A few more notes, comments and observations from the MA2010 conference (see the first chapter here):
Audiences are hungry for new perspectives: Kate Spinks from the Victoria Police Museum gave a presentation on their new exhibition “Ambush”, about the Kelly gang’s attack on a group of policemen at Stringybark Creek. This exhibition interprets the incident from the perspective of the police, drawing upon the recollections of the one policeman who survived the attack. Kate reported that visitors welcomed these new perspectives and points of view – they know that the romanticised tales of the Kelly gang are not the whole story, and are keen to hear the other side.
Customer service benchmarks are continually moving: Melbourne Museum has recently started selling tickets online for major exhibitions like Pompeii (2009) and Titanic (2010). The proportion of online presales is steadily increasing, as are customer expectations regarding the extent and quality of the online purchasing experience. Many people now view the ability to buy tickets online, etc. as a basic level of service, not an added extra.
Watch your language: when visitors use words like ‘interactive’, they don’t necessarily mean what we think. They might mean ‘immersive’ or the ability to get up close to an exhibit. We can’t assume we know the meaning of the terminology that visitors use in interviews. Drawing from her PhD research, Dr Tiina Roppola from the University of Canberra gave out some useful tips for interviewing visitors and drawing out from them what they mean in their own words.
Museum by popular demand: Lindsay Richardson from the 6th Floor Museum in Dallas, TX presented at the conference as part of the MA Historians’ network’s global curator exchange. The ‘6th Floor’ refers to the floor of the Texas Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy. A museum arose at the assassination site ‘by accident’ – originally the municipality wanted to gloss over this chapter of its history, but the public wouldn’t let that happen. Thus the museum opened in 1989, originally intended just as a temporary exhibition to placate the thousands of visitors who made the pilgrimage to the site. However a huge visitor spike (500,000 people) in the year after the ‘JFK’ movie (1990-1991) was the catalyst for the museum gradually gaining permanence and building up a collection pertaining to the assassination’s aftermath (items relating to the assassination itself are more problematic, given they are criminal evidence).
“Dumb blondes of the art world”: David McFadden, Director of the Museum of Art and Design, said this is how craft was often dismissed by the fine arts fraternity. But he described the ‘blur zone’, where the hierarchies and boundaries between art, craft and design are being blurred and eliminated. (Incidentally, David said that 48% of his museum’s collection is by female artists, in comparison to other art museums where the percentage barely gets above single figures . . .)
These tidbits just keep leaping out of my conference notebook – more to come in another installation . . .
One of my favourite sessions from last week’s MA National Conference (see also here) was the ‘Exhibition Critique’ session. This was a thought-provoking peer review of an exhibition, bringing together designers, curators and a panel of expert reviewers to discuss the exhibition from the perspective of both the design challenges and the resulting visitor experience.
The subject of this year’s critique was Screenworlds, the permanent exhibition at ACMI which opened in September 2009.
"Emergence" section of Screenworlds (from ACMI's website)
I’d visited this exhibition not long after it opened, albeit a quick streak through at the tail end of a lightning trip to Melbourne. So I was familiar with the exhibition, but nearly 12 months down the track, was relying on the lasting impressions I had rather than any immediate recollections (probably not a bad starting point really).
The session kicked off with the ACMI team, led by Michael Parry, giving a brief overview of the exhibition’s history, processes and challenges, along with some visitor feedback they’d collected. (This bit was done while the exhibit reviewers were out of the room, so that it could not affect their critiques later in the session). Michael elaborated on some of this at a later conference session, and I’ll summarise the salient points from both sessions here:
ACMI had a difficult first few years, tied in with some of the early teething problems of Federation Square. ACMI hosted numerous temporary exhibitions, but there was no consistent offer. So Screenworlds was unusual in that it was an exhibition conceived to solve a problem.
The Design and Content Development processes were conducted in parallel. The initial intention of this was to save time, however this turned out not to be the case: it often entailed considerable design re-iterations, and sometimes design decisions made early in the process created unforeseen constraints in the way the emerging content could be presented. On the other hand, the parallel process created oppourtunities and exhibits that would not have emerged if all the content decisions had been made before the designers were called in. (This resonates with my experience of contractual tensions in exhibition development process – from a Project Manager’s point of view, the more certainty there is in the project at the outset, the better. You want to limit re-designs and the time, cost and hassle they entail. But on the other hand, steering too hard down that route can stifle creative opportunities.) As Michael said, the only way around this is for all team members (in-house and consultants) to enter the process with their eyes open and ready to navigate the bumps along the road (presumably with contractual and fee structures that allow this).
