Got Stuff? Great! It's Memorable!

Submarines.  Furniture.  Old clothes.

Rockets.  Canoes.  Paintings.

Tapestries.  Bonnets.  Fire trucks.  Clocks.  We could go on and on, from the spectacular (dinosaurs!) to the mundane (light bulbs . . . really!).  Children remember the most random, bizarre, and spectacular things when they visit museums.  And those memories can last decades.

As we shared last week, in our most recent national study of museum-goers, we asked our adult respondents to think back to their early childhood museum memories and share them with us.  We then conducted rigorous qualitative analysis of about 3500 memories that were shared.  The memories were coded by museum type but also by what was remembered.

Turns out, more than anything else, the objects and artifacts that fill museum galleries and exhibit halls are what sticks with people.  Memories were often extraordinarily detailed, full of feeling and magic.

• “It was the Detroit Institute of Arts.  I loved the ‘Knights in Shining Armor,’ a picture of a sunset that seemed so real that looking at the sun hurt your eye”

Were there specific types of objects that turned up more often than others?  Well, yes.  Dinosaurs turned up so often that we coded for them specifically.  And dioramas were all over the place as well.  In fact, natural history museums were so sticky (in that memories from these types of museums were particularly vivid and memorable) that we’ll post about them separately.

Mummies and Egyptian artifacts were also particularly memorable:

• “My earliest remaining memory is visiting the Baltimore Museum of Art with an elementary school group. The Egyptian mummy was everyone's favorite that day. It's mouth was open and we all agreed it's tongue looked like a potato chip.”

As were suits of armor, paintings, and historic costumes.  In short, any and every type of collections object can be memorable to a child. 

We did want to see if interactive memories became more prominent than object memories in younger respondents than older ones, given the growth of science centers, children’s museums, and hands-on exhibitions in museums of all types.  Indeed, younger respondents are more likely to have interactive memories than older respondents (as we’ll explore more in a future post), but not at the expense of objects.  Our respondents in their 30s and 40s were actually more likely to remember objects in their memories than respondents in their 60s.   (Our sample of respondents in their 20s was too small to analyze with confidence.)

When it comes to making a memorable impact on a kid, there are lots of ways of going about it (and we’ll cover more over the next few weeks), but our initial analysis indicates that there is nothing that will provide you with a more memorable bang for your buck than giving a child an opportunity to see something new, different, unique, or even ordinary.  Because nothing turns up more in memories than the cool stuff we have in our museums. 

What do you think?  What do you remember from your childhood museum experiences?  To share, simply click on "comments" below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to http://reachadvisors.typepad.com to add a comment.)

Photo courtesy Louisiana Art & Science Museum

Comments

[Marcella]

The Egyptian mummies, definitely! Some of my stickiest memories of museums come from the Chicago Field Museum and the Egyptian tomb exhibit there. Dioramas too, specifically the Thorne Rooms at the Chicago Art Institute. Anything that provided a "whole," immersive experience particularly--house museums have remained some of my favorite places as I've grown older, but I know it started when I was small. Adsmore in Paducah, Kentucky is one house that sticks out particularly; I loved going back there over and over to see what they changed from season to season.

[Martha Evans]

My earliest memories: My grandfather had just retired from the Metallurgy faculty at Penn State. At that time, the Mineral Industries "museum" consisted of glass display cases spread along the corridors of the College's headquarters. One might see pottery donated by alumni working at various companies; American scene paintings of Pennsylvania factories and industrial landscapes (now known as the Steidle Collection); dinosaur bones, and huge dinosaur fossil footprints. the Jivaro Indian shrunken heads made the hugest impression on me and my cousins, however. The didactic panel informed us that the hair on those heads kept on growing. Every summer we'd stop by to verify that their hair really had gotten longer. (It was QUITE long, swirled around the base of the armature.) When I read LORD OF THE FLIES as a teenager, I had no doubt that kids really might be quite ghoulish. (A little Halloween anecdote!) We also loved to enter the dark fluorescent mineral room and turn on the special lights to see the colors change. The geiger counter was also magical.

[Lisa McNamara]

Seneca lifeways dioramas lifesize and smaller! In our Rochester Museum and Science Center we also have Native Peoples dioramas depicting their diversity all across America. They we so skillfully done one could "enter" them with imaginations all fired up easily!
Also, we had nature scenes of woodland flora and fauna so real and closeup you felt you were among the birds and plants-we all walked by and spoke in hushed tones.

[Dan Crowther]

Well said, Lisa! It was exactly the same with me, albeit at the NYS museum in Albany. "Entering" the dioramas in my mind was the best!

[Wendy Barker]

Not my earliest museum memory, but the one that had the biggest impression: Seeing an Andy Warhol exhibit at the Los Angles County Museum of Art and wondering what the heck all those cardboard boxes were doing in the gallery. It just looked randomly stacked boxes full of groceries (corn flakes?). I remember having a long conversation with my mom during the ride home about what art is, and can be. That exhibit really opened my eyes to a new way of looking at things.

[Mindy]

I doubt that person saw a mummy at the Baltimore Museum of Art. They don't own mummies or Egyptian art. It was probably the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. This is a huge problem we have here at the Walters...yes, kids may remember our cool collection (mummies, arms and armor...both things that the BMA does not own) but later on, they only recall that it was the BMA...they can't remember that it was the Walters! They really think of the two museums as one place, and the name they remember is the Baltimore Museum of Art. It's really a dilemma!

[Eric Leyland]

I couldn't agree more. My earliest museum memory is a dusty, cavernous hall in Vancouver that was filled with old wooden glass faced cases that were all stuffed with rows of arrow heads and bugs. I still have a soft spot for this out of date exhibit method.