Where's The Chairs?

Sit down before you read this. If you're at home, or even reading this on your iPhone, there's probably a seat nearby.

Unfortunately, if you're visiting a museum or gallery, finding a place to sit and/or rest might be a lot more difficult. Art museums, perhaps because of their deliberately "contemplative" nature (or the advanced age of many of their patrons) do a much better job of providing seating in gallery spaces than other types of museums.

Paradoxically, the types of museums that we often think of as the most interactive, Children's Museums and Science Museums, often have the least seating available inside their exhibition spaces. One reason often given for the lack of seating is that "we want parents to play with their kids, not sit down!"

This is the sort of bogus, passive/aggressive, museum-speak that really infuriates me. You can't "force" someone to engage with their children by taking away all the seats like a twisted game of musical chairs. An ideal museum visit will have a rhythm of activity --- sometimes quiet and contemplative, sometimes more mentally and/or physically active --- and museum designers should encourage, but not "force" people to engage in exhibit experiences in these different ways. Also, if you believe that eliminating seating options is going to coerce adult caregivers into stopping their young charges from racing around your museum or tearing up your exhibits, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you!

Leaving all that aside, what are some of the parameters to consider when selecting seating for any type of exhibition gallery? Personally, I think sturdy, movable seats, like stools or benches, are your best bet. Flexible seating arrangements let visitors shift things around a little, and you might even learn a little bit about how visitors are using (or not using) your exhibits by watching how the seats get rearranged.

Here are a few suggestions regarding seating options for museums:

On the low(er) end of the budget spectrum, IKEA (as I've mentioned in a previous post) provides simple, durable seating options. (Like the "Kritter" bench pictured above.)

If you have more money to spend, I really like the Alvar Aalto stools and benches. Clean design, and stackable. (If you get the stools, choose the more stable 4-legged option for museum use.)

Other good options for purchasing simple, durable seating are from Library furniture suppliers like Gaylord or Highland Park.

So, please consider your visitors, and think of ways to provide seating in your museum's exhibition spaces. (I'll sit down and be quiet now.)



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Museum Hype or Museum Hope?

How do you know if a trend lighting up the Web, or the latest issue of Museum magazine, will be something of lasting value,  or whether it's almost pure hype?

More importantly for your museum, and the people who visit your museum, can you tease out the actual "hows" and "whys" for implementing a buzzy program idea, instead of just the "whats"?

It's amazing (and a little disheartening) to me how often the real answer for doing something new at a museum is a combination of:

• everyone else is doing it

• we can lots of publicity out of doing it

• anything connected to [insert hyped topic here] can get us funding   (As an aside, the acronym STEM should really stand for "Simple To Extract Money")


So let's take two different topics that have been buzzing around the cultural sector for the past few years:  Maker Spaces and the notion of "Hacking The Museum."

Setting up a Maker Space at a museum (or increasingly often, the local public library) can readily veer into the "hype" zone:

• lots of places are doing it (I'm actually working with FIVE different projects right now that want to include Maker-type Spaces in their new buildings!)

• Media outlets love to do stories on cute kids and/or wacky nerd types making things

• Funders love Maker Spaces!  (Especially if you tie making to STEM.)

The good news is that there actually is some long-lasting value in Making and Maker Spaces underneath the hype, especially if the institution creating a Maker Space is committed to being thoughtful about staffing, community engagement, and appropriate tools and materials (it's not all about 3D Printers!)

The further good news is that thoughtful, and readily available information exists online about the qualities that constitute a great Maker Space.

The slight bit of bad news is there are still plenty of museums merely rebranding their existing "recycled crafts areas" (filled with cut up magazines and cereal boxes and glue sticks) as Maker Spaces to latch onto funding.

That doesn't mean Maker Spaces are just hype, but it does mean those particular museums are as bogus as their pseudo "Maker Spaces" are.  In a similar vein, my jaw dropped (literally!) at a recent Science Center conference session where at least a dozen folks admitted that they received funding for creating a Maker Space, but had no real idea of how they were going to go about doing that!

In sum, even though there's much righteous hype surrounding Maker spaces, there's a long-lasting, meaty core of programming, content, and philosophy there that thoughtful museum folks can build upon.

