Creating Effective Museum Experiences, with Lynda Roscoe Hartigan

Jonathan Alger: Hello, and welcome to "Making the Museum." I'm Jonathan Alger, and this is a project of C&G Partners, the exhibition and experience design studio. Today, I am joined by Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Lynda, welcome to the show.

Lynda Roscoe Hartigan: Thanks, Jonathan. It's great to be here, and I look forward to our conversation.

Jonathan: Me too, for sure. To get started, for those who don't already know your name and your fame, like I do, could you tell our dear listener who you are and what you do, what you're up to?

Lynda: I'm Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, and I've got a really long title. [laughs] I'm the Rose Marie and Eijk van Otterloo executive director and CEO of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

Jonathan: Excellent. Salem, Massachusetts, not too far outside Boston. I'm thinking we should invite everybody to come on up there, or come down, I guess, or come over and visit your museum, which I've been to. It's a great place.

Lynda: Absolutely. We love to welcome everybody. We're open Thursdays through Mondays, 10:00 to 5:00. Do indeed come visit.

Jonathan: A very well known museum up there and big with a wonderful and diverse collection, not only of objects, but also properties and terrific stories you can learn. They're quite terrific.

A traditional side question that I have for all my guests, our listeners like to hear this little superhero origin story. How did you get into this business originally? A lot of people come into it sideways or through the back door. Every once in a while, someone comes through channels. We're all raised by wolves. How did you get into the business originally?

Lynda: I'm going to take us back to third grade when I decided that I was not going to be a teacher. That was actually my first professional decision. Then at some point, I decided I wasn't going to be a standup comic. Then I decided I wasn't going to be an interior designer.

Through my early childhood, I had taken a lot of art lessons. I lived across the street from a very small science and art museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I was very comfortable with the museum environment. I went into college as a fine arts major. I came out as an art history major, went on to graduate school in art history.

I had the good fortune of having an internship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which confirmed for me that I was an objects person and that I really wanted to work in a museum environment instead of teaching.

I like to say that I started in kindergarten because I've been at this for a while, but I have been very active as a curator for many, many years. Then in 2003, I went to the Peabody Essex Museum as its first chief curator, became deputy director, left, took a job at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and now returned to PEM in August of 2021 to be the director. That's the path.

Jonathan: A little bit of very specific jargon, what you just said, PEM.

Lynda: Yes.

Jonathan: People who may not know the museum, although I can't imagine who wouldn't. Peabody Essex Museum, P E M. That's if you hear us say PEM, we are referring to this thing called PEM.

It's funny. For me, having talked to you in the preshow and knowing you from working with you in the past at the museum, actually, I didn't realize that there were some other potential career paths, which included teacher, stand up comic, and interior designer. Knowing you, I want to propose that you are actually doing all three of those things professionally now in a way.

Lynda: I've had to come to that conclusion. I'm a lifelong learner and I really do believe in informal learning and teaching. I've come to understand that I can be a role model. I can set an example. I really love mentoring people. There's the teaching element.

If you invite me to your house, I'd be happy to rearrange things so that they look better. I've now renovated a couple of houses. I just really love design, which clearly is something we're going to be talking about today.

Then in terms of the standup comic thing, I believe in the power of humor. It's an important way to connect with people. Life can be very serious, but there's got to be some lightheartedness and also some irony and sarcasm in there, depending on where you want to be on the scale of humor.

Jonathan: Absolutely. Let's get into our discussion that you were just talking about. Here we go. Today's episode is called "Creating Effective Museum Experiences" with Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. As always, I have the list, but only the list, and my guest as the rest. I'm going to be learning right alongside you, the dear listener.

Today, we have six points on your list, Lynda. Making Museum has somehow become a six point show. That's a very common number. We'll do three, we'll do a little halftime show, and then we'll do the other three.

The first one, I love this first one given what I do for a living, doing design myself. Number one, embrace human creativity. That's your first pillar in creating effective museum experiences. Number one, and I'm guessing it's for a reason that it's number one, embrace human creativity.

You're a museum director. Say more about why you as a museum director think that that's almost the most important thing you can say about how to create effective experiences.

Lynda: Fundamentally, human beings are creative. I am struck from time to time how some people will say to me, "Well, you're creative, Lynda, but I'm not," and they're sitting there knitting or they're cooking something wonderful. That is creativity.

Creativity to me is one of the fundamental ways in which we communicate with each other, we question things, we solve problems through creativity. Understanding that human creativity can run the gamut. Sometimes you can call it art, sometimes you can call it culture, sometimes you can call it just making something out of nothing.

The value of creativity as a very powerful expression of what we are as human beings. As we talk about the mission of the museum, it's about celebrating human creativity as a nourishing force in people's lives. Obviously, I see it as a fundamental and very positive thing.

The more that you can actually communicate that, make it possible for people to experience that, then to me, the more successful the likelihood is of the experience when you're in a museum.

