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It's a really interesting thing to think about should exhibits tell stories or not. Being an interpreter myself(I prefer the term interpreter over tour guide), my job is to tell a good story and hopefully, my audience will like it and learn something from it. Although something different from my narrative than other interpreter's from the same museum is when talking about something that was controversial, instead of giving a solid answer, I would provide several theories and encourage my audiences to come up with their own answer. My colleagues think doing so would make me look unpersuasive, their ideal interpreter figure would be someone who knows everything in front of his audiences, which I believe rather than that, an ideal interpreter should lead the audiences to come up with their individual thinking.
Back to R. Herz's blog, I think he made a point by explained why telling a story oversimplifies the historical facts. Just like sometimes after we finish read a book, the only thing we can remember is our own feeling about a part of the story, many details got lost. Yet I don't think this is such big of a problem, after all, we are living in the age of the information explosion, make the audience focused on the main theme of the story is good enough. If we really want the audience to look at the whole thing from a different angle, doing some special exhibit or activity would be a nice way to go.
That might sound contradictory to what I said in the first period, I think it depends on which type of museum we are looking at, scientific or historical.

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I think the article was very interesting. Thinking about it I tend to like knowing the history and story behind an object. However she did make some good points. stories don't resonate with everyone the same way like her example with the girl not wanting to go back to the Lincoln Museum due to the sad feelings the diorama with the slave auction gave her. That scene make me want to learn more about slavery and the tearing apart of families back then but obviously this person had a very different reaction from my own and it is an entirely other thing of whether or not either of our reactions were ones that the Museum hoped to instill in us by showing this display. So while I may like stories in museums and want to know more about the artifacts and what they have gone through in their history in a story I may get the wrong impression based on my own experiences and such as well as the museum not knowing if they are invoking the reactions they seek in there stories.

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I thought this article made some interesting points. Storytelling and emotional responses are good ways to connect with audiences in a meaningful way, but they lack the nuance often required to make a visitor think. I also thought that the first point -- Storytelling as kitsch -- was really valid. I look at some dioramas with wax figures and it is very evident to me that it's fake, which often limits my personal ability to fully connect with the information being provided. I can also understand why the author struggled to write this piece, because it's very two-sided. Yes, storytelling is important, but at the same time, storytelling is difficult to do while maintaining the nuance required for a visitor to have any complex thought about what is being presented to them.

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I think that there are interesting aspects to the article.  For example, the fact that museums are focused on the idea of storytelling and not making the audience want to ask more or new questions.  I do think that museums should have a story telling aspect for exhibits because I think that is how information reaches someone more.  I understand that the article thinks differently and I do believe that there are some cases where storytelling might not be the best way to go about displaying the objects.  I think that it mostly depends on the story that the museum is trying to tell with the objects because that determines how the audience might react.  I liked the examples given to back up the argument but I think that it can be an important part of an exhibit to have a storytelling aspect.

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The author made a comment saying “They generally demand an emotional, rather than intellectual, response.” This Rang true for me. Most people telling your average story is just trying to get a reaction out of you. At least in my personal experience. You look at the news. Now a days it’s just looking for a reaction out of the audience rather than inform the audience. I disagree with the author when they says, “this function is compromised when it is driven by storytelling”. Sometimes it’s easier to think about things analytically when its told through a story. Sometimes not all the time though. If I see an exhibit in a museum that can tell a story maybe it gives me a different perspective to think about it.

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I agree with the idea that museums should tell stories, but I also agree with the idea that storytelling should be more nuanced. The dioramas at the Lincoln Museum, unfortunately, are not nuanced - they are snapshots in time of the president's life, but are too shallow. They don't provoke questions: rather, they seem to be illustrations of "And then this happened to Lincoln"...."And then this happened to Lincoln"...."And then this..." We need storytelling with more depth and the Lincoln Museum does not deliver there (except, perhaps, in the case of the Emancipation Proclamation Room).

However, I disagree with the author that storytelling cannot help someone to think or learn. In my personal experience, visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. - a museum which tells a story - did help me to think and learn about such a moment in history. Sure, I had learned of the Holocaust before, but my experience in the museum made it much more of a reality than words in a textbook. The museum made me understand what it felt like to be either in power or absolutely powerless, to be at the mercy of others simply based on hate, and much more. I feel like the Holocaust Museum is a good example of a museum that changes you through storytelling: when you leave, you are not the same person you were when you entered.

