It’s probably not hyperbole to say that digital photography has completely transformed our relationship with images. We are prodigious producers of visual imagery as much as we are voracious consumers of them. Today photos can be taken on a whim – no longer do we have to choose carefully what to photograph so we don’t run out of film. Nor do we have to wait to finish the roll and have the photos processed. Thanks to cameraphones, we pretty much have a camera handy at all times, and are able to share them online in an instant.
As a general rule, photography was not allowed in the special exhibitions at the American museums I visited (as opposed to the permanent galleries). The notable exception (which is where this was snapped) was at an Art of Video Games exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. I would have thought IP and copyright (the standard rationale behind ‘no photographs’ rules) would have been a greater issue with game design than with most art exhibitions. Or perhaps this was a concession to the likely target audience of this exhibition? Make of it what you will . . .
The ubiquitous nature of photography has inevitably influenced museum visits and visitor behaviour. When I was in the US I noticed that most of the larger institutions permitted photography in most galleries, although there are still some seemingly arbitrary rules about this (as I have noted previously and in the image caption above).
Observing what visitors photograph is thus an expanding area of enquiry. It gives a different insight into what visitors think is interesting, important, or otherwise worth documenting about their visit (see Susan Cross’ blog post on holiday snappers). I know of at least one PhD project that is using visitor photography as a primary data source, and I’ve also heard of museums mining Flickr to see what pictures of their museum people are posting online.
People line up to photograph Dorothy’s red shoes from the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.The Hope Diamond attracts the camera-toting crowds at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.Sometimes the camera can go where the eyes cannot – notice the person on the right holding their camera aloft to get a glimpse of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” through the crowds (at MoMA).
As well as noting what objects are the photographic ‘superstars’ in a museum, it’s also interesting to look at where (and how) people include themselves in the picture.
Two teenage girls take a ‘selfie’ at MoMA. As far as I can tell, they were posing in front of a window (presumably with an interesting view) rather than any specific object.At first I thought it was odd that this woman was listening to an audiotour with her back to the artwork . . . until I realised she was posing for a photo!People posing to be photographed next to the Moai at the American Museum of Natural History. I have since found out that the Moai was a character in the movie “Night at the Museum”. Whether the object’s popularity as a photo opp has changed as a result of this I can only speculate . . .
It seems that posing next to the objects is an important way for visitors to reaffirm to themselves and to others that yes, they were there.
A mother takes a photo of two very young children in front of the Egyptian tomb at the Met. They might be too young to remember this visit, but later they will be able to look back and see they were there. Will it help jog any early, formative memories in them I wonder?
Where it is permitted, photography clearly has a marked impact on visitor behaviour and the visitor experience. What are the implications? Does photographing the objects (and being photographed next to them) become more important than experiencing the object first hand? Do photographers get priority over non-photographers in getting unfettered visual access to objects? (Social norms dictate we get out of the way of a person lining up to take a photo in a way we don’t when someone is simply just looking.) What are the overall impacts and does it matter?
I borrow the title of this post from Francis Fukuyama, who famously (if rather prematurely) declared the “End of History” some 20 years ago. While I’m not going to make such bold proclamations here, I do want to be a little provocative and ask: has the heritage ‘industry’ planted the seeds of its own demise?
First a little background: at the Museums Australia conference a couple of weeks ago, several presentations reinforced the notion that heritage is both a process of preservationand of creation. However, it strikes me that the former is sometimes privileged at the expense of the latter. Indeed, we can become so preoccupied with preserving the cultural legacy of our forebears that we forget that we too have the opportunity (perhaps even duty) to create our own legacy as well.
One of the conference keynote speakers, Victor Steffenson (from Mulong Productions) spoke of his work using film-making to document Indigenous knowledge and cultural practices. In a later panel discussion, he talked about how he wants to dispel assumptions that Indigenous culture is a static relic of the past. He described working with Aboriginal youth who said that they could no longer perform corroborees because their traditional dances had been lost. To which Victor’s reply was: “why not make new ones?” In other words, while preservation of traditional Indigenous culture is important (and an important part of Victor’s film work), it should not subsume the ongoing evolution of that culture as a creative process.
This got me thinking about the balance of preservation and creation in heritage more broadly. Look at any ancient city or old building and what you see is a palimpsest – the ongoing destruction, creation and restoration is what gives these sites their historical richness. However, this overwriting of one layer of history by another is often put to a stop in the name of ‘heritage’ – no more layers will be added to the palimpsest.
