Balancing Touchless and Tactile in Museums

Because of COVID-19, the realities of balancing the real health and sanitation concerns of visitors with the interactive nature of "hands-on" exhibits leave museum workers in a difficult situation.

Even if a "touchless" or "contactless" museum is possible, is that something we want to really set into motion?  Eliminating every aspect of touch in a museum would, at a start, create spaces that are inaccessible to people with physical or learning challenges. Numerous scholarly articles underline the developmental and educational importance of tactile learning in museums.

Fortunately, I recently had the opportunity to chat with Greg Sprick, the Technical Director of the Richard Lewis Media Group (RLMG) and he shared with me the ongoing work and research that he and his colleagues have been sharing via the RLMG website.  You can access a free series of PDF whitepapers written by Greg and his colleagues on topics ranging from how personal devices can be incorporated into visitor experiences to "minimal-touch" solutions for in-gallery interactives.

You can access all of the COVID-19 resources from RLMG here.  (As a bonus, they have also provided sets of fun Zoom backgrounds for all your "Work From Home" videoconferences.)

How will your museum handle "Touchless vs. Tactile" concerns?  Share your thoughts or additional resources 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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Tools You Can Use: Symbolology 🎶 ↕ ☂

Since so many of us are Working From Home and spending more time on our computers, tools that improve our workflow are welcome. 

For example, our keyboards are missing lots of symbols that might be handy to include in a document -- like ♠, ♣, ♥, and ♦. 

An easy way to browse and use these hidden characters is by visiting Symbololology, a one-page site with about 500 non-keyboard characters organized into categories including Punctuation (¿ §), Mathematics (≠ ∛), Greek (β φ), Arrows (▶ ⟲), and more!

Click on over to Symbololology to add some ⚡to your documents!

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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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Celebrating Creativity During A Pandemic

Sometimes it is hard to turn away from the "pit of despair" that seems to characterize life during the July 2020 pandemic reality in the United States.

But wait!  It is not all doom-and-gloom!  Artist Federico Tobon, of wolfCat Workshop, has used paper clips, cardboard, scraps of wood, and tape to create wonderful and whimsical little mechanical sculptures, some of which are featured in this post.

Tobon also created a video collection of some creations entitled "29 automata in 6 minutes" which you can see on YouTube or embedded below.

You probably have all the materials you need at home right now to put together your own pandemic plaything -- why not give it a whirl?

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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!

If you enjoy the blog, you can help keep it free to read and free from ads by supporting ExhibiTricks through our PayPal "Tip Jar"

My "Pandemic Project”

When the restrictions and precautions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic took hold on Long Island, where my family and I live, it immediately became apparent that we were entering strange new territory. The notion of “working from home” and having meetings and conferences remotely, was not that different from much of my usual consulting workflow, but two other things soon became apparent.

First, as every museum conference I was scheduled to speak at or attend was canceled or postponed, the notion of “social distancing” on a professional level became very real, very quickly.  I missed the opportunity of seeing museum friends and colleagues in-person!

Secondly, and related to professional social (and physical!) distancing, I missed the back-and-forth of sharing and learning from each other – which strikes me as one of the underlying strengths of the museum field that sets it apart from many other professions.

So, what to do?  Well, what I did was to take up with new vigor the idea of “Museum FAQ”  videos (FAQ is tech-speak for “Frequently Asked Questions”) that, quite honestly, I had started a while ago but had left aside.  Now I started contacting museum colleagues to find out if they would be willing to have a conversation with me via Zoom (of course!) about a museum topic that would draw upon their personal experience and expertise.

To my delight (and relief!) folks readily agreed, and now I have started to build up a freely available library of videos on my POW! YouTube channel that covers a wide range of topics from Museum Management to Exhibit Design to Science Communication. Even though the videos are being recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, the topics covered, and tips and techniques shared, are truly “evergreen” in the sense that they will still provide interesting and useful information for, hopefully, years to come. 

While I continue to record Museum FAQ videos, three videos, in particular, stand out for me.

Christian Greer, President & CEO of the Michigan Science Center, brought forward a thoughtful (and timely!) discussion about managing in times of transition.  I was struck by how eloquently Christian shared tactics for balancing the foundation of Mission with the flexibility and creativity needed for turbulent times.

On a completely different topic, Amparo Leyman Pino shared successful ways she has used language as an interpretive tool in museums. Amparo moved beyond the more familiar multilingual labels to the ideas of blended language and language-neutral environments.

Lastly, exhibit designer Margaret Middleton shared a fun and informative way to think about creating more inclusive museums by walking us through how to plan for better infant care and feeding areas as a model for the process.  

I hope you’ll click on over to the POW! YouTube channel to view some Museum FAQ videos for yourself – and, better yet, please let me know if there are new topics that we could have a Museum FAQ conversation about together to share with our museum colleagues on YouTube!  (Don't forget to hit the big red "Subscribe" button when you get to YouTube!)

(This post was adapted, with permission, from a piece I submitted for the online version of Informal Learning Review, Special Issue #2  June 2020 p.26)

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 Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

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!

If you enjoy the blog, you can help keep it free to read and free from ads by supporting ExhibiTricks through our PayPal "Tip Jar"

Tasty Failures

The other day one of my sons wanted to cook up a little surprise for our family.  He worked hard to make some onion bhaji based on a recipe that one of his college friends taught him.  (You can try making some of your own bhajis by following this recipe.)

Everyone enjoyed our special appetizers and found them quite tasty, but I noticed my son was a little upset and I asked him what the problem was.  He was disappointed that the bhaji hadn't turned out exactly how he had hoped and had actually thrown some of them away because he didn't think they were "good enough" to serve.

We are often our own worst critics, and many times the fear of "less than perfect" paralyzes our work. 

Sometimes parts of an exhibition or a new program won't be completed or be *perfect* on opening day -- and while that might gnaw at us as creators, our visitors are usually focused on the 99% of what's working well, not the 1% that's missing or imperfect.

Let's continue to learn from our failures, but let's also take time to savor our successes.

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 Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

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!

If you enjoy the blog, you can help keep it free to read and free from ads by supporting ExhibiTricks through our PayPal "Tip Jar"

Every Minute and Every Dollar is a Vote

The ways we spend our time and money indicate our priorities.

One of the strengths of museum workers is our capacity to share information and resources as well as sharing of ourselves to help others.  With that in mind, I'm going to offer one suggestion for where to spend your money and another suggestion for where to spend your time.

A Place to Spend Your Money

Please consider contributing to the Museum Workers Relief Fund to help our colleagues in need.  From their GoFundMe page:

"It has become clear to us that when our institutions will not stand in solidarity with us, we must stand in solidarity with one another."

A Place to Spend Your Time

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I've started a Museum FAQ video project to share ideas with museum workers through a series of YouTube conversations with museum thinkers from around the world.  Please check out the Museum FAQ YouTube page and let me know your suggestions for future Museum FAQ topics.

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 Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

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!

If you enjoy the blog, you can help keep it free to read and free from ads by supporting ExhibiTricks through our PayPal "Tip Jar"