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Questioning the Entrance Narrative
... Their mobile application aimed at fostering inter-group discussions through the delivery of incomplete narrative information to each member of a group. This builds on what Doering and Pekarik (1996) defined as "entrance narratives", i.e. the personal storylines, expectations, and the resulting experience of each visitor. Different perspectives over the same experience, resulting from different "entrance narratives", are part of the critical discussion included in the current contribution. ...
... These are inferred from the participants' respective entrance narratives (cf. Doering & Pekarik, 1996) and from the announced museum experience. What are the issues if this standard is not met? ...
The digital representation of our past has long been an important tool in the interpretation of cultural heritage in museums. The recent rise in the use of Augmented Reality (AR) has seen various approaches to adding dynamic information to existent artefacts. The challenge is even greater when uncertainty further complexifies the represented history. This paper presents a critical analysis of an AR installation in the Sacra Infermeria museum in Valletta, Malta. After a description of the AR configuration of the installation, we present a thematic analysis carried out from a multidisciplinary focus group of 11 researchers in the field of Interactive Digital Narratives (IDN), from three perspectives: the technological implementation of the AR experience, the historical accuracy, gamification and the influence of social media-centred design, and the representation of the complexity arising from the uncertainty of history. In the light of the results of the multidisciplinary focus group, we provide a list of recommendations and heuristics at the end of the article.
... Entrance narratives are those storylines we bring to exhibitions (Doering & Pekarik, 1996), and the scholarship has some of its own. It is acknowledged that objects are tendentious (C. ...
... With the customer service approach, visitors experience the satisfaction of having their already existing views confirmed. Doering and Pekarik (1996) say about visitors "They may not want to learn much more specific detail than they already know, and they certainly do not intend to have their narratives radically revised" (p. 21). ...
The Exhibitions of Impact (EOI) special issue of American Behavioral Scientist consists of six articles from authors in communication studies and rhetoric, public health, medicine and bioethics, memory studies, and art therapy. Each article profiles some exhibition or memorial related to a pressing social issue, including gun violence, racist terrorism, domestic violence, religious fundamentalism, corporations selling harmful products, and how society treats those regarded as cognitively and behaviorally different. First, examples from today’s headlines show a global outcry over racist monuments and artifacts, and a global pandemic, which casts doubt on the future of exhibitions. Historical examples and explanatory concepts are introduced, with a focus on public exhibitions which issue suggestions or commands, brazenly or in more indirect ways. A look at medical and health exhibits makes explicit how exhibitions try to get us to do something while being informative. While summaries of each article show the topics are diverse, racism and health inequities emerge as underlying themes. After considering performative exhibits, there is a call for a bioethically informed exhibition studies, capable of navigating the wide variety of exhibits out there, and able to express allyship while troubleshooting urgent problems.
... Relatedly, research also documents that people attend to information sources with which they believe they share common perspectives. Consequently, they often fail to notice experiences and information that are misaligned with and/or contradict their held beliefs, values, attitudes, and knowledge (Doering and Pekarik 1996;Heimlich and Reid 2016). 3 People seamlessly shift between social roles. ...
... Scholarship in this vein explores areas such as what may have sparked an initial interest in environment, stewardship, and conservation and what processes, factors, and socio-environmental structures and contexts may have supported those initial interests as they emerged into more mature, fully formed interests and areas of deep dedication as adults. Chawla and Cushing's (2007) 'Education for Strategic Environmental Behavior' applies these principles of engagement to young people, drawing on Dewey (1916Dewey ( , 1938, who emphasized the importance of incorporating everyday-life concepts into educational experiences such that those experiences become relatable, infused with meaning and purpose. Chawla and Cushing (2007) consider those principles with regard to questions of democracy and participation for children, stating that, 'children also need opportunities for collaborative decision-making in everyday life' because those decision-making activities 'enable young people to exercise control over their environment and other elements of their lives' (442). ...
Environmental learning is a lifelong, lifewide, and life-deep endeavor, much of which occurs in the spaces in between those that are studied, remarked upon, and documented. Within this everyday-life context, we examine the concept of learningscapes—intersecting sociocultural, intellectual landscapes where people learn about and undertake practices related to the environment understood as a holistic concept. Considering the affordances and constraints of the environment situated within this everyday-life context, we examine theoretical underpinnings and implications of making daily-life learning visible, while avoiding a doom-and-gloom approach to environmental practices. We end by highlighting research and practice opportunities within environmental learning, overall.
... Therefore, we needed to consider how to best capture the experiences of teachers, who sought to improve their pedagogical content knowledge and skills (Shulman, 1987), who encounter the historic space as embodied, individual learners (Csikszentmihalyi & Robinson, 2009;Dawson, 2014;Winans & Dorman, 2016) with their own entrance narratives and subjectivities (Burgard & Boucher, 2016Cameron & Gatewood, 2003;Gatewood & Cameron, 2004;Doering & Pekarik, 1996;Grever, de Bruijn, & van Boxtel, 2012;Latham, 2013;Levy, 2017;Reich, Buffington, & Muth, 2015;Smith, 2006;van Boxtel, Klein, & Snoep, 2011;Winans & Dorman, 2016), but also as collaborative learners, interacting with professional peers (Hutchins, 1994: Lave & Wenger, 2018Korthagen, 2010;Zeichner, 2005), who then transfer the experience/information gathered in HSBPD to different professional roles and contexts (Clark & Paivio, 1991;Barnett & Ceci, 2002;Author, 2014;Mayer, 2009). Therefore, we positioned these studies within Complexity theory, which acknowledges that effective professional development requires "multiple and cyclic movements between the systems of influence in teachers' worlds" (Opfer & Pedder, 2011, p. 386) including continuous interaction between knowledge, identity, and participation in communities (Zellermayer & Margolin, 2005). ...
