The Fork

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?

Experts like curators have, well, expertise. So they can think at a higher level, in abstractions and systems. They’ve done the reading.

When a fork expert looks at a fork, they don’t only see a fork. They also see all the higher-level abstractions it represents to them: trade, culture, war, the history of art.

The curator has brought her younger sister along, a pediatric nurse still in purple scrubs. The nurse looks too. 

And she sees … just a fork.

For non-experts, the fork is concrete, visual, and real. It is not abstract, or symbolic. It’s a fork. And we have done none of the reading.

Visitors can never join the experts on their level.

So the experts must join the visitors on theirs.

Talk in literal terms. 

Concrete. 

Simple. 

Brief.

Here’s the thing:
We must always communicate at the level of visitors, not experts.

If we don’t, we will create a blockbuster interactive fork exhibition for our visitors — that isn’t for our visitors.

It’s for our fork curator.

Warmly,
Jonathan