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  • 1.  Museum Liminal Spaces

    Posted 22 days ago

    Hi all,

    What do you consider "liminal spaces" in your museum? I think of them as the connective tissue upon entry, those often-empty spaces that lead to galleries, giftshops, cafes, restrooms, etc. Or they may be the quiet corridors between galleries or even buildings. But they are important parts of the visitor experience. 

    DLR Group and Jill Snyder from Snyder Consultancy, have embarked on a peer-reviewed research study of liminal spaces. This Making the Museum podcast describes the early phases, including the whys and hows of the research and a sneak peek into some initial feedback. The team will return to the podcast in the fall to share the analyzed data. 

    Liminal Space Research, with Dan Clevenger, Monika Smith, and Helen Ho

    Apple Podcasts remove preview
    Liminal Space Research, with Dan Clevenger, Monika Smith, and Helen Ho
    Museum lobbies have a huge influence on visitor experience. But what makes a good lobby? What is a "liminal space" in a museum? How does research actually work?
    View this on Apple Podcasts >



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    Carol Duke
    Principal
    DLR Group
    Washington DC
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  • 2.  RE: Museum Liminal Spaces

    Posted 20 days ago

    Hi Carol

    For me the most important liminal space for a museum today is AI. Happy to continue the conversation.

    Kind regrads

    Jose



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    Jose Antonio Gordillo Martorell PhD
    CEO & Founder
    Meilen
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  • 3.  RE: Museum Liminal Spaces

    Posted 17 days ago
    Carol, thank you for sharing this. The episode is wonderful and the research question is one I've been working on from a completely different direction.
     
    I'm a product designer who built Free City Arts, a mobile-first web app for discovering free public art and cultural spaces in San Francisco through self-guided walking tours. It's a personal project, still in progress. One of the core ideas is that the free floors and public-access spaces inside institutions like SFMOMA and MoAD are genuinely underknown. Many people don't realize they can walk in without buying a ticket. The app names those spaces, describes what's in them, and puts them in sequence with other free public stops, like the Frank Stella paintings in the lobby at 222 Howard Street.
     
    The framing of liminal spaces as connective tissue resonates with something I kept running into while building the tours. My hunch, and I'm a designer not a researcher, is that some people don't cross the lobby because they don't know the space is open to them. Surfacing it explicitly, with a description and a reason to enter, is one of the things I was trying to solve for.
     
    I'd love to follow the research as it develops and see what the data shows - especially as I build out more tours. The de Young is next, with the Hamon Tower and sculpture garden, and I'm planning a Civic Center tour that includes the main library, which is full of public art and free programming.


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    Sharon Cardinal
    Student
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