Posts
Exhibitions
The Peabody Essex Museum’s Climate + Environment Initiative Seeks to Create a Different Climate Future
As the director of an interactive art and nature space, I’ve included climate change as a topic in many shows and programs over the years. But until recently, I had convinced myself that …
PIVOT: When the Exhibit Title Sets the Tone
The Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College had just installed its latest exhibit, PIVOT: Skateboard Deck Art, when the pandemic hit in March 2020. Over the next year, the …
Building Emotional Intelligence Through Play
An exhibition at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh uses the movie Inside Out to teach children about thei…
Empathy Check (and why it’s not a cliché)
An exhibition on African American women’s hair became a space for the African diasporic perspective to be seen, heard, valued, and better …
The Secrets of Emotion
Psychological science offers myriad opportunities for measuring emotional responses to the museum …
Invitation to Introspection
The Exploratorium’s free, outdoor exhibition helped people understand the factors that contribute to both compassion and po…
Excite, Build, Consider: A Structure for Open and Honest Feedback in Project Development
One challenge we’ve all probably faced in collaborative program and exhibit development/design is creating a space for open and honest feedback. We know candid feedback is crucial for …
How the Delaware Art Museum is Centering Community Voices in Interpretive Planning
In 2018, the Delaware Art Museum (DelArt) began a radically inclusive approach to reinstallation planning, integrating community voices at every stage through focus groups, iterative …
Empathy Interventions: Mia Experiments with Cultivating Empathy in Museum Visitors
Can the visual arts foster empathy and understanding? From our experiences as art museum educators, we believe they can, but there is little empirical research to support this theory. So, …
Do-it-Yourself Exhibits: How the National Museum of Natural History Created a New Model for Reaching People in Their Communities
The Challenge Years before the world was thrown into the coronavirus pandemic, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) sought to increase awareness about the concept of …
Re-Engaging the Past to Re-Envision the Future
The Mississippi Museum of Art and Tougaloo College joined creative forces to spotlight civil rights issues, past and present. This article originally appeared in the January/February, 2021 …
With Rapid Response Collecting, Who Are We Responding To?
After the start of protests over the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent looting of businesses, hundreds of plywood boards went up in Greensboro, North Carolina’s downtown. But these …