Museums are under steady pressure to prove their value. In response, we often reach for familiar metrics like attendance numbers or evidence that people are learning from their participation. But Martin Brandt Djupdræt’s research suggests we may be looking for meaning in the wrong places. He’s found that the experiences visitors describe as most meaningful are the ones that resist familiar instruments. The value they describe is emergent and unpredictable. It shows up in things like a conversation between generations, a personal memory surfacing unexpectedly when seeing a particular object, or a reflection that arrives weeks after they left the museum.
In his PhD research, Martin explored what visitors themselves feel they get from museums, surveying nearly 1,300 people and conducting 60 interviews across Danish museums. In this session, John Falk will discuss the implications of his findings with Martin and invite session participants to work with peers in breakout groups to explore how those findings might be applied in their museums. Come prepared to be an active contributor.
Begin by reading an overview of Martin’s paper, The Museum Visit: A Study of Use, Benefits and Perceived Value, prepared for session participants below. We encourage you to highlight passages that are of interest to you, and leave comments on the text if you like. We’ll bring these highlights and comments into the event itself during the group discussion.