Checking Up On The Exhibit Doctor

When we threw open the Exhibit Doctor's "office" on this blog last month, a familiar exhibit "ailment" was brought up by Mary Jane Taylor, Research and Evaluation Manager at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia:

"In twenty years as a museum professional, and longer as a visitor, I've never seen anyone come up with an attractive, cheap, durable and easy-to-use system of having a flip book of text or images available in an exhibit.  Solutions range from the bulky and impossible to use (thick mountings for pages with heavy-duty grommets and rings) to ugly, disposable three-ring binders from Staples.

"Notebooks" of source material, photographs, and diagrams are a basic in all kinds of museums, so it seems like a problem that somebody should be able to solve!"


I'm happy to report that I received some excellent suggestions regarding Mary Jane's query from ExhibiTricks readers.

Several folks suggested high-tech solutions such as the wonderful Spin Browser from Technofrolics  --- which would completely eliminate dog-eared pages!  (Is there an iPad app for this sort of museum application?)

But I think something gets lost when you replace tactile objects, especially books, ledgers, and journals with digital facsimiles.  It's a bit like "pictures under glass" to borrow a phrase from Bret Victor's excellent rant on the future of interaction design.  But I digress.

In the low-tech realm, I immediately thought of the clever "page and rod" design first developed by Jay Erickson from the Minnesota Historical Society.  Basically you laminate each label/document page and then carefully clear tape one page edge to a 1/8-inch stainless welding rod, cut to size.  The collection of rod/page assemblies then are captured in wooden (or plastic) "end caps" with large cylindrical depressions drilled into them.  I recently saw some "flip pages" using this method in an exhibition at the Connecticut Historical Society (pictured below.)

Flipping pages

Close up of one "end cap"

Ken Dickson offered up a few clever industrial-type solutions to consider.  The first is a rotating, changeable system called the SHERPA Carousel

and the second, the Master View system

It looks like both of these items are also available at your friendly neighborhood office supply store, so go take a look.  Thanks for the tip, Ken!


Lastly, Stewart Bailey from Intu Design was kind enough to share a design (pictured below) that's works well for his clients:

It’s just pages printed onto white reinforced vinyl banner material, and bound at the spine onto a support so that it doesn’t walk away. I generally use a direct UV print onto the vinyl, which allows double-sided printing. The books feel quite nice in the hand. There’s none of the horrible U-bolt and laminated card stock with grommets, or sintra panels that are so frustrating to use. Pages are as easily changed as with U-bolts. The reinforced vinyl is really tough, and can stand up to heavy use well.

Nice work Stewart!  I wonder if the "pages" could be printed onto Tyvek or EcoPlast as a vinyl substitute?

UPDATE: Scott Clarke was kind enough to recently send an email to tell me about his VarroBook system (an example is pictured below.)  Check out the VarroBook website for lots more information!

Have your own exhibit issue you'd like to discuss with the Exhibit Doctor?  Feel free to email me directly, or leave a message in the "Comments" section below.


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Hobnobbing with the Historians (NEMA 2011 Wrap-Up)

Different types of museums seem to foster different "tribes" (or affinity groups) of both staff and visitors.  So I was happy to get outside of my science center/children's museum/interactive exhibits comfort zone to attend the decidedly history-oriented NEMA (New England Museum Association) Conference that just recently concluded in Hartford, Connecticut.

To be sure, not everyone at the Conference was in the History racket, but the majority were.  So this is a group that takes the twin foci of the museum business, "Stories" and "Stuff" very seriously.  (Of course that's a tricky task when you have such artifacts range from whaling ships to original Silly Putty packaging.)

You might expect such a conference to be overly concerned with "When" and "What" type questions, but I was pleased to find that this year's NEMA conference kept bubbling with "Who" (as in who are we as museums, and who will our visitors be?) and "How" (as in the process of creating engaging, community-centered, and community co-created, offerings) type questions.

What follows are a few highlights from the conference sessions and activities:

Tuesday night, before the official Wednesday morning start, began with a nice social opportunity by offering a "Pecha Kucha" evening event.  I've written about Pecha Kucha before, but briefly it is a presentation format that limits each presenter to a session of 20 slides of 20 seconds each (for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds.)  The format is great for getting presenters to focus and sharpen their ideas.  The NEMA crew delivered with presentations ranging from "The Pickle Project" to reflections on Route 66.  I think every museum conference should start this way!

In keeping with the "Who" and "How" focus, the Wednesday morning Keynote Presentation was actually a panel presentation on "Reflecting Relevance in a Diverse Society."  The speakers eloquently and forcefully emphasized the disconnect between the past, and for the most part current, offerings of museums and cultural institutions in the U.S. and the changing demographics of our potential visitors.  Basically, museums that attract older and whiter audiences can't expect to keep doing more of the same programming and expect to interest and attract audiences that do not have a museum-going tradition.

