January 1st, 2007 | RESEARCH
This book includes accounts going back to the 1970s of efforts to engage visitors as contributors to exhibitions and active participants in museum conversations. Included are 27 essays by practioners from children’s museums and science centers, natural history museums and art galleries, history museums and living collections. The book offers practical guidance and concludes with reflections on the value and meaning of visitor contributions to exhibitions. Co-editor Pollock poses a question that in retrospect seems prescient: "Finally, have we considered carefully enough the possible downsides of collecting and displaying visitors’ fleeting thoughts as if they were so much wallpaper—brief, lacking context, only hinting at thought? In 1985, social critic Neil Postman wrote of the hazards of public talk that aims primarily to amuse—the direction in which, even then, television news was headed. Talking heads don’t constitute a conversation. Neither do Post-its, juxtaposed. They may attract attention and even provoke thought. But could we do more to foster genuine conversation in museums, around topics that matter?"
Document
Team Members
Kathleen McLean, Editor, Independent ExhibitionsWendy Pollock, Editor, Association of Science-Technology Centers
Citation
Identifier Type: ISBN
Identifier: 0-944040-75-6
Funders
Funding Source: IMLS
Funding Program: 21st Century Museum Professionals Program
Award Number: MP-00-05-0010-05
Tags
Audience: General Public | Museum | ISE Professionals
Discipline: General STEM
Resource Type: Book | Reference Materials
Environment Type: Exhibitions | Museum and Science Center Exhibits