In October 2011 Insight Labs convened a session with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The big question on the table was what great new project might be possible now that the museum had completed its initial goals of establishing itself on the National Mall and widely educating Americans about the Holocaust.

In discussing the effect the museum has on its visitors, the Lab reached a substantial idea. Museums – particularly deeply moving museums like this one – now have the power not just to curate their exhibitions, but to curate collective action that occurs in response to them. The Holocaust Museum had already recognized “active agents” who have taken what they learned there and applied it in their own lives. One Lab participant suggested that the institution’s next big goal should be to create six million “active agents” – that is, to curate collective actions for good in the world that would be on the scale of the Holocaust itself.

One participant in the Lab was Dan Lurie, who had recently been named as Senior Advisor and Director of Strategic Partnerships at the National Endowment for the Arts. Lurie previously held posts with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as well as the Chicago Transit Board. In the following interview with Labs Content Director Andrew Benedict-Nelson, he considers how the Holocaust Museum could use new technologies and new partnerships to realize the Lab’s vision. He also discusses how those ideas might prove relevant to the NEA and the organizations it supports.

Andrew Benedict-Nelson: How would you describe the main problem the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was hoping to solve in this Lab?

Dan Lurie: It’s not sure it’s even a problem – they were looking for high-level guidance on what they, as an institution, should be focusing on over the next 20 years in the space of human dignity. They were looking for something even broader in that space that could live relevantly and impactfully, and they wanted our guidance on what that could be like. … They were able to reel off many successes, but they also seemed to be of several minds about where they were going as an institution.

ABN: So how would you say the work of the Lab met that question or challenge?

DL: They were clearly intrigued by the flurry of activity we had at the end of the Lab surrounding the idea of a cohort of agents doing their work out in the world. I think they were wrestling with the question of how they could become a catalyst as opposed to the owner and operator of this work. To that extent, I think they made some progress. They have a new frame to think about it. It’s not just about bringing people into the physical structure or the institution. It’s about engaging with ideas and conversations outside the building. But I don’t know what they should do next.

ABN: I’d like to know more about what you make of this “active agent” idea.

DL: In the course of the conversation it was clearly a breakthrough. They were very focused on agency as a kind of product that folks coming into the museum could take away with them. I thought that was powerful, but it was also focused too much on the visitor experience. And I thought, “To what end?” So I posed the question of whether instead of focusing on this product of agency they could actually somehow plant the seed for an army of agents who could keep the conversation alive without ever being physically connected with the institution.

It’s an interesting idea. It’s certainly not something museums have traditionally engaged in. There wasn’t enough meat on the bones yet, though, about how the museum would actually lead that conversation. To really be the catalyst of that kind of conversation, they would really have to tackle the international brand of the Holocaust. They are already somewhat responsible for that brand. As Toby Moffett mentioned, “the Holocaust” is perceived by some as a very Jewish-centric, time-specific, politically charged term. They are starting with a brand that is very powerful but also goes beyond their specific institution and plays a role in broader politics.

ABN: But the Holocaust and the way they tell its story has a particular connection to the kind of agency they want to encourage. You could contrast their story in the museum to, say, the World War I Museum in my hometown of Kansas City. It’s a great museum, it makes you think about how awful war is, how you would never want there to be such a war again, etc. But it doesn’t make you think about your particular agency in history in the way that the Holocaust Museum does. You come away from the Holocaust Museum with the feeling of “Okay, there are problems in the world, and I am going to do something them about them. Or not.”

DL: And if not, you see that the consequences could be very serious.

ABN: So do you think the story of the Holocaust and the way they tell it would be a unique asset to promote this idea of agency?

DL: I do. But they need to make sure they overcome the challenge of making themselves about an experience that the people they are trying to reach don’t relate to, as scary as that idea may be. But I think there is real power there. I think this is a way of taking advantage of the unique position they have in the world. I’m still struggling with what it would look like or how they would move forward. But on an intuitive level it definitely works.

