Show Notes
museums.love — The Museum Lover's Guide
Transcript
Stephanie Pearson
Manuel:
[0:08] So, Stephanie, [Hi!] Welcome to our little podcast. [Thank you.] We just discovered you and I both moved to Berlin in 2012.
Stephanie:
[0:17] Exactly, yeah.
Manuel:
[0:18] It's been a while.
Stephanie:
[0:19] It's been ... So my anniversary was, I think, last week, 4th of July.
Jae:
[0:23] Oh, wow. Congratulations!
Stephanie:
[0:24] The Day of Independence!
Jae:
[0:26] Very understandable why you left!
Manuel:
[0:29] And tell us why you came to Berlin in 2012.
Stephanie:
[0:32] Yeah, well, so I was a doctorate student in Archaeology, as was my partner at the time. And he was the one who got a stipend to move to Germany and research here in the archaeological libraries, which are excellent. They're world-renowned because Germans invented Archaeology.
Manuel:
[0:48] What? Is that true?
Stephanie:
[0:50] That is true. It was a German, Theodor Schreiber, who came up with the so-called theses of how archaeology should operate and what it is, with things that sound really simple to us today because it's been 150 years. [Shovel ...] Yeah, he didn't say exactly shovels or trowels, but, you know, things like the principles on which history or historical discoveries should be made, things about how ... more, it's kind of more philosophical.
Manuel:
[1:17] Okay, that made you move here. You were like: I want to go to the birthplace of archaeology!
Stephanie:
[1:23] Well, so the so-called Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, the German Archaeological Institute, is, I would say, the worldwide biggest archaeological institute, and it's a part of the Auswärtiges Amt of the [Foreign Office.] Foreign Office.
Manuel:
[1:37] Foreign Ministry.
Stephanie:
[1:38] Yeah, which means it has money! Big contrast to America. And so they give out stipends to try to, as part of this foreign office diplomacy efforts, to bring foreign researchers to Germany and to send Germans to America or to other countries. Yeah, anyway, so it was a stipend from the DAI that brought my partner to Berlin to study. And I just came and we thought it was going to be for one academic year. And that was 12 years ago.
Manuel:
[2:07] And the reason we invited you here ... Sorry, Jae, do you want to say hi or something? I feel like ...
Jae:
[2:13] Oh, no, hello! No, I'm intrigued.
museums.love
Manuel:
[2:16] You have a website. [Yeah.] The first thing I want to say is that I think your website and our website have the coolest domains. [Aww.] Ours is everyone.berlin. Yours is museums.love.
Stephanie:
[2:32] Amazing. [What a great domain that is.] Yeah.
Jae:
[2:34] Let's get rid of the .coms and the .orgs. Let's get more personal.
Stephanie:
[2:38] Yeah.
Manuel:
[2:39] I love it.
Stephanie:
[2:39] More love and more Berlin.
Jae:
[2:41] More love and more Berlin. Yes, we love that.
Manuel:
[2:43] So museums.love is about museums.
Stephanie:
[2:46] It is, yeah. I've been working in museums for donkey's years, almost the time I've been in Berlin. The first year that I came to Berlin, I started working in the museums. Because museums were the whole reason I started doing a PhD, because I knew you need a PhD to do anything in a museum. I wanted to become a curator of ancient art, so I studied ancient art. And moving to Berlin, of course, they have the Antikensammlung, the antiquities collection on Museum Island, which is, again, not just world-renowned, but probably one of the top collections of ancient Mediterranean art and Egyptian art in the world. So I thought: I want a piece of that! [A piece of the art!] Yes, yes, so I started taking things home! Through a connection, I could finally contact somebody in the museum to ask, "Can I do something?" And the something was English language tours, because I didn't speak any German. And French language tours, which now feels like a joke, but that was my first foreign language. And so taking people through the Pergamon Museum was my first job in the museum.
Jae:
[3:48] Wow!
Stephanie:
[3:48] Yeah, yeah.
Manuel:
[3:49] And then you thought: Let's reach more people and create a website.
Stephanie:
[3:53] Yeah, it was a very long process. So that process that you ... like the jump that you just made, took about six years or eight years or, you know, it took a long time. Yeah, but it's because, you know - and we'll, I think, probably get into this a little more later - that the museums in Berlin are so different from museums in the States, especially in terms of outreach. And the things they offer for people to come into the museum and the way people understand the stuff they see in the museum is very different. And so, yeah, I enjoyed leading tours. And after that, I went into a teaching job in the university because teaching, that part, really appeals to me. I love that. Yeah, but you know the museums have a very limited scope of what they want to do with outreach, and so at some point I think I just got frustrated and decided to do something by myself, and that was the website. My husband is ... he's been working in online learning and audio and visual things for a long time, so he was a big motivation to start because he could ... he had the camera, he knows how to use it, he could cut, he could do the editing and things, so as a two-person team we really started it.
