PRECEDENT STUDIES
ENGAGING VISITORS
The exhibit I studied is called the Side Trip and was featured in the Denver Art Museum. Through researching and analyzing this exhibit, my mission was to find out how to engage visitors of the new JMM exhibit using a response piece.
Some elements I looked at within the precedent is the placement of the piece within the larger exhibit, the materials they used, the aesthetic and theme of the piece, and the kind of questions the piece asked. All of these elements will need to be looked at when making a piece for the new exhibit in the JMM. Having a limited budget and wanting to appeal to all ages, I looked at how the precedent used inexpensive and low tech materials that all visitors would feel
comfortable using.
- Grace Cushing
MUSEUM FATIGUE
The purpose behind my precedent study was to research and inform about museum fatigue and how elements of remedies of museum fatigue could be used in our engagement with the exhibit. I set out to find a museum that had combated museum fatigue successfully and how they went about doing that, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Searching led to the Jewish Museum Berlin, very relevant in regards to our community partner the Jewish Museum Milwaukee.
The museum utilizes a very unique building design, a zigzagging hallway leads through the exhibit draws attention on its own and keeps the visitor engaged even when there are no exhibits. Windows are interspersed in such a way in that the visitor is able to look outside and take in their surroundings. Stools are provided that are able to be moved around promoting deeper reflection on exhibits and longer sessions in the museum.
The galleries are more “neutral” leading to less distraction and causing less fatigue than a regular gallery. Because both museums deal with the same subject the lessons learned are more readily applicable to the Jewish Museum Milwaukee (JMM). The non-permanent exhibit space is essentially a closed box with windows that can be covered by material. Since the space is much smaller than what the permanent exhibit is given the content becomes very crowded, leading to overload of information. While we may not be able to have much influence on how the exhibit is laid out, knowing the ideas behind the layout is good for informing any decisions we can make in terms of layout.
- TJ Brefka
POSTER DESIGN
The main purpose that I chose the study behind the Wilson Visitor’s Center was to learn from what they did in order to increase traffic into their region’s attractions, specifically the museums. The main mission that I had behind looking at this piece is understanding where to place fliers and informative pamphlets so that they are there for the people who are looking to engage themselves. They were able to bring the center off the interstate and into the midst of the resident’s lives. They put it in the center of the town's activity to engage the residents more but still had tourist traffic as well. I thought that this related well with what I was going for as there are limited studies on posters in a museum setting.
Some important things I learned from the precedent which translate to the Jewish museum are the spots in which to place fliers in the community. I found that placing fliers in community hubs and meeting places are a lot better than just along the street. For example, a town hall meeting or a place of worship could be a good spot if the content of the flier relates to that certain demographic. Also, when looking at the article I wondered about what goes into a good flier. So, I researched some physiological indicators that attract people to a poster and informs them. This is reflected in my visual piece.
- Caleb Foster
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MAP DESIGN AND IT'S USES
The greater purpose of this precedent study is to discover the best way to integrate maps and similar
macro-scale visuals into a museum exhibit. Many museums successfully incorporate such visuals into
their exhibits to give greater insight and context into topics, allowing for things as varied as the range of
a group of migratory animals to troop movements during large battles throughout history. An
important thing that I have noticed throughout this is just how many different uses maps can have and
that is their strength. Another important aspect is that many digital interactive maps are popping up in
museums that allow for the roles of multiple maps to be tied up into a single interactive display
medium.
I observed and interacted with two different museums for this precedent study: The Science
Museum of Minnesota and the Milwaukee Public Museum. Both museums employ a large number of
maps, an yet they both had differing takes on how to best integrate the maps into the overall exhibit
experience. They both had one exhibit with a fully digital map that allowed you to interact with it and
view different time periods.
The Science Museum of Minnesota is a larger museum overall, yet it had a
similar number of maps compared to the Milwaukee Public Museum because it is: a) more spread out
overall, taking advantage of its abundance of space and b) because it also features much more heavily
on interactive science exhibits compared to the Milwaukee Public Museum. Yet the Science Museum of
Minnesota has some maps far larger than anything present in the Milwaukee Public Museum, the lobby
of the Science Museum of Minnesota has a massive map of the planet’s surface on the floor allowing
kids to interact with an enlarged view of Earth.
- Darrian Garrett
SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT
Working with the Jewish Museum during the first quarter our task was to help with the engagement aspect of their Blacklist Exhibit. With that our group took notice in the lack of engagement of their social media posts because their questions were posted there as well as on the website. I chose to research about the use of social media for this precedent study. Primarily, I focused on looking at the facebook pages of other museums and at the engagement they receive on their posts. Looking at many different museums pages it appears that
engagement is not very high for many museums however it is better than what the Jewish Museum receives.The Jewish Museum Milwaukee uses all types of social media including facebook but they don’t get as much engagement from their posts as we observed during first quarter. I decided to find a museum that has a facebook page that has relatively the same number of people liking the page and it just so happens that the Grohmann Museum has only 306 less likes on the page than the Jewish Museum.
Comparing the two facebook pages there is something that stands out. The Grohmann Museum posts are typically a picture or multiple pictures with a sentence or two. If more information is needed to be shared, a link is provided so if one wants to know more they may
click the link. A study done found that posts with 80 characters or less receive 88% more engagement. (Jackson). This is a factor of why the engagement on the Jewish Museum’s posts are little to none. Scrolling through the Jewish Museum’s page, posts with multiple paragraphs can be seen. In this day and age people just don’t have the desire to read long posts. Cutting back on the number of words in a post and allowing a link to provide further information if needed is a way that the Grohmann Museum gets engagement and the Jewish Museum could increase theirs.
