Museology Communications and Marketing Assistant Marcela Velandia (’25) spoke with Lucas Terry (’25) about his experience in Museology’s Evaluation Specialization.
Can you give us a brief introduction to yourself and why you decided to take the Evaluation Specialization in museology?
My name is Lucas Terry, and I have chosen to complete the evaluation specialization because of my interest in the effect of affect. As a form of narrative, museum evaluation offers opportunities to explain how a museum experience may animate the lives of its visitors. The choice to preserve something inherently implies to what end are we preserving this object? Why do we believe the stories encased in our collections are significant? I believe the answer is surrounded by the idea that the museum is a project for future life that induces investigation into what we were, therefore asking the question of what we must become in the future. Museums hold vast potential as memory constructors that function as intermediaries of meaning. Evaluation offers an opportunity to steer and leverage a museum’s impact in a way that is conducive to future generations.
What is the current evaluation class you are taking?
This is the second course in a year-long, student-led evaluation project. Students will implement the evaluation plan presented in the previous quarter. Work will focus on finalizing project instruments, refining research protocols, collecting and managing project data. Teams will prepare their data for analysis (and may begin the analysis process), setting the stage for interpreting data and reporting findings in Spring Quarter.
Can you describe what is the evaluation project you and your team are leading at the Nordic Museum? What is the goal?
The NNM wants to assess how the multi-sensory components of their new exhibition, Faux Flora, are received and experienced by their visitors. The purpose of this evaluation is to examine how the innovative multi-sensory components of Faux Flora influence visitor expectation, engagement and experience. To that end, we are asking three distinct evaluation questions: 1) What did visitors expect from Faux Flora? 2) In what ways do visitors experience and engage with Faux Flora? 3) How did the multi-sensory element of Faux Flora enhance (positively affect) or challenge (adversely affect) visitors’ experience?
Why is it important to evaluate and analyze visitors’ perspectives in a museum space?
Museums are public facing institutions that are supposed to provide a public service. However, defining the public service museums provide can oftentimes be muddy, unclear, and subject to extreme variety due to the size and scope of museums. This is why museums should be tailored to their communities’ needs and wants. And the way to accomplish this is by conducting research with visitors and the community to collectively define value and imagine a vision to leverage this collectively defined value.
What are the challenges and opportunities have you considered while you and your team are developing this project?
One challenging aspect of this project was coming to an understanding of what our UW team and the NNM consider as “enhancing” and “challenging” the visitor experience. This process required collaborative conversations to come to a collective understanding. One unanticipated challenge has been our physical placement in the museum. We very quickly realized that many visitors exited through the entrance rather than the exit. Our initial plan was to catch visitors as they were leaving the exhibition, but this proved to be unfeasible.
How will this study benefit the Nordic Museum?
Faux Flora follows a successful exhibit called FLÓÐ in 2023 at the National Nordic Museum, which was also sensory-driven and explored the natural connections between the coastal cities of Seattle and Reykjavik. Conducting this evaluation now will help the museum better understand how multi-sensory exhibitions resonate with audiences, particularly as museums worldwide are rethinking strategies to engage visitors. The insights gained will offer valuable feedback for future exhibit planning, ensuring the museum remains relevant and aligned with contemporary visitors’ needs and preferences. Multi-sensory exhibits like Faux Flora can also strengthen visitors’ connections to Nordic nature and culture, attract those who are not regular museumgoers, and increase audience diversity.
We expect that the multi-sensory components will enhance many visitors’ experience but understand this form of exhibit may induce sensory overload for visitors. So far, our data tells us that more people struggle with the olfactory elements than we may have anticipated.
What are the takeaways of this project for your professional development?
This project provides me with real world experience in designing and implementing an evaluation study in a museum setting! This project is an opportunity for failure. As someone learning how to do evaluation, I cannot expect myself to perfectly execute an evaluative study. Instead, the NNM and the University of Washington have graciously designed an opportunity to fail, with my responsibility being to learn from the opportunity.