Museum Tours
Jae:
[4:59] Cool. [Yeah.] And what inspired you to really have that connection with those people that you were doing the tours with? How was that introduction? Was it very nervous-ing? Was it very exciting?
Stephanie:
[5:11] The people who take the tours?
Jae:
[5:13] Yeah.
Stephanie:
[5:13] I loved that. And I'll tell you just two small examples because it was so exactly why I love that job. One example is that was the very first tour in English that I led in the Pergamon Museum, and we were standing in front of the amazing Ishtar Gate of Babylon, which comes from Mesopotamia area, but it's, you know, two and a half thousand years old. Standing there with a group of engineers from Iraq, which is the modern day where it came from, and one of the engineers told me he's from Babel, which is the name for Babylon today. He said, "I'm from Babel, and this looks so much better in real life than the fake one that was built in its place," which he showed me a picture of with, I think American military standing in front of it, but in a horrible Disneyland sort of plastic variation. And he was so moved, and thank goodness, I don't know why, but he wasn't at all mad that it was here instead of in Iraq. and he was just so happy to see it here. And I get goosebumps when I think about it because it was so touching that he was here and that I was ... that was my first tour! I was so touched to be there sharing it with him, yeah.
Cultural Exploitation
Manuel:
[6:20] But can we do a little side quest about this topic of... "stolen art"? [Yeah.] That's been in the news or in the media for a while, about ... especially the museums you already mentioned, there's so much stuff in there that did not originate in Germany or even Europe. [Yeah.] How do you feel about all that, as a museum lover? [Yeah.]
Stephanie:
[6:40] It is a topic, very rightfully so, and it's getting - although very slowly - it's getting to be a bigger and bigger topic, also rightfully so. Where I did tours, primarily in the Pergamon Museum, people would ask about that very often, "Why is this here? It doesn't come from Germany. Why is it in Germany?"
Manuel:
[7:01] And also we didn't like buy it necessarily. [Yeah.] Like oftentimes it was taken. [Right, right.]
Stephanie:
[7:06] So things like the Pergamon Altar and the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, those both came, those were excavated and brought to Germany at the time that those monuments were located in the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottomans had little interest in keeping those things, exploring, sort of digging them up and researching them, and keeping them, maintaining them. Of course, building tourism industry around it was not yet the topic of the day, this is the late 19th, early, very early 20th century. And so the Germans, when the archaeologists, as I say, Archaeology, very early in Germany, and so German archaeologists saw these things in the desert poking out of the sand, literally, just like in the films. And they said, "Hey, can we dig this up and take it?" And the Ottoman government said, "Fine." And there's very little actually written about this. The documentation is sort of, "Hey, can we?" "Sure, go ahead." [Yeah.] But that's to say, it was official. It wasn't stealing in the dead of night, which a lot of people do ask about. And that was the case for the Nefertiti head, for instance, it was really in the dead of night, trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the Egyptian officials who otherwise would not have let it out of the country, so that is very much stolen. Pergamon Altar and Ishtar Gate were not that. At the same time, I would not condone that they're here, because our values and principles today have changed, and I think we need to re-evaluate these things in the light of those. But at the time, just to say, unfortunately, it's not all easy to tell. It's not all good, bad, good and evil.
Jae:
[8:47] Everything's kind of gray.
Stephanie:
[8:47] It's just very gray, exactly. But I still think we need to re-evaluate what it's doing here.
Must-See Museums
Jae:
[8:53] Yeah. That's really good. Interesting. And I know you talk a lot about the Pergamon Museum.
Stephanie:
[8:58] Yeah.
Jae:
[8:59] Maybe let's get into like what are like your favorite museums and like the must-sees?
Stephanie:
[9:04] Yeah. I was thinking about this for summer because it's so hot today! [Yes!] And some of my favorite museums are my favorites because they're just fun to visit. And it's not ... I was trying to think, it's not ... Some people love to go to a museum because there's this one artwork that they connect with and love. I saw that in New York City. There are people who go to the Met in New York City because there's this one painting they want to see. And I've heard from curators who switched out the paintings because they wanted to put up something else, and they get complaints, they get letters of complaint because the people go to see their one painting. Okay, so I don't, I couldn't think of anything for me like that. But the experience, and especially in summer, what I love in Berlin are the museums that are historical places with nice outdoor sort of - what do you call those? - like elements.
Jae:
[9:50] Yeah.