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I absolutely believe that museums should tell stories, but I also believe that they simply can't avoid it. In my opinion, a story is a progression from start to finish. It's linear. Every single historical museum is already telling stories by virtue of existing, because time is also linear.

The article's point about the teen being too sad to visit that museum did not make sense to me. I think she drew the wrong conclusion from that teen's story. The refusal to revisit the museum was a failing on the teen's part, not the museum's. Slavery WAS awful, and we (especially white museum visitors) should feel awful about it. We as a society have a fatal lack of critical thinking skills. Instead of feeling sad and avoiding the uncomfortable feeling we need to recognize that in order to heal the wounds of the past we need to confront and embrace those uncomfortable feelings. If a museum feels that its exhibits border on the overly emotional, then they should address their visitors, perhaps by saying something along the lines of my previous sentence, but ultimately the onus is on us as visitors.

Stories are vitally important to the way we remember history. Could I tell you the dates at which branches of the avian evolutionary split occurred? No, but I can tell you which synapomorphies created which branches and how they evolved, because that's a story to me. Australian Aboriginal stories are so we'll preserved in their oral traditions that we essentially have firsthand accounts of mammoths walking the earth. I cannot express how emphatically I disagree with the assertion that museums should move away from stories. I don't care about the rows of pretty rocks in a geology display, but the infographic or video showing me the story of how a geode is formed? I'm there.

The simple fact is that visitors are not the kind of "intellectual" that this article mentioned. Random people off the street are going to respond more strongly to emotional information than analytical. I would hazard a guess that that's why the narrative form of museums has persisted and flourished.

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Should Exhibits Tell Stories

In Rebecca Shulmans article, she expresses the pros and cons of museums displaying exhibits in a story telling format. While I do agree with her point that displaying information in a museum this way can simplify the story, I don't think that is all in all a bad thing. While providing information to visitors in a simpler way can rob them of the chance of trying to think and understand for themselves, I think this is a positive. Museums should strive to teach their visitors something new, and most exhibits have a particular message in mind they are wanting to share. If the information is too complicated, visitors may lose interest in it, or they could interpret the information wrong. Along with this, I personally feel that I gain more from exhibits that tell a story. Another point she made was in relation to evoking emotions through exhibits. I agree that feelings can make for a more memorable experience and is a good tool to be used in museums. However, I disagree that it isn’t a good teaching tool. If a museum doesn’t make their guests experience anything on an emotional level with their story, then what's the point?

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I do not necessarily agree with Shulman. One of the main pros of a "storyline" exhibit is that it captures attention from various audiences. Those who are interested WILL ask the questions, but this reaches the most people and makes it the most easily digestible seemingly. Purely object-based ends up leading to a lot of troubles sometimes, or will just garner the attraction of the scientific community (which isn't always necessarily bad however). Is this the right way to approach each exhibit? No, but I can say with a good amount of certainty that it would be hard to find a better way to set up the main exhibit in the National Czech and Slovak Museum, whose way of telling stories of the heritage through their most trying ages is very succinct and moving in some places, but also manages to get a lot of historical and cultural information across without the attachment of emotion in some cases. There are many narratives and cultural histories that must be told with a story almost, in some situations. Many cultural heritage sites, and Native American sites rely on a retelling of a narrative to "fix" history's retellings.

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I agree with Shulman - both in her conclusion that stories are not the best way to communicate information in museums and the idea that such a conclusion is unstable. All stories simplify ideas, and that simplification can become problematic when it leaves out important contextual information. I think another reason why museums often "miss the mark" with stories is that historical narratives are often changing and museums cannot keep up with that change. Stories, however, can also help people connect with the past - or at least make it more memorable.

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To me, this is a tough topic. I personally am conflicted with weather a museum should solely provide facts with a sold learning experience or provide some sort of storytelling. It’s hard to control what feelings someone might convey about a certain story and if they have a negative reaction like the author said it could affect their ability to soak in the actually learning content that is embedded into the story. Sometimes I think a straight forward museum is the best way to teach and have your visitors learning experience be controlled. I also think stories are a good way for people to think for themselves and know in their heart how that object or objects make you feel and it gives you a more concrete feeling when you remember the emotions you had while learning about something.

