"Creating the Visitor-Centered Museum" Book Launch at OMCA
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My new book co-authored with Mimi Michaelson, titled "Creating the Visitor-Centered Museum," was the subject of an event at the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) on Friday, February 3, 2017. I presented the accompanying slide deck as a backgrounder for a dialogue with OMCA Director and CEO Lori Fogarty before we both took questions from the audience. A great and stimulating time, with friends, students, and colleagues from near and far. Many thanks to the John F. Kennedy University Museum Studies Program and OMCA for organizing it!
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"Creating the Visitor-Centered Museum" Book Launch at OMCA
- 1. Creating the Visitor-Centered Museum Book Launch Event with Lori Fogarty • OMCA Friday, Feb. 3, 2017
- 2. Museums. We look like this on the outside: For some people, the trouble starts when they walk through our door!
- 5. Too often, museums see technology as a way to sidestep… the larger issues we’re not prepared to face.
- 6. The Big Questions • Why would anyone make this? • What’s it doing in this big important museum? • (aka: What’s remarkable about it?) • What does it have to do with the other works around it? • What would I be doing if I made this— or were in this historic person’s boots? In a word: Why should I care?
- 7. The elephantin the room is that: The vast majority of American visitors do not use technology during their museum visit. So how do we reach them?
- 8. That was a question we set out to find answers to… • 10 sites nominated by colleagues as innovators in the field • Mainly art museums, with some history and multi-disciplinary museums (e.g., OMCA) • Site visits followed by in-depth conversations with museum leadership and creative staff • Case studies from the USA and Europe Co-written and co-researched with Mimi Michaelson, Ed.D.
- 9. Denver Art Museum, Colorado
- 10. Denver Art Museum, Colorado Historic Precedent: From Gallery Seating to Maker Spaces
- 11. Denver Art Museum, Colorado Not to mention Kids Bingo Treasure Hunts… journaling, music
- 12. City Museum, St. Louis, Missouri
- 13. City Museum, St. Louis, Missouri Immersive Experience… Thrills & Wonder
- 14. Ruhr Museum, Essen, Germany
- 15. Ruhr Museum, Essen, Germany Arresting visual design that also tells a story
- 16. Minnesota History Center, St. Paul
- 17. Prototyping to make sure they get it right. Minnesota History Center, St. Paul
- 18. Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
- 19. Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan Analog didactics that explain what’s special about the artworks Richard Long, Stone Line
- 20. A video projection that sets the table for French decorative arts.
- 21. Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio
- 22. Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio Connectors “Wonder Room” creativity studio for kids and families The museum has produced jigsaw puzzles based on the art “Any strategy that connects people to the art, besides the art itself.” –Merilee Mostov More family activities in the Impressionist galleries
- 24. Oakland Museum of California California Portrait Gallery: Draw Yourself
- 25. Kelvingrove Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Scotland
- 26. Kelvingrove Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Scotland Teen interactives
- 27. Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
- 28. Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands Role Playing for Adults… Gallery Guides as Game Masters
- 29. Museum of Contemporary Art • Denver
- 30. Museum of Contemporary Art • Denver Stretching the bounds of normal behavior in mind and body Art Meets Beast
- 31. Two takeaways from our research Visitor-centered innovation goes hand-in-hand with museum change. “We have to keep reevaluating: Who’s our audience and what do they need from us?” For a visitor-centered museum, these questions are the starting point of all museum business.
- 32. Thank you.
Editor's Notes
- Are we forcing this person to take out his or her phone?
- Who, as we say, are often puzzled, left feeling inadequate in the gallery, isolated from something important, ignorant and deficient. Is this the way we want our visitors to feel? To fear a visit to the intimidating museum?
- Of course, not everyone avails themselves of the audio experiences we offer—no matter how illuminating and enjoyable they might be. In fact, most digital resources reach only a fraction of our audience. Which raises the question of what we’re doing for everyone else.
- Denver has been a pioneer in visitor-centered innovation back to the 1980s. They tick all the boxes—as Melora has discussed. Here’s just one: Wild West-themed Bingo cards that are unobtrusively displayed in a pocket on the wall, and immediately give kids a treasure hunt and a mission in the gallery.
- Denver has been a pioneer in visitor-centered innovation back to the 1980s. They tick all the boxes—as Melora has discussed. Here’s just one: Wild West-themed Bingo cards that are unobtrusively displayed in a pocket on the wall, and immediately give kids a treasure hunt and a mission in the gallery.
- A few museums are sites of wonder, creativity and play. City Museum—really an artist’s vision of a 10-story playground—is one of them. Those are kids crawling through aerial tubes in the heart of the city. City Museum also has a 10-story slide.
- Here is a history and culture museum that took its cue from art museums: note the simple, spare display, presenting each artwork in isolation, evocatively lit: on the left a black lung taken from a miner in this district, on the right a set of beer bottles. The museum knows that objects presented like this have their own visual power; they also know to tell a story on the side of each case that personalizes the object inside and delivers a message.
- This is quite outrageous. A nineteenth-century painting by John Pettie has been outfitted with a touchscreen kiosk targeted to teens that updates the courtship theme in today’s terms: should she go for the rich city slicker or the farmer’s son living in Glasgow on a student budget, who aspires to be a veterinarian?
- The Van Abbe Museum is trying to re-invent how people relate to museums. In this case, Gallery Hosts became “Game Masters” and helped people retrace their itinerary though the galleries, helping them to distill some insights from their visit. On the right, a cartoon by Dan Perjovschi that shows that no matter how many people may work in a museum, it often feels faceless and monolithic.
- We’re all familiar with wall labels, but at Detroit, they add levels of depth by using conspicuous signage and easy-to-read laminated booklets right near the artworks they treat. Highlights and captions on the panel in the left hand picture help guide the visitor’s eye to especially significant parts of the painting.
- And they project a film on a tabletop so you may vicariously experience a fabulous French banquet from the 18th century that uses the very same silver and porcelain dishes on display in the gallery. It brings the gallery to life—and gives us a seat at the table.
- Some of the museums in the book are in heartland cities that don’t receive many tourists. They mustfind ways of connecting with their local community so families come back again and again.
- At the OMCA, a digital drawing station enables visitors to make self-portraits, which are then displayed among the portraits from the collection on two screens, part of a constantly changing array of faces. For me, two messages emerged: all the decisions involved at every point in making my portrait—and that each and every one of us belongs in this museum.
- This is quite outrageous. A nineteenth-century painting by John Pettie has been outfitted with a touchscreen kiosk targeted to teens that updates the courtship theme in today’s terms: should she go for the rich city slicker or the farmer’s son living in Glasgow on a student budget, who aspires to be a veterinarian?
- This is quite outrageous. A nineteenth-century painting by John Pettie has been outfitted with a touchscreen kiosk targeted to teens that updates the courtship theme in today’s terms: should she go for the rich city slicker or the farmer’s son living in Glasgow on a student budget, who aspires to be a veterinarian?
- The Van Abbe Museum is trying to re-invent how people relate to museums. In this case, Gallery Hosts became “Game Masters” and helped people retrace their itinerary though the galleries, helping them to distill some insights from their visit. On the right, a cartoon by Dan Perjovschi that shows that no matter how many people may work in a museum, it often feels faceless and monolithic.
- The Van Abbe Museum is trying to re-invent how people relate to museums. In this case, Gallery Hosts became “Game Masters” and helped people retrace their itinerary though the galleries, helping them to distill some insights from their visit. On the right, a cartoon by Dan Perjovschi that shows that no matter how many people may work in a museum, it often feels faceless and monolithic.