The modern museum invites you to touch. Or it would, if it wasn’t closed due to the Covid-19 outbreak. The screens inside the Fossil Hall at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC say “touch to begin” to an empty room. The normally cacophonous hands-on exhibits at the Exploratorium in San Francisco sit eerily silent.
Museum exhibit developer Paul Orselli of Paul Orselli Workshop says he’ll be reluctant to use hands-on exhibits once museums open up again. But he hopes that future hands-on exhibits are more meaningful because museums will work harder to justify them.
In this episode, Orselli predicts what hands-on exhibits could become, the possibility that the crisis will encourage museums to adhere to universal design principles instead of defaulting to touchscreens, and how Covid-19 might finally put an end to hands-on mini grocery store exhibits in children's museums.
Topics and Links
00:00 Intro
00:15 Hands-On Exhibits in Museums
01:00 Michael Spock (https://bostonchildrensmuseum.org/michael-spock)
02:04 Paul Orselli (https://www.orselli.net)
02:40 The Growth of Hands-On Exhibits
03:30 “The last thing I want to do is rush into a super-crowded museum”
04:40 “Empty Interaction”
06:50 27. Yo, Museum Professionals (https://www.museumarchipelago.com/27)
07:30 The Future of Touchscreens
09:14 Universal Design Principles
10:20 The End of Mini-Grocery Store Exhibits
11:00 “Constraints Are A Good Thing For Creativity”
11:40 Archipelago at the Movies : National Treasure is Now Free for Everyone (https://www.patreon.com/posts/archipelago-at-31845538)
12:15 SPONSOR: Pigeon by SRISYS (https://pigeon.srisys.com/museums/)
13:10 Outro | Join Club Archipelago (https://www.patreon.com/museumarchipelago)
Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/museum-archipelago/id1182755184), Google Podcasts (https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubXVzZXVtYXJjaGlwZWxhZ28uY29tL3Jzcw==), Overcast (https://overcast.fm/itunes1182755184/museum-archipelago), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/5ImpDQJqEypxGNslnImXZE), or even email (https://museum.substack.com/) to never miss an episode.

Sponsor: Pigeon by SRISYS ?
This episode of Museum Archipelago is brought to you by SRISYS Inc - an innovative IT Apps Development Company with its Smart Products like Project Eagle - an agile messaging platform and PIGEON - a real-time, intelligent platform that uncovers the power of wayfinding for your museum, enabling your visitors to maximize their day at your venue.

Using SRISYS's Pigeon, the museum's management can gather real-time data for managing space effectively about visitors while improving their ROI through marketing automation. Visitors can navigate the maze of a museum with ease, conduct automated and personalized tours based on their interest, RSVP for events, and get more information about the exhibits in front of them.

Pigeon is a flexible platform and can be customized to work for your museum. And because the platform takes advantage of low-cost Beacon technology, the app works offline as well! This means less data transmission costs for the museum and bigger savings for visitors when using this app outside their home territory. Click here find out how Pigeon can help your museum.



Transcript
Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 79. Museum Archipelago is produced for the ear and the only the audio of the episode is canonical. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.



View Transcript



[Intro]

The modern museum invites you to touch.

Or it would, if it wasn’t closed due to the Covid-19 outbreak. The screens inside the Fossil Hall at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC say “touch to begin” to an empty room. The normally cacophonous hands-on exhibits at the Exploratorium in San Francisco sit eerily silent.

And th