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Much like Rebecca Shulman, I am unable to draw a concrete conclusion on this issue. Overall, I think that museums should be able to tell stories, but that they should do so carefully. For starters, I agree that the exhibit of President Lincoln and his advisors discussing the Emancipation Proclamation is very well done. It shows all the sides of the story, and it left even me, an online viewer, interested in the subject material. As far as the other dioramas of Lincoln, I think Shulman has a point when they say the exhibits "simplify" history. However, I do think dioramas like this can be enjoyable for some viewers. As a viewer, sometimes it is interesting to be able to visualize a historic person's life, and these dioramas help do that. The "Stories Evoke Emotion" portion presents a more complex issue. I agree with the student who said that exhibits should "make you learn things, including sad things". However, I also agree that when telling stories to evoke emotion, museums have to be careful to also present historical information and allow viewers to draw their own conclusions. It is a difficult line to walk, for sure.

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In the blog post by Rebecca Shulman's "Should exhibits tell stories?" she listed out some pros and more cons of storytelling in the Museum. She used her experiences with the dioramas in the Lincoln Museum to strengthen her opinion toward storytelling in Museum, which is generally against it. I agreed with her when she mentioned the dioramas "makes history into a soap opera that the visitor can relate to rather than shedding new light or making one think." I have also been to a museum that has lots of dioramas, which name I cannot remember, and what I remember is I skim through all the dioramas in this exhibit and skip to the next one. I can remember I see the dioramas, but I did not remember the scene presented by the dioramas, which was supposed to be the goal of the dioramas. Therefore, I agree with her that showcase a historical scene with a diorama makes it more life soap drama. I also agreed with her when she explained the diorama that presented the scene of the Emancipation Proclamation. In the post, she explained, it did help people understand some insights into what happened, such as there are eight sides instead of two sides that some people might think as. However, she mentioned, people were wonder about the stories of these eight people, but it did not provide. I agreed with her that diorama is a good platform to give people insights, things like these can only be better understand with dioramas. I disagree with her when she said dioramas only appeal to people's emotions, but it did not let people think. She said, "Storytelling is an excellent way to make people feel, but it not always an effective way to make people think or learn." I disagree because I think it depends on cases to cases, and different types of people might be able to learn from the emotions that arise from seeing the dioramas. I am those people that can learn from feelings after a diorama that make me emotional. For example, after seeing the diorama about a slave auction, it made me sad and angry at the same time, how this black family separated because they been purchased by different people and probably they would never see each other in their lifetime. This makes me think about how inappropriate slavery is, and prohibit it is one of the most righteous things.

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This is an interesting topic with many different ways to look at it. However in my opinion i think that storytelling has its place in museums. I belive that Herz is correct in stating that storytelling elicits more of a emotional response though i think that this isn't a bad thing. sure it may discourage some people who the story frightens, such as the girl in the post, but those that the story intrigues i feel it will do so much more for as far as ingniting their passion to explore further. I do however agree with Herz statment " I do think that the museum exhibit has an analytical function, and that this function is compromised when it is driven by storytelling." the musuem is an analytical and educational experience first but a little story to present it with won't kill the purpose.

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I am kind of struggling with coming up with my own opinion on this post, because my feelings are mixed. I do think that emotion is extremely important in storytelling. This makes me think of that quote that says "people won't remember what you said or did to them, they will only remember how you made them feel," and I think that this applies here too. People's emotions will provide a lasting effect on them, which will help them to remember specific exhibits or objects. This is good, however, I do also see the problem that comes with including story telling in museums. I think that with many things in the world, people let their emotions get the best of them and they allow their hearts to do the thinking instead of their brains. Having these emotional stories could be a good thing, but I do think that the stories should be informational enough to get the visitors' brains thinking rather than only tugging on their heart strings. I wish that I had more to say about this post, but honestly, I am currently trying to piece together my own thoughts about this issue so that I can come to a decision about how I feel about this.

