Communication and Persuasion in a Didactic Exhibition: The Power of Maps Study

This article describes a study of The Power of Maps, an exhibition presented in 1992 at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in New York City. The study compared the result of surveys administered to visitors at the Cooper-Hewitt as they entered and exited the exhibition with a control group of surveys administered to visitors at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, who had not seen The Power of Maps exhibition. It was found that visitors who were surveyed as they entered the exhibition were closer in agreement with the message of the exhibition than the control group. It was also found that visitors surveyed upon exiting The Power of Maps exhibition were in closer agreement with the message of the exhibition than with visitors who were surveyed as they entered the exhibition. The study demonstrates that it is possible to document a change in visitors' conceptions about a topic as a result of hearing about or visiting an exhibition and reliably determine the degree to which exhibitions can influence visitors.     

Measuring Success in the “Congo Gorilla Forest” Conservation Exhibition

Abstract Most zoo visitors are primarily motivated by the joys of watching animals, which may preclude attention to major ecological issues that are the focus of research in biodiversity, habitats, and other matters pertaining to the survival of wild animals. The Wildlife Conservation Society exhibition Congo Gorilla Forest is a popular animal‐watching experience, but it also communicates considerable educational content, stimulating visitors' interest in and awareness of ecological relationships. This article reviews the phases of an evaluation process that assisted WCS staff in making decisions about exhibition design and interpretation; it discusses measurement challenges in assessing outcomes; and it uses key findings from the evaluation process to define and explain the interpretive success of the project. Success for this conservation exhibition is described in terms of achieving three educational goals while recognizing the diversity among audiences. The exhibition's effectiveness is attributed to understanding visitors' expectations and interests, creating an array of exhibit formats to engage people, and communicating conservation messages visually and experientially.     

“Pure Land”: Inhabiting the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang

This article examines two exhibition installations that integrate high‐resolution digital archeological datasets (photography and 3D architectural models) with immersive, interactive display systems. These analogous installations, Pure Land: Inside the Mogao Grottoes at Dunhuang and Pure Land: Augmented Reality Edition, allow visitors to engage in different ways with a full‐scale augmented digital facsimile of Cave 220 from the UNESCO World Heritage site, the Mogao Grottoes, Gansu Province, northwestern China. The peerless treasuries of paintings and sculptures at Dunhuang are extremely vulnerable. Comprehensive digitization has become a primary method of preservation at the site. The digital facsimiles of this cultural paragon can be transformed, providing formative personal experiences for museum visitors. The Pure Land projects contribute to new strategies for rendering cultural content and heritage landscapes. Interpreting these installations through the lens of phenomenology and panoramic immersion helps situate them at the forefront of virtual heritage today.     

“Let's talk about sex”: visitor comments in Contraception: Uncovering the collection of Dame Margaret Sparrow

Contraception: Uncovering the collection of Dame Margaret Sparrow was an exhibition at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa which featured a participatory activity titled “Let's talk about sex” where visitors could answer the question: “If you could give your younger self one piece of advice about contraception, what would it be?” Over 2200 comments were written, inspiring an evaluation project. The resulting analysis provides insights into visitors’ attitudes, values, behaviours, experiences and concerns about contraception, sex, sexuality and sexual health in the early 21st century. The results also demonstrate the value and usefulness of visitor comments both as an exhibition experience and as data to complement formal evaluation methods. The paper also acknowledges the less successful aspects of the project.     

The Power of Expectation

Abstract In 1999, the first author and his colleagues at the Smithsonian Institution published an article in Curator: The Museum Journal introducing research on the experiences visitors find satisfying in museums. Subsequent data collection has expanded on these findings, as this Research Note will elucidate. In general, the team found that experiences that visitors were looking forward to on entrance tended to have a distribution similar to that of the experiences they found satisfying on exit. The aim of this note is to present data that demonstrates this consistency, and to observe that visitors’ expectations that they would have certain types of experiences upon entering a museum or exhibition were a much larger factor in determining their responses than were minor differences in museum or exhibition content or presentation. In other words, on the whole they came in knowing what experiences they expected, and they left having found them, regardless of what museum personnel presented to them inside.     

On the Road with Rock and Soul

This article reports on a study conducted for an exhibition team at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History (NMAH). As part of the planning process for a major exhibition, we studied visitors at a small preview exhibition, The Social Roots of Rock and Soul. Personal interviews, including a tape-recorded portion in front of the Rock and Soul display about the images and the themes, were conducted at four venues of the Smithsonian's 150th Anniversary traveling exhibition, America's Smithsonian (Los Angeles, Kansas City, St. Paul, and Houston). The most significant finding from visitor responses is strong regional differences. The study also showed that visitors responded to the images and storyline differently, depending on whether the material was presented through video or panels.     

