In my last post, I was musing about whether exhibitions can sometimes leave things too open to interpretation, in the process ending up just being confusing and coming across as elitist.
In the context of this, a recent article by Pete Brown in Museum Management and Curatorship* is very illuminating. His research:
“. . . aimed to test whether [using exhibitions to provoke debate] is just an academic, post-modern indulgence that bewilders and alienates visitors, or whether it has real value for audiences.”
The article, “Us and them”, is a case study of Manchester Museum’s 2008 exhibition of the Lindow Man (a 2000 year old bog body discovered in the 1980s). The 2008 exhibition wasn’t the first time that Lindow Man had been displayed at Manchester Museum. However previous exhibitions had presented Lindow Man as an “archaeological treasure” (the ‘traditional’ interpretation) but did not explore the ethical issues surrounding the collection and display of human remains (issues which have come to the fore in more recent years). In constrast, the new exhibition sought to emphasise Lindow Man’s humanity, and speculate on his life and death rather than just treat him as purely an archaeological find:
“The key goal of the exhibition was to contextualise Lindow Man in a way that encouraged respectful reflection, inviting visitors to question the interpretation of archaeological evidence and the practice of displaying human remains in museums. The ‘post-modern’ concept sought to expose the process of development and construction, and to present various interpretations of what little evidence exists.”
Produced following extensive consultation with groups having a scientific, geographical or spiritual connection to Lindow Man, the exhibition was “poly vocal”, representing a range of viewpoints.
The exhibition design was intended to mirror the fact that that the story of the Lindow Man is incomplete and open to debate, by using finishes and materials which were deliberately left rough and unfinished.
This ‘polyvocal’ approach prompted considerable debate amongst the museum professionals involved: Was the museum abdicating its responsibility to educate the public or was it actually being more inclusive?
(This touches on similar issues to what happened when the Science Museum covered alternative medicine in one of its exhibitions – to the anger of those who expect the Museum to present only scientific authority).
The paper presents a good description of the issues museums face with respect to authority, the ownership of the ‘truth’, and the myth of ‘value-neutral’ displays. Exhibitions are products of their time and inevitably bear the fingerprints of the values and prejudices of the culture that produced them. But in this paper Brown goes a step further. Rather than just theorising about how visitors might respond to the museological shift in self awareness and self image, he presents some visitor research (something which is often sadly lacking in such debates).
Brown interviewed around 100 visitors, using a combination of Personal Meaning Mapping (PMM) and post-visit Questionnaire. Personal Meaning Mapping is an open-ended mind-mapping exercise conducted before and after an exhibition visit. It is a way of comparing visitors’ knowledge, attitudes and thoughts about an exhibition’s key idea and to see how these are affected by the exhibition experience. The questionnare collected demographic information as well as asking about visitors’ motivations for visiting the exhibition and general museum-going habits.
In the post-visit PMM exercise, nearly three quarters of visitors mentioned something to do with the exhibition’s ‘design, construction and atmosphere’. Apparently most of these comments were unfavourable – visitors missed the interpretive point of the deliberately ‘unfinished’ design and instead just saw it as tacky, incompetent and unprofessional. (Design like this presumably flies in the face of social conventions where ‘professional’ is used synonymously with ‘polished’).
But besides this observation, the PMM showed that nearly all visitors gained new knowledge, despite the non-didactic approach of the exhibition. In addition, more than half of visitors demonstrated attitudinal shifts, exploring and questioning their own assumptions about the issues raised. Going even further, many of these visitors had been inspired to delve further and find out more. However, others were clearly incensed by the approach taken and frustrated by the lack of an authoritative voice:
‘ . . . the exhibition, depending on an individual’s perspective, was seen as groundbreaking, experimental and challenging, or shoddy, lazy and unprofessional.’
Clearly, you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Brown then goes on to say “With hindsight, I think the Museum could have made the thinking behind its approach more overt. . . ”
This is the point I was getting to (admittedly a bit awkwardly) in my last post. We shouldn’t be afraid of being experimental in our approach to exhibitions, and we do need to test boundaries from time to time. But we need to also ensure we aren’t leaving our audiences behind in the process.
Alienated visitors just switch off – at which point it doesn’t matter what we say.
*Source: Brown, Pete (2011). Us and Them: who benefits from experimental exhibition making? Museum Management and Curatorship Volume 26, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 129 – 148
Regan – as always – well put. Its important to acknowledge the counter pressure that the challenges of finding funding for exhibitions can create. Its not easy to raise funds for new exhibition and in most museums there is a sense that we need to get the ‘best’ outcome for those funds. Courting a controversial approach or pushing the boat out a bit can be successful in getting an exhibition mentioned or challenging visitors to see subjects in a new way, but few museum boards are prepared to risk funds on ‘unproven’ or controversial exhibits in non-art venues.
Hi Andrew,
You raise a very good point. Many of these museological debates take place in isolation from the operational and financial realities that museums face. In the literature I rarely see acknowledged the inherent tension between the academic ambitions of museums on one hand and their market positioning as leisure destinations on the other. People *choose* to visit museums; they don’t have to. And when visitor numbers are a major part of most museums’ KPIs, the fear of alienating audiences is not a trivial concern.
Some may lament this commercial impost into museum practice, but it’s the reality we have to work with.
I’m sorry I’ve only just picked this up by chance, but I’m delighted my article has prompted some discussion.
The paradox is that museums often talk about taking risks and innovating to broaden their audiences, and are encouraged to by many funders, but when it comes to the crunch are held back by worries about losing the support of existing visitors. One interesting finding from my research into the Lindow Man exhibition was that the very things that upset some established museum-goers seemed to appeal to ‘non-traditional’ visitors, which made me wonder about the ethics of improving engagement for a new cohort at the expense of a current one. Is this just levelling the playing field? The complaints that some ‘traditionalists’ made closely echoed things I’ve heard from non-visitors in the past: it doesn’t make sense to me; I don’t know what to do; it’s not for people like me… I agree completely that you lose visitors if you confound their expectations completely, but I think there’s a lot to be said for a little creative discomfort!
Hi Pete,
Thanks for offering some further insights. I really enjoyed your article.
I find the phenomenon you describe above very interesting – it’s almost like ‘traditional’ visitors and ‘nonvisitors’ are mirror images of one another!
And it is true that it is easier to talk about taking risks than actually doing it – sometimes I think the subtext is “Yes take risks, but only if you know it’s going to be successful . . .”
I also wonder if there is a wider social point about ‘creative discomfort’ as you describe – I suspect as a society it is something we are less likely to tolerate. You can draw a parallel here to popular music and network television – anything that’s not an Instant Hit gets shelved pretty quickly nowadays. It probably trains us to think that if we don’t like something instantly, we can’t acquire a taste for it.
I think you’re right about the risk-taking paradox – everyone wants to be a successful risk-taker but no-one wants to ‘fail’! (I use inverted commas because failure and learning are so closely linked that you could argue that ‘failure’ is intrinsic to improvement). There is a tendency for many people to stick to “I know what I like and I like what I know”, partly because change is scary, and perhaps this leads to leisure attractions, broadcasters etc playing safe. However, I firmly believe that some of the most stimulating and rewarding experiences are those that surprise you or shift your perspective in some way, which is why I think it’s always worth taking a calculated risk.