Cueing the Visitor: The Museum Theater and the Visitor Performance

There are an estimated 17,500 museums in the United States. If people think these institutions are pretty much the same once you get inside or that the differences between them are unimportant, it might be hard to persuade them that all 17,500 are needed. Exhibitions can have great transformational power; why don’t they exercise that power more often? Have museums not fully understood exhibitions as a medium? Have we not devoted enough attention to the full repertoire of visitor feelings? Have visitors been telling us this and we have failed to listen? For many people, museums play many roles in their lives; for most others few or none. How can this be? “Museum‐adept” visitors seem to prize museums as theaters in which their own emotional and spiritual journeys can be staged, but what about the non‐museum‐adept? Can the museum‐adept teach us how to realize our medium’s full potential?     

The Future of Three‐Dimensional Imaging and Museum Applications

Abstract Is it time for all museums to initiate large‐scale 3D digitization programs? We don’t yet know how 3D is going to change, replace, or integrate into current museum experience. Yet the possibilities are being actualized right now. What does 3D mean for museums? Digitizing museum objects in 3D (or the museums themselves, for that matter) with incredible accuracy and realism; examining the inside of a mummy; modeling collections in 3D; retaining virtual copies of vulnerable objects; all these and more already exist in the fast‐changing realm of 3D applications.     

Redefining Access: Embracing multimodality,memorability and shared experience in Museums

The authors discuss the principles of “access for all” in museums, both physical and intellectual access. They explore this question of multisensory processing in neurologically typical individuals, and case studies of two Portuguese museums that experimented with implementation of an “access for all” approach to the presentation of their permanent collections. The study was designed with three phases: addressing architectural barriers to access, preparation of accessible information about space and objects, and testing of alternative formats to convey this information to learn how to meet diverse needs in different ways. Set in the context of research on multisensory learning, this article discusses why an access for all principle is a majority issue as well as a moral and legal concept. It discusses two case studies where an “access for all” museological approach has been applied to access to the collections, with differing success. The discussion focuses on how an “access for all” approach could enhance learning, long‐term memorability and the ‘cultural value’ of a museum experience for all visitors.     

Essentialism, adaptation and justice: Towards a new epistemology of museums

This article treats the prevalent confused mixture of utilitarian, art-and-knowledge-for-their-own-sake and ideological interpretations of the purpose of museums as a problem of epistemology, arguing that that key dimensions of museum knowledge (of objects, visitors, museums themselves, and of society) need to be integrated to achieve coherence. A new object-based, visitor-centred, storytelling epistemology is proposed. This would take an interdisciplinary approach and aim to unleash, rather than mute the real power of objects. It would address human destructiveness, as well as celebrating human creativity and the wonders of nature. It would respect the meaning-making practices of real, as opposed to idealized, imaginary visitors, and promote staff self-awareness in managing bureaucratic drift into introversion and avoidance of difficult issues. Incorporating a theory of justice, it would erode boundaries created by presentation traditions which, though marginal to object experiences, discriminate in favour of specific social groups—often groups with whom staff identify. Providing a museum service on a visibly fair basis is essential for museums to achieve intellectual coherence as well as societal support.     

Kelvingrove: Telling Stories in a Treasured Old/New Museum

“Welcome to the future of museums” is one of the many rave head‐lines that greeted the reopening of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, Scotland, after a $60 (£30) million refurbishment. This article charts the course of the project over the 16 years it was in development, tells how it survived a number of major setbacks, and recounts the key strategic decisions that led to the creation of an object‐based, visitor‐centered, storytelling museum that was more successful than we dared hope. The project team aimed to integrate the demands of research, design, conservation, education, and communication in order to bring visitors and objects—in all their richness and complexity—into meaningful contact. This process has been rewarded with unprecedented visitor numbers‐3,000,000 in the first year, in a city of 600,000 people.     

A Conversation on Object‐Centered Learning in Art Museums

Danielle Rice and Philip Yenawine are veteran art museum educators who have wrestled for decades with the thorny issues involved in teaching about and learning from art objects in the museum setting. While there is general agreement within art museums today that the object should be the focus of educational practice, debate continues as to the most effective processes for facilitating learning. Gallery teaching is one of the most contested arenas, with much of the disagreement centering on the place of information in teaching beginning viewers. In art museums, the issue of what and how to teach is complicated by the fact that many people, including artists, museum professionals, psychologists and educators consider art primarily as something to be enjoyed, and they posit this enjoyment in direct opposition to learning about art. Partly because of this, the function of art museum education and gallery‐based instruction is still evolving.     