... Twenty-five teachers' pre-sorts held a Pedagogical Content Knowledge Focus. Of these 25, 10 remained on this factor and two more moved to the factor in the post-sort, indicating that loading on this factor was a greater indication of participants' expectations and entrance narrative (Doering & Pekarik, 1996) than of program outcomes. Six teachers identified as male, 19 as female. ...
This paper reports on Y3/3-year project to assess teacher growth in historical knowledge, skills, and dispositions, at historic site-based teacher PD programs (HSBPD). This third year study, drawn from two different historic sites—Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and George Washington’s Mount Vernon, we found a plurality of teachers evinced growth in historical thinking after exposure to on-going archeological and interpretive work at the sites. This is the first study to tie historical thinking gains to specific elements of teachers’ work with historic dssites. As part of the larger study, these results move us towards more generalizable understandings of HSBPD outcomes.
... Sob essa ótica, em uma visita ao museu, cada sujeito apresentará necessidades, interesses, motivações e compreensões relacionados à identidade, que proporcionam uma experiência individual nesses espaços. Contudo, enquanto grupo familiar, os indivíduos compartilham um conjunto de valores, memórias e experiências que permitem que o novo conhecimento se torne pessoalmente relevante (Ellenbogen et al., 2004;Zimmerman & MacClain 2016;Doering & Pekarik, 1996). O conjunto de tais experiências, pessoais e compartilhadas é fundamental para a construção de significado (Ansbacher, 1999;Silverman, 1999). ...
Neste estudo, tivemos como objetivo entender como ocorre a construção de significado durante a visita de famílias a exposição itinerante de ciências, “Túnel da Ciência Max Planck 3.0”, a partir da análise de suas conversas e interações. A visita de quatro famílias foi gravada e analisada por meio de um protocolo de pesquisa focado nas interações e no conteúdo das conversas. A análise traz evidências de que a leitura, os questionamentos das crianças e o papel do mediador contribuíram para aprofundar as temáticas de ciência relacionadas aos módulos expositivos. De igual importância, as habilidades de negociar o trajeto, de acessar e operar os dispositivos interativos contribuíram para o interesse e para apropriação da exposição. Em síntese, a análise indica que houve um esforço das famílias para significar e compreender as interações estabelecidas no grupo e com a exposição e que, portanto, os visitantes vivenciaram experiências de aprendizagem de maneira colaborativa.
... Historical museum exhibits call on the visitor to look to the past through the stories they tell. In doing so, they engage us in memories not only of these pasts but also of our own life experiences (Doering and Pekarik, 1996). Our own memories become a scaffold to our identities (Cubitt, 2007) and by extension our engagement with the past. ...
... Visitors have diverse needs, and even the same individual can experience the same exhibition multiple times, each with a different approach and varying expectations. The most satisfying exhibitions for visitors are those that resonate with their experiences and provide information in ways that validate and enhance their worldview (Doering and Pekarik 1996). According to Kelly (2003), visitors enter exhibitions with their own agenda and perspectives, particularly if the subject matter is current and significant. ...
In 2022, the National Museum of Australia launched an immersive virtual exhibition of Australian Aboriginal art: Connection: Songlines from Australia’s First Peoples, which was created and produced by Grande Experiences, the same team that produced the multisensory experience Van Gogh Alive. The exhibition employs large-scale projections and cutting-edge light and sound technology to offer a mesmerizing glimpse into the intricate network of Australian Aboriginal art, which is an ancient pathway of knowledge that traverses the continent. Serving as the gateway to the Songlines universe, the exhibition invites visitors to delve into the profound spiritual connections with the earth, water, and sky, immersing them in a compellingly rich and thoroughly captivating narrative with a vivid symphony of sound, light, and color. This article examines Connection as a digital storytelling platform by exploring the Grande Experiences company’s approach to the digital replication of Australian Aboriginal art, with a focus on the connection between humans and nature in immersive exhibition spaces.
... The participants could have a wide variety of lived experiences, knowledge, or even attitudes about evolution. The potential diversity of entrance narratives (Doering & Pekarik, 1996) that the path designers have to consider could be very large indeed. To this end, therefore, it might be advisable to present a few key concepts in multiple formats and at multiple instances to increase the chances of the message being relevant and relatable to, and retained by the participants. ...
Non-formal learning activities have an important role in continuous education of the general audience, and thus provide an essential element in increasing evolutionary knowledge and scientific literacy for European citizens, beyond the formal schooling. This guide brings together explanations of how non-formal learning can be designed, with special emphasis on evaluating the activities. The guide describes common activity types and examples encountered in our scoping conducted via surveys, personal contacts, and literature and internet search. It also provides reflection points for practitioners (activity designers, educators, science communicators) to embed evaluation as a form of engaging activity participants, as well as a tool to assess the impact and improve practice.
... In addition to providing some background and context, an information panel Photo credit: Author helps set the 'entrance narrative'. The entrance narrative, from museum studies, refers to the preconceptions, life experiences and worldviews that visitors bring with them to an exhibition (Doering & Pekarik, 1996). Thus, an information panel, especially when it comes to a research exhibition, should provoke audiences to be conscious about what their personal entrance narrative might be. ...
... In addition to providing some background and context, an information panel Photo credit: Author helps set the 'entrance narrative'. The entrance narrative, from museum studies, refers to the preconceptions, life experiences and worldviews that visitors bring with them to an exhibition (Doering & Pekarik, 1996). Thus, an information panel, especially when it comes to a research exhibition, should provoke audiences to be conscious about what their personal entrance narrative might be. ...
In this chapter, Boyd describes the staging and evaluation of the ‘Finding Home’ exhibition within the context of university ‘impact agendas’. The notion of societal impact is critiqued before the tasks involved in staging the ‘Finding Home’ exhibition are detailed. The findings from the exhibition’s evaluation, which included 100 visitor surveys and 31 phone interviews with exhibition audiences, are also presented in this chapter. The chapter concludes with reflections on the labour involved in bringing a research exhibition to multiple publics.