Stephanie:
[9:51] So the one that I was thinking of is the Liebermann Villa on Wannsee, which is a very short train ride from the center of Berlin, and has not only the historic house where the painter Max Liebermann lived part of the time and worked and made beautiful paintings, but also his garden, and it's right on the lake, and so his garden literally ends at the lakeside. And there's a cafe outside now for the museum and things. It's so beautiful. And that's one of the things I just love. It's very small. They have a sort of new director who is doing, I think, a lot more cool stuff, like really good marketing and more interesting projects with young people to bring young people into the museum and do something with the art themselves that then also gets exhibited, which is very rare in Berlin. And so that whole picture, to me, that's one of the things that I really like about the Liebermann Villa.
Manuel:
[10:43] I wonder what rent that guy paid for the garden that goes to the lake.
Stephanie:
[10:49] Yeah! It would be different now, on the starving artist's budget. Oh yeah.
Manuel:
[10:54] I mean, I have to make a little confession here. I'm not huge on museums. When you were like, "The museums in Berlin are so different from the ones in the ones in the US," I'm like, I wouldn't know, because I haven't really visited museums in either place, much. I have been to a few museums of modern art. Those are always fun, I feel like, because stuff's crazy. What would you recommend maybe as a hidden gem, or maybe not so hidden, to someone like me who's like, "Yeah, I don't care so much about the super old stuff or the art that you have to kind of understand, I just want like a fun experience?
Stephanie:
[11:27] Totally, yeah. So for the outdoors, really, Lieberman Villa, or I like the Brücke-Museum, that's very lesser known. I feel badly for them because I always see their posters because I know what it is and I'm interested to see what they're up to. And they do interesting ... like for me ... [Brücke, like bridge?] Brücke, like bridge, yeah, describes this art museum that was called the Bridge Movement or the Brücke Movement in the earlier 20th century, and they have art art from those artists. But they also do cool artist-circle things. They're doing like ... or I just ... I think they've just finished a feminist event series. So things like that, that made ... that are interesting to me, maybe not to everybody, but has it on my radar. And so I see their posters, but I kind of think most people don't see them and don't know that it exists. So that's really cool, that's definitely a hidden gem. The arts, quite ... it's not just quite nice ... I mean it's traditional painting. So if you're not into looking at paintings what they do have is an art studio right next door that was used exactly during the war years 1939 to '42, I think, by some artists, and that's where the café is now. So I talk a lot about cafés because I think that's one of the best parts of museums! [Right?] [It is.]
Manuel:
[12:41] Museum cafés, and also the gift shops often are awesome. [Yeah.]There's so much fun stuff.
Stephanie:
[12:46] Totally, yeah. Now I work in a museum gift shop [Really?] Because, yeah, that was always one of the things I was like: It must be so fun to work here and like pick out the stuff that you can sell, yeah, and somehow it's come full circle and now I'm back there.
Manuel:
[12:57] It's such a great place to buy gifts because it's like kind of useless stuff, but also it's not like useless stuff that you would get on Temu, it's more like artsy useless stuff.
Stephanie:
[13:09] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's classy! Sort of designed useless stuff! No, I got bath towels at a museum shop in Berlin at the PalaisPopulaire that has the Deutsche Bank collection of art. That's a great - so, it's because I work for them too - but that is an amazing gift ... that's why I work for them. Because I went into this gift shop at the PalaisPopulaire, it's right at Unter den Linden, it's right next to the Humboldt Forum. But it's smaller, lesser known. They have always exhibitions of what the Deutsche Bank has acquired, so it's in their own self-interest, of course, but they select artists of the year and stuff that are quite progressive in terms of what museums in Berlin do. And the shop there is the reason that I contacted the shop to say, "Do you need somebody to do your social media or something?" And that's why I work, there because I love their stuff. Yeah. [That's awesome.]
Berlin Museum Island
Jae:
[13:58] Okay, so there's one thing we have to talk about is, specifically, Museum Island.
Stephanie:
[14:03] Oh yeah.
Jae:
[14:04] Can you tell the audience, maybe who like doesn't really know about the Museum Island why is it so special and is it something that people should go to if they're visiting Berlin?
Stephanie:
[14:15] Yes.
Manuel:
[14:18] I've lived here for 12 years, like you. And I've been there ...
Stephanie:
[14:24] You haven't been? Have you been?
Manuel:
[14:25] I feel like I've been there as a child, like before I moved here on, like, a Berlin trip, but since I've lived here, I don't think I've been.
Jae:
[14:31] I've been like a few times.
Stephanie:
[14:33] Yeah.
Manuel:
[14:33] And I know the one big museum just closed, right? For like 10 years.
Stephanie:
[14:36] Yes, yes, yes. The Pergamon Museum closed until, probably, 2030.
Manuel:
[14:43] Educate us, please.
