Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience by Falk John H;

Author:Falk, John H;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4558866
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

CHAPTER 7

The Museum Visitor Experience Model

We have inherited from our forefathers the keen longing for unified, all embracing knowledge … But the spread, both in width and depth, of the multifarious branches of knowledge during the last hundred odd years has confronted us with a queer dilemma. We feel clearly that we are only now beginning to acquire reliable material for welding together the sum total of all that is known into a whole; but, on the other hand, it has become next to impossible for a single mind fully to command more than a small specialized portion of it. I see no other escape from this dilemma (lest our true aim be lost forever) than that some of us should venture to embark on a synthesis of facts and theories, albeit with second hand and incomplete knowledge of some of them—and at the risk of making fools of ourselves.

—E. Schrodinger, 1944

In the previous chapters, I have laid the foundations of a model that describes the museum visitor experience. It is a model that begins with the first conceptualization of the idea that visiting a museum in one’s leisure time could help to satisfy an identity-related need and concludes long after the museum visit ends through the individual’s development and enrichment of personal identity. In between, the individual’s identity-related visit motivation propels the experience, shaping not only the reason for visiting but also the actual visit and even, the laying down of long-term memories. It is a model that is based upon strong theoretical foundations and which is supported by considerable research collected both inside and outside of museums. In the final chapter of this theory section, I will summarize again the basic outline of the model as presented so far. I will illustrate how the model works using a detailed example, once again, using data from my research at the California Science Center. Finally, before moving into the practitioner section of the book, I will provide a big-picture overview of what this model can and cannot tell us about museums and their visitors.

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