Our girl Nina Simon just penned, in my opinion, an important article about the usefulness of working on the museum floor from time to time. Now, I’m the first to admit that the thought of working the floor can terrify me – I can be shy, and I’m not great with intentionally chatting up strangers and getting a sense of how they’re enjoying an exhibition. But even I know just how much insight into your job can be gained by direct interaction with visitors.

From Museum 2.0: Should Everyone Work on the Front Line as Part of Their Career?

Spending time on the museum floor can be exhausting, but it’s also a pleasure. It’s a learning environment free of meetings and bureaucracy. It’s a place to learn, one interaction at a time, how to serve visitors better. The stultifying, repetitive tasks teach you how to be more efficient and effective. The constant interaction with visitors gives you an opportunity to delight, mixed with a healthy dose of reality. In most museums, the people who design visitor experiences don’t operate them–so they (and I’m included here) miss out on the important feedback loop of how visitors use what is presented.

Nina’s right. Being with the visitors and seeing our exhibitions through their eyes is the only way to gauge their effectiveness. Sure – you can hire folks to do visitor surveys and interviews, but the resulting data removes the nuance of public interaction. How many visitor studies describe how a young woman with her group of friends may pause mid-stride to look at something most people wouldn’t notice? Or how the discussion of an exhibit is blended in with political references? Or how many people stop to chat with the guards, because they know the guard hear every docent lecture from here until Sunday? There’s a lot we can’t get from studies and surveys. And that’s ok, but it does mean that there’s a lot of value to be learned by being in the spaces we create.

My very first museum job was to be a gallery attendant. My first day ever was spent serving champagne at a Valentine’s benefit auction for the museum (and my fellow AAM-goers wonder why I volunteer for champagne duty at the MUSE Awards…). It was hectic: there was no time to really think, I was focused on making sure I didn’t smack someone in the forehead (or an artwork) with a cork projectile, and it was an amazing, wonderful experience. Here I was, making sure the major fundraising event went smoothly, so as to ensure we has the operating funds we needed to be effective. That was great. Even better was seeing how excited people were. They were laughing, competitive, loud, boisterous, and they’d egg each other on.

Most of the time, though, I’d sit at a desk and count visitors. Most of them wouldn’t say much; they’d come in, look around quietly, or might whisper to friends. It was pretty hushed, and, admittedly, pretty boring. But sometimes, you’d have wonderful visitors who would ask me what *I* thought about the pieces, or what they meant. I wasn’t allowed to play curator, so I had to be careful in my phrasing, but it was fascinating to see what people thought about and what they disagreed with or didn’t like. People Have Opinions about exhibits, and some people aren’t afraid to express them. As a young person with no say about an exhibition, it can be a little traumatizing to bear the brunt of someone’s opinion, but it was never AT me, just TO me.

And that’s okay. We want our visitors to feel something about what we’re presenting, and the work we’re doing. If no one’s talking at all, then clearly something isn’t working. That’s exactly the sort of evidence that we need to be exposed to ourselves. Not to mention, it’s just fun to be around people who are engaged and excited. It’s a good refresher before going back to the desk job.

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