Stephanie:
[14:45] Okay, but I hope we get back to the topic of why you might not have been there, and this sort of thing, b ecause that's the same topic as why the museums here are so different than in the States. And I do not shame anybody who hasn't been to the museums, ever. I tried to make a dramatic moment, but it's not at all, because I understand all too well why people are maybe not interested in museums. That's why I wanted to do my channel online and this sort of thing, because I know I've also stood in museums and been bored to tears, so I know what it's like. And it doesn't have to be that way. And it makes me frustrated that, but, yeah, when that happens, because there's so much more passion that can go around. Museum Island is extremely special. And one way to sort of try to grasp how worldwide special it is, is it's protected under three different codes of heritage preservation. Okay, it sounds like it sounds boring, it's a very official sort of documentation reason, but just to sort of get the scale of how important it is, because every building on the island is under special architectural protection, but also the island itself, as a space, is protected. And that's stuff that happens to Venice, like the beautiful alleyways in these old towns and that sort of thing, because the space itself, it's not just an individual building or two or three that are special, it's the atmosphere. And that's something that's been recognized by UNESCO for Museum Island. So that's just ... yeah.
Manuel:
[16:12] Which, we need to maybe explain: Museum Island is an island or rather half island, like it's connected to the shore on the Spree River. So it's not an island island. It's basically a little half island on a river. So it's a very small ... How many buildings are on there?
Stephanie:
[16:30] Yeah, let's see. Altes, Neues, Bode, Alte Nationalgaleries, the Dome, so five on the north side of Unter den Linden. And on the south side is the Humboldt Forum, yeah, and Fischer Insel which has houses. And that's the whole island.
Manuel:
[16:48] And you can go to five museums, six museums in one day if you're crazy, yeah.
Stephanie:
[16:51] Yeah, if you're - oh my gosh, and they sell a pass for that? [Yeah.] But it makes me so sad. Like if you do that in one day ... I think it's a three day pass for all the museums. [So doing it one day is not advisable?] Oh, I don't think so. I think it would ... you would ... you just wouldn't have fun. I don't know, like how fast can you walk through a museum and consider to have seen it?
Jae:
[17:09] For sure.
Stephanie:
[17:10] Yeah.
Jae:
[17:10] I mean, that goes to my next question, I guess. Why do people not go to museums? How do you enjoy a museum?
Stephanie:
[17:16] Yeah. I think one big aspect that is this one we're talking about, is try to swallow the FOMO because you can't see everything in one day. So just try to put it out of your mind that you're going to miss out on something - you will miss out on something - and just try to break off a chunk that's doable in two hours. So I did tours in the ... When I did the tours for groups, one-hour tours were the best. And sometimes a very ambitious group would book a 90-minute tour, and after an hour I could see the drop off. Like you just see people, they're just ... an hour is it. And in the last half hour you can tell them whatever you want, and they're just ... understandably, they're tired of standing, standing on the hard floors is hard, and their mind, their attention wanders. I totally get it. So one hour as a tour is great. And if you're doing it yourself, not as a tour, try to sit down in between. Like plan an hour to look at stuff and really like use your faculties of concentration, but they're not endless. And museums kind of give us the impression, because they're big and full of stuff, that we somehow should, like "look at all the stuff," but that's not possible and it won't be fun. So take an hour to really engage with something that you find interesting - and it doesn't have to be, you know, the first thing you see - and then go to the café and sit down, recharge, and then do another hour. That's like my number one tip for how to actually enjoy yourself.
Jae:
[18:39] That is a great tip. [Such a good tip.]
Manuel:
[18:40] The Jewish Museum is another one [Oh yeah.] where it's ... like you need to pick a decade, probably, because it's giant. It's just a giant museum.
Stephanie:
[18:47] Totally.
Manuel:
[18:47] But okay, so one thing about ... like a stingy person -which I'm not saying I'm stingy, but - would think: Okay, I bought this ticket [I know.] and now I'm just gonna go for an hour. [Yeah.]
Museum Sunday
Manuel:
[18:59] But there is a way to go for free, which I have on my calendar ... [Yeah!] I've had on my calendar for like months and I've never done! How does the Museum Free Sunday, or whatever it's called ...? [Yeah. Museum Sunday.] Museum Sunday.
