It’s the Mental Framework

Why have a strong organizing principle for my exhibition? Don’t visitors just go wherever they want?

Yep. That’s why you need a strong organizing principle.

Whatever principle you use — time, category, hierarchy, another LATCH type — no visitor will follow it like a duty.

Not the streakers, the strollers, or the scholars.

Organizational principles aren’t physical barriers meant to restrict the visitor.

They are a mental framework meant to free the visitor.

Let’s say your exhibition is chronological: history of feminism in California. No visitor will make it their duty to experience every detail. Often they can’t. There’s another visitor in the way. Or they have to catch up with their group. They’re not literally following your framework.

But they sense it. They know the reason things are where they are. When they do reconnect, they are like someone jumping to a new page in the dictionary. They know why those words are on that new page.

Here’s the thing:
You need a strong organizing principle, but not because visitors will follow it. Using it as a mental framework, they are now free to do it their way.

It’s the mental framework.

Warmly,
Jonathan

P.S. Your voice was heard! Starting next week, MtM is switching to a three-day-a-week format, the preferred choice for the most readers. Which weekdays? Tues-Weds-Thurs, for that fresh WFH feeling. Next week, look forward to your first email on Tuesday. And mille grazie again to all the readers who replied to the surveys.