Douglas Hofstadter is a scholar of cognitive science, physics and comparative literature. So what does he have to do with making cultural projects better? Hofstadter is known for many things, but the only law that bears his name is about project management. …

Let’s be honest. Lots of cultural project teams come up with lots of great ideas, have no idea what it will all cost, and wait until some milestone down the road to find out. Is it any surprise that “what comes back” is crazy high? Here comes the budget axe. …

Sure, we may say we’re in education. Or we’re in preservation of material heritage. Or we’re in advocacy. But exhibitions — call them experiences, or whatever you like — are the core reason most of our visitors visit. [Whispers:] We’re all in entertainment. …

It’s the one-year anniversary of one of the highest-traffic posts in the archive: The Fork. Here it is. + + + + +. A curator pulls a key from her cardigan to unlock a dark, quiet storage room. She walks to drawer F138, opens it, and sees … a fork. Or does she? …

Before they come to our experiences, there is one thing our visitors see a lot of: glowing rectangles. They’re everywhere. The sheer number is huge, and growing. In less than one day, it would be totally normal for you to consume information from the following: …

Have we lost a sense of playfulness in our work … and could we get it back? Jonathan Goldstein and Kyle Talbott (Principals, Skyhouse Studios) join host Jonathan Alger (Managing Partner, C&G Partners) to discuss “Six Keys for Unlocking Your Most Playful, Creative Work.” …

Aaaaargh! I am watching a budget train wreck happen to a cultural project team. (Not mine. No, really.) And it was avoidable. Budgeting and cost control don’t happen to a project. They are the project. You seem nice. Take these tips — and use them. …

Time, money, quality: the three basic factors in exhibition project delivery. But these are interdependent and interlocked. Given normal time and normal money, we can deliver normal quality. True. But what if something isn’t normal? Here’s a rule of thumb for that. …

A college student I know told me he’s planning to take a friend to see an exhibition in Berlin: Yadegar Asisi’s panoramic “The Wall”. He saw it before, as a middle schooler. But then he told me the first time gave him nightmares. Why go back? “They were good nightmares.” …

An exhibition of rare books and manuscripts is a flock of beige butterflies. The books are beige paper. Wings spread, perched in rows, floating above the decks of tabletop display cases. And what is the most common background we put them on? Beige. Why? …

“Cost per square foot” is a useful ratio. Likewise “occupants per square foot” and “sales per square foot”. What other “per square foots” could be useful? Here’s one: “words per square foot”. Say we have 50 paintings in a 50 x 50 room (2,500 SF). Now let’s write labels …

Why have a strong organizing principle for my exhibition? Don’t visitors just go wherever they want? Yep. And that’s exactly why you need a strong organizing principle. Because whatever principle you use, no visitor will follow it like a duty. …

What can we do when a display is old and culturally out of date, but we have no resources to refresh it? Many exhibitions have this problem, and solving it is so expensive we often do nothing. But In some cases, there is a clever temporary way to refresh a display. …

Is lighting art or science? If you’re a curator tasked with lighting design, where do you start? Lighting designers Steven Rosen and Ted Mather (Available Light) join host Jonathan Alger (C&G Partners) on Making the Museum to discuss "Revealing the Story with Light". …

The Euro 2024 right now is huge. It’s the big European soccer showdown every four years. The viewership of the final game equals half the entire population of Europe. Hundreds of people work for years for each team. Yet despite that scale, it has only one goal. …

At the school track meet today, our event is a sprint, once around the track. We’ll use all our fuel to win. Halfway through, the coach yells surprising news: the event has been changed midway. It is now a marathon. Instead of half a lap, we have 26 miles to go. What? …

How do new museums make money — really? What is “the peril of the bicycle wheel”? Is it bad to rely on “anchor funding”? Amy Kaufman (Principal, Amy Kaufman Cultural Planning) joins host Jonathan Alger (Managing Partner, C&G Partners) to discuss “The Money Pie Chart”. …

Can you invent a genre? For sure. But inventing one from scratch is rare. Treasures of Tutankhamun was the first blockbuster. Ateliers des Lumières pioneered immersive projection. Meow Wolf was the first … Meow Wolf. But for each success, a hundred others lost their bet. …

Remember the “Lone Ranger” remake years ago? Johnny Depp played Tonto. You might not. It flopped. The audience expected a classic western, but got a comedy-action movie, and that disappointed them. For exhibitions, genre expectations are critical. For example: …

It’s genre week! I’m excited. We’ll explore what genre means, how to work with genre expectations, and even how to invent a new one. First, what is it? A genre is a category of art, literature or music where all works share characteristics. Imagine bookstore sections …