Visitor Experience

What I learned from my favorite exhibit of 2022

December 29, 2022 by Cait Leave a Comment

My favorite exhibition I saw this year was Great Whales: Up Close and Personal at the Royal Ontario Museum (“the ROM”) in Toronto. Here’s my attempt to summarize key takeaways from its whale of an achievement.

Say who’s speaking.
Press the mute button on the all-knowing institutional voice and pass the mic to your subject experts. These intro panels with photos, bios, and quotes made me feel like I was getting a private walking tour of the exhibit.

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Really include community stakeholders.

As an outsider looking in, I’m not qualified to judge whether this exhibition was a “good” example of community involvement. But I’d like to recognize that the voices of Indigenous experts were utilized throughout the exhibit (not just acknowledged as a one-off at the beginning or end), and tobacco offering stations spoke directly to Indigenous visitors.
Put numbers into perspective.

“We lost 10% of a species, and that’s equivalent to humanity losing all the people of North and South America” says a lot more than “we lost 10% of the species.”
Take your labels from prose to poetry using the literary devices of consonance and assonance.

Notice how many words in this label have “d” sounds, either with the letter “d” actually in the word or phonetically with double “t”s.

“Dies…body….dense…bottom…down…cold, dark…depths. Does matter? Hundreds…deep-sea…decades.” (13/64 total words in the label = 20% of word count)

We can do the same exercise with “L” sounds:

“Whale fall…whale…falls…miles…whale…fall….minerals…cold…large whale fall…. (12/64 = 19% of word count)

And “s” sounds:

“Dies…its…is…so…dense…falls…ocean…sometimes…miles…brings…nutrients…minerals…ecosystem….ocean depths. Does…support hundreds…deep-sea species decades (21/64 = 33% of word count)

Any of these combinations could stand alone as a poem in its own right, abstractly conveying the label’s message. Together, they flow into a readable label without being heavy-handed with alliteration.
Find piece harmony with your objects.

One thing I learned from taking chess classes in high school (besides that I’m no good at chess), is the concept of “piece harmony.” There’s something that just looks right about a chess board where all the pieces are positioned to support each other. No knight is left unprotected, no pawn blocks another’s path.

Great Whales gave us a masterful example of positioning the smallest objects in the exhibit (these specimen jars) right before one of the most shockingly large objects (the whale heart). The visitor doesn’t just read the message that big whales support small life–they feel it in their surroundings.
Answer the obvious question.

“Why are they called GREAT whales?”

“Is that REAL?”

If there’s a question everyone will be asking, confront it head-on and answer it.
Speak to hope and action.

Fear of loss catches attention, but doesn’t sustain long-term motivation. Inspire people to make a positive change by suggesting specific ways to help.

Share relatable success stories.
Be up close and personal.

The subtitle of the exhibition was “Up Close and Personal,” and that’s precisely where it took me.

It taught me what we have in common with whales so I could relate to them as neighbors.

It used sensory cues like smell to put me in the action of a salvage expedition.

It even turned the assumed appeal of “up close and personal” on its head.

No part of the exhibit stayed with me longer than the revelation that so few North Atlantic right whales remain, we can know them each by name and picture.

The thing great museum experiences have in common

July 7, 2017 by Cait Leave a Comment

Have you ever compared your top few museum experiences to find what they had in common?

I remember a conversation like this coming up in a discussion at the National Museum of American History when I was an intern there in 2012. Curators throughout the room raised their hands to share which museum they thought “does it best.” After the fifth person said the US Holocaust Memorial & Museum (USHMM), someone said something different. “Sure, we’d love to use the USHMM’s model,” they said, “but they only have one story they need to tell whereas we have hundreds.”

Storytelling is a hot topic in museums now, and I’m sure it’s part of why many of the curators admired the USHMM experience. After all, the museum is a linear path on a timeline telling the global story of events preceding the Holocaust to its aftermath. Then there are more personal stories worked in, such as the cards visitors receive describing a person from the time period and revealing their story as the exhibition progresses.