Stephanie:
[19:12] You're so right. This is something that hurts my heart because museums, I think they should be free. And I know there's a lot of cultural ministers and things. I know all the arguments, and all the arguments to say we need to balance a budget here, but I don't agree with those arguments. And I do think there's another way to do it. Anybody who is in the government who wants to talk with me about that, please contact me! Because that's ... it's a real impediment. Museums should be there for people to enjoy themselves, learn things. It's an enrichment. It's such an enrichment of our lives for everybody. And when you put a price on it, and people can only pay however much they can pay and it's maybe not €10, or they do they pay €10 but then they want to get their money's worth as it is ... Capitalism! Urgh! Anyway, it doesn't belong in the museum. [Yeah.] So I totally get that. Museum Sunday is an amazing sort of countermeasure to that. And the thing to really know about Museum Sunday is you have to book in advance, because otherwise ... I did this exactly, one time on Museum Sunday, and never went again: it was to go to three museums that are all walking distance from each other and every time to get turned away because the entire rest of the day was booked out. Not just, "You have to come back in two hours." Nothing. There's nothing. So the museum tickets get put online, like switched to available, I think it's exactly one week before the Museum Sunday, or like on the Monday morning before the Sunday, something like that. And you need to be punctual to reserve the tickets for the museum you want to see, because other people know about it and it's so popular that they reserve right away, and if you don't reserve online ahead of time, my experience is when they are trying to do it spontaneously, it doesn't work.
Manuel:
[20:56] And it's always the first Sunday of the month?
Stephanie:
[20:59] Exactly. And only in Berlin. So the shop and the museum I work in right now, is in Potsdam, and Potsdam does not participate in that, for instance. So it's only a Berlin system.
Manuel:
[21:09] And do you have to be registered in Berlin or can you be a tourist?
Stephanie:
[21:11] You can be a tourist. To my knowledge, you can be anybody, as long as you ... I think you have to put in your email address or something, but no, you don't need your Anmeldung Bestätigung!
Manuel:
[21:20] What if you live in Berlin, but you can't do the Anmeldung of your apartment? [Exactly.] But in a way, it's good that they do this system because I assume it's then not crazy overcrowded, right? Because I went in San Francisco or something, I went to the day where the Museum of Modern Art was free, and it was so full, like it was so crowded that I would rather pay $20. And so this is like crowd control, basically.
Stephanie:
[21:47] Yeah, yeah. It is a way of crowd controlling. Absolutely, yeah. From my perspective, because I am a very lucky person who can pay €10 to see a museum, and so I do not go Museum Sunday because from what I want out of my visit, it is still too crowded. And I would just rather pay, like you said, the €10. And to be honest, I don't visit museums that often anymore since I started working in them. I've gotten very persnickety about museums, and so it's a very selected sort of program. Yeah. So just, you know, don't expect that it's going to feel relaxed or something. There's still a ton of people there.
More Museum Recommendations
Jae:
[22:23] So you said you got selective. How do you choose the museums that you want to go to?
Stephanie:
[22:27] Yeah. I like museums that look like they want you to be there and that can look like different things. One of the ... And what I want to say to you, Manuel, also about ... so if you don't really ... you're not like super into looking at an old painting or something, like what museums could you go to see? One of the museums I did work at for a while is the Samurai Museum in Berlin, [Aah!] which is also relatively new. [Yeah.] It's maybe two, three years old.
Jae:
[22:54] It's right by the other really cool art museum, contemporary art museum.
Stephanie:
[22:58] Yeah, KW? Yes. Yeah, they're neighbors.
Jae:
[23:00] Yeah, they're neighbors.
Stephanie:
[23:01] I like KW. Yeah. Have you been to the Samurai Museum?
Jae:
[23:04] No, I haven't. I didn't know if it was too commercialized or whatnot. Like I was very ... I don't like too, too commercial.
Stephanie:
[23:12] Yeah, yeah, rightfully so. [Yeah.] Depending on your definitions [Yeah.] it's based on the collection of one collector who collected for many years - decades by now - and he has the best private collection of samurai objects in the world [Really? Okay.] outside Japan, outside of Japan. But that's huge that's ... [Yeah.] And he has ... like you know, he spent a lot of money on it and some of these - I'm trying to think of how to phrase this! - so, you know, one suit of samurai armor costs millions, plural, for this quality. And the quality is excellent. And the way they're presented is absolutely fantastic. So you were saying, you know, if we want something nice to see, sort of spectacle, without having to really, whatever, do a degree in art history, I really recommend the Samurai Museum. It also has some, but not too many, touchscreens. Like, that's another thing you can have too much. But they have some nice ones that are interactive because they ask you a question about Japanese culture or samurai culture. And you can answer this little quiz. Like, there's a little cartoon fox that sort of follows you around. It could be for kids, but I think it's for adults. I used it and learned a lot about samurai culture! And the lighting and everything is really dramatic and beautiful. So, that's also very different from the sort of ethnographic collection that you could see in Humboldt Forum, for instance. It just feels really special. It is pricier than most of the museums in Berlin. I'm not quite sure what it is now, but it's like €16 or €18, because it's private, small, because I think they know they can charge it. [Yeah.] But it is really nice.
