Disclaimer: Wir, die Mitarbeiter*innen des Kunstmuseum Bochum, sind ein internationales Team und gestalten unsere Kommunikation dementsprechend so offen wie möglich. Deshalb haben wir uns für die englische Sprache entschieden für unsere Weeknotes.
We at the Kunstmuseum Bochum are an international team and want to keep our cooperations international as well and as open as possible. Therefore, we decided to write our weeknotes in English.
Week 2
Welcome back to our second weeknote! Last week we introduced you to the inventory process taking place in our museum, and how it reaches out and connects many areas. That was the big picture; now let’s unpack a little bit.
A view of the collectionbeing set up - © H.Holtgreve, 2022
1. We’re taking time to learn new skills and explore ideas
Hand-in-hand with our inventory process, we are developing a digital platform to access our collection. We started off by co-producing the process with Abhay Adhikari, founder of Digital Identities. Designing a process means not jumping straight into the development of an app, but planning enough time to specify needs, aims and boundaries, to reflect and to educate the team. We are in the middle of that education phase, which takes place in the form of workshops and moderated weekly conversations with experts from different fields.
2. Becoming digital and what it means to us
This week’s session revolved around aspects of becoming digital. Since we are not starting on a blank page, we need to weave in digitization with existing structures. These structures start with the people within them, and it is a priority for us to keep our colleagues informed of what our team is doing. Though it is not feasible to share every detail, we agreed that a willingness to explain our work should be one of our core activities. The openness of an institution is directly reflected in their data handling, so we start working at the roots.
3. We need to find the words to describe our work (because it’s all new)
We base our collaboration on communication. However, we don’t all share the same vocabulary. It feels uncomfortable not to understand jargon. We want to tackle these insecurities by not only encouraging everyone to use this new vocabulary, but also accompanying it with a glossary so that there is a shared understanding of these buzzwords.
4. Mediating “Inventur”, and how it helps us to understand our users
We are on a journey to understand our users’ needs and respond to them. In some aspects, we need more data about our visitors. The team is already offering diverse mediation formats to open up our exhibition “Inventur”, and we are working on how we can connect data-collection and mediation. This is a work in progress.
5. Are we redefining mediation?
Last week the team held the first of two workshops to redefine our general approach to art mediation. Through vision boards, we shared our ideas, explained them to each other before analyzing common categories. Through this process we discovered a shared approach: If we want to take our projects further, we need bilateral exchange with the user/visitor. This conversation can only happen if we create space for it, a space safe and welcoming enough for all to participate, regardless of their position. This is our job as a museum, and we are setting a standard for it.
Thank you for accompanying us on our journey, see you next week!
- CN
About us:
The Kunstmuseum Bochum is a small art museum in Bochum, Germany, rethinking its collection.
Through these Weeknotes we want to document insights and share thoughts about our ongoing inventory process at the Kunstmuseum Bochum. We call it “process”, not “project” on purpose because beyond a need of order, our collection needs a re-telling of its stories, in all its iterations. For more information, you can contact us at: cnies@bochum.de or if you’re reading this for the first time, join our Substack for regular updates.