Jonathan: You said just now something jumped right out of me because of what I do. You said creativity is communication. You had some example, like even someone knitting. Foreshadow alert, we're going to talk about knitting later. Cooking, whatever, it's all a form of communication, which I love. I see everything as a form of communication.

Say more about that. I think that's a fascinating insight that I've never really thought about before.

Lynda: I think in part because of how many people perhaps have the stereotype of an artist or someone who is creative as a singular, standalone, perhaps isolated individual, creativity is something that an individual is using for a variety of purposes.

I often believe that it is precisely because it's not just about having a great idea or you want to deal with color, or line, or whatever. To me, it's about the urge to connect with people. We can also say that words are a form of creativity.

In terms of my world, the visual world, that creativity is to me an effort on one person's part to actually connect with other people, and that is communication.

Jonathan: The museum has a wonderful and diverse collection, Asian art, American art, book art. I'm not even doing justice to the variety. You could go on, and on, and on, and on, and on. I think of all of those artistic forms, obviously, as expressions of the creativity of the artist, but you just said that the mission of the museum is celebrating human creativity.

I know because we're talking about creating great museum experiences that visitors, when they come, are also encouraged to find their own creativity. I know you would encourage people to do that. That's what you're about.

Are there examples of how you do that in your museum, how you get people turned on to their own creativity? Just being there, I suppose, is number one.

Lynda: That's a start, but oftentimes people, I think, can feel intimidated as they come into a museum. First and foremost, we work to create a sense of welcoming. Some of that has to do with how we light our spaces, but it primarily has to do with people meeting people literally as they come into the museum to welcome them.

Presumably, that's going to warm you up and say that there's something here about the environment that makes it safe even for you to keep going and have the exploration. I think one of the greatest examples that I could give you is an exhibition that we did called the Rare Bird of Fashion. It was all about the fashion collection and sensibility of the late Iris Apfel.

She had a wonderful way of mixing high fashion with street fashion. It was really eccentric and out there in certain ways. The number of people who experienced that show to say, "Oh, I could have my own style," was quite revelatory.

Part of it for me is about taking the chance on the unexpected in terms of what it is that you're going to offer people and to feel like they're actually experiencing the productivity and the vision or the ideas of other people. It's that people connection that is so important.

Jonathan: It's one of those moments when we wish a podcast was a visual medium because I'd love to be able to show listeners, Iris Apfel, 102 old, with her giant glasses, her perfect hair, and some kind of bright Canary yellow feather boa. It looks like it's all she's wearing. What a fantastic character.

Very much about creativity. Boy, you couldn't miss her if she were walking down the street near you.

Lynda: It was about the freeing up of your inner energy, if you will. That's what she helped people discover about themselves. How it is that you go about creating an experience in the museum that gives people the confidence to be open to that sort of thing is important to me.

Believe me, I do a lot of research. I'm a bred in the bone curator. I believe in careful research, great thought and analysis. For me, frankly, if your idea does not have visual or emotional immediacy that people can get hooked by very quickly, then all the great ideas in the world can fall on deaf ears.

Jonathan: That's reflecting on your admission of teacher, standup comedian, and interior designer. Everything you said, I'm thinking about that. There's something else you just said that I don't want to gloss over. You talked about the power of welcome and people.

I don't know if I got this right. Do you have folks at the museum whose job it is to welcome people?

Lynda: Yes.

Jonathan: How does that work? I was speaking to a client just this week, actually, who were guiding me around. We need to change what we're doing. Most people get welcomed by a security guard behind a podium at our institution for various reasons. What can we do?

How do you all handle that in your museum? How do you give that welcome that you've just said is so important?

Lynda: Among the many things is that we have very friendly security guards. They're not wearing uniforms. They're dressed in polo shirts and slacks so they look like they are more approachable. We have great visitor services training for the visitor engagement folks who do indeed take your membership card or welcome you with a ticket or that sort of thing.

The other piece of it is that I've never quite been able to put my finger on it, but there is something about the Kool Aid that we all drink at PEM. We manage to hire people who are also very outgoing. The notion of being in our space, people smile at you and talk to you or ask how things are going.

There's just a more ease of socializing that I think we make possible. We also believe in having really comfortable furniture, for example. So that if people want to gather, sometimes I discover that strangers are striking up conversations, or people who've come together feel comfortable having their moment their time out.

It gets to be a complex mix of things, but it's not formulaic.

Jonathan: I have to stop on that tactic too because that's a piece of literal news that someone can use. Very comfortable furniture. Say a little bit more about where you put them. Is it crazy comfortable? Is it surprisingly everywhere? How would you define that? It sounds like you have a furniture philosophy as a recovering interior designer.

Lynda: Yes. Recovery, tell that to my husband.

Jonathan: Not recovering. Still interior designer person.

Lynda: I despise uncomfortable furniture. When you come into the museum, there are settees right away. They're colorful, they are well upholstered, they are comfortable. If you just need to come in and get your bearings, you can put your stuff down on the settee or the accompanying table.

