It’s been a while since I’ve updated on this site, and there’s good reason for it. Last year I began a doctoral program at the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with the National Museum of Scotland. In broad terms, I’m back to doing what I love best: playing with exhibition labels. More specifically, I’m working…
Exhibits / History / Inspiration / Memorial / Participation
Three years ago, I wrote about immersive memorials – the idea of places where objects and points of memory are dispersed through spaces, rather than being localized in one place. The example I used were Stolpersteine, the brass “stumbling block” cobblestones that mark the former residences of Holocaust victims throughout Europe. When I first wrote…
When people find out that I live in Germany, am not fluent in German, but develop and conduct visitor studies for German museums, a common question is: How? How do I understand why visitors are coming, what they’re doing, how they’re engaging, and what they want when I don’t always understand what visitors are saying? A difference…
Collections / Community / Engagement / Ideas / Participation
How can local German museums best support, engage with, and document the arriving Syrian refugees?
What happens when museums create space for others to talk about controversial issues?
Fair warning: When you marry a museum person the percentage of vacation time you spend in museums increases exponentially.
I don’t know if this exhibit title was intended to make me laugh, but I did and I love it for that.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium does some of the most elegant and evocative labels I’ve ever seen. Here are some of the ones that captured my imagination recently.
The cannon has been a participatory project at the University of Guelph for over 60 years. Here are some of the factors that have helped sustain its success.
Every once in a while, I find myself in a round of “Fantasy Museum. “The rules are simple: What would I try if money and practicality were no object? A lot of my ideas are predictably extreme, but more than once those impossible ideas have filtered down into something plausible and even reasonable. The other day I…
What happens when visitors explore life in the ocean during Arctic winter using flashlights in a pitch black room?
While waiting to take off from Tromso, Norway, yesterday, I noticed the neighboring Norwegian plane’s tail was decorated with a picture of Edvard Munch.
A few months ago, I sweet-talked (in very poor German) my way into a behind-the-scenes tour of a local museum. As a staff member was showing me around, he mentioned that the collection space was roughly divided into two zones. Zone 1 housed the “valuable” items – the pieces that get put on display and used by researchers. Zone 2…
The main art museum in my city – the Augustinermuseum – is under construction. The museum is expanding, and will eventually have new galleries for graphic and historical objects. For the past year, the fences around the construction site have been decorated with panels highlighting the city’s museums and what visitors can see there. And, for…
I’m so pleased to share that my recent piece, “Telling Stories with Invisible Objects,” was republished by Riksutställningar, The Swedish Exhibition Agency – and in Swedish, too! Att organisera berättelser kring föremål verkar vettigt i utställningsform. Men i en podcast eller ett öde landskap? SPANA:s gästskribent Katie Bowell skriver om konsten att bygga berättelser kring det som…
Museums Askew 