while I was in DC for the Apollo 50th anniversary celebrations I spent the day
at Smithsonian exhibits this is the department that designs plans and builds
exhibits for many of the Smithsonian museums and offices that create public
facing exhibitions John Powell is one of their exhibit developers and writers his
job is to take complex stories and tell them in as few words as possible I
talked to John about what it's like to boil down a huge amount of information
into a short accessible experience for all kinds of people all right John can
you walk me through the overview of your job sure well my job is basically to
help museums tell stories so I am kind of coming at the very beginning of a
process help a museum plan an exhibition work with their curators and their
experts to really tell the story in as few words as possible we're working with
a very finite space in exhibitions and we need to kind of distill down the
messages and make it lively and engaging as possible so really I'm kind of there
to help the curators and the experts at the Smithsonian sort of tell their story
and make it accessible to visitors so in fact would you say that you're
kind of like the screen writer of the exhibit that's a good good analogy
sometimes we call ourselves kind of translators we're kind of working with
these experts who are kind of world experts in their fields and they're
often a little too close to the subject to really be able to see it with fresh
eyes right so we kind of come in not knowing anything about the subject
sometimes and and or help them to see it with new eyes kind of like a first
visitor would walk into that gallery and and if something's confusing to us we
need to explain it more we need to to use words that you know people use in
everyday parlance and not you know not something technical or scholarly that
otherwise might be used well I imagine also I mean
have you know you have a lot of stakeholders that you have to to serve
here there's the museum there's your curators as the experts there's also the
people loaning the objects I would imagine they have ideas yeah it's
definitely a collaborative process and there's a lot of back and forth
throughout developing an exhibit it's not something that's just one person can
do so work a lot with not only the curators but the designers of the
exhibition educators all kinds of people who are involved from the very beginning
until the gallery opens and so when you're saying that from the beginning to
when the gallery openings your job doesn't just end once you've written an
outline of how this goes does it it does not I stay with the process through you
know proofreading the final proofs when they're about to go up on the wall make
sure there's no typos or you know so it's it's a long process but it's it's
really rewarding to see it all come to fruition in the gallery and get to see
those visitors walk in there and see what was just an idea at the start
turned into this amazing experience for people well so it also must be that like
exhibit may come to you and say well this thing that we're supposed to get
done it can't be done within these confines of this space so we need to
come up with a new solution for telling that part of the story do you have to
adjust sometimes on-the-fly salutely we need to be flexible in our jobs to be
able to respond to so what what everyone wants and what the realities of the
space are I mean sometimes you're just working with a very small space and you
can't tell the whole story mm-hmm so there's there's other ways of doing that
you know it exhibit exhibits are really just a start I like to think of exhibits
as kind of the start to get people inspired about a subject then there's
all kinds of other ways to expand knowledge through programming and online
resources and you name it the Smithsonian has has it all so we're
basically just hoping to spark that moment of interest in people that moment
of curiosity and really visitors take it from there and I notice you said you
used you try and use as few words as possible
what what sort of considerations do you bring when you're trying to think about
who's gonna come to see this exhibit like I'm thinking about accessibility
like people with differences and being able to see differently here differently
you also incorporate that into the initials for sure that's a big priority
of the Smithsonian we want to engage as as many people as possible all different
types of audiences we're doing a lot in accessibility right now we need to do
more but we're we you've been working on projects with Braille with audio
description with tactile elements other things incorporating multiple senses so
there's there's a whole range of tools that we use is not just words yeah it's
not just words on the wall so and and for other audiences too you know people
who whose first language may not be English we were doing more and more
translation into Spanish and other languages and our exhibitions and I
think that's really important for the future are you guys looking at other
brand new technologies like augmented reality as other ways to tell these
stories in addition for sure I think museums are really just getting started
with new technologies like AR and VR I've worked on a few projects with them
but I think the the possibilities are out there and we're all really excited
to be be part of that and it's we do a lot of prototyping so we test out
different ideas to see what works we don't always go for the you know we try
to pick the tool that's right to tell the story that we want to tell right now
we don't always go for the bells and whistles we just kind of you know
depending on the budget and the circumstances and the who were working
with we try to just find the right vehicle to fit their needs so let's say
you've designed something in that you haven't tried before if it's a brand new
way to execute part of it exhibits story do you prototype it do you build it
full-size and walk people through it yes sometimes full-size are smaller we do
that a lot with Interactive's like tactile or hands-on interactive
we did it recently with a maze for the the zoo we did a panda maze that you can
sort of spin this this wheel and helps the Panda find its habitat and and that
worked out really well we tested it with kids and and different audiences and
before we made the final version you must also visit museums around the
world and see how they do their their thing for sure I'm a huge museum nerd
I've always loved visiting before every family vacation yeah for sure and you
know tried to take inspiration from what you see out there a lot of people doing
creative things all over the place and we're just you know trying to do our
part as well but John thank you so much for walking me through this is thank you
really amazing amazing place and it sounds like it sounds like you have a
really fun job it's a great place to work a lot of variety learn different
things every day so and actually I know I just said the goodbye but I actually I
really like the fact that you talked about not knowing being really important
and intrinsic to the design of an exhibit yeah so as an exhibit developer
I can't be afraid to ask the you know the stupid questions we have to it's
kind of get get into the content and understand what what the most crucial
messages are to get across and and what visitors really want to know so we have
to kind of approach things with a fresh eye and and that helps because I really
am NOT an expert in the areas that I'm working on one day I can be working on
an exhibit about elephants one day it's about the history of American diplomacy
you never know what you're gonna get so try to approach each project with fresh
eyes and try to help help the experts kind of navigate that and and you know
bring their passion for the subject and their inspiration to the visitor how
often do you work through the majority of an exhibit to get close to the end
and realize that you want to change something or you feel like something
could be made clearer yes sometimes that happens you don't always see these
things up front we try to do a lot of planning up front to sort of help us
with this and we do what we call an interpretive master plan which
helps people think through what their what they want the end visitor
experience to be and to kind of visualize that and to you know outline
the goals to get us there yeah so that helps but yeah there's always
last-minute things and we again we just have to be flexible come up with
solutions that work there's a lot of creative problem-solving on the go so
it's you know it takes a lot of different skills a lot of different
people to get these exhibits up well and when you hand off these things to the
graphics department to the construction and installation department they're not
just getting a basic set of instructions they're also collaborating with you in
this process and telling you what's possible and maybe even bringing new
technologies to your attention for sure where we all meet we all collaborate
it's a group process it's it's not just you know an assembly line it's it's
really much more of a collaborative process and and it's great that we have
so many creative people to work with who have different backgrounds and different
ideas so they people always bring new things to the table awesome John thank
you very much thank you appreciate