ExhibiTricks: A Museum/Exhibit/Design Blog

Friday, June 5, 2026

Have You Met Chloe?

By now, you may have stumbled across "Chloe VS History" in your social media feed or on YouTube.

If not, go take a look. I'll wait.

Chloe is an AI-generated avatar who "travels" through history, hanging out in pre-revolutionary Paris, dodging the eruption of Pompeii, and sneaking into the first-class section on the Titanic. She's got the vibe of a travel influencer: casual, enthusiastic, and a little amazed by everything.

The YouTube channel has racked up hundreds of thousands of subscribers and millions of views, and the videos are genuinely watchable.

The person behind Chloe is Jonathan Laramie, who also runs Majestic Studios, a history channel that hit 14 million views in 90 days using AI to bring historical scenes to life. In a recent interview, Laramie, who has no background in filmmaking, talks candidly about what separates his work from the tsunami of AI garbage: trust and accuracy in sources, genuine creative investment, and a consistent storytelling voice.

Now, before you roll your eyes and mutter something about "AI slop," I think there's something genuinely worth paying attention to here, particularly for those of us who work in history museums.

The secret sauce isn't really the AI visuals (though they're impressive). It's the perspective. Chloe works because she positions herself as a curious visitor to history, not a lecturer about it. She's learning alongside you. She reacts. She wanders. She asks the dumb-but-honest questions non-historians would ask if they felt comfortable doing so.

Sound familiar? It should. That's good interpretive design. (It's also worth noting that Laramie comes from the customer service space.)

So here's the question worth asking: what would it look like if YOUR museum used AI-generated media—not to replace human storytelling, but to model the kind of curious, visitor-centered engagement you want to spark? A short "first visit to a Colonial kitchen" clip to play at a program intro, or an AI character who "experiences" your exhibit for the first time and invites visitors to do the same?

The AI technology is accessible. The approach is already working at scale since the Chloe Channel was built by just one guy with no film training and a lot of curiosity.

The only thing missing is history institutions willing to experiment thoughtfully with accurate content, genuine curiosity, and real visitors in mind.

Chloe currently doesn't have all those advantages, but history museums do!

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Wednesday, May 27, 2026

FREE Museum Exhibit Design Resources

Who doesn't like free stuff? Here are links to some great FREE exhibit design resources from the POW! website:

The Great Big Exhibit Resource List

A constantly updated compendium of resources for museum design and exhibit fabrication (including websites and contact information.) Need to find fake food, giant sequins, or adaptive devices? Check out the GBER List! And contact me if you have a resource you think should be added to the list.

The Exhibit Cheapbooks

The idea for the Exhibit Cheapbooks started during sessions at the annual Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) Conference. The purpose was to share "cheap" exhibit ideas and create a written record of how to replicate these simple and successful exhibit components.

The four Exhibit Cheapbooks have always celebrated museums' "sharing" nature. Inside each volume, you will find varied exhibit ideas from museum colleagues around the world. Sincere thanks to everyone who has shared their ideas and expertise! Special thanks to ASTC for allowing all the Exhibit Cheapbooks material to be shared freely online.

Museum FAQ Videos

Check out these interesting and informative video conversations with museum professionals from around the world. Topics run the gamut from museum management, community engagement, digital exhibits, and more! Click the link above for the video gallery, or go directly to the POW! YouTube site.

You can also find downloadable exhibit articles and other museum exhibit design resources by clicking over to the main resource page on the POW! website.

Do you have some other great resources to share? Tell us about them in the COMMENTS Section below!

Sunday, May 17, 2026

Caps, Gowns, and Grand Openings

It's graduation season. Everywhere you look: folding chairs in gymnasium-sized rooms, proud families squinting at tiny figures crossing a stage, and someone in charge at a podium declaring that this is only the beginning.

Sound familiar?

Think about the last exhibition opening you attended. The speeches. The ribbon cutting. The board members beaming in the front row. The champagne (or, let's be honest, the warm Chardonnay in plastic cups).

Both events share the same fundamental illusion: that the hard work is "done."

It isn't, of course. The grad still has to get a job, pay rent, and figure out what they actually "do" with that degree. And your shiny new exhibition? Visitors are going to touch things they shouldn't, break things they definitely shouldn't, and completely ignore the interpretive panel you agonized over for three months.

Here's the real parallel: graduation and an exhibition opening are both "beginnings," not endings. The diploma is just a ticket to the next set of challenges. The opening night ribbon is just the starting gun.

The best museums know this. They treat "Day Two" -- when the real visitors (not the donors) show up as more important than opening night. They watch, they listen, they fix things. They iterate.

So by all means, enjoy your opening. Pop that (warm) Chardonnay. Take the group photo.

And then get back to work.

Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Every Train, A Note

Let me bring to your attention the website called Train Jazz.

Here's the premise: designer Joshua Wolk assigned a jazz instrument to every active NYC subway line, then mapped them against the MTA's open real-time transit data. Every note you hear is triggered by where an actual train is along its route. Bass, piano, sax, vibes, brushes all playing together as a kind of jazz combo.

Eight hundred trains, give or take, forming a small jazz combo that has been "playing" without pause for over a hundred years.

This is a perfect example of taking something people walk right past every day (a subway map, a stream of transit data) and making it audible in a way that suddenly reveals all the hidden rhythm underneath.

Museum folks, take note. What's the "Train Jazz" version of your collection? What data stream, what pattern of visitor movement, what overlooked system in your building is just waiting to be turned into something a visitor could hear or feel or interact with in a completely new way?

