Reading List: Creating Exhibits That Engage: A Manual for Museums and Historical Organizations

This book is described as a "nuts-and-bolts guide to how to do [exhibits] step by step." It's meant, as Graham Black says in the Foreword, to help build the skills base of staff and volunteers at small and medium-sized museums and give them "the confidence to experiment and innovate" (xv). Author John Summers says this will give you "a method and a process you can follow that will greatly increase the likelihood that you will be able to create [a good exhibit]" (xix), and that 

If you want to know what is involved in making exhibits, this book will show you the scope of a typical project. If you need to create an exhibit, the steps outlined here will lead you through from beginning to end. Even if you are just hiring contract professionals to create some or all of an exhibit, the information in this book will help you to understand their perspective on the project and lead to a more effective working relationship. (xx)

 

Creating Exhibits That Engage: A Manual for Museums and Historical Organizations, 2018 by John Summers, 190 pages

The upsides:

• A "nuts-and-bolts guide to how to [create exhibits] step by step that is suited to the resources typically available in small- to medium-sized institutions" (xix)
• Each chapter has what Summers calls a "checklist" at the end, basically a summary or a TL;DR.
• I really liked the section on how to create an Exhibit Brief
  

The downsides:

• I felt like this was a very broad and brief overview of exhibits (The Big Idea, layout, fabrication, etc.).
  

Overall: 

Given all the summary information about how this would empower small museums' staff and lead them from beginning to end of an exhibit, I just didn't get it. The chapter titles and subheadings (Audience, The Exhibit Development Process, The Big Idea, The Brief and Request for Proposals, Text, etc.) sound like this would be a great resource, but I still felt like this was just skimming the surface. This felt like it was general guidelines and not like we're actually going anywhere big or specific. If you go with the statement above that talks about "the steps outlined here," then I guess it succeeds: this is just an outline of steps, which may give you a general map of how to create an exhibit, but doesn't give a lot of tips or advice on how to make it good. All of the other reviews of this book (which, granted, I couldn't find many of) think this is a great book, so maybe I'm just so uncreative and un-exhibit-minded that this book didn't touch me. There were some helpful parts, though, so this wasn't all a waste: a few accessibility guidelines, installation/viewing height guidelines, font samples, tools you need to build your own exhibit furniture (which is way beyond anything I'll ever do), and other tips, plus the Exhibit Briefs section was great; I just didn't see it as the same wonderful resource other reviewers did. I may refer back to it at some point, but I'll definitely look for other books about creating exhibits. 

Reading List: Community-Based Exhibition Model by Cassie Chinn

Long ago, when I first really started getting into the idea of working in a museum, there was a post on LinkedIn asking for recommendations for good books about exhibits. One of the books listed was Community-Based Exhibition Model from the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, so I put it on my list of books to read someday (although I couldn't find it for sale anywhere).

This past September, I attended the American Association of State and Local History's virtual conference, which had a number of staff members from the Wing Luke Museum presenting sessions. In their sessions, Cassie Chinn and Rahul Gupta each touched on the idea of partnerships with the community, and in other sessions, both from presenters and attendees, the Wing Luke's community-based model -- the book, and the general idea -- were mentioned. That made me want the book even more.

In October, Jessica Rubenacker, current exhibits designer at the Wing Luke, spoke to one of my Museum Studies classes; I LOVED listening to her, which made me decide I Need This Book Now. I was finally able to find it for sale on the museum's website (why didn't I ever look there before??).

In this short book (26 big-sized pages, with charts and images), Cassie Chinn describes the museum's process for creating their community-based exhibits, where museum staff let community members guide the development of exhibits -- including themes, education and public programs, sources for artifacts and interviews, and even fundraising -- and uses the 2005 "Sikh Community: Over 100 Years in the Pacific Northwest" exhibit as a case study for their approach.

The upsides:

• The chart of the community-based model, showing how the Community Advisory Committee, participating community members, museum staff, and contractors all relate to each other and work together. 
• How to select Advisory Committee members and community partnerships  
• The meeting schedule - Chinn lays out what topics are covered at each of their (sample) meetings (Meeting 1 is introductions, sharing project background, presenting a timeline; Meeting 4 is creating the exhibit's storyline; etc.)
• How to facilitate a meeting with the Advisory Committee, a lot of which are just good points for leading any kind of meeting (making sure everyone's voice is heard, sending meeting minutes, respecting people's time, etc.)
  
• The Sikh exhibit case study shows in more detail how the theoretical model and timelines presented earlier in the book play out for real
  
• The honesty about what worked and what got the Sikh exhibit project off schedule
  
• The honesty about challenges presented overall by this model 
• In the AASLH sessions as well as sessions of the New England Museum Association's virtual conference on working with the community and partners, over and over panelists talked about being flexible, giving up control, and admitting that you don't know everything, and these key points are also highlighted in this book. 

The downsides:

• I would have liked maybe one more case study. The Sikh exhibit study gives good insight, but a second example could have possibly presented even more highlights and lowlights (things that worked and things that didn't) that the reader could learn from, and could also show how the museum learned from the challenges of the Sikh (or a previous) exhibit. Then again, this book was written soon after the Sikh exhibit was completed, so perhaps if they had an updated version, there would be more projects available to use as case studies.

Overall: A good tutorial for people who want to create exhibits with their community. The Wing Luke obviously has a great connection with their community and partners (otherwise they wouldn't want to help the museum with their exhibits), and Chinn does a nice job of presenting the framework for a community-based project.

Community-Based Exhibition Model
by Cassie Chinn