It’s Not You, It’s the Museum: Combating Museum Fatigue
Many have experienced it: You’re a short time into a visit to a world-class museum, amid the stunning artworks, only to realize that what you really need is a comfortable seat and a strong coffee. In response, you rush onward, barely pausing in front of the art or skipping entire galleries to conserve your energy or bring the visit to an end. In doing so, you may barely register the experience, much less feel the anticipated exhilaration from getting to see such great works of art in person. If this scenario sounds familiar, it’s not you, it’s the museum.
In our field, this phenomenon is known as museum fatigue, and it’s a well-known problem. Early research on the subject dates to 1916, when Benjamin Ives Gilman explored the topic for The Scientific Monthly. Gilman focused on the physical demands of viewing objects, documenting through photographs a marvelously mustached gentleman bending, crouching, and craning his neck to observe works on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which at the time was a pioneer in a number of innovative museum practices. Later researchers considered how design elements might contribute to physical and mental exhaustion in museums. On the whole, repetition is the biggest culprit, along with sprawling distances between galleries and unforgivingly hard floors, topped off by the sustained cognitive effort required of visitors as they take in and process the information presented to them.
Fortunately for visitors to our new Museum, mitigating the effects of museum fatigue through design features was a priority for the building from its inception. “If we want visitors to make the Museum their own, we have to meet them where they are and do everything we can to make sure that museum-going doesn’t feel like such hard work,” stated Museum Director James Steward, who is particularly passionate about the subject.
When Steward and University Architect Ron McCoy began soliciting proposals for the new building, they requested design solutions that would “encourage lingering and combat visitor fatigue.” Design architects Adjaye Associates accomplished this task through three methods, which became signatures of the new building: dynamic shifts in the size and style of interior spaces, so-called lens moments, and dedicated viewing rooms.
“We found complementarity between the strategy to reduce the massing in the building, which offered moments between the building elements and the lens moments. This was a great coincidence of opportunities,” noted McCoy.
The building’s nine interlocking pavilions—seven of which are dedicated gallery spaces—help break up the massive footprint of the Museum and create dynamic interiors of varying size. Leaving a larger pavilion, one typically encounters a more modest gallery space, not only accommodating the variable scale of objects from the collections but also helping keep the visitor attuned to shifts in experience. As Steward noted, “you are constantly moving from big to small and back again in a way intentionally designed to keep you awake and ready to absorb new spaces.” Throughout the galleries, curators and exhibition designers also deploy strategies for overcoming museum fatigue. Variation in object display and interpretation helps keeps the visit fresh—for instance, visitors will encounter a range of sculptures installed in the Cross-Collections Galleries that bridge two larger pavilions.
The term “lens moment” refers to specific areas of the new Museum that are punctuated by a window, noteworthy for both their large scale and their varied forms: One takes the shape of an oculus, another a half-moon, and two are accompanied by fixed, bronze-clad sunshades. These lens moments respond to one of the Museum’s design mandates: create vistas onto campus in all directions.
Furthering these vistas are three so-called viewing rooms. Minimally installed—none has more than three artworks on view—and clad in warm oak, these spaces offer respite from the larger pavilions and the intensity of those viewing experiences. Their scale, materiality, and acoustics all differ from those of the gallery spaces, again injecting some of the variation known to combat museum fatigue. All three viewing rooms feature built-in architectural millwork benches made of the same warm oak as the clad walls, inviting rest and offering compelling views out onto campus—and in one case onto the monumental, brilliantly colored mosaic by the artist Nick Cave that graces the new Entrance Court. “These will be moments for quietude, contemplation, and close looking without disruption,” noted Michael Jacobs, senior gallery designer and manager of exhibition services.
The building’s use of distinctive materials also contributes to a varied visual and physical experience. The flooring shifts from terrazzo in the more public spaces to white oak within galleries, whose entrances are punctuated with Vermont granite portals. These materials offer contrast in color and texture from both the sandblasted cast-in-place walls, with their signature archaeological character, and the smooth painted gallery walls. The galleries’ wood flooring offers a more forgiving surface for walking and standing, and custom gallery seating affords frequent moments for close looking and rest.
A thoughtfully designed museum can hold great beauty and also can contribute mindfully to a more engaged visitor. Many of the cues and supports may be subliminal, but the hoped-for outcome is a refreshed visitor enjoying their stay from start to finish.
