The Missing Ingredient In Exhibition Narratives?

I've been helping to develop some really great exhibitions recently, and one common thread between these eclectic projects is that they all feature prominent "Big Ideas" inside strong narrative arcs.

I've written before about the importance of finding these Big Ideas inside exhibitions, but one thing struck me recently about these exhibition narratives: it's not just about telling a compelling story, but instead framing the story in a way that will compel visitors to tell it to other people.

Museums often have a way of talking at folks instead of allowing visitors the space (and respect) to find the parts of the exhibition narrative that are so exciting and meaningful that they can't help but tell their friends and family about them!

And that's the heart of "word of mouth" advertising isn't it?

It might seem like a self-evident thing, but setting up exhibition stories so that visitors can (and will!) tell them to others has helped to shift my thinking about how to craft narrative exhibition experiences that are more fulfilling.


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What's The Big Idea?

A recent article in The Washington Post about the new exhibition “Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations” at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) made me think about the importance of "The Big Idea" in exhibition development.

The Post journalists basically put forward the notion that much of the NMAI visitor experience inside the exhibitions (but not the universally acclaimed museum cafe!) suffers from a lack of clear organizing concepts.  To quote The Post directly about the formation of the institution: " ... the leaders of the NMAI allowed individual tribes extraordinary input and power over what viewers saw in the museum’s galleries. The results were controversial: It was, in many ways, the ultimate postmodern museum experience, with no central narrative, no omniscient voice and no absolute appeals to the voice of science and history. But from the visitor’s point of view, it was also bewildering."   

But now it seems that the NMAI has gone back to the fundamentals of exhibition narrative (aka "The Big Idea") as described by Beverly Serrell (serrellassociates.com) in her foundational book "Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach."

Rather than employing community curators and multiple perspectives, the NMAI brought in writer and Indian rights activist Suzan Shown Harjo to curate the "Nation to Nation" exhibition and to bring a strong editorial voice to the proceedings.

To be clear, strong curators can drive forward lousy exhibitions just as readily as a chaotic mish-mash of community input can, but it's difficult (and I'd say nearly impossible) to create a great exhibition without a strong central idea overall and equally strong messages as you break up the exhibition into smaller and smaller physical and conceptual chunks --- down to the individual exhibit component and informational graphic level.

You would think understanding the importance of strong exhibition narratives and clear framing ideas to create compelling visitor experiences would be "Museums 101" but it's apparent from my recent visits to a variety of museums around North America, that it's not clear at all.

How the Big Ideas get lost 


And I suppose there are two main reasons for why the Big Ideas get lost:

1) Crafting strong Big Ideas, and testing your concepts out with visitors, is hard!  It takes time to get the foundational ideas for an exhibition in place, and it takes institutional commitment to keep working at it, and trying things out to get honest responses from visitors and advisors.  That doesn't mean it's not worth doing, but rushing into physical designs and exhibit concepts before you have your exhibition conceptual framework in order is either a result of inexperience, or the result of significant outside pressures.  Which brings us to reason Number 2 that Big Ideas often get lost:

2) Don't let money or lack of perspective derail your exhibition narratives.  Of course every exhibition benefits from, if not downright requires, outside funding and input.  But something significant is lost when exhibition decisions are made to please outside funders (or community groups) rather than the end users inside the museum.  At its worst, this perversion of the exhibit development process pimps out the museum and misrepresents the ideas inside the exhibition.

So what's to be done to ensure that strong Big Ideas become the foundations for equally strong exhibition experiences?  Aside from buying, reading, and then implementing the ideas in Beverly Serrell's book, I'd say allying yourself with strong advisors, community leaders, and other stakeholders who put the visitor experience first is a good place to start.

There may well be some tense discussions when you push back against funders or members of the public trying to advance agendas outside the scope of a particular project, but the efforts will show in your final exhibition!



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Unpacking the Objects and their Stories. Takeaways from the 2013 AAM Conference.

I'm still buzzing a bit from the interplay of people and ideas (and crabcakes!) that I found in Baltimore during the 2013 American Alliance of Museums (AAM) Annual Meeting.

Normally I ignore the theme of most museum conferences, but this year's AAM theme, The Power of Story, resonated with me because of two particular sessions that bookended my experiences at the conference, and that have continued to make me think deeply about those two essential elements that great museum experiences provide: stories and stuff.