Unlike "Hacking The Museum" which is 99% hype.


What does the term "hacking the museum" even mean beside being naughty or transgressive?  As the late great Steve Jobs would tell upstart software developers before crushing them, "that's a feature, not a product."

And the hopeful "feature" that makes the 1% non-hype aspect of "Hacking The Museum" worth your attention is the piece that gets you to think about re-examining the way of doing business at your institution. Not merely with the aim or being shocking, but with the aim of adding programs or approaches with lasting value to visitors.

And that should always be the core "product" behind our work, not just some buzzy "feature."


What do you think?  Where's the line between hype and hope in the museum biz these days?  Let us know in the "Comments" section below!



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Museum Spaces

I'm in Detroit with my family this week, and while we're here we will be visiting one of favorite museums, the Detroit Institute of Arts.  And we will certainly make a point of visiting the amazing Rivera Court that features the frescoes of Detroit's industrial heritage created by Diego Rivera in the 1930's.

I've been thinking about the power of museum spaces a lot over the past few months, especially since experiencing Rain Room at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NYC, and, most recently, James Turrell's lightwork, called Aten Reign, that now inhabits the entire central core of the Guggenheim Museum.

In all three cases (Rivera's murals, Rain Room, and Turrell's Aten Reign) there's something really special, maybe even essential or magical, about the combination of the art+physical environment.

When you come into Rain Room, or Rivera Court, or the transformed Guggenheim rotunda, it's like entering a church or sacred space.  You can see people's body language change, and the sound level change as well --- everyone realizes intuitively that they're in for something special.  And, even if they come alone, that the experience will ultimately be a shared/social one.

This powerful combination of aesthetic and architectural and social elements plays out in the artwork of Olafur Eliasson and theatrical installations like "Sleep No More" as well.  (As an aside, there's a great article about the effects of Turrell's Guggenheim installation on visitors here.)

In the age of omnipresent electronic screens, I think we underestimate this aesthetic/architectural/social power a bit.  How can we leverage museum spaces to become more interesting (and welcoming!) to communities that normally don't think of visiting museums?  It's an interesting and continuing challenge for all of us in the field.

But if you look at the folks who waited in line for hours to get inside Rain Room, you know there's something important to pay attention to there.


What are some of your favorite Museum Spaces? Let us know in the "Comments" section below!


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Reimagining Children's Museums? Recapping InterActivity 2013

Last week, the international tribe of Children's Museums professionals converged on Pittsburgh to assemble under the banner of the InterActivity 2013 conference theme of Reimagining Children's Museums.

First off, kudos to the Association of Children's Museum (ACM) staff and the staff of the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh for pulling off such an audacious event in such a graceful way.  The Children's Museum looked great (all spiffed up for the out of town company!) and if there is ever a Nobel prize awarded for museum directors, I would definitely put Jane Werner on the short list.

The organizational format of this year's conference was a little different than normal --- folks from outside the traditional bounds of the Children's Museum field presented to us, and helped us to rethink, and yes reimagine a bit.

However, I only found part of this reimagining exercise successful.

The first part of the reimagining happened on the first day of the conference when ALL of us marched over to the Byham Theater to engage in something called "Small Talks."  I have to admit, I was a little apprehensive at first --- we're ALL going to be in this same theater, ALL DAY, watching/listening to the SAME presenters?!?!?   I felt a little trapped.  But I gave it a try.

IT WAS GREAT!

Having the speakers and performers present to us at the Byham was like what it must be like to attend a TED Conference.  The speakers were thoughtful, the performers engaging, and I really felt inspired and able to "reimagine" a bit.

Some particular speakers whose work and presentations resonated with me included:

Frans Johansson  spoke about the differences between "strategy" and "serendipity" and how we need to be open and prepared to exercise both of those skills in our professional and personal lives.

Luis von Ahn, the inventor of Captcha spoke about leveraging computers and humans to solve big problems.

Jesse Schell, who in his "day job" designs video games and is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, entertained us with his circus skills.

Vanessa German is a passionate artist committed to working with her community in many different ways. (Plus her spoken word piece to end the day kicked butt!)

So that was all good. Great first day, lots of good conversations with people about the presenters and the ideas in their presentations.