... Those set of values and ideas came from prior experience, knowledge, emotions. They shaped the way visitors acted in the situated context, and they were directly expressed in their expectations (Doering and Pekarik 1996). The findings show that expectations are defined not only by visitors as individuals but also by the content and physical context of the museum and the social context of the visit. ...
In the UK, accessibility for blind and partially sighted people in museums and cultural heritage sites has seen substantial progress thanks to the civil rights movement and the Equality Act of 2010. In recent years, there has been significant development of projects in UK museums for disabled people that aim to be socially inclusive. The concept of “motivation”, coming from Museum Studies literature, is central to understanding blind and partially sighted visitors’ experiences. This paper aims to investigate the motivation and expectations of blind and partially sighted visitors, providing a general understanding of why they decide to visit museums and how accessible resources affect their experience. Findings show that participants have multiple motivations for visiting, and they do not consider different motivations to be conflicting. The social and educational aspects seemed to be the most valued elements regarding visitors’ experience. The analysis suggests clear links between the way participants use resources in the museum and their motivation for visiting museums. The results show that the use of accessible resources has the potential to enhance the museum experience of blind and partially sighted people.
... These verbal strategies worked to close down the emotional validity of challenges to a visitor's sense of identity and status and maintained misrecognition of social groups other than that to which the visitor belonged, while also emotionally reinforcing their commitment to their own sense of place. Attempted interventions into the interpretations at sites of national heritage examined in this study were routinely met with such responses ensuring that visitors could invest in what Doering and Pekarik (1996) refer to as their entrance narratives. ...
Heritage sites and places are often mobilized to represent a group's identity and sense of place and belonging. This paper will illustrate how heritage and museum visiting, as a leisure activity, facilitates or impedes recognition and redistribution in direct and indirect ways. Drawing on extensive qualitative interviews with visitors to 45 heritage sites and museums in the USA, Australia, and England, the paper demonstrates the importance of emotions in mundane struggles over recognition and misrecognition. How emotions uphold or challenge investments in heritage narratives are examined. The paper argues that heritage and heritage‐making is a valuable focus of analysis that reveals the nuances of how people sustain or impede claims for recognition and redistribution.
... Indeed, teaching is often legitimisedor notthrough other experiences. Just as a museum visitor projects a specific meaning onto an exhibition based on their preexisting values (Doering and Pekarik 1996), a person studying the anti-Jewish genocide will appropriate the meaning of lessons according to their pre-existing knowledge. Similarly, international recommendations do not define national narratives; in turn, national frameworks are appropriated by a plurality of individuals who make sense of them based on their heterogeneous socialisations. ...
... The children's statements that could lead to information about bird characteristics, such as macaw vocalisation and imitation, the constitution of the toucan's beak, are attenuated, distorted, diverted to emotional aspects, or simply not answered. We are aware that issues relating to entrance narratives -based on visitor´s culture and prior knowledge (Doering & Pekarik, 1996), each family's agenda (Anderson et al., 2008), motivations and interests, and scientific capital (Archer et al., 2015) influence group interactions and conversations. Nevertheless, we believe that zoos need to help and encourage parents to build relevant knowledge, talk about science, and encourage their children to learn. ...
This study aims to analyse family experiences when visiting a zoo from children's perspective, through their interactions and conversations. Thirteen children and their parents participated in the study, totalling 271subjects in seven family groups on a spontaneous visit to Parque das Aves (Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil). The visits were fully recorded using a subjective camera (first person audiovisual recording), and the audiovisual material was analysed in relation to the role that the children played in directing the visiting experiences towards the family group's engagement and learning. The results provide evidence that interactions and conversations occurred with children's active participation in the families' experience visiting the park, usually engaging the group through different strategies such as selection of expository elements for interaction, route guidance, reading of information boards, assigning roles to adults, and crafting questions. These actions placed children as central to the learning experiences in some cases. This investigation provides evidence of the need for zoos to understand the visitors' agenda from the perspective of children and provide support for the planning of educational actions and communication strategies that involve and engage the public in biodiversity conservation. ARTICLE HISTORY
... In order to promote critical reflection, scholars advocated the adoption of multiple perspectives and contrasting views. As Doering and Pekarik (1996) argued, museums should question and unsettle visitors' pre-established 'entrance narratives', rather than reinforcing them. The growth of the World Wide Web, in turn, has offered museums exciting novel opportunities to attract and involve visitors (Parry 2007) as well as to engage with 'different histories and historical truths about the past' (King et al. 2016: 90). ...
This paper explores the potential for the deployment of oral history in the museum space to challenge hegemonic narratives on the past and enhance multivocality. Following an overview of the general merits of oral history and debates about its use in museums, we set out the arguments in favour of combining such an approach with the notion of agonistic memory. We then move to a comparative analysis between the Schindler’s Factory exhibition in Krakow and the Voices of 68 project at National Museums NI’s Ulster Museum, Belfast to explore the limitations and benefits of digital storytelling as a tool for disrupting linear narratives. In so doing, this article showcases and explains the potency of combining oral history with agonism in encouraging radical multiperspectivity that takes representations of the past beyond the curtailed benefits engendered by approaches focussed on multivocality alone.
... Individual experience: instances in which visitors refer to their individual perspectives on and expectations of their museum visitwhat Doering & Pekarik[20] refer to as 'entrance narratives'. Here, we coded instances in which visitors referred to their personal expectations, experiences, emotions and memories related to the artworks and the museum visit and space. ...