ABN: What do you think are some of the intellectual problems the museum would need to solve to reach this goal?

DL: I think they have to put some parameters around the human dignity question. There is a legal framework there, a policy framework, a philosophical framework. But none of those have deep roots in people’s lives. They would need to find what it is that would make the question of human dignity most relevant in people’s lives and give them that sense of purpose and agency.

In the federal policy world, we struggle with this all the time. If we say we’re “fighting poverty,” is that a frame that resonates with most people? Or do we need to talk about “creating access to the middle class”? It’s the same broad challenge. You have to be very careful when you are finding a way to communicate with people about a set of issues that are, frankly, not a part of the national conversation right now.

And there are a lot of people doing an awful lot of things. What is the State Department up to in this area? Do they want to get involved in international diplomacy? They would need to confront all that messiness. But it would also be great, because they should be an institution that is playing in that space. They have the credibility and resources to do it. But they would also need to come in with a sense of humility.

ABN: Let’s say the museum succeeds in that. What do you imagine it would be like to visit or experience the museum 20 years from now?

DL: I think of them not having just a single location, but having affiliates or actual new sites around the world. They could have almost like a university-type setup with sister city arrangements, infrastructure in different countries. The could have fellowship programs for the creation of agents, or maybe super-agents, who could work in a campaign-style operation catalyzing conversations around the world. That would create a kind of professional class that would not just move the needle, but train a workforce prepared to address how governments, local organizations, and civic players could all participate in the conversation about how to improve human dignity.

I would like to think they could engage the technology community. The State Department has been doing that, not just starting Twitter accounts, but actually asking what kind of technologies would need to exist to get their work done. They are engaging in the development, shaping, and dissemination of those technologies. For the museum to also be a thought leader in that space would be really powerful.

I also think the leadership and the people behind the institution would need to be much more visible. Let’s say that over the next 20 years you have two or three new executive directors. You would hope that each of those people would bring with them their own particular focus, almost in the style of a political administration. That would allow for an evolution of the conversation independent of the brand. With most museums you have a sense of “I know what they do, they’ve done it forever, they’re always going to do it.” They would obviously all have the same frame, but that could bring more of a sense of personality to the mission with each new leader.

ABN: I remember reading about some of those efforts by the State Department in the technology space. They were working to build an “Internet in a suitcase” type of device that would make it impossible for governments to shut down the Internet for the whole country. What’s interesting about that to me is that they are talking about embedding a certain set of democratic values in the technology. What do you think are some of the technological spaces in which the Holocaust Museum could project their values?

DL: I don’t know – it’s just not my space. But I think they could certainly convene the right people to have those conversations. You could imagine them going to a gathering like Aspen Ideas Fest or Clinton Global Initiative and saying, “Here’s what we’re trying to do, could you help us think about how we would do this over the next couple of years?” Getting in that kind of conversation could lead to new technological answers in fairly short order.

If you think about the strategy behind these engagement technologies, the State Department looks at them from an empowerment standpoint. Going through governments and traditional diplomatic channels is important and good, but there can also be real change and especially democratic promotion by using these new tools. Then you are ready to take advantage of new technologies when they come along. You could imagine the Holocaust Museum creating fields of practice around how to do this.

I could see the museum with its reach and reputation initiating some sort of competition, a code-a-thon equivalent: “How do we create six million active agents for human dignity? Tell us.” You could invite Code for America. You could have a team in Russia and in other countries. The State Department has already done this kind of thing. Pick a few places that you feel are relevant both for the coding and for human rights and dignity, then go. You could attach some prize money to give a little “umph” to it or show people it’s more than a one-time thing.

My perspective is that the less they try to own the data and the tools, the better off they will be. If they try to become a tech company, they’re going to fail. If they ask themselves how to give people the tools they need to better engage people in this conversation in their own country, that allows you the freedom to let this stuff evolve over time and not take your mission off track. You can purely act as a convening power.

