Lessons Learned Part 1 (cont)

Lessons from…the Exhibit Team (cont)

3. It takes a village
There is a lot of talent involved in making an exhibit. At a small museum this talent may have to be divided between 3 or 4 people. In a large museum the talent is distributed in more specialized areas and there might be 15-20 people involved. If I remember my numbers correctly, on the Time and Navigation team there were 4 curators, 2 designers (one graphic designer and one CAD designer), 2 educators, a fundraising or development manager, an editor/ writer, a project manager, and several other people (fabricators, AV specialists, department heads, archivists) who popped in and out to various meetings. On top of this there is a whole production crew that usually gets involved once the plans are basically complete. That’s a whole lot of people!

And while too many cooks in the kitchen can be a bad thing, as long as everyone has an open mind and perspective on the final goal, teamwork is a GREAT thing when producing exhibits.

4. Poll the audience
One week, the Time and Nav team visited the National Archives to learn about some of the technology that they have used in their exhibits. During the briefing we learned that they don’t do audience testing or polling because federal regulations prevent them. Apparently for federally funded organizations, any poll or question that is asked to more than 9 people needs special federal approval. Since a poll of 9 people is essentially useless in gathering pertinent information, they don’t do it.

As a quasi-funded institution, the Smithsonian doesn’t have such limitations, and it’s a good thing since evaluating the audience is a key step in testing concepts and components of the exhibit.

As part of the Time and Nav process, the Education department conducted several surveys of museum visitors, asking questions about prior content knowledge, interest levels, and even the understandability of certain key sentences from the script. The answers were integral in making sure that the script tailored to the areas of most interest to the audience and helped them see when a concept (clear to an academic or specialist) needs to be broken down and explained further.

Up next: Lessons about day to day work