exhibitions and leads to deeper visitor engagement.
In 2016, PEM presented Asia in Amsterdam, which explored commercial and cultural exchange between the Netherlands and Asia during the seventeenth century. Although beauty and luxury were key themes, the exhibition team balanced these ideas with the costs of such riches — colonialism, slavery, etc. — by introducing different voices into their written texts. Strategies used included:
- Delivering contextual information through infographics and videos
- Writing fictionalised historical narratives to introduce first-person voices, including those of enslaved and subjugated populations
- Layering our information hierarchy
with evocative quotes and questions
Visitor comments such as “More than just art. Tells a whole story” and “So clear and so ‘easy to read’” suggest that audiences reacted positively to these new approaches. We plan to continue exploring their potential in other displays and exhibitions. To this end, our experiences with Asia in Amsterdam have reinforced the importance of several key steps in the text development process, namely:
- Providing resources for staff members tasked with writing innovative copy
- Allowing more time for prototyping and refinement
- Clearly defining roles, responsibilities, and deadlines related to the writing process
The words we put on our walls are an integral part of the experiences we create. We hope they are a bridge, leading our visitors to look a little longer, to make connections to their own lives, and to question established knowledge.
Jeanne Goswami is interpretation editor at the Peabody Essex Museum.