- Sophie Semanko
INNOVATIVE MUSEUM FEEDBACK
Building off of my previous exploration of the potential benefits of placing a kiosk after the Jewish Museum with their guest experience survey, I have focused on researching better
methods of gathering and using feedback for museum improvement.
One intriguing example is one installment of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History’s(MAH) 3 rd Friday series. In January of 2012, the event brought over fifty artists into the museum who lead participants in such activities as making their own paper, stitching books, and other simple art projects. In front of the museum exit, they set up a makeshift photo booth with a refrigerator box and some simple decorations and invited guests to take photos with their creations as well as a sign with their
personal answer to one of four prompts: I made, I loved, I met, or I learned. Overall, they had
roughly two to three times as many people offering feedback at the end compared to their
traditional methods of have interns with clipboards attempt to interview people after a typical
museum visit, and they received significantly more interesting and original thoughts and
opinions.
Some other successful strategies included an independent UK website that allowed
patients to share stories and comments about their healthcare experience and for professionals to
respond and a grocery store that had a fairly typical suggestion box, but always answered every
note and posted it on a bulletin board.
- Jacob Beine
WHAT MAKES A SUCCESSFUL MUSEUM
The purpose behind choosing the precedent study chosen for this assignment was to examine a specific exhibit at a museum that was successful and analyze what made it were most interesting and educational for visitors. The findings of this study will be applied to the layout and design of the Jewish Museum of Milwaukee’s Partisan exhibit.
One of the metrics used to measure the success of a museum is a museum’s number of visitors. By that metric, the Louvre Museum in Paris is the most successful art museum in the world and therefore is the museum selected for this study. Although it is an art museum and not a historical museum like the Jewish Museum, the goal of this study is to identify what aspects of a specific museum exhibit make it interesting and educational to visitors. As both art and history are typically considered to be boring and not very engaging to audiences, the findings of this study should be relatively applicable to the history exhibit being created for the Jewish Museum.
In a study performed by Louvre Museum researchers Fabrice Larceneux, Florence Caro, and Anne Krebs, visitors to the museum were interviewed and their movements around the museum recorded to investigate what sort of exhibits and strategies left visitors the most satisfied with their visit to the museum. The first strategy that was employed in the study was to create a scavenger hunt around the museum where visitors were given a specific itinerary to follow within the museum’s permanent collections to find contemporary works placed distant from each other. Leaflets were handed out to visitors to make sure they knew where they were going and to explain the works to them when they found them. Plaques were also placed near the contemporary works that explained the links between the artist, the work, and the other works in the Louvre. Through end of visit interviews, four categories of visitors were identified. There were contemporary art lovers, cultural omnivores, first time visitors, and classical visitors. Out of the visitors surveyed, almost all discovered new works and spaces within the Louvre that they were unfamiliar with or saw in a different way because of the contemporary art. This scavenger hunt was found to be very successful, leaving almost all visitors extremely satisfied with their visits. This technique for creating a scavenger hunt to get visitors to move around the museum and see exhibits in a new way is one that could almost certainly be applied to the Jewish Museum’s Partisan exhibit and would be a great way for people to see the connections between the partisans and the permanent exhibit at the museum.
- Andrew Kempen
USING EXAMPLES TO PROVIDE
BETTER WEBSITE DESIGN
The purpose behind my precedent study choice was to inform our group the best way to approach an online representation of the exhibit we are currently trying to create/design. My mission was to analyze famous museums/not so famous in order to find the best way to go about designing certain aspects of our website project.
I wanted to research based on three aspects of other Museum websites to improve upon theirs. One aspect being the design, another being user-friendliness on a mobile device or menu options, and the last aspect being focusing on how many photos vs text is on each page of the website; however, after doing some research, I realized there were more aspects to explore in order to really understand which websites were better. So I researched some of the key aspects and I found which was something I had not considered before was that a “museum’s website has to be a dynamic entity in order to keep up with the evolution of technology and attract a constantly growing number of users” (Loncaric, Ribaric, & Prodan, 2016). So, I understood that I had to modify the aspects I was going to test with to be inclusive of everything a museum website can offer. I changed my test to include five tests.
Clicks to current change exhibit with scrolling counting as a click because its not directly there when loaded, aesthetics, navigation/user friendliness especially on mobile devices, relevant information, and photos vs text. Using this method, I rated three museum websites to see the aspects either succeeding or failing and how each one looked and to give us an example of a better laid out museum website to use as an example in the future. This method can also be applied to our project when we start creating the exhibit page, by now understanding more about how to attract visitors we can better prepare and better create a website page for the exhibit. So, my goal of understanding a museum website was to help us on our project and was achieved.
- Joy Cross
MUSEUM INTERACTION
The intention of my precedent study was to review how museums improve engagement through interaction and extending the museum experience from the base of text and images on a wall. I looked how the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum engages its visitors through the way they set up the rooms in their exhibits. They have intentionally created each room in the museum to have the feel and/or put the visitors in the space that the story takes place. As you learn about the living situations of Jewish people within camps, you are put into a bunkroom and as you learn about how Jewish people were hidden in homes, you are presented a full-scale bedroom with hidden corridors and doors. This drives every point more effectively then it would have without all the visual stimulus. Many people praise this museum for their tactful use of space, so much so that my family calls is one of their favorite museums and would love to visit again. You can equate the immersive experience to the difference of a still image to the same scene viewed in 360 with a VR headset
- Seth Kooiker