By definition, the content was overwhelmingly screen-based (there are apparently some 250 screens across the exhibition!). But they couldn’t use all the content they wanted, often due to format and copyright constraints.
The content and the slightly awkwardly-shaped angular cloverleaf exhibition space both lent themselves to the exhibition being divided into three parts: Emergence (history of the development of different screen based media); Voices (how the moving image shaped Australia, and how Australians shaped the moving image – from a cultural rather than a production-process perspective); Sensation (the most interactive and immersive area, looking at commonalities between media. I think this is also the bit that includes the games lab).
The low ceiling and hard surfaces were softened using curved surfaces; these were made of bamboo and other renewable materials.
In the year since opening, some 340,000 people have visited the exhibition, roughly half from outside Melbourne. 24% of these visitors spend longer than 1.5 hours in the exhibition and there is a fair bit of repeat visitation. From visitor surveys, the main complaints they have are density and audio tracks interfering with one another (9% of visitors). The team were aware that this was going to be an issue, but one which was somewhat inherent given the content. The design solution was a self-aware compromise on this front.
At this stage, our reviewers entered the room. They were: Bryon Cunningham (Cunningham Martyn Design), Bliss Jensen (Museum Victoria) and Tim Fisher (Curator at Victorian Arts Centre). They each presented their thoughts upon visiting the exhibition.
Bryon liked the simple graphic map which was handed at the entrance – it clearly set out the space and he thought he would have found navigation difficult without it. He found the opening section (Emergence) overwhelming – a cacophony of activity and noise. But he liked to escape from it into the microcinemas (the white domes in the pictures above). He also thought there was a lot of text. Design-wise, he liked the lighting and curved shapes which he said brought welcome relief from the ubiquitous angles of Federation Square. He made an analogy to a department store – with piles of content to choose from, and mirrors to create an illusion of space.
Bliss was less confronted by the noise – in fact it drew her in and kept her moving from post to post. She liked the Australian perspective in an international context (care had been taken by the curatorial to make this Australian content neither parochial nor jingoistic). She observed that there was so much to take in on a first visit, and it took a while to focus on one thing. She started off looking methodically at each section, but soon lost stamina. Bliss also commented on some of the exhibition’s ergonomics – some of the tabletop viewfinders were positioned very low, and she wondered if the target age of the content and the ergonomic range of the exhibit were compatible in all instances (e.g. more adult-targeted content in low-positioned viewfinders). Compared to Bryon, Bliss was less taken with the physical form of the design, not feeling it was all that consistent with the curatorial messages. (Bryon apparently took the forms at face value, whereas Bliss seemingly wanted them to represent something meaningful).
Tim started out by acknowledging that as a permanent exhibition, this was ‘crying out’ to be done. But again, his critique was in the sheer density of content – was there too much stuff in this exhibition? There was much well-researched and written content, but it was cluttered and he didn’t feel there was any clear direction about where to go first. For Tim, museum fatigue set in from the outset – the sheer overwhelming density causing his attention span to wane “against my will”.
All three reviewers also spent time observing other visitors to the exhibition (indeed, Bryon prefaced his review by asking whether as exhibition ‘experts’, we are in the right place to review an exhibition compared to the general public). They all noticed generational differences in the way visitors used the exhibition – younger visitors seemed more confident in negotiating the visual and aural density (children of the information age?), and in any case, bee-lined for the games area more or less straight away.
The session then broadened out into a more open discussion between the ACMI team, the reviewers and the rest of the audience. Apparently an earlier iteration of the ‘Emergence’ exhibition had even more content. There was colour-coding of different themes in the ‘Emergence’ area, although this detail seemed to be lost on some of the reviewers (I’m starting to have my suspicions about the effectiveness of colour-coding as a visual signpost for the majority of visitors).