Understanding Visitor Comments: The Case of Flight Time Barbie

Many museums use comment cards, visitor books, and bulletin boards to capture the reactions of visitors. Whether they are collected, counted, skimmed, read, or simply filed, the utility of these documents is rarely questioned. This paper suggests some pros and cons of comment systems and presents an analysis of the comments on an exhibition, Flight Time Barbie, at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM), Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC. The responses to this exhibition included judgments about the subject matter of the exhibition, opinions about its presentation, and remarks regarding its appropriateness to the museum. The paper concludes by suggesting a practical approach to the analysis of visitor comments.     

Small Wonder: Using SEM Images to Exhibit the “Small Stuff”

Abstract Digital image enlargements can be a powerful method for displaying small specimens in museums. In 2007, the Royal Alberta Museum held an exhibition of 28 SEM (scanning electron microscope) images of seeds and other subfossil macroremains, which were shown in a fine‐art format. The exhibition was prepared by a museum team using images derived from in‐house curatorial research work. This paper describes the exhibition components and reports on an attempt to engage the visitors more closely with the images by asking them to suggest identifications for some “mystery” specimens.     

From Knowing to Not Knowing: Moving Beyond “Outcomes”

The ways that museums measure the success of their exhibitions reveal their attitudes and values. Are they striving to control visitors so that people will experience what the museum wants? Or are they working to support visitors, who seek to find their own path? The type of approach known as “outcome‐based evaluation” weighs in on the side of control. These outcomes are sometimes codified and limited to some half‐dozen or so “learning objectives” or “impact categories.” In essence, those who follow this approach are committed to creating exhibitions that will tell visitors what they must experience. Yet people come to museums to construct something new and personally meaningful (and perhaps unexpected or unpredictable) for themselves. They come for their own reasons, see the world through their own frameworks, and may resist (and even resent) attempts to shape their experience. How can museums design and evaluate exhibitions that seek to support visitors rather than control them? How can museum professionals cultivate “not knowing” as a motivation for improving what they do?     

Paying Attention: The Duration and Allocation of Visitors' Time in Museum Exhibitions

The amount of time visitors spend and the number of stops they make in exhibitions are systematic measures that can be indicators of learning. Previous authors have made assumptions about the amount of attention visitors pay to exhibitions based on observations of behavior at single exhibits or other small data samples. This study offers a large database from a comparative investigation of the duration and allocation of visitors' time in 108 exhibitions, and it establishes numerical indexes that reflect patterns of visitor use of the exhibition. These indexes—sweep rate (SRI) and percentage of diligent visitors (%DV)—can be used to compare one exhibition to another, or to compare the same exhibition under two (or more) different circumstances. Patterns of visitor behavior found in many of the study sites included: (1) visitors typically spend less than 20 minutes in exhibitions, regardless of the topic or size; (2) the majority of visitors are not “diligent visitors”—those who stop at more than half of the available elements; (3) on average, visitors use exhibitions at a rate of 200 to 400 square feet per minute; and (4) visitors typically spend less time per unit area in larger exhibitions and diorama halls than in smaller or nondiorama exhibitions. The two indexes (SRI and %DV) may be useful measures for diagnosing and improving the effectiveness of exhibitions, and further study could help identify characteristics of “thoroughly-used” (i.e., successful) exhibitions.     

Time to Listen

This article is a reflection on two aspects of the exhibition development process that are important but elusive. One is a habit of listening, and the other is the importance of allowing time for listening—to advisers, visitors, and other members of the exhibition team. The team that developed the touring exhibition Invention at Play used visitor research throughout the process of exhibition development to explore the links between the work of inventors and familiar human activities such as exploration, imagination, and play. The exhibition won an award of excellence at the AAM convention in Portland, Oregon in 2003. It was used as a case study on integrating accessibility into exhibition planning and design at an international conference, ADA Coordinators and Accessibility Managers in the Cultural Arts, sponsored by the Kennedy Center in 2002.     

Technical Note: Using Latent Class Analysis versus K‐means or Hierarchical Clustering to Understand Museum Visitors

This paper discusses the benefits of using Latent Class Analysis (LCA) versus K‐means Cluster Analysis or Hierarchical Clustering as a way to understand differences among visitors in museums, and is part of a larger research program directed toward improving the museum‐visit experience. For our comparison of LCA and K‐means Clustering, we use data collected from 190 visitors leaving the exhibition Against All Odds; Rescue at the Chilean Mine in the National Museum of Natural History in January 2012. For the comparison of LCA and Hierarchical Clustering, we use data from 312 visitors leaving the exhibition Elvis at 21 in the National Portrait Gallery in January 2011.     

Beyond the Blockbuster: Good Exhibitions in Small Packages

Many American and European art museums are now featuring small, highly-focused shows in their exhibition programs. In 1990, the Indianapolis Museum of Art organized an exhibition that reunited, for the first time in a century, the four landscape paintings created by neo-impressionist Georges Seurat during the last summer of his life. Using Seurat at Gravelines: The Last Landscapes as an example, this article addresses the advantages — for museums and their visitors — of the small temporary exhibition.     