The next day was a traditional conference day, but the culminating session of the InterActivity Conference was the "Reimagining Design Seminar" on Thursday afternoon.  I'll just state upfront that this particular aspect of the reimagining theme left me cold, and completely befuddled.  The premise is/was that four international and interdisciplinary teams of designers would present their models for realizing the "21st Century Children's Museum."

I could barely sit still in my seat because of how agitated these presentations made me feel.  It was like bad performance art.  I kept thinking "how much money was spent on all of this?!?"  Perhaps the idea was to push people out of their comfort zone, but honestly my only takeaway was "what the heck was that all supposed to be about?"  A children's museum could be like a sponge? Puh-leeze!

I'm sorry to be so negative about something that sincere people obviously spent a great deal of time on, but that's my honest reaction.   (I'd gratefully provide space, and equal time, on this blog for someone more deeply involved in the process to present what it really was about.)

So, in sum, I learned from InterActivity 2013 that reimagining is NOT a straightforward business.  Perhaps we all just need to pick and choose from the things that do (and do not!) resonate with us, and use these ideas and people and experiences to sharpen our own professional practice.

Were you at InterActivity 2013?  If so, what were you takeaways?  Let us know in the "Comments" Section below this post.




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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.

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The Green Exhibit Checklist

I'm an advisor on a wonderful project designed to create tools for the museum/design industry that help to foster more sustainable project development and exhibit production.  Or in simpler terms, helping exhibit folks to be more thoughtful about the broader ecological impacts of our work .

The project is headed up by the fine folks from OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) with funding from the National Science Foundation.

One of the "in-process" products that I'm most excited about is "The Green Exhibit Checklist"

The Green Exhibit Checklist is a tool to evaluate the environmental sustainability of exhibits. The goal of the Checklist is to inspire exhibit/design teams to plan exhibits with environmental considerations in mind. It awards points (along the lines of the LEED process) for five key strategies for reducing the environmental impact of exhibit production:

• Reducing new material consumption
• Using local resources
• Reducing waste
• Reducing energy consumption
• Reducing products with toxic emissions

Rather than focusing on a dogmatic list of “dos and donts” or a list of “must use” green materials, the Green Exhibit Checklist considers sustainable design as an institution-wide, evolving process.

If you'd like to find out more about OMSI's Promoting Sustainable Decision Making project, you can click on over to the website called "Exhibit SEED" or better yet, click here to download a PDF of the most recent version of The Green Exhibit Checklist, so you can start using it yourself!

As a side note, I'll be speaking at the upcoming NEMA (New England Museum Association) Conference in Hartford during the Exhibits Luncheon on Thursday, November 17th on just this topic.


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Back to Basics: Reflecting on the ASTC 2011 Conference

Over 1700 people from around the world converged on Baltimore recently for the ASTC (Association of Science-Technology Centers) conference.  It truly was an international affair with delegates coming from Africa, Asia, Australia, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America.

I was fortunate to attend and be part of two sessions, so here are some of my takeaways on this year's get-together:

If there has been one overarching conference "theme" (there was an official conference theme, but I couldn't tell you what it was ...) that I've been thinking about since I've returned from Baltimore, it's "Back to Basics".

Many of the sessions, conversations, and most striking things in the Exhibit Hall really seemed to be getting back to science center "fundamentals" like exhibit development, evaluation, community engagement, and pure scientific phenomena.

Starting with the science phenomena first, the folks from the Superconductivity Group in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel-Aviv University were demonstrating what they called "Quantum Levitation" using powerful magnets and thin sapphire wafers coated with a very thin ceramic layer of yttrium barium copper oxide cooled with Liquid Nitrogen.  You can see the YouTube video below.  If you think it looks amazing in the video I can tell you it was really AMAZING in person, and it was the hit of the Exhibit Hall.  (Also the video has gone viral with over 3 million views!)



One of the other popular areas in the Exhibit Hall was the NASA area.  Even though the last Space Shuttle has left the launchpad, NASA is doing incredible science, and is quite willing to share their educational resources with museums and the public.  (I like to imagine all my tax dollars going to NASA and NSF instead of some the less beneficial and interesting things the government does ...)