Jae:
[24:47] You get the wow factor, definitely.
Manuel:
[24:51] I have a quick recommendation. I don't know if this actually qualifies as a museum, but Ramones Museum, which is around the corner from here. It's more a café than it is a museum, because it's like a café and then there's like a room full of punk and Ramones stuff [Whoa!] but it's fun if you're, you know, if you're a music lover [Yeah.] [Yeah.] more than a museum lover!
Stephanie:
[25:14] Yeah! [I also ... oh go ahead.] I was gonna say, I have to go! I have to go. That's one I haven't been to. Because I know of the Ramones. I'm not such a music person - it sounds bad but that's somehow just not part of my life, really - yeah, but just where you say that now, I have to go.
Manuel:
[25:31] What I thought was really cool, you get a pin and that gives you lifelong free entry so, you can come back anytime.
Jae:
[25:37] Oh nice! [Oh, man. That's awesome.] There's a few other like wow-factor museums that I like, or kind of museums of exhibitions. There's one called Dark Matter. Have you heard of that one?
Stephanie:
[25:49] Isn't that the one in Köpenicker Straße? It's in the old industrial ...
Jae:
[25:52] Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Stephanie:
[25:54] I think I saw that a couple years ago.
Jae:
[25:56] Yeah. That one's really cool if you like a lot of kind of like sci-fi and like a lot of sound and light visuals and stuff. [Yeah.] There's another free museum that I also really like, if you like urban art, [Yeah.] it's called the Urban Nation Museum. It's in Schöneberg like close to Nollendorfplatz [Okay.] That one's free all the time. [Really?]
Stephanie:
[26:18] They exhibit street art, isn't it? [Yeah, okay, okay, yeah.]
Jae:
[26:21] Like the 1UP - if you ever see the 1UP on the graffiti like on the side of the walls - they do that as well too.
Stephanie:
[26:29] I didn't realize that it's free.
Jae:
[26:30] Yeah, yes. That's like when my friends come to visit I always like recommend that they go to that one. [Yeah. Oh nice!] [What was it called?] The Urban ... Urban Nation Museum. [Urban Nation.] Yes. I'm always big on like contemporary art and like those type of like ... yeah things. It is ... I think Berlin offers a lot of opportunity to see a lot of different types of ... create, yeah, a lot of different types of arts and a lot of different types of stories, especially since it's such an international place.
Manuel:
[27:02] By the way, I'm taking notes and we'll put all of these museum recommendations, yours and ours, in the show notes. I'm going to personally make it a goal to use every Museum Sunday. Because I can also afford to go pay €10, but for me, it's like if I pay €10, it's like a thing. But I really like your tip of: Just go for an hour. Because that's really nice. Go for an hour and then have coffee in the café and go to the gift shop. And that I want to do when it's free.
Long Night of Museums
Stephanie:
[27:27] Yeah. [So I'm inspired.] Great! Do you know about the Museum Night in August? That's coming up too.
Jae:
[27:33] What is that? [What is that?]
Stephanie:
[27:34] That is the extravaganza! It's definitely not free, but it is sort of circus spectacle, theater-meets-museum night, really, every August. It starts at 6pm this year on August 24th and goes until 2 a.m. This is also ...
Manuel:
[27:56] It's called The Long Night of Museums.
Stephanie:
[27:58] Yes. And that's a total extravaganza also in that there are also tons of people. As I say, this is because of the tons of people - it's not totally my jam - but apparently lots of people really love it because the museums put on extra special performances. So they have ... some places have readings, but it can get very creative with, you know, art performances, little theater shows or sort of sketch shows, the more sort of research-oriented places like Charité that has a museum, or Futurium. Futurium's free, Futurium's free.
Manuel:
[28:34] I went to Futurium with my dad. It was fun. It's really great with kids, I would say. For an adult, if you're very into like ... the future, I guess!
Jae:
[28:44] Yeah!
Manuel:
[28:45] What the future could look like. [Oh, I love it!] But it's cool that it's free. And it's by Hauptbahnhof. It's a great tip if you need to kill an hour waiting for a delayed train.
Stephanie:
[28:54] Yeah, you're so right.
Tours in Museums
Jae:
[28:55] Yeah, that's really cool. And I have just like one question about like tours and museums. I've never done a tour of a museum. But like, can you like share like the value of doing like a tour in a museum?