This paper discusses the digital method Social Meaning Mapping (SMM) and its affordances to capture aspects of the museum visit. SMM, embedded in the Visitracker tablet-app, enables the annotation of visitors’ movement and interactions in a particular gallery room post-visit. During a researcher-led session, visitors handle the tablet and annotate their experience on its screen while sharing their thoughts aloud. Both visitors’ annotations and their voices are being recorded through the app. Each SMM can be accessed through Visitracker’s portal as a video which re-creates visitors’ ‘trails of walking’ (what they mark) and their ‘ways of talking’ (what they say) in synchronization. In this paper, we draw upon data collected at the Austrian Gallery Belvedere in Vienna to argue that SMM created by visitors can complement tracking and timing (T&T) data collected by researchers, allowing for a more holistic understanding of the museum experience. The analysis shows that SMM captures visitors’ experiences in a multimodal way, both visual and verbal, enabling them to foreground aspects of their personal experience, spatial practices, co-experience and social realms of their visit.
... The concept of narratives was proposed by Doering and Pekarik (1996) to categorise the self-reinforcing motivations people express when visiting a museum. With the established idea that individuals bear a previous body of knowledge and identity, the development of the narrative's analysis based on post-visit individual interviews is currently applied to categorise the motivations of the museum visitors (Falk and Gillespie 2009;Falk 2016;Rowe and Nickels 2011;Vesci et al. 2020). ...
Cuenca, a small city with a rich historical and palaeontological heritage, is the ideal location to explore how the scientific knowledge of its inhabitants has changed over the years. In 2010 and 2019, two surveys were conducted on the streets of Cuenca to characterise their scientific profiles and how they perceive heritage outreach initiatives in palaeontology (i.e. visits and non-formal education in museums, research dissemination and mass media). For the present study, 320 responses were analysed through multivariate techniques (multiple correspondence analysis or MCA), using simple binary states and multiple nominal states. The results showed a significant disparity in the age demographic category: on the one hand, young people (< 18 years old) retained more scientific information linked to educational activities than older people in 2010; on the other hand, older Cuenca natives (> 55 and 35–55 years old) were the most informed and influenced by outreach and media in 2019, some of them even forming a particular group of palaeontology and dinosaur enthusiasts, herein named ‘paleo-geeks’. In general, it was found that the majority of answers were congruent within the same year and corresponded with the sociocultural changes that Cuenca had experienced, from a rural to a more urban and diverse culture. Lastly, it was concluded that heritage outreach initiatives do influence the scientific profiles of Cuenca’s inhabitants.
... An individual in different contexts with different others will be aware of and give attention to different activities, information, people, ideas, feelings, and the host of what we can learn. It is also well understood that people seek out information that supports their existing beliefs and values, and they often do not notice or attend to experiences and information that do not fit with their entrance narrative-particularly in informal learning environments (Doering & Pekakirk, 1996). ...
... Museums are multidimensional environments and require a multi-perspective approach to guidance enhanced by implementing technologies such as AR, VR and MR (Raptis et al. 2018). However, the most significant roles that museums play are in attracting people and enriching their knowledge (Doering and Pekarik 1996). A museum guide is defined as verbal or non-verbal instructions and information that helps visitors to engage, amuse, educate and navigate (Best 2012;Fine and Speer 1985). ...
Mixed reality (MR) is a cutting-edge technology at the forefront of many new applications in the tourism and cultural heritage sector. This study aims to reshape the museum experience by creating a highly engaging and immersive museum experience for visitors combing real-time visual, audio information and computer-generated images (CGI) with museum artefacts and customer displays. This research introduces a theoretical framework that assesses the potential of MR guidance system in usefulness, ease of use, enjoyment, interactivity, touring and future applications. The evaluation introduces the MuseumEye MR application in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo using mixed method surveys and a sample of 171 participants. The results of the questionnaire highlighted the importance of the mediating the role of the tour guide in enhancing the relationship between; perceived usefulness, ease of use, multimedia, UI design, interactivity, and the intention of use. Furthermore, the results of this study revealed the potential future use of MR in museums and ensured sustainability and engagement past the traditional visitor museum experience, which heightens the economic state of museums and cultural heritage sectors. 3
... Methodologically, video recordings shifted the research focus from attentiongiving to multi-modal interaction analysis between artworks and co-present subjects (Christidou & Diamantopoulou, 2016;Heath & vom Lehn, 2010;Steier et al., 2015). Engagement with art is also mirrored in the more general literature on "entrance narratives" as the internal storyline that visitors bring with them (Doering & Pekarik, 1996;Pekarik et al., 1999;Pekarik & Schreiber, 2012) to the on-site museum experience (Black, 2005(Black, , 2018Falk & Dierking, 2013) in the context of informal and social learning theories (Crowley et al., 2014). Here, visitors are understood as active interpreters who engage with the given content in a structured perception scenario. ...
There is increasing awareness that the perception of art is affected by the way it is presented.In 2018, the Austrian Gallery Belvedere redisplayed its permanent collection. Our multidisciplinary team seized this opportunity to investigate the viewing behavior of specific artworks both before and after the museum’s rearrangement. In contrast to previous mobile eye tracking (MET) studies in museums, this study benefits from the comparison of two realistic display conditions (without any research interference), an unconstrained study design (working with regular museum visitors), and a large data sample (comprising 259 participants). We employed a mixed-method approach that combined mobile eye tracking, subjective
mapping (a drawing task in conjunction with an open interview), and a questionnaire in order to relate gaze patterns to processes of meaning-making. Our results show that the new display made a difference in that it 1) generally increased the viewing times of the
artworks; 2) clearly extended the reading times of labels; and 3) deepened visitors’ engagement with the artworks in their exhibition reflections. In contrast, interest in specific artworks and art form preferences proved to be robust and independent of presentation modes.
