Reading Assignment: Falk, J. H. (2006). Understanding Museum Visitors’ Motivations and Learning. According to noted museum studies scholar John Falk, visitors' identities, motivations and learning are deeply intertwined. All individuals enact multiple identities, many of which are situational and fluidly constructed in response to a social and physical context. Identity influences motivations, which in turn directly influence behavior and learning. Visitors to museums tend to enact one or various combinations of five museum-specific identities, described in the above article: explorer; facilitator; professional/hobbyist; experience seeker; and spiritual pilgrim (aka "the recharger"). The above reading is a summary of the Museum Visitor Experience Model based on a conference presentation John gave in Denmark. If you'd prefer to read the longer, published article with further description of the identity categories see: Falk, J. H. (2006). The impact of visit motivation on learning: Using identity as a construct to understand the visitor experience. Curator, 49(2), 151-166. Reflection PromptPost a reflection in the blog comment section below responding to Falk’s five categories of identity-related visitor motivations.
Shoshana Klein
3/29/2017 22:14:39
The categories seem to be relatively exhaustive, although I am sure there is a group of reluctant people who have been forced along with the group and don’t particularly have more motivation than that. Another I might consider would be going to a museum to kind of “take it in” - feel that specifically with art museums, rather than learning and engaging, it can sometimes be about mere exposure to new things. In a way that might fit into experience seekers, but I think it is slightly different. I feel that the categories are not overlapping, but it is extremely likely that museum goers would fit into multiple categories, even on one visit. The categories seem explanatory.
Rohtih Pillai
3/29/2017 23:21:12
Mimi Niou
3/29/2017 23:47:31
In my opinion, the categories in this typology seem to meet the three criteria of being Exhaustive, Exclusive, and Explanatory, sufficiently. First, while there will definitely be visitors that do not fit in any of them, the five categories represent the main views of museums held by the public. Second, the categories definitely seem exclusive. While some individuals may fall in multiple categories at different times and in different situations, the author noted that our identities are continually changing and that these motivations are not permanent in any way. For this reason, I think that at least in terms of one particular trip to a museum, an individual should only fall in one of the five categories mainly. Lastly, the categories do seem to have quite a bit of explanatory power. The author gives a plethora of examples about how museums could change their exhibits or their marketing as a response to the conclusions drawn, in order to make experiences more satisfying or more memorable for certain groups of people. Additionally, the author adds that, “customising museum offerings to suit the distinct needs of individuals possessing different identity-related needs will not only better satisfy regular visitors’ needs but also provide a vehicle for enticing occasional visitors to come more frequently. I also believe that this approach opens the door to new and creative ways to attract audiences who do not visit museums at all.” In other words, these categories could help us determine how and what these groups of people learn at museums, which would allow us to better cater to their desires.
Ankita Jha
3/30/2017 00:37:18
Looking at the categories stated in this paper I believe they mostly fit in the Exhaustive and Explanatory. I feel as though these categories touch on the wide variety of people who go to museums. I believe this is an effective category as it encompasses both the visitors that go to museums for the experience and the ones that go for specific exhibits. A reason I enjoyed this paper was because the author did not try to narrow down the categories and throw and overall blanket of generality over the visitors and research. I liked how the author mentioned how there is a uniqueness to every visitor, and while there may be some similarities to the motivations as to why the visitors attend the exhibit, the internal motivation is unique.
Nicole Pinto
3/30/2017 01:30:09
Stephanie Chung
3/30/2017 01:34:11
In Falk's "Understanding Museum Visitors' Motivations and Learnings," he claims that the ways in which individuals express their museum experiences seem to suggest visitors’ "situation-specific, identity-related self-aspects." Falk explains that museum visitors' reasons for visiting museums and their post-visit descriptions of the experience have gravitated towards clustering around just a couple of categories, which in turn seem to indicate how the public recognizes and understands what a museum visit affords. Falk describes his five-identity related reasons for visiting a museum, but I found only two of the three E's to be true when considering these identities. Falk's list of identities are exclusive because each one seems rather distinctive, and are explanatory because they clearly explain each identity. However, I am not convinced that Falk's list is exhaustive because there are certainly identity types that did not fit into any of these clusterings that Falk failed to mention. Also, as more and more new and unique museum exhibits are created, there is also the possibility for different types of reasons for visiting a museum to form.
