Judging Exhibitions

Today, I had a rare opportunity to give direct feedback on an exhibition. A representative from the museum just happened to buy a membership while I was at my current job and just happened to mention that he worked at said museum. I, of course, piped up that as a project, I had evaluated that exhibition and he was curious as to my group's conclusion.

First, I must point out that we used a specific framework assigned by my professor for the assignment. The framework can be found in Beverly Serrell's Judging Exhibitions: A Framework for Assessing Excellence and a copy of the framework can also be found here. I also must be honest and admit that all the groups in my class spent more time criticizing the framework than we did evaluating the exhibitions we each visited.

As we were explained to by our professor, the purpose of the framework is to evaluate an exhibition based on how a visitor might view it. The issues we found with the framework were not so much that the aspects listed were not important, it was more that we found them limiting and did not appropriately assess how we felt about the exhibition. As I learned in my visitor research course, visitors have a variety of ways of looking at exhibitions and could easily rate an exhibition highly, but still not have enjoyed themselves or vice versa. The framework certainly attempts a more objective way of evaluating exhibitions, but we still found ourselves being subjective. Perhaps this is because museums are essentially meant to be subjectively viewed. With the exhibition we reviewed, we found the exhibits to have poor labels, undefined flow and a creepy mannequin. However, most of us were glad we were able to see the content and explore a new museum.

When I did bump into the employee at this museum, I was able to communicate my assessment of the exhibition, but I think I could have come to the same conclusion without the framework.

Has anyone used this framework? Has anyone attempted another method of similar style evaluation?