As far as sessions, it was interesting to note the sheer volume of presentations geared toward engaging the public with "real" scientific information and research (as opposed to "bogus" information like immunization conspiracy theories.)  One of the best examples of this was the keynote presentation by author and reporter Michael Specter. 

Mr. Specter delivered many of his talking points from his recent book "Denialism" and provided a vigorous defense of both science and reason by excoriating everyone from Michele Bachman and her irresponsible statements about the HVP vaccine to "raw" milk fanatics. Good Stuff!

As for the conference sessions, I really enjoyed the "nuts and bolts" topics the most.

I participated in the "Knowledge that Works for Small Science Centers" session where the entire range of operational concerns like evaluation, fund raising, education, marketing, and exhibits for small(er) museums was addressed.  Some common threads were that museums need to build sane and sustainable operations, while continually thinking about how to increase their internal capacity.  The double session was well-attended and judging from the comments and conversations, there is a real need for this type of info.  (You can download our session notes and resources from this web page.)

The other session I participated in was entitled "Exhibit Evaluation: Useless bureaucratic hurdle or valuable tool?"   As you might gather from the title, there was lots of frank discussion and audience participation.  How can you not love a session that name checks Mary Poppins, Frank Oppenheimer, and The Spanish Inquisition?

From my perspective, the good news is that people are passionate about figuring out what "works" in exhibit and education programs in museums.  The bad news is that there are many different ideas about what makes for useful and effective evaluation, and it seemed that many of the evaluation folks felt that the exhibits folks just "don't get it."

All that being said it was interesting and spirited. Emily Schuster from ASTC gave a fair and detailed recap in this blog post from the ASTC website.

One of the last sessions I attended "Are Your Exhibits Safe? A Walking Workshop" was an important look at an often neglected topic --- that of safety.   Exhibit fabricator extraordinaire, Charlie Shaw (pictured below) took us on a "walkabout" through the Maryland Science Center where we took apart and opened up exhibit components to study both the good and bad design features in regard to safety. A super important topic and usually not something that comes up at an ASTC conference --- so kudos to the presenters!

Off course, like most conferences, many interesting conversations happened outside the "formal" presentation times (did I mention there was a Tinkerers' Ball at the American Visionary Art Museum?)  I'll certainly be mulling over my ASTC 2011 experiences to share in future ExhibiTricks postings.


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Transmitting Information or Fostering Knowledge?

How do you want to transmit the ideas that matter to you, and how does your audience want to receive them?

Do you merely want to distribute "quick hits" of information, or allow for the "deep content dives" that over time can build up knowledge?

Should any particular museum's collections and exhibit approaches be so varied and deep as to allow for, and encourage, repeat visitation?   Or should museums constantly alter their "surface" (through traveling exhibitions, say) to appear to be ever-changing?

Some people will say, why not do both?  But can a museum really be involved in transmitting information and fostering knowledge equally well?  Info-seekers are notoriously fickle, and fresh information has a limited shelf-life after all.





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ELVIS the Exhibit Prototyper?

This week I was fortunate to work with the students in the Exhibition Design Master's program at FIT (The Fashion Institute of Technology) in Manhattan.

My presentations covered one of my favorite, but often overlooked, design topics: Prototyping! 

In my opinion, most exhibit design misfires could be prevented by more thorough prototyping at the beginning of the exhibit development process.

In addition to warping the minds of these young up-and-coming exhibit designers with my corny jokes and some rapid/cheap prototyping exercises using paper and masking tape,  part of my presentation also dealt with how to use the word ELVIS as a mnemonic (memory aid) for exhibit designers when they are developing prototypes:

 E = Everyday Materials
Using everyday materials makes it easier to prototype AND maintain exhibits.  I'd much rather spec something from McMaster-Carr or the local Radio Shack that does the job, rather than creating a custom component that will be tricky to replace later on.

L = Looseness
Providing open-ended opportunities during exhibit development and for the visitors.  The best exhibits (and exhibit developers!) are not one-trick ponies, they are wired up to allow multiple successful outcomes.

V = Vermicious
The word means "wormy." Good exhibits and prototypes should "worm around" your head on many different levels: old/young, art/science, beginner/expert.  If you can find a way to conceptually and actively "hook" your visitors, they'll remember your exhibits.

