Storytelling in Museums

A storytelling museum

Situation 1:

A few Sundays ago, after ending a storytelling session at the "Juan Bautista Ambrosetti" Ethnographic Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a lady from the audience approached me and in a soft voice -almost like a confession- she gave me a gift: she said that for many years no one had told her a story and that she never thought it was possible to have that experience in a museum: the stories had made her relive her childhood and she had once again felt like a little girl with an enormous imagination.

Situation 2:

A few Sundays ago, three 8-year-old girls laughed out loud near a photo exhibited in the museum where I work. Their mother came and scolded them: “Shhhh! This is a museum!”. The girls immediatly became silent.

For the lady in situation 1 and the mother in situation 2, a museum is a place where you cannot laugh out loud or where letting your imagination run wild is something exceptional or unexpected.

For me -whom, I must admit, am biased due to my experience as a storyteller and my anthropological training- a museum is a place full of stories where laughter, imagination, surprise, disagreement, questions, doubt, indignation and wonder take place and can coexist. It is not a dead and silent space, but active and activated by those who work in it and those who visit it. And this is not exclusive of the Ethnographic Museum: many museums tell and through this act they awaken emotions and build links.

Jack Lohmann sums it up perfectly: “Storytelling is at the heart of what many museums do. They use stories to breathe life into their collections, making connections with different times, often different continents, cultures and beliefs, capturing a range of emotions”.

The exhibited objects or works, the museum script, the curatorship and montage, the posters and signage, the building architecture, the staff, the educators, the tours and educational resources: everything is storytelling, transmitting ideas or messages. Museums go beyond a collection of objects or works of art: they are made up of people, ideas, a story and hundreds of stories. They are made up of workers and visitors, their past and their present.

Stories activate museums and their heritage, they introduce us to new ways of seeing them and relating to them, they open up the oportunity of a gentle bond among a group of strangers whom for one moment and in a particular place breathe at the same time.

Open a displaycase to let out a story

Stone II

Look at it intently:

you will feel the gaze of ancient inhabitants.

Hugo Jamioy Juagibioy. Camëntsá

Colombia. 2005

In 2004 I began work as visitor services staff and museum guide at the Ethnographic Museum (the 'Ethno'). Meanwhile, I was studying Archaeology/Anthropology at uni (Universidad de Buenos Aires) and was very interested in heritage and communication. The stories inside the Museum took me by surprise.

While I was guiding a group or studying the contents of the different exhibitions, I came across objects that told me stories: two Maori carvings (Poupou) from New Zealand brought to mind stories of warriors facing monsters, of deceiving English colonizers, or the creation of the world as we know it and the separation of heaven and earth. A magnificent Japanese Buddhist altar (Butsudan) transported me to other periods of time, to samurai, priests, goddesses, dragons and ghosts. An Andean woolen fabric invited me to share the story of the Yakana: the constellation of the llama.

These stories that came from the oral tradition were building an immaterial bridge with objects, with cultures, with peoples. Words and ideas intersected with the tangible products of different societies. And these bridges could be a way for those contemporary museum visitors coming from an urban context to feel a little closer to that which they did not know.

That is how storytelling began in my museum: those objects that told me stories were transformed into a project: a guided tour for children in which stories, songs and objects intertwined to give context, history, flesh and meaning to the material culture of a society.

Nowadays, this type of activity has a little less focus on a tour of the material culture and a little more on the storytelling. It maintains the same objectives, but changes the emphasis: the stories have more prominence. The academic content is a context that enriches the stories, but it is presented on a more discreet level.

An example of how this change operates is in the use of the space itself: in most guided tours (except for programs for the elderly or people with visual or motor disabilities) the public accompanies the museum guide moving along the route: they are standing, they move on foot. There are few times to sit down. Storytelling at the museum is also done inside the exhibitions, near the objects that provide a frame or point of reference to the story. But, by emphasizing the narrative, the space is built around the story: it is not the same to tell in front of a group standing up or moving than to stop, sit and create a space of listening, of attention.