The Museum Experience: Mapping the Experience of Fine Art

How do visitors to fine art museums experience exhibitions? Can we classify their experiences? What are the factors that drive different types of visitor experience? We set out to answer these questions by analyzing from sociological, psychological, physiological, and behavioral perspectives the responses of 576 visitors to a special exhibition 11: 1 (+ 3) = Eleven Collections for One Museum mounted at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland, from June to August 2009. Our five‐year research project, eMotion: Mapping the Museum Experience, interpreted computer‐modeled movement‐tracking and physiological maps of the visitors in complement with entrance and exit surveys. We tested individual aspects of the visitor, such as her or his expectations of the exhibition prior to seeing it; his or her socio‐demographic characteristics; her or his affinity for art, mood just before and receptivity just after the visit; and spatial, individual, and group‐related behavior patterns. Our study breaks down three types of exhibition experience that we call “the contemplative,” “the enthusing,” and “the social experience.” The results yield new information about aesthetic arousal, cognitive reaction, patterns of social behavior, and the diverse elements of the exhibition experience.     

A Journey Unlike Any Other: An Interactive Exhibition at the National Museum in Copenhagen,Denmark

Abstract A Journey Unlike Any Other is an interactive museum exhibition that introduces visitors to the experience of being a refugee. First, the visitor is confronted with hostility from soldiers in the homeland, and later, after an escape, with all the difficulties derived from meetings with police and immigration authorities in the new country. The provocations visitors endure during the course of the exhibition enhance a high degree of perceptual awareness, reflectivity and memory. In the aftermath of their experience, visitors indicate an increase of empathic understanding and experiential knowledge, whereas their interest in information and further background knowledge seems to be unaffected.     

‘The feeling of exclusion’: Young peoples' perceptions of art galleries

This article first looks at the relationship between museums and art galleries and their potential audiences and, in particular, the under-represented sector of young visitors. It examines the main findings from the limited research available on young visitors, and goes on to discuss theories delineating the differences between the cultures, identities and values of culture consumers and culture providers. The second part of the article looks at what specific museums have done towards being more inclusive in their appeal, and then reports the findings of a survey of young people in relation to New Zealand's Auckland Art Gallery. The survey found that young people's ideas of what constitutes modern, relevant art do not match standard art criteria, and that most exhibitions and marketing methods do not mesh with their worldview. The article concludes by using data from the survey to suggest ways of engaging more young people with public art galleries.     

In Byzantium1

During Spring 1997 we experimented with a research method combining quantitative and qualitative approaches to documenting visitor experiences in The Glory of Byzantium, a special exhibition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition to using standard demographic and behavior surveys, a small team of researchers and volunteers gathered information, compared experiences, and summarized their observations of people in the exhibition. Each team member conducted about a dozen structured conversations with visitors as they left the exhibition. Subsequently the team met as an informal focus group to describe their experiences. We found that many museum users arrived with relevant experiences and high expectations for this somewhat specialized exhibition; we also found users whose approach to the exhibition was less well‐informed, but whose enthusiasm and trust for the museum experience moved them to attend with satisfaction. We believe that such team approaches to research might well be used as a regular part of museum work as we search for answers to the many elusive questions about museum use.     

Fred Wilson,PTSD, and Me: Reflections on the History Wars

Abstract Our relationships with our audiences have proved parlous. But if history is destined to be contested, where should museums be in that contest and how do we get there? Fred Wilson's Mining the Museum has turned out to be a path not taken; Enola Gay was a cautionary tale. But we should have these fights in museums, where the national narrative is blocked out and staged, because of how museums teach us, opening hidden windows on cloaked realities. Museums can start by becoming clearer about what they think they are doing when they make an exhibition. Exhibitions can have a profound effect on visitors at many levels but it doesn't happen very often. Is that because visitors seek another kind of experience from what we typically offer?     

Designing an “Architecture of Information”— The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

For the permanent exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum the design approach was minimal and transparent, and the designers were in dialogue only with the story — not with the history of design or the conventions governing most museum presentations. We reached for a sense of immersion by trying to erase the seams between exhibits and architecture. Display strategies included the removal of conventional barriers of certain glass-encased vitrines: some objects can be touched, and reactions sought are as visceral as they are intellectual. We tried above all to see that people leave the museum not profoundly dejected but with some other feeling evoking the resilience of life and hope. The design intended to make the environment so united with its subject that memory of the museum experience and the sharing of memory through discussion will carry on in the lives of the visitors.     

A Case Study of “Planetary Landscapes: Sculpting the Solar System”

This article presents a case study of the design, development and evaluation of a science museum exhibition called Planetary Landscapes: Sculpting the Solar System. The exhibition was created by Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, California, in collaboration with the artist Ned Kahn. (A slightly smaller version has been traveling to science museums around the country, and has been sent to the Middle East and Asia.) This exhibition affords a chance to explore the work of a gifted artist as he seeks to merge art and science and create beautiful inquiry‐based exhibits. The story also relates how a museum design team and an evaluation team sought to support the exhibition design in ways that would augment and not interfere with the expertise of the artist.