Making museums’ “awesome stuff” more emotional

The Connected Audience Conference was jointly developed by KulturAgenda Institute, the Institute for Learning Innovation and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and took place April 4th - 6th at the Kulturforum Berlin, Germany. Museums - their objects, collections and exhibitions - inspire and awe their visitors. But can they do more? And should they go beyond the classical museal tradition of being a showcase for "awesome stuff”? The answer and impetus presented by the speakers and participants from 36 different countries in 28 presentations and workshops during this three-day conference was a resounding YES! This positive attitude has only partly to do with the fact that the museum "industry” is a vital part of any city’s cultural offerings. While it is difficult to accurately establish how many people visit museums, the ballpark figure (extrapolated from EGMUS statistics) lies at about 600 million visits per year in the European Union alone - with a strong upward tendency. 

 

 

Maria Gendron (US), Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University, spoke on emotions and learning. She explained that emotions sit at an important nexus in psychology: they colour our experiences, drive our behaviour, are critical for human relationships, and impact health and wellbeing. Gendron’s presentation described a series of scientific experiments about the nature of emotion. Gendron: "Emotions are not mere reactions to the world. They are constructions of the world. Or more precisely, they are your brain’s understanding of what is going on / in your own body in relation to what is happening in the world. As the brain is running its internal model of its body in the world, it is maintaining allostasis, it is predicting what actions will be necessary in the next moment, and it is simulating the sensory consequences, creating the mental events you experience as thoughts, feelings and perceptions.” With her detailed explanations of the physiological determinants, Gendron established the scientific basis for the discussions at the conference.

 

Paul Spies (DE), Head Curator of the Berlin Exhibition at the Humboldt Forum and of Stadtmuseum Berlin, explained the concept for the Berlin Exhibition in the Humboldt Forum, which will open early 2020. The visitors will be invited to explore the relationship between Berlin and the world and their very own part in this complex network. By exerting interactive choices, they will be told the history of Berlin and how the city has defined itself over the centuries, with references to revolutions, war, entertainment, fashion, and art. 

 

John Falk (US), Sea Grant Professor Emeritus of Free-Choice Learning at Oregon State University and author of several ground-breaking books over the last 40 years, spoke about basic emotions and motivations of museum-goers and - equally important - what makes a visitor classify a museum visit as a "peak experience”. What do people remember from their museum visit? Overall, Falk comes to the conclusion that museums and their exhibits fill an emotional need - which might even be as simple as to experience beauty and get away from the daily routine - and provide that satisfaction. To provide this to an audience is all about planning. That involves thinking about museum experiences that are not "linear” or "rational” since emotions are neither. This implies that a museum experience does not begin with a visitor entering a museum, nor does it end with the departure. It lives on, and, in a best case, drives visitor satisfaction, communication of this positive experience and repeating the visit.

 

Sheila Watson (UK), Associate Professor for Museum Studies at Leicester University, spoke about museums needing to rethink their strategy to involve emotions in their narratives. Traditionally most museums present themselves as disseminators of dispassionate knowledge. But as a study (Ganz 2011) observed, stories act as "social identity” prompted by the sharing of emotions crafted and encouraged by the narrative. Emotions are culturally regulated and museums need to consider to what extent exhibits are successful in eliciting the responses they intend from those who may be unfamiliar with that society’s cultural norms. Also, emotional responses to events, everyday life patterns, relationships and social structures change over time. For example, some eras and cultures may accept more violence than others. Can museum academics and professionals examine a subject dispassionately or will their own emotional upbringing and cultural heritage get in the way of scientific analysis? 

 

 

Joe Hancock (UK), co-founder of the "Burn the Curtain” theatre, spoke about the role of movement, magic and shared experiences: Over the last 10 years "Burn the Curtain” made theatre and other cultural events based on a simple set of principles - that if the audience is physically involved in the creation of an event, they have an increased sense of ownership in it, engage more deeply with it, and remember it longer. "Burn the Curtain” is a site-specific theatre company, where audience and performers work, travel and build a performance for the whole family. A bicycle may be transformed into a horse with simple cardboard masks and off the entire group goes on adventures with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, for example. Physical and emotional engagement leads to greater understanding and pleasure of the experience by the audience. This proves that interactive activities create a stronger bond between museum and visitor. Pushing buttons is fun for everyone! 

 

Marie Hobson (UK) from the Natural History Museum London spoke about visitors becoming advocates for nature after visiting the museum. At the very least a visit increases their awareness of biodiversity, especially since most of the public is becoming increasingly disconnected from nature due to urbanization, technological advance and safety fears. The museum’s own audience research findings demonstrate that communicating messages around biodiversity loss needs to consider audience’s emotions in order to be effective. An exhibit has to go way beyond creating a sense of awe and wonder. Especially in reaching children, the exhibits have to connect at a familiar level, provide educational value and provide positive examples of what is being done to protect biodiversity, since visitors switch off from depressing messages. 

 

Karleen Gardner (US) from the Minneapolis Institute of Art spoke on fostering empathy, compassion, and engagement through the visual arts to counteract the decline in personal connections, evoked by the rise of smartphone communication, etc. Since 2018, there is a Centre for Empathy and the Visual Arts at the Minneapolis Institute of Art where social scientists work together. An example is taking an object from the collection and humanizing it though imagination and storytelling - what is it, who made, what was it used for, share views and comments. This approach goes beyond a mere descriptive tag and has been very successful in creating visitor bonds with the museum. 

 

Ludovico Solima (IT), Associate professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", spoke on the role of emotion in visitor engagement within the context of the tremendous success of the video game "Father and Son” at the National Archeological Museum of Naples. The game is the first mobile game by an archaeological museum about a father’s legacy to his son he never got to know and how the son reclaims his identity by looking at the past and the work the father - an archaeologist in Naples - left behind. Since the game’s launch in 2017, it has been downloaded for free over 3 million times and has received more than 15,000 positive reviews. The analysis of these reviews highlights the high emotional involvement of users and their strong emotional bond with the museum. As a result, many players have expressed their interest to visit the museum. 

 

Anna Kovaleva (RU) works for the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Museum in Yekaterinburg. This museum won the European Museum of the Year award 2016 and is the first museum in Russia dedicated to the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its international team of scholars, museum experts and designers had a difficult task - to present all losses and gains of this time without giving any personal evaluation. The exhibits and collection trigger a great variety of emotions in their visitors since most of them have themselves lived through the upheavals of those times and can closely relate to the materials. 

 

 

These types of conferences always present an excellent opportunity to find out about current trends and best practice examples as well as inspiration for projects and ideas. Through a variety of keynotes and presentations, the Connected Audience conference was able to show the wide scope - and necessity - of including emotional aspects in today’s museum experience. Looking at a "pretty picture” or "amazing object” is no longer enough. Only by creating an emotional bond with the visitor will there be engagement and meaningful interaction. 

 

 

Ganz Marshall (2011): Public Narrative, Collective Action, and Power. In:  Sina Odugbemi, Taeku Lee (eds.): Accountability Through Public Opinion: From Inertia to Public Action, 273-289.