INDIANA STATE MUSEUM,CANAL SIDE Courtesy Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis Reflections on the Indiana State Museum and Historic Site: A Conversation with Doug Noble
On May 22,2002, the Indiana State Museum completed its move into a new 270,000-square-foot building in Indianapolis's White River State Park. The facility includes 60,000 square feet of permanent exhibits, 12,000 square feet of changing exhibit space, two restaurants (one of which is a recreation of the historic L.S. Ayres tea room), gift shop, and an IMAX Theater. The building, which stores the muse- um's collection of 400,000 artifacts, was designed by Ratio Architects of Indianapolis, the exhibits by Ralph Appelbaum Associates Inc. of New York. Douglas R. Noble, who assumed the position of chief executive officer in June 2001, was previously director of the Pink Palace Fam- ily of Museums in Memphis, Tennessee. During his twenty-one-year tenure at the Pink Palace, the museum (originally the home of Pig- gly Wigglygrocery stores founder Clarence Saunders) expanded to 176,OOO square feet, becoming the best-attended not-for-profit museum in Tennessee. Noble has served on the board of trustees of the American Association of Museums (M)and is past-president of the South- eastern Museums Conference. In August 2002, Noble was interviewed by James H. Madison, Thomas and Kathryn Miller Professor of History at Indiana Univer- sity, and a former editor of the Indiana Magazine of History. Both Madison and Noble reviewed the original transcript of the conversa- tion for accuracy. It has been further edited, for length and clarity, by the editors.
Jim Madison: What did you think when people first approached you from Indiana about coming to Indianapolis and doing what you're now doing?
Doug Noble: You know, the first question a lot of people ask is, "well, you had been in Memphis for twenty-one years, why make a change?" I think I'd reached a point in my professional life [where] I felt that I . . . really needed a change and a challenge, and clearly this was a unique opportunity. I think it gave me an opportunity to do in Indi- anapolis-I hope, in the next year or two-what took twenty-one years in Memphis. First of all, I was attracted [by] the scale of the
INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY, XCVIII (December 2002). Q 2002, Trustees of Indiana University 306 Indiana Magazine of History
DOUGLASR. NOBLE
Courtesy Indiana State Museum,Indianapolis project: the architect’s [Bill Browne of Ratio Architects of Indi- anapolis] concept of narrative architecture, the use of Indiana build- ing materials, the great significance to the positioning of the building on the old national highway [US.Route 401, and the fact that it was sort of the last major piece of the development of White River State Park. From a management and strategic [viewpoint],I saw the chal- lenge for this project as [one ofl moving from an old venerable loca- tion-that was fine-[toI a whole new institution. It’s got the synergy of the IMAX Theater being part of it, of being located in White River State Park surrounded by some very interesting and effective attrac- tions. It’s in a vibrant, progressive city that has so much to offer cul- turally and, you know, the new museum is an exciting opportunity.
JM: What do you see as the challenges or opportunities of the next year or two?
DN: It’s to move toward creating a state museum commission. That would be a quasi-governmental organization [that would provide] what we really need for this place to grow and succeed, following the university model. The state will always need to be a financial player, but we need to develop a financial partnership, and that means the foundation [the State Museum’s not-for-profit fundraising arm] get- ting earned income which ultimately could flow to the commission, Reflections on the Indiana State Museum 307 once it’s created, [from] the restaurant, the after-hours rental, ticket admissions, and so on. Through gifts and donations, grant writing, and other fund-garnering opportunities, [such as] a planned giving program to build an endowment, we create diversified sources of rev- enue. Those diversified sources of revenue shelter us from the vagaries of the economy, government cutbacks, soaring fuel prices that might cause a slump in tourist attendance. So really what we’re talking about is a different kind of model for operating a state facility.
JM: Let me move from finances and administration to the museum exhibit itself and to the interpretation. You are a state institution. How free are you to interpret Indiana as you and the curators wish? How constrained do you feel by the fact that you are a state institu- tion, that there are Democrats and Republicans, that there are Methodists and Baptists and Catholics and all the rest that make life so interesting these days?
