New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York: Wait for the elevator

I’ve mentioned the New Museum of Contemporary Art before, in the Disabling Museum posts from several months ago. On a recent visit to New York City, we found that the lobby has the same awkward features. In order to access the exhibition galleries, which are all on higher floors, you pretty much have to line up and wait for an elevator.

A big, slow elevator. 

The other choice is a small, slow elevator.

The stairs are an afterthought.

The result: big, awkward crowds gather in the lobby at regular intervals, shuffle into the elevators, and begin to gather again. A few brave souls head up the stairs, but most people don’t want to make the four to five story climb.

Visitor comfort in San Diego: Video Part 2

Video documentation continues of our visitor comfort workshop in October at the Western Museums Association. In this chapter, workshop participants recount their first visits to the Museum of Photographic Arts in their roles as people with either learning differences or physical disabilities. Participants were given brief profile cards on the morning of the workshop. They had not seen their profiles before and had about 20 minutes to familiarize themselves with the important characteristics of the roles they would be playing. 

The dedication and consistency with which they inhabit their characters and interact with the museum in those roles, is striking. I think this demonstrates the viability of role-playing as a method for testing visitor comfort and accessibility among staff and consultants. It also demonstrates Paul Gabriel’s point that people with learning differences and disabilities do not have “different” comfort and accessibility needs; they are simply more sensitive to those needs than some other visitors and thus can help to identify problem areas quickly and efficiently.

MOMA New York: Lobby follies

One of the more annoying aspects of a visit to the old, pre-renovation Museum of Modern Art in New York was the coat check: a narrow, dim, corridor that could only hold a few people at a time. On a cold, rainy day, with most visitors checking something, it was crowded, confused, and chaotic.

Comes the much-heralded renovation, and voila: the old coat check experience has not only been replicated, but made even more unpleasant.

This was what it looked like on a mild mid-autumn day. Crowded? Yes. Dim? Check. Confusing? You bet. Hmm –what’s missing? I know: narrow! 

It’s not even clear how you’re supposed to get there from the lobby proper.

A popsicle stand at the coat check exit directing visitors to the entrance: a sure sign of intrinsically confusing design. Many visitors ignore this sign and enter here anyway, inadvertently jumping the line.

Meanwhile, out in the lobby, an example of dichotomous, able-bodied vs. handicapped thinking: a separate “handicapped” ramp.

Perhaps this is a naive question, but if a ramp and handrail arrangement works for so-called handicapped visitors, why would it not work for all visitors? Or if a large proportion prefer stairs, why not split it fifty-fifty? Why create a narrow cattle chute for the people with the wheelchairs and walkers? And strollers? And rolling luggage? Or who feel unsteady on stairs? Etcetera. This is really backwards thinking for the mid-oughts.

WMA Comfort and Access Workshop, MOPA San Diego, Video Pt 1

Thanks to videographer/editor Kenshi Westover and staff videographer Joaquin Ortiz of MOPA, our October 2009 WMA workshop on visitor comfort and access was thoroughly documented on video. We were able to field-test Beth’s idea of workshop participants playing the roles of visitors with either physical disabilities or learning differences. Beth created the role-playing cards for the physical disabilities, and Paul Gabriel created the cards for learning differences. Participants were randomly assigned roles and had about 15 minutes to familiarize themselves with their cards before heading out the museum door to re-enter in the guise of their new personas. Here’s Part 1 of several episodes, edited and produced by Kenshi, documenting the day:

 

Based on the results of the day, role-playing seems to be an effective method for testing comfort and access.

More video episodes to come.

Visitor Comfort at the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego

In late October, 2009, the Museum of Photographic Arts in lovely Balboa Park, San Diego graciously hosted a workshop on “Getting Comfortable with Visitor Comfort” as part of the 2009 annual conference of the Western Museums Association. Facilitating the workshop along with Beth and myself were Paul Gabriel, a specialist in learning differences based in San Francisco; Stephanie Weaver, visitor experience consultant extraordinaire and principal of Experienceology; and MOPA Deputy Director Vivian Kung Haga. 

 

Workshop participants spent an intense half-day delving deeply into the question of what constitutes visitor comfort and access. Their explorations on the museum floor and their reactions were videotaped for later use and analysis, while the museum received an in-depth assessment and set of recommendations. 

 

Participants were unanimous in their praise of the MOPA galleries, which are well lit, gracefully proportioned, and simply feel good to be in.

The museum, in the person of Vivian, proved itself delightfully open to constructive criticism — for instance of one problematic aspect of the text for a traveling show:

It might not be very clear from my photo, but the text in Spanish — on the right — is in a fainter typeface than the English on the left. Perhaps helpful for immediately distinguishing one language from the other, but as several participants pointed out, what might this say, unintentionally, about the status of Spanish in relation to English?

Vivian’s plans include modifying a number of visual elements for greater accessibility and comfort, such as this grey-on-purple text:

The workshop was a great opportunity to not only talk and think about visitor comfort and access in the abstract, but to put thoughts into action in an actual museum.

Thanks again to Vivian and her staff for opening up their institution to us in so many ways. 

 

de Young Museum, SF: welcome, sort of

The de Young Museum in San Francisco is currently hosting a traveling Tut exhibition. We haven’t seen the exhibition, so we can’t comment on that. We were struck by one contrast, however. Here’s the de Young admissions and ticketing desk:

It’s pretty enough, with the windows and greenery behind it, but not exactly information-rich. Just taking it in at a glance, it’s unclear exactly where you’re supposed to stand, where you go if you’re a member instead of the general public, and what you pay.