One of the first heritage sites I worked on was a Grade I listed building in Lincolnshire, which had been constructed in the latter part of the 14th century. Over the course of the building’s history it had served as the headquarters of a Hanseatic guild, a town hall, a court house, a council chamber and finally a local museum. A point about that last incarnation: over the years I’ve observed that ‘turn it into a museum’ is the fate of many heritage buildings – sometimes because it is a logical adaptive re-use, but too often because there is no other viable use for the building in its present state, and given its heritage listing it can’t be adapted for anything else, so ‘turning it into a museum’ becomes the default (and sometimes uncomfortable) compromise. But how many heritage buildings can realistically be preserved as museums?
From my (admittedly non-expert) perspective, it appears our shift to a focus on preservation is a consequence of events of the mid 20th century. In Europe, two world wars had wreacked destruction on an unprecedented scale. The reconstruction (and in Australia, post-war boom) of the 1950s and 1960s was then heavily influenced by the harsh, minimalist aesthetic of modernism. Modernism didn’t quite work out as planned: designs intended to make built spaces work like efficient machines ended up being hostile environments that invited crime. Furthermore, it didn’t age well, and many buildings from this era are reviled as eyesores. At some point, it seems we collectively proclaimed ‘never again’ to such follies and decided we had to be much more careful about using the bulldozer in future. This is not necessarily a bad thing. That is, unless preservation becomes paralysis.
I see this paralysis in action (if that’s not an oxymoron!) in my home town of Adelaide on a regular basis. In the Australian context, Adelaide is distinctive in that it was a planned settlement from the outset. The city plan as set out by chief surveyor Colonel William Light is considered one of our most significant cultural assets. And it is. However I get frustrated by those who seem to be more preoccupied by the letter, rather than the spirit, of Light’s plan. Light and his counterparts were progressives of their era; they were adapting new philosophies and approaches to urban planning and design. In contrast, new developments in 21st century Adelaide are often passionately resisted by preservation lobbies. Proposals frequently spend protracted periods in planning limbo (for as long as decades in some instances). Meanwhile, empty sites become dustbowls and heritage buildings lay empty as they cannot be adapted for contemporary use. This ‘heritage for heritage’s sake’ approach does not seem to serve anyone, and taken to its logical conclusion would turn the city into a museum of itself. And this is what I mean by the ‘end of heritage’. It is when the desire to preserve tips over to become the fear of creation.
I see signs of the pendulum swinging back, and perhaps a more pragmatic approach to adaptive re-use of heritage buildings (after all, their preservation is only sustainable if an economically-viable use for them can be found). There is also potential for a greater role for interpretation here too (but that’s a whole different subject).
Yes we should preserve and restore. But let’s not forget that we can adapt and create as well.
Have you ever wondered how it is that so many of your visitors miss a prominent sign or installation – after all it’s in plain sight, right by the entrance? Chances are it’s in the Transition Zone.
Transition Zones were identified by Underhill [1] (see previous post on Underhill here) in his observational studies of retail spaces. When people first enter a store, they can be seen going through a reorientation and refocusing period – adjusting to their new environment, working out where to go next, and so on. In these few metres they are passing through the Transition Zone. In the Transition Zone, people are focused on where they are going, not where they are. Their immediate surroundings are, in effect, invisible to them.
I was reminded of the Transition Zone this week, as I am reading a doctoral thesis by Janine Fenton Sager [2], who applied Underhill’s methods to contemporary art exhibition spaces. Not surprisingly, the same Transition Zone effect applies – both at the entrance to museums as well as to individual exhibition spaces where there is a new environment and/or new topic to adjust to.
The South Australian Museum’s main entrance is a fairly typical example:
The main entrance atrium of the South Australian Museum. Visitors enter this space through a set of automated glass sliding doors, and pass through the second set before entering the entrance lobby proper.
I had discussions with the Museum about the use of this atrium space about a year or so ago, not long after I had read about Underhill’s Transition Zones. While I have not spent a lot of time observing how this particular space is used, the Transition Zone concept would suggest that most visitors have psychologically ‘exited’ the atrium pretty much as soon as they have entered it. They can see the information desk and key decision points in the main lobby beyond (the shop, cafe and galleries all fan off this lobby), and are probably already thinking about where they might go first. Consequently I advised the museum to keep this space minimal, and that any signage in this space would be as good as invisible to most visitors, at least on their way in to the museum. (I notice some brochure racks have crept in since then, and I wonder how well and at what stage of the visit they are used . . . perhaps they are picked up on exiting?)