The wonders and challenges of storytelling inside museums

Audiences

When we tell in a museum, we are in a space crossed by multiple interests: there are many types of users/visitors: whoever comes on purpose to hear stories is coexisting with someone who is passing by, a student doing practical work, a teacher preparing a class, a researcher going to the library, a tourist on a photographic safari, a family on a Sunday walk...

The museum spaces where we work at are all these dimensions and users: storytelling might not be the main feature of the museum, although it can transform users into an audience. Or not. We can be telling in an exhibition and see, behind our audience, people who enter and leave and circulate seeing the objects, indifferent to the activities that are going on. Or people who stay. And come back for stories, again and again.

The uses of museum space

Broadly speaking, I would divide museum storytelling spaces into three types:

Type 1. Multipurpose rooms or auditoriums

Some museums have auditoriums, multipurpose rooms, classrooms or spaces for artistic activities: most of these are rooms with neutral colors and good illumination.

In the case of auditoriums, they might be set up in the style of a theater with chairs/armchairs (that can be fixed to the floor or not) in front of a stage and even a sound or lighting system.

Other museums have multipurpose rooms. Usually, these are quiet spaces with no distractions, very helpful in storytelling (although sometimes they are designed to be isolated from the rest of the museum exhibitions: it is more difficult for a casual visitor, circulating, to suddenly find themselves in these places and get hooked on hearing stories).

Here in Buenos Aires, there were regular storytelling sessions happening in two museums that had these kind of spaces: the one produced by Elva Marinangeli and Juana La Rosa (Enrique Larreta Spanish Art Museum) and the one hosted by Mabel Negri and Celia Planxart (José Hernández Popular Arts Museum).

Type 2. Inside the exhibitions

If we tell within the museum exhibitions (which is the case of the Ethnographic Museum and the National Museum of Fine Arts), the objects and the montage of the exhibitions are a wonderful frame or setting: objects or works of art give us the opportunity to weave stories linked to what surrounds us.

Telling inside an exhibition can also be a risk or a challenge for the storyteller: a showy montage or object could be focal points that capture the scattered attention of someone who did not connect with the narrator. The story continues, but the visitor was trapped in the object. This can occur while on guided tours and when storytelling.

It is also worth mentioning that telling inside exhibitions means accepting the conservation restrictions linked to guarding the heritage exhibited: dim lights or illumination focused on the objects and texts, leaves those who are telling in the darkness. This is one of the things that guest storytellers at the Ethno notice the most. Add to that the museum policy on taking pictures inside the exhibitions or the use of flash and it's a whole new level of practices that those not used to these policies must take into account.

Another conservation measure that is typical of museums and heritage sites is that you cannot eat or drink in exhibitions: what about the storyteller who wants to keep their voice hydrated and needs to have water on hand? When producing the storytelling sessions at the Ethno, this was part of our negotiation: a capped bottle of water carries less risk of an accident, than a glass or jug. This example may seem silly, but it is something we take seriously: conservation measures are there for a reason and must be taken into account.

And what about sound in this type of space? It depends on the type of exhibition. If there is a projection or audio in the exhibition, we turn it off during the telling. If the acoustics are good and the exhibition is small, we aim towards a more intimate climate and a microphone is not normally used. The Ethno is in an old building: we have the chance to close or leave ajar some of the exhibition doors when there is a telling going on inside to avoid external noise and interruptions.

Type 3: Patios and gardens

Many museums have green or open-air spaces: these patios, gardens and terraces are living frames for the storyteller.

In the rural Olavarría region, there is a group of community museums: the old carts in the yard of the Museo Colonia San Miguel gave us the perfect start to gaucho stories. Back at Buenos Aires city, the wind whispering through the trees at the wonderful gardens of the Isaac Fernández Blanco Museum of Hispano-American Art enriched the experience of the tales told by moonlight that were once offered as part of its programming. And in the Ethno, when the cold season leaves us and the days are longer, the imposing rubber tree in the courtyard becomes the tree of tales ... although we might have disruptions in the form of leaves, seeds and the occasional 'gift' from some hidden sparrow. But these are also incorporated into the magic of telling.