... Doering and Pekarik distinguish visitors according to these motivations, adding visitors' desire to strengthen their identity through associations with the themes presented in a museum and the aim to continue one's self-education intellectually, culturally, emotionally and socially (Kotler, 2008;Doering 1999;Doering, Pekarik, 1996). ...
The article discusses the motivational factors of visual art institution consumers. Analysis includes Falk’s identity-related theory of motivation for visiting art institutions that discusses how visitors’ experience begins before visiting a museum and is focused on the consumer’s attitude (identity) validation. Consumers’ motivation to visit an art institution depends on not only the proposals provided by the institution and their value to the consumer, but also on accessibility, the environment, and the personnel’s communication. The article introduces the motivations, expectations of consumers of the services provided by Kaunas Picture Gallery as well as evaluation of the services and infrastructure provided by the organisation obtained during study Visitors’ Expectations in Visual Art Institutions.
... The importance of questioning as a higher cognitive skill, and even as an 'art' has been highlighted in the literature (Doering and Pekarik, 1996;Phillips and Duke, 2001;Yang et al., 2005). The dialogical, critical and reflexive nature of questioning can be used to direct enquiry − not only into a topic, but also into the learner's own positionality (and how subjectivities may impact the narrative construction). ...
University Special Collections are increasingly being recognised as a valuable pedagogical resource in higher education teaching and learning. The value of historic artefacts as a cross-disciplinary tool to promote higher order thinking processes such as criticality, questioning and narrative construction is well-established in the museum education literature and is gaining increasing attention in teaching and learning development. In this paper, we present three case studies in which we explore the application of Special Collections in a range of learning development contexts, in order to help students engage with their discipline and discipline-specific higher order skills. Our case studies are explorative in the sense of ‘trialling’ the use of historic artefacts in the classroom, to inform our next steps and development of our method. We conclude with our reflections on the process and outcomes of our explorations, to inform our practice and that of other educators looking to apply this method.
... Research has underlined that people do not enter museums as ''blank slates'' (Doering and Pekarik, 1996: 20). They bring with them their ''entrance narratives,'' comprising personal histories, previous knowledge, and past experiences (Doering and Pekarik, 1996;cf. McIntosh and Prentice, 1999: 607 for heritage sites). ...
There is a dearth of studies on intercultural dynamics in Southwest Asian and North African archaeology, not least since conventional narratives assert that present-day majority Muslim communities in these regions are not interested in the pre-Islamic past. In this paper I argue that, despite seemingly overcoming such positions, collaborative projects may actually exacerbate them through perceiving local communities as deficient, in need of being taught and re-united with “their” heritage. Using data from two current projects in Sudan, I explore actual motivations of local publics to engage with the archaeologically approachable past and the interests they voice vis-à-vis archaeological heritage. I suggest that emphasizing these dimensions effects a shift in how nonarchaeological partners in collaborative projects are conceptualized. This opens new ground for engagement, as changing perceptions impact on interactions and, in consequence, power relations between protagonists.
... Informed by previous studies of museum visiting experiences, a visitor's "entry narrative" refers to personal interests, motivation, and agenda for the visiting experience. Research findings have suggested that visitors come to museums for diverse reasons, which direct their visiting behavior to satisfy their personal needs and agendas (Falk 2009: 80-89;Packer and Ballantyne 2002;Doering and Pekarik 1996). A visitor who expects to learn something from an exhibition would likely be more motivated to interact with the exhibits and the interpretation aids (e.g., exhibition panels, audio guides, and/or education workshops), and consequently, the experience would contribute to his or her degree of satisfaction with the visit. ...
... The most significant role in the museum industry is attracting people and enriching their knowledge [18]. Museums employ a diverse range of practical activities to engage the public and museum guidance is the primary contributor [58], This approach is applied using verbal and non-verbal instructions and information to aid visitor interaction [21]. ...
Many public services and entertainment industries utilise Mixed Reality (MR) devices to develop highly immersive and interactive applications. However, recent advancements in MR processing has prompted the tourist and events industry to invest and develop commercial applications. The museum environment provides an accessible platform for MR guidance systems by taking advantage of the ergonomic freedom of spatial holographical Head-mounted Displays (HMD). The application of MR systems in museums can enhance the typical visitor experience by amalgamating historical interactive visualisations simultaneously with related physical artefacts and displays. Current approaches in MR guidance research primarily focus on visitor engagement with specific content. This paper describes the design and development of a novel museum guidance system based on the immersion and presence theory. This approach examines the influence of interactivity, spatial mobility, and perceptual awareness of individuals within MR environments. The developmental framework of a prototype MR tour guide program named MuseumEye incorporates the sociological needs, behavioural patterns, and accessibility of the user. This study aims to create an alternative tour guidance system to enhance customer experience and reduce the number of human tour guides in museums. The data gathering procedure examines the functionality of the MuseumEye application in conjunction with pre-existing pharaonic exhibits in a museum environment. This methodology includes a qualitative questionnaire sampling 102 random visitors to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Results of this research study indicate a high rate of positive responses to the MR tour guide system, and the functionality of AR HMD in a museum environment. This outcome reinforces the suitability of the touring system to increase visitor experience in museums, galleries and cultural heritage sites.
... Individual experience: instances in which visitors refer to their individual perspectives on and expectations of their museum visitwhat Doering & Pekarik[20] refer to as 'entrance narratives'. Here, we coded instances in which visitors referred to their personal expectations, experiences, emotions and memories related to the artworks and the museum visit and space. ...