The large iron meteorite on display in here is an interesting one – it’s an impressive object and possibly sufficiently unusual that visitors may be stopped by it. However it may be more readily noticed on the way out than the way in, and I also wonder what role children play in whether the meteorite is noticed and stopped at. (I suspect children are less susceptible to Transition Zone effects but I’m not sure if this has actually been studied or observed).
These nuances aside, the lesson here is not to position important orientation or introductory signage right by the entrance – it’s too close to the Transition Zone and will end up being missed by the majority of your visitors.
[1] Underhill, P. (1999). Why we buy – the science of shopping. New York: Simon & Schuster.
[2] Sager, J. F. (2008). The Contemporary Visual Art Audience: Space, Time and a Sideways Glance (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis). University of Western Sydney.
Last week was the Museums Australia National Conference in Adelaide. As one of the organisers, there is a sense of relief in being able to say that the week went off without any major hitches.
I have to say that I was pleased with the overall result – in particular we had put some considerable thought and care into the way that we combined the keynote speakers in the program, and from where I was standing this went well (even better than expected in some instances!). We also tried some different session formats, inevitably with some being more successful than others. You learn, you refine, you improve.
However, because I was so close to proceedings, it’s a little hard to give a critical reflection on the presentations and discussions that took place. So it’s a good thing there are plenty of other people who can do that for me! I was impressed by the number of delegates who contributed to the life of the conference through social media, particularly via the conference’s #masa2012 Twitter hashtag. Looking at how the Twitter activity has matured over the past three Museums Australia conferences is a good case study in how more and more people are starting to ‘get’ social media.
So rather than a comprehensive conference wrap from me, I’ll compile links to the tweets, blogs and photostreams of others. I hope this will give a good picture of the week’s proceedings. Here’s what I’ve found so far, and let me know if I’ve missed something out:
Tweets
There was good activity and conversations on Twitter. Suse Cairns (known in the twitterverse as @shineslike) kindly agreed to compile Storify of the tweets to the #masa2012 hashtag. It was great to see a lot of different people using twitter to contribute and converse (in previous years it has either been slow to get going, or otherwise dominated by a handful of accounts which may have discouraged newcomers from contributing).
There are plans afoot to share as many conference slides as possible via a conference Slideshare page – I’ll update with further details as and when this takes shape. I also presented a paper (with Jenny Parsons), a snapshot (just me), and a workshop (with Katherine Sutcliffe) during the conference’s parallel sessions. These presentations have already been uploaded to Slideshare:
I was also interviewed by one of the delegates for a podcast, listening to which made me realise how fast I can talk sometimes! (I come in at about 1:30)
The blood donation centre in the city has recently moved to a new location, and this morning was my first visit to the new site. I knew roughly where it was (in one of the city centre arcades), but wasn’t sure of its exact location. I needn’t have worried.
As soon as I walked into the arcade, there was clear signage (both at height and on the floor) that confirmed that I was in the right place and headed in the right direction.
Floor stickers and a large overhead banner point directing you to the new donor centre.
The floor signage repeats on both sides along the full length of the arcade – important for busy times of day when crowds will obscure at least some of these.
More floor signage – I’m still heading the right way!
This continues until you reach the entrance of the facility – it’s clearly signposted and the large clear facade welcomes you to enter:
The entrance to the new Blood Donor Centre. Clear signage and a sense of arrival.
The net effect of this is that I arrived to my donation appointment on time, and in a relaxed frame of mind. Although I find blood donation trouble free, it’s still not something you want to arrive stressed at!
Inside the centre itself there are large graphic murals of different people who have benefited from blood donation as well as signage that explains the donation process and what your blood might end up getting used for. (I’ve avoided taking photos inside to respect the privacy of my fellow donors.) There were some nice touches here, although I was struck by the lack of ethnic diversity in the featured donation recipients.
This amount of signage probably won’t be around forever, as people get used to the new location. But at the moment it’s a great case study of how to get people to your door without stress, fuss or confusion.
The diorama, typically comprising “preserved organisms and painted or modelled landscapes” (Tunnicliffe and Scheersoi, 2010, p. 187), has been a mainstay of Natural History museums for well over a century. While they are often much maligned as old fashioned by many museum professionals, they continue to be popular with visitors and can be valuable learning tools (Tunnicliffe and Scheersoi, 2010).
My recent visit to the US as well as my own research have got me wondering about the essential ingredients of ‘diorama-ness’. What would a psychological schema of a diorama be from a visitor’s perspective? When does a diorama stop being a diorama?
