Articoli taggati con ‘Museum Management’
Reinventing the wheel: why museums should learn more about their visitors
Have you ever wondered why everybody underlines the relevance of private information and privacy policies? One of the most astonishing answers could be that personal information is important to those who want to sell you a product or a service. Maybe simple. Still, it is everything but simple for museums, apparently. In Italy, there is very poor knowledge about museum visitors, and there is still less knowledge about cultural consumption. In our country, there are always too many reasons that could be suitable to justify a specific condition, and this case is no exception. This lack of knowledge could be the effect of the lack of funding, or, the consequence of the lack of adequate software, or even the organizational structure of the most important Italian museums, where private companies manage all those services where visitors’ data could be collected (such as ticketing) and this condition could cause issues related to the privacy of visitors or give to those operators a commercial advantage. Actually, none of those reasons is decisive: lots of museums have spent, in recent years, significative economic resources to realize research about their visitors; no special software is required to collect basic information about visitors and their cultural tastes and consumption; the realization of a common database could avoid any commercial advantage, and the data-anonymization process could come in handy to protect visitors’ privacy. Since the lockdown Italy strongly prompted the digital development of public services: we’re running digitization projects in almost all the most important spheres of our lives, such as health with the realization of the Electronic Health Record, a database with all our health data, or digital identity, with the so-called SPID (Public System of Digital Identity), which already provides citizens with numerous e-government services. So why we do not have an Electronic Cultural Record? Perhaps it is not such a priority for our museums or policy makers, but it could be a strong tool for both public and private players. Analysing Cultural Consumption Data, private enterprises could produce a more attractive cultural supply, addressing specific products and services to the right audience, and this could increase the overall volume of cultural consumption. Tanks to the potential growth of private revenues, public institutions and other organizations could focus on those “taste-niches” that cannot reach a proper market dimension. Furthermore, cultural organizations could reach the right audiences, strengthening engagement and improving sense of belonging. There are several ways to realize such a system: one of the most intuitive is a specific tax-deduction policy for all the personal expenses related to cultural and creative themes that are paid by a specific debit-card. This kind of system could enable the realization of a specific AI developments, thanks to which, when a person comes to visit a specific museum, the AI could suggest specific guided-visits based on his or her past purchases. It is sad to find that traditional cultural systems are abdicating to the digital supplies all the potentiality of data: in our everyday lives we’re surrounded by services displaying us how likely it is we could appreciate a book, a restaurant, a tv-series or a tv-movie. It could be useful for us to understand how likely it is we could count of such a service also in our physical experiences: going to the cinema, exploring a city, evaluating theatre or music events, or choosing an art – exhibition or a museum. It’s quite simple to understand. Still, it is everything but simple for cultural systems, apparently.
Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage
In the wide framework of cultural resources present on a territory, there are still instruments and assets that, for multiple reasons, do not enter in traditional mixed offer of a city or a region. Ecclesiastical cultural heritage is often part of the structures that public administrators let slip. For Italy, it seems like paradoxically. While an important part of the art history and of cultural heritage is related to the history of Church, and while there are almost no cultural itineraries that do not include an ecclesiastical reference, the so-called “ecclesiastical museums” are still a marginal part of the policies realized to improve cultural, social and economic growth of our territories. In this article, we will discuss both the theoretical implication and the concrete opportunities that the empowerment of the ecclesiastical museums could generate for Italian territories, in terms of the touristic, cultural, and spiritual offer. As occur for “secular” ones, the ecclesiastical museum expresses a set of differentiated values that we need to take into account: the economic and social values are, therefore, specific consequences of the intrinsic cultural and historical values represented by the artworks that the museums store and protect. Furthermore, ecclesiastical museums present an aspect that every kind of consideration needs to take into account: the relevance of the spiritual and religious values and the role of the artworks as an important tessera in the wider mosaic of evangelization function.
Ecclesiastical Museums: an important opportunity for cultural networks and territories
In the wide framework of cultural resources present on a territory, there are still instruments and assets that, for multiple reasons, do not enter in traditional mixed offer of a city or a region. Ecclesiastical cultural heritage is often part of the structures that public administrators let slip. For Italy, it seems like paradoxically. While an important part of the art history and of cultural heritage is related to the history of Church, and while there are almost no cultural itineraries that do not include an ecclesiastical reference, the so-called “ecclesiastical museums” are still a marginal part of the policies realized to improve cultural, social and economic growth of our territories. In this article, we will discuss both the theoretical implication and the concrete opportunities that the empowerment of the ecclesiastical museums could generate for Italian territories, in terms of touristic, cultural and spiritual offer. As occur for “secular” ones, the ecclesiastical museum expresses a set of differentiated values that we need to take into account: the economic and social values are, therefore, specific consequences of the intrinsic cultural and historical values represented by the artworks that the museums store and protect. Furthermore, ecclesiastical museums present an aspect that every kind of consideration needs to take into account: the relevance of the spiritual and religious values and the role of the artworks as an important tessera in the wider mosaic of the evangelization function. The article will therefore discuss three main aspects of the Italian ecclesiastical museums: first chapter, “From religious to spiritual” will briefly deal with the theoretical dimension of the role and the relevance of ecclesiastical collections and their inclusion in a broader cultural dimension. The second chapter “Ecclesiastical Museums and services” will analyze services and main characteristics shown by ecclesiastical museums in Italy. Third section will finally introduce the potentiality of the introduction of ecclesiastical museums in different networks, considering the recent growth of cultural and spiritual products or services.
The role of Catholic and Religious Cultural Heritage in an ambiguous era.
Today, we live in an ambiguous era. This is true under almost all the perspective we want to assume, but it is particularly true when we analyze the relationship with the religious and spiritual aspects. On the one hand we live in a laic world, characterized for a technological and web-based development. On the other hand, religious wars are increasing, and the terroristic attacks are more and more frequent. In this context, Religious Cultural Heritage is called to play not only a religious role (representing the values of a specific faith) but it is called to play a cultural activity (representing cultural relevance of the spiritual sphere of the humankind). It is crucial, in this difficult and fragile equilibrium, for Religious Cultural Institutions, to adopt management criteria in order to run this peculiar institutions with efficiency and efficacy. The article will provide an overview of the main fields in which a more economic (but not necessarily monetary) approach is needed, with a specific focus on catholic cultural institutions.
