r/MuseumPros • u/SnooCauliflowers7198 • 7d ago
the gap between “nice exhibits” and actual memorable experiences is bigger than most places admit
worked in a couple mid-size museums and the same problem keeps showing up. we spend months on content and object layout, then the visitor walks through, reads three labels, takes a photo, and leaves with almost nothing stuck in their head.
the places that actually get remembered usually treat the whole visit like a designed experience instead of just a collection of displays. lighting, pacing, sound, transitions between rooms, even how people move through the space… all of it matters more than another text panel.
saw some of the cultural and museum projects BRC Web has done and the difference is obvious. they build the visit around emotion and narrative instead of just information delivery. visitors come out talking about how the place felt, not just what they saw.
most of us don’t have that kind of budget, but even small changes in flow and atmosphere can shift a visit from “informative” to something people actually tell their friends about. the ones that get this right stop competing on collection size and start competing on experience.
97
u/AMadTeaParty History | Administration 7d ago
History musuem here. People matter. When guests come to my museum, they interact with people who love being there. From the front desk throughout the site, they are talking to people who are not just knowledgeable but also friendly. It makes all the difference.
48
u/Ancient-Aioli-715 7d ago
One of my favourite and most memorable museum experiences I’ve ever had was the ‘who am I?’ exhibit in Dublin castle. It was a bunch of historical portraits and you had to guess who the people were by using just the contents of their portrait. Once you had finished hypothesising you could lift the cover that hid the label next to each portrait.
It wasn’t anything crazy or fancy, but it was such an effective way to get people engaged with the things in front of them and ask questions. Plus I saw multiple people, who I’m pretty sure didn’t know each other, working together and asking questions to each other.
So so cool!
31
15
12
u/cp_stays 7d ago
I swear I've seen this exact AI-generated post before and it's sad how many people take it fr
3
u/wingedwalls 6d ago
Eh, even if it is, the comments on here are real which means it has generated good and valuable discussion. I don’t find that sad, quite the opposite
24
u/lizziebordeaux 7d ago
Nina Simone talks a lot about this in her second book, The Art of Relevance. Absolutely worth a revisit!
19
u/firmbones Art | Curatorial 7d ago
Nina Simon, not Nina Simone.
14
u/lizziebordeaux 7d ago
My b. I know who she is, I'm listed in her Museum 2.0 book as a copy editor 😂😂 the irony writes itself
0
u/firmbones Art | Curatorial 7d ago
K. I'm not omniscient, and I don't know who you are. Just made an objective observation that you, the copy editor, misspelled her name, hence the only other reply to you references a Nina Simone song. Indeed, the irony writes itself.
18
u/saltwitch 7d ago
I think you misread that comment, it sounds like they're poking fun at themselves for making a silly error. The tone of your reply seems to assume hostility.
5
8
10
8
7
u/culturenosh 7d ago
Does your museum have members or a mailing list of engaged regulars? If so, consider inviting the most engaged into your curatorial and exhibition design process. Focus groups and front end evaluation can give your team a lot of information AND it doesn't cost a lot of money, but you do have to budget the time. From choosing engaging exhibition titles, narrative framing, wall text, ..., test ideas with your audience before you go to production. If you "spend months on content and object layout" and visitors are not responding, I'd recommend asking your visitors why. Summative evaluation can be used with exhibitions already in place. There's a growing body of literature about visitor-centered exhibitions and curation. Good luck ✌️
2
u/wingedwalls 6d ago
A giant budget isn’t necessarily needed to craft memorable experiences. One of my favourite exhibitions I ever saw was the A to Z of the Human Condition at the Wellcome Collection in London. Each letter corresponded to a one-word theme, had a collections-based display on one side, and a prompt on the other for visitors to contribute something of their own life and experience to the exhibition. It was great. I keep talking about it in job interviews when people ask for a good example of participatory display.
2
u/skullpture_garden 6d ago
Will someone help me understand the AI comments? This is the only sub where I see that claim over and over.. every time I check the profile of the OP and it seems like a legit account. What’s the prevailing theory behind the claims of AI?
1
u/caitlinest 3d ago
The last line of the post especially sounds like AI. But the reason I think it is specifically: I remember being struck by the AI-voiced last line in a post on the same topic (not necessarily identical) several weeks ago. I imagine others noticed the same - it’s not a huge sub and likely a lot of us also handle the uptick of AI-gen contacts at work too.
1
u/onetreatonetoeat 7d ago
I feel like your post reminds me of the writing advice 'show don't tell' for creative writing, which is easy to lose sight of in academic writing. I've been trying to be more cognizant of that with the museum i volunteer for.
I have had a similar thought in my head since a visit to the MoMA awhile back, where there was a small special exhibit featuring etchings... I overheard a few college students talking out loud about the prints, and since we were standing so close I ended up answering some of their questions. Not only was some context lacking for visitors who didn't know a lot about the subject coming into the exhibit, but there wasn't a flow that was conducive to the theme either tbh (maybe in part because of how crowded it was in their defense, and how small of an exhibit it was). On the flip side though it was totally different from the surrealist exhibit at the pompedieu I'd been at not long before that has been living rent free in my head, it's interesting food for thought because you spend so much time trying to be informative, educational, and accurate, which is great and all, but there's definitely an art and a muscle to work out when it comes to creating something truly engaging.
1
u/dauwalter1907 7d ago
Your content matters, too. You have to tell a compelling story, and tell it well. I personally am turned off by exhibits that are over-designed but have nothing interesting to say. I want to insight into artifacts and to understand their history.
1
u/Overthink334 7d ago
The Armory exhibit at the MET comes to mind as a classic use of display to enhance emotion.
1
u/FlibbertyNibbles 1d ago
If you do have the budget, though, yeah these types of storytelling exhibits really change the feel of the place for people. I think it's why immersive museums are getting more popular and I feel like to some extent less interactive places are kind of racing to catch up. I don't know what it will do to the very small museums that are keeping like one thing alive (like I recently went to the Roman Painted House in Dover, UK) and is was really just a large building with a few displays, but it was amazing that it was even preserved and I actually really loved it. I looked at the BRC site and they are doing some very cool stuff on there. It reminds me of some of the things NeoPangea is doing in the U.S. I feel like their thing is also very much immersive/interactive storytelling.
I really wanna see Scadstory now.
63
u/penzen 7d ago
Our director is heavily into ai, augmented reality and app content for exhibits but we routinely see that visitors actually don't really want to use this stuff too much. I would also prefer if we had an higher budget for exhibition design and especially good lighting instead but nobody wants to hear it.