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I definitely will say that I disagree with the point that the author makes that life sized dioramas, such as the ones found in the Lincoln Museum, about making history into a soap opera. Dioramas such as these can let visitors see how people used to live and can help them feel what it must have been like to live in those times. These dioramas can also help you to understand the people in history.
Yes, stories do evoke emotion, but you have to be able to learn from this emotion. it you can understand why you feel the emotion, then you should be able to figure out how the people may have felt about life. Life is not always fun, and history cannot always be viewed through myopic lenses. You have to be able to understand this or you will never get anywhere in life.
I did like some of the point that the author makes on the anti-storytelling moment. It shows the visitors the different perspectives and then allows them to make their own conclusions based on what they learned from the diorama. It makes the visitor be a part of an important moment in history. It also shows the visitors that, even with something such as the Emancipation Proclamation, the people working on it were divided and the exhibits teaches you why.
I do disagree with the author's overall claim that you can't use cognitive skills at the same time you are feeling a strong emotion. People learn from their emotions. There is a reason that the most effective ad campaigns use things that evoke emotions. For example there are the ads used to tell people about the dangers of smoking. Most of these ads (especially lately) use things that try to evoke an emotion of fear with what is in cigarettes. They want you to connect the emotion to what you learned about the dangers of smoking.

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I have been to museums designed to tell stories, I have even been to the Lincoln Museum mentioned by Shulman, and so I understand where they are coming from in their article. To an extent, I see the truth behind their words. The first point Shulman mentions is the way in which this type of museum can be a bit kitsch. It is clear, as Shulman mentions, that the Lincoln Museum seeks to embody the idea that Lincoln is some sort of larger than life folk hero, rather than a complex person. This is a common issue in places like this as the individual is often only portrayed in the light that either accentuates their positive attributes or seeks to exclusively highlight their negative attributes. Unfortunately, many such museums feel more like historical propaganda than a true account of the past.
Now, while I generally agree with Shulman’s first point, I can’t say the same for their second point. It is unfortunate that the girl in her story did not feel compelled to learn more after seeing the auction diorama, but that does not mean that others do not. I know personally one of the first things I do when I see a diorama that makes me feel any sort of heightened emotion is to make a note to lookup more about the scene or individuals later. I do not see how Shulman draws the conclusion that storytelling compromises the ability of museums to help visitors build cognitive skills. Truthfully, I don’t think you can remove the storytelling from museums and do the items justice. A bone is a bone until the bone has a history, the same with every piece of art and artifact you see. There is always a degree of storytelling in museums, some just make it more apparent.
As for their third point, I do agree with leaving the stories unfinished. Museums don’t always have to share every detail, sometimes it is enough to simply introduce a person or thought and leave it up to the patron to unravel the rest of the story on their own.

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This was such an interesting article and made me change my mind left and right about how story telling aids/kills an exhibit. I agree with other posts here that age (children vs. adults) can really impact the amount or story or how it is told; finding that sweet spot may be impossible. But as someone who has worked in and visited many different museums, I think that having a story is a big part in conveying the information -- it's how humans have shared history for millennia.
The best exhibits I have been to (all being interactive and informational for all ages) have a loose story, not super restricting and no right/wrong answers about what happens aside from fact.
[ My example is the Bugs Alive exhibit at the Field Museum: lots of colors and activities, but each individual section allowed you a different perspective (ie, ant, wasp, butterfly, you get the idea). At the end of the exhibit you are placed in a bug zoo and able to look close at the real 'scary' bugs. From the time I've spent thinking about this, the larger theme/story here is that everything is scary and beautiful and mysterious until you understand it. ]
Without explicitly creating a narrative, which  some museums can't do entirely (historical), the exhibit allows the audience to become involved in how they can understand the story behind it. I'm also a sucker for history and think everything has a story to be told, so perhaps that may skew my interpretation of the Shulman article. I think being able to piece together the narrative is one of the most important jobs of museums, as they determine how a generation will remember an event/object/person/thing from emotion and experiences.