Then it's spread throughout the museum, including in our exhibitions. Frequently, when we go through design sessions for our shows, someone at the table, because they now know that I asked this, are saying things like, "Well, do we have room for furniture?"

It's like, "No. You have to have room." It's as much an object of the experience as the art and the other kinds of objects that you are including in the installation.

We have found something called a moon chair that is molded resin that's extraordinarily comfortable. It's very contemporary looking, and yet it somehow manages to fit in with all different kinds of topical subjects of exhibitions.

It's actually a hard seat, but we've also learned that, especially for our older visitors, please have things with arms and backs just as a courtesy. You go into some places and they're really hard stone benches, hardwood benches, and that's not real inviting and it's not real comfortable.

Jonathan: That is, you said, the moon chair, like moon up in the sky.

Lynda: Yeah.

Jonathan: Terrific. I can't get past point one here, but creating seating so that people, if they wish, can pause or stay. Sometimes we'll talk to clients, and there's two schools and in between. There are those who would say, "We'll put plenty of seating, but it'll be in the café," where you implicitly have to pay to sit there, sort of, a little bit.

As opposed to the galleries, where we'd like you to get through there. Don't linger there. We want you to move on to something else. It sounds like your philosophy is, "No. People have to be comfortable throughout." That's one of the factors, one of the many, and why your museum is successful, is that insistence on radical comfort.

Lynda: This could jump ahead to point six, which is which is called consider the neuroscience on our list. People have very specific attention spans, and it is going to vary from person to person, but people need timeouts. Oftentimes, spaces like museums are very big. They got hard floors. There's a lot to look at. Your synapses are busy firing, or at least we hope.

People just need time outs, and sit and relax. If they're really stimulated by something and they want to have a conversation with somebody, it's a lot easier sometimes to have that conversation sitting down rather than standing up.

We're very attentive to the fact that we want people to linger as long as possible at the museum. I would be unhappy if people walked out and said, "Damn, that was a really uncomfortable place. I couldn't find any place to sit."

Jonathan: So terrific. I think that's a philosophy. Now, that's something any listener can take into account. Grab that strategy. Speaking of strategies, number two, design is critical. Use media wisely. As a museum director, why do you think design is critical, and especially that you have to use media wisely? That suggests that some people are maybe not using media wisely.

Lynda: Let's deal with the design is critical piece first because the media is a subset of that. Basically, I believe in making what's going to happen in an environment that you're in or a space that you're in, whether it's a cultural institution, or whether it's someone's residence, or a commercial space, that space has to be inviting, in my opinion, and clear in terms of what's going on.

How does color affect your emotional or psychological response to different kinds of things? People can often complain that they can't read labels because the type isn't large enough. For me, if you pick really fussy fonts for even just graphic design, it makes it hard for people to read. You put white print on a black background, there's a lot of bounce. It's hard.

It's a panoply of factors in terms of how it is that you create an integrated, cohesive, pleasing environment that actually means that people are going to relax and open up and take in the experience, the information, and the ideas that you're trying to provide for them. It is, I think, also an opportunity to experience beauty.

Jonathan: Your words are music to my ears because I design exhibits, but you're saying beauty not only in the collection, but also in the environment. You're saying the color, the spacing, the pacing, even down to whether the text and labels is fussier.

It sounds like it's a totality. You don't think of it as a collection that's a purpose and it's on some walls, but the entire thing is an experience. When we're talking about creating effective experiences, is it a holistic idea that you have? It sounds like it.

Lynda: Absolutely. Oftentimes, the design of an exhibition, to me, is as much conceptual as it is physical. How you get those two things together right there is an act of integration. How do you take what's in the mind of a curator and the desire of a curator and how a designer might begin to imagine that is a very powerful collaboration when it works.

The notion that you have walked into a space and you may be experiencing something visual, you may be able to touch something, you may be able to say, "I really like the level of lighting in here because it makes it possible for me to experience something. I have furniture to sit on," it all starts to come together as a complete package.

Jonathan: I'm reflecting on your comment about typography. We do that a lot in our studio, obviously. Somebody in an article recently said it in a way that I thought was pretty good. There's a little statistical chart that said average age of the mid level or junior graphic designer actually setting the type, 26.5 years old.

Average age of a human, 49.5 years old. Average age of a museum goer, 52.5 years old, or something like that. In other words, the capacity to see of the people setting the type simply isn't the same as the average target audience. It's not that it's willful. It's that the young designer's like, "Hey, how come you can't see that?" which I think is interesting.

You said that exhibitions are as much conceptual as they are...The design is as much conceptual as physical. Can you say more about what you mean by that? Because I think listeners could say, "I like that. I'd like to make my exhibitions conceptually well designed, not just physically."

What would be a, from a project you've done recently or something you've seen, something that you thought was conceptually well designed?

