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Creating the visitor-centered museum

Article  in  Museum Management and Curatorship · March 2017

DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2017.1290321

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 Museum Management and Curatorship

ISSN: 0964-7775 (Print) 1872-9185 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmmc20

Creating the visitor-centered museum

Jill Rachel Baird

To cite this article: Jill Rachel Baird (2017) Creating the visitor-centered museum, Museum
Management and Curatorship, 32:2, 196-198, DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2017.1290321

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Download by: [The University of British Columbia] Date: 23 February 2017, At: 08:59
MUSEUM MANAGEMENT AND CURATORSHIP, 2017
VOL. 32, NO. 2, 196–198

BOOK REVIEW

Creating the visitor-centered museum, by Peter Samis and Mimi Michaelson,

New York and London, Routledge, 2011, 197 pages, $52.92 CDN, ISBN 978-1-629-
58191-0

‘Who writes? For whom is the writing being done? In what circumstances? These it seems to me
are the questions whose answers provide us with the ingredients making a politics of interpret-
ation’ (Edward Said, as quoted in Smith, 1999).
Thinking about a mass march may not, on the surface, seem like an appropriate or even
useful way to start a book review on visitor-centered museums. However, I am writing this
review just after 21 January 2017 when women and men in an estimated 600 cities across
the globe marched (Globe and Mail, 2017) in solidarity and protest to defend the rights of
equality, of diversity, and to speak back to power that patronizes, disempowers and engenders
fear. It brings into sharp focus what’s at stake when peoples’ histories, experiences and knowl-
edges are not fully part of the public discourse. Museums are contributors to this public dis-
course and have ongoing responsibilities to be inclusive – not just of difficult histories,
marginalized communities and cultures, and different ways of seeing and knowing the
world, but diversity in all its forms. It is from this position that I read Peter Samis and Mimi
Michaelson’s book Creating the Visitor-Centered Museums. This position is similar to the many
directors, educators and curators interviewed for this book. Museums need to renew and
refocus their activities on accessibility and everything that term means, transforming
museums into cultural commons.
The idea of museums as cultural commons owes much to the ideas posited by Duncan
Cameron, a Canadian museologist. He asked whether a museum can be both a temple and
a forum (Cameron, 1971). Later he expanded this idea of museums as the village green –
that messy public space where less control is exerted by the institutions and more common
space is created for community. Samis and Michaelson’s book offers food for thought on
how to transform what are still seen by many as elite institutions from forums to village greens.
Creating the Visitor-Centered Museum is the result of a study in which Samis and Michaelson
visited twenty museums, studied ten of them in-depth and interviewed a range of pro-
fessionals including directors, curators, evaluators and educators. The selection of museums
was drawn from nominations from colleagues in the field. The book provides context to the
debate on the need for visitor-centered practices in museums and provides examples of crea-
tive and innovative approaches.
The sites they have chosen to reflect upon range in characteristics from collections-based
and non-collection-based institutions, to play centers, natural history museums, history
museums and art galleries. Though a curious collection of institutions, they have brought
together a productive set of case studies. The authors are clear that ‘easy prescriptions or
magic bullets are hardly the purpose of this book’ (165). The institutions in their study are pri-
marily American: City Museum in St. Louis; Denver Art Museum; Columbus Art Museum,
Oakland Museum of Contemporary Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; Minnesota History Museum
in St. Paul; with three European museums included: Ruhr Museum in Essen, Germany; Van
Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, Netherlands and the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in
Glasgow, Scotland
I was initially worried that, when setting the stage for the case studies, the authors promi-
nently featured Judy Rand’s Visitor Bill of Rights (2000). I applaud the goal of making visitors
 MUSEUM MANAGEMENT AND CURATORSHIP 197

matter and addressing them in ways and means that make sense to them. But I know that not
everything we do can be fun, not everything is revitalizing, and we cannot always meet visitors
where they are. Outreach, engagement and visitor-centered change need also to consider the
larger frames of diversity, social justice, as well as political and economic concerns: all fields in
which museums operate.
In addressing our concerns for greater inclusivity and creating visitor-centered institutions
we must in parallel continue and deepen our conversations and our commitments as
museum professionals to diversity, decolonization and social justice regardless of our insti-
tution type. Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbe Museum whose institution is one of the
case studies in the book, asserts ‘I have, at the heart of it, a particular desire to see if,
through art, we can imagine the world otherwise’ (145). I concur, and many of the voices
and practices that Samis and Michaelson bring together lead us in this direction through
our visitors, through institutional change and collaboration, and through ongoing critical
self-reflection.
The strategy to study very different institutions with a diversity of mandates and structures is
not only insightful but allows for cross-pollination. As an Education Curator, I can apply some
ideas from the City Museum about physically engaging visitors and learn more about the role
of play in social engagement. I can adapt outreach programs like those offered by the Kelvin-
grove Museum and Gallery where objects from the collection go out into the community; I can
use the organizational structure of multidisciplinary teams for exhibition production used at
the Denver Art Museum in the Museum of Anthropology where I work.
Samis and Michaelson’s study is very useful because, thankfully, they do not offer a list of
what to do, or best practices. Rather they document two important and interconnected com-
ponents needed to develop or deepen a visitor-centered approach in museums. The first is
researching and designing visitor-centered strategies for engaging visitors. The second is an
analysis of needed organizational changes, asking what are the structural and staff changes
required to apply visitor-centered strategies? These ‘two intersecting trails’ (4) are critical
and make this book immediately useful. Many of the case studies document organizational
change that includes hiring more experience and visitor oriented professionals and giving
them responsibility and authority, while also advocating for experimentation and interaction
rather than the more traditional route of sharing expert curatorial knowledge.
The authors chart developing museums’ visitor-centeredness as a continuum through phys-
ical, immersive, emotive cognitive, co-creative, and metacognitive. Examples are offered for
each of these from the museums studied and from interviews with a diversity of staff including
directors, educators, curators and engagement professionals.
The key takeways offered in each section are very handy ways to summarize the case
studies. For example, one key takeaway for the case study of the Columbus Museum of Art
is ‘Welcome families and design for their needs’ (125). Not a simple directive. However, since
it is backed up with an example from the museum, as a reader I found it helpful.
Samis and Michealson have compiled a diverse set of case studies that are instructive in
their diversity and which support their intention of not having ‘best practices, rather solutions
best suited for particular audiences and situations’ (46). The book is built on the premise that
visitor-centered strategies are essential for the long-term sustainability of museums, but the
non-prescriptive way they present creative possibilities makes this book both welcome and
practical.
 198 BOOK REVIEW

Notes on contributor
Dr. Jill Baird is the Curator of Education at the UBC Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, Canada,
situated on the unceded territory of Musqueam people. She has written and co-written articles on
collaboration and community and worked directly with Indigenous communities to co-create edu-
cational initiatives both inside and outside the Museum. She also currently teaches in the Masters
of Museum Education at UBC.

References
“As the Women’s March on Washington Goes Global, Here are the Highlights.” 2017. Globe and Mail, January 22.
Accessed January 22, 2017. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/womens-march-on-washington-
goesglobal/article33696482/.
Cameron, Duncan F. 1971. “The Museum, a Temple or the Forum.” Curator: The Museum Journal 14 (1): 11–24.
Rand, Judy. 2000. “The 227-Mile Museum, or a Visitor’s Bill of Rights.” Curator: The Museum Journal 44 (1): 7–14.
Smith, L. T. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed books.

Jill Rachel Baird

Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia,
6393 NW Marine Drive, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2
jill.baird@ubc.ca
© 2017 Jill Rachel Baird
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2017.1290321

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