DN: Thus far I haven’t been approached with concerns about what has been done and presented in the museum. I think that there are a number of issues that are pretty boldly and straightforwardedly dealt with in the exhibits.
JM: You have a Klan robe, very prominently displayed. Is that con- troversial?
DN: [It’s]a tremendous icon that causes in many people a visceral reaction, an emotional reaction-and it’s exactly what we want to do. With it is a 78-rpm record, which sold for a dollar back in the twenties, [by a] choir called “The Women of the Klan” and I suspect that it was sold as a fundraiser for the Ku Klux Man. Spotted through- out the exhibits are a lot of depictions of things that are emotional and historically honest. I think it’s a pretty straightforward presen- tation of Indiana history. It isn’t all “feel-good” stuff but it is engag- ing, and what is interesting is to observe visitor behavior and use that as a benchmark. We’re going to start doing some pretty serious visitor studies here before long. No, I don’t think that I have felt any political heat, nor am I aware of the members of the staff coming to me anecdotally and saying, ‘Yeah, we were approached by such-and- such office expressing concerns about this.”
JM: Are you content with the degree to which you’ve integrated African-American history into the presentation? Is that where it ought to be?
DN: I think it was very well done. We had a number of very helpful people, including Wilma Gibbs from the [Indiana] Historical Society across the street, on an advisory committee that played a major role. KU KLUX KLAN DISPLAY
Courtesy Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis Reflections on the Indiana State Museum 309
I think the challenge with African-American history oftentimes in a museum setting is finding artifacts-finding images and the things that can tell the story as a museum should tell the story. But I think nevertheless, based on most of the history museums I’ve seen around the country, we did a very credible job. What we want to do is be sure that people understand that the African-American cultural history content is contained and integrated throughout the permanent exhibits and that this space which we’re referring to now as the African Amer- ican Living History Theater [at one time planned to be Free Town Vil- lage] is a different approach to interpretation. It is not artifact-rich, it never was. It is largely didactic, and the real essence of this expe- rience will actually be the use of live performers working in that space.
JM: Let me ask you about museums in general as learning experi- ences. My sense is that museums are pretty hot these days. Is that right, that they’re flourishing, their attendance is up-is it not the case [that] in the last ten years or so, people seem more engaged? [That] museums are more serious?
DN: I do think museums have become much more conscious of this whole idea [that] we have a responsibility [not only1 to educate, but to engage people and get people to come. In order to do that, the material has to be presented in an entertaining way that engages people. If they’re having fun while they’re visiting, so much the bet- ter. You see that in a number of our exhibits. On the one hand we could have a label down in the historical geology section which details ice age mammals. We could have a list of how much an ice age musk oxen and a short-faced bear weighed. What we opted to do [instead] was put a large scale in the floor and one person or a group of indi- viduals can stand on the scale and visually compare their weight to these extinct beasts. We are primarily a family-driven institution in terms of our primary audience. You know, school kids are impor- tant and represent a significant percentage, but families are the largest percentage of visitors. So, fundamentally the information is the same; it’s just, how do you present it to make it interesting and fun to people?
JM: Now some would say that moving in that direction and making museums fun is moving away from the serious purpose, particular- ly of scholarship. And there are some tensions there sometimes. Do you feel those tensions?
DN: I think in the museum world those tensions exist, but it depends a lot on the nature of the museum, how old the institution is, and oftentimes you may see that tension more in a university museum environment than in a museum like this which really justifies its 310 Indiana Magazine of History existence based upon utilization. $105 million has been spent here. Quite frankly, if we built this and only had a thousand visitors a year, I think we’d be in pretty serious trouble. So there is an expec- tation that people are going to come, and part and parcel with that, what the AAM is now calling “the public dimension of the museum” has taken on a greater and greater priority. I think there are those museums that are well-equipped because they have a huge endow- ment to support scholarly activity. Perhaps they are affiliated with a college or university and have the resources, the graduate school and the graduate students to be doing those kinds of activities. Here, I would say that our research is kind of outcome-directed. If we do research, the end result is an education program or an exhibit. So that we’re not just doing research for the sake of doing research here. We are fortunate in having a lot of [research] resources. We can go across the street to the historical society and seek help. We can go to Indiana University . . . .