This paper presents findings from the ‘Belvedere Visitracker’ study conducted by the University of Oslo and the University of Vienna in collaboration with the Austrian Gallery Belvedere. As the museum has
recently rearranged its permanent collection, the ‘Belvedere Visitracker’ study was designed to explore visitors’ experience in one of the central rooms, the Secession room. Combining observational, visual
and verbal data, the study investigates: How do visitors move through space, physically approach and interact with each other and the 16 artworks displayed in the Secession room? How do they reconstruct
their experience through Social Meaning Mapping after the visit? In this study, the novel digital tablet-based tool Visitracker was used to collect data through in-gallery observations, a post-visit questionnaire and the new qualitative tool called Social Meaning Mapping (SMM) during a researcher-led session. SMM is designed to be used in post-visit researcher-led sessions during which visitors in groups are prompted to recount their movement in one of the museum rooms
verbally and visually by marking it on the tablet’s surface using a toolbox. Both their talk (verbal activity) and the maps (visual activity) are recorded through the app. SMM addresses a methodological challenge of incorporating visitors’ own narrative understandings of their movements and meaning-making processes into data collected by researchers through in-gallery observations (i.e. time and tracking
studies). We collected data from 76 pairs of visitors (=152 individuals). The analysis of the data collected through in-gallery observations foregrounded meaning-making patterns regarding (a) visitors’ movement and use of space in the Secession room, (b) visitors’ preferences in relation to the artworks displayed in this
room, and (c) the use of resources such as text, audio-guides or smartphones. The audio and visual data
collected through SMM was analysed qualitatively with NVivo 12 software. The analysis illustrated how
visitors linked artefacts visually and embedded them in space, time and a narrative through a process of
creating, editing, and sharing them with their co-visitor and the researcher.
The data collected with Visitracker through the in-gallery observations enabled us to aggregate visitors’ movement patterns in the Secession room (Figure 1) and thus, easily identify the areas which visitors
occupy, or not, the most, and the artworks and resources they use, or not, the most. The data collected through SMM (i.e. both visitors’ maps of their trails and their verbal accounts of their experience in the Secession room) foregrounded aspects of visitors’ personal and sociocultural context and often linked
these with aspects of the physical context. Apart from their own art-related knowledge, visitors brought into their meaning making a variety of personally-related knowledge resources such as hobbies,
previous museum experiences and current societal debates. Additionally, visitors related both verbally and visually their experience in this room to the given situation in the museum, allowing us to explore how social and spatial constellations may shape their experience.
Visitor studies are an important source of knowledge within museum practice: They inform what we believe about our audiences, what kinds of interpretation we develop, and how we conceptualize success. As visitor studies professionals, we see firsthand that the ways we gather data have implications for how we and our colleagues view visitors and how visitors perceive our institutions. Meanwhile, we also see opportunities for visitor studies within museums' broader aspirations to become more visitor‐centered, as defined by meaningful two‐way engagement with visitors. Using real‐world project examples, this paper explores possibilities for moving toward a more visitor‐centered approach to data collection, in which practitioners can more clearly privilege meaning, transparency, and care. As starting points, we suggest that active attention to four considerations should inform more visitor‐centered visitor studies: comfort (i.e., the well‐being of people); context (i.e., the circumstances of museum experiences and study implementation); flexibility (i.e., responsiveness to dynamics that imply a need for change); and value (i.e., supporting relations of mutual benefit).
This article uses traditional Chinese handicrafts' intangible cultural heritage culture as the research object, mainly studying the design and application of interactive cultural heritage gamification. This study first analyzes the reasons for the low learning efficiency of Chinese traditional handicraft intangible cultural heritage and summarizes the gamification theory and its application status. Secondly, the advantages of gamification in cultural heritage education were proposed. Finally, taking the blue calico pattern as an example, it was designed to display the interaction process and behaviour of the application program. A usability test was conducted on the design scheme, and the test results showed that the design scheme could meet user needs and achieve the display and dissemination of the blue calico pattern. This study has specific reference value for promoting cultural heritage education through gamification and is of great significance for promoting the inheritance and promotion of cultural heritage. Traditional cultural disseminators and artisans can benefit from it.
This article is both a reflection on the cultural, social, and political stakes of how early medieval literature and language functions as heritage in England, and on my practices as a museum educator. Language and literature in heritage contexts may enable rich emotional and intellectual engagement with early medieval stories, landscapes, and objects in ways which may unloose the early medieval from the grip of exclusionary narratives. I discuss how Old English language and literature may be understood within wider contexts of early medieval heritage, often called ‘Anglo-Saxon’ in English institutions, by sketching the overlapping public spaces of encounter with the past, and how we may read across them. With its longstanding links with Old English poetry across scholarship and public history, I suggest that Sutton Hoo provides an ideal case study for examining the enmeshment of early medieval literature, language, landscape, and archaeology as heritage categories. I discuss the planning and delivery of ‘Trade and Travel’, a temporary display and learning programme that I organised with the National Trust in 2017, and present findings from qualitative data I collected to suggest how people make sense of place, archaeology, and early medieval language and literature. Understanding language and literature as heritage, I show how visitors discover and create meaning through encounter and conversation. In heritage spaces, literature and language are sensory and emotional artefacts and experiences: observing visitor engagement reveals how both become integral to creative and identity-making work.
Os estudos em museus de ciência destacam cada vez mais o papel da emoção nas experiências de visita dos públicos. Neste artigo, nosso objetivo é investigar as características das experiências de emoções de famílias com crianças em visita ao Museu de Microbiologia do Instituto Butantan, São Paulo (Brasil). Participaram deste estudo três famílias, em um total de 10 pessoas, sendo quatro adultos (um homem e três mulheres) e seis crianças (três meninos e três meninas). Como instrumentos de coleta, utilizamos a observação das visitas familiares que foram gravadas por meio de uma câmera subjetiva e entrevistas realizadas com as crianças ao término do percurso. A análise de valência (sensação agradável ou desagradável experimentada) e excitação (se sentir ativo ou tranquilo) foi aplicada nas conversas e interações durante a visita e uma análise interpretativa das falas das crianças no processo de entrevista. De maneira geral, nossos resultados trazem evidências de que a experiência foi positiva e que a resposta emocional das famílias com crianças esteve relacionada ao interesse, à motivação, ao conhecimento e a experiências anteriores.
