Giuseppe Antonelli, Giacomo Micheletti, Anna Stella Poli (a cura di)
Verso il museo multimediale della lingua italiana
DOI: 10.1401/9788815410283/c7

Ann B. Friedman Bringing Words to Life at Planet Word

Notizie Autori
Ann B. Friedman è fondatrice e CEO del Planet Word Museum di Washington, DC; alla sua iniziativa si deve il restauro della Franklin School, l’edificio che ospita il museo. Per nove anni è stata insegnante di lettura e scrittura. Dal 2010 al 2016 è stata presidente del board della SEED Foundation, nata per fornire opportunità educative preparatorie al college a studenti svantaggiati. Attualmente è uno dei nuovi direttori dell’American Alliance of Museums. Fa parte del board dell’Aspen Music Festival and School e della National Symphony Orchestra.
Abstract
I’m Ann Friedman, the founder of Planet Word in Washington, DC, the world’s first interactive museum dedicated to words and language. In our physical museum, we divided the broad topic of words and language into three main categories: how humans acquire language and the amazing variety of those 6.000 living languages; what we can do with words; the power of words in advertising and people’s lives. Then we specified six core values that all our exhibits had to embody to. They had to be some combination of fun, playful, unexpected, meaningful, motivational, or inclusive. To bring all these words to life for visitors (just like you’ll have to do virtually) we used lots of technology: voice-recognition technology, motion activation, and projection technology, sound, animation, and compelling color and design. Visitors would talk to the museum, and it would talk back. And every visitor would leave the museum having written a little, read a little, spoken, and listened – every part of the language arts.
I’m Ann Friedman, the founder of Planet Word in Washington, DC [1]
, the world’s first interactive museum dedicated to words and language. I hope I have some helpful tips for you as you contemplate opening a virtual museum about the incomparable Italian language.
I realize that there’s one big difference between our two museum models: Planet Word is not virtual – it’s in a very real, 51.000 square-feet National Historic Landmark building. To be honest, lots of people suggested that I go the virtual route, because it would cost a lot less money and be a lot quicker to open than the 7 years it actually took to finish Planet Word. But I was determined to occupy a physical museum. To explain why, let me take you back to the origins of my idea.
First of all, everyone’s world view is shaped by seminal events in their early years, and for me that was living in Beirut and Jerusalem, two cities divided by civil strife, in the 1970s and ’80s. After experiencing so much unnecessary division and discord (unfortunately still with us today) I promised myself that when I moved back to the United States, I would do something to build community – something that was, at that time, still a hallmark of American life and politics.
The second big influence was my career as a beginning reading and writing teacher. I loved teaching kids to read and introducing them to reading and poetry and wordplay, so when I retired, I wanted to continue working in literacy. I believed then (and I still do) that literacy is the key to a healthy democracy. But everywhere I looked in America literacy was on the decline. Reading test scores were stagnating, there were staggering numbers of functionally illiterate {p. 76}adults, newspapers and magazines were going out of business, and young people weren’t reading for pleasure anymore.
Fig. 1. The Spoken World, Planet Word, Washington, DC.
Fig. 1. The Spoken World, Planet Word, Washington, DC.
So, my thought was, why not try to reverse those negative trends by trying something no one’s ever tried before: creating a museum devoted to reading, words, and language? To make reading cool again. I visited a new museum in New York City that was doing exactly that with math concepts, so, I thought, why not try a museum of words and language? A museum can do things that individual teachers or parents can’t do by themselves: museums have large spaces, they can afford cutting-edge technology; they have access to celebrities and funding; they can bring people together in immersive, participatory experiences.
And a museum can help building that community that was so important to me after living in the Middle East. It could bring people together to learn, to experiment, to use their words to communicate and to debate civilly.
For all these reasons, I was convinced that only a physical museum would fit the bill. Now I know that you’re planning {p. 77}a virtual museum – and although it’s not the direction I chose, I think you can create something great in the virtual sphere because of all the technological tools we now have at our disposal: virtual reality, augmented reality, holograms, 3-D photography, to name a few.
Fig. 2. The Library, Planet Word, Washington, DC.
Fig. 2. The Library, Planet Word, Washington, DC.
And the great thing about a virtual museum is how wide its reach can be – you’ll be able to welcome people from all over the world, people who would never be able to visit Italy – especially during a pandemic! But the all-important thing is to decide what story you want visitors to come away with, and to the greatest extent possible: show, don’t tell. That’s true for a virtual museum even more than for a physical one. Telling is didactic, that’s for schools. A museum, real or virtual, should be fun and surprising and engage visitors. They should be given the opportunity to chart their own path and discover what’s interesting to them.
So in our physical museum, we divided the broad topic of words and language into three main categories: how humans acquire language and the amazing variety of those 6.000 {p. 78}living languages; what we can do with words (like singing, joking, writing poetry and stories or giving speeches); the power of words in advertising and people’s lives. We had to decide what concepts to include. And then we had to fit those concepts into the space. Lucky for you, with a virtual museum you won’t have to worry about space limitations – you’ll have infinite virtual space. Only time and money will limit your choice of what topics to include.
Fig. 3. The Word Wall, Planet Word, Washington, DC.
Fig. 3. The Word Wall, Planet Word, Washington, DC.
Then we specified six core values that all our exhibits had to embody to. They had to be some combination of fun, playful, unexpected, meaningful, motivational, or inclusive. For me the most important of those values was meaningful. If an idea was fun or playful but it wasn’t meaningful, it didn’t end up in the museum.
And we also decided that Planet Word would be a descriptive language museum, not a prescriptive one. We wanted to show words and language as they are really used. We wanted to avoid rules and grammar so we wouldn’t intimidate anyone from visiting. Everyone would be welcome at Planet Word no matter what language they spoke, what {p. 79}accent they had, or how much they knew about literature. At Planet Word there would be something to interest everyone, and everyone would see themselves reflected in the museum through the books and poems and songs we chose or through the really broad range of activities. You like rap music? Well, there’s an exhibit for you. You like the environment? Well, there’s a speech you’ll like to hear. You like cooking? We’ll bring a cookbook to life for you.
And we wanted Planet Word to be a free museum, because language belongs to all of us: we are all curators of our words from the day we are born.
To bring all these words to life for visitors (just like you’ll have to do virtually) we used lots of technology: voice-recognition technology, motion activation, and projection technology, sound, animation, and compelling color and design. Visitors would talk to the museum, and it would talk back. They would be inspired by words all around them: on the walls, on the lockers, and even in the restrooms. We wanted to make sure that every visitor was surrounded by words and awe. And every visitor would leave the museum having written a little, read a little, spoken, and listened – every part of the language arts.
Note
[1] https://planetwordmuseum.org (retrieved on March 2023).