Presented at the National Museum of Denmark to a mixed audience of Nationalmuseet curators, educators, and staff from other Danish museums. The presentation addresses responsiveness to visitor needs in developing interpretive components and gallery design. I followed the talk with a hands-on workshop in which participants wrote labels in new ways, observed visitors, and edited their galleries with visitor experience in mind. Part of a 2-day symposium organized by Mette Boritz of the National Museum.

1. Visitor-centered:
What does it
mean to
Walk that Talk?
Peter Samis
Associate Curator, Interpretive Media
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
National Museum of Denmark
Copenhagen
18 September 2013

2. This is where I come from.

3. Offering chamber. Withholding chamber.

4. Modern art—like all the objects we exhibit
—exists in a framework of meanings.
• Physical aspects
• Process of its making
• Relationships (to its maker, to ideas, to
other works)
• Documents (journals, letters, sketches)
• Media
• Methods of approach and understanding

5. Of these, art museums typically strip away
all but one or two.
• Physical aspects

8. Olafur Eliasson states the problem.

9. “Objecthood doesn’t have a place in the
world if there’s not an individual person
making use of that object.”
i.e.,
The expert’s reality does not
trump the visitor’s perspective.

10. So how do we make our objects useful?

11. Our Visitors:
Experts………………Novices
Somewhere along the line
that leaves us to restore the
context.

12. How we
interpret:
sometimes we
leave people
stranded.
High and dry.
JustinCozart, Drought

13. Other times, we give them Too Much Information.

14. Recognize this syndrome?

15. From drought to flood in one easy lesson!

16. Compare this...

17. Reversal of fortune.
Detroit Institute of Arts, USA

20. From Aristocracy to Industrial heritage.
Ruhr Museum, Essen, Germany

23. The Power of immersive spaces

24. …and scenography

26. Drama…

27. …and stories:

29. How about this for compact?
33 words.
Kelvingrove Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland

30. Or this...
Detroit Institute of Arts, USA

31. Minimum words. Maximum impact.
BELLAMY: “With visitor research, most people… read
the first couple sentences and then you move on. So
we thought, „Okay, we‟ll just give them the first
couple sentences. We‟ll put everything that we need
to in those first couple sentences.‟”
PERRY: Our word count on labels is thirty
words. And within that thirty words, you
have to say why that object is good.
—Interview with Martin Bellamy and Anne Perry of the Glasgow Museums

32. Consider the longer wall text…
rewritten with
personality!
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

33. Consider the wall text…
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

34. “Their art can hurt, can be ugly.”
Passion.
Hatred.
Emotions validated.
And with them, the visitors’ potential
discomfort.

35. With audio/multimedia tours, the issue
is the same—but different.

36. It‟s just as easy to run on at the mouth
and try to cram too many points in,
ignoring people‟s tired feet.
Photo: FreakingNews.com

37. So what can you say in a minute that
keeps people looking at—and engaged
with—the object?

38. Dosing = Scaffolding
Photo: RocPX

39. How do we know what our visitors want
to know?
How do we know what our visitors know?

40. Why don‟t we just ask them?

44. This goes for kids, too.

45. The power of prototyping to make sure
you‟re communicating as you hope…

47. Families’ conversations during interviews and
the projective techniques used provided
insight into families’ comfort with history and
the ways they related to objects.
©2011 Garibay Group. All Rights Reserved
The interactive nature of the family interviews
allowed us to gather input from both adults
and children.

48. Object sort activity. Families in action.
©2011 Garibay Group. All Rights Reserved

49. The goal of this activity was to
uncover patterns and identify
common characteristics of objects
that fell in each quadrant. This
process allowed us to understand
how families approach and think
about objects. By uncovering these
patterns, findings can be used to help
CHM make decisions about ways to
interpret collections and engage
families. Thus, the purpose of the
matrix is to more easily visualize
groupings. Keep in mind that the
focus is not on the individual objects,
but rather on the patterns that
emerged.
Note that the italicized phrases in the quadrants (e.g., I know what…) were not on
the matrix used by families. These phrases were names we gave the quadrants to
facilitate analysis and discussion.
©2011 Garibay Group. All Rights Reserved

50. What might we learn here?

51. Ask Kirsti
• 33 years old
• Smart, hip
• Works in an
architecture firm
in Copenhagen
• Lives in
Øesterport
• Learning to
kickbox
• Seeks new
knowledge &
experiences

52. Kirsti is your future.
“I know it‟s „interesting‟—
but not really. I feel
horrible about it.
I live now.”

53. Kirsti is your future.
“It‟s a pity because there
are beautiful things, and
they are old things, and
they‟re part of our history.”
But it‟s
•
•
•
•
•
Too cluttered
Undifferentiated
Not enough air
Makes her feel tired
Overwhelming

54. She‟s hoping for stories as a way in, but
instead she gets overwhelmed by
undifferentiated accumulations of objects.

55. “Give me one beautiful thing and I‟ll look at it.”

56. In fact, art & ethnography may not be so
different.
Each is born in a powerful symbolic
dimension, comes with its own web of
cultural references…

57. And leaves people outside that system
completely puzzled.

58. But the spoken word is powerful medicine.
Especially combined with images & text.

59. Video and multimedia, on-site and
online, offer another kind of scaffolding.
Context building.

60. Knowledge on demand, just in time.
SFMOMA, 2001

61. Art Institute of Chicago, Decorative Arts galleries, 2012

62. And from Nick‟s presentation yesterday…
Victoria & Albert Museum, Furniture galleries, 2012

63. So hopefully
this…
Photo: RocPX

64. can turn into this:
Yogendra Joshi, Flow

65. Thank you.