Over the weekend, I had another quick trip through the exhibition (cut short as it was near closing time; plus I was already a bit exhibitioned-out, fresh from the Tim Burton exhibition). Again the visual density of ‘Emergence’ struck me, but it seemed less intimidating the second time round. I don’t think I went into the microcinemas the first time (maybe they were all busy) but found them to be useful respite and a good way of delving into more detailed content.
In one of the lower-hanging microcinemas, I observed a kid who was probably no older than three confidently navigating the touchscreen interface. I wonder if our understanding of visitors in exhibitions can keep pace with the ever-increasing savvy of said visitors?
Last week was the 2010 Museums Australia National Conference – “Interesting times for Collections” – hosted by Museums Australia (Victoria) at the University of Melbourne.
About 600 delegates from across Australia, along with a few international visitors, came to hear from an impressive list of speakers including a considerable number of international keynotes.
My first instalment of highlights, notes and observations (which will be in no particular order):
Museums shouldn’t be afraid to have an opinion: Professor Richard Sandell from the University of Leicester opened proceedings with a keynote on the social role of museums from a human rights perspective. He drew upon case studies from the UK and USA showing how museums can play an important role in raising community awareness of marginalised perspectives including sensitive topics surrounding religion, sexuality and disability.
One case study clearly demonstrated that there was no such thing as a ‘neutral’ position – a single text panel in the Walt Whitman interpretive center in USA attracted simultanous protests from both gay rights groups and the Christian community, on the one hand for ‘erasing history’ and on the other for ‘implied sinfulness’. Prof. Sandell said that such controversy was not something that museums should shy away from. He went further, arguing that it was inappropriate for museums to duck controversial issues by ‘presenting all sides and letting visitors make up their minds’. In this there was an interesting parallel to Amanda Lohrey’s criticism of a lack of curatorial courage in exhibition authorship (as mentioned in a previous post).
Does Australia need a museum diet? At the other end of the conference, during the closing plenaries, museum consultant Kylie Winkworth presented a challenging paper about the ‘political and policy vacuum’ which she believes is creating a sustainability crisis for smaller and regional museums. She argued that large scale capital developments in big cities are starving smaller museums of much-needed funds for improving care of and access to collections. She also warned that collections were being amassed haphazardly and unsustainably, with no serious discussion in the sector of deacessioning as the obvious corollary to sustainable collections development.
The audience gasped when Ms Winkworth presented figures showing that Australia has 1 museum per 7,500 people, whereas in the UK and US it is 24,000 and US 17,500 respectively. There was some debate on the #ma2010conf Twitter feed as to whether such a per capita comparison was helpful, but nonetheless it was a brave and provocative presentation. I thought there was also a lot of truth to her assertion that political leaders tend to prefer something shiny and new, with all the associated ribbon-cutting and prestige, rather than adequately fund that which already exists – but then is hardly an exclusively Australian problem.
Exhibition ‘hardware’ vs ‘software’: observing a similar phenomenon, Susanna Siu from the Leisure and Cultural Services in Hong Kong confirmed that there is roughly 1 museum opening every 3 days in China at the moment. She described the current focus of museum development to be more on ‘hardware’ (i.e. statement buildings by celebrity architects) more than ‘software’ (which I took to mean collections, exhibitions and programs). I was reminded of the UK’s Millennium building boom in the late ’90s / early ’00s. How the China experience will pan out in the long run will be one to watch.
Over the coming few days I’ll go through my notes and add further posts – some sessions warrant a post all of their own so much more to come!
Today was Adelaide PARK(ing) day, where groups take over a city centre parking space and turn it into something else for a few hours.
According to the website, it started in San Francisco in 2005 and has since gone global with around 100 cities participating.
It is based on the idea that a parking space is just rented space – so if it can be occupied by a car, then why not something else? So for a few hours either side of today’s lunch hour, around a dozen city centre parking spaces were turned into art installations, outdoor design studios and miniature market gardens (including live chickens in one instance!).
Hosking Design's 'Happy Days' cutout figures
I managed to see all but one of them, which either wasn’t there or I blinked and missed it among the usual hustle-bustle of Gouger St.
