Technology and Interactivity in the Art Museum Environment: The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Other Case Studies Jeffrey Preston Holman A Capstone in the Field of Museum Studies for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University Extension School March 2018 Author’s Statement The following paper encompasses the research and experience I gained during my graduate internship in visitor studies at the Museum of Fine Arts in Spring 2017. During that time I assisted with the formative evaluation process for the Museum’s new Daily Life in Ancient Greece exhibition. I would like to thank Lynn Courtney, Adam Tessier, Barbara Martin, Janet O’Donoghue, and the entire exhibition team for their assistance and guidance throughout this project. I would also like to thank Sofia Walter of the Education Department for providing additional support during this process. The collections included in the Daily Life in Ancient Greece Exhibition and the history the represent have long fascinated and thrilled me. I was very fortunate to be a part of a project that involved making content that is already so interesting and meaningful to me personally accessible and engaging for those unfamiliar with Classical Greek civilization. ii Table of Contents List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... v Introduction: The Place of Technology in the Art Museum Agenda .................................. 1 Evolving Notions of Museum Interactivity ........................................................................ 4 Historical Development of Interactivity in Museums ...................................................... 4 Technology, Society, and Museums ................................................................................ 5 Researching the Effects of Interactivity ........................................................................... 8 Interactivity: Entertainment Versus Education .............................................................. 10 Motivations for Interactives in Art Museum .................................................................... 13 Renewed Object Focus .................................................................................................. 13 Redefining the Relationship with the Audience ............................................................ 15 Examples of Dynamic Relationships Through Technology ............................................. 19 Recommendation Systems: The Brooklyn Museum ...................................................... 19 Contextual Engagement: The Detroit Institute of Arts .................................................. 20 Self and Co-Curation: The Cleveland Art Museum ...................................................... 21 Lingering Questions of Motivation ................................................................................... 22 Appeal Without Purpose ................................................................................................ 22 Donor Influence ............................................................................................................. 23 Questions Around Democratization ............................................................................... 25 Assessing the Effectiveness of Digital Interactive in Art Museums ................................. 27 A Dearth of Outcome-Based Research .......................................................................... 27 Evaluation’s Crucial Role in Validating Expense ......................................................... 29 Approaches to Evaluation .............................................................................................. 32 Using the External Perspective to Create More Effective Exhibition Features ................ 36 The Museums of Fine Arts’ Background In Touch Screen Interactives and Research .... 37 MFA Motivations for Digital Interactivity .................................................................... 37 First Efforts: Maya Ceramics Interactive ....................................................................... 39 iii Outcomes and Conclusions from Maya Ceramics Installation ...................................... 41 Daily Life in Ancient Greece Interactive .......................................................................... 44 Background on Exhibition and Interactive .................................................................... 44 Learning Objectives for Interactive ............................................................................... 46 Impact of Prior Efforts (Maya Ceramic and Others) on Design and Goals ................... 47 Formative Evaluation Process: Assessing Three Models .............................................. 49 Evaluation Results: How They Impacted the Final Product .......................................... 53 Benefits to the MFA’s Interactive Design and Evaluation Approach ........................... 56 Suggested Enhancements to the Process ........................................................................ 58 Conclusion: Valuable Features in a Larger Educational Mission......................................61 Works Cited ...................................................................................................................... 65 iv List of Figures Figure 1: Rollout and Zoom Lens Features...................................................................................40 Figure 2: Interactive Users and Non-Users by Age Range............................................................42 Figure 3: The Conversation...........................................................................................................50 Figure 4: The Game.......................................................................................................................51 Figure 5: Click and Learn..............................................................................................................52 Figure 6: Preferred Version...........................................................................................................53 Figure 7: Version Which Would Most Encourage Looking at the Actual Object........................55 v Introduction: The Place of Technology in the Art Museum Agenda Digital technology has become a highly prevalent and integrated element of life in the twenty-first century. The significance of this development has noticeably impacted museums’ efforts to relate to and expand their audiences to varying degrees, and these “[m]edia technologies are seen as an important strategy in making [these institutions] culturally relevant to an increasingly media-literate society” ( “Re-Imagining the Museum” 129). Museum staff are increasingly compelled by the extensive application of digital mediums in the public, domestic, and professional lives of their visitors to investigate how these new technologies can affect experiences within their galleries, as well as beyond them (Heath and Vom Lehn 267). In accordance with these efforts, the marriage of multimedia with interactivity has emerged as a central pillar of many institutional agendas around technology in museum galleries and subsequent efforts to create more immersive on-site experiences for visitors. Devices like touch screen kiosks, handheld digital tours, large-scale media displays, and even computer games have been implemented as a means to engage visitors in new ways with ideas, objects, and content. This pattern has become so widespread that there are few museums operating today that do not offer interactive technology, sometimes referred to as “new media”, in one form or another or whose content consists entirely of the passive consumption of information (Marty 131). For art museums, technology offers an opportunity to help break down traditional assumptions about the accessibility and static nature of their exhibitions. Additionally, they can utilize different digital features as a means of invigorating their gallery spaces and connecting with new audiences. Many large and well-established institutions, like the Cleveland Museum of Art, the National Portrait Gallery, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, have embraced technology as part of their larger educational agenda (Bernstein; Lohr). However, despite the increasing 1 popularity of interactive media within the art museum environment, there is still a lack of publically available research that examines the full extent of the effects that different digital features have on the visitor experience. Uncertainties remain as to the scope of technology’s benefits for audiences, and potential drawbacks that its use might also entail. To address this, more investigations must be done into different art museums’ underlying motivations for adopting digital components, what their goals are for these features, and how the multimedia elements advance institutions’ larger mandate of cultural education (Anderson 297). Furthermore, it is not always clear whether a digital component is the most effective or appropriate way to convey the ideas or narrative of a given exhibition, and museums must carefully investigate this matter on a case-by-case basis. Finally, the visitor perspective must be taken into account when creating these interactives, as it the museums’ audiences that these devices are designed to appeal to. Fortunately, evaluations of visitor experiences with multimedia interactives are being carried out more frequently, and new approaches of