I = Interesting
Two things: 1) Great exhibits/prototypes always seem interesting, no matter how many times you've seen them. Think of "classics" like gravity wells and mist tornadoes.

 2) If the prototypes you're developing aren't interesting to you, how can you expect your visitors to be interested in your final exhibits?

S = Sharing
We should be sharing ideas with our visitors, and each other as professionals.

In that spirit, don't forget to check out The Great Big Exhibit Resource List, a free compendium of great resources for designers, makers, AND prototypers.

Thank you... thank you very much. 

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I (almost) lost my voice ...

In both a physical and metaphorical way, I (almost) lost my voice during the recent ASTC conference (the international gathering of science center folks.) My laryngitis is mostly better now, but I'm still mulling over why I felt like there were more hucksters and monument-builders dominating the conversation at the conference than usual.  Is it the effects of the poor economy, or an inexorable shift in the science center field itself?

It was a little sad to be surrounded by so many people (in presumably the same business as me) who seemed completely willing to rationalize bringing any off-message, off-mission, off-SCIENCE claptrap into their museums in the head-long chase after numbers. (Although it's questionable if either the money "numbers" or admissions "numbers" are real or sustainable.)

IMAX movies about giant robots taking over the world? Bring 'em on!  Exhibits about movie props without the annoying detail of including any difficult science content?  Call our ticket line right now!

And now onto to the trend of launching gigantic science center juggernauts...  I overheard the director of a newly-opened palace of mediocrity complaining that he would NEVER work again with the fancy museum design company that was one of their co-conspirators.  Well now's a great time to come to that realization, isn't it?  The checks have been cashed, the damage has been done --- and the fancy museum design company is on to another gigantic new museum project --- it costs money to pay for all that smart office space and furniture in the big city, after all.

When will the museum business stop building the institutional equivalent of Humvees? Do we really need more titanic, and in all likelihood, unsustainable (in both the business and environmental sense)  museum buildings sucking up resources, when we could do a better job refining and rethinking our existing museums? (Rather than building on top of their construction rubble ...)

Just as I was pondering how the sponsors of the ASTC conference possibly help to perpetuate this money-churning storyline that we need a constant stream of bigger (BIGGER!) projects to keep the science center world moving forward, the winners of the "Edgie" awards were announced.

The Roy L. Shafer Leading Edge Awards are presented annually to ASTC members and/or their employees in recognition of extraordinary accomplishments in Visitor Experience, Business Practice, and Leadership in the Field that not only enhance the performance of their own institutions but also significantly advance the mission of science-technology centers and museums.


I'd like to highlight and give a tip of the hat to two of this year's winners:  Klima X (a clever and thought-provoking look at global warming) produced by the The Norwegian National Museum of Science, Technology, and Medicine and The Coyote Point Museum  (an institution in the midst of carefully recreating itself to better serve its constituent communities.) In each institution's case, they are thoughtfully addressing critical issues of science with both rigor and creativity.

I say thank goodness for the Edgie awards, a welcome antidote to both the mindlessly conjoined  "numbers at any cost" and "bigger is better" museum trends that often seem to be dominating both the media landscape and the professional microphone.

There, my voice feels better now.

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Museum Design Thought Experiment: Would/Would Not

After the roiling kerfuffle that came about after my recent "screens" posting, I started thinking about the automatic reactions that we all have about design/exhibit features in museums.

So I'd like to start a little "crowdsourcing" or museum design thought experiment for ExhibiTricks readers.

It's simple --- think about creating a brand new museum, now choose just one design/exhibit feature you absolutely WOULD include, and why, and one design/exhibit feature you absolutely WOULD NOT include in your wonderful new museum, and why.

Now write your WOULD/WOULD NOT new museum design/exhibit features in the "Comments" section below.

I'll start things out by putting my own WOULD/WOULD NOTs right here:

WOULD: I'd include a "FabLab" type space where visitors could use computerized (and non-computerized) design tools to create objects to take home. I'd do that because I think many museum experiences show people the "end products" (art objects, historical artifacts, phenomenological exhibits) without helping them appreciate the process(es) by which those products came about.

