The times are a-changin’ at the Wien Museum, Vienna’s history museum. As well as the impending closure of the main museum on Karlsplatz for a new building and complete redevelopment, a new director will start in October. Matti Bunzl - born and bred Viennese who has spent the last 20 years of his professional career in Chicago - is a cultural anthropologist who peppers his German with English words and concepts and will lead the Wien Museum through the next years of transition and profound change.
The museum’s Facebook page asked their followers to submit questions for the new director and those who participated were invited to have “Frühstuck mit Matti” (Breakfast with Matti) and his head of press and public relations, Peter Stuiber, in that most Austrian of meeting places: the coffeehouse. And so it was that on Friday a diverse group of people met in an Aida café to ask questions, offer opinions and make suggestions about what the Wien Museum is doing, what they should be doing and how they should do it.
A snapshot of the two hour breakfast from the Wien Museum’s facebook page. I’m third from the right.
Sat around the table were people from various sectors such as journalists, art historians, and people from social start-ups, and representing a broad spectrum in terms of where people are in their careers - from students to those running their own businesses… and yours truly. The tone that the museum representatives struck was refreshing; in German you would say “Augenhöhe” - at eye level - a focus group of interested persons with ideas and experience and an interest in the Wien Museum. This was especially underlined by Matti Bunzl’s immediate suggestion that we all use the informal “du” when addressing eachother, a gesture of equality and informality that definitely helped set the tone of exchange from the outset.
Topics ranged from a lengthy opening discussion about the role of social media and what can realistically be done with limited resources, what would visitors and potential visitors be interested in, and what channels can be used in different way to engage and communicate with people?
As well as looking to engage visitors, the conversation turned to how the Wien Museum might be able to work with young and creative start-ups to advertise the creativity of Vienna and give up-and-coming designers and businesses a platform to sell their products. The challenges faced are in developing products that are relevant to the museum and visitors, but also that fit the spending profile of the shop itself: the average spend at the moment is €3 (not sure if this was average per visitor or average per purchase). The museum has gained a reputation for their guidebooks which are invariably detailed, high-quality and richly illustrated. It seems that they also sell very well too.
Matti Bunzl: “I want to create a place where the cultural diversity of the city is presented as a matter of course” from the Facebook competition “Breakfast with Matti”
Another interesting aspect of the Vienna museum is the visitor profile: two thirds of all visitors to the museum are from Vienna and one third are tourists. The question is how to position the museum as a must-see attraction in a city with world-famous art museums and lots of competition? It would be very difficult to overtake the likes of the Belvedere and Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss”, but can the museum develop a reputation as a ‘hidden gem’ in Vienna, the way another breakfaster described her experience of the Tenement Museum in New York?
Other topics that were covered included the role that mobile apps might play in the museum’s future (keywords: audioguide, linking the city to the museums), the professional profile of those working at the museum (without limitless resources, how can the museum continue to add to the workload of their curators, educators and other departments in terms of technology and social media? How do these new and changing dimensions to museum work fit into the experience and roles of the museum personnel?) and how universities might work together with institutions of higher education to provide meaningful training opportunities for students, leading to a discussion about internships.
The main challenge seems to be the ability to expand and develop the role and tasks of the museum in the context of that - age old - concern about resources. But the signs are good. This type of communication is unprecedented in Vienna: the idea of sitting down with a (to be) museum director over coffee in an informal setting, and the eagerness to listen and learn is clear and sincere.
For more information about the changes taking place at the Wien Museum, look at their new website (in German) and the brief for the competition to design the new museum building (also in German).
The Wien Museum’s facebook post with extra photos.