Setting: Regional museum conference. Characters: Monique, exhibition developer at her second museum. Wise beyond her years. Phil, veteran independent museum consultant. Anxiety-prone. Our scene opens at the hotel grab-and-go.

Exhibition planning meeting running low on bold ideas? Here‘s a simple trick: as a thought exercise, ask some “disaster questions”. What if you could only exhibit one thing? What if your budget got cut in half? What if you only had half the time?

Fuzzy little words get projects in trouble. I once saw a major exhibition in a year-long tailspin because people assumed different definitions for “script” in a contract. Saying “you are responsible for the script” is like saying “you are responsible for the building”. Yeah? Which part?

Let’s imagine two exhibition experiences, which I will now invent at random: 1. A giant, 10 foot tall, 20 foot wide, high resolution, interactive media wall. 2. A giant, 10 foot tall, 20 foot wide red chain-link fence.

A “canon” is list of influential classics that make a field what it is. Literature has Joyce and Morrison, classical has Beethoven and Chopin, jazz has Miles and Billie. Let’s look at the canon of exhibition project components.

Visitors don’t already have our historic landscape. They don’t already have our landmark building. They don’t already have our rare collection. But they might already have the same media technology we’re planning if we’re not thoughtful.

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Do you have a love/hate relationship with mood boards for exhibition projects? I do. Because almost everyone only uses them halfway. You’ve either made one or seen one. It’s a visual collection of precedents.

Here are the last three. D. Separating narratives: The next concern is conflicting narration (different narrators saying different things). Just keep these distant enough. Test it. Distant voices are less distracting than you think.

Here are six solutions. The first is mind-blowing to some, but the most useful by far: Allow overlaps. Total elimination isn't desirable. Ambient overlaps make spaces feel normal. (Ambient: no loudness, catchy melodies, or narration.) You can have way more overlaps than you think.

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.