Frame by Frame: What Two Graphic Novels Can Teach Us About Museum Storytelling
If you're looking for fresh inspiration for your next museum exhibit, pick up a graphic novel.
I recently read Guy Delisle's "Muybridge" and Lauren Redniss's "Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout," and both books made me think hard about how we tell stories in museum spaces. Each provides compelling examples in visual storytelling that translate directly to exhibit design challenges we face every day.
Motion Studies and Sequential Revelation
Delisle's "Muybridge" tells the story of Eadweard Muybridge, the pioneering photographer who essentially invented motion pictures by breaking down animal and human movement into sequential images. Delisle uses the static medium of comics (itself based on sequential art) to tell the story of someone who revolutionized how we see movement.
What struck me most was how Delisle varies his panel layouts to echo Muybridge's own photographic grids. Some pages feature rigid, uniform panels that mimic Muybridge's famous motion studies, while others break free into more dynamic compositions when depicting the drama of his personal life (including a murder trial that reads like a Victorian soap opera).
The exhibit takeaway: Think about how your visitors move through space and encounter information sequentially. Just as Muybridge broke down a galloping horse into 12 frames, we can break down complex ideas into digestible moments. The pacing matters. Sometimes you want uniform, predictable "panels" (like a series of identical cases showing technological progression), and sometimes you need to disrupt that rhythm with a dramatic reveal or an unexpected spatial break.
I've used this approach in exhibits where we're explaining a multi-step process. Instead of a single massive graphic panel trying to show everything at once, we create stations that visitors encounter in sequence, like frames in a motion study. The physical movement through space becomes part of the learning.
Materiality as Metaphor
Redniss's "Radioactive" is a visual knockout. She uses a unique visual language in which no two pages look alike. Text appears in hand-drawn lettering that changes size, color, and style. Images are layered, scratched, collaged, and printed using a cyan-magenta split that creates this eerie, glowing quality—perfect for a book about radioactivity.
The book's physical form is the message. Pages feel unstable, dangerous, beautiful, and unpredictable, exactly like radiation itself. Redniss uses cyanotype prints (a historical photographic process) to tie the book's materiality directly to the Curies' era and their scientific work.
The exhibit takeaway: Your materials and fabrication methods are part of your content, not just decoration. We often default to standard exhibit systems and conventional graphics because they're easier and cheaper, but sometimes the medium needs to match the message.
When I'm working on exhibits, I think about how materials can transport visitors. Rough-hewn wood for agricultural exhibits. Cold metal and institutional fixtures for exhibits about industrialization or medical history. Soft, tactile materials for exhibits about childhood or domestic life. The sensory experience reinforces the content.
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| Nice example of materials use from Hiferty & Associates |
Redniss also does something brilliant with how she handles scientific concepts. When explaining radioactive decay, she doesn't give us a traditional diagram. Instead, elements appear and disappear across spreads, fading and transforming visually.
We can do this in exhibits, too. Instead of static diagrams that explain processes, consider how light, shadow, motion, or even the visitor's own movement can reveal or demonstrate concepts. Exhibits where visitors cast shadows that show how X-rays work, or where walking past a panel makes images appear to decay or transform.
Negative Space and What's Left Unsaid
Both books use white space brilliantly. Delisle often isolates his figures against blank backgrounds, focusing our attention. Redniss uses negative space to create mood—empty pages feel lonely, crowded compositions feel chaotic.
The exhibit takeaway: We tend to pack exhibits full of content because we're afraid of "wasting" space. But emptiness is a tool. Strategic negative space gives visitors room to think, breathe, and process what they've just experienced.
Some of the most powerful exhibit moments I've encountered have been simple benches placed where they overlook something meaningful, or blank walls that let a single object command attention. The space around your content is part of the composition.
Personal Stories, Scientific Content
Both books root scientific achievement in deeply personal, often messy human stories. Muybridge's technological innovations are inseparable from his toxic marriage and a murder that results. The Curies' scientific partnership is a love story, and their scientific legacy is measured in both Nobel Prizes and radiation poisoning.
The exhibit takeaway: We know visitors connect with personal narratives, but we sometimes treat "the science stuff" and "the human-interest stuff" as separate tracks. These books show how they're on the same track. The messy human details are what make the scientific achievements comprehensible and meaningful.
When developing exhibits, resist the urge to sanitize the personal stories or to relegate them to sidebar "fun facts." Let the human drama drive the narrative and let the science grow organically from it. Your middle school visitors will remember Marie Curie carrying vials of glowing radium in her pockets more than they'll remember atomic weight numbers.
The Bottom Line
If you're stuck on an exhibit concept, if your layouts feel stale, or if you're struggling to translate complex content into three-dimensional space, spend some time with ambitious graphic novels. They're dealing with the exact same challenges we face -- how to guide someone through a narrative using sequential images, text, and physical form. They're just using paper instead of drywall.
"Muybridge" and "Radioactive" are excellent starting points, but there are dozens more. Richard McGuire's "Here" tells stories spanning thousands of years, all from one fixed viewpoint in a house. Perfect inspiration for exhibits about places with deep histories.
The best museum exhibits and the best graphic novels share the same DNA: they're both about using visual sequence, spatial relationships, and material choices to create meaning. They both ask readers/visitors to actively construct understanding rather than just passively receive information.
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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