My favorite part of day three was going on the Freedom Fighters tour at the Capitol Building. We had THE MOST AMAZING tour guide, who was the perfect combination of funny and factual. She was a great example of how to engage your visitors in a way that makes them interested and included in the narrative.
After the tour we met with two educators from the Capitol Visitor Center and they gave us some great techniques for object based story telling. There are three aspects to talking about objects:
- Tangibles- physical truths about the object
- Intangibles- ideas behind an object
- Universals- ideas that transcend a social/cultural group
Understanding these three aspects of talking about objects allows us to create an environment where our visitors will want to learn. If visitors feel like they can’t be a part of the conversation because they don’t already know about the subject matter, then you have essentially alienated them. Instead, as an educator, you need to be able to get a feel for your audience, establish what they already know or can ascertain, and then build up from there. When visitors feel a personal connection to the objects/narrative, then they will want to engage!
After a wonderful afternoon at the Capitol Building, we headed over to the National Portrait Gallery for a fun exercise in storytelling.
Portrait of Juliette Gordon Low
At the National Portrait Gallery, we were each tasked with finding a portrait and using our visual literacy techniques to learn about the image. Then we partnered up and crafted a story about how our two portraits met. It was such a fun exercise! In our fictional encounter, an older Juliette Gordon Low met 8 yr. old Dizzy Gillespie.
I feel like I have learned so much about storytelling and narratives within museums today, and I am so excited to be able to go home and share these ideas with my own museum.
The old Senate chamber 
Orchids at NPG! 
I did say I loved plants… 
Storytelling at NPG
A Gal in the Galleries 
Emily, It’s great that you’ll take the ideas from the seminar back to your own museum. Our guide at the Capitol Visitor Center was a great model of how a tour can be engaging, factual, and personal. You did a good job with Juliette Low at NPG.
LikeLiked by 1 person