Objects in Focus: Museum Visitors and Instagram

While there is increasingly widespread use of social media by those visiting museum exhibitions relatively little is understood about this practice. Further still, the focus of such practices is unknown yet research in this area can reveal much about how visitors using applications driven by smart phone technology are engaging with exhibition content, space, design, architecture and people. This article draws on a case study of one exhibition using visual content analysis to frame, explore and interpret visual and text based posts by visitors using the social media application, Instagram, as part of their experience. Findings suggest that museum visitors using this application do so to account for and record details of their experience that draws attention to exhibition content, specifically objects. The implications are extensive for cultural institutions given the uptake of social media in all corners of life, with museums and galleries being a lively context for social media use via mobile technologies.     

Using 3D Printing to Enhance Understanding and Engagement with Young Audiences: Lessons from Workshops in a Museum

This paper details findings from a collaborative research project that studied children learning to 3D print in a museum, and provides an overview of the study design to improve related future programs. We assessed young visitors’ capacity to grasp the technical specificities of 3D printing, as well as their engagement with the cultural history of shoemaking through the museum's collection. Combining the museum's existing pedagogical resources with hands‐on technology experiences designed by Semaphore researchers, this study enabled both researchers and museum education staff to evaluate the use of 3D‐driven curriculum and engagement materials designed for children visiting cultural heritage museums. This study raises critical questions regarding the practicality of deploying 3D media to engage young learners in museums, and this paper illuminates the challenges in developing models for children to put historical and contextual information into practice.     

Visitor Meaning-Making in Museums for a New Age

The concept of meaning-making is generating excitement within the museum community, with good reason. Providing an approach to understanding visitor experiences, the paradigm illuminates the visitor's active role in creating meaning of a museum experience through the context he/she brings, influenced by the factors of self-identity, companions, and leisure motivations. As a result, visitors find personal significance within museums in a range of patterned ways that reflect basic human needs, such as the need for individualism and the need for community. The dynamics of visitor meaning-making indicate the importance of fashioning a better “fit” between people and museums in two critical areas: (1) between human meaning-making and museum methods and (2) between human needs and the purpose of museums in society. Each of these areas illuminates a promising direction for a new age of museums in which we actively support, facilitate, and enhance the many kinds of meaning possible in museums and explicitly incorporate human needs into exhibit goals and institutional missions. Examples of successful strategies are discussed.     

Stay Behind the Yellow Line: Young Children Constructing Knowledge from an Art Exhibition

Studies exploring very young children visiting museums and art galleries are few. The majority of research about museum and gallery visitors explores family group interactions. This paper examines the findings of a study involving three‐ and four‐year‐old children visiting an art exhibition in a national museum on more than one occasion. The children's construction of knowledge about being a museum visitor and exhibitor indicates their ability to develop an appreciation of art and an understanding of the purposes of museums and art galleries.     

Museums and Virtuality

Abstract This paper investigates issues of museums and virtuality. In considering the diverse ways that museums are approaching virtuality, the focus here is on the common ground and shared objectives, rather than the differences between museums and their virtual re‐creations. Put simply, on‐site museums and their online counterparts are merely two ways of exhibiting cultures. In this sense, “virtuality” is a fundamental exhibition practice. The World Wide Web has become increasingly relevant to such core museum tasks as collecting, preserving, and exhibiting. Digitization of objects in digital heritage programs has led to new forms of collection management and unparalleled access to virtual replicas of museum artifacts. This transformation is inspiring new forms of preserving and displaying cultures both on‐ and off‐line. A successful digital expansion will largely influence whether museums can sustain their cultural authority and position in the 21st century.     

Children's Museum Experiences: Identifying Powerful Mediators of Learning

This article reports on a study of young children and the nature of their learning through museum experiences. Environments such as museums are physical and social spaces where visitors encounter objects and ideas which they interpret through their own experiences, customs, beliefs, and values. The study was conducted in four different museum environments: a natural and social history museum, an art gallery, a science center, and a hybrid art/social history museum. The subjects were four‐ to seven‐year old children. At the conclusion of a ten‐week, multi‐visit museum program, interviews were conducted with children to probe the saliency of their experiences and the ways in which they came to understand the museums they visited. Emergent from this study, we address several findings that indicate that museum‐based exhibits and programmatic experiences embedded in the common and familiar socio‐cultural context of the child's world, such as play and story, provide greater impact and meaning than do museum exhibits and experiences that are decontexualized in nature.     

