Contemporary Influences
Museums in the Age of Retail: How Museum Shop Design and Layout Are a Leading Force in Constructing Visitor Experience
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Abdulrahman Albannaa
There is no museum visit without visiting the museum shop. Museums are institutes which harness the power of inclusive understandings about the world around. Hitherto, museums have shown great facilitation in their designed curricular via various facets. Now, museums disseminate knowledge not only via their teaching curriculum, their meta narrative; but also, providing a rather enticing one through their gift shops. Gift shops are museums narrators and tour guides. It is essential how the institute’s mission is presented in the form of commodities and memorabilia, which tie to visitors’ experience. This autoethnographic study investigates the acquired experience through museum shop, and what we gain or learn from our visit and how it serves the greater mission and designed curriculum, and the level of inclusivity between the institute and its offered commodities for purchase. In South Dakota, it is striking how the individual experience in both Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse national parks’ gift shops are, by name, serving the same form of outdoor museum. However, both gift shops’ displays and experiences are far from alike. Through investigation, it can be shown that museum shops are a leading spectrum in our experience in that museum and no matter how inclusive or exclusive it is to the greater mission, our body of knowledge gets rather concrete post visiting the shop. The study focuses on the individual experience under various facets of the museum’s storytelling, by which understanding the role and impact of museum shop design and merchandise.
Conceptualizing a Face to a Name: AI’s Role in Delivering Empathy and Awareness at Mt. Locust
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Torrey Tracy, Daria Hall, David Baird
AI technology is satiating our most valuable human sense: sight. This transformative technology can produce extraordinarily complex prompt-based images of limitless subject matter. We are at the cusp of AI’s role in finding a majority strong hold over future museum content as it will allow for strategic awareness and greater “edutainment,” while also contributing to elevated visitor experiences. While the technology’s ability to paint a vision of the future is remarkable, the authors explore what it can do for the past…recreating the past for a renewed visceral appreciation. On a bicycle ride through Mississippi a decade ago, my party and I discovered historic Mt. Locust, a thriving cotton plantation that existed through the early to mid-1800s. On the west side of the property, a cemetery holds the remains of 43 enslaved people who endured the bondage of slavery and forced labor at the site. The only indication of a burial site is a wooden plaque that lists known souls who lie in peace. Using historical and regional data along with AI technology, the authors aim to create a series of iterative portraits to generate conceptual faces for several of the names of the buried enslaved inscribed on the wooden plaque at Mt. Locust. Associating a face to a name will hopefully raise awareness of these sites of sensitivity, and potentially usher in an innovative approach to historical interpretation in museums. As a case study, the authors also question its appropriateness as an ethical tool for awareness.
Collecting in the Online Space: Responding to Memories and Other Voices
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jennifer Munday, Alison Watts, Eileen Clark
Many historic sites and buildings become museums of their social history and past stories. In other cases, artefacts from social history buildings or events are absorbed into existing museum collections, often archived and kept away from potential audiences until a specific topic or theme gives them temporary viewing. In this presentation, I show how virtual tours of two historic sites have been the foundation to produce an online repository for stories, artefacts, and research about Mayday Hills, a former mental hospital, in regional Victoria, Australia. A team of researchers and technicians have created a website using innovative technologies to make available a 3-dimensional tour of the historic buildings (now mostly repurposed) with embedded narratives and museum artefacts sourced through interview data and research participant private collections. The site also contains a blog where aspects of the social history research are posted. The website has been accessed by a variety of visitors – potential and past visitors to the historic town of Beechworth; people with an interest in former mental hospital and asylum history; and relatives of former patients and staff. The research project is ongoing, and the development of the website continues with advances in technology – the outcome is a virtual space that fills all elements of the new Museum Definition of ICOM.