Quoting the website, PARK(ing) Day is all about:
* Calling attention to the importance of urban public spaces
* Rethinking the way we use our streets
* Creating diverse conversations about design and how we make sustainable cities
JPE Design's comment wall
So how well did the parks achieve these objectives? Well based on my experiences, the most successful ones had at least two of three following ingredients:
Good Location: some sites were just better positioned than others. I had a map and systematically looked out for all of the parks, but I would have been in the minority. Most people would have stumbled across them on their lunch break. So those which were on reasonably busy thoroughfares (but not so busy that they were lost in amongst all the other goings on) seem to have the best conversations and interactions with passers by.
Something to do: those who had a way for the public to get involved somehow, for instance Hosking Design’s large cut-out figures which doubled as comment walls for people’s ideas about sustainability. (Although I think this might have worked better if it the topics for comments were bit more specific and focused – I probably wasn’t the only one who was at a loss for words when a pen was shoved in my hand). JPE’s artwork where people could map the paths they’d taken that day in lengths of string was another creative idea and primed thinking about the journeys we make.
Passionate people: parks who were staffed by energetic teams who seemed to genuinely enjoy engaging with the public, explaining what it was about, and getting passersby involved.
To get a flavour of the different parks, there is a Flickr stream on the PARKing day homepage.
(PS. I give the “sense of humour” prize to design company Enoki. Their park, entitled ‘All my friends are dead’, comprised a sole dinosaur skeleton made from large orange profile-cut pieces. There may have been a more profound story behind this installation, but unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to look too closely as there was a huge crowd of school kids lining up to get into the cinema right next to them. Wonder what they made of it?)
You know it’s never going to be good when the tax man rings.
By the time I’d fished my phone out of the bottom of my handbag (d’oh!), the call had gone to voicemail. So at 9am this morning I had an ominous message to the effect of “Could the authorised contact for the ABN xxx call the Tax Office within seven days.” Gulp.
So I dutifully called the number given and patiently waited on hold for several minutes, all the while wondering what it could be – did I win the lucky draw for an audit? Did they find out about that Grade 5 assignment that I didn’t hand in? Exactly what was I in for and how deep was I in it?
So it was a bit of a relief when they said that the reason for their call was to confirm what business category I was in. On my business registration form I’d written what I thought was a reasonable description of what I do: consultancy to museums and cultural sector; interpretive writing; so on. Problem is, that doesn’t mean nada in tax land. The subsequent discussion went something like this:
What do you do most of the time?
Well, at the moment, it’s writing.
So are you an author?
Er, no. Not in any way you’d be thinking anyway. (I was pretty careful about saying I was a creative in any way, as being in an ‘artistic’ category apparently puts you into a scary tax-related No Man’s Land which I didn’t want to get into.)
What else do you do?
Well, I’ve just been trawling through historical archives getting images and footage for a client.
So what would you call that then?
I don’t know, you tell me!
You can see where this is going, can’t you? Because what I do is such a mixed bag of things, I don’t fit neatly into pre-defined categories which are worked out by – let’s face it – Bean Counters. “Specialist Generalist” is not something they can wrap their heads around.
We ended up settling on some anodyne-sounding ‘professional services’ category. Whatever. I asked what they needed a category for, and it seemed to be mostly for statistical purposes. Fine, but if I don’t fit properly into any of the categories, I’m hardly going to help any statistical analysis am I?
So what, you ask? It’s not going to make any difference in the general scheme of things. If I keep my receipts and pay my taxes on time, no men-in-white-pinstripes are going to come and get me.
But it does get me thinking – how many of us don’t neatly fit into these boxes? My experience says – LOTS. So how useful are they? Are all these neat little categories making some people’s life a lot harder, just so it can make some other people’s lives a little easier?
And what about if those boxes were on a grant application, for something really innovative and new? Would it never get past the first round-file-filter, just because no-one could find a neat ‘box’ to put it in?
Everything you do is saying something to a visitor
But do you like what it says?
Sometimes, it is the NON-interpretive elements of a visitor experience that leave the most lasting impression – and not necessarily a good one.
In a few weeks’ time I’ll be presenting a workshop – Interpreter as Advocate – at the Interpretation Australia National Symposium in Launceston.
As part of the workshop, interpretive principles will be turned ‘inside out’ – rather than using interpretation just to engage our visitors, how can we use the same principles within our organisations to help build a better overall experience?
In advance of this, here are five top challenges to creating a coherent and compelling visitor experience.
