Wayne LaBar writes that the National Association for Museum Exhibition (NAME) – one of the American Association of Museums (AAM) Standing Professional Committees – is looking for session proposals for the 2010 meeting, to be held in Los Angeles, May 23-27.

Sessions relating to the meeting theme – Museums Without Borders – are given greater consideration by the AAM Program Committee. Such topics might include: learning how best to engage publics in new ways; how museums have succeeded (or not) in responding to different communities including minorities, immigrants, and children; how museums have succeeded (or not) in creating networks with other museums in the United States and abroad; and what we’ve learned about what works with nontraditional audiences.

If you have an idea for a session – about technology, design, content development, prototyping, or some other aspect of exhibitions – that relates to these themes, go to the AAM website to submit a session and ask for NAME endorsement.

From what I’ve heard, it sounds as if there are quite a few of us who’ve started writing case studies, but haven’t quite finished – or haven’t gotten around to hitting “publish.” I started a post some time ago about an exhibition called Rotten Truth that I worked on with Kathy McLean, Beth Redmond-Jones, and colleagues from the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, about 15 years ago. (The exhibition was never actually built – which is part of the story.) One thing that’s held me up is that this all happened so long ago that records aren’t that easy to pull together, few were in digital format back then, and documents will need scanning. It was such a collaborative project, shouldn’t we all  consult on the case study? And then there were some sensitive issues – what Gretchen referred to recently as “exhibition frictions.” Should those be mentioned? What are the “frictions” or tensions that would be meaningful to recount? I gather others are stymied by those “intellectual property” issues Paul was commenting on earlier this week. In the interest of sharing experiences that may save some reinventing-of-the-wheel – one of the reasons we created this site – I think I ought to take on those challenges and finish this case study. I hope others will overcome hesitations and do the same. The stories, however imperfect they may seem to us, are part of our collective memory, the foundation of the “wisdom of practice” that informs our field.

We celebrated the solstice by reaching a milestone: There are now 1,000+ members of ExhibitFiles. Welcome to all of our newest members!

Since the site opened at the end of April last year, word has spread, and the community’s grown – and with it, the collection of shared memories and experiences posted here.

There are other ways to share, from the more traditional channels like journal articles to personal blogs. But by contributing to ExhibitFiles, we’re building a collective resource that’s easily accessible, everywhere in the world. We’re glad to see that museum studies students have begun to use the site to post reviews and hope to see more; you’re acting as eyes and ears for the rest of us. And for those who haven’t yet shared your stories, we’ll all look forward to reading about them in the new year. For now, thanks to all for your contributions, and best wishes for 2009.

Wendy

In October, we recognized the contributions of two ExhibitFiles power-users during a gathering at the ASTC Annual Conference in Philadelphia. Paul Orselli, a self-described instigator and principal of Paul Orselli Workshop (POW!), was among the group of exhibit developers who guided early planning of this site, and one of the first to contribute a review (check out Toasters, posted in April 2007 – and his 8 other case studies and reviews).

Gretchen Jennings was also among the early advisors, and her case studies of Psychology and Invention at Play provided models for others to follow. As editor of Exhibitionist, journal of the AAM’s committee on exhibitions, NAME, she – along with Beth Redmond-Jones, Penny Jennings, Eric Siegel, and others – has looked for ways to make this site useful to NAME members. And she’s spread word about the site through presentations to groups outside of the United States.

To them, and to all of our other 960+ members, thank you for so generously contributing to our common fund of knowledge and experience.

ExhibitFiles member Beth-Redmond Jones is looking for good examples of insect zoos (and also life science/ecology halls). Does anyone have a review to contribute?

(The photo, right, was taken by Christine Ruffo of ASTC during the ASTC Annual Conference in Philadelphia two weeks ago. It’s in the Academy of Natural Sciences Butterflies! exhibition.)

Over the last 18 months, we’ve received a lot of suggestions for new features for the ExhibitFiles site. One recurring request is to allow members to post not just full Case Studies or Reviews of exhibits and exhibitions, but short message or media elements. In other words, members could share one image (or video) or just an idea or a question. We’ve been thinking about how best to incorporate this potential new feature.

We want to make it easy to add media so we are envisioning a system that would allow for direct uploads to the ExhibitFiles server or links to images on Flickr, videos on YouTube, along with other services.

Here’s a few mock-ups of how it might work. The first one shows the “Add” page, where members are asked what they would like to contribute to the ExhibitFiles site.

The next screen shows how the ‘Bits main page might look. (Obviously, the gray thumbnails would be populated with images.)

Finally, here’s a mock-up of an individual ‘Bits page. We’re hoping to add the ability to make comments that have associated media files. Notice there is an integrated media-player. This improvement would also be added to Case Studies and Reviews.