Another nice aspect of NEMA's programming format is that they allow individuals (even those running a business or independent museum professionals) to present for an entire 90 minute session by themselves. In my experience,  this worked really well and allowed in-depth consideration of such topics as developing apps for your museum (by Rob Pyles of TourSphere),  building a strong social media presence (by Caitlyn Thayer of Barefoot Media), and exhibit project management (by Todd Harris of 42 | Design Fab Studio.)   The presenters were all thorough and thoughtful and absolutely did NOT turn their sessions into sales "pitches."  Bigger conferences like AAM, ASTC, and ACM should take note, and loosen their session formats a bit!

Of course not all the important conversation happens during sessions, and I was happy to reconnect with some old friends and meet some new folks as well.  I even went to a Tweet-Up!  If you find yourself in Hartford, you could do worse than eating at Trumbull Kitchen or Black-eyed Sally's!

The only false note in the conference evening festivities was the trip to the Connecticut Science Center.  Both the event itself, and also the entire museum, were lacking.  It's amazing to think of all the money and political capital (not to mention a "starchitect") that went into producing such a fizzle of a place  --- a true museum NOT worth a special trip.  (But I'll save the specifics for a future post ...)

Luckily, I was invited to present during two sessions.  I gave a short talk and helped moderate an activity during the Exhibits PAG (Professional Affinity Group) Lunch on the topic of "Green Exhibits" where I referenced the "Green Exhibits Checklist."

I also was on the panel of "critiquers" for a session that reviewed the "Making Connecticut" exhibition at the Connecticut Historical Society.  (Which despite being a history exhibition, had some nice interactive opportunities for visitors, like the spindle component pictured below.)  I applaud the staff and designers for putting their work up for review in a public forum before their peers.  This, to me, is how we grow as practitioners and share ideas on how to create better exhibitions.

Kudos to the NEMA staff and museum hosts for doing such a great job with the 2011 Conference!  Their hard work is a big reason why NEMA continues to be one of the strongest regional museum associations in the U.S.



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Exhibit Design Inspiration: Doing More with Less (Space)

Architects Michael Chen and Kari Anderson of Normal Projects designed the clever NYC apartment seen in the video above for their client Eric Schneider.

There are some wonderfully clever ways shown here to maximize space that should be an inspiration for any museum/exhibit designer that has faced the challenge of needing to fit "5 quarts" of program into a "2 quart" space.  Enjoy (and take notes for your next "small" project!)


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Food for Thought: Selected Nutrition Exhibit Resources

I've gathered some cool links based on some interesting and useful food/nutrition resources I've come across on the Web as part of my research for an upcoming health exhibition.

The links below come from a dedicated Evernote "notebook" that I've kept during the entire reasearch and development work on the aforementioned health exhibition.  I've posted before about Evernote, but I can't enthuse enough about this FREE multi-platform, multi-device way to keep track of web pages and other digital assets (including images that you capture with your cellphone, computer, or digital camera.) Did I mention that Evernote can search the text in your captured images as well? 

But enough about Evernote, now back to the Web resources.  Here are seven sites I've selected because I think they're either handy references for anyone working on a health and/or food related project, or they're fun departures from what can often be mind-numbing discussions of Calories and portion sizes.  In no particular order:

1) Calories burned in 30 minutes:  This chart from the Harvard Medical School is a handy reference to determine "Calorie burns" for everything from Billiards to Bicycling.

2) USDA's MyPlate:  The US Department of Agriculture has dumped the old "Food Pyramid" and replaced it with the "MyPlate" scheme.  There are still different food groups, but the MyPlate icon is meant to help us all keep proper portions of the food groups on our plates as well.  Try to make at least half your grains whole grains!

3) Sugar Stacks:  One of the food ingredients we all need to keep careful track of is sugar.  But reading a label and finding 35 grams of sugar listed is a bit abstract.  Enter the site Sugar Stacks!  Here they show you visually how many cubes of sugar each grams listing for a particular food product translates to.  It's a little disconcerting to see how many cubes of sugar a can of soda contains, for example.

4) Is Your Meat Made With Meat Glue?  Technically "meat glue" is called transglutaminase, and is made from animal blood. Yum!  A glimpse at what "processed food" really means.

5) Portion Size Plate:  This graphic app from WebMD let's you see the proper size portions you should be eating of particular foods by comparing them to familiar objects like baseballs or decks of cards.  It's not just what you eat but how much you eat. 

The last two items are things I would have liked to incorporate somehow into the health exhibition, but they didn't quite make the cut.  Perhaps you'll find some use for these last two links in one of your future projects?

6) Tiny People's Wonderful World of Food:  Seattle-based artist Christopher Boffoli uses food as a jumping off point for his fanciful photographs.


7) Odors and consumer behavior in a restaurant:  Researchers found that introducing certain odors, like lavender, into a restaurant increased the length of stay of customers and the amount of food purchased.  An interesting study that emphasizes how little we understand about how our sense of smell guides some of our behavior.

I hope you find the links and sites above interesting. If you have food or health related Web resources that might be useful for exhibition or program development, please let us know in the "Comments" section below.

Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Automatic ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)