This volume contends that young individuals across Europe relate to their country’s history in complex and often ambivalent ways. It pays attention to how both formal education and broader culture communicate ideas about the past, and how young people respond to these ideas. The studies collected in this volume show that such ideas about the past are central to the formation of the group identities of nations, social movements, or religious groups. Young people express received historical narratives in new, potentially subversive, ways. As young people tend to be more mobile and ready to interrogate their own roots than later generations, they selectively privilege certain aspects of their identities and their identification with their family or nation while neglecting others. This collection aims to correct the popular misperception that young people are indifferent towards history and prove instead that historical narratives are constitutive to their individual identities and their sense of belonging to something broader than themselves.
How does one convincingly demonstrate to policy makers and the public the value of museum experiences? I begin to answer this question by asserting that the primary value museum experiences deliver to the public is enhanced personal, intellectual, social and physical well-being. Findings from an initial pilot study conducted with different types of museums from three different countries, showed that individually and collectively all generated significant well-being-related value for the vast majority of their users - enhanced well-being lasting not hours but days and weeks. However, this approach, in and of itself, does not fully answer the initial question. To truly convince policy makers requires re-framing value results in monetary terms. Pilot data showed that the median value of a museum experience was 10 to 1 spent. Discussed are the implications of this approach for creating value, including the relative pros and cons of increasing value by increasing the number of visitors versus increasing the quality of experiences. Also discussed is the potential for increasing value by changing who has access to museum experiences, including particularly individuals from minority and low-income communities.
In this chapter we analyse a number of war museums across Europe, in order to assess the extent to which national(istic) narratives are being subverted and challenged by cosmopolitan and/or agonistic ones. While the representation of violent conflict in war museums lends itself very easily to adversarial contrapositions of friends and foe, it can also foreground the suffering inflicted upon both civilians and soldiers from all warring sides, or indeed highlight dissensus and contestation, offering multiple perspectives including those of the perpetrators and bystanders. This chapter also explores audiences’ motivations, experiences and emotional states, in order to understand the kind of emotions elicited by the different modes of representations, as well as the emotional responses experienced by the visitors.
This study explores how the decision to visit an archaeological museum in Greece is influenced by a range of structural attributes, including admission fee, opening-hours, collection type, and use of multisensory experiences, using the discrete choice model (DCM). DCM is used to study individual preferences towards a set of scenarios that describe a range of choices regarding museum attributes. Study conclusions are drawn from estimated model parameters that determine the most favoured attributes identifying the basis of visiting archaeological museums in Greece. According to the study, participants assess positively the introduction of specific museum services and exhibition features which seem to affect their decision making to visit archaeological museums. The results obtained are useful both from a theoretical point of view, given that there are few writings on this topic, and from a practical point of view, as they provide elements for visitors’ particular needs towards which museum practitioners and cultural policy makers should redirect their attention.
In this article we introduce the method of the exhibition interview walk (EIW) and contextualize it within qualitative social research. In the EIW, the focused interview and thinking aloud are combined through object elicitation in a walking conversation. In the commons research project presented here, the EIW method was applied in a specially designed exhibition. The aim was to provoke immediate reactions to commons principles—i.e., the use of goods and resources for the common good—from various positions of economic and social thinking. By contrasting materialized opinions in the form of artifacts, along with joint verbal and sensory analyses in the EIW, complex facts and case studies can be made accessible in a bundled form; all the while conflict-laden topics can be discussed in concrete terms. In this article we provide insight into the development, the concrete procedure, the special characteristics and the possible uses of this method, which can also be applied beyond specially designed exhibitions for research purposes.
“Research & Practice” features educational research that is directly relevant to the work of classroom teachers. Here, Christine Baron to share her and others’ research on teaching about historic sites. She offers a conceptual framework as well as practical advice for teaching about historic sites.
Technology can be used to augment visitors’ experience with a museum exhibit and provide museum visitors with means of interacting with otherwise hands-off exhibits. However, introducing technology to support interactivity has the likelihood of usurping users’ attention from the exhibit or diminishing interactions with other visitors. Our approach to this problem involves supporting hands-on interactions for groups visiting a pollinator garden–a science museum exhibit containing fragile species where touching is discouraged. Through interviews with museum experts and docents, we elicited design goals that we then enfolded into an Android application that leverages visual recognition to support interactions with the exhibit. We tested our application in-situ with 65 children in three groups and subsequently propose and describe design approaches that uses the ethos of scaling to support different number of users and levelling to varied cognitive levels. We conclude by recommending reusable designs guidelines to support interactions within other evolving and hands-off contexts.
This article explores how to ensure visitor engagement with art objects at exhibition spaces in art museums through relational aesthetics, which focuses on the intersubjective relationship that art objects arouse in visitors. In the 1990s, Bourriaud coined the term relational aesthetics in reference to interactive installation art, but the concept has yet to be actively examined in terms of visitor engagement. In this context, this study examines the theoretical framework of relational aesthetics in terms of its implications for art museum education. As a result, this article explains how constructing relational aesthetics depends on intervening in visitors’ experiences with art objects through participatory acts to build individual visitors’ creative agency as well as intersubjectivity between visitors and objects in the in-between space.
This article explores how we may study physical museum foyers as multilayered spaces of communication. Based on a critical examination of ways in which the museum foyer is conceptualised in the research literature, we define the foyer as a transformative space of communication for visitors which has four transformative functions, and we ask the following question: How do people entering the museum practise these transformative functions so as to become visitors – and become non-visitors again on leaving? Answers are provided through an empirical analysis of the foyer as a transformative communicative space. Based on qualitative studies of four divergent Danish museums and a science centre, we demonstrate that the foyer’s communicative space supports transformative functions consisting of multiple phases before and after the visit itself, namely arrival–orientation–service–preparation (before the visit) and preparation– service–evaluation–departure (after the visit). We discuss the implications of these results for the museum and heritage sectors and argue for more granular understandings of the visitor perspective.
