Educators on Exhibit Teams: A New Role, a New Era

Abstract

In the early 1980s, for the first time in any systematic fashion, educators began to be invited to sit at the exhibit development table. Exhibit teams have been dogged by problems that range from establishing priorities to achieving consensus. Role definition has been especially problematic because on the surface it has appeared so straightforward: curators are responsible for an exhibit's content, designers are responsible for its look, and educators are responsible for the visitors. The Children's Museum in Boston and Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago are widely credited with originating the models that led to what we now call the team approach to exhibit design. In the ideal world, there is an evaluator at the exhibit development table who is responsible for conducting visitor studies that will improve an exhibit's effectiveness. Effective communication is the key to producing visitor-friendly exhibits.

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