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I certainly agree with Shulman that storytelling is often used as a tool to evoke emotion, and this can be limiting in a sense. If you are manipulating the visitor's emotions in a certain way, you influence their view on the subject being presented. It can be additionally limiting in that the narrative may be focusing on one small aspect of a larger picture. However, I'm afraid I disagree that storytelling and analytical thinking cannot go hand in hand. The author uses an example of a museum visitor who was moved by their experience but reported not giving further thought to the subject after the experience. I am sure this happens often, but one anecdotal experience is not enough to convince me that everyone else who visits a storytelling exhibit takes so little from it. I don't think storytelling is the ideal strategy for every exhibit, but it certainly has its place. This strategy can help people feel a more personal connection to the exhibit and help them identify with certain characters. This can be used by the museum to convey certain ideas and concepts. Visitors can certainly draw their own conclusions and spend time contemplating a storytelling exhibit after their visit is over. I don't believe, as Schulman states, that the analytical function of a museum is compromised when storytelling takes place.

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I believe that Shulman makes a compelling argument against storytelling as a tool for exhibits. It does make it tricky to have the visitor think critically about an artifact or exhibit as a whole when it s completely laid out as a narrative, as it is not framed to be viewed critically, it's made to be viewed as it is, as it happened. I think it certain ways storytelling can be useful. I think if a museum uses storytelling to piggy back off of objects, it can be more affective than centering the whole exhibit around the narrative aspect. I visited an exhibit that used storytelling in an effective way, it was a traveling exhibit about the Titanic where you got a "identity" as one of the named passengers on the doomed voyage and it told you the basics of them, as much as was known about them. The exhibit is not specifically centered around just seeing what played out with your specific passenger, since this would be impossible to do with the 2000 or so passengers. But you go around seeing artifacts that your passenger might have seen or eaten off of or visited while traveling on the ocean liner; ceramic plates recovered from the wreck, a reproduced grand staircase, a wall of ice and pool of freezing water to show how cold it would have been in the water on the night the Titanic sank. At the end, you find out what the fate of the passenger you were assigned is, did they survive or perish? I definitely don't think that an entire museum should be dedicated to telling a story around it.

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I think Shulman is too caught up on how how adults and young adults think and not enough about the great picture when it comes to children. Children are the ones who will typically get the most out of an exhibit because they don't have the same comprehension for text as adults, but the visual comprehension is arguably the same making these dioramas at the Lincoln Museum especially important for that audience. I think that storytelling is a fine line when designing an exhibit. As she says the teenage girl she worked with didn't want to come back after seeing the slavery exhibit because it made her sad and it didn't force he to critically think about it. Although the exhibit on whether the emancipation proclamation should go out did because there were 8 opposing view points. I do agree with her conclusion that when storytelling is used as the driving factor of an exhibit it doesn't necessarily teach the viewer everything they need to know because it the emotion they get out of the exhibit could be different than the one the museum wanted them to get out of it. I don't think it's a bad idea to tell stories in museums but it needs to be done with context that allows for the viewer to see the full picture and not just one heroic or villainous narrative.

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The first point Shulman brings up I disagree with. Dioramas are a way to give the overall sense of a time period, to show children especially, how different life looked at that time. They really impress upon viewers an environment that we can become immersed in. Just because part of an exhibit doesn’t shed new light or make one think, as the author would like it to do, doesn’t mean it can’t be a valuable tool. Certain visitors may need a way to envision themselves in another time as a way to connect with the information being presented. What kid is going to be happy to look at rooms of letters from Civil War soldiers? Most kids I know love dioramas, no matter the scale or subject matter and oftentimes these scenes have the most long lasting impact on them after leaving the museum. As Sam Ham points out: “Your visitors remember themes. They forget facts.”

In response to storytelling being an effective way to make people think or learn, I believe that it truly can be. When we read books, be it fiction or nonfiction, about topics that interest us it makes us want to learn more. I absolutely think that a museum should have the opportunity to make you feel sad, mad, or any of a range of emotions. If they could not evoke emotion then how can they evoke change or passion? Every person has their own history and reaction to an exhibit. Because one person does not want to return can maybe be looked into by the museum staff so as not to alienate a certain group of people but that should not sway the museum of its intent to try to bring up emotion in its visitors.

Dioramas can provoke, raise questions and help the visitor see different points of view while bringing out emotions. I agree here that storytelling can complicate and expand what we think of as a simple issue: the debate for and against the Emancipation Proclamation. I definitely think that showing the perspectives of each individual instead of the sides of for and against, can “hook the visitor” and leave them wanting more. While not every visitor is going to leave the museum wanting to do additional research on their own, this way of storytelling could push some visitors to pursue more information.

