Monthly Archives: December 2016

Effective Wayfinding Strategies for Museums

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When I am physically in the museum space, whether observing or surveying visitors, people always talk to me and ask me questions. I have no doubt from my observations that people like to see museum staff on the floor. It doesn’t matter whether the museum arms people with maps, touch pads, audio tours or text panels – visitors like to talk to real people. They have questions, they want directions and most of all they want to give you feedback about the things that they are seeing and doing in the museum. They want to tell you what they do and don’t like, they want to tell you what you are doing well, what should be on display, and they want to tell you about other museums doing similar things better than you are.

I don’t think that this is a bad thing. Museums need to know their audiences, and they cannot possibly know them if they don’t do a little face to face work, rather than just counting numbers through the front door or in specific galleries. Exhibitions need not be static places. Even if the exhibit layout is “perfect” from the curator’s viewpoint, there will always be room to tweak the exhibit in some way – whether it’s a text panel/ label, training “front of house” staff and educators/guides about a new exhibition space, doing continuous maintenance or just ensuring that museum visitors are making the most of any exhibition or permanent gallery on any given day.

I have seen many “front of house” staff appear exasperated that visitors can’t find their way around an art gallery or museum – even with a map. The fact is that maps are prepared by people who are familiar with the workings of a particular space and so a map already makes sense to them. In reality, people move through museums and art galleries intuitively and so it’s better to build on that natural movement or provide them with really clear directions via gateway text panels and objects or pathways within the space.

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British Museum. Earthenware Candle Box/Holy Water Box. 1565. Siena, Italy.

The British Museum offers many “plan your visit” tools on its website. A couple of options use “gateway objects” as an effective way to lead audiences on a 1 hour or 3 hour trail through the museum.

These objects grab the viewer’s attention and give visitors a sense of the gallery’s space and themes without requiring them to read every label. With smart design, anyone entering can instantly follow a path of key pieces through the gallery, no map or exhaustive reading needed, to grasp the purpose of the space.

The same technique could be used for the whole museum and not just for a specific exhibition or permanent gallery. It isn’t as important for members or frequent visitors but for the unfamiliar visitor or one-off tourists, it could be the key for them to sample what’s on offer at the museum without having to struggle with maps or having to read every text panel which often results in “museum fatigue”.

A great article in Hyperallergic spoke about an interactive mapping approach by students in the School of Visual Arts’ MFA Visual Narrative program. The students developed a number of creative, interactive maps for the Metropolitan Museum of Art which look way more interesting than the map in the link on the MMA website. Interactive maps are great, but I don’t think that I’ve come across a museum yet with perfect access to free wi-fi in every room. It seems to be either intermittent or timed for 10 minutes or have some complicated temporary sign-up method (even worse if you don’t speak the language and are navigating with Google translate!).

Since Covid, most museum and art gallery websites have enhanced their “Plan Your Visit” features, and more importantly, digital access to collections has greatly improved. Offering a “Taster Tour” for time-poor visitors is essential to give them at least a glimpse of the museum’s vision and collection. With better digital support, they can continue exploring online after their visit, at their own pace, if they can’t return in person. Floor staff can further enrich the experience by offering directions or insights into the displays and highlighting the significance of certain objects in the collection.

 

Other Reading

MuseumNext Developing Wayfinding Systems in Museums

Gareth Davey (2024) Understanding Visitor Path Choice and Enhancing
Wayfinding in Museums: A Critical Review of a Century
of Research

Exploring Songlines and Cultural Memory

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First Life – single cell male
Evidence of the inland sea
First life – single cell female

During a trip to the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, I saw fossils that were evidence of the earliest forms of life on Earth and admired incredible Indigenous rock art. Exploring such an ancient landscape, with its natural beauty and deep sense of spirituality, inspires a deeper appreciation for the rich culture of our First Australians.

Xanthorrea – Flinders Ranges
Arkaroo Rock walk – Flinders Ranges

I’m slowly beginning to grasp the deep connection Indigenous Australian people have to the land after spending time in places like the Flinders Ranges and Mungo National Park, and by listening to local Park Rangers as well as interviews like 702 ABC Radio’s Conversations with Richard Vidler. Richard interviewed Lynne Kelly about her book “The Memory Code” in 2017. Lynne has explored traditional Indigenous Australian songlines as a key to memory, revealing layers of information embedded in the Australian landscape. These songlines are passed down through stories, songs, and traditional dance.

The strong unwritten and oral history of Aboriginal Australians is passed down by Elders within the community. So much of this knowledge is key to survival. Knowledge about the landscape, navigation, ancestral totems, food and medicine, trade routes, culture, law and history. Information is shared through stories, traditional dance and song. Kelly speaks about the way that non-written memory systems are coded into the natural and built environment. She believes that this system was not only used in Australia but may have been used by other ancient cultures around the world.

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Learning how Songlines work has changed my perspective on the harm caused by disconnecting Indigenous Australians from their land. The impact must have been devastating, causing deep pain through the loss of culture and vital survival knowledge. While Australians can relate to the struggles of displaced peoples around the world, the situation here is even more complex. I’m not suggesting colonial Australians did this intentionally, but the outcome remains the same—and it’s profoundly significant for our Indigenous communities. I had these new thoughts on board when I attended the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney to see Jonathan Jones’s exhibition, “Barrangal Dyara (Skin and Bones)” which was Kaldor Public Arts Project no.32.

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The Garden Palace, Sydney

Jonathan has reinterpreted one of Sydney’s great cultural losses which was the destruction of the vast Garden Palace in Sydney, which burned to the ground in 1882.

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Bleached gypsum shields forming the border of what was The Garden Palace

 

The Palace contained many Indigenous Australian artefacts which were culturally significant and represented a link to country, part of the collective memory handed on from Elder to community and which can never be replaced. The loss was also greatly felt by the Colonials who lost many archival records, art works and museum objects (remembering that at this time there were no public museums or art galleries in Sydney, only in Melbourne). In a strange way there was some commonality of loss and understanding for all Australians arising from such a catastrophic event.

What stood out most about Jones’s interpretation was how the installation used physical elements like the kangaroo grass meadow and thousands of bleached gypsum shields to outline the original Garden Palace’s perimeter. The soundscapes of eight Indigenous languages drifted through the air, creating an atmosphere that transported the observer to another world. Daily conversations with historians, theorists, curators, artists, and writers as part of the public program encouraged the audience to reimagine the building, its history, and the cultural loss from both Indigenous Australian and Colonial perspectives. It truly made for a great conversation starter.

The arts have a powerful role in shining a light on social injustice and human rights issues, helping bridge the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians by deepening our appreciation for the richness of Indigenous Australian culture. They highlight the importance of “connection to country” and the intricate ways unwritten knowledge is embedded in the natural environment. There’s so much we can learn, and it’s an opportunity that past generations failed to fully value.