 

Not far away in the same lobby is the temporary admissions desk that is dedicated to the Tut exhibition:

It’s not as good on esthetics, but in terms of function, it’s much more direct and useful. It’s quite clear where you’re supposed to stand and what your various payment options are. The part of the desk that’s lower than the rest is set aside for will-call. Even the dark color seems more substantial and authoritative than the de Young desk’s beige color scheme. Not being back-lit by windows, it also appears more solid. Apparently, whoever put together the Tut show did some research on the semiotics of admissions desks.

Calif. Academy of Sciences: False Entrance

The California Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco has two entrances. There’s the public entrance on northwest side, fronting on the museum concourse and facing the De Young Museum:

 

On the opposite, southeast side, fronting Middle Drive, there’s another entrance, which is reached by crossing a pedestrian bridge:

A casual passerby — or someone who remembers the old Academy of Sciences building — might well assume that this is a public entrance as well. Everything about it says, “come in here.” 

Wrong. It’s for employees only. 

I’m sure it’s pleasant for the staff to have a well-designed (hopefully), light-filled space in which to work, but to me this off-limits entry seems like a wasted opportunity to create another means for visitors to get into the museum. On busy days, when the lines snake around the front of the building, a second entrance would relieve congestion considerably. And this entrance is deceptive in its visual attractiveness: we pass by here frequently and observe visitors start down the pedestrian bridge and then turn back. 

You could enter the old Academy from both sides, so why not the new one?

Getting comfortable in San Diego

The annual meeting of the Western Museums Association will take place in San Diego on October 24-30, and visitor comfort is on the agenda.

Beth and I are working with Stephanie Weaver of Experienceology, educational consultant Paul Gabriel, and Vivian Haga of the Museum of Photographic Arts to present a pre-conference workshop and a conference session:

Pre-Conference Workshop

Increasing Visitor Comfort to Encourage Return Visits

Sunday, October 25, 1-5:30 PM

 

In this tough economy, we need to do everything we can to welcome visitors and encourage them to return, become members, and support the museum financially. Visitor comfort is known to aid learning, promote mental and emotional receptivity, and increase the likelihood of a return visit; yet in many museums, comfort is not a priority. In this pre-conference workshop at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego’s Balboa Park, participants will explore practical, economical, and simple ways that museums can help make visitors comfortable by accommodating their physical, psychological, neurological, and social needs. Participants will work together to assess public areas of the host museum in terms of comfort and accommodation and suggest potential improvements. Most critically, they will collaborate with the host museum staff to examine potential barriers to making those improvements and create strategies to address and overcome those barriers. Findings will be presented in a session at the conference.

 

Session

Getting Comfortable with Visitor Comfort

Wednesday, October 28, 9:55-11:15 AM

 

This session offers practical and simple visitor comfort tools to apply at your museum, using the results from our pre-conference workshop at the Museum of Photographic Arts as a starting point. Experts in design, visitor experience, and physical and learning disabilities will deconstruct what we learned from our host museum and how it might be more broadly applied to museums in general, while museum staff weigh in on the workshop results and share what they learned. Panelists and attendees will suggest and critique practical, economical, and simple ways in which all museums might increase visitor comfort-physically, psychologically, neurologically, and socially.

 

If you’re attending WMA in San Diego this October, we’d love to see you there. 

Metropolitan Museum: Return of the American Wing

When we visited New York City in September 2009, we were delighted to discover that the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum was open to the public once again. 

In spite of some changes that in (Beth’s opinion particularly) make it a somewhat colder, less visually coherent space, it’s still one of the great interior spaces in American museums — an indoor piazza. 

The American Wing Cafe is open once again, and the prices are still reasonable. We were momentarily disturbed to realize that the windows have been frosted over.

“The view is gone!” we said. But there’s a good reason, which becomes apparent as soon as you climb the stairs to the newly-added mezzanine right above the cafe.

It’s a construction site out there, and the Met is simply preserving the esthetics of the American Wing experience.

 

The mezzanine itself, although it adds a ceiling to the Cafe that’s a little low for psychological comfort, is put to good use as an exhibit space.

 

Meanwhile, the piazza itself, while not as tranquil and intimate as it was before the remodeling, still has a variety of places for people to sit.

 

There is still a fountain. Like all fountains, or any element featuring water for that matter, it is extremely attractive to visitors.

de Young Museum, San Francisco: It never rains … oh, wait a minute

When you visit the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and walk out of the cafe onto the terrace that fronts on the sculpture garden, on many days you will enter not the fresh open air but a plastic-enclosed, temporary-looking space.

It’s full of design features that say “added as an afterthought,” such as this elegant sand barrel:

Step out of the plastic enclosure into the sculpture garden and you will see the full expanse of this kludgy plastic addition to the would-be elegant Herzog & de Meuron building.

Why is this is party tent necessary? My guess is that since the building opened in 2005, any number of visitors have complained that the outside terrace is cold, windy, and wet. It’s exposed to the west, where the prevailing weather comes from just about every day of the year. In San Francisco, that weather often brings a chill wind, fog, and in winter, rain.  

Rain? But there’s a huge, brutalist overhang running along the entire side of the building to take shelter under, right?

Wrong! Look up, and you’ll see that the overhang is totally porous…

…rendering it useless as a functional architectural element for about four to six months a year, namely late fall, winter, and early spring, when (most years) it rains frequently and profusely. This feature of San Francisco’s Mediterranean climate is extremely well-known, as are the steady west wind and frequent fog. Except perhaps to Herzog & de Meuron.