WOULD NOT: I would not create a traveling exhibit space in my new, idealized museum. The reason is that I think many museums' use of traveling exhibit spaces becomes either an institutional treadmill or crutch, and I think the time and resources usually spent on bringing in traveling shows (many of which are overpriced junk, but that's a different story ...) could be better utilized by developing exhibits/programming internally that stick around for more than three months.

Let's read your WOULD/WOULD NOTs in the "Comments" section below!

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Are Screens Killing Museums?

Having just returned from SEGD's Sixth Annual Symposium on New Directions in Exhibition and Environment Design held at Cranbrook outside of Detroit, I was very much reminded of Nina Simon's recent post about small "camp-like" meetings instead of conferences.

The SEGD Symposium really was like a design camp with a small group of participants in Cranbrook's idyllic setting learning from each other.

I was fortunate to give a talk during the symposium about "Right Tech." Building upon the notion that museums' strengths lie with the "Triple S" of Stories, Stuff, and Social Engagement, part of my Cranbrook presentation focused on the contention that "screens" are destroying truly interactive experiences in museums. Since my thoughts seemed to elicit about 50% heads nodding in agreement, and 50% gritted teeth in the audience, I'd thought I'd share my "screed against screens" condensed into a top ten list with ExhibiTricks readers:

A SCREED AGAINST SCREENS


10) Screens are not "green".
I don't care how you slice it up, screens are not a sustainable design technology.

9) IMAX.
The biggest gateway to "cheesiness" in the museum business.

8) The "death trap" introductory theatre.
Didn't forcing people to sit through a boring movie before they get to the "fun stuff" die out with the 1964 World's Fair?

7) BIG Touch Screens/Touch Tables.
Somehow the technology that looked so cool in the Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report" has landed inside museums. Proof that bigger is not always better.

6) Individual Experiences Instead of Truly Social Experiences.
Screens hypnotize, not socialize.

5) Screens in museums emulate TV or movie experiences.
But poorly.

4) Screens in museums emulate videogame experiences.
But poorly.

3) Screens become the "easy answer."
Since visitors will stare at a screen, even if nothing is on it, screen-based technologies often become our default design choice.

2) Screens often become "electronic labels" or encyclopedias.
Screens often become a dumping ground for huge volumes of text that we would never dare stick onto a printed label.

1) Screens don't age well.
Screen-based technologies and techniques become dated very quickly, but unfortunately don't seem to get replaced as quickly.

What do you think? Are screens destroying museums or are they the last hope for engaging visitors? Feel free to hurl your bouquets or brickbats to us via the "Comments" area below.

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Exhibit Design Toolbox: JC Whitney

Since I'm speaking at the SEGD Exhibition and Environments Symposium in Detroit (my hometown and STILL the Motor City!) this week, I thought I'd highlight a great auto-related resource that's often overlooked by exhibit designers, namely the JC Whitney catalog.

JC Whitney is a great resource for odd little bearings or mirrors, as well as low voltage lights and accessories.  And, since all the items were designed for automotive use, they hold up well to the pounding museum visitors can often give exhibits.  JC Whitney's website can also be a good place to find speciality tools or paints that can be adapted to exhibit design.

So spend some cash to upgrade your exhibit "clunkers" by investigating the JC Whitney site. 

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Exhibit Designer Toolkit: LIT LEDs

LED technology continues to advance, and designers can take advantage of the high-impact of LEDs to add some punch to exhibit components and/or environments.

LIT is a company that offers some nice compact LED lighting elements, as well as some nifty interactive demos on their website that give you a sense of the possibilities that LED lighting offers.

Of course, LEDs have the double advantage of a long life span and low energy usage compared to many other light sources, making them a "greener" design choice as well.

So check out the LIT website and consider how you might be able to use LEDs in your next exhibit project.

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The OUTSIDE Factor: A Great Exhibit Design Meeting In Brooklyn

Have you ever been in the middle of an interminable exhibit design meeting where you just wanted to slit your wrists out of boredom and frustration?

Well just a few days ago, I participated in an exhibit design meeting that was actually fun!

I was able to join some of the intrepid Liberty Science Center (LSC) staff on an informative (and tasty!) romp around Brooklyn. (We went to visit the Children's Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Blue Marble Ice Cream, The Pickle Guys, and Taci's Beyti Turkish Restaurant.) And the best part is that it was all related to the exhibit design process for a project called Cooking: The Exhibition.