Lynda: I worked on an Alexander Calder exhibition. His work as a sculptor, because he made mobiles that were intended to move, was how does one suggest that to an audience, when in effect, sculptures are well designed, fairly delicate.

We had a whole conversation about fans and volume of airflow and that sort of thing. I decided that as much as the motion was important, his work also has incredible silhouettes, so we also used shadows quite a bit. He worked to music consistently in his studio.

The conceptual part was let's not just do an exhibition of the abstract sculpture of Alexander Calder. Let's try to incorporate the kinds of things that were really important to him. That's a concept underlying the design to actually help the sculptures come alive even if we couldn't have them moving constantly and that sort of thing.

There was music in the galleries, but it was music that he played in his studio. We played a lot with the lighting in terms of creating really interesting shadows that helped people reinforce what they were perceiving as abstract forms.

It made it more playful, frankly, and he also made toys. He was like a big teddy bear, although I gather he was grouchy, also. At any rate, there's a playfulness and a lightheartedness, if you will, to the work. How do you build that into the design of a show was one of the challenges that I gave to myself and to my design partner.

Jonathan: Now you've put into my head an image of Alexander Calder as a big grumpy teddy bear. I'm not going to get that back out again. A couple of things there for our listeners. You said earlier that you believe very much in research. You refer to yourself as a bred in the bone curator. Your advanced degree is in art history.

I'm putting things together as we're having the conversation. Everything you just said was through deep knowledge of Calder's working methods, the formality of his work, but also how he worked and things like that.

I haven't been to every Calder exhibit in the world. I'm sure I've been to a few. Usually, it's a motion thing or a color thing. You've talked about shadow, music.

It feels to me like you were also looking for something new, something where you could say, "Hey, if we are the PEM, the Peabody Essex Museum, and I'm going to put on a very visible exhibition of, of Calder or wherever I'm going to do that, I'd better come up with some new interpretations, some new ways of curating, give back to the industry these new ideas."

Am I right about that? I'm taking away, do your deep research, have your ideas come from research, not from decoration, that's whatever you feel like, but from research.

The second thing is look for things that are new that people haven't already done already. That will be delightful to your visitors, but it will also be advancing human knowledge. Do I have that right? I'm putting things together. I don't want to make sure I'm not putting words in your mouth.

Lynda: No. You're not. One of the things that we really value at PEM is the concept of the unexpected. So either it can be taking a different unexpected. Either it can be taking a different angle on a particular artist's work.

I can't even begin to count how many Ansel Adams exhibitions there were, the famous American photographer. Our former photography curator figured out that he took a lot of pictures that involve the water. We have an extraordinary maritime collection.

We are a by the ocean kind of community. We're in New England, where water is incredibly meaningful as part of the environment. Focusing on that very specific, not attended to, not focused on ever before angle of Adam's work made it possible for us to do something different, and therefore, unexpected.

Design can introduce unexpected kinds of things. What's it going to take to get people's attention in the first place and keep them going, getting them engaged?

You can't keep hitting people with surprises by turning every corner, but there's got to be something fundamentally different and distinctive about what we do that we do consider one of the value added elements of how we provide experiences at the museum.

Jonathan: Within the bounds of good curatorial practice and museology, I'll say, there's a bit of showmanship. It is a show. We even use the same word to describe, let's say, I'm just joking here, standup comedy show or an art show, an exhibit, like, "Oh. I saw a great show. I saw Ansel Adams show and I saw the Calder show."

It sounds like you're not averse at all to, within the bounds of what you do, some showmanship.

Lynda: Absolutely. Design can be incredibly obtrusive and heavy handed, or it can be your subtle, graceful, sophisticated partner in what you want to create as the environment and as the experience.

We better get to part B of the [laughs] design is critical in terms of using media wisely. This also then connects to another point that we'll get to later in the conversation. Within our walls, if you will, we have very careful conversations about whether a project warrants the complement of the digital or of the, let's call it analog, a video, that sort of thing.

What is it that the digital can actually best deliver? Oftentimes, we'll have debates or questions about is there something about providing a Google Maps zeroing in on where a country is that somebody may not be familiar with geographically? Will that help the experience or not?

I think also because we have so much digital experience in our lives otherwise, the question is more about using it why wisely because often people coming to museums understand fundamentally that they get the chance to see the real thing in person. Do they have to be inundated with yet more digital experiences in a museum?

The wisely piece, the pick and choose, like does it add value or not, is what I mean by the wisely.

Jonathan: I like your phrase, the complement of the digital. The complement with two Es. You could complement your digital work, like, "Hey, good work." It is a complement to that. Do you think of it that way?

As you just said, and it is true, people come to museums in order to see real things. That's something that museums can offer, especially yours, not all, but yours, that you don't have much competition on. You're not going to see a Calder in your living room or in a screen in person on the back of your SUV seat or something.