In the conclusion, I agree that generally museums help people understand and think about objects more than they try to evoke powerful emotional responses. Does every exhibit need to tell a story? I don’t believe so. But I do think that in some cases storytelling can help visitors remember more information than an exhibit that displays objects and labels. For many, a story about a period in Lincoln’s life told through a diorama would make more of an impression than reading labels about objects that Lincoln owned, for example.

Shulman says that she believes that “the museum has an analytical function, and that this function is compromised when it is driven by storytelling.” While I agree that emotions may cause one to lose focus when trying to analyze and learn facts, I don’t know that storytelling would make retaining or learning information harder. But I do think that storytelling is a powerful tool that can be used in an exhibit to better connect visitors to a place and time.

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I agree that ever exhibit should tell a story. Having said that, the story should be relatable to everyone, and not just one segment of the potential audience.  An exhibit, if properly done, should exhibit a response. Emotions can be gateways to understanding the experience. By using emotion to open the door to understanding, it gives the audience a window into the idea that we are attempting to convey, makes the ideas easier to understand.
I think that basing an exhibit purely in analytics tends to make it harder to appeal to a broad audience, which is counter to the whole idea of having an exhibit to begin with. Have some analytics available, but you need to appeal to the broadest audience possible, and not just a few.
We use dioramas to convey a sense of time in our little museum. They have a point, and a purpose. And we use storytelling to appeal to the broader audience base. If they want to take it farther, we offer ways to do that. But honestly, the average person who goes into a museum does not go there for analytics. They go for the entertainment and educational value.

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I agree that when you tell a story in anything you do it should in some way relate to the people you are speaking too. When this is done in exhibits within museums then you should be able to tell a story that relates to a wide audience not just adults or just children. That is unless you have a focus audience. I agree too that when a story is told it should make you "feel" something whether that is awe, boredom, excitement or something else that way you understand in some way what scientist or historians feel when they discover new things.
I disagree with this this article when he states that museum exhibits should be just analytical I think that it would depend on who is looking and studying the exhibit.

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In general, I disagree with the author's premise that the emotional response that stories generate interferes with or is incompatible with an intellectual response. In fact, I think that storytelling relates to Sam Ham's ideas of expressing a big idea through a thematic approach. Ham says, and I agree wholeheartedly with this idea, that people remember themes, not facts. Exhibits are designed for the public, and the public will remember a story, a theme, because they emotionally connect to it. If a scientist or researcher needs to access a museum's collection for deeper fact-intensive, intellectual purposes, they will probably not be looking at an exhibit, but at the specific assets of the museum that support their study. I draw a parallel to the study of history. It comes alive for me when I consider broad themes as opposed to names and dates. The specifics are important, but not as compelling as the story.

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After reading the blog by R. Herz. “Should Exhibits Tell Stories?” I would have to say that I agree with the idea that stories “generally demand an emotional, rather than intellectual response.” I think that within storytelling this is a powerful purpose of them - helping people to feel connected with others in a deeper way. So when trying to come from a more logical place, of sharing information or educating people as museums often aim to do, I think it could possibly make it a more about the dramatics or the emotions that the storytelling might evoke from the audience. This I do agree with in ways. What I disagree with within this authors post, is the idea that learning by also feeling these emotions completely compromises an exhibits analytical function - I think that this is a major part of the human experience. To learn, to understand, to analyze, and to relate. I feel as though they all go hand in hand with one another, though at times, one may need more focus than the other. So while it is true that this storytelling might make people view these exhibits from a more emotional place, I do not believe that this compromises the experience or that it should removed from the exhibit culture.

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Much like the author appears to be, I am somewhat conflicted in my opinion of whether or not storytelling should be a part of museums. I think Shulman’s idea that storytelling “makes history into a soap opera that the visitor can relate to rather than shedding new light, or making one think” is a very strong point. Stories do lean more towards the entertainment side of museums, which can compromise educational abilities. People can easily be so distracted by a story that they forget to take in its historical significance. However, despite the author’s arguments, I still believe that storytelling can have a place in museums. I think it should be used with caution, especially when dealing with heavy topics and subjects where critical thinking is essential. But, in some place like a historical house museum, it may be more apt for people to be immersed in a story, although I still think the story needs to be educational. Emotion can be a great way to engage audiences and make them connect with information in a new way. So, as long as stories are designed in a way that promotes connection and deep thought, I think it is perfectly okay to use them in museums.

