Religion. Politics. Gender. Discuss. Controversial topics are part of the museum mission. And they attract public interest. But divisive themes can also cause bad PR, and jeopardize the mission. How can an exhibition court controversy with less risk?

Reader C.L. wrote in, asking about that time Phil & Monique tried to outdo each other with increasingly bad ideas for touchscreens. Phil won with “Touch the screen to hear messages from each donor.” The question was, why was that the worst idea?

FADE IN:
INT. MUSEUM CONFERENCE - GRAB-AND-GO CAFE - DAY
PHIL: My client’s exhibition of rare letters isn’t working, and I’m supposed to tell them how to fix it!
MONIQUE: Not working?

An exhibition is for many people: the community, the staff, the donors, the visitors … I could go on. But sometimes the needs of these groups can conflict. You are not shocked by this, oui? When that happens, ask: “Whose exhibition is it”?

Our visitors are surrounded by media that is better-funded and better-produced than anything we will ever do. In a fair fight, we lose. Make it unfair. Capitalize on what makes exhibition media unique — it’s exhibition media.

There are two audience groups that exhibitions should almost never target. Both are a waste of your limited resources. At one end of the spectrum: believers, who already get it and come regardless. At the other end: skeptics, who refuse to listen and won’t come.

A. Whenever possible, use a unique organizing principle. It creates a unique exhibition automatically. B. For all other times, there is LATCH. Richard Saul Wurman, co-founder of TED, popularized LATCH in the 90s: Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, Hierarchy.

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?