Is that how you think about it? That you have a physical holdings they're physical, you must come to see them and digital can complement it. You start in the physical and add digital as necessary instead of the opposite?

Lynda: Absolutely. You can go to, I suppose, some science museums where so much of it is digitally delivered through screens, where you think about IMAX presentations in science museums and that sort of thing. That is a different kind of experience, but art is very tangible. It's physical. It occupies space.

That's what we want to give primary focus to, but if we can use the digital to help people approach that physical object in a different way or to think about it in a different way. The perfect example is if you've if you've got a phone.

We don't believe in putting books on the wall, meaning incredibly long labels, but if through a phone, you can actually call up something that's additional information, there are people who like to do that. That's something that we do consider.

Jonathan: The next piece of this that we're going to put together has to do with a unique hobby that I know that you have. It's an out of the ordinary hobby. It doesn't sound like it's out of the ordinary until you explain it a little bit more.

That is number three, knit experiences. K N I T, knit experiences. I'm going to do a poem about yarns in your museum, but say more about knitting experiences and how that relates to a unique hobby that you have that you're known for.

Lynda: The unique hobby is that I do not knit, I never will knit, but I love yarn, so I collect it. I put it in baskets and bowls and different kinds of vessels in my house and in my office.

I am a very tactile person, and I think that's in part because I had a grandmother, a wonderful maternal grandmother, who made all kinds of quilts and she made all the clothing for her four daughters, right down to the undergarments. That tactile piece is just really meaningful to me.

It's the possibility of what could come from the yarn that I could imagine, but I just never got to take the time to figure out how to do. Knitting the experience, and you brought up the word holistic earlier in the conversation. I suspect you might be talking to some of my staff because this is a word that I use quite a bit.

Momentarily, this is very specific about PEM. We are a museum of art, culture, and science. We have historic houses and gardens. We are also an arboretum, and we have a magnificent new collection setters where we take care of our collection and make it accessible to many different kinds of people.

Part of my challenge and opportunity as the director of PEM right now is how do we knit all of that together as the kind of experience that people would like to have over several hours or over several days if they want to go through the houses and that sort of thing.

Knitting the experience together, I will never forget listening to a marketing person years ago who said something so revolutionary that I've never forgotten it. It was basically about the fact that the experience of a museum begins outside its doors.

Now, this was set at a time when electronic access via computers and phones was really not on the table. What he meant was that a block away from the museum, for example, if you don't have clear signage, somebody might not know how to get to you.

You're coming up the steps of a museum or some other form of entryway. Does it look welcoming? Is it clean? Do people greet you when you come inside the...What's the cohesive unfolding of the experience?

That has stayed with me. It does then relate to my belief in the value of good design because knitting together how someone is going to experience what you're offering, both visually, physically, intellectually, socially, and emotionally is what I mean by knitting together the experience.

An exhibition per se is not necessarily a standalone experience. It is reflective of an entire institution. Our collection is reflective of an entire institution. How museums can place equivalent value on their displays of their gap collections is actually a very meaningful thing to me.

Oftentimes, people will say, "Special exhibitions and permanent collection." Guess which one wins? Those exhibitions are special, and those collections are permanent. "Oh, gee, I could go see them anytime or it must be really old and tired."

The interpretive techniques, the design quality that we apply to our exhibitions, and our collection inspired galleries, which is my phrasing, collection inspired galleries, they are equivalent. The exhibitions don't get extra special design, and the collection inspired galleries don't get that. Equality, in other words.

Jonathan: It sounds a little like words count. Influence of that marketing person is even a little bit more. You're careful about the words that you use. I've never thought about that before. I've never thought about it until you just said it just now.

That when you say permanent exhibitions, someone could say, "What is that? A cemetery has permanent residence? What is that supposed to mean?" For something special, it's like, "Well, of course, I'm going to go to the special thing. I never thought about that until you until you just said that."

I did not realize that you use the word holistic regularly. I just intuited that's what you're talking about. It sounds like it's not just holistic design of your galleries or whatever. You're almost holistically thinking of it's the day of the person, not your museum.

It's what's going on in their head all the way now to what they see on the Web, what they see in an advertisement, in a bus, on the T or the Boston area mass transit system, etc. Then coming in your front door, coming to Salem, etc., and going and then afterwards, I suppose, as well. It's what's in their head that counts. That's what it sounds like you're saying.

Lynda: It's worthwhile talking about each person coming is bringing their life experience. We can't possibly know about all of those life experiences in advance. For me, a museum does not exist as a mausoleum for objects. It exists because we want to share the creativity of other people with other people.

That notion of how it is that someone finds out about what could be happening in a particular thing known as a museum and then how they feel we've delivered on that is really important. You don't want disconnects. There's a sense of cohesiveness, consistency. You never want to feel like somebody came away going, "Oh, that was bait and switch or disappointing."

It's a well designed journey of clear and enticing delivery.

Jonathan: I love the new term you just taught me, collection inspired galleries. That sounds much better than permanent exhibitions.

