The Art of Museum Exhibitions: How Story and Imagination Create Aesthetic Experiences

by Leslie Bedford

Leslie Bedford, former director of the highly regarded Bank Street College museum leadership program, expands the museum professional’s vision of exhibitions beyond the simple goal of transmitting knowledge to the visitor. Her view of exhibitions as interactive, emotional, embodied, imaginative experiences opens a new vista for those designing them. Using examples both from her own work at the Boston Children’s Museum and from other institutions around the globe, Bedford offers the museum professional a bold new vision built around narrative, imagination, and aesthetics, merging the work of the educator with that of the artist. It is important reading for all museum professionals.

Genres: Museums, Nonfiction, Art

168 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2014

Reviews

[Phoebe · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 - This is more of a food for thought kind of book. Bedford provided a lot of great ideas and new ways of thinking about exhibition as art, but the examples were limited and there was little discussion on how to effectively execute these ideas.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gets pretty philosophical about museum exhibitions and sometimes goes right over my head. But the main message is clear: when developing exhibitions, always keep in mind that you want to tell a story that allows the visitor's imagination some room to play. Keep that in mind, along with the always important question, "So what?" That puts you well on the way to a memorable and successful exhibition.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you can get through some of the dense philosophy of meaning making, art, and experience (which mercifully isn't terribly long -- only a little over half of this short book), there's something really compelling about what Bedford is trying to get at. At least I found it compelling. Boiled down way too much, the idea is to look at museum exhibitions as story and experience instead of instructional platforms. Part of me says, "Well, yes. Isn't that obvious?" and the other part of me that is looking squarely at institutional bureaucracy and long-embedded "this is how we've always done it, and this is how it always happens" is glad to have a resource that unpacks the legacy of the way museums have been viewed through time.

The most helpful parts of the book for me were the first section, explaining that historical view of museums and where all those "this is how we've always done it" ideas come from, and the last section, where she applies the philosophical pillars of her theory that she spent the middle of the book unpacking, not always successfully for those hearing the concepts for the first time. She's also not always helpful with her examples, which she doesn't explain in enough detail to make them make sense to anyone who hasn't actually experienced that exhibit.

There isn't as much PRACTICAL in this as I would like. Bedford does not claim to be a DESIGNER and solidly passes that buck to other books. But the idea of looking at the exhibit development process in terms of experience, art and story is an excellent jumping off point. That, after all, is the big buy-in that everyone has to be on the same page about if it's going to work.

I gave this book 3.5 stars, rounded up . . . because honestly, for 133 pages of content (the rest is notes and appendices), it was a SLOG most of the time. It's dense, philosophical, and not super accessible. But I was impressed enough to buy a copy for my personal library.

[Courtney Homer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for a museum studies class. The book tied up nicely, and the concept was compelling, but the writing was overly complex and distracting. Majority of the book was summaries of other museum theory.