I would suggest that the displays at the American Museum of Natural History would be the closest to the traditional diorama archetype.
Diorama at the American Museum of Natural History, New York. There is relatively little interpretation beyond the description of the region it depicts.
Traditional dioramas attempt to re-create a naturalistic setting as closely as possible. The back wall of the diorama is often curved to enhance the effect of a foreground and a horizon:
The sand in the foreground and the painted background merge together to create a distant horizon
The dioramas are the principal focus of the exhibition, with the surrounding areas kept in relative darkness:
View into the African Dioramas in the American Museum of Natural HIstory
By contrast, the mammals displays in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History take a different approach. Rather than a sequence of identically sized and evenly spaced dioramas, the space is more open and varied in height and scale:
A general overview of the Mammals area in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History
While backdrops are still used to evoke a habitat or setting, there is no attempt to make these look realistic. Rather, the multiple layering of two-dimensional images gave a ‘picturebook’ feel to the displays:
Picturebook dioramas – the animals’ habitat is eluded to rather than directly represented
The Smithsonian displays also sometimes showed multiple levels of the same scene, something I don’t recall seeing in the AMNH dioramas. For instance some dioramas included peepholes to see creatures hiding below ground:
Peep-hole displays showing life above and below ground. The label in the foreground asks “What does this coyote smell?” A beaver hides beneath.
While I’m happy to consider these displays as a version of a diorama, I wonder if other visitors’ interpretation is as flexible. Consider the Biodiversity Gallery at my research site, the South Australian Museum:
A view of the South Australian Biodiversity Gallery. Interpretation is via touchscreen rather than traditional labels.
As with the Smithsonian, these displays are a variation of the diorama archetype. While the displays have quite realistic foregrounds, these are set against a simple blue background:
A desert diorama. The blue is evocative of the clear blue skies of inland Australia, although this link is not made explicit.
Beyond the dioramas, there is further use of design to evoke the habitat – in the forests area, lighting combines with a ceiling feature to create an arboreal feel to the space:
The forests area of the SA Biodiversity Gallery
However, this effect is subtle for those not attuned to seeking out design features. It was not explicitly mentioned by most visitors who I accompanied through this space, suggesting they either didn’t notice it because their attention was absorbed by the displays themselves, or they didn’t think it was worth mentioning. (Some noticed a change in the feel of the space but couldn’t quite put their finger on what was different.)
Design concerns aside, do the displays in the Biodiversity gallery count as dioramas? In the words of one of my research participants:
It’s not even a proper diorama, because the background’s missing. . . .
Further probing revealed that the painted background on a curved background (creating the artificial horizon) was an essential part of the diorama ‘schema’ for this visitor. However she continued to use the word ‘diorama’ to describe the displays, presumably in the absence of a more appropriate word.
What are the essential ingredients of a diorama to you?
Reference: Tunnicliffe, S. D., & Scheersoi, A. (2010). Natural History Dioramas: Dusty Relics or Essential Tools for Biology Learning? In Anastasia Filippoupoliti (Ed.), Science Exhibitions: Communication and Evaluation (pp. 186-216). Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc.
Everyone remembers what they were doing on September 11, 2001.
At the time I was living in the UK. I was working on a project in rural Lincolnshire and spent that afternoon in some long (and frankly rather tedious) meetings, oblivious to what was unfolding on the other side of the Atlantic. At the end of the day, my colleague went to pick up our car from where we had parked it down the road. I waited on the narrow street with our clients, making small talk. It seemed to take an unusually long while for my colleague to show up – we were in an English market town and it was hardly rush hour – but eventually the car pulled up. He got out with a look of shock on his face. “Sorry – I was listening to the radio and missed the turning. Some planes have flown into the World Trade Center in New York and the towers have collapsed.”
We made the two hour journey home in near silence, listening to the news on BBC Radio as we let what had happened sink in. It was too soon to know whether our worst fears were irrational or a harbinger of what was to come. As we speculated as to what would happen next, and how the USA, a wounded military giant, would respond, I suddenly felt a long way away from home indeed.
Fast forward 11 years to today. Yes the world has changed, although perhaps not to the extent of my darkest fears that day. We have adjusted to the ‘new normal’ of heightened security with grim resignation. The ‘war on terror’ continues, but it has faded to the background of most people’s day to day lives. A new tower is reaching skywards above Ground Zero.
The Freedom Tower under construction
I imagine there has been much reflection, discussion and debate in the US about how to record and interpret such a significant historic event, particularly since it is such a painfully recent chapter. What objects should be preserved, how should they be interpreted – and who decides?
