At 09:04 PM 7/22/98 -0400, you wrote:

> how do
>you teach/inform/enlighten without entertaining/thrilling/suprising?  And,
>ultimately, if museums are to stay alive and vital, will they have to go to
>a more amusement park kind of atmosphere?  I'm new to this whole business,
>so forgive me if these are ridiculous questions, but when I'm the only soul
>in a vast museum, I kind of wonder how to impart the thrill I get at a good
>exhibit to other people.

I think it's actually a lot simplier than most people think.  A good
exhibit is a good exhibit regardless of what the subject matter is.   My
personal definition of a good exhibit is one where you are allowed to think
and reflect and aren't simply just presented with information.

Calder's mobile's are facinating in and of themselves so you don't need
"bells and whistles" to exhibit them.  I saw more kids at that exhibit than
I've ever seen at any other art exhibit.  They were facinated by these
moving sculptures and more than once, the guards had to tell them not to
poke or blow on them to make them move.  (I waited until the guards weren't
looking to blow on them to make them move.  ;)  The impact of that exhibit
would be a lot less if it has lots of fancy lables and interactives.

Another art exhibit that I thought was a "good" exhibit was at the National
Portrait Gallery in London last fall of Holbien's "The Ambassadors".  The
whole exhibit was built around this one painting of an Italian and an
English ambassador standing together next to a shelf with all sorts of
scientific instruments on it.  Also significant about this painting is a
projected skull at the bottom on the painting which appears only from a
certain angle.  The painting was placed at the end of the exhibit as kind
of a "finale."  Leading up to it were models or actual objects in the
painting such as the hymnal, a globe, a telescope and some other things
that I'm blanking on, with explainations of what they are and why they were
significant in this time of scientific enlightenment.  There were also
explainations and examples of the technique used to paint the skull and why
it is such a feat for the time, especially since we are starting to do the
same thing with computers today. The techniques used to paint the rest of
the portait were also explained and illustrated down to the selection of
pigments and paints used.  By the time you got to the actual painting,  you
understood all the things going on the painting than two guys standing next
to a bunch of funky looking instruments.  ANd the coolest thing was seeing
the skull literally "pop out" of the painting by standing at marked spots.
This exhibit was also done without "bells and whistles" but simple text and
graphic panels and objects.

On the flip side, an interactive exhibit I liked was at the Franklin
Institute's math hall.  I have always been rotten at math so I thought I
wasn't going to like it.  But i had to walk through it to get to the
astronomy exhibit which I do enjoy.  Most of the interactives centered on
patterns and geometry.  Some were as simple as tangrams to put together to
show how shapes interact, others were simple computer programs on fractals
and chaos theory.  The neatest thing was a conic section exhibit done with
beams on light.  It projected a cone and you could intersect the cone with
another beam of light.  Depending on how you cut the cone, you would get
different conic sections like an elipse, parabola, hyperbola or a circle.
I knew what those were and have not so fond memories of solving analytical
geometry equations for conic sections, but that exhibit made it clear to me
what the differences were between the sections.  An interactive exhibit but
done very simply.

So you don't need "bells and whistles" or lots of interactives to keep
things interesting.  You just need to let the objects or the concepts speak
for themselves.  Don't put interactives or video or "bells and whistles" in
an exhibit just for the sake of having them.  If you feel the need to have
a lot of them, evaluate why they are going to be there.  If there isn't a
reason for them other than "it would be cool to have something like this"
then you probably need to go back and redesign the exhibit.

Deb Fuller

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