Stephanie:
[29:08] Yeah. It's huge. And I also resisted for a long time. I think now I'm much more open to doing tours now that I've seen ... I guess it's now that I've seen the difference not being a tour guide myself, but where I work in the museum in Potsdam now in ... Das Minsk is the name of the museum, I work at the counter and in the shop and selling tickets. And so I try to tell people, "We have a live tour coming up. Do you want to take part in that?" And when people hum and haw and they often ask like, "Should I do it? Like is it worth it?" Because it costs extra -which is also a question - it does cost extra €5 more, and so it is a ... it's a barrier again, you know. So people want to know, "Should I pay the money? And I tell them, "Yes." I mean, it's easy to spend other people's money but ... [Yeah.] Because the difference is an exhibit in which you may be able to relate to the artwork in some way because maybe it speaks to you, maybe you have a ... whatever, whatever it is, the aura, the interest, whatever, but it's probably going to be a really small percentage of the artworks that really grab you and where you're so happy you spent even just the money to get into the museum. And with just a little bit more money, there's somebody there who can maybe open the whole world to you of what this art is doing. And maybe not. You know, sometimes the tours are really bad or something. And then, of course, I'm sorry, but usually ... And then, because it's a live person and not an audio guide, which is another thing ... [Right.]
Manuel:
[30:33] It's a huge difference. [Yeah.]
Stephanie:
[30:34] Huge, huge. And then you have a potential for dialogue, depending if the guide's into it. But you could at least bring your special interest to the table with the guide. And when the guide says something that maybe clicks for you as, "Ooh, it's something I want to know more about," then you can even ask. And to me, that sort of enrichment of your own experience is worth it. As much as you can, get in there.
Manuel:
[30:53] Totally. I mean, I've never done a tour in a museum either, but I used to be a free tour guide, a free walking tour when I lived in Switzerland. And I got really into it, and I tried to really create an engaging tour. And it's just ... like it's a thing, right? Like you can obviously walk through a city by yourself [Yeah.] and discover things, but if you have a really good guide who tells you, "If you look in this corner of this building you will discover this hidden thing, there's actually a crazy history behind it," it like opens up a whole new perspective and it's really fun. [Yeah.] And I can totally see how the same thing would apply to a museum.
Stephanie:
[31:29] I bet you're great at that! That sounds fun!
Manuel:
[31:31] Got lots of good reviews on TripAdvisor! [Oh nice!]
Stephanie:
[31:35] Oh I bet. What city did you do that in?
Manuel:
[31:37] Basel. [Oh cool.] Yeah, we were a whole group, you know. It was very ... In Berlin it's like impossible to become one of the free walking tour guides because it's very organized, it's very commercialized, the free tours are essentially an ad for the other tours and stuff. In Basel we were just like ten friends who kind of winked ... [Randomly stand there and be like ...] Hey, no no, I mean we had a system and stuff, we had several tours, but it was very loosey-goosey, just for the fun of it. But yeah, [Sounds fun.] it was good. Yeah. [That is really cool.]
What Can You Find on museums.love?
Jae:
[32:08] And two last questions. I want to maybe just go back to like your website or whatnot, of like what can people find on like your website and museums.love?
Stephanie:
[32:19] I hope it's a ... So videos is the primary material that I wanted to put onto the website, although there are also blog posts, and there's a small shop where you can get a bag that says museums.love -I love museums - or Nefertiti earrings, amazing, very lightweight, good for the ears. But the videos are the primary part because, as I said, the outreach is so important, to make people at all, not just interested in museums, but to even realize why museums should exist. And I, of course, believe museums should exist, but I totally understand why people maybe don't think so, because if it's not interesting to them, you know ... You know, museums, especially in Germany, are not really trying to make people interested in them - most of them, anyway. Humboldt Forum is maybe a little bit of an exception. But a lot of them, especially on Museum Island, they've been doing things this way for a long time and they'll keep doing it! And so the videos are sort of my way to provide a bit of outreach about things that mean something to me, that I care about: gender in the museum, especially in ancient art, which is my specialty, and where the tradition can be a liability because there's been so much tradition about ancient art and writing about ancient art.
Jae:
[33:37] You also talk about the diversity of ancient art. [Yeah.] That was one of the things I read about your website. I love that.
Stephanie:
[33:42] Oh, thanks. I'm so glad. It's so unbelievably important and so unbelievably ignored.
Jae:
[33:47] Yes, yes. I was like, you know, that's actually something that could like ... Because you don't think about that whenever you go to a museum, but there's so many different aspects. There's so many different aspects of it.
Stephanie:
[33:57] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I'm so glad that you liked it. That's really probably my biggest passion, is just to try to get these issues in the consciousness of the people who go to museums, who maybe start asking questions like, "Oh, I thought all these white marble sculptures were white people." You know, that's the assumption, quite understandably. And in the Altes Museum I made that video because there is a white marble sculpture head of somebody who probably wasn't white, and that opens the box for maybe a lot of these people weren't what we classically define as white. And what even does that mean? Like what are these definitions? And we're talking about 2,000 years ago. Have things changed since then? Oh, man. And I get really excited about that topic! And why isn't it in the museum? So that's why I wanted to make the video as a sort of supplement. For me, also to ... maybe therapy, just to try to get it out there because in my head, it's not doing anyone any good. Yeah. Some friends have said that they've taught with that video, which makes me really happy, just to think it's going towards the younger generations also.