While a trip through Brooklyn with a food writer, in this case Arthur Schwartz, to visit different restaurants and food-centered sites was automatically going to be big fun, the biggest take-away for me was the OUTSIDE Factor:

1) The event took place OUTSIDE the LSC offices.

2) The event offered opportunities to learn from OUTSIDE people (Arthur Schwartz, restaurant and store staff.) At each stop, we could ask questions, discuss ideas, and get behind-the-scenes glimpses of how things happened.

3) Most importantly, the Cooking project has been inviting (actually encouraging) OUTSIDE ideas from anyone who joins their NING site. You'll also find design write-ups, grant submissions, inspirational websites, and notes related to the Cooking exhibition development process on the site as well.

While you might not be able to take in a food tour through Brooklyn, hopefully your can apply the OUTSIDE Factor to your own exhibit design process sometime soon.

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Celebrate Independents Day and IMPs!

No, that's not a misspelling in the title.

Even though today is Independence Day in the United States, there are thousands of independent museum professionals (IMPs!) who can provide fresh new ideas, as well as valuable exhibit fabrication and/or design skills for your museum.

So why not seek out a local IMP to brainstorm ways to work together on your next project?

You'll be expanding your list of community resources and doing your part to help support the economy as well.

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Museums Worth A Special Trip: Summer Vacation Edition

Since we've entered the summer travel season here in the U.S., I thought I'd point out a few "Museums Worth A Special Trip."

This time around, here are three suggestions that combine fun, science, and the Great Outdoors:

1) Montshire Museum of Science The Montshire is one of those "gems" that everyone who visits considers their own little secret. In addition to creative and unique interactive exhibits, Montshire's building is surrounded by 110 acres of woodland and nature trails along the Connecticut River.

2) The New York Hall of Science. In addition to the hands-on exhibits inside, the NY Hall offers some wonderful outdoor activities as well. Joining the outdoor Science Playground this summer is Rocket Park Mini Golf. With two real NASA rockets looming in the background, Rocket Park Mini Golf reveals that the same laws of motion and gravity that guide the path of a spaceship control the motion of golf balls here on Earth. Playing off the retro styling of the 1960's (evoking the Hall's roots as part of the 1964 World's Fair) the nine-hole miniature golf course is gigantic fun!

3) Chanticleer Garden While not technically a museum, this charming "pleasure garden" just outside Philadelphia is filled with whimsical touches including a carved stone living room set (pictured above) and interesting pathways, bridges, and artworks that both complement and highlight the surrounding landscape and plants. Every single member of my in-house testing team wants to go back for another visit!

Have your own summer suggestions for Museums Worth A Special Trip? Let us know in the Comments Section below. Happy Trails!

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Exhibit Design Resource: TheGameStore.com

For a recent exhibit project, I needed to prototype a set of "spinners" (the rotating arrow devices found in a million board games.) I could have mickey moused something out of laminated cardstock or Sintra, but instead I ordered a set of DIY plastic spinner arrows from TheGameStore.com.

Why buy something (albeit a cheap something) instead of just mocking it up with duct tape and string? Two reasons: 1) I wasn't going to be around to "babysit" the temporary prototype to make "wear and tear" repairs on the fly for the client, and 2) The pieces I bought from the "Game Parts" section of GameStore's website can ultimately be used in the final version of the exhibit component. I love making good stuff cheap!

Have fun nosing around The GameStore.com website. I'm sure tucked in amongst the dice, timers, and spinners you'll find something useful for your next project!


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Museums In The Middle

I'm worried about museums. Specifically "museums in the middle."

As will come as no news flash to intrepid ExhibiTricks readers, the wretched economy is playing havoc with the museum biz (and all the adjunct players like designers, fabricators, architects, etc. who work with museums.) Just the other day, Design Craftsmen announced they were closing up shop after 40 years.

But this posting is about "museums in the middle" as in middle of the bell curve.

Not BIG museums like those that form The Smithsonian, or MOMA --- these battleships will keep moving in the same direction even if you cut their engines tomorrow. To borrow a phrase, these iconic institutions are simply "too big to fail."