Lynda: I did try. Maybe I have a future in marketing. Who knows?

Jonathan: Excellent. Fourth career. Let me do a quick halftime show, a little station identification. If you're just joining, you're listening to Making the Museum. I'm Jonathan Alger, and this is a project of C&G Partners.

If you find this show valuable, please help spread the word. You can hit follow on Apple podcasts or Spotify. You can rate the show with stars, especially if you are in a five star mood, or you can leave a review or all of the above. A big MTM thank you to everyone who's made the show a five star podcast.

Some listeners and readers have asked me what my company does. Great question. Thanks for asking. C&G Partners is an award winning exhibition and experience design studio, among other things, with clients like the nine eleven Memorial Museum, Cornell University, the Gates Foundation, NASA, the Smithsonian, and actually, the Peabody Essex Museum, come to think of it.

This year is our 20th anniversary, but we're always looking for that next interesting assignment. If you are searching for a new exhibition or experience design partner for your next big project, or you just need some good advice, reach out to me. I'm the managing partner and a cofounder of the firm.

By the way, that conversation would sound a lot like an MTM podcast, except don't worry, we will not hit the record button. Speaking of which, back to the show. Today, we are talking about creating effective museum experiences with Lynda Roscoe Hartigan.

Next up is point number four. I love this point. It should be turned into a movie featuring Tom Cruise or a mug that you can use when you're talking to people on Zoom with the AI thing turned on. That is point number four, escape the algorithm. You were just talking about the digital complement on the physical thing that is the core, escaping the algorithm.

You also talked about people using their phone to get more. I think, from a previous conversation with you, you'd be more inclined to say, "What can I do in this museum so that people never even think of taking out their phones?" What does escape the algorithm mean to you?

Lynda: This is basically the theme song of our marketing campaign for a period of time. That algorithm that just loves to figure out what we want to buy yet again online and what have you. We have become a very screen centered culture all over the world between phones, computers ,and laptops, and the television screen, and movie...Whatever.

Basically, the algorithm relates to the electronic and the digital. Escape the algorithm is an invitation on our part to say, "Come on in. Experience something real, unexpected, beautiful, and culturally sensitive, and revealing. It's valuing the in person experience in a particular kind of space known as a museum.

It's very much based on imagery that we're using that suggests the people are actually seeing their bands that are put across people's eyes in the ads in terms of examples of works from our collection or what have you.

The people that we hired to do the photography are expressing emotion in their facial expressions to suggest, again, it's a real human based experience that we can provide.

Because museums have often cited as one of their values the opportunity to escape, which I do value as one way in which museums can be of service, escaping the algorithm is perhaps a very contemporary way to spin that because we're all seeking alternatives to how we can experience each other and how we can find meaning in our lives.

Jonathan: I love the idea that a museum is an escape. I don't think I've heard anyone say it that way, but that's implicit in the value proposition of a museum, that you're going somewhere else, and we're going to take care of you for a little while.

It sounds like escape the algorithm, as you described it, has two parts. One of them is just get out of the screen. You said we've become screen based, enough of that. We've got some things that are, believe it or not, not screens. Come over here if you're a little bit fatigued, literally come over.

There's another nuance there that you said that has to do with the fact that we're being told our own preferences.

The algorithm is literally that's not a word meaning the screen. That's the word meaning the code that's watching what you do and figuring out what you like, mixing that with what it would like you to like, and feeding you things that it deliberately wants you to see that you like just enough that you will go, I don't know, buy something you didn't need to buy or something.

I think what you're saying is, "Get away from that. If you come to the PEM, if you come to Peabody Essex Museum, we're going to give you something you don't expect. It might be something new you don't know you love yet. The algorithm wouldn't be able to do that." Did I get that right?

Lynda: Yeah. Again, it's about choice and opportunity. The more that you order something online, the more ads of that very same thing you're going to get. As you say, you're going to be directed to, "If you like that, then maybe you're going to like this." Having choice and opportunity is extraordinarily meaningful as a human activity.

Jonathan: Your point number five is know your audience and get feedback early from them. I think that means when you're developing an exhibition or we're saying effective museum experiences in general for this show, you don't want to get too far down the road at all before you're getting feedback.

What do you mean by know your audience? When you say get feedback early, how early is early? For listeners who are like, "When should I do it?" Are you telling them before you even have an idea, or the minute you have an idea, or three months later, "Let's get practical." What do we mean, first of all, by know your audience?

Lynda: I would say over the past 25 years, if you looked at the covers of some of the museum related publications, there would inevitably be a pattern of headline often in the form of a question. Are museums relevant? How can museums be relevant? Are they still relevant?

That, to me, is inherently a question about who are we for? Different museums exist in different kinds of communities. Presumably, you should know the demographics of your region or your draw area.

