Collecting Our Culture: Exploring Object Focused Exhibitions, While Telling the Story of Museum Collections

This paper will explore how museums can create meaningful experiences through object based exhibitions. In the context of the museum world, experience based exhibitions are at the forefront of exhibition design. Museums are seeing a decline in interest with object bases exhibitions and more interest in experiential exhibitions. The challenge this exhibition presents is how to combine experience and objects into an exhibition. The chosen location for this exhibition proposal is Vesterheim: The National Norwegian-American Museum and Heritage Center. Using their collection and history, this exhibition will provide an experience that differs from a typical museum exhibition. Museums are the homes for objects they protect and care for them, they hold stories and memories. In this exhibition visitors will be surrounded by collections, discover stories, and experience objects in new ways.

Author

• Hess, Jill

Language

• en

Keyword

• Exhibition
• Design
• Museum

Date created

• 2018

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Exhibition Design

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Brennan, Barbara

Committee Member(s)

• Crellin, Naomi
• Briggs, Nigel

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/g732d917n