Benches, Windows, Forests

“To enter with heart and mind into the world of the imagination may be to head deliberately and directly toward, or back toward, engagement with the real world.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

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I sincerely believe that many of the issues affecting our complex and contradictory professional world of museums—sometimes cannibalistic and ungrateful, other times generous and innocent—stem from misdiagnosis and, consequently, flawed solutions. It’s like trying to write coherent text when some keys on our keyboard don’t work. Banks without foundations, windows without walls.

New work methodologies, new skill types, new approaches, new promises, new technologies. Everything changes so that nothing changes. We consider the new inherently better, forcing our gaze outward and forward, towards what we supposedly achieve by leaving behind what we have been, what we have done, who we really are. But what if we find what we are truly looking for precisely in those places?

For some time now, I have been advocating, along with other professionals from within and outside the sector (I admit, more with the latter), for a new language that helps us understand what is happening to museums and positions us effectively to start acting decisively. We need to find foundations and walls so that our benches rest on something stable, and our windows outline a frame from which others can see us. Currently, in many cases, we are useless and invisible.

In other words, we need a good story to tell ourselves and to tell others—a story about what a museum is today and what it can do for each of us to make our dreams a reality, caring for and supporting us as we pursue them together. Ultimately, it’s an act of love. Love for the community we are a part of, whether we are fully aware of it or not. Love and tenderness for those who remain by our side, despite everything and against all odds.

In this new story, we need new metaphors (this time, yes) that not only capture reality better but also transform it into something that helps, cares, inspires, and makes us wiser, more patient, persevering, and resolute. Clay for the walls that frame our windows, wood for the legs, backrest, and seat of our bench.

Words can save or condemn; they can heal or kill. It all depends on which words we use, how we use them, and with whom. Since the pandemic (even before), I have heard the same words associated with museums over and over, keeping us stuck in a looped story, an ouroboros devouring itself: crisis, lack of resources, funding, AI, burnout, EBITA, lay-offs, sustainability, capacity building, profit/non-profit, user, deadline, KPIs, ROI, retention, boards, meetings, priorities, short term,... I wonder, where are the other words? Where did they go? Words like community, children, future, “what if it goes well,” trust, play, care, “your story is my story, our story,” seven generations, “welcome, I was waiting for you,” water, perseverance, trust, truth, opportunity, nature, dream, hope, care, support, deep listening, love, sense of purpose, change, children, sense of belonging, compass.

As Andri Sn?r Magnason says about climate change in his beautiful book On Time and Water, if we truly understood what “acidification” means, we would cry every time we heard it. But we don’t because the word itself doesn’t wound us, doesn’t scratch us, doesn’t take our breath away, doesn’t shake us and leave us by the roadside. We need words like that for museums. Bank words. Window words. Forest words. We also need to be silent. To learn to speak to each other through silence. Sincerely, how many of us know how to do that?

It’s said that when Alvar Aalto was convalescing as a patient in the Paimio Sanatorium, he came up with an idea that would forever change hospital architecture. Until then, windows in these facilities were designed at a height convenient for healthy visitors, while patients—lying horizontally—could see very little through them. But seeing a landscape can be essential to a patient’s recovery. Aalto decided that hospital windows should be designed with patients in mind. With this, he changed the history of hospitals and architecture itself, demonstrating that an architect's true client is not the one who commissions the building, but rather the common person, the human at their most vulnerable. Do we have something like that for museums?

Another story, again from the field of medicine. A brilliant professional once told me that museums must be like hospitals. Franco Rotelli, a director of a psychiatric institute in Trieste, continually questioned the psychiatric institution itself. He believed that organizations (museums are no exception) tend, even unintentionally, to reproduce themselves—even the most critical ones. Rotelli spoke about moving from institutional autonomy to the constituent autonomy of those within it, where they continuously question the institution. He described his institution with the metaphor of a bench made of snow for the winter of our lives—when one is tired, struggling, and lacking strength (the moment we are in now)—but that would melt with spring, starting a cycle of either building the bench anew or creating something different. Can we reimagine ourselves as museums in this way? Like a snow bench that melts and reforms again and again?

Many stories are happening out there, silently taking root, connecting, intertwining, consolidating, and expanding. Stories that give us new words to capture reality, name it, and shape it in a completely unexpected, bold direction. Words that, once spoken by their protagonists, stay with you forever, whispering, “Now it’s your turn, your moment has come.” Trunk words. Pando words—the oldest and largest organism on Earth, where one tree has 42,000 different ways of being. Children should be the great suppliers of these words to museums.

Stories like that of Gleis 4, a contemporary art gallery redefining the concept of a gallery by transforming it into a nomadic space that comes to you, where you can have a beer while talking with a friend and immersing yourself in top-tier creativity. Or like Arkiv, a global hybrid network of museums with curators from around the world, where anyone can create a museum in an old donut shop, a garage, or an abandoned tire warehouse. When you are part of these stories, they buzz in your ears, keeping you awake at night. They are sharp, vibrant, and intense. They demand that you surrender without reservation, with no room for delay. A path with no return. How many paths with no return do we encounter when visiting our museums?

I am writing a book titled Mycelium Words for Museum Lovers. It draws inspiration from a fascinating 2022 study by Dr. Andrew Adamatzky of the University of the West of England, published in Royal Society Open Science. His research explored how fungi communicate through electrical impulses transmitted via their mycelial networks, akin to a primitive language with a vocabulary of up to 50 “words.” Adamatzky recorded these impulses from various fungal species like enoki and split gill mushrooms, observing clustered patterns that might signify resource sharing or environmental changes within the fungal networks.

In my book, I present 50 words as 50 electrical impulses to communicate with other professionals interested in creating new stories in their museums, stories that will transform those who hear them radically and permanently. Fifty words like “window,” “bench,” and “forest” to fall in love with museums without even needing to visit them. Just to hear someone talk about them.