Oftentimes in this relevancy discussion, there's been the assertion that museums are for everyone. In many respects, absolutely, yes, but you can also run the risk of trying to Loopdedoo a lot of a little of something for everybody and then actually not focus on perhaps what you are best prepared or equipped to deliver based on your collection, based on your location, based on your on your mission.

Know your audience is about being clear about who you think you can best interact with and have impact on. That's one level of it. When to get the feedback, it depends on the project.

Oftentimes, if you're doing a strategic plan, it would be good to know how people have been experiencing you or what they think of you, and coming from different kinds of constituencies, whether it's your visitors, or people who've never come before, or your business partners, or school groups and school districts, that sort of thing.

In relation to doing an exhibition, it can be both internal and external. We do an ideation process at PEM.

When I started this years ago, it was basically about trying to jumpstart ideas in a way that meant that we would have a bigger basket of ideas to consider rather than waiting for a curator to do years of research, do a proposal, do the checklist, and then come and ask whether it's a good idea.

With the ideation process, and I'm sure Jonathan, you're familiar with this from design thinking and other areas of your work, my challenge to the curators has been what's a twinkle in your eye? What makes your heart go pity pat?

I don't care if it's outside of your area of expertise. It might sound odd to say this, but what's the wild hare idea? If you got hit by a bus tomorrow, what show do you wish you could have done, for example? Coupled with what is it that we could encourage people to think differently about a particular artist? The Ansel Adams, for example, show comes to mind.

It's about trying to get even your collegial feedback really early in terms of what's got some sticky power? What makes sense? What actually helps us fulfill our mission?

Once you have that kind of buy in for an idea, as in internally, we think it's a good idea and we can raise money for it and all that kind of stuff, then it's like consult your peers. We do convenings with people from different disciplines because we also do a lot with the multidisciplinary approach to realizing ideas.

You can get that professional feedback, but you also need to take it out into your communities of audiences. Is it actually going to be meaningful to them? What don't we understand?

Years ago, we wanted to do a very different kind of exhibition of contemporary native American art. We did focus groups. That's a form of feedback.

It was dismaying, disturbing, and galvanizing to get the kind of feedback that said that, "Oh, how can there be contemporary Native American art? They didn't make art in the first place," or, "They made art for tourism purposes," or, "What they made is cultural or artifact," or what have you.

We understood the fundamental basis from which we had to work in order to build the persuasive case for people to say this work is transformational and it is a true expression of creativity coming from within a really meaningful culture as part of the American landscape.

Jonathan: The mug I talked about before, that's out. Now, I'm going to have mugs that say a twinkle in your eye, heart goes pity pat, and also whoop de doo.

Lynda: [laughs]

Lynda: I'm just kidding. I want to go back to your idea here about the ideation process. The way you described it, it sounds like don't wait for a curator to come up with one idea for years, do all the work and then say, "What do you think?"

Have a lot of ideas at first and have a lot of people, in a congenial way, shoot them down. It's the old saw about how do you take a good picture? Take a thousand pictures and pick your favorite.

Lynda: Again, it's all about creating opportunity and having choice. If all you ever do is consider one idea at a time also, what does that actually add up to? We develop an exhibition program. Which shows are we going to do in a given year? What shows are we going to do two years from now, three years from now? You have to take a longer as well as a short term view.

If you only ever consider ideas one at a time and say, '"OK, I like that idea. We're going to put that in that calendar slot," and then another idea comes along and you put it in the slot next to it.

We're not trying to say if you looked at our one year of exhibitions, that somehow, there's an overarching story that we're telling, but that instead, we're making sense of why it is that we're making the choices that we are.

Sometimes you could say, "We haven't had a Chinese art exhibition in three years. Where are the ideas?" You just don't want to think about one Chinese art show at a time. Again, it's about choice. That is another expression of knitting the experiences together in terms of how you even build an exhibition program, let alone a specific project.

We go through the discussion and the evaluation process, and then inevitably, they're going to be ideas that emerge as the stronger ideas.

Jonathan: In our firm, we have a philosophy normally when we're working with the clients like, "Oh, give me three options and I'll pick the middle one all the time." Goldilocks. We got to say, "We're going to give you 14, and it's going to be very loose sketches and things that are going to fill up the whole wall."

It's more like what you're talking about. Honestly, we do that in our own self preservation to be more likely to have an idea that's going to work, actually, if you have more of them.

Lynda: It's all about figuring out what your options are and how that's best going to enable you to move forward.

Jonathan: Love it. The last point, point number six. This is a big one. You hinted at this before. Consider the neuroscience. It is not always that we will have a museum director on the show who would like to talk about neuroscience. Whose neuroscience? Yours? Your visitors? Ours? How are you considering the neuroscience?

In the pre show, you were talking about one of your colleagues, I think brought on, who is a neuroscientist. Say more about this. This is very out of the ordinary.

Lynda: Let's see here. It's probably now going on five to seven years that Tedi Asher has been on our staff as a neuroscientist. The former director of the museum was very in tune with the idea that we are a creative group of people. We need to better understand how people experience things.