What are the problems, in addition to the attacks of the rubber tree or the presence of mosquitoes, that we can find while telling in an outdoor venue? With a large audience and an open space it is difficult to maintain sound quality without amplification, therefore the use of microphones is very necessary.

The use of time in museums

Time opens up at least two doors: on the one hand, the time destined to research or select a repertoire according to the museum space and theme.

On the other hand, something very simple: museums have schedules and you have to respect them:

• Someone asked me once me regarding the Ethno: "Can we do a night show? (after 8 or 9 p.m.)". Unfortunately, unless it is during Museums' Night (in which most of the museums in the city open until 3 a.m.), the museum closes its doors at 7:00 p.m. There are no chances of that.

• "Can we do a storytelling activity on a Tuesday morning?" Schools come on Tuesday mornings, that is our priority.

• "How punctual do you have to be?" (I don't know what storytelling sessions are like in other countries, but in some venues we tend to start veeeery late: when storytelling at bars and cafes, this has to do with not starting until the service is done, to avoid interruptions, but that can lead to delays). In museums we try to be very punctual: we cannot abuse the time we have.

Where are we standing on as storytellers?

I tell in a museum that depends on the University of Buenos Aires. It is a type of museum that operates with different logics and objectives than private museums, or non-university public ones.

Storytelling in an anthropology / archaeology museum is not the same as telling in a community museum, a space for remembrance or human rights, or an arts or sciences museum.

It is essential to know the type of museum where we are telling at. Museums are not not neutral spaces like a theater (or even a cafe): they carry a very strong semantic and ideological responsibility. If it is possible to understand its mission, much better: whether we work for the museum (in my case, as a storyteller and educator) or as guest artists, we have to know where we are.

Telling stories of the oral tradition in the Ethnographic Museum has a very strong burden of responsibility for me: these kind of museums were tools of colonization and domination of one people over other. In the Americas, in Argentina, we are still experiencing the consequences of the processes of invisibility of native cultures (which, unfortunately, continue nowadays). When I tell, I have to position myself with great respect and care of what I am telling.

And, as I belong to a university museum, I can't make mistakes with the content that gives context to the stories. I can't say "It's a Bantu tale", when Bantu is a generic nineteenth-century definition of 'black', sub-Saharan Africa (this very definition is making noise in my head). I have to ask myself: what region is the story from? Who is telling it? If it is possible to find out, what else can I know about the context of the narrative: when is it told? Is it a mythical narrative or an initiation story (so: can I tell it or am I violating a cultural practice?)?

Storytelling as a guest might give a little more freedom, but if we tell in a museum, its own contents and mission are our frame of reference: in an art museum I am not going to tell in front of a painting and say that it is a sculpture. In a paleontology or natural history museum I will try to avoid fantastic stories in which humans live with dinosaurs, because it is a blunder promoted by Hollywood cinema (it is the kind of story that gets on the nerves of archaeologists and paleontologists) . If the museum's mission is to recover the memory of the victims of a historical conflict, I am not going to tell a story that praises its perpetrators.

Before the pandemic, the 'Storytelling in the Museum' series I was in charge of invited once a month three guest storytellers to the Ethno to bring new voices, new ways of telling, and new stories from oral tradition. More than 90 professional storytellers from Argentina and other countries have been our guests. A few years ago, one of them made a mistake in a very specific piece of information linked to the story she was telling (the character hunted a whale with a spear instead of with a harpoon). Our audience understood that the storyteller was not a specialist or museum staff. However, we received feedback about this mistake from two people: an expert and a museum regular who were in the audience (most likely the rest of the audience didn't notice). But telling in a museum implies taking care of that kind of detail.

