On September 3, The Art Institute of Chicago fired all of their docents.
Docents are the volunteers that lead visitors around museums. Since it is an unpaid job it is mostly occupied by retirees. And most of those retirees are affluent white females. Hence the dismissal of them despite the fact that some had worked for the museum for as long as 15 years.
Ms. Stein, the Executive Director of Learning and Engagement at the museum explained that the institute needs to find “a way that allows community members of all income levels to participate, responds to issues of class and income equity, and does not require financial flexibility.” (Bottum, 2021)
So does that mean they are going to start paying volunteers and recruiting minorities? Doubtful.
My guess is that what will happen is the docents will be replaced with technology - QR codes that can be scanned, pre-recorded audio tours, interactive kiosks, etc. That will of course make the possibility of asking follow-up questions impossible, thus depressing learning, as well as the opportunity for human interaction.
And the experience is likely to be as frustrating as trying to get Target's website to work properly. (For some odd reason they have frozen me out of my cart, yet they keep sending me reminder emails about that cart.)
Is this really what Millennials and Gen Z want?
Research shows that people who have friends are happier. It also shows that "loose acquaintances" those that we don't know well, but have pleasant interactions with are particularly important to our perceptions of belonging and happiness.
And yet, we seem to be moving to a world where human interaction is minimized.
Are we doing this on purpose? Do we really want to eliminate all human contact and interact with each other only on devices? If not, how did we get here?
I recently read an article where someone hypothesized that in the future only rich people will be able to interact with other people and everyone else will interact with robots instead.
What do you think of that? Is it the future we really want?
Bottum, F. (2021, October 15) Indocency on Display at the Art Institute of Chicago. wsj.com. Retrieved October 19, 2021, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/indecency-art-institute-of-chicago-docents-diversity-firing-11634310172
4 comments:
I believe there are other ways to effectively navigate this issue of diversity lack. As our midterm suggests, it is possible to appeal to niche demographics with proper research. Are there other groups of individuals who would be interested in volunteering whom may not know about the opportunity? Perhaps, the museum should market to high school, undergraduate and graduate students or disabled communities whom would be able to participate. According to ubimo.com, “museums are attracting audiences 35-44, but not connecting with younger audiences, 18-24.” I suggest that there is a way to properly appeal to a younger generations interests. I also think that the implementation of technology and the addition of volunteers (maybe whom volunteer only during high traction times) would lead to a more inclusive experience.
https://www.ubimo.com/blog/articles-and-research/museum-attendance-by-visitor-demographics/#:~:text=Results%20showed%20that%20museums%20are,compared%20to%20the%20national%20average.
No one wants to eliminate human interaction. In fact, I know of peers that are tired of all the "robots". Due to the loneliness that this pandemic has caused, people are yearning to talk to each other. In simple tasks like a tour guide around a museum, this is easily one of them. We got here from companies pushing forward technological advancements at at very fast rate. They have this vision that every consumer wants quick, easy, and low cost. Which isnt the case.
As Technology rapidly advances, low-skilled jobs like Museum Tours are more likely to be eliminated by the rise of Artificial Intelligence. There are machines that have the ability to interact with humans without the need of them being explicitly programmed. It means that they can learn from humans as well by learning from data it gathers. With the rise of Social Media (Facebook, Tiktok, and others), people nowadays focus more on fame instead of building healthy relationships. People right now are also less likely to interact, for they are distracted by Social Media platforms, and because of this, we tend to focus less on essential life skills like social interactions. Thus, mental health conditions (depression) are becoming more evident. As tech enthusiasts, we have a social responsibility to reverse engineer human interaction by eliminating the negative side effects of Technology. In my opinion, children from 4 - 18 years olds shouldn't be allowed to create social media accounts, for they are the most vulnerable to mental health conditions. Instead, they must be encouraged to participate in activities that involve social interactions to learn essential life skills.
Elimination of human interaction might be a trend and can't be avoided due to the booming technology. The pandemic lockdown allowed us experienced isolation earlier than we expected. There’s 82% I (introvert) in my personality type, and I was not even into self-isolation, so I genuinely believe a decreasing human interaction is not favorable. However, we are still not willing to stop the technology advance only because we like the old-fashioned way of human interaction, such as purchase tickets in the museum and led by an instructor instead of doing everything on our phone with only a QR code. I just learned from the article that many of the museum employees work for free. Still, technology benefits other businesses by saving labor expenses, as well as helping end a global pandemic.
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