Voices of the Future Interview

Last week at the AAM conference in Philadelphia, our host, the American Association of Museums, offered all sorts of new and experimental ways to engage. One was to record a Voices of the Future interview. Anyone who was interested was welcome to speak for a couple of minutes on their visions of the future for museums. All of the interviews are now available up on YouTube. Mine is embedded here.

How DO Audiences Want to Use Museums?

Perhaps I am a bit of a hypocrite. Over on the WestMuse blog, I opined earlier that I didn't feel as connected as I would have liked to through the FutureQuest game here at AAM. But at this evening's event at the amazing University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology I felt almost exactly the opposite.

The evening was structured by a group activity--everyone was divided into teams for a scavenger hunt. I opted out, preferring instead to be able to explore on my own and at my leisure, not wanting all that much group involvement with my experience. I think what I really want is to connect with others about museums, but when I am in a museum, I really only want to connect with the objects.

So now the question is, am I a relic in terms of how I want to use museums, or am I not alone in my sentiments? If the answer is the latter rather than the former, then I am quite wrong about how audiences want to interact with museums...