Rethinking the Visitor Experience: Transforming Obstacle into Purpose

The purposes of museums and those of their visitors often have little in common—despite the growing body of knowledge about museum learning and visitors' motivations. Based on concepts of experiential learning envisioned a century ago by the American educator and philosopher John Dewey, this paper explores bringing those purposes into closer alignment. A re‐evaluation of several factors—including criteria of experience, content organization, and the nature of inquiry—could lead to exhibitions more closely aligned with visitors' processes of self‐motivated activity and museums' goals for informal learning. One way is to shape exhibits and activity around problematical situations developed out of the exhibit experience itself and shaped by visitors' own purposes. By shifting focus from knowledge taxonomies to problem‐solving situations, museums could increase their exhibitions' potential for providing engaging educational experiences to visitors.     

Visitor Meaning‐Making at Grand Canyon's Tusayan Museum and Ruin

Abstract Meaning‐making describes a process by which visitors transform museum experiences into new knowledge and memories. Meaning‐making is influenced by visitors' leisure motivations, prior knowledge, socio‐cultural context brought to the experience, personally‐guided interpretation, and events since the visit. In this study, visitors' long‐term recollections included contextual references to how and why they remembered what they experienced. Forty visitors were interviewed by telephone six months after attending a Native American interpretive program at Grand Canyon National Park's Tusayan Museum. Two patterns associated with a constructivist view of meaning‐making were discerned: a) visitors' integration of indoor and outdoor exhibits and b) visitors' comparisons of modern family and community with a more ancient culture. The presence of contextual indicators within visitor recall suggests that new knowledge may be constructed from factors carried forth from the meaning‐making process. Evidence within the data suggests that exhibits made more relevant to visitors' socio‐cultural identity may enhance on‐site experiences.     

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.     

Climate Change Education at Nature‐Based Museums

The status of climate change education at nature‐based museums (i.e., zoos, aquariums and nature centers) was examined, with a particular focus on centers participating in a National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation (NNOCCI) leadership training program. Study 1 revealed that, relative to nature‐based museums that did not participate in the training, NNOCCI‐participating institutions provided resources for staff to work on the topic and professional development programs and were more likely than non‐participating museums to be comfortable with and provide climate change education programming. Study 2 confirms these results via visitor reports about the exhibits they observed. Study 2 also reveals that, relative to non‐visitors and visitors to non‐participating nature‐based museums, visitors to NNOCCI‐participating nature‐based museums were more knowledgeable about and concerned about climate change and ocean acidification, hopeful about their ability to talk about the topic, and likely to engage in climate change actions than those who did not visit these centers. Importantly, results from both studies indicate that nature‐based museums, especially NNOCCI participating museums, have an institutional culture supportive of climate science education and suggests that NNOCCI interpreter training programming facilitates this culture which in turn is reflected in visitor engagement.     

A Synopsis and Perspective of Concerns and Challenges for the International Community of University Museums

University museums and their collections are among the oldest and most significant in the world, yet their role and future is being questioned. They have critical needs for facilities, staff, and support. At risk are millions of objects that document our natural and cultural history and programs for research, teaching, and public education and exhibits. The museums are attempting to redefine, reposition, and clarify their educational mission. Museums such as the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural history are successfully meeting the challenges through strategic planning and funding for new facilities. Other museums are finding solutions with partnerships, links, and tailor‐made service programs. New leadership and management will need to emerge for university museums to reestablish their stature and relevance. Physical and intellectual access to the museums and their objects is a key to their future. The new technologies are tools that museums can use to improve their interpretive programs and increase the depth of their research. Facing shared concerns and challenges, the museums are generating a growning sense of collective urgency and a call for intenational organization, advocacy, and cooperation, resulting in formation of the International Committee for University Museums and Collections.     

At Hospitality's Threshold: From Social Inclusion to Exilic Education

Abstract Describing actual museum‐wide events developed for the culturally charged arena of the Brooklyn Children's Museum, this article explores the philosophical and pedagogical double binds that have brought multiculturalism to a political impasse. Museums have strived to be valued resources in an increasingly diverse society. In aspiring to broaden their audience base, their work has shifted from developing educational policies that are “object‐centered” to those that are “community‐centered” — a change of strategy affecting everything from programs to exhibit design. Children's museums — distinct (if not marginalized) from the serious work of the traditional art or ethnographic or natural history museum — know and indeed say in their very name — “children's museum” — that they are for the sake of someone and not about something. They have always already been attuned to the visitor at the threshold.     

浅议科技博物馆藏品与科学中心展品的区别与联系

科技藏品与互动展品的关系,是研究博物馆与科技馆教育功能关联性的基础。本文从科技藏品与互动展品的不同来源与特性入手,分析了科技藏品与由科技藏品转化而来的“互动展品”之间的关系,以及转化的原因和途径,并从教育学和认知的角度分析归纳了科技藏品与互动展品的本质差异。在此基础上,说明依托科技藏品的博物馆教育与依托互动展品的科学中心教育的不同思路和策略。     

Intentional Civility

The meaning of civility is culturally dependent—as are the rules associated with the term. If museums and their staff want to welcome all peoples, then the rules of civil behavior have to change to reflect that intention. Yet museums have mostly lived with the traditional, class‐dependent notion of etiquette. The area that the concept of civility should be concerned with covers our interactions in spheres generally considered separable: public behavior; staff behavior; content behavior; community relations. Museums would do well to examine those behavioral elements that have been assumed to be self‐evident: like not talking in the library (whereas there are now talking‐based rooms). Normative behavior is always changing, but interestingly, as it changes, it generally remains mostly in the service of peaceful outcomes. I am suggesting that direct interrogation of our unexamined rules about interactions with each other in every context—and adjusting them to reflect a changed society—might be more significant than previously assumed.     