He, through conversation with a number of us, decided, "Well, we're going to hire a neuroscientist." You can say that a museum is in service of other people. In order to understand people, you can get a psychology degree, a psychiatry degree, you can be in neuroscience.

Basically, understanding attention systems, what makes something memorable, what elicits positive and negative emotional responses, it was something that we just wanted to know more about.

I think also because I mentioned that we are a friendly bunch and a welcoming environment, it fundamentally says that we believe that emotion has a real role to play as important as the intellectual or the visual in how we do what we do for and with people. With people, I also include our staff, by the way.

The multisensory was something that we really wanted to understand more deeply. How is it that design can either increase people's attention or what is it that actually makes it so unpleasant or unsatisfactory that people aren't going to pay attention and keep going? What shuts down people's curiosity? What opens it up?

Those are all the kinds of questions that we have explored and keep asking ourselves. I will also say that it has helped us understand the value of storytelling. This actually goes back to the first point in terms of human creativity because human beings are storytellers.

When I say that creativity is a form of communication, communication often comes in the form of stories. Particularly because we had a global collection covering so many different cultures and times and places around the world, we look at the objects in our collection as bearing stories, and that we as human interpreters can unlock some of those stories.

One of the things that we've learned through being engaged with neuroscience is that stories actually change brain chemistry. That means that you have the opportunity to inspire curiosity, to make it possible for people to consider different perspectives, to make up their minds or to change their minds.

Jonathan: Wow. Now I'm just intimidated.

Lynda: [laughs]

Lynda: No.

Jonathan: Do you publish these findings about neuroscience? You've had someone on staff for five or seven years, or do you just use them to develop your projects better?

Lynda: It's primarily in terms of how we practice what we want to do and to be able to do it more effectively. Tedi has certainly spoken at a number of conferences around the world sharing what we're doing. We try not to get too formally academic because it takes us away from the experiences in many respects that we really do need to focus on.

Jonathan: Sure. You're doing some public speaking, but mostly what Tedi is doing, your neuroscientist, is his voice around the table is participating, advising, guiding towards outcomes that are neuroscientifically sound or that use neuroscience like the role of emotions.

As you were pointing out, which I'd love to be a fly on a wall, which emotions open up creativity and which ones shut down curiosity? I bet the answers are not what I would expect. That's a very fascinating thing. That's super cool.

Lynda: One of the reasons why this has really clicked for me is that year years ago, I didn't like memory painting, to think about people like Grandma Moses, and yet I was a folk art expert and what have you.

Oftentimes, it's a great challenge to examine why you think you don't like something. I had the opportunity to write an essay about Grandma Moses as a memory painter. This predated the museum getting involved with the neuroscience, where that took me was down a deep rabbit hole of research into the function of memory.

It was personally meaningful to me because my mother had developed a dementia, so I saw the receding of memory. I came away from that project with a much deeper respect for what Grandma Moses was trying to convey in how she wanted to tell stories of what she remembered about her experience as an American at a particular time, in a particular place.

Jonathan: Truly. The idea of memory. Like we're saying before, if you have a holistic view of the people who are coming in, if that's what you mean by holistic, their time with you is a momentary stop. If you don't leave something in their minds, in their memories, the tree fell in the forest, did it make a sound?

Let's do a quick recap. This was our list for today. We have been talking about creating effective museum experiences with Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Number one, embrace human creativity. Number one for a reason. Number two, design is critical, and use media wisely.

Number three, knit experiences, especially yarn collectors. Number four, escape the algorithm. Print them all right now. Number five, know your audience and get feedback early. The last point we just were discussing, consider the neuroscience. Did we get it all in?

Lynda: Absolutely.

Jonathan: Terrific. Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, it has been great, really super to have you on the show, educational. I learned a lot. I'm sure the dear listener learned a lot as well. If they would like to get in touch with you to ask more or what have you, what's the best way for them to do that? Email, museum website, LinkedIn? How would you like people to be able to reach out to you?

Lynda: Certainly, I would encourage people to come visit and check out the website. Probably the best way to get in touch with me is either through LinkedIn, or my PEM email is lynda_hartigan@pem.org. Lynda is spelled L Y N D A. Then Hartigan is H A R T I G A N.

Jonathan: Got it. Email address does not include middle name, Roscoe. Got it. Terrific. Super. I think we covered it. Thank you, dear listener, for your time in exchange. I hope this episode gave you some news you can use.

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By the way, this podcast has an older sister. It's a one minute newsletter with the same name, one quick insight three times a week, and a Sunday digest for museum leaders, exhibition teams, visitor experienced pros. It is the best way to get advanced work or anyone else about new episodes right when they come out like this one. You can subscribe to that as well at makingthemuseum.com.

Meanwhile, I'm Jonathan Alger, and I hope you'll join me next time for Making the Museum. Bye for now.