Training Industry Magazine - November/December 2020 - 23

caught in your throat. If museums
aren't your thing, recall the best
restaurant meal you've ever had
or the greatest music performance
you've ever attended. Recall that
experience - how it felt, what it
meant to you, what it means to
you still. Think of what you learned
during that experience. In an
industry where research indicates
that 30 to 70% of what employees
learn
is
forgotten,
learning
professionals should take time
to examine experiences that are
instantly and permanently stored in
our memory and available for recall.

Now
consider
that
those
experiences - the museum, event,
meal and concert - all have
something in common. They all
began with an empty white room
with white walls and empty floors.
This was the curator's starting
point, and the curator's goal was
to then give visitors an experience
that they would carry with them
when they left the room.
What do curators add to the
white room to create meaningful
experiences?
Certainly,
there
are works of art to be exhibited
(the content), but the works
themselves cannot be the only
elements. Paintings lose meaning
if they sit stacked in a corner. The
following are some components
of experience - beyond the
content itself - that are useful for
learning curators.

COMPONENTS OF
EXPERIENCE
PATH COMPONENTS
ENTRY AND EXIT

Exhibit curators are deliberate about
how visitors enter a space. There are
functional components, like obtaining
a ticket or joining a tour group. But
the entry to an exhibit also sets the
stage for the entire experience.
For example, Meow Wolf's "House
of Eternal Return" exhibit in Santa
Fe, New Mexico uses a full-scale
recreation of a Victorian home as its
entry point. Participants step through
an ordinary-looking refrigerator and
into the "real" exhibit - an interactive
light and sound installation.
Learning professionals should be
equally attentive to how participants
enter courses or learning events.
Participants should have clear
expectations of how learning will
benefit them in their roles and
personal development. Opening a
course with messages from leaders
that welcome and positively affirm
participants' value to the organization
also
promotes
engagement
and attention.
Exits are equally important, as they
are the best opportunity for a call to
action. As visitors of an amusement
park exit through an experiencethemed gift shop, learners should
exit each learning event with a clear
call to action. Otherwise, skills and
knowledge learned may never be
applied on the job.

GROUPING, SEQUENCE
AND PACE
Curators can add additional impact
and meaning to art through careful
grouping. Works that complement
or contrast each other might be
placed close together. Alternatively,
curators can give a piece additional
emphasis by surrounding it with
white space.

HOW SENSORY
COMPONENTS
CAN ELEVATE
THE LEARNING
EXPERIENCE

One example of an experience
that uses sensory components
to great effect is the Holocaust
Memorial in Berlin. The main
exhibit consists of thousands
of rectangular concrete slabs
spaced in a rough grid on
a sloping plane. As visitors
approach the exhibit, they
are offered a view across the
almost-level tops of all the
slabs. As visitors descend the
slope, surrounding slabs grow
taller until they stand fully in the
shadows at the center of the
space. The lighting changes as
the sun is blocked out, giving
visitors an actual chill despite
the temperature. Sound is also
shaped by the arrangement of
heavy blocks, until it's difficult
to distinguish echoes. Visitors
feel a sense of isolation as
groups are separated into
different paths. Many have
compared walking into the
memorial to descending into
a grave.
There is no "content" on or
around the slabs. All content
that visitors are to hear, see or
read is housed in an information
center placed at the edge of
the site, but consider how the
experience of passing through
the slabs prepares visitors to
attend to this content in a more
meaningful way.

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Training Industry Magazine - November/December 2020

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