On my travels to the US I saw objects salvaged from the wreckage of the towers in several places, including the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Newseum, the New York Public Library, and a visitor centre right near the current 9/11 memorial (the museum on the memorial site is not yet opened).
One of the memorial fountains, in the footprint of the former South Tower of the World Trade Center. The museum will eventually be located in the building to the left.
The 9/11 memorial site is open to the public and free, although for the moment you need a timed ticket to enter because the surrounding area is still a building site. In the footprint of each of the buildings are enormous fountains, surrounded by the names of those who perished in the towers (as well as the Pentagon, Flight 93, and the victims of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center). Rather than an alphabetical listing, people are grouped by flight crew or workplace. This juxtaposition of friends and colleagues, developed in consultation with next of kin and survivors, is a unique characteristic of the memorial.
For me, the most poignant part of the memorial site was the ‘survival tree’ – this tree was originally on the WTC site and miraculously survived the collapse of the adjacent buildings. It was removed, rehabilitated and now reinstated in the memorial site where it is gradually reestablishing itself. To me it was a symbol of continuity; the resilience of nature in the face of destructive forces unleashed by humanity.
The Survival Tree
In a museum setting, it’s a very different experience encountering objects from an event that you vividly remember, compared to something that’s safely abstracted in the past. As well as the twisted girders, plane parts and dust, there were displays that had a distinctly chilling edge:
Cell phones and pagers that kept ringing from the Ground Zero wreckage. (Display at the Newseum, Washington DC)
Another thing that sticks in my mind from this experience was the realisation that one person’s vivid memory is another one’s history. When I was in the 9/11 exhibition in the Newseum, there was a another woman about my age with a couple of children in tow. They would have been about 10 or 11 years of age. While I quietly pondered the wreckage on display, I overheard her explain to her children what we were looking at – that once there were these bad men in planes, they flew into buildings, the buildings collapsed, and so on. I was struck by the fact that there is now a generation that is (just about) old enough to understand what happened, but too young to remember. 9/11 is probably as remote a concept to them as the World War II air raids over Britain are to me.
And so it goes – soon enough I won’t be able to say that everyone remembers what they were doing on September 11, 2001.
Both The Met and the American Museum of Natural History have displays of objects from the Pacific region. What I found interesting were the similarities and differences between the two display approaches – in one museum the objects are presented as works of ‘art’, whereas in the other they are presented as ‘artefacts’ of culture.
An overview of the Oceania gallery in The Met.The Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples in AMNH
The AMNH exhibition looks considerably older than the display at the Met, and the one in the Met is definitely lighter, more airy and spacious – both in respect to the space itself and the density of objects on display. But there are similarities in the colour palette used in both with the dominance of a light, slightly grey blue (ignoring the red-earth inspired colour scheme of the Australian display to the right of the AMNH picture above).
AMNH display cases – a more traditional approachDisplays at the Met – more open and with a greater attention to the aesthetic.
Of the art museums I visited in the United States, The Met was the only one to have dedicated any appreciable space to art from the Pacific region. It turned out there was a reason for this. The Met had acquired the collection of the erstwhile “Museum of Primitive Art” that had been founded by Nelson Rockefeller in association with Rene d’Harnoncourt in 1957. (The museum closed in 1974). These items were part of this so-called “primitive art” collection, along with items from Africa and the Americas. This term betrays a cultural legacy that gave me pause to ponder.
Plaque on display at The MetCoincidentally, I’ve been reading about Rene d’Harnoncourt’s influence on exhibition design in a recent article[1]. He was director of MoMA from 1949-1967, and in the 1940s was responsible for taking new approaches to display of art, in particular items from the Pacific. He introduced varied colour schemes, theatrical lighting and a decluttered approach to case layouts in a way that both borrowed from and influenced shop window displays. His work was influential in positioning such objects as works of art, rather than just ‘ethnographic curiosities’. He was also interested in creating a market for Pacific art.
Meanwhile, over on the other side of Central Park, the AMNH takes a more anthropological view of its collections. Rather than works of art, the same sorts of objects are shown as representative of a culture. In these displays, the purpose is more to show the ‘archetype’ objects rather than the more pure aesthetic approach of the art museum, even if the objects are pretty similar to untrained eyes such as mine.
AMNH grapples with its own historical legacies in the way that it depicts ‘other’ (i.e., non-Western) cultures. Some of the displays seemed anachronistic in their depictions and terminology. They are presumably products of their time and I can’t imagine displays such as these being conceived today.