JM: Ihopeso!
DN As you know, there are many competent scholars and a wide array of activities. I think here our job is to sort of spark people’s imaginations, [to] fulfill their need to see objects, and [to] present those objects in a compelling way; if somebody becomes enormously interested in some aspect of Indiana history then there are many other resources available to them. We’re not here to offer history degrees. We’re not here to teach history in the same way that it would be taught in the middle school, the high school, or at the university level. I think we’re here to present ideas through objects that hopefully get people to think a little bit-maybe enliven a subject that they never thought much about before, they’d never given much consideration to.
JM: In the quarter century and more that you’ve been in the muse- um field, how would you characterize the changes that you’ve seen, that you’ve observed?
DN: If you would have asked me twenty-five years ago, would I be running a movie theater or spending the amount of money that we have to spend for marketing and developing fully fleshed-out marketing plans, talking about stuff like brand identity, identifying demographic audiences, I would have been incredulous. This would have been beyond me. But I think clearly all of this has changed. A lot of it has to do, of course, with the scale and sophistication of an operation. But we’re in a very competitive marketplace here in Indianapolis. I mean, look at the choices people have! They can go to the sympho- ny, they can go to the ballet. They can go see a Colts game. They can go see a race. In that mix of demand for people’s time-including the way families unfortunately overbook their children in activities after Reflections on the Indiana State Museum 311 school-we are asking them to give us a little of their time. We want them to come here. And so to make that happen drives our thinking about how we plan exhibits, how we execute them, and, to a certain extent, which exhibitions we bring in.
JM: About the subject matter?
DN: We’ve moved beyond the point where the curator is the subject expert, independent of anyone else. This harkens back to yesteryear and may still be true in some institutions today. It doesn’t matter how important the subject matter is, it doesn’t matter how good the curator thinks the exhibit is: if nobody comes then, what’s the point? So we have to be very careful when we look at our resources. Rental costs for exhibitions are staggering. I never would have dreamed I would reach a point in my career where I would see over $200,000 being spent on a changing exhibit and not be terribly concerned about it. It’s a lot of money, but then again, in the greater scheme of things, [in] what we’re doing here and what’s going on in American muse- ums today, it’s not that much money. But it’s being spent to bring something in for three to four months and it’s got to work.
JM: What’s lost in this transition? Is there anything lost in the thir- ty years you’ve been in the business in this transition?
DN: Well, from a personal perspective, starting out early in my career I was with small institutions and I wore a lot of hats. It was so much fun in those days and I miss that. You know, now I’m an administrator and a fundraiser and a strategic planner. [But] philo- sophically, I like the direction museums have taken over the last two or three decades. I think they are being responsive to [their] princi- ple purpose, which is nothing more than a self-directed educational experience. You don’t have to do this, you’ve got a lot of choices. How can we reach you and be effective? I like the challenge of taking some- thing that at first blush might be inherently boring to people and trying to figure out a way to present it that they can get excited about it. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we don’t.
JM: Yes. But does the transition leave less room for the kind of cre- ativity at, let’s say, the curator level in particular, [for] the kind of opportunity to pioneer and to innovate? Because one might suppose that the tyranny, the fear of the bottom line of marketing and peo- ple coming through the doors is such that you can’t take a risk.
DN: No, I think, quite the opposite. If the curator can interact with the public, with the user of the program, with colleagues, with dif- ferent points of view, that’s a stimulating situation. I think we’re at our best when we work together. We can do good things alone and there 3 12 Indiana Magazine of History
are certain kinds of activities that lend themselves to working alone. But I’m not sure that scholarship in the context of the modern muse- um is necessarily one of them.