Interpretation and the Role of the Viewer in Museums of Modern and Contemporary Art

Abstract What does the term “interpretation” mean when it's encountered in museums of modern and contemporary art — and is something missing? Studies conducted by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the University of Leicester in England reveal that visitors want more information about art. In this article, interviews with the directors of the Phillips and the Walker (as well as other museum professionals and academics) examine interpretative practices today and suggest plans for tomorrow. When preparing future interpretive materials, the author advocates that museums expose visitors to the idea that they make their own meaning when viewing art.     

The Puzzle of Museum Educational Practice: A Comment on Rounds and Falk

Abstract Museum practice is in the midst of a fascinating practical and theoretical trajectory. The mandate that museums place education at the center of their public service role has had the effect of framing a new set of questions and—inevitably—problems. If museums have primary value to society as educational institutions, what kind of learning actually happens in them? Jay Rounds and John Falk, writing at the leading edge of this inquiry, explore curiosity, motivation and self‐identity as paramount considerations for the special type of learning museums promote. Their analyses present interesting challenges for the museum practitioner, who may observe that people find the pursuit of curiosity pleasurable and value it more highly than knowledge acquisition. The practitioner may conclude that museums have a calling: They stand for the value of curiosity for its own sake, and for that reason will never wear out their welcome.     

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?     

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.     

Cultivating Connectivity: Folklife and Inclusive Excellence in Museums

Today there is a growing global awareness of the need to address issues related to the safeguarding and use of both tangible and intangible heritage. By engaging with communities in the documentation of local cultures—especially their folklife, or in other words, their traditional intangible cultural heritage—museums can create collections that will serve as foundations for museum research, exhibitions, and programs that have more resonance with and relevance for those communities. Interactions of these kinds—in particular those of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and the Michigan State University Museum, home of the Michigan Traditional Arts Program, as well as collaborations between the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and the Great Lakes Folk Festival, and other programs around the world—have served as important platforms for public discourse about a variety of issues and have produced programs and exhibitions both at home and around the world.     

A Taxonomy of Museum Program Opportunities—Adapting a Model from Natural Resource Management

This paper describes a conceptual framework for the way museum managers might categorize different kinds of program opportunities, both existing and potential. This systematic approach to program planning may be useful to managers in museums seeking to expand their programs' scope and scale. The basis for this concept is borrowed from the outdoor recreation discipline, which sought, in the 1970s, to find a common language to describe supply and demand for recreation opportunities and to understand recreation opportunities in a geographic context of available natural resources. In this paper, the concept is adapted for museums and museum going as a leisure activity. The article first explores the linkages between museum supply and demand as they relate to a larger leisure marketplace. The Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS) is then described as it is used for outdoor recreation decision making. Following this practice, museum demand opportunities are defined and elaborated by example, and a “Visitor Opportunity System”—modeled after ROS—is presented. Specific examples are provided for applying this system approach to a variety of museum practices and planning scenarios.     

Function Follows Form: How Mixed‐Used Spaces in Museums Build Community

Abstract This article examines three elements largely overlooked by the museum profession when thinking about community building—space, space mix, and unexpected use of space. It suggests that if museum planners were to pay overt attention to these, they could greatly enhance the community‐building role museums increasingly play. When considering museums and communities, writers in the museum field have focused on broadening audiences, public programs, collections and exhibitions. Physical spaces have been regarded as necessary armature but not as catalysts themselves. There are many subtle, interrelated and essentially unexamined ingredients that allow museums to play an enhanced role in the building of community and our collective civic life. The article describes the characteristics of the Livable Cities Movement and New Urbanism and suggests ways in which museums could encourage these characteristics—and thereby consciously use their interior and exterior spaces to build community.     

科技成就类科普展品的展示创意——以“创新决胜未来——庆祝改革开放40周年科技成就科普展”为例

本文围绕科技馆策划科技成就展的展品创意进行探讨,针对相关展览的现状及问题,分析展品的目的性及其与观众的联系,分别对展品创意中可能的展示点及展示手段进行了梳理归类,并以“创新决胜未来——庆祝改革开放40周年科技成就科普展”为实例,对展示点及展示手段在实际工作中的体现予以阐释。     

Children's Museums as Citizens: Four Inspiring Examples

Abstract The audience‐centered mission of childrens' museums has caused these institutions to look at their role in their respective communities and to take bold steps in envisioning new ways of relating to their constituents. Here is a selection of four childrens' museums which have founded inspiring and imaginative programs centered on children's welfare.     

博物馆:我们共有文化精神的前沿实验室

当代公共博物馆在经历了250余年的发展演变之后,其发展的社会、文化、专业甚至经济环境,都在发生着重要变化。新的趋势无疑为博物馆带来新机遇、新可能,同时也伴随新挑战。在今天博物馆需要回答的诸多问题中,有一个始终处于核心位置:我们的博物馆机构是否对社会很重要？无论是眼下还是长远的未来。围绕于此的相关讨论,让当代博物馆新的文化观逐渐清晰起来,让博物馆为适应新形势而进行的战略选择有了新的坐标,并最终引导出关于博物馆价值体系可能的重构以及新的运行规则。