Tag: The Wider World (Page 4 of 4)

by columnist Tegan Kehoe

I recently read an older article in The Journal of Museum Education, Partnerships: Hype and Reality (Amy Jared, Winter 1994), that had some thought-provoking things to say on museums engaging with their communities. The author pushed back on the idea that museums’ greatest challenge is to convince the public that they are no longer elitist temples of wisdom: “I would like to suggest that the museum’s greatest challenges is convincing not neighbors and audiences, but ourselves — museum professionals from all levels of management — that the elitist regalia have indeed been shed.” From reading the article, I believe she means that in two ways, convincing ourselves both that elitism is no longer appropriate in museums even on the occasions when it is tempting, and that certain patterns of behavior, such of ways of interacting with community “partners” are holdovers from a more elitist time and need to be shaken up.

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by Tegan Kehoe

This fall, the museum where I work is having an exterior restoration project done, and this means the building will be enveloped by scaffolding with dark mesh covers. The gallery, which is largely lit by natural light, will be considerably dimmer. After a staff meeting that included a lot of joking around about lending out headlamps in admissions, a few of us realized that now would be a great time to create large print exhibit guides, which had been in the back of our minds for a while. I volunteered to spearhead the effort.

I set about looking for resources and examples to make the guides as useful as possible. In doing so, I learned that there are few universally-accepted standards in this area. In addition to making the font large, it is important to print on opaque, non-glossy paper, to minimize special formatting, and to use a clear and readable font, but often, I found I just had to read what many different groups had to say and choose what seemed to make the most sense for this particular project. I wish we had a focus group of testers, but it doesn’t look like that will happen. Continue reading