It’s the Mental Framework

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 — 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 physically. Using it as the underlying logic, they are now free to do it their way.

It’s the mental framework.

Warmly,
Jonathan