In this article, Beat Hachler, co-director of Stapferhaus Lenzburg, discusses his institution's unique exhibit design approach, which uses unconventional strategies to "represent the present." In particular, Hachler describes the techniques used in "A Matter of Faith: An Exhibition for Believers and Non-Believers" and its impact on visitors and museum staff.
In this article, Jenni Martin, Director of Education at Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose, describes how and why her team developed a new exhibit, "The Wonder Cabinet" for children ages 4 and under and accompanying adults. Martin outlines the design process associated with this exhibit, noting challenges and best practices.
In this article, Minda Borun, Director of Research and Evaluation at The Franklin Institute Science Museum, discusses how and why exhibit designers need to design experiences for multi-age groups (families) not individual users. Borun sites exemplars from the field who've successfully created immersive experiences for multi-generational visitors.
In this article, Julia Rose, Director of the West Baton Rouge Museum, analyzes increased efforts by museums to include references of slave life histories into their interpretations. Rose discusses the strategies used by museums and challenges they face when presenting the tough stories of slave life.
In this article, Joanne Jones-Rizzi, Program Director, People & Cultures, at the Science Museum of Minnesota, explores the role of museums in presenting and translating cultural experiences for visitors. Her perspective is based on twenty years of community-centered work in the field at two museums.
In this article, Suzanne Gaskins, Professor of Psychology at Northeastern Illinois University and researcher at the Chicago Children's Museum, discusses how museums should design exhibitions to support and encourage family interaction. Specifically, Gaskins discusses how caregivers' understanding of the exhibition influences their engagement and their use of resources offered by the museum to support their engagement as well as cultural differences in caregivers' understandings of how experiences like those in a "hands-on" museum are related to learning and what their should be, and how they
This article features critiques of the "The Kenneth E. Behring Family Hall of Mammals" exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History. Barbara Brennan, Senior Exhibition Designer at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, Rebecca Singer, Youth Audiences Manager at Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens, and Andrew Pekarik, policy analyst in the Office of Policy and Analysis at the Smithsonian Institution, share their analysis of the exhibition and assess its strengths and weaknesses.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Barbara BrennanRebecca SingerAndrew Pekarik
In this article, Diane Willow, Assistant Professor of New and Combined Media in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota, discusses how technology can be used to better engage children and families in the content of exhibitions. Willow highlights several exhibitions as they relate to how children interact with technologies in general and digital technologies in particular.
In this article, Gretchen Jennings, editor, and Maureen McConnell, Museum Exhibitions Consultant, summarize and comment on how professionals in the field responded to the question, "What, if anything is 'unexhibitable'?" They organize the topics into categories and explore the roles of time, place, culture, community, funding, and other issues play in shaping answers to this question.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Gretchen JenningsMaureen McConnellNational Association for Museum Exhibition
This article provides commentary about the early closing of "Imaginary Coordinates," an exhibition at the Spertus Institute in Chicago, inspired by the antique maps of the Holy Land. The exhibition reportedly closed early because some groups found it "anti-Israel." Featured voices include exhibition curator Rhoda Rosen, Marc Fischer, of the Chicago-based design firm Temporary Services, and artist Michael Rakowitz. The materials gathered for this article present a microcosm of the museum community's struggle with "the unexhibitable" among other challenging museum issues.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
National Association of Museum Exhibition
In this article, evaluator Randi Korn details the importance of a museum's mission as "key to an institution's success." Korn recommends museums clarify their intent, before evaluating their impact , and provides three mission-based filters that museums must use to examine all operational activities: clarity of intent, alignment of practice and resources, and reflective inquiry.
Flip It, Fold It, Figure It Out! is a 1500-sq. foot traveling mathematics exhibition with companion take-home educational materials. There are two copies of the traveling exhibit: one for the members of the North Carolina Grassroots Science Museums Collaborative reaching over 500,000 visitors, and a second for travel nationally to science centers reaching an estimated 750,000 additional visitors. Take-home activity kits were developed for visitors to continue informal mathematics explorations at home. The activities included expand and extend the exhibit themes, offering multiple levels to meet the needs of K-5 students and their families.