In this message I'm going to indulge several of my favorite themes: fair
warning to those who've seen them before!

Maybe I'm temporarily humor-impaired or just tired, but I have to admit I
don't find some of Judith Henry's supposedly hilarious one-liners
particularly funny.  "Let's go to the gift shop first", e.g., strikes me as
just sad--to quote from the campaign speeches of former presidential
candidate Perot (remember him?).  It's certainly a sad commentary on the
state of museum values.  One of the first concerns of modern exhibit design
seems to be the strategic placement of gift shops.  When visitors express a
preference for shops over exhibits, perhaps we're just getting what we
deserve.  After all, we have to make those sales to support our programs and
exhibits--whether the visitors are really interested in them or not, right?
Pardon my cynicism; as I said, I'm tired.

I assume that "look who donated this one" was prompted by a donor credit to a
famous person (or corporation).  Seems like a perfectly legitimate and
predictable response to name recognition.  And I've always advocated that all
donors should be credited in exhibits, even if they're rich and famous.  But
seriously, someone will have to explain to me why that's funny.  You can't
expect all visitor responses to be profound.

And "You can look at the show; I'll wait in the lobby"?  Again, sad but
typical, and not especially funny.  Many museum visitors are just tagging
along with someone else and would really rather be any place other than in a
museum--a fact of life which many museum folks don't seem to want to admit.

Reactions to other thoughts in this thread:

<<1. visitors believe that nothing that's in a museum is real

2. visitors think we do a good jobs with our mock-ups>>

I think no. 1 goes a little too far.  Let's say "some" visitors are hard
pressed to determine what's "real" and what's a replica or facsimile.  Many
museum exhibits confuse the viewer about what's a "real" historical artifact
and what's simulated by intermixing them without clear differentiation.  I
think this is an ethical issue which is seldom appreciated.  Of course,
museums started generating this confusion many years ago with dioramas
composed entirely of constructed realities, then period rooms and settings
containing mixtures of collection artifacts and fabrications.  In our zeal to
"educate" we sometimes fail to explain the differences, and I think that
short-changes the viewer--especially if "real" artifacts can be mistaken for
replicas, or vice-versa.

End of sermon.  However, I can also personally relate to the circumstance of
having real people mistaken for mannequins (which is perhaps the result of
the wax-museum mentality infiltrating "real" museums).   I do find such
confusion funny (to prove that I may have a sense of humor after all), but
the joke may be on the museums, not the visitors.  My office, research room,
and archival collection is plunked smack in the middle of an exhibit area,
and I've encountered many visitors who were baffled by the juxtaposition.
They can't figure out whether they're expected to enter and look around or
not.  Some try to come in to gander because they assume the space is an
exhibit and are stunned to hear that they need a research appointment.  The
reception area looks almost like it might be some sort of period room, so
confusion is understandable.  In a previous configuration it was even more
ambiguous.  It contained a desk with a receptionist, who reported (sometimes
amused, sometimes annoyed) that if she sat immobile for too long, she could
hear visitors debating whether or not she was real or a mannequin.

Some museums are hard to decode.  Visitors often have difficulty interpreting
what they're looking at--or what they're supposed to be seeing.

David Haberstich

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