Nurse: Doctor, this patient has been slumped on a bench, staring into space for an hour! What’s wrong with her? Doctor: I’m afraid she has a bad case of … museum fatigue. Joking aside, I do believe museum fatigue is underdiagnosed. …

Quick, what’s better: A linear path exhibition, with a preset route? Or open plan, where you choose where to go? Most people I know say “open plan.” Maybe it sounds better. But it’s a false choice. Both work, for different situations. …

The more popular your institution is, the more you have to deal with lines. But queueing can be improved. Theme parks make queue design into an art. Here are nine possibilities: 1. Don’t Have a Line:
Digital pre-purchase can reduce or eliminate lines. …

The SEGD Museum Exhibition Professional Practice Group, or ME-PPG, has a great offer while supplies last. If you work for a nonprofit museum and need support to join, SEGD has a limited number of grants available to cover a complimentary membership. …

Here’s a thought: Over time, the OpEx of an exhibition will eventually outstrip the CapEx. Now, you probably had one of two reactions to that statement. Reaction #1 is: “Hm. Yes, eventually that would likely be true.” Reaction #2 is …

Since the QR code comeback, they are up for consideration in every project. And for some things, they’re great. But before we put QR codes on every wall, let’s review 7 truths. #1: QR codes are just shortcuts online. But shortcuts to what? …

“Color temperature” is a term you’ll often hear in museum projects. Or should. :) The term means the warmth or coolness of white light from a source, measured in “kelvin” units, or “K”. But there’s more. There’s a whole, er, spectrum. …

Floor plans usually show walls, furniture, windows, and doors. Slightly less common types are used to plan electrical circuits and lighting systems. Then there are the other types, the ones no one knows about. Except now you do. …

How many different types of experiences should one interactive offer? Easy: One. It is easy for us to dream up interactives for our exhibition as if they were the laptops we use to plan it. But interactive surfaces in exhibitions aren’t like that. …

What are the (top) secrets of better collaboration? Barbara Miller and Danae Colomer from MoMI discuss “Mission: Collaboration” with host Jonathan Alger (caution: this episode will self-destruct in five seconds). …

Sure, it’s smart to plan systems using the “worst-case scenario”. But that doesn’t work when the worst case is extreme. For example: We want to accommodate the largest exhibitions. So we plan big. But that size rarely comes …

We imagine our visitors moving through our exhibitions in the exact order we devise. But visitors that follow every step of our sequence … don’t exist. Even if our experience were a one-way people-mover, a visitor can still get distracted …

In Las Vegas they have The Sphere, a hollow moon coated with LEDs, inside and out. It cost well over $2 billion to make, and it’s awesome, even though nobody knows what “LED” stands for. Can’t tell LED from LCD? You’re not alone. …

We forget. We forget that we are experts. We can’t unlearn our subject. We forget we can’t automatically empathize with our visitors’ level of knowledge. We have to actively do so. We forget we should stop adding just a little more …

What is “immersive”? A. A bad, over-hyped marketing buzzword of the moment? B. A good, evergreen basic principle worth a spot in the toolkit? C. Both. Let’s clarify something here …

It’s a special day. Here’s a short break from the usual. Today is the 20th anniversary of the founding of C&G Partners, the firm that makes Making the Museum possible. I’m one of the founders, so I’m a proud … uh … co-papa? …

PHIL: Look at this script. Is this too much text? MONIQUE: Yes. [Sips matcha.] PHIL: But you didn’t even look! MONIQUE: Don’t have to. PHIL: Why not? MONIQUE: It’s always too much. PHIL: True. …

Technology changes fast. Flat panels are bigger now, LED is cheaper now. Both work in sunlight. In classrooms and conferences, projectors are dying out. But they are sometimes still necessary in (darker) exhibitions. When? …

Here’s a little bit of everyday magic. When airport staff need to line people up efficiently in front of a ticket counter, they make a switchback out of short poles and nylon straps. What’s a switchback, you might wonder. …

Richard Saul Wurman, co-founder of TED, popularized the idea of L.A.T.C.H. in the 90s. Can you come up with a way to organize information that does NOT fall into one of Wurman’s five L.A.T.C.H. methods? …