New Strategies of Exhibition Design for a Natural History Museum

It is a discourse on two design strategies, “effective exhibition” (used in the metaphor of modernist museum) and “interpretative exhibition” (used in the metaphor of post-museum), for developing the exhibition and their effects on the visitors’ experience in a Natural History Museum. Both of the strategies are concerned about the communication model (team or visitors), concept hierarchy, visiting route, and methods of exhibition evaluation. The research of “effective exhibition” was conducted in 1992 for the “Ecology Gallery” (March 1991 up to now, in Natural History Museum, London, UK) with the methods of tracking and recording visitors’ behavior. The result indicated the content structure of knowledge is the first priority of this strategy based upon a curator-centered consideration. This strategy almost ignored the other experience that should provide the visitors in the museum. To serve the didactic function of exhibition, the design thinking became more meaningful and complicated and formed a big gap between the visitor and the exhibition. Visitors only could spend the time on the most attractive items within limited visiting time. The traditional methods of evaluation and design thinking could not offer the solution about what the visitors had learned and what they wanted for this exhibition. Another research of “interpretative exhibition” was conducted in 2002 for temporary exhibition of “Flower Story” (May -Oct. 2002, National Museum of Natural History, Taichung, Taiwan). This is an intended exhibition with multiple channels of communication. We used the self-evaluation inquisition for the visitors’ learning and satisfactory experience in the museum. The result indicated that the visitors get more varieties of experiences due to the strategy of interpretive intention. The visitors were inspired to create the learning experience by themselves. The design thinking attracted more visitors with varieties of education status, knowledge background, visiting attention, etc. Therefore, today, the visitor-centered consideration as the exhibition design in museums should be a trend. It is not only to develop the successful or effective exhibition but also to get more benefits for the inspiration of design thinking in a Natural History Museum.