Effective Museum Aspects

There are so many museums that I have visited each was effective in their own way besides what is on exhibit it is in my opinion is the staff that makes a museum very effective. In many ways the staff can make or break a visitors experience to a museum. Yes museums usually have the representation of ‘ssshhhh show respect this is a museum you need to be quiet’ with security and guides giving the glare of death if you make a loud sound. But I have never run into any staff of a museum acting like that. Very friendly, helpful, full of information of the exhibits and of the museum these museum staff is there for the visitor regardless of what museum a visitor is at.

With large museums there still is the helpful staff that is there to help but I find that smaller museums (that are out of the mainstream) or when visiting a bigger museums on none eventful day both have better staff. Yes going to a museum you is there to appreciate the exhibit you wanted to visit but the staff is able to give you a more in-depth look at the exhibit and answering your questions. Depending on the staff you can get a personal tour of the museum. In my personal experiences I can rightfully blame my mom for many of those tours and I’m grateful in hindsight for they were very insightful. My favorite private tour was when I visited the John Steinbeck museum in California on a Wednesday morning (with my mom) and Aaron one of the staff at the front desk took us around to each exhibit including all the extra tidbits. Funny thing was before I visited the Museum I have only read one of his books after that visit I have read five more.

Contextual Approach in a Museum

Creating a museum needs to be set around the objects used. But the use of these objects needs to be within a context to share the rich legend surrounding the objects used in the museum. Yet taking those objects out of context is taking a big risk in stretching the truth and retelling a completely different story. Pearce is explaining in her article to keep all objects within the contextual approach within the exhibits of a museum and not the by classification that was used before. The classification approach was helpful in the past for museums to show objects in a grouping way of telling a history of common objects. While the contextual approach grouping objects together which have the same intellectual significance. Without the contextual grouping the meaning or story being told will be disordered and misleading to the visitors at any museum. So yes I believe that a contextual approach should be used in museums to effectively to show the objects on exhibit there. I have seen the Bodies exhibit but I was not interested in looking at the dead spices of body parts. But that is the only museum that I can think of which I have been to which is where the contextual approach is very usable in. It was an informative exhibit in which people can observe what the inner parts of a body looks like. Without any derogatory objections or protests in which the use of the human body in the exhibit is used. By keeping the information as a third person and basic facts of the bodies used kept the exhibit educational. I think the people creating the exhibit in the museums were able to achieve the goal of informative exhibit. Even though I didn’t enjoy the exhibit I saw their accomplishment.