3 Things New Tech Can Learn From Old Museums

If you’ve been in the the startup world for more than year, especially the tech side, you know how easy it is to look up from working long hours only to feel creatively drained and ready for that overdue vacation.

You can grind and grind, but at some point you are going to need a jolt of inspiration along with some fresh, new perspectives.

Since 2012, a New York City startup has been making waves in the most unlikely of places: Museums. That startup, Museum Hack, shares three ways old museums can teach and inspire new tech.

1. History Can Inspire Creativity.

Why museums? Why does this matter? We have to tell you about our favorite piece of art in the entire world. It’s a life-sized little sculpture. It’s called “Fragment of a Queen’s Face”, and while it may be new to you, it is very, very old. It’s an Egyptian artifact over three thousand years old.

We don’t exactly know who it is, there’s a lot of mystery. It could be Nefertiti, it could be a woman name Queen Tiye. It’s made from a material called Yellow Jasper, and there’s two things you need to know about Yellow Jasper.

“I look at my own work, and I wonder if that will stand the test of time.”

Number one, at the time this was made, Yellow Jasper was incredibly rare.  It was so rare, that the next largest piece of Yellow Jasper in the whole museum is no bigger than your thumbnail. So this would have been a really big deal.

Number two, Yellow Jasper is insanely hard to work with. On the hardness scale of one to ten, where a diamond is a ten and marble is a three, Yellow Jasper is a solid six, pushing a seven. It makes marble look like a stick of butter.

Today we see this and it kinda takes our breath away. We can’t communicate with the Ancient Egyptians. We don’t speak the language and we can’t read hieroglyphics, but today, we can see those lips and we can feel something.

A great piece of art can communicate through time. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is an encyclopedic museum that has over five thousand years of human history. The greatest compliment that we ever got after one of our tours came from a music video director from Los Angeles.

He said “I’ve been on this tour with you for two hours now”, he said, “I never would have been here. I’ve walked through these halls and I’ve seen objects that are one hundred, that are five hundred, that are a thousand years old.” He said, “I’ve seen objects that have withstood the test of time and I look at my own work, and I wonder if that will stand the test of time.” He said, “being at this museum has made me want to be a better creator”.

2. Cool Tech is not a Modern Concept.

We hosted an event for a massively successful, super cool, global internet search company. They have offices around the world, and when their New York office came in contact with us, we created a plan to blow their socks off.

“It’s a 13th century smartphone...a fascinating bit of history from the timeline of pocket sized technology.”

We asked two of our guides, Ethan and Jen, to divide and conquer the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jen is an expert at finding the most mind blowing art, and Ethan is a self professed science and math geek, so pairing them together for this tour meant that the team was going to get a great balance of diverse content. The two guides did their own massive search for things in the Museum that would interest these experts in digital searching.

The objects chosen for this tour were not random, or the standard go-to items. We meticulously curated the vast collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, specifically picking items that related to the creativity and technology behind the company we were giving the tour to.

We wanted to inspire them. Ethan gives the example of the Yemeni Astrolabe, “It’s a 13th century smartphone.”  From predicting the positions of the planets and stars, determining local time given local latitude, surveying, triangulation, and casting horoscopes, it is an incredible fascinating bit of history from the timeline of pocket sized technology.

3.  Spending Time in Quiet places is Like Hitting the Reset Button

We all know that when things get heated, it’s important to break the scene to get a new perspective.  A walk in a quiet place like the museum allows the mind to relax and gear down for a while, giving us the rest we need before heading back into the work space.

Your team members have to balance priorities, distractions, stress and deadlines all the time. At the end of an intense project or quarter, help your team celebrate and loosen up by bringing them somewhere completely new and fun. It will help them release stress and feel more recharged.

Remember, sometimes your team just needs a break. They need to get out of the workspace. After a long project, a long quarter, or a tough project, a break might just be exactly what the your team needs, like hitting the reset button.

Find out more about Museum Hack’s team building events in the museum, or send us an email at info@museumhack.com, we’d love to hear from you.