I’m a fan of the museum, but I’m unconvinced that its impact has much of anything to do with its storytelling. Plenty of museums and exhibitions have done a remarkable job of telling stories, but those weren’t the first examples jumping to curators’ minds in the meeting. My theory on what makes the USHMM stand out is the universally perplexing nature of its topic. At some point, everyone who learns about genocide experiences a sense of bewilderment about how, even when empowered by democracy, people can do such evils to other people. In other words, the USHMM isn’t effective because it’s somehow better than all other museums at telling stories or because it only has one story to tell. It’s because its visitors all share one very powerful question.

In searching my mental archives of exhibitions that have held meaning for me over the years, I found this central element of a “universally human” question to be a common thread. The title of this blog pokes a bit of fun at how dinosaurs are crowd-pleasers and the ultimate museum fail-safe. But dinosaurs fit this pattern too. Who hasn’t held a question, at some point in their lives, about what the world was like before humans or what other great beings exist(ed) besides us?

Another example, the recent Wonder exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum tapped into the question of why do we seek, wonder, and marvel at things beyond ourselves. In visiting the exhibition, I found a place and time to meditate on the question I had previously only experienced as a fleeting curiosity. Each new artwork and gallery challenged and expanded the theories that I had built in the one before.

I’m not sure whether this idea holds value for museums. Many already theme their exhibitions around questions. However, I’d argue that it’s less common for these questions to be relevant to all visitors (contributing to systemic exclusion of undervalued audiences). It’s also less common for orgs to choose these questions because visitors are already asking them. Often the opposite is true; exhibition developers hope to open visitors’ minds to new ideas and enable them to ask deeper, more informed questions. All of that in consideration, maybe visitor research would reveal there are no such questions that everyone asks, and my own biases distort my perspective on the universality of the questions I listed as examples here.

What I can surmise at a personal level is that the most memorable exhibitions I’ve seen aren’t the ones that have told me stories, or taught me things, or inspired me to ask new questions. They’re the ones that let me enter and leave with the same question, but provided a well-stocked sanctuary for asking it again.

When Free Admission Fails: Try “Social” Entry Fees?

October 6, 2016 by Cait Leave a Comment

A Brown Girls Museum Blog post by Amanda Figueroa recently inspired me. In it, Figueroa questions why she gets free museum access with her Harvard student ID. Admission costs are often the n^th paper cut for people of color. Privileging visitors who have higher education and elite affiliations, Figueroa observes, raises additional barriers.

Data from museums that have waived their admission fees reveal even more complications. Opposite from their usual intention, free-admission days have been found to attract routine museum audiences instead of underserved ones.

It’s no surprise that eliminating entry fees failed to dismantle other barriers preventing inclusion. Yet I am curious about whether pricing models can be reimagined to engage target audiences better than free days.

Common pricing models promote attendance by favoring social relationships. Children get discounts so that families can afford to visit together. Many museums hope that students receiving discounts will generate buzz and bring their friends. The Art Institute of Chicago’s student membership, for example, includes admission for a guest.

This raises a few questions:

Can cultural organizations make paying, or not paying, for admission a rewarding, social experience?
Can organizations create groupings that target their audiences better than conventional groups (like students)?
Can museums use discounts in a way that entertains individuals, gives them confidence that they and their social groups are wanted, and excites them to involve their groups?

Here are some ideas of what this could look like:

“Neighborhood days” with free/discounted admission for residents of certain areas.
Free/discounted admission for people with certain traits or stuff (e.g. anyone named “Michael,” anyone who shows a copy of an old family recipe, etc.) and their guests. The Charles M. Schulz Museum, for instance, offers free admission to redheads on Valentine’s Day.
Free admission for a raffle winner and half-price admission for up to five guests.
Tickets that teachers can award students, and a reward (such as a private tour) for the student’s family when they visit.

As the data about free admission days suggests, revising admission prices will have small, if any, impacts on inclusion. Adjusting such a specific area of institutional practice will not produce organization-wide changes. Where experiential entry fees may help, however, is in shifting mindsets around whom museums involve and how. Cultural organizations now know that extending a free invitation for whomever accepts doesn’t work. Maybe refocusing attention on the relationships underserved patrons have with each other can be a step toward shaping spaces that they can enjoy together.

I want to hear what you think. What do you see as limitations of rethinking admission prices? What can cultural organizations do to make the price of admission more equitable?