ABN: It seems as if they were already playing some in the technology space through the World Memory Project, the partnership with Ancestry.com that Lorna Miles mentioned in the Lab. They have thousands of volunteers keying in the records of Holocaust victims. That presumably requires some thinking about the right technologies to use to reach those goals. You’d be talking about something similar, but focused on a global mission.

DL: I think that they already intuitively understand that the museum is not the entirety of this conversation. That’s in fact where many governments are going. They know they’re not going to fix the problems on their own – they need to have multi-lateral conversations across many different geographies and spectrums to do it.

ABN: There’s something else I’m curious about in this area of technological partnerships. We asked them during the Lab what made the museum such a powerful experience. They focused on the events of the Holocaust itself, of course, but they also talked about the way they tell the story. The exhibitions are specifically designed to draw attention to this issue of agency.

Now, storytelling itself is a kind of technology. It’s an area where they have expertise. And it also seems to me like an area that is kind of open field now online – I don’t think any of the major players like Facebook or Google really have the corner on narrative. Do you think that might be an area where they could do some significant work with someone?

DL: Yes, I think that’s a great idea. It’s fascinating. Now this is actually closer to the NEA’s jurisdiction. Look at outlets like The Moth on NPR – that’s not necessarily a new form, but a new way of promoting the form of storytelling – it would be fascinating to think about how that could play out through new technologies. I don’t know exactly how it would play out, but I guarantee that you could get some really sharp people to work on it if you asked. What is the most innovative way to use technology to tell the individual stories of the Holocaust? That would be really great to know.

ABN: Like most of the people in the room, you had been to the Holocaust Museum before. Do you feel that its significance to you changed or evolved in any way as a result of this Lab?

DL: Not really. Though I do feel their pain as an institution now. It’s a bit of an odd duck because it receives federal funding and it’s on the Mall, but they clearly would not identify themselves as a traditional federal institution. Congress doesn’t appropriate their funds with an eye on checking on what they’re doing. They don’t need to engage with the public in the same ways that a federal agency does. So it was interesting to me to hear about the operational challenges they face and, by proxy, the state of the American Jewish conversation right now.

That is the context it had for me personally: “Where do we as a people go from here?” To hear an institution that has been so successful and is such a lion in the older Jewish community, to hear it also struggling in that way, was very interesting to me. To hear them wrestle with these ideas and think about how they could be free from traditional constraints and think bigger – it was pretty cool.

Now how they do that, I don’t know. How do they do that given many of the same operational challenges that an agency faces? We all want to change the world, but you always have to deal with political fights and capital campaigns. That’s why I think they should think about building more partnerships and really opening up the frame around the Holocaust so more and more people could say that they have equity in what happens with the museum.

You want more people to look at them and say, “They are doing work that doesn’t just fulfill their mission, but helps my organization.” For us, that’s just bread-and-butter federal interagency cooperation. It would be great if they made a list of 30 other organizations that they think are uniquely valuable for what they want to do, and then ask, “How are they helping us and how can we help them?” What’s great about that approach is that it necessarily focuses on outcomes rather than the bottom line or fundraising.

So thinking about what I knew about the institution before, I did come away thinking about them as a much bigger potential player on the federal or international stage. Coming in there, I had them much more narrowly pegged as a museum and memorial propagating information.

ABN: You know, even though it might not sound fashionable, I think the federal government really is a great metaphor for the kinds of partnerships they’d need to pull this off. Think about the post-9/11 intelligence challenges. Even with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security as a kind of umbrella, you were still going to need pretty sophisticated cooperation between agencies to respond dynamically to challenges out there in the world. They couldn’t regard the partnerships as nice occasional gatherings or meetings that happened only when something went wrong – they had to become a vital part of their mission. I think that in order to create millions of active of agents working to protect human dignity in the world, you would need a similar transformation in your idea of what a partnership is.