1. Barriers: these can be either physical or virtual. Being able to provide universal physical access is the most obvious point here, but there are other aspects: clear directional signage (both to and around your site); intuitive layout of visitor services and facilities; websites which are organised according to the way your audience is likely to look for information (which is not necessarily a mirror of your management structure!)
2. Inconsistencies: does your interpretation sell a message of environmental sustainability, but your café sells drinks in polystyrene cups and your shop sells myriad plastic trinkets that are likely to be landfill before the year is out? Are your front-of-housers friendly but security staff surly? All these inconsistencies can detract from your interpretive message.
3. Blind spots & Assumptions: Your institution, and those like it, is very familiar to you. You have probably visiting such places for a lot of your life. There are certain norms and expectations which may be so obvious to you that you don’t even see them. Imagine if you’d never been to a National Park or a Museum before (and didn’t know anyone who had) – would you know what was expected of you? Would you feel comfortable or would you feel concerned that as soon as you crossed the threshold you’d break some unwritten code that would immediately flag you as an ‘outsider’? If this seems a bit weird at first, consider how you would feel going to a place where you would be a complete outsider – for instance a place of worship for an unfamiliar religion, or a social activity that is vastly outside your cultural experience– daunting, isn’t it? And that may be how some potential visitors feel about you!
4. Misalignment: this includes efforts which are not necessarily wrong, but are aimed at the wrong kind of audience. For an example from another field, consider a friend of mine who recently ordered fluorescent light bulbs from a supposedly ‘environmentally-friendly’ company. Along with her order came: “an unasked-for green bag, two shower timers and a fridge magnet.” Her verdict? Landfill! The company was undoubtedly trying to be mission-consistent, but in the case of my already-converted friend, the preaching was a waste of time and resources. In fact, it ultimately sent her a message which was the exact opposite of that intended.
5. Superfluous services: related to misalignment, this is offering benefits or services that your audience neither notices nor particularly values. It’s not a barrier to visitor engagement per se; but it can be to the extent that it diverts valuable time and resources which could be better spent elsewhere.
Have you ever encountered these examples, either in your own institution or as a visitor elsewhere? Are there others that I’ve missed out from this list?
Give me your thoughts, or better yet – come to the workshop!
Every so often, a debate goes around Science Communication circles which goes along the lines of “should we train scientists to be better communicators, or should we first find people who are natural communicators and then get them sufficiently across the science so that they can engage others?”
There are pros and cons on both sides, of course. Someone who is only a step ahead of their audience in terms of scientific knowledge can easily be caught out by a tricky audience question. They may be less comfortable deviating off a defined ‘script’ in which they know they’re on safe ground regarding the accuracy of the science.
On the other hand an expert, knowing the content inside out, will be far more confident in ad-libbing and tailoring their presentation to the audience and context.
But at the same time, an expert can be so immersed in their field that they don’t have a good idea of what sort of knowledge they can assume in a lay audience. Also, they might well be far more interested in doing the research than talking about it.
My first major exhibition project was at the National Space Centre, developing the Planets exhibition. I had a science qualification, in Biochemistry. But the exhibition included a lot of geology and physics – subjects I’d only had a passing acquaintance with in my student days.
On balance I think this was a good thing – I had enough distance from the subject that my previous knowledge wasn’t a million miles away from the target audience’s. But I had enough understanding of science in general that I was fairly confident about where I could safely generalise without oversimplifying
So what about historical subjects? Should interpreting historical sites be the sole preserve of the historically qualified?
Quite obviously, I’d contend not. My interpretation work has called for me to acquire a passing knowledge of, among other things, Medieval England, the American Revolution, World War I in the Middle East and colonial South Australia. In so doing I am coming to the subject as a curious non-expert, which is the same starting point as the average visitor. This perspective can give clarity.
But having said that, I confess that I do sometimes find myself self-censoring – asking myself if I really can make that generalisation about a certain historic period, or speculate about a historical figure’s motivations and state of mind.
My solution? Besides gaining confidence through experience, I find I can be more adventurous when I know there is an expert I can call upon to check ideas with and to ensure that a good story is not coming at the expense of the facts.
Therefore I’d say that experts vs. storytellers is not an either/or argument. The best outcomes are when they can work together creatively and collaboratively.
This is how Glenn Lowry, Director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), described his institution at a recent talk at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI).