The end is only the beginning

Museums are not neutral, aseptic spaces ... or at least they shouldn't be. They have to provoke emotions, awaken the imagination, stimulate discussions, trigger ideas, allow us to enjoy them ... just like the stories we tell.

Many museums understand this and incorporate oral storytelling (and games and poetry) into their program of activities, inviting storytellers or having their own specialized staff. Others do not even know what a storyteller is. But they still tell through their collections and exhibitions. And they are beginning to discuss these crossovers.

In my language

In my language

poetry is called:

Aqaktzij

(honey word)

Je'ltzij

(beautiful word)

Pach'umtzij

(interwoven or braid word)

Anyway,

I don't know what this is for,

nevertheless

I insist.

Humberto Ak'abal. Maya K'iché

Guatemala. 2002

Thoughts on this article? I'd love to hear from you: you can contact me at anabelle.cas@gmail.com

Wishing to know more about my work? You are invited to browse the different sections of this site or visit my webpage in Spanish

Bibliography and recommended articles:

Before I wrote the article that you have just read, the Network of Art Museum Educators of Argentina (REMCAA) had invited me to write a series of four entries for their blog. These entries were titled: What do we tell in Museums?

¿Qué contamos en el Museo? Entrega 1

¿Qué contamos en el Museo? Entrega 2

¿Qué contamos en el Museo? Entrega 3

¿Qué contamos en el Museo? Entrega 4

AAVV. 2012. Los visitantes como patrimonio. El Museo de las Escuelas. Primeros 10 años. Editado por el Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires

http://www.ilam.org/ILAMDOC/Publicaciones_recibidas/Los_visitantes_como_patrimonio.pdf

CASTAÑO ASUTICH, Anabelle. 2012. (En) los museos (se) cuentan historias. Experiencias de narración oral y formación docente en el Museo Etnográfico. Experiencia presentada en el 22º Encuentro Educativo “El museo y la escuela”. Banco Provincia. Buenos Aires.

In English: FISHER, M., et al., “The Art of Storytelling: Enriching Art Museum Exhibits and Education through Visitor Narratives”, in J. Trant and D. Bearman (eds.). Museums and the Web 2008: Proceedings, Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. Published March 31, 2008. Consultado en Junio 2015. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2008/papers/fisher/fisher.html

GALINDON, Graciela; Constanza PEDERSOLI; Mercedes PUGLIESE. 2012. "Un día en la vida de Alicia y Enrique ". Los visitantes como patrimonio. El Museo de las Escuelas. Primeros 10 años. Editado por el Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires

http://www.ilam.org/ILAMDOC/Publicaciones_recibidas/Los_visitantes_como_patrimonio.pdf

GARCIA, Eva. “Contar para aprender. La narración como práctica educativa” (en el VI Encuentro Educa+, “Narraciones”, organizado por EducaThyssen). 11 de abril 2015. Video online. Youtube. Acceso en mayo 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdkTYjiRBbs

In English: JOHNSON, Emily & Claire ADLER (ed.). 2006. Telling tales. A guide to developing effective storytelling programmes for museums. London Museums Hub. Londres.

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/files/4413/7468/3728/Telling-Tales.pdf

In English: NICHOL, Liz. 2011. “Storytelling”. En Chapter 2: Visitor-Centered Interpretation Techniques: Storytelling, Improvisation, and Inquiry. Partners in Discovery: Visitor-Centered Tours. Transforming History School Tours at the Oakland Museum of California. Oakland Museum of California. Oakland.

In English: WALKER, Rob. “On objects and storytelling”. Blog Center for the Future of Museums. 30 abril 2013.

http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.com.ar/2013/04/on-objects-and-storytelling.html

SNIJDERS, Eva. “Storytelling, cultura y educación” (en el VI Encuentro Educa+, “Narraciones”, organizado por EducaThyssen). 11 de abril 2015. Video online. Youtube. Acceso en mayo 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IB-ZdY9APw