Back to Bulgaria!

I'm delighted that I will be heading back to Bulgaria to kick off the new MUSA Academy program sponsored by the America for Bulgaria Foundation (ABF).

The MUSA Academy will equip Bulgarian professionals from museums and other cultural organizations with the tools to create compelling exhibits and tell powerful stories that will keep visitors returning for more.

I am doubly excited to share the MUSA Academy teaching stage with colleagues Jamie Lawyer and Christina Ferwerda!

Check out this recent article from the ABF website that shares more information about my work and the new MUSA Academy.  Also, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as I post live updates from Bulgaria in March!

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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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Where are your Museum's "Fans" on Super Bowl Sunday?

Super Bowl Sunday will be a great day to visit your local museum --- because it will be even quieter than usual. 

Why are so many people, even folks who don't normally follow football, more rabidly enthusiastic about watching the "Big Game" or attending a local Super Bowl event than visiting your museum?

  

I'd say one possible answer lies in finding the difference between a "fan" and a "casual visitor."   Fans wear logo gear all year long and have no compunction in excitedly telling total strangers how great their team is.

So how can museums create more "fans" and expand their demographic reach as well?  

Places like the City Museum in St. Louis have set out to become a gathering spot for their local communities and have become open to all sorts of fun ideas that are edgy enough to attract a wide and enthusiastic audience of repeat visitors who definitely become City Museum fans.

Of course, all this talk of creating "museum fans" is pointless if your museum isn't really fan-worthy.  Is your admissions procedure torture?  Do you create core exhibits and attractions that are worth revisiting, or do you depend on the hucksterism of events that are only vaguely related to your museum's mission and purpose?  What are the obstacles that prevent your visitors from becoming fans?

Let's see if we can create more museum fans. 

  

GO MUSEUMS!

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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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Why Can't Science Centers and Children's Museums Have More Contemplative Spaces?

And why can't Art Museums (the traditionally "hands-off" museums) have more physically interactive experiences and artworks inside?

A number of years ago, I worked on an exhibition entitled "The Animated Artwork of Laura Vaccaro Seeger" at the Nassau County Museum of Art (NCMA) on Long Island. 

The exhibition included interactive exhibits and installations that naturally dovetailed with themes like light and color, metamorphosis, and negative space that show up in the award-winning children's books that Laura Vaccaro Seeger writes and illustrates. That would have definitely NOT been a big deal if I designed that sort of exhibition at a "hands-on" museum, but this was the first time that NCMA had put on a show with so many deliberately interactive exhibit pieces. Initially, the museum staff was even a little freaked out by having loose books in the gallery (in a show by an author!) so we compromised by mounting the books on "reading shelves" attached to the walls.

Exhibitions like "Take Your Time" by Olafur Eliasson incorporated stunning pieces that, with a little tweaking, could make equally amazing science museum exhibits. But since Eliasson's pieces are "Art," they are mostly not meant to be directly touched or interacted with physically, at least inside of an Art Museum.

At issue seems to be the context that people (with or without young children in tow) approach different types of museums. The atmosphere in most art museums is on the level of a library --- hushed tones, silent contemplation, and guards occasionally telling people to settle down. One of the complaints from guards (but not visitors!) in the Laura Vaccaro Seeger show was that some of the interactive pieces made noise or caused the visitors to make noise!

Of course, most Science Centers and Children's Museums often seem like a cross between a fun house and a race track --- frenetic busy activity and experiences that seem to invite chaos more than contemplation. So is it possible to introduce contemplative experiences into such active spaces?

I remember speaking with Bernie Zubrowski about a piece that he developed and displayed at the Exploratorium, entitled "The Ghost of Amelia Earhart." The piece incorporated a silky piece of fabric (Amelia's scarf?) immersed in a tank of water being gently swirled by currents. There are interesting moire patterns caused when the fabric overlaps, as well as mysterious shadows formed by the lighting inside the tank.

When I saw Bernie's piece at the Exploratorium, I loved it. Unfortunately, I was one of the very few visitors to take the time to pay attention to its subtle pleasures. Despite being a treasure trove of art, science, and perception exhibits, the Exploratorium wasn't really conducive to a piece like Bernie's, which required quiet concentration from the viewer. However, "The Ghost of Amelia Earhart" would likely have been very well received in an art museum or gallery show.

Can we get Art Museums to "loosen up" on their approach to exhibits and visitor interactions -- or should we?

What about getting "Interactive Museums" to provide more contemplative spaces and opportunities?

Or are all types of museums trapped by the "institutional images" that they have worked so hard to foster and promote?

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the "Comments Section" below!

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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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Design Inspiration: Scan of the Month

"Scan of the Month" is a cool website that shows CT scans of everyday objects (like the asthma inhaler at the top of this post) with fascinating results.

The website started off as some scans of LEGO Minifigures created by a group of creative technologists at the engineering company Lumafield.  

To quote the website:  "Engineering marvels surround us every day. As deeply curious engineers, we thought we understood how beautiful the details around us can be. Then CT scanning revealed a world we had never seen."

So click on over to the Scan of the Month website to reveal a new bit of the world.

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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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Expecting the Unexpected?

Do you know what's worse than getting COVID?  

Getting COVID far away from home during an important museum installation!

So I'm writing this blog post from isolation in a hotel room in Minot, North Dakota.  It's a drag because right across the street, my fellow museum workers are installing new exhibits which I should be helping with.

Nevertheless, through the wonders of modern communication, we are continuing to work together to move things forward.  

I suppose there's a lesson in there somewhere about flexibility and making the best of how things actually are, not how you wish they were.  

(Check out these ExhibiTricks posts in a similar vein, What's your Plan B? and What's On Your Three Lists?)

I hope if you are encountering some unexpected obstacles of your own, you are finding ways around (or above or below or through) them.

ONWARD!

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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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Design Inspiration: If these walls could talk ...

Sometimes a visual or graphic punch can set the mood or transmit a content message in a room or gallery.

An often underutilized exhibition approach involves using wall graphics. With the advent of high-quality digital printing at a large scale, custom wallpaper or dimensional graphics can be a real boon to designers.

One company that provides wallpaper printed to size, either with your own custom images or stock images, is Wallsauce. (One of their wallpapers is in the top image of this post.)

Also, your local printer is likely able to create large-scale dimensional graphics from your files -- see the full-wall installation image from a recent project below.

So take a look around at the walls in your next project and let them "talk"!

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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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