IPOP: A Theory of Experience Preference

The theory and practice of IPOP emerged from structured observations and interviews with visitors to the Smithsonian Institution museums in Washington, D.C. from the 1990s to the present—a dataset useful in constructing a long view. This research has had one overarching intention: to serve museum visitors better, that is, to provide visitors with experiences that are above average, special, significant, and memorable. In numerous studies and interviews during the last 16 years, visitors have repeatedly spoken about their reactions to Smithsonian museum exhibitions in four typologies distilling their primary interests: I = ideas, P = people, O = objects, and—as we were obliged to add at a later stage—a second P for “physical.” The evidence suggests that exhibitions that strongly appeal to all four visitor typologies will be highly successful with visitors.     

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?     

Collaborative Exhibitions and Visitor Reactions: The Case of Nitsitapiisinni: Our Way of Life

Collaborative exhibitions built by aboriginal communities and museums often seek to reposition aboriginal peoples as the authors and experts of their cultures, and to assert their active and continued presence in the contemporary world. This article explores the impact of collaborative exhibitions on museum visitors' experiences and their potential to reshape the public's perception of aboriginal peoples. Interviews conducted with visitors to Nitsitapiisinni: Our Way of Life, a permanent exhibition created by Blackfoot Elders and museum staff at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, demonstrate that museum visitors rarely recognized the extent of the collaboration, and thus rarely equated Nitsitapiisinni with concepts of self‐representation or self‐determination. However, other messages were successfully communicated to museum visitors, namely the impact of colonialism, the efforts to revitalize Blackfoot culture, and the importance of Blackfoot spirituality. This study provides some interesting insights about public perceptions that will help promote deeper reflection on the issues surrounding collaboratively developed exhibitions and the first‐person authorship of First Nations cultures.     

Evaluation, Research and Communities of Practice: Program Evaluation in Museums

Museums present different contexts for learning, particularly when compared with places such as schooos, universities and libraries. They have been described as free-choice learning environments visited by a broad range of people. Museums have the opportunity to shape identities—through access to objects, knowledge and information visitors see themselves and their culture reflected in ways that encourage new connections, meaning making and learning. However, across the world museums are finding themselves competing with other leisure and learning experiences in an increasingly global world. The long history of audience research in the cultural sector demonstrates the interest museums have had in their visitors over time. This paper outlines the development of audience research in museums, the context within which it operates, and describes the processes of audience research through a series of case studies drawn from the work of the Australian Museum Audience Research Centre. It is argued that the shift in museums from mission-led program development to balancing content and audience needs through a transaction approach requires a broader research-focused agenda. While traditional ways of conducting evaluations are necessary and useful, to remain viable audience research needs to be more strategic, working across the sector in new ways and utilising new methods. How programs impact on users and facilitate learning about a wide range of key issues that museums are concerned with is a leadership role that audience research can take across both the cultural sector and other free-choice learning contexts. To achieve this, a communities of practice approach is suggested as a potential framework for audience research in the contemporary museum.     

3D Representations in Museums

Abstract Museums have developed strategies to allow their visitors to “walk through” three‐dimensional replicas of great cathedrals and palaces, tombs and catacombs, stately houses and other architectural achievements from distant lands and ages, and to walk around the great sculptures of the past several millenniums. Casts (three‐dimensional replicas) provided these 3D experiences in the mid‐nineteenth century. In many respects, the older technology of casts retains its advantages over the present state of digital virtual reality, though it has fallen out of favor. This article examines the usefulness of this earlier way of viewing sculptural objects.     

Museum as Soup Kitchen

In this paper, I suggest that museums have not explored their potential opportunities enough when dealing with their communities under stressful conditions. Each reader, however, should decide when what I am talking about is no longer appropriate for museums in general or your museum in particular. While some museums have moved more in the direction of serving their communities, I am struck by how little philosophical change has actually taken place in most museums after a year into this universal economic downturn. I argue that incorporating a broader palette of social services may make institutions more useful, but at some point these institutions might cease to be traditional museums. My question would be: “Should you care?” I do not suggest that all museums become full‐service community centers, though some might explore that option. Perhaps the question might become: How do we expand our services so that we make museums’ important physical assets of safe civic space and objects useful for tangible three‐dimensional learning into more relevant programs that reach all levels of community, and are rated by many more as essential to their needs and their aspirations for their children?