Dear list,
thanx to all of you who responded to my message on June 4th 1997. Somebody
suggested to post a synopsis of it on the list again and I think that's a
good idea.
The Performing Arts Museum in Melbourne/Australia use film and video footage
in most of their exhibitions.
The same is true for the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian
Institution, in Washington, DC. Through films they explain concepts that are
essential to an exhibit storyline but cannot be explained with artifacts.
Each film runs about 12 minutes, but an evaluation has shown that most
visitors only watch about four minutes of each and then move on to look at
the artifacts in the exhibit.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance in L.A./California make
extensive use of film and video in the Museum in all manner of ways.
The 'National Museum of Photography, Film & Television' in Bradford, UK has
specialized on film, too, as the title already suggests. So far I haven't got
into contact with them, but I will tell you about any information I 'll get.
These and many other helpful information showed me that I have to focus on
visitor studies to find out more about film and video used as means of
communication in a museum. Questions like 'How are the films percieved by
visitors?', 'How are films included in the exhibition and why?', 'How long
(minutes) are the films? Is that an acceptable lenght for most of the
visitors or do they stop watching after some minutes?' , 'Who produced the
film?' etc. So, please, any museum who did researched on these or similar
questions, what is your result? If you have published it, please tell me
where and when.
Thank you very much for helping me a second time! :-)
Anja Mueller