In the competition for Most-Worried-About Technical Aspect of Exhibitions, there can only be one Greatest Of All Time: Sound bleed. If I had a dollar for every time I have been asked if we’ll have sound bleed problems ….

High school teachers (who are awesome) need to know more than their students, but not tons and tons more. But in exhibitions, we have Ph.D.s trying to explain astronomical redshift to middle schoolers.

(I’ll hear about this one.) We all love good copy. But the script isn't why visitors come. An exhibition is not a book on a wall. Any visual medium — exhibitions, documentary films — should get developed visually. Visuals first, script later. How much later? 

Here's a quick win. There are many ways NOT to label a screen in an exhibition:

NOT on the wall nearby.
NOT above or below the screen.
NOT running up the side of it.

Why? When the screen breaks (it will) it will look even more broken. 

Strategies, principles, tricks, and tips abound. But the One Rule of Exhibitions stands alone [dramatic music]: Exhibitions are primarily a medium for communication. Everything else is secondary.

From our last episode: Artifacts — real, unique things from a collection — are the heart of most exhibitions. Yet many myths persist about how to use them. Here are the final five: Myth #6: Artifacts have to be real…

Artifacts — real, unique things from a collection — are the heart of most exhibitions. Yet many myths persist about how to use them. Here are the ones I hear the most, working with clients. Myth #1: You need a lot of artifacts. Fact: A few will do…

A poem: Exhibitions are like other forms: / All follow certain given norms. / Seldom do we hide special secret layers, / Though visitors like to be game players.

Priceless objects studied by scholars (Neanderthal skulls, Rosetta Stone) often can’t travel. So we make scientific-quality facsimiles for borrowing. These are “forensic" quality, identical in every detail…

Have you ever re-watched an old film you loved for its special effects, and realized that it didn't age well? The media industry raises the bar on production values every day. Museums can’t do that. How can museum media be valuable longer? Pre-age it.

White box, black box. In black box, the container doesn't play an active role in the experience. In white box, it does. When to do white box: It's generally the best choice. In white box, the architecture adds to the value of the experience…

In exhibitions, black box refers to a gallery space that doesn’t matter. It is all black. We take the term from black box theater. Black box is a term in engineering and airplane safety too. In all three cases, the container is irrelevant…

Every visitor experience communicates five types of content, in this order. Inspiration > Persuasion > Orientation > Information > Education. Every experience has all five, even if some are minor…

You plan public-facing technology in most of your exhibitions. How cutting-edge should it be? It depends, but here are two things to remember. First: Nothing dulls faster than the cutting edge…

What if I told you ... that "nonprofit" actually means a business that makes profits, but never gives them to individuals, and instead reinvests them in crucial services for public benefit?

A nonprofit is a business — including nonprofits that make exhibitions. It must make more than it spends or it won’t survive. That leftover money is called profit. Then why do we call it nonprofit?

Nonprofits — like Harvard, the Smithsonian, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art — all have employees, bring in money, pay their bills, and provide things that people value (for example: exhibitions). So yes, a nonprofit is a business.

If you develop exhibitions, you probably work at, or for, a nonprofit. So it’s important to know what a nonprofit is. Quick: define nonprofit in words, quietly to yourself. What did you come up with?

It’s inevitable that some bad news will crop up during your next exhibition project, and you’ll be the one who has to deliver it. Or you’ll have to tell someone else to. It’s awfully tempting to stall, wait, go into denial — and not deliver it.

Time, money and quality are the three basic factors in exhibition project delivery. Given standard time and standard money, we can deliver standard quality. What if we’re asked to deliver faster, or cheaper, or better than standard? When do we say no?