Titled Museums in the 21st Century, Lowry presents some interesting ideas about what it means to be a modern art museum. That’s where the ‘unstable bit’ comes in. MoMA considers itself as an organisation under perpetual change: every 10-12 years or so, the building undergoes some major reconstruction, frequently in parallel with a total reconception of how the museum should operate.
To cease doing this, Lowry contends, would mean to cease being a Modern Art museum and begin being something else. They have to continually change and adapt in response to changes in the art that they collect, display and interpret.
One example: at some point in the past, the MoMA building was laid out as a linear sequence of joining galleries, like beads on a string. This works great for nice neat linear stories showing chronological developments in art history. But modern art often doesn’t fall very neatly into chronological or stylistic boxes, so the string of linear galleries was an uncomfortable fit. The current layout is more open, apparently allowing more organic juxtaposition of ideas and narratives.
There are also practical reasons to make radical changes to the building – some of the art that MoMA is procuring simply can’t fit in the current building, either due to scale or gallery configurations. But this doesn’t stop MoMA collecting what it thinks is important – it changes its building to accommodate (I marvel at an organisation that has the resources to do this!).
Lowry also made some interesting observations about how they have been changing the way that audiences interact with the art and each other in their spaces. He mentioned the MoMA’s PS1 site, an exhibitions and events space which attracts a far more youthful and diverse audience than the average MoMA audience. In fact, in recent years the overall audience demographic has changed from being 55+ and predominantly female, to around 40 with a nearly even gender split.
Yet another reason why I have to try and get to New York!
It’s not all that often that an article on museum practice shares column inches and prominence with articles on Barack Obama and female infanticide. But that’s what’s happened in the latest edition of The Monthly. In an essay entitled “The Absent Heart”, novelist Amanda Lohrey laments that “so much exhibition design is pedestrian, or worse, confused and at some times chaotic”.
The core of her criticism is the “fetishising” of the object ahead of a wider story or narrative: “I come away with the impression that our curators are more conserned about the preservation of the artefact than they are to give any account of the history that produced it. Where is the passion for meaning, for making sense of the world? Where is the desire to create an experience for the visitor?“
As someone from an interpretation background, I can find much to agree with in this quest for wider meaning. Interpretation is all about answering the question “So What?” – and for this author at least, that question has not been adequately answered.
The essay challenges a lot of shared assumptions in the museums sector, and raises some intriguing questions:
Have we reached the limits of letting people ‘make their own meanings’ in exhibition spaces? How much evidence do we have that this is a successful strategy? (And in some cases is ‘let visitors decide’ being used as a convenient fig leaf for avoiding controversy and not venturing an opinion?)
From the point of view of storytelling, how important is the ‘real’ object? Lohrey makes the point in relation to showing the size of Phar Lap’s heart: “if you are concerned with meaning then a model will do, but if you are in the market for fetishising objects as magical tokens – “the real thing” – then it seems that only the pallid tissue of the original will suffice.” Here I could easily present a counter example: the Apollo capsule in the Smithsonian would be nowhere near as compelling if it were just a model, and not the scarred and burned vehicle that safely brought three men back to Earth after an incredible journey. But all this proves is that the value of the object is completely dependent on the point you’re trying to make.
There seems to be an implicit assumption in the essay that an exhibition should follow a single specific narrative (at one point Lohrey observes that “the visitor is wandering along no clear path at all . . . “ Is this the prejudice of a novelist, whose chosen medium is by definition very linear, or is it of wider concern to visitors in general? Is it unrealistic to expect that a three-dimensional environment will easily lend itself to a single linear narrative?
In reading this article, it reminded me of a passage that really leapt out at me from the book “Thriving in the Knowledge Age” by John Falk and Beverly Sheppard (p127): ” . . .our collections bring value to the museum in direct proportion to the “knowledge” they provide. The objects do not “speak for themselves”. The intellectual value of a museum’s collections is directly tied to the use of these objects to provide answers to questions society finds valuable.”
This seems to reflect well the overall point of the article – what socially relevant questions is the display of these objects addressing?
Bottom line is that this article raises several legitimate questions, and I’m not sure how much evidence we have as a sector to properly address these questions. More research into how different audience groups relate to the exhibition environment is definitely needed.