Thursday, April 23, 2026

Museum/Exhibit/Design Inspiration: "Cook This Page"

What if instructions and end product become one and the same?

Leo Burnett Toronto created fill-in-the-blank recipes printed with food-safe ink directly on cooking parchment paper for IKEA Canada's "Cook This Page" campaign.

You lay your ingredients over the illustrated outlines (sized to actual proportions, naturally), roll the whole thing up, and cook it. The recipe IS the cooking vessel. < Mind blown. >

What makes this idea inspiring for me is the way it completely collapses the distance between instruction and action. No separate recipe card to consult. No screen to smear with salmon hands. The medium and the message are literally the same object, and then you eat it.

Museum/exhibit/design folks, take note: this is exactly the kind of thinking we should be applying to interactive experiences. What if the instructions were the activity? What if the label was the exhibit? What if visitors didn't need to read about something before touching it, because the touching was already built into the reading? (I'm wondering about a hands-on science exhibit on edible paper ...)

All 12,500 parchment paper recipes for the "Cook This Page" campaign distributed across 18 Canadian IKEA locations were snatched up within hours. People grabbed those things because the format itself communicated "this will be fun and I can do this." Simply place ingredients here, roll, cook, and eat.

The other lesson worth emphasizing is that the "Cook This Page" idea went through multiple iterations: starting as dessert recipes on peel-away posters, then recipes on different cooking materials, before landing on the fill-in-the-blank parchment paper approach.

Prototyping your way to the right answer isn't just good exhibit development practice. It's apparently good marketing practice, too.

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Building LEGO Bridges (Over Ponds of Water Lilies)

I've been keeping an eye on the LEGO Art series for a while now. As someone who thinks a lot about how people engage with objects, ideas, and making things with their hands, there's a lot to appreciate in LEGO's latest collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The new LEGO Art "Claude Monet – Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies" (set #31220) was announced in February 2026, inviting builders to connect with one of Monet's most iconic works, originally painted in 1899. At $249.99 and 3,179 pieces, it's not an impulse buy, but the thinking behind this collaboration is interesting from a museum engagement standpoint.

The Translation Problem (and Solution)

The design challenge here mirrors something exhibit designers wrestle with constantly: how do you translate one kind of experience into a fundamentally different medium without losing what makes it special?

LEGO designer Stijn Oom describes how his team "meticulously created a tactile 3D surface by layering tiles and plates in both vertical and horizontal directions, mimicking the brushwork and carefully adapting Monet's subtle palette of hues within LEGO's signature color options." That's not just marketing copy; that's a genuine design constraint that required real creative problem-solving. (Oom was also the designer behind the earlier Van Gogh "Sunflowers" set.)

Even more interesting to me is that the finished LEGO build transforms with viewing distance. Individual pixels and textures are visible up close, shifting into an Impressionist landscape from afar, mirroring the nature of Monet's later works. That's the LEGO version of "pointillism," and it's a clever parallel to how Monet himself worked.

The Unexpected Elements

Here's where it gets fun for anyone who loves the creative use of everyday objects. The set uses well-known LEGO elements (including butterflies, cherries, bananas, swords, and shields) to recreate Monet's masterpiece. I love this kind of creative repurposing, and it's essentially the same spirit as reaching into a hardware store bin for an unexpected exhibit component. The constraint becomes the creativity.

The Museum Piece of the Package

What I find most interesting about this collaboration between LEGO and The Met isn't the set itself, but rather the multiple interpretive experiences built around it.

The Met is releasing a podcast hosted by European paintings curator Alison Hokanson, offering historical context and personal reflections on Monet's life, his garden, and the enduring legacy of his work. Accessible via QR code right in the instruction booklet (or via the LEGO website) it turns the building process into something closer to a guided art museum experience. That's a smart, simple approach to interpretation, meeting the audience exactly where they already are.

And then there's the in-museum activation: visitors to The Met will have the unique opportunity to get "inside" the work by posing with a life-size, 8-foot-wide immersive LEGO installation of Claude Monet’s Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies, by artist Nathan Sawaya, on view at The Met through June 2026.

Located near Gallery 819, this installation features over 60,000 bricks to promote the 3,179-piece LEGO Art set released in collaboration with the museum. A giant, climbable, photo-worthy LEGO installation inside one of the world's great art museums? That's smart audience development, especially for families and younger visitors who might otherwise find the Met's marble-clad gallery experience a little chilly.

The Met has been clear that it hopes the set will boost its efforts to bring its collection to life for kids and families.

What Museum Folks Can Learn Here

The collaboration took over a year, with LEGO designers visiting The Met to see the original painting in person rather than relying on reproductions, and Met staffers traveling to Denmark to review different iterations. That kind of genuine back-and-forth is what separates a thoughtful partnership from a licensing deal. It shows in the result.

The interpretive layers, including the booklet, the podcast, the in-museum installation, and the LEGO website, demonstrate how a single object can anchor a whole ecosystem of engagement. Most of our exhibit projects could stand to think more expansively about that multiplier effect.

And finally, the LEGO Art series as a whole has been quietly "building" a very interesting niche. The series already includes tributes to Van Gogh's "Sunflowers," "The Starry Night," and Hokusai's "The Great Wave." Creating a line of adult-oriented, hands-on making experiences that are explicitly connected to major museum collections. That's a mainstream consumer product company doing what "stuffy" museums often struggle to do -- making art history feel personal, tactile, and worth your time on a Tuesday evening.