This reviewer’s essay represents an odyssey, from question to print, that started in December 2019 with a visit to the exhibition, Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. It was inspired by a view of New York's Statue of Liberty, seen through the rustling of tall trees, planted in 2003 by Holocaust survivors on New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage’s terrace. As she looked out – and for many days since – she’s worked to understand the “why” of this exhibition and others like it. This reflective essay begins with a descriptive, non‐judgmental account of the Auschwitz exhibition, followed by a review and discussion of the exhibition’s impact and strategies. It explores whether the Auschwitz exhibition does, live up to the potential and the promise of its title. The author views the exhibition’s effectiveness through a behavioral lens; i.e., activities and actions extending beyond the exhibition. The essay concludes with the broader question of whether Holocaust exhibitions, and other exhibitions that address inhumanity and traumatic subjects, are capable of building the necessary bridge between history, empathy, and action to ever live up to that promise.
This paper presents findings from research conducted by two U.S. scholars from divergent disciplinary fields (Indigenous studies, cognitive science) and backgrounds (Chiricahua Apache, first‐generation U.S. immigrant) under a National Endowment for the Arts grant (2015‐2018). Our goal was to assess perceptions of American Indian peoples reflected in verbal responses (and in the lab settings, eye gaze) to historic photographs with the aim of enhancing visual competencies and deepening cultural interpretation in museum settings. Data was drawn from museum visitors at the Autry Museum of the American West and undergraduate students in a lab setting at Occidental College, both in Los Angeles, CA. Our findings indicate that perspective‐taking methods employed across both field sites do not alter enmeshed and persistent bias for interpreting American Indian lives. Participants who took the perspective of the subject and even adequately visually described the photograph still tended to engage in conventional narratives (i.e. stereotypes) unrooted in comprehension of living Native communities. These findings starkly expose the distance that largely non‐Native institutions must travel to fully reach the equity and inclusion efforts museums aspire to. Generalized diversity efforts in museum education based on empathy or simple description (as found in Visual Thinking Strategies) are not effective means of comprehending difference as viewers are not equipped to adequately draw independent conclusions free of bias. We argue that, especially in museum settings, where emotions are heightened, educators may productively consider methods of encouraging visitors to forestall conclusion‐making and to embrace uncertainty.
This paper explores the connection between memory study theories (antagonistic, cosmopolitan, and agonistic) and emotions in a dark heritage site. It does so by investigating Italian and Slovene visitors’ emotional reactions to the permanent exhibition of the Kobarid Museum. The museum is located in a dark heritage site in Slovenia that was the epicenter of a series of bloody conflicts during the First World War. Relying on a cosmopolitan narrative, the museum promotes a clear antiwar message, aiming to elicit emotional responses such as empathy and compassion for the victims to connect with visitors. However, our analysis brings to light antagonistic emotions among Italian and Slovene visitors, raising important issues concerning the role of emotions and multiperspectivity in dark heritage sites. Hence, we discuss how these emotions could instead promote critical thinking, self-reflection, and cross-national dialogue.
This paper reflects on some of the findings from a Horizon 2020 research project, Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe (UNREST, Horizon 2020, funded 2016–2019, http://www.unrest.eu/), which aimed to test and apply an agonistic mode of remembering in different settings. The analysis focuses on the potential advantages of promoting agonistic representations of past conflicts in museums through the adoption of ‘radical multiperspectivism’, as opposed to the ‘consensual multiperspectivism’ informing most contemporary exhibitions and displays. The paper argues that such an approach, which foregrounds socio-political passions by drawing on both artistic interventions and contrasting narratives, can deepen visitors’ understanding of violent conflicts and help counter the growing shift towards antagonistic memory, by turning enemies into adversaries.
This paper examines the convergence of national identities and war heritage, among first-, second- and third-plus-generation Australians. In Australia, interpretation of a First World War event, the Anzac story, is promoted as war heritage central to national identity. What meaning might this discourse have in today’s multicultural Australia? Qualitative interviews were conducted with 93 adult visitors to the Australian War Memorial, 37 of whom had recent migrant backgrounds from 20 countries of origin. The analysis applied ‘authorised heritage discourse’ (AHD) as a theoretical framework. Visitors displayed three different orientations to an AHD that merged war heritage with national identity. The dominant group positively aligned with the war heritage/national identity AHD. In this group, national identity is reinforced by those qualities typically ascribed as being forged out of the ANZAC’s experience. Those consciously aligned critique the mythological status of the Anzac legacy yet embrace it as important for national identities. Those resisting the war heritage/national identity AHD disrupt the often-assumed links between history, heritage and identities. These three orientations appear to be independent of the participants’ country of birth or cultural background, showing the constructed nature of heritage and fluidity of national identities.
This article offers a primer on how to study and use historic places both in and out of the classroom.
Using a broad-based assessment for understanding what teachers learn in historic site-based professional development (HSBPD), this study follows 29 teachers from a HSBPD at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello to see how their work at historic sites affected their practice upon return to their classrooms. Influenced by the Interconnected Model of Teacher Growth and Complexity theory, this study considers the complex outcomes of teachers as individuals, professionals, and learners in communities of practice. Results explore a range of outcomes related to content, pedagogical content knowledge, working with peers, interactions with the historic site, and a willingness to reconsider historical information. The discussion offers a consideration of the network of HSBPDs as a cumulative system and the ways in which teachers’ on-site work can deepen our understanding of working with complex historical sources and make larger curricular changes.
OPEN ACCESS LINK: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022487119841889
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