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Like some of the others here, when I read the title, my first thought was of course exhibits should tell stories. I agree that storytelling really hits home more if there is an emotional connection, like the teen girl in the story who was moved by the slave auction diorama. I feel like storytelling has it's place such as in memorial museums. In some instances storytelling could be forcing everyone to the same conclusion and not allowing them to learn on their own or form their own idea or opinion on a subject. It is important to strike a good balance between storytelling and allowing visitors to come up with their own ideas. A good story can be used to excite a visitor or pique their interest, but it should be left open ended allowing to form their own questions and force them to seek out their own answers on the subject instead of being led to draw the same conclusion as everyone else who has seen the exhibit.

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At first, when I read the title of this blog, I thought, "Of course exhibits should tell stories! That is what we have always been taught an exhibit is about!" But after reading the article, I am more confused than when I started. I agree with her point: "At its worst it simplifies rather than complicates, makes history into a soap opera" (Shulman, 2015). History and the people involved are complex, and sometimes boiling it down to simplify it discredits the situation and the people. I liked her example of the men that opposed the Emancipation Proclamation. There are many reasons that people didn't like it, and not all of those reasons were because they wanted to keep slaves. That is a very hard point to get across and it doesn't exactly fit into the storyline of good people vs. bad people. Her last statement I also agree with: "But I do think that the museum exhibit has an analytical function, and that this function is compromised when it is driven by storytelling." She also talks about how emotions get tied into storytelling. Isn't that the point of museums? To educate and inspire? She's right when she says that some emotion can be bad, but I don't think an exhibit would last long if it didn't incite some sort of emotion in a patron. The exhibit would simply be boring.

Overall, there is a fine line between narrating the past and manipulating people to believe a certain thing. Museums need to be educational, but they also need to be interesting enough to keep people coming in.

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This is an interesting question to think about and discuss. After reading this week's Padlet question and the blog post, I did realize that there are a lot of instances where curators create these types of replicas to help visitors understand. However, it's likely hindering overall understanding by almost forcing all visitors into the same interpretation and understanding of the exhibit.

In the blog post Rebecca Shulman says, exhibits should take it as their responsibility to help people understand [these] objects, and think about them carefully. I agree with this. Replicas simply to tell are story are unnecessarily pulling at people's heartstrings and pushing people into legacy or majority view. I do think there's time where it's important to have some sort of replica recreated (e.g., historic items to scale, outdated items to display their use and functionality, etc.). Used in this way they would simply help visitors visualize items they've never seen before and have a simpler understanding of things they are not familiar with while leaving the remainder of the exhibition interpretation to the visitor themselves.

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It was very hard for me to take a "pro" or "con" stance after reading this blog by Rebecca Shulman. I agree with her thoughts that stories, "... demand an emotional, rather than intellectual, response" (Shulman, 2015) but was never swayed one way or the other as to whether or not museums should tell stories through their exhibits. Her example of one of her students becoming "sad" after viewing the "slave auction" exhibit had little bearing since it was only the response of one person to the exhibit. I tend to think that seeing that scene would prompt some people to research slavery in addition to any emotional responses that could develop. Just like we discussed in the last module, there is always a chance that an exhibit can be controversial to some and acceptable to others. I think each individual museum will have to rely on their own mission statement and engage their primary audience before developing an exhibit and must do the same with any stories that are told as well. My "take a way" from her comments is that if an exhibit is using a story, make sure it is supported with factual information that is relevant to the topic so the audience can both "feel" and "learn" at the same time.

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The Author makes a valid point that storytelling can go a little too far from what the exhibit is trying to tell. The author expresses that immersive exhibits such as dioramas can over simplify the meaning of the exhibits, which I can agree with. Storytelling is a great way to get an audiences attention but doesn't always make an audiences diver deeper into the subject. For example, the author talks about how a young women was upset about the portrayal of a slave, so much she did not want to return, however she wasn't interested in learning more about that time period or subject. In conclusion, I agree with the author that storytelling can be helpful but not always effective, we need to find balance with emotion and cognition in our exhibits.