The first session, "Is it real? Who cares?" delved into the interplay between whether an object is perceived as "real" or "fake" and whether that notion has any impact whatsoever on whether a visitor's experience(s) with that object are successful or not.

During the session, different objects were described and projected onto a large screen at the front of the room.  Examples of objects included things like "Sue" the T Rex, the historic ship U.S.S. Constitution, or a recreation of a historic synagogue ceiling. 

At the same time, members of the audience were given smaller images of the same objects mounted on foamcore and were asked to weigh in on whether the object/story was more toward the "Fake" or "Real" end of the spectrum, and more toward the "Works" or "Doesn't Work" end of the spectrum, in terms of visitor engagement.  After each person holding an image weighed in on their impressions of the Fake/Real and Works/Doesn't Work continuum at the microphone, they went to stand at the front of the room and serve as a data point in a big 3D matrix.  (The front wall of the room was the Fake/Real axis, while the side walls were the Works/Doesn't Work axis.)

It was Uber Museum Geeky, but also lots of fun, especially once everyone was standing at the front holding their images and people from the audience could comment and move the human "data points" around to refine the big 3D matrix of stories and stuff.  (See image from the session at the top of this post --- that's me holding the U.S.S. Constitution firmly in the Real/Works quadrant.)

One thing that struck me was that at the beginning of filling in the matrix things were really clumped up toward the Fake/Doesn't Work part of the matrix, but after continued discussion, things spread more evenly between Fake and Real, and much more toward the Works for visitors end of the spectrum.

It really made me think how often in the museum world that we fetishize objects and their "authenticity" while sacrificing the primary visitor experience(s). 

The organizers of this session created a "Is it real? Who cares?" Tumblr site that they used while preparing their session, but which they have also opened up to continued conversation amongst colleagues on the topics that came out in the session discussion.

The other session that really stood out for me (and that connected in so many ways to the Is it real? session) was a dialogue between Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums, and Rob Walker, one of the creators of the Significant Objects Project.  The session was entitled (unsurprisingly) "Significant Objects."

Walker started with a brief presentation about the idea behind Significant Objects, which I would summarize as a way to test the theory that an object (of fairly limited "value" like something you could buy at a garage sale) could be invested with significance by attaching a fictitious story to it.

Some of the stories for the first 100 Significant Objects were written by famous authors (like Jonathan Lethem and Bruce Sterling) while other "object stories" were written by less famous writers.  In the end, all of the objects + stories were put up for sale on EBay to determine whether people would pay more for these objects coupled to clearly fictional stories than they would for the objects by themselves.  It turns out that people did pay more for the objects with stories, but really you should check out the entire Significant Objects website to get a better sense of the entire scope of the project.

In the same way I usually don't pay attention to conference themes, I've rarely purchased recordings of conference sessions, but in this case I'm making an exception just because I found the conversations and references presented (especially by Merritt and Walker) so valuable and meaty.  Two in particular related to this thread of narrative and object include the book "Taking Things Seriously" written by Significant Objects co-creator Joshua Glenn, and the Museum of Broken Relationships.

You can go to this section of the AAM website to purchase recordings of conference sessions, including this "Significant Objects" session which happened at 10:15 a.m. on Tuesday, May 22nd.

As I departed Baltimore, I was left with the overwhelming feeling of the importance of objects in museums and visitor experiences, but only when coupled with strong narrative contexts, not as ends unto themselves. And that's really The Power of Story.



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Museum Exhibit Design: On the Road in L.A.

Who'd of thunk it?  Given some in the museum biz traditional animosity toward all things Disney,  Joe Rohde of Disney Imagineering (immortalized in stained glass in the image above) ripped through an inspiring talk on Narrative Space that highlighted "Thematic Unity" and the importance of haptic effect and sensuality in design.  (And not a cute cartoon character or merchandising tie-in in sight!)

Rohde was part of an excellent session entitled "Learning from Hollywood" that was chaired by John Chiodo here in L.A. on the first day of the annual AAM (American Association of Museums) Conference.  I also enjoyed the always-dynamic Tali Krakowsky's presentation on the possibilities of integrating technology and social media into the very fabric of our creative spaces --- sort of a grand "unified theory" for interactive/immersive architecture.

And speaking of spaces, NAME hosted another amazing AAM party at the Velaslavasay Panorama Theatre

I'll be reporting on interesting things that pop up during my Cali trip --- so stay tuned!


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