JM: Let’s turn to Indiana; you’re still a relative newcomer to the state and that may mean that you have a fresh eye on Indiana, on Hoosiers. What do you think about Hoosiers? What’s your impres- sion initially here?
DN: If you’d said, “What was your impression of Indiana before you moved here?,” I would have said, “I have no impression of Indiana.” I visited my grandparents when I was a child, when they lived in Evansville and I lived in a small town in Arkansas, and I was going to the big city because they had a zoo, the Mesker Park Zoo. [As for my more recent impressions,] I had no idea about both the histori- cal and current dependence of the state on manufacturing. And, for some reason or another, I had this idea that the economy was more broadly based. I wasn’t terribly shocked by driving around the state to visit our historic sites and seeing the fields of corn. The monocrop agriculture wasn’t a surprise, because coming from the South I saw lots of soybeans and cotton. I am surprised to a certain extent by a very fundamental conservatism that exists here.
JM: Can you elaborate on that? Where do you see that? How do you see that? Do you see it any way in the museum or the reaction to the museum?
DN: Well, no, actually the reaction to the museum has been very pleasant. We deal with some subjects over in Tomorrow’s Indiana that I thought would be a lightning rod for controversy. There’s a program over there called the “Future’s Forum” and you’re intro- duced to a fictitious farm family in the year 2025. And you have these little screens in hntof you and you actually vote. It’s like a focus group. And part of it’s funny and whimsical. “Should we clone the family dog?” It’s really based on genetic engineering as the underlying con- cept. But it does get into the fact that the farm family mom is preg- nant and the child has a predisposition to diabetes. The doctor makes a house call on the high-tech screen at home and says, “Here’s the prob- lem, but we come in and we can fur this in uitro through genetic engi- neering.” And, you know, I thought there might be backlash to that, but frankly, people love this thing. They’re engaged by it.
JM: Are there things about Indiana that have interested you or piqued your curiosity as you’ve seen the place?
DN: Well, there’s the eternal question that no one has the answer to, and that’s, “Where in the world did the Hoosier come from?” And Reflections on the Indiana State Museum 313
we’re caught in that trap now with people asking that same ques- tion, so if you do get a real answer let me know.
JM: There’ll never be a real answer. I don’t think there’s any hope of that.
DN: I didn’t think there would be. I guess one of the most wonder- ful things I’ve found is an intense loyalty to the state, and pride which I did not see in my twenty-one years in Memphis. What is this pride in [being] a Hoosier-whatever a Hoosier is-where does this come from?
JM: Well, we’ve thought about that, many of us. And I think it’s a very interesting question. No one has the answer to it. But what about the present and the future? Are there ways that those of us in the humanities and in cultural areas can take better advantage of that pride and that loyalty to Indiana, to being a Hoosier? How can we use that to everyone’s advantage?
DN: I guess the challenge is, “How does Indiana tell a story to other people in the region and in the Midwest and the rest of the country that it is a special place? How do you do that?”
JM: Is that being done here [at the State Museum] as well as it can be?
DN: No, it’s not being done as well as it can be. Because we’re a brand new place. We’ve reinvented ourselves. It isn’t like doing a building expansion at your same location. We’re no longer self-cen- tered here, existing on the public dole. We have changed and we’re very visible. We’re subject to criticism. We are subject to public scruti- ny and we’re certainly subject to the expectations of the people that come. The great news is that universally people who come are hav- ing their expectations exceeded. I think our challenge is, when you say state museum, people will come with a preconceived notion that it’s going to be purely a history museum.
JM: So this place will be different in three and five years from now.