DL: That’s well said. When I was at HUD, and now at the NEA, our focus was on community outcomes. We ask “How is New Orleans doing?” or “How is Detroit doing?” based on a set of clear metrics. We are humble enough at each agency to understand that we aren’t going to move those metrics through federal funding alone, let alone through one particular agency. We acknowledge that due to the history of appropriations and the pace of policy-making that we might not be in the perfect position to deal with every problem as it manifests. So we reach out to each other and try to be like-minded.

The same is true for the international context, where you have to be even more multi-lateral. I think it’s smarter. I think it’s more effective. But it’s also being driven by necessity. The days of being able to simply move the needle on something on your own, if they ever existed, are not now. And that’s especially true in the space they would have to move into to do this. But moving into that space would also help them talk to new people, given them different sources of funding, give them ways to engage people in ways that they don’t have now.

ABN: This Lab wasn’t about the Holocaust itself. But did participating in it change your perspective on that event at all?

DL: Well, I definitely didn’t walk out with some sort of “a-ha” moment where I think about the Holocaust in a really different way. But it was nice and affirming to hear people who clearly came from different backgrounds and personal perspectives from me come at the issue with such sincerity. I am so conditioned to this sort of eye-rolling when it comes to the Holocaust. The analogy has been so abused. People don’t think about it as a real thing with real victims – they think of it as an object in popular culture, almost.

I came away feeling good that really smart, engaged people from different perspectives felt that this was really important to focus on. They felt that the Holocaust Museum really was relevant to the national and international conversation. But I don’t know if I had any evolution in my personal perception of it.

ABN: I definitely thought it was interesting to hear the museum’s staff and the Lab participants imagine how the Holocaust could be relevant to people in India or China.

DL: Right. If you had asked me about that beforehand, I would have been skeptical. They mentioned that they had been working to teach the lessons of the Holocaust to people in the Egyptian Army. Before the Lab, I might have laughed at that. But as we discussed in the Lab, the moment where we can say there is a consensus around the Holocaust being an important event – that moment will fade. They’re already at a moment when they need to think about how to make the Holocaust relevant to new groups of people and make a kind of pivot.

ABN: Do you feel like there are any ideas from the Lab that could be applied at the NEA?

DL: Oh yeah. More than anything, it was good to take some time out to think big, taking away all those narrow-minded questions of resources and execution. It sounds somewhat elementary, but it was really good to be reminded of the power of those conversations, and I’d like to seed that here in my own way.

ABN: It seemed to me that one idea that emerged from the Lab is that the Internet has enabled museums and cultural institutions to take ownership of the response to their activities in new ways. Do you think there’s truth to that? What does it mean to the NEA?

DL: We have traditionally viewed ourselves as a funder and grantmaker. Then we are a leader in the conversation about national excellence and cultural heritage. There is a much messier conversation about what happens with our dollars and what is happening at the institutions we care about. It would be great if we were really involved in performance metrics for the things we care about in communities. You could look at a broad set of metrics, ask how the community is doing, and then talk about what NEA’s role would be in that. If we worked that way, I think we would be in a much better position to take advantage of the kind of frame you describe.

Of course, there’s also the baseline idea of having a two-way conversation about how federal dollars are working or not working, clearing up misunderstandings. Right now those tend to be fairly closed-loop conversations. If we could open up that conversation, it would be really interesting for NEA to move into that space.

ABN: You could also imagine NEA as the stewards of certain kinds of conversations about the arts that the artists wouldn’t have themselves. If I see a great jazz performance, I could conceivably talk with the performers on Twitter afterwards, but I don’t think the first topic on their minds will be how jazz makes me feel about being an American.

DL: Or even about being from Chicago.

ABN: But you could imagine NEA owning those conversations.

DL: That’s exactly what I would love to see. “Quality of place” is the big metric we are talking about here. Of course, that’s highly context-specific, but if we could be the ones who could expose the levers at work that are impacting quality of place – levers that exist right below people’s feet that they don’t even realize exist, let alone that the federal government is putting millions of dollars into those levers – that would be a big win. We can’t just pretend that those levers doesn’t exist or that they will be there forever no matter what. We need to engage people about how the system works and how it could work better.