This is all preliminary and we’re still working through the details. I didn’t post the proposed form for adding ‘Bits, as this has many layers due to the multiple choices.  (There are lot’s of options for that screen, since we are allowing members to include images and video that already exists on external social media platforms).

We’re open to any comments or questions you might have about ‘Bits. We’ll let you know how this all progresses.

If you’re a member of ExhibitFiles, and you haven’t yet “favorited” a case study or review, this would be a good time to start. Just a year and a half after the site initially opened, 69 members have taken time to post 137 case studies and reviews, helping to build a common resource for all of us who work with exhibitions.

But many other members are helping, too, by adding tags and comments, and by marking “favorites.” Over time, “favorites” help site users to browse by “popularity.”

We’ll be recognizing some contributions (and contributors) during the ExhibitFiles brunch at the ASTC conference coming up in Philadelphia. Hope to see some of you there.

Wendy

We were happy to see two new ExhibitFiles case studies posted by participants in the PI Summit, held July 25-26 in Washington, D.C. Liza Pryor of the Science Museum of Minnesota wrote about Science Buzz, and Elizabeth Fleming of the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, North Carolina, wrote about Flip It, Fold It, Figure It Out. Like a number of other exhibitions described in earlier case studies, both were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), a U.S. federal agency.

As anyone in the informal science education field with NSF funding now knows, documenting the impact of the work is an increasingly high priority. NSF issued a Framework for Assessing the Impact of Informal Science Education Projects (PDF) earlier this year to guide grantees, and future proposals will need to address impacts laid out in this publication.

But defining intended impacts can be a challenge in the rich and multifacted world of informal, lifelong learning, and assessing whether or not we’ve achieved these impacts can be even tougher. In a later reflection added as a comment about her case study, Liza notes one challenge she faces in assessing the impact of Science Buzz: “We’re working on our summative evaluation,” she says, “but we don’t have anything to compare our data TO. We’ve got the data from the Pew internet study, but it’s not too helpful. I’m particularly interested in studies of online communities. What’s a decent participation rate? Any way, without resorting to discourse analysis, to figure out what people are learning?”

Maybe this online community can give Liza some help. In fact, we’ll be posting soon about how we’re thinking about this in relation to ExhibitFiles itself.

ExhibitFiles members will be participating in the ISE PI Summit 2008 , July 25-26, when leaders of informal science education projects supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) gather here in Washington, D.C. More than 180 projects will be represented at the Summit, including not only exhibitions, but a range of media, from youth and community programs to broadcast media and online games.

NSF has been supporting the development of ExhibitFiles, so the site can serve as a resource for the science exhibition field. Exhibits people typically rely on personal memories and social networks to fill in the gaps; but the high level of turnover in the field, and retirement and passing of older colleagues, mean much of the history is being lost. By building a collaborative community site with a rich and growing set of exhibition records at its core, it is our hope that together we will preserve this history and support development of a culture of critique. Many NSF-funded exhibition projects, old and new, have already posted case studies, and we look forward to seeing more. Kathy McLean and Wendy Hancock of the ExhibitFiles team will be at the Summit later this week to help anyone who hasn’t yet registered.

The gathering is organized by the Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE), founded in 2007 with NSF support, which is housed at ASTC. CAISE partner organizations include Oregon State University (OSU), the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments (UPCLOSE), and Visitor Studies Association (VSA).

Are there topics you, or others you know, consider “unexhibitable”? The AAM’s National Association for Museum Exhibition (NAME) wants to hear about them. The Fall 2008 issue of the NAME journal, Exhibitionist, will consider this and related questions, and the editor, Gretchen Jennings, and Boston Museum of Science exhibit developer Maureen McConnell are looking for comments and reflections now. We also hope you’ll share any case studies and reviews here on ExhibitFiles to build up our collective record. We’ve already seen some examples (was the House of Terror in Budapest a concept that would have been considered impossible 30 years ago?).

More specifically, what Gretchen and Maureen want to know is: If there are ideas or topics you consider to be “unexhibitable” — that is, incapable of being made into an engaging museum exhibition — why is that? These are some of the reasons people have already mentioned:

- too controversial or sensitive
- too violent
- too revolting or disgusting
- too abstract
- too ordinary or insignificant
- untimely – could/could not have been exhibited years ago (or perhaps could e in a few years), but not now
- constrained by place – my museum/country could/could not do it, as opposed to another museum/country

On the other hand, if you think there is nothing that cannot be exhibited, could you share your thinking? Post your comments right here in the ExhibitFiles blog — or write to Gretchen or Maureen. If you’re willing to have your comments considered for inclusion in the issue, please respond by June 15 and identify yourself so they can contact you.