Allison wrote: >I'd like to know your opinion on the process of writing an educational >text for art museums. >Do you think that as museum educators our vision and appreciation of a work of art >would be limited in comparison with that of the expert, and therefore this procedure >would be counterproductive? I work with history exhibits instead of art exhibits but I personally prefer to use curators' information. In a recent exhibit, I worked with our chief curator on the exhibit labels. He wrote a first draft and I rewrote them using simpler language and at a much lower reading level (I tried for about 4th grade). The final version was somewhere in between and was well received according to a recent study. I find that when I write labels or materials from my own research, it's harder to simplify and weed out things that maybe aren't as important. I also think that when I work from someone else's research, my new perspective helps identify areas of confusion. When I assume that the message is valid and accurate, it frees me to focus on the way it is communicated. It's not that I couldn't do the research myself (I still consider myself a historian) but the beauty of good teamwork is that we share the load. One person focuses on the message and the other focuses on the way it's received. I'll be interested to see others comments. Lisa Craig Brisson, Museum Educator Mackinac State Historic Parks (616) 436-7301 [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]