“Understanding Museum Visitors’ Motivation and Learning” – Dr. John H. Falk

The author has introduced an idea of visitors’ identity throughout the whole essay. He gave a new model of 5 categories that are used to classify visitors’ expectation and behavior. He believed that visitors who come to a museum have their own purposes and gain experiences afterwards. The 5 categories are as follow:

• Explorers – who are curiosity with interest, what they see and find interesting while visiting.
• Facilitators – who are in the museum as accompanier, worried on what their significant others see and find interesting.
• Professional/Hobbyists – who have his/her habits and content-oriented interests on a specifically so as to facilitate them on developing their interest.
• Experience Seekers – who looks for experience and fun, and only cares how enjoyable the visit is instead.
• Rechargers – who seeks for refreshment, relaxation, having a peaceful or inspiring experience.

By classifying museum visitors’ purposes, the museum has a reference on how to support and facilitate their visitors, so that they can provide a more user-friendly and better environment for their visitors.

---

“How to Visit an Art Museum” – Johan Idema

This book gives a lot of ideas on how a person can enrich his/her visit in a museum. For example, enhancing communication with others, especially guards and staff inside the museum, is an important idea, since the others may have different backgrounds that may bring you a new dimension of the exhibits.

He also suggests readers to be more interactive with the works and the surroundings inside the museum. For instance, touch it if it is possible, walking around and listening to your favourite music, looking around through every windows inside the museum. 

Meanwhile, he mentions his thoughts on how to make a museum better for visitors’ experience by introducing the idea on how to connect a self to the artworks, like suggesting taking picture of the artworks as a way to participate and connect with the artworks. Therefore, it is not a reference book for the visitors only, but also for the curators and museums.

Photo’s from: http://johanidema.net/how-to-visit-an-art-museum-en/