Why can’t we just ask our visitors what they want? Jessica Sickler (Principal, J. Sickler Consulting) discusses “Testing the Right Thing at the Right Time” with MtM host Jonathan Alger (Managing Partner, C&G Partners). …

Iron Chef was a Japanese cooking show, later adapted for the U.S. The premise was totally unreasonable. First, the host declared a surprise ingredient, like: Shrimp! Then two chefs battled to invent five-course meals around it …

Low exhibition budget? Turn off some lights. Light reveals everything you wish you could hide: cheap finishes, empty corners, imperfect details. But darkness lets those things vanish. Darkness: the cheapest construction material of all.‍ …

Behold the bubble diagram: a simple planning tool anyone can create. It’s a top-down view with bubbly shapes representing topics and experiences. But sometimes, we believe our own bubble diagrams a liiiiittle too much. …

[ASTC 2026 Special] Science changes fast. How can science museums keep up? Mike Horvath (Museum of Science, Boston) discusses “Innovation Secrets of the Museum of Science” with MtM host Jonathan Alger (C&G Partners) …

I tried to make a giant list of exhibition genres. Yes, a very MtM things to do. But I kept getting stuck. At first I couldn’t figure out why. Then I realized that the genre names we sometimes use in the industry aren’t all the same kind of category. …

If we are going to stick with an existing genre, we'd better commit. Because genres, regardless of medium, are all about creating expectations. Remember the “Lone Ranger” remake years ago? Johnny Depp played Tonto. You might not. It flopped. …

We all want to do new things in exhibitions. The most impressive new thing is perhaps inventing an entire new type of exhibition: a new genre. But inventing a genre from scratch is difficult, and rare. Inventing a new sub-genre is a little easier. …

A visitor walks up to a security guard in an exhibition and asks: “Where’s the restroom?” The guard points. Directly above the guard is a huge sign that says: RESTROOMS → This is hilarious (except maybe to the security guard). Yet …

Quick, what are the phases of exhibition design? Concept Design, Design Development, Final Design, Fabrication? Maybe Schematic Design between Concept and DD? Sure, as a zoomed-out view. But when you zoom in …

A very special episode of Making the Museum, for the 25th Anniversary of 9/11. Mark Wagner (Design Principal, Stantec) discusses “The 9/11 Museum, 25 Years After 9/11” with MtM host Jonathan Alger (Managing Partner, C&G Partners). …

A test fit is a quick, rough, scale-accurate drawing that answers a simple question before you start designing: Will our important stuff actually fit? The term comes from architecture and real estate …

Museums call long-term exhibitions “permanent.” But even permanent exhibits are temporary. The term “permanent” really distinguishes a long-term exhibition from a short-term one. It might stick around for 5, 10, or 20+ years. But eventually …

Most commonly in museums, objects get chosen to go on display because they are categorically similar to each other. But that’s not the only option. Here’s one last less-common idea: what about choosing them to create an environment? …

Most museum display cases invite visitors to compare similar things. Occasionally, though, you’ll encounter two objects in a case that don’t appear to be similar at all, but it’s no accident they are together. …

When most people imagine creating a museum object case layout, they might think of somebody arranging artifacts until the composition looks good visually. But visual arrangement isn't where experience design really starts. …

Visitors do not only look at what we give them to look at. If only. Case in point: the visible exit problem. All of us humans automatically, subconsciously, and constantly scan for obvious ways out from the spaces we are in. …

[Ominous music] You walk into the gallery one morning and discover that something firmly attached yesterday is now hanging by one corner. Or broken on the floor. Adhesives are wonderful. But they are dependent on many invisible things …

Why do our visitors come back? Often, because we have “something new.” But not every kind of “new” works this way. A whole new temporary exhibition can be an event. A single rotated object might be “new,” but not in the same way. …

Everybody loves a good Venn diagram. You kinda can’t go wrong throwing one on a slide. (You know, those easily drawn, disarmingly simple overlapping circle diagrams that show the relationship between ideas, priorities, or categories.) …