DN: Absolutely. It is evolving. And the whole point is we can’t be satisfied with what has been created. We’re still installing perma- nent exhibits. We’re still tweaking things. We’re still trying to get things to work the way they’re supposed to work. And all that will come together in the next four to six, seven months. But looking out to the year 2005 and beyond, our challenge is to keep reinventing ourselves. That’s why we have the changing exhibit space that’s so huge. If we wanted to, we could take all the Hoosier art out of the per- 3 14 Indiana Magazine of History manent art hall and do a 12,000-square-foot changing exhibit out there of international importance. And we might just do that.
JM: What’s the one exhibit that you would point a visitor towards to get a good sense of what this place is about? Or, what’s your favorite exhibit?
DN: Oh, I hate that. I have several. The museum is large; I mean we have to understand this whole complex is 278,000 square feet. And it’s hard for me to just pick out a single exhibit and say, “That’s my favorite,” because I think some things have been very well done. I think the most exciting place in the museum is in the cultural his- tory exhibits. Our consultant on ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] talks about this and I like it too. Walking out the rampway into the middle of the simulated limestone quarry does several things. Hopefully, people look down to the floor below, where they see the giant eurypterid swimming and the giant bony fish. They see large pillars of stone standing there. They see the workmen with the derrick to lift a block of limestone. They see the etched images of important build- ings in this nation that are built of Indiana limestone. They look above and they get a hint of the third floor, the changing exhibits floor. They look back east through the glass to the city, to the State House. From a viewing perspective, you’re engaged in a museum that gives you a sense of connectedness to what was happening in an ancient sea 500 million years ago, to people in the 1920s pulling blocks out of a quarry, then looking into the heart of this vibrant city. I think it’s a very special place.
JM: I agree with you. You don’t want to [rush] through there. You want to stand there for quite a while. That reminds me, we haven’t said anything about the building itself. This is to my eye a spectac- ular piece of building.
DN: Most of the credit for everything that’s been done here goes to the people who preceded me-to the architects on the project for their design and the concept for exhibits, and to the members of this staff who have been here working on this project for years before I came. I am not necessarily a fan of contemporary architecture. [But] this building blows me away. I love it. The big voluminous spaces, the use of the glass, the use of the Indiana materials. It’s my under- standing that the quarry [that our sandstone1 came from closed at the turn of the century, and we reopened the quarry to get that sand- stone. The clever use of that rough-cut limestone. [Normally] that material is trimmed off the blocks and then ground into dust for cement. It only became valuable when we wanted to try and figure out a way to clad substantial portions of the building. So you’ve got all of these odd-sized pieces of limestone, many with drill marks, DELAWARECOUNTY DISPLAY FEATURING BALLJARS AND GARFIELD, CREATION OF LOCAL CARTOONIST JIMDAVIS
Courtesy Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis 3 16 Indiana Magazine of History
[creating] this sort of rough texture versus the smooth finish that you typically see in limestone structures. I did not know that Indi- ana was first to produce stainless steel. But it’s integrated into the building. I think it’s a great piece of architecture. It’s a very friend- ly, welcoming piece of space. It isn’t a black box. It isn’t a tomb. It pre- sents its own challenges in terms of exhibits, but it’s just a building that makes you feel good to be in it. And of course the other really won- derful thing is this idea of the ninety-two icons [one for each of the state’s counties]. At first I thought, “Boy, this is going to be kitschy.’’ Now they are one of my favorite things in the building.
JM: I love them.
DN: They range from the very literal, very traditional to just whim- sical, funny, [like] these Ball jars over here on the side of the build- ing. . . .
JM: With the pickles?
DN: With the pickles, and then Garfield the cat stuck in one down in the bottom corner. Every time I see it I smile. And so [I like] the fact that a visitor can come-and they don’t have to pay an admis- sion-they can have an hour’s experience wandering around in the lobby looking at the treasure cases that we’re now finally filling up with just a smattering of eclectic things from our permanent collec- tions. They can go to the gift store. meyl can do this county walk and enjoy the garden between us and the Eiteljorg Museum, and wan- der through that for a little bit of serenity in downtown Indianapo- lis. It’s good stuff.