What is the future of museums?

By Nickky Faustine P. de Guzman, Reporter

IN COUNTRIES like Japan and Australia, their citizens, including children and the elderly, go to museums in much the same way that Filipinos like to visit their favorite shopping malls.

Australia’s Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), for instance, welcomed 1.7 million visitors last year, and 300,000 of them were families and children. According to Simon Wright, QAGOMA’s assistant director of the learning and public engagement department, the gallery is seeing a generational shift from adults bringing their children to museums to children now bringing their grandparents to museums.

The QAGOMA, located at the Cultural Precinct in Brisbane’s South Park, holds more than 17,000 pieces of historical, modern, and contemporary art. Mr. Wright said the gallery’s vision is to be a leading contemporary art institution in Australia and in Asia and the Pacific. The two adjacent riverside buildings are also home to the Children’s Art Center, which is a platform for collaboration of interactive artworks between children and some leading artists in and out of the country.

In Japan, collaboration and learning with children is also a top priority. At the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, children are encouraged to participate in activities that would enhance their creativity and challenge how they perceive the world. According to Sumika Takashima, Mori Art Museum’s leader of learning, the gallery’s educational programs include artists’ talks, children’s workshops, school visitations, art programs for teens and seniors, access programs for the physically challenged, community projects, and international symposia.

The Mori Art Museum, founded in 2003 and located at the 53^rd floor of Mori Tower in Roponggi Hills in Tokyo, has been a platform for “intergenerational exchanges” where Japanese of any age who are interested in art can interact with one another. The contemporary museum has 120 education-related programs, and over 5,000 people joined them in 2016.

In Japan, a nation with an ageing population, children are encouraged to go out of their classes to study art and interact with the older generation artists, said Ms. Takashima.

The two international guest speakers were in the country on Nov. 7 for the Arts and Museum Summit held at the Ayala Museum, which followed the theme “Cultivating an Arts Community in the 21^st Century.”

While the two international galleries have been deliberately cultivating a population that visits museums, the Philippines has yet to get into this.

“Nurturing a family experience is something we need to address in the Philippines, it’s interesting how families eventually come back [in galleries in Australia and Japan],” said Victoria Herrera, director and chief curator of the Ateneo Art Gallery, as she took the role of the moderator between the guest speakers.

While BusinessWorld does not have statistics on the number of gallery goers in the Philippines, anecdotes and simple observation during this writer’s visits to galleries and museums would lead one to see that few people go out of their way to view the art. Still, the recent opening of Ateneo de Manila’s Areté, and other small galleries plus the upcoming opening of the Museum of Natural History bodes well.

One of the toughest challenges that art institutions face, anywhere in the world, is the issue of audience engagement, especially of the millennials. The American Alliance of Museums, for instance, reported in 2010 that the core group of art museum goers in the US over the last 25 years have been the adults aged 45 to 54. The number of visitors in this age bracket, however, had declined between 2002 and 2008 from 32.9% to 23.3%. The report said the future of cultural organizations is in the hands of the youth.

According to Mr. Wright, the aim of the museums should be keeping up with advancements in technology in order to capture the youth and their short attention span.

“Short and impactful content is the name of the game,” he said, while adding that the challenges to museums include “providing the audience with multiple pathways because the audience wants flexibility in how they want to consume content.”

The two guest speakers agreed that the future is digital and participatory, including investing in sensory laboratories that are both experimental and experiential.

“Galleries should know how to reframe and present the information by broadening their reach and appeal,” said Mr. Wright.

These are easier said than done, the experts in the room all agreed. But what they could do start adapting with technology and modernization.

Organized by the Asia Society, the summit, which was on its third installment, is meant to collate and bring the best practices of today’s leading art institutions. But the theme was distinct in the Philippines, which hosted the two-day summit.

“The last two summits were done in Hong Kong, but in the Philippines, the theme is slightly different. It’s how to engage new audiences because the art scene in the Philippines is new. Our artists are getting known by the art world — we see that all over the world young people are beginning to appreciate art. But one thing that is distinct in the Philippines among the Asia Society Centers, is that we have the youngest demographic and age median of 23,” said Suyin Lee, executive director of Asia Society Philippines. “Our programs are focused on your generation,” she said directly to this writer. “What is appealing to you?”

Asia Society Philippines, founded by the late Washington SyCip, aims to make meaningful contributions toward a more united, peaceful, and progressive world while bridging understanding among cultures. The overarching institution, Asia Society, was founded in 1956, and has offices in Hong Kong, Houston, Los Angeles, Mumbai, New York, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Washington, DC, Zurich, and in Manila.