Jae:
[34:58] Yes.
Stephanie:
[34:59] Because they're the ones, I think, they'll come into the museum world to work in museums, I hope, with a whole different idea of what museums are there for and how to get people into it. Just engage, engage, yeah.
Finding a Museum Job
Manuel:
[35:12] Speaking of working in a museum, you mentioned that you came to Germany and found your first museum job here. And I feel like I've talked to quite a few people who are studying something about art or mus ... I think you can even study. What's it called? Museum Studies. Like Museum Studies. And often I've heard, "That's what I wanted to do, but I can't find a job. How do I find a job in a museum?" Yeah. What are your expert tips for anyone who wants to find a job in a museum in Berlin?
Stephanie:
[35:41] Oh, man. Well, do I have any tips? Because my own ... So maybe my own history shows what my tactic is, which I guess was to change my specialization until I found one that was hiring, which is really hard because it's not actually related to the 15 years of schooling or however long I was in school, like unfortunately not a direct link although, I think, an indirect link because the ... Well, so leading tours is maybe a really good way to start. The unfortunate thing is, and this is one of the differences, in the state museums in Berlin, leading tours is done by freelancers. So the job perspective, like career perspective - pretty much non-existent. I knew one ... I had one colleague at the time who lived on the tours that he did, and that was not a good living. You know, if you're a student and you have a stipend and you just need to get experience and you want to do something on the side, great. Unfortunately that's not the most of the people who work there, and that should be an embarrassment. And the US is - this is one case where the US in terms of like social awareness, social issues, is actually way ahead of Germany, even though here there's all the social network systems like retirement and stuff - but the US actually hires people to do guide work and to do outreach work. And that's something the museums here are not really doing, not yet, and especially not the ones on Museum Island. So it's hard to say, should you start as a guide? Sure, you get experience, but I don't know, did it help me on my career path? I'm not so sure. It was a side job that didn't turn into anything. And then I started looking into doing social media for museums on a freelance basis and did that for a little while. But again, the museums in Berlin - and especially in Germany, because Berlin is symptomatic for Germany - they don't quite know what social media should or could do for them. That's also a difference to the States that embraced more social media and is using it as a tool of outreach, which is awesome and super cool. The Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt is an exception. I love their channel and what they do - super cool - but social media also I found more like a grind. And so then I went to the shop side and you know that's where I asked the shop people, "Do you need somebody to do social media? Thank goodness they did not yet, and they said, "Come to work doing other stuff," and so I just started working at the ticket counter, and now I'm doing ... I'm shop lead. But it took a while, you know, it's ...
Manuel:
[38:15] You have to squeezle your way there. [Yeah, it is.] Somehow find your way in and then find your way there. [Yeah.] Squeezle is perfect. That is exactly, that feels ... that's so the description. Exactly.
Manuel:
[38:26] "Squeezle your way into a museum!"
Stephanie:
[38:29] Unfortunately yeah. Yeah. And I think some ... like if you're talking about younger people who are doing these Museum Studies now, or whatever it is, and so they're in the younger generation and they're trying to get into the career path, I think that's really hard. Because the people who are hiring are, of course, not in the younger generation and here, in my experience, have a very conservative mindset of what museums are up to. And so if you're a young person and you've been doing Museum Studies or whatever studies you've been doing and you've read all the, you know, the gender or the diversity texts, and you're thinking like: Yeah, there's so much that can be done and let's do it, I think you're going to run up against a brick wall.
Jae:
[39:09] Yeah. They're probably going to be more slow [Yeah.] and more resistant.
Stephanie:
[39:14] Yeah, unfortunately. And it's not everybody, of course. And, you know, there are bright lights, the smaller museums, things like ... Okay, so this is maybe a real concrete tip: Berlin has small like Kiez museums. So every -it's probably defined by Bezirk - so every sort of part of the city that's an administrative unit, Prinzlauer Berg and Charlottenburg and stuff, they have their own museum, like a little history museum, and those museums, like I'm thinking of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg museum near Kottbusser Tor, they are smaller and they just have more interest in their communities than the big museums. And so that's maybe a place where a new, younger person could go in and say: I'm new and young, and I'm interested in changing things and, like, you know, engaging, making things happen. I can imagine some of those smaller museums would do it, like especially Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, because the people running that are also a little bit younger and dynamic and just trying to do more stuff with the communities than other places.