Visitor-Centered: What Does it Mean to Walk that Talk?

Peter SamisAssociate Curator, Interpretive MediaSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art

National Museum of Denmark Copenhagen 18 September 2013

Visitor-centered: What does it mean to Walk that Talk?

This is where I come from.

Offering chamber. Withholding chamber.

Modern art—like all the objects we exhibit —exists in a framework of meanings.

• Physical aspects• Process of its making• Relationships (to its maker, to ideas, to

other works)• Documents (journals, letters, sketches)• Media• Methods of approach and understanding

Of these, art museums typically strip away all but one or two.

• Physical aspects

Olafur Eliasson states the problem.

“Objecthood doesn’t have a place in the world if there’s not an individual person making use of that object.” 

i.e., The expert’s reality does not trump the visitor’s perspective.

So how do we make our objects useful?

Experts………………Novices

Somewhere along the linethat leaves us to restore the

context.

Our Visitors:

JustinCozart, Drought

How we interpret:sometimes we leave people stranded.

High and dry.

Other times, we give them Too Much Information.

Recognize this syndrome?

From drought to flood in one easy lesson!

Compare this...

Detroit Institute of Arts, USA

Reversal of fortune.

Ruhr Museum, Essen, Germany

From Aristocracy to Industrial heritage.

The Power of immersive spaces

…and scenography

Drama…

…and stories:

How about this for compact?

33 words.

Kelvingrove Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland

Or this...

Detroit Institute of Arts, USA

Minimum words. Maximum impact.

BELLAMY: “With visitor research, most people… read the first couple sentences and then you move on. So we thought, ‘Okay, we’ll just give them the first couple sentences. We’ll put everything that we need to in those first couple sentences.’”  PERRY: Our word count on labels is

thirty words. And within that thirty words, you have to say why that object is good.

—Interview with Martin Bellamy and Anne Perry of the Glasgow Museums

Consider the longer wall text…

rewritten with personality!Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Consider the wall text…

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Passion.Hatred. Emotions validated.

And with them, the visitors’ potential discomfort.

“Their art can hurt, can be ugly.”

With audio/multimedia tours, the issue is the same—but different.

It’s just as easy to run on at the mouth and try to cram too many points in, ignoring people’s tired feet.

Photo: FreakingNews.com

So what can you say in a minute that keeps people looking at—and engaged with—the object?

Dosing = Scaffolding

Photo: RocPX

How do we know what our visitors want to know?

How do we know what our visitors know?

Why don’t we just ask them?

This goes for kids, too.

The power of prototyping to make sure you’re communicating as you hope…

Families’ conversations during interviews and the projective techniques used provided insight into families’ comfort with history and the ways they related to objects.

The interactive nature of the family interviews allowed us to gather input from both adults and children. ©2011 Garibay Group. All Rights Reserved

Object sort activity. Families in action.

©2011 Garibay Group. All Rights Reserved

The goal of this activity was to uncover patterns and identify common characteristics of objects that fell in each quadrant. This process allowed us to understand how families approach and think about objects. By uncovering these patterns, findings can be used to help CHM make decisions about ways to interpret collections and engage families. Thus, the purpose of the matrix is to more easily visualize groupings. Keep in mind that the focus is not on the individual objects, but rather on the patterns that emerged.

Note that the italicized phrases in the quadrants (e.g., I know what…) were not on the matrix used by families. These phrases were names we gave the quadrants to facilitate analysis and discussion.

©2011 Garibay Group. All Rights Reserved

What might we learn here?

Ask Kirsti• 33 years old• Smart, hip• Works in an

architecture firm in Copenhagen

• Lives in Øesterport

• Learning to kickbox

• Seeks new knowledge & experiences

Kirsti is your future.

“I know it’s ‘interesting’—but not really. I feel horrible about it.

I live now.”

Kirsti is your future.

“It’s a pity because there are beautiful things, and they are old things, and they’re part of our history.”But it’s• Too cluttered• Undifferentiated• Not enough air• Makes her feel tired• Overwhelming

She’s hoping for stories as a way in, but instead she gets overwhelmed by undifferentiated accumulations of objects.

“Give me one beautiful thing and I’ll look at it.”

In fact, art & ethnography may not be so different.

Each is born in a powerful symbolic dimension, comes with its own web of cultural references…

And leaves people outside that systemcompletely puzzled.

But the spoken word is powerful medicine.

Especially combined with images & text.

Video and multimedia, on-site and online, offer another kind of scaffolding.

Context building.

Knowledge on demand, just in time.

SFMOMA, 2001

Art Institute of Chicago, Decorative Arts galleries, 2012

Victoria & Albert Museum, Furniture galleries, 2012

And from Nick’s presentation yesterday…

So hopefully this…

Photo: RocPX

Yogendra Joshi, Flow

can turn into this:

Thank you.