A human diorama of ‘pygmies’ in the AMNH
There was something about this that range a vague bell at the time, and later I realised I was recalling Bal’s 1992 critique [2] of the AMNH’s ethnographic displays and the historic cultural assumptions upon which they were based. While that paper is now two decades old, it looks like many of the displays described in that paper haven’t changed radically in the intervening period. It was interesting to re-read the article, now having some knowledge of the spaces it describes.
[1] Foster, R. J. (2012). Art/Artefact/Commodity: Installation design and the exhibition of Oceanic things at two New York museums in the 1940s. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 23(2), 129–157. doi:10.1111/j.1757-6547.2012.00178.x
Last week I went to the Australasian Evaluation Society’s conference – mainly because it was happening on my doorstep. Another draw was that Michael Quinn Patton (who needs no introduction to anyone who has done a research methods course) was delivering one of the keynotes. At first I was disappointed when I learned that this keynote was via videolink, but in this instance it worked well, if not quite the same as being in the same room.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the conference, because I’m not sure I can really lay claim to the title ‘evaluator’. But since evaluation spans such broad areas – public policy, health, international development, education and indigenous programs to name just a few – I wasn’t obviously out of place. Having said that, there was still some unfamiliar terminology and assumed knowledge among the delegates that had me reaching for Google later on.
I’ve compiled a storify of conference tweets which serves as a good overview. While most of the sessions were not directly related to my research, it was interesting to get some different perspectives on theories and methodologies, and see where the commonalities were. I also met some interesting people and gained a different perspective on how my skills could be used in my life post-PhD.
Yes, yes, I know – I visited some of America’s most popular museums at the height of summer. If there was one thing I was going to have to contend with, it was crowds.
Crowds at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, attempt to catch a glimpse of ‘The Starry Night’ by Van Gogh
For those museums that are not at the top of every summer holidaymaker’s ‘must see’ list, the issue of too many people probably sounds like a happy problem to have. But not necessarily. The summer high season may well bring in valuable income, but all that crowding and queuing can lead to a less-than-satisfactory visitor experience – not to mention the maintenance costs associated with having hundreds of thousands of feet and fingers interacting with your building and your exhibits.
Now I should point out that I’m not very good with crowds and I’m an impatient queuer. Being short means I find it hard to navigate large numbers of people because my head is at shoulder height of many of the people around me. This physical characteristic combines with the psychological uncertainty that makes waiting in line torture at the best of times. In these circumstances I guess it was inevitable that some museums would have me in a twitching, toe tapping mess before I even crossed the lobby. At some point I decided to put this enforced waiting time to good use, and notice how well site signage was working under these very trying conditions.
Multiple desks, multiple lines, multiple signs
I arrived at the American Museum of Natural History just before opening time, and a fair few number of people had already begun to congregate on the front steps. The first bottleneck was having to clear security (In more or less every American museum there was security screening of some sort as you entered. An unfortunate sign of the times.). The next step was then to work out which ticket line was the right one to join. AMNH is one of the venues in the New York City Pass scheme (excellent value btw), which is meant to give you express entry although is sufficiently popular that in many cases it just means you get to join a shorter queue rather than walking right in. Security guards directed us to the right, and immediately to the right was a desk. But this wasn’t the right desk (still not quite sure what that desk was but the people behind it gave us vague onward directions), and it was a bit of a challenge to find where the right queue was and where it started.
The lobby of AMNH shortly after opening time. The green banner shows where the front of the line is, but where is the back?
As it turned out, the back of the queue was marked, clearly enough, by one of those standard signs you fit to tensabarriers. The problem is, there were sufficient number of people that this sign was obscured by people the majority of the time.
Ah – the back of the queue! It took a while for this sign to become visible among the throngs.
It really needed to be positioned a lot further back into the lobby than it was, or be reinforced by additional signage closer to the entrance. I encountered this issue on more than one occasion, where tensabarrier signs were positioned in such a way that they were obscured by people as the crowd overflowed beyond the anticipated area.
Now as I said at the outset, I was visiting in peak periods when visitor management strategies were being tested to their limit. So I don’t want to come across as too nit-picky about this (and I don’t mean to single out AMNH either). However, with that number of people arriving all at once, even the slightest bit of ambiguity or confusion is likely to make the bottlenecks even worse. So for me it was a reminder that our signage strategies and visitor sight lines should be tested under all circumstances – what makes sense in the relatively calm periods when we often plan signage may be far less obvious at peak times.
