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I Am A Historian I Make Exhibits

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Crossed out text: "I AM A"/"HISTORIAN". Below: "I MAKE"/"EXHIBITS"/"B. ERIN COLE"

Cartoon of B. Erin Cole, saying, "Hi! I make exhibits for history museums. I also have a Ph.D. in History. Having a doctorate has opened doors for me, and I use my research + writing skills a lot...reading! archive work! writing exhibit text! and more! BUT! Most of the things I do I learned on the job. Making exhibits takes a lot of other skills. leading exhibit teams! I am often the only content person on a team. Collaboration! Sharing authority with outside communities! Budgeting + Scheduling! Thinking about what visitors want! THIS is the most important!"

Black text: "We make exhibits for VISITORS. Not historians, our museum peers, or ourselves.) My teams ask questions like: who is this exhibit for? What do these visitors want + need? How can we engage them and meet them where they are? So, who are visitors? (And what is an exhibit, anyway?) Drawing of an exhibit box, "I'm an exhibit, and I'm glad you asked! I'm a three-dimensional narrative environment! A story or argument you move through and interact with! That makes me very different from a book or a movie of a website! But I also wonder who comes to see me!"

Black text: There's a few ways museums think about the people that come through their doors. An obvious one is DEMOGRAPHICS. [drawing of various charts for race, age, gender, and zip code] and MORE! Demographics help us [begin checkmark list] market exhibits, know who IS + who isn't coming, report data to funders, board members, + more. But they don't tell us WHY visitors are here!

Since I make exhibits, I need that WHY! What draws people here, + what do they want out of their visit? Enter...VISITOR TYPES! People come to museums for lots of reasons. [drawing of a person, labeled as EXPLORERS: curious, into learning new things, saying, "I love learning new things!"] [drawing of a person, labeled FACILITATORS, wants a meaningful social experience, saying "I love things my family + friends can do together!"] [drawing of a person labeled EXPERIENCE SEEKERS, checking things off of their list, saying "I heard this place was awesome!"] [drawing of a person labeled ENTHUSIASTS, likes history a lot, saying "I am SO into this topic!"] [drawing of a person labeled RECHARGERS, looking to unwind (often avoid history museums), saying, "Museums help me feel calmer!"] Text below: See the work of JOHN FALK for more information.

Whoever they are, visitors do whatever they want in exhibits. You have to EARN their attention. Sadly, a lot of exhibits aren't trying to engage visitors much at all, unless they're enthusiasts. [drawing of a typical exhibit experience, with a room and a person moving through the space. Drawing includes a very long label, shiny thing, content dump, corner of awkward exhibit-team compromises, important thing no one notices, boring interactive, seating, a donor insisted, pain in the ass artifact, boring interactive.]

Exchanging different types of visitors is easier if you have ONE big idea that ties the exhibit together. [drawing of cloud labeled COMPLEXITY, with an arrow to a circle with arms/legs saying] All potential exhibit content -- THE BIG IDEA! Deciding on the big idea is HARD! We want to share lots of things with visitors! But FOCUS makes our work more visitor friendly. We can reach more people if we use different techniques to reinforce the big idea. [drawings of exhibit copy, media, artifacts, interactives, talkbacks, plus lighting colors]

Telling the story in multiple ways lets visitors approach + engage with the big idea in their own way, to fit their needs. Doing activities together! Asking each other questions! Reading panels! [drawing of an adult and two children, the adult saying: "Kids, you want to do this puzzle?"] Sitting down! Contemplation! Taking photos! Watching media! Leaving after a few minutes! There is no WRONG way to see an exhibit. If visitors aren't engaging with what we made, it's probably OUR fault. Are we meeting visitors' needs? Is the exhibit focused on one big idea? Does the exhibit tell its story in multiple ways, for different types of visitors?

[drawing of exhibit box, saying: "hey! that's a lot to ask! I'm just a space with some things in it!"] You're right! One of the most important things I've learned making exhibits is...EXHIBITS CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH! They can inspire curiosity! Introduce new points of view! Give context! Give people a meaningful experience! They can't please everyone! Talk about everything! Include every fact! An exhibit is just one part of a museum experience. We can use programs, lectures, books, social media, + more to build on what visitors got out of exhibits. THE END!

 

A printer-friendly PDF of this comic is available here.

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B. Erin Cole on InstagramB. Erin Cole on Twitter
B. Erin Cole is an exhibit developer at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul. Before that, she was the assistant state historian at the History Colorado Center in Denver. She also draws a lot of comics, and is working on a book-length graphic memoir about recovering from traumatic brain injury. She got her PhD in history at the University of New Mexico in 2014, and occasionally thinks about doing a comics version of her dissertation.

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