Nor am I concerned about many smaller museums, the ones that didn't overbuild, the quirky little gems that bask in the love of their respective communities --- they've always lived by their wits, rather than endowments or visitor attendance projections, and will continue to do so, even if their forms and formats change somewhat.

No, I'm worried about the mass of mid-sized, perfectly nice, but not exceptional, museums who bought into the notions that the only way to get better was to grow bigger, or to jump onto the traveling exhibits treadmill to boost visitation statistics. When the donor and governmental money was freer-flowing it seemed like every building expansion, or every dodgy ploy to boost attendance, was a smart bet.

But now in the midst of this recession/depression/whatever these notions have become largely unsustainable --- and thus comes the reduction in staff, the reduction in hours, the reduction in, let's be honest, quality and service to the public.

So what happens now? What's the best way to use this time to rethink and reshape our current museums? I'm worried that many museums --- traditionally risk-averse, will just shrink their operational footprint and wait until things "get better."

Rather than just waiting, how can we thoughtfully, and boldly, use this time to make things better now?

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Not Another Grocery Store Exhibit!

I was very fortunate to be able to give a presentation on exhibition development and exhibits resources during the Emerging Museums Pre-Conference during the recent ACM (Association of Children's Museums) meeting in Philadelphia.

We had lots of fun at the Pre-Conference discussing unusual places to find exhibits resources , making prototypes, and even blowing stuff up in a museum MacGyver moment (really!) but I ran out of time before I could slice up a few "Museum Sacred Cows" related to museum exhibits.

But before I finished my talk, I threw a chunk or rhetorical "red meat" to the crowd by saying that I'd be quite happy if I never saw another kid-sized grocery store exhibit in a children's museum ever again. Given the raised eyebrows and open-mouthed stares from many in the audience I thought I'd share the top five reasons why I dislike grocery store exhibits:

1) Grocery store exhibits are the anthithesis of "green design."
Dumping a truckload (literally!) of fake plastic produce and grocery items onto shelves and into bins sets a tremendously bad example for sustainable exhibit design practice.

2) Grocery store exhibits are unfair to museum floor staff and volunteers.
These galleries might more accurately be called "entropy exhibits" since the main activity for young visitors seems to be to madly rush about pulling every facsimile grocery store item off the shelves, shoving them into the miniature shopping carts or onto the phony checkout conveyor and then leaving. The poor floor staff and volunteers assigned to this area then, Sisyphus-like,
engage in resorting the mess left behind again and again as new visitors enter the mini store.

3) Grocery store exhibits are just creatively lazy.
When I visit a museum with one of these areas, I instinctively think, "well, they must have run out of good exhibit ideas." Despite all the high-minded rationalizations --- "the kids are learning about food groups" or "our grocery store shows visitors where milk and tomatoes actually come from..." I say if that was really what you wanted to get visitors thinking about, there are only about a dozen more entertaining and interesting ways to address those particular topics in an exhibition format than riding the tired mini grocery store warhorse once again. (Although if food groups or farm to store topics were high on your exhibit"wish list" to begin with, I'm not sure I'd want to visit with my kids in the first place.)

4) Grocery store exhibits send at least as many unintended messages as intended messages.
I'd really rather not send the message that it's alright to tear up an exhibit area and make a mess and then leave it to other people to clean up, or that shopping for food is some sort of wacky leisure activity instead of a necessity. If we really thought carefully about the ideas that kids are leaving grocery store exhibits with instead of blithely, and automatically, assuming that frenetic activity in an exhibition area equals "fun" or "learning" we might try out some different ideas.

5) Grocery store exhibits are the worst sort of craven fundraising ploys.
One of the most common reasons I hear directors defend their choice of a kid-sized grocery store exhibit is "We can easily get a sponsor for this." Believe me, after 27 years in the museum business, I understand the need to fundraise, but are you trying to create unique, amazing exhibit spaces, or just sell chunks of museum real estate?

Unfortunately most museum "sacred cows" come from just the sort of "well this is the way we've always done things" or "I've heard it works amazingly well at Museum X" sort of thinking.

What do you think? Do you have some of your own favorite museum "sacred cows" you'd like to throw on the fire? Let us know in the "Comments" section below.


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