titles, and was the first speaker for the section on volunteering in Museums for day two. I presented the practical stuff - telling stories from the US. I shared the section with Sally Yerkovich, a colleague from long ago who now is organizing the launch of the Tribute Center, which uses Sept 11th survivors and first responders as volunteers in NYC; Jillian Poole, this dynamo who has created a Fund for Arts and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe that links arts professionals with needs in Eastern Europe; and the director of the Czech Volunteer Center, who has begun a series of programs to build friends groups, volunteers, and corporate volunteer initiatives in Czech museums.

All went well, and then I settled into the conference rhythm. As the days got darker the translations got quirkier (it must be so exhausting!), and I wondered anew about language subtleties. In general though it was quite amazing to realize how the issues in museums seem to be similar to those in the US, that there's always some amazing creativity and energy in both the start up and the turnaround stories, and how the same fundamental conflicts seem to be ever present. (I will skip the details here and spare you non-museum people.

My photos show the room; one photo from my slide show(thank you Austin Children's Museum); and earphones and program page from the conference. Note the presentation titles. I waited with a anticipation to find out what I would hear in the workshop entitled "Destiny and Morality in the very indifferent universe delivering truly divine ghosts" to find out it was about the layout of an exhibition on the literary works of a renowned Czech author.