This multi-volume reference work provides a state-of-the-art survey of the burgeoning field of museum studies. Showcasing the best of theory, practice, history, controversies, and the ways technology impacts the way we view, think about, and institultionalize objects, The International Handbooks of Museum Studies will be the definitive reference for anyone - student, scholar, librarian - working in museum studies and the allied fields of art history, anthropology, and American studies.
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This introductory chapter contextualises and reflects critically on theemerging trends characterising the evolving social role advocated by museums insociety, with an emphasis on museum experiences as vehicles for change or trans-formation. It looks at transformation by adopting a systemic perspective, anchoredin the transformative potential of the experiences that museums offer to visitors, andthen zooming out to turn attention towards the way recent changes in the socio-political and cultural context reverberated in structural and functional changes insidethe museum and connected institutions and communities. The chapter is structuredalong a series of questions, starting by unpacking a rationale for transformativeexperiences and why they are worthy of attention at this particular moment (Why),then focusing on what we mean by transformative experiences in the context ofmuseums (What), on particularities of design approaches and supporting technolo-gies for crafting transformative experiences (How), and closing with reflections onthe meaning and significance of it all, for the museum, the visitor, diverse audiencegroups and society as a whole (For whom and For what). The final part of the Intro-duction then reviews these themes once again, narrating how they are woven in thebook narrative.
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A general trend of museums and cultural heritage institutions besides digitizing their collections is to involve the public more and at various levels. Technology plays an increasingly important role in this involvement. Developments we have observed in museum experience design, include trends towards 1) dialogical engagement of the public; 2) addressing crowds as audiences; 3) the use of Internet of Things (IoT) and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) technology in museums; and 4) designing for museum systems and institutional ecologies instead of for individual museums only. In this one-day workshop we especially focus on exploring the implications of museums reaching out to crowds beyond their local communities, and of museums increasingly becoming part of connected museum systems and large institutional ecosystems. By means of a tangible game we will brainstorm about future opportunities and challenges, cluster and evaluate them, and suggest future work.
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The notion of relevance is often used as a concept to be considered for making a museum matter to its visitors. The term, however, is rarely operationalized for use by designers, practitioners, or scientists in their work on museum experiences. We propose an integrated framework for designing relevant museum experiences, in which we distinguish between four stages of seeding and growing relevance in new audiences, called “trigger”, “engage”, “consolidate” and “relate“. The framework proposes to see designing for relevance as developing ways of integrating meaning-making, play and acceptable visitor effort across all these stages. It is intended to provide sensitizing concepts for use in further research on designing for relevance, as well as in design-related activities such as crafting requirements for new museum experiences, analyzing existing museum experiences and developing new museum experiences.
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The recent pandemic crisis, coupled with the rapid development of new technologies, has shown what new opportunities exist for designing enriched museum experiences. In this article, we collected the experience of six Dutch design agencies that are known for their portfolio in applying new technologies to museum experiences, also internationally. We start by clarifying the concept of museum experience design. Then, we discuss the role technology can play in designing museum experiences. We first review the types of technology that were mostly used in museums in the pre-Covid period and clarify the purpose of their use. Subsequently, we elaborate on the trends that design agencies see as the most important developments emerging post-pandemic and reveal the dreams they have for future applications of technology in museum experiences.
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A case study of the Markiezenhof Museum.
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The web is widely used by museums as a low-barrier platform to inform people on activities in the museum and publish their collections online. It is not uncommon that this publishing consists of an simple web interface connected to a database that holds records with limited information about the artifacts; information that is more relevant for managing the collection than for informing a wider public. It is not uncommon for a description to have no reference at all to that what is visible in the picture. Moreover this situation is hardly a worst-case scenario. In the Netherlands over 20 million artifacts in museums await a description, artifacts that do have a (scanty) description only half of them is available digitally. Four museums in the Netherlands (Naturalis, Museon, University Museum Utrecht, Dutch Institute of Image & Sound) together with three research and knowledge institutes (University of Applied Science Utrecht, Novay, BMC Group) decided in 2008 to explore the potential of user groups tagging collections and the effects of this on the involvement of these people towards the museum. For this purpose a dedicated social tagging tool was developed and implemented: www.ikweetwatditis.nl
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Marnix S. van Gisbergen (project leader), Shima Rezaei Rashnoodi (project leader), Karlijn van Baal (Producer), Kevin Otto (Director), Leonie Palm (DOP), Adinda Berends (Audio), Joost Scheffers (Editing), Danny Linssen (Supervisor).
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