When exhibit becomes layout

In August 1987 I was to lucky to get to visit the Exploratorium in San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts. For a souvenir I bought a copy of the pamphlet, Working Prototypes: Exhibit Design at the Exploratorium. As I was reading the book again I wondered what I might learn if I replaced the word ‘exhibit’ with ‘layout’ in the list of exhibit development principles and characteristics that appears in the conclusion. Here’s what I get:

 

1. Basic research - just plain tinkering around with something for the fun of it - is an essential part of the layout development process.

2. Layouts are designed and developed by people who are interested in the phenomenon to be displayed.

3. To some extent, all layouts are collaborative: many people make suggestions and contribute ideas.

4. The first stage of layout design is the construction of a full-scale working prototype.

5. Layout builders are responsive to comments from visitors and staff, testing layouts at many stages in their development and allowing reactions to shape the layout.

6. Layout builders pay attention to aesthetic nuances, noticing what is fun to do, what is beautiful, what is intriguing.

7. Generally, layout builders try not to restrict a visitor’s choice.

8. Ideally, visitors should be able to see the inner workings of a layout and make discoveries about how the layout works.

9. Most layouts are set up on table tops, so that visitors can gather and use the layout together.

10. Layouts are often constructed of inexpensive materials, scrap, and found objects (or junk).

I can’t say that every item makes sense for a layout, but that’s not the point, which is just to stir the brain up a bit.

I found what seems like an addendum to item 8) noted in K. C. Coles’ 2009 book, Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up, quite interesting:

Anything involving computers was likely to be rejected out of hand. “There’s nothing a computer can do that I want done,” Frank said. Everything a computer did was a simulation, and therefore not sufficiently transparent - or even “honest” - by Frank’s lights. You couldn’t see what was going on inside the box. Besides, he thought computers were both passive and addictive. And new technology - as he learned at Los Alamos - could all too easily entrap.