Now that Tech Savvy has opened, more work is, of course, to be done! One factor surrounding a gallery that someone might not think about needing to do is putting together a guide for the museum docent. A museum docent is a volunteer who gives tours on the the galleries at a museum, and because they’re going into it without any knowledge of the gallery, it’s up to the museum and those that made the exhibit to provide the most necessary and important information about the exhibit to the docent in order for them to provide the best tour possible. Putting together a docent guide isn’t always necessary for temporary exhibits but since Tech Savvy is going to be installed until December, the department decided that it would be worth it. Since I did a large amount of the labels for the exhibit, I was asked to help put together the docent guide that would go on file for the Tech Savvy exhibit.
After giving a tour today in the Root and Sloth exhibits, I spent a good part of my afternoon walking around Tech Savvy, imagining how to group the information together and how one might walk around the room so I could put all the information in a document in a fluent order. When putting the information in the document, a lot of it is copy and pasting or grabbing key information from the labels and informational posters on the walls. This part of the process doesn’t require any extra research, as it has already been done by the time the items are on display in the gallery. It’s mostly organization and thinking about the best way to present the information to the docent who will be reading the guide so they can present the information to those that they’re giving the tour to.
Wow, my other comment could apply here too. It is a valuable skill to be about to provide direction for people when you cannot be present. Both projects can help you develop this skill.
One other comment for this project: While summarizing the information on the wall text is good, I always appreciate it when the docent provides some added information that I would not have learned otherwise. You might think about some added facts that were cut out of the wall text that you could add back in via the docent guide. Does that make sense?
It does! After the guide is put together, I’ll see if there’s any missing gaps and fill it in. Maybe I’ll ask around the office to see if there’s any fun facts that didn’t get to make it in!