Conclusion!
Revisiting the process through which this thesis explores museum education, by examining youth engagement programs and the correlation between their learning outcomes and the physical educational space, we arrive at the conclusion that while museum practice has grown noticeably more open, progressive, and with the aim to be more inclusive, it could still benefit from innovative thinking and thoughtfully challenging the restrictions inherited from its development history.
At the beginning of the paper, a brief discussion regarding the history of museums as public institutions served as a reminder in acknowledging where some of the challenges museums still face today may have stemmed from. For instance, over centuries of museums’ existence, these representations of bodies of knowledge have not always been open to the public. Through the shift between private and public, due to the function and purpose this institution seeks to serve, what we saw is the crucial influence selecting its intended audience has on its outlook and strategy. When collections of precious objects and beautiful works of art were meant to serve as showcases of the collectors’ power and reach, the intended audience was often small and selective. Traditional restrictions on access to knowledge also played a role in limiting access to spaces like a museum, as illustrated by texts such as A
Social History of Museums by Hudson. Even when history arrived at late 18th century, with
increasing amounts of former palaces converting into exhibition space and more and more collections becoming available for public viewing, a turn in the development history of museums often considered as the beginning of the museum as a public institution as we know it today, visitor experience still differed gravely from what it is like in modern day society. Opening up doors to allow access to the public was only the beginning toward building inclusiveness in museums as public spaces, and more and more museums around the world have been working towards this goal since.
During the 20th Century in the United States, we saw the rise of progressive learning in the museum space as a result of several liberal movements around the 1960s, when interpretive learning in line with constructivist theories started to take greater presence in museums. The result of this was an increase in focus on education in museums. In the latter part of the first chapter, learning theories championed by likes of Dana, Barnes, Hooper-Greenhill, and Falk, just to name a few, were discussed, and provided a foundational understanding of the importance in audience engagement and progressive thinking. As
museums became aware of their duties in engaging various audience groups, programming for educational purposes became increasingly diverse and targeted. One specific area in education programming this thesis focuses on is the youths engagement in art museums, where teenagers between the age of 14 and 18 are provided with opportunities to interact with and get involved with museums outside of their regular school curriculum. Case studies examined in detail include two programs from Seattle Art Museum (SAM), Teen Arts Group (TAG) and Design Your [Neighbor]Hood (DYH), with a selection of similar youth engagement programs from the United States and the Netherlands as comparison.
In the second chapter, the paper zoned in on audience engagement specifically, and looked at two sets of groupings of audience types proposed by Falk, and by Brown and Ratzkin. With this understanding in mind, Brown and Ratzkin also proposed an Arc of
Engagement, which explores the various stages one might engage with a museum experience.
Of course every person’s experience is unique and certainly would not follow the exact same stages of engagement; but what this Arc provides the museum field with is a way of looking at an experience as multiple points of contact, with awareness of meaningful encounters occurring before and some after the actual museum visit. It therefore encourages museum professionals to be more mindful with the ways in which messages about exhibitions and programs are conveyed, through media and marketing, and also the lasting impact they may have on those who engage with the institution. Another interesting shift worth noting is the expansion into off-site projects at museums, some may be one-time performances, talks, or lectures, but some offer structured long-term engagement programs off-site, such as the DYH program at SAM, which creates a new dynamic that is more open and inclusive.
By looking at experiencing museum engagement through off-site project DYH versus on-site project TAG, the contrast between the audience reached and the behavior of respective participants speaks volume to the impact of the physical environment. The paper argues that, while on-site projects like TAG aims to engage the youths in discussions on sociopolitical issues and social responsibility, the site itself due to its geographical location and architectural space, acts as a filter that ends up preventing a wider and more diverse group of students from partaking in it. Much of this has to do with the construction of identity and narrative even before one enters a museum space, since, the purpose for most visitors to engage with a museum is to create their own narrative and identity through this encounter; and because the “[self] is both outer and inner, public and private, innate and acquired, the
product of evolution and offspring of culturally shaped narrative”48, this complexity takes many factors into account, and the physical environment is arguably an impactful one.
My observation as an education assistant staff working on the DYH program reveals that despite initial resistance towards active participation in activities designed and lead by museum-affiliated instructor, DYH’s teen participants grew increasingly engaged as time went on, illustrating the importance of building trust in an audience-relationship, just like that of any kind of human relationships. Watching the youths engage in the DYH program from beginning to end was akin to that of a full engagement arc being fostered. While there is still much room for growth in reaching out to non-traditional museum audience groups, what this experience demonstrates is that with time, investment, and a willingness to challenge the institution’s own perception of programming, such as the confines of the physical walls at the museum site, new audiences can be fostered, and it is worth rethinking how museums define their educational space.
The goal of this research is to better understand engagement in order to provide more impactful and effective learning opportunities through museums, unrestricted by the confines of the walls, and taking education beyond the museum buildings. In the final chapter, the paper discusses the construction of narrative identities in relation to the physical environment, the importance in recognizing the “why” part of the audience’s visits, rather than the “who”, and how recognizing these elements can contribute to better understanding and therefore better engagement with the museum participants. It draws attention to the crucial role the site of a project or an event can play, with examples from both long-term programs such as DYH and short-term one-time interactions such as SAM Lights and Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum’s school visits.
The key to fostering that aforementioned trust between an institution and its visitors, especially with a focus to encourage diversity and inclusion, lies within building familiarity and a sense of community, and the willingness to go beyond the museum walls and step into off-site spaces could contribute significantly. Therefore, the paper urges the field to invest resources in designing effective methods in producing concrete analysis in understanding the correlation between educational outcomes and the physical environment, as the current state of research in this area lacks data in addressing this specific question. Plenty of surveys have been conducted by museums in researching visitor experience, and youth programs survey their participants with similar goals. However, most of the responses collected are highly
subjective, and surveys themselves contain few questions designed to explore audience response in educational spaces. As existing architectural analysis regarding spatial impact has been continuing to push forward better design towards audience engagement, imagine the benefits in applying similar approach in further understanding specific environments and sites used for educational purposes.
In a panel discussion titled ‘Art and the Walls Without’ in 1985, Michael Graves (1934 – 2015), 49 an influential American modern architect and the one leading the expansion project of the Whitney in the 1980s, shared his thoughts on the function of museum spaces: “… I think this is a moment in history where we have to realize that we’re not just building
kunsthallen or picture galleries. We’re building institutions that have places for discussion,
places for study, and a social climate as well as a climate in which to see painting and sculpture.”50 Since surveying within the social sciences carry its own inherent challenges, this certainly will be a demanding task, and so is the undertaking of re-defining museum education space; but with a solid grasp on the history of the museum in order to understand the perspectives of both the institution as well as the visitors, and staying attuned to developments in learning and audience engagement theories, it is not only achievable but also constructive and invaluable that the museum community continues to explore effective ways in bringing the art beyond the walls – to always allow room for growth, and consequently, room for progress.
49
Graves is identified as one of The New York Five and Memphis Group
List of Illustrations
Figure 1 Detail from ‘Room to Rise: The Lasting Impact of Intensive Teen Programs in Art Museums’
Whitney Museum of American Art. 2014 Figure 2 Detail from ‘Making Sense of Audience Engagement’
Brown, Alan S., and Rebecca Ratzkin. 2011
Figure 3 Detail from ‘Understanding Museum Visitors’ Motivations and Learning’ Falk, John. 2013
! !
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