ABN: So I’d like to talk about federal funding from a different angle. In the Lab, participants talked about federal funding as both an advantage and a disadvantage for the museum. On the one hand, federal funding and the position on the National Mall gives the museum a unique kind of legitimacy (not to mention the value of the money in itself). On the other hand, it might limit their sphere of action or the way they’re perceived in the world. What do you think?

DL: I think that addressing the issues we were talking about and wrestling with make them better suited to federal funding than they are now. When this sort of thing just sits out there, there is a sense that it is a special project. It has resonance for humankind, but not a resonance for Americans in a way that people can grapple with.

Now that hasn’t stopped federal funding for a lot of things. And if their budget were on the scale of $500 million, this would be a different conversation. But I wonder if they could take the money they receive and use in ways that challenge Congress – more like an agency would. You often have an ambitious agency secretary who receives appropriations from Congress and then decides to do really powerful things that tee off some of the members. That’s where I’d like to see them go, rather than serving a civic good that doesn’t have any clear boundaries to it.

ABN: So you’ve just thought through a balance of pros and cons related to federal funding and public legitimacy. How do you think that applies to institutions that receive federal funding through the NEA?

DL: I think it’s a pretty similar situation, actually. There are some folks who would say that we are like a traditional agency and we fight the good fights. But I think we probably operate more like the museum does. We’re often torch-carriers for this cause that people seem to be slowly fading away from, despite the fact that its relevance is growing by the day. I think that is why our chairman is so focused on forming partnerships with other agencies.

Everyone cares about the Holocaust. Everyone loves the arts. But what are their impact on their daily professional lives? How does it impact their communities? How does it improve their quality of life? Those are the questions we are both trying to wrestle with, as well as asking how the institutions can engage people with them.

ABN: And what about the institutions you serve?

DL: I think it applies even more so. There are people who would worry that if the Holocaust Museum doesn’t maintain its particular focus, it will turn into the Human Peace Museum or something like that. They say that this is something that happened to a particular people in a particular way for a particular reason, and we can’t pretend that it is about all of humankind.

The same applies to arts organizations on the ground. They say, this is all well and good, we care about community development and all of that. But we’re dying here – we have no money to keep our lights on. They end up in a place of saying, “Because we need funding so much, you should fund us.” They don’t think more broadly about how they could help the community over there or the city over there and how doing that that could lead to benefits for them.

ABN: It seems to me that you can have that kind of conversation without even drifting from the organizations’ original missions, though. Even if the only metric the Holocaust Museum ever uses is how many people in the world know about the Holocaust, they would still educate many more people about the Holocaust by actively helping to prevent genocide in countries that had nothing to do with it. Similarly, it would seem as if your arts organizations would become much better known in their communities if they were doing things to help other people out.

DL: But what’s the narrative in those people’s mind about how this came to be and what the impact is? How do you make those connections more transparent for people? When change happens in a neighborhood, how do you get people to see how it happened and the effects of it and what it means for them? Most people just have a very passive exposure. They say, “Hey, I was here a few years ago. It was a dump then, but now it’s great.” There is a very limited universe of people worrying about these questions, even though everyone should be worrying about them. It just goes back to this question of how you give people this sense of agency. How do you help them see that they are more than just passive members of a society that just happens to be there?

There’s no way that the whole country will worry about this stuff. But there are enough people pre-disposed to being enlightened that it’s a worth effort. The hope is that you would reach people of influence in policy and funding but also people who are out there shaping their communities. Part of the effort the feds are leading is how to get nontraditional players at the table for these conversations, because if you simply get the mayor and the community development director and the housing director together, that’s too narrow a slice. You really need to bring in folks who are impacted by policy decisions, or who should be impacted and aren’t, or who are impacted but don’t think they are.