Open Forum

Museum Colleagues,

In a recent conversation with another institution regarding the use of the traditional Post-It share interactive activities responding to a prompt, and others that fall into the same simple style, there was an assumption that the use of these simple activities is waning. My question to you all is:




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Max Metz
Manager and Educator
Durant-Kenrick House and Grounds
of Historic Newton
Newton MA
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At the Chrysler Museum of Art we utilize the response station format as a permanent fixture in one portion of our museum, and create new stations for visiting exhibitions. The permanent boards are covered in pegs with prompts such as "What did you learn in the museum today?" and "Create your own masterpiece" with drawing materials and paper with holes provided. For a recent exhibition, the response station created for the show Herb Ritts: Rock Portraits asked guests to share their favorite rock and roll moment. While gallery staff do frequently survey the boards to rearrange and "hide" questionable content, the responses we get are always interesting and delightful to read. We have great success with this program, though it has been taken outside of the traditional Post-It format. We have found it is also a great way to get children engaged and to reinforce what they have learned while on their visit.

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Ashley Beerbroer
Chrysler Museum of Art
Norfolk VA
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-24-2017 08:39 AM
From: Max Metz
Subject: Traditional Post-It Sharing Activity Declining?

Museum Colleagues,

In a recent conversation with another institution regarding the use of the traditional Post-It share interactive activities responding to a prompt, and others that fall into the same simple style, there was an assumption that the use of these simple activities is waning. My question to you all is:

What trend do you see in visitor interaction with traditional Post-It share activities and other activities that fall into the same simple style?

Since this style of interactive is quite common among museums worldwide, I feel that this information would be quite useful to help inform a new way to encourage simple interaction or reinforce that this method is still successful. We are interested to hear what the trend is a your institution and what spin you put on this age-old interactive. 

Thank you for sharing.

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Max Metz
Manager and Educator
Durant-Kenrick House and Grounds
of Historic Newton
Newton MA
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