Ken Situ
3/30/2017 03:04:52
John Falk's five categories for museum visitors are exhaustive, exclusive, and explanatory. In his extensive studies of free-choice learning, he pinpointed these categories to be comprehensive of visitors from across a variety of museum settings. How is it possible that every patron can be put into one of five categories? Well Falk boiled down people's motivators until he hit the core of their identity. People do things because of their needs and in this raw form, there can only be so many needs to be met. For example: the explorer is motivated by their intellectual need, the recharger by their spiritual need, the facilitator by their social need, etc. Because each of these needs are unique, I can say that these categories are exclusive as well. Each category covers a different need and attempts to explain a topic of interest through those needs. Therefore I can also say that these categories are explanatory. These categories have utmost relevance to museum curators, researchers, directors, etc.
Sarika Bajaj
3/30/2017 07:35:03
In my opinion, the categories in this typology are for the most part exhaustive and explanatory but do not meet the exclusive criteria. In terms of the exhaustive criteria, I think this typology does an effective job of listing out the reasons why people go to museums willingly. However, this means that the typology neglects to identify the major reason that most children end up going to the museum: because they are forced to. The typology does an effective job in terms of the explanatory criteria, as each defined identity was explained via a quote from museum visitors, proving that people generally do fall with in these categories. However, in terms of exclusivity, I think this typology is lacking. The main case where the biggest issue lies is with the facilitator identity; although a parent might bring a child to a museum to facilitate their learning, the parent may have chosen the museum in the first place out of personal interest (making their identities encompass facilitator and hobbyist). Another counter example is that a parent may have chosen a museum as a place to bring the children also as a respite for themselves (have the children outside of the house for a while) while still intending the children should learn. The facilitator identity I feel like should actually be an accompanying identity when compared to the other two (a person could be a hobbyist and a facilitator, but not just a facilitator) as that identity tends to reduce parents or caregivers as only functioning as guides to children which is not necessarily true. 3/30/2017 08:18:07
This reading was particularly interesting to me in the how the author exposes the traditional way of analyzing concrete demographic to understand their visitors, and how that looking at those demographics can be limiting, or do not offer much insight into the real ephemerality and ever-changing motivations and prior experience for visiting that particular museum. Giving a context of considering psychographic traits is more descriptive and meaningful to museum curators and exhibit designers.
Isha Mehra
3/30/2017 09:12:13
Falk's categories for museum visitors include explorers, facilitators, professionals, experience seekers, and the rechargers. His idea is that the visitors of a museum comprise these 5 categories, and therefore museums can design their exhibits to reflect the motivations of their visitors. He also interestingly points out that museums have become more for leisure which is why these models of categorizing visitors have become more present. I believe that his categorization is in conjunction with being exclusive and explanatory, but aren't really exhaustive. I agree with Falk that out of the general population that go to the museum most will fit into one of these catergoies, but I believe that these catergoies leave behind visitors such as friends going for a social activity, children going since their parents are making them, etc. I found that the catergoies were exhaustive for people who are very interested in museums and who come upon them and would be actively involved in the exhibits, except maybe not exhaustive to the more passive and less enthusiastic visitors of museums. This is a fault since those visitors are the ones that museums exhibits have to keep in mind when making engaging exhibits that would grip their attention. I thought that Falk's catergoies did manage to be both exclusive and explanatory. Although there are concepts between the catergoies that seem to overlap, I think that in any case one category will be a clearer choice over another so they can be considered exclusive. I think that for exclusivity its also important to note that people can go for different reasons each time they are visiting. Lastly, I did think these catergoies were explanatory for how museums could then react to what their visitors were interested in. I would consider myself to be either a facilitator or experience seeker when looking at museums. In the past, I have organized events for family friends with children to go to museums, since I love to teach/spend time with children. In these cases I feel like I am visiting as a facilitator since I am primarily focused on the experience of the children I visited with. In other times, such as when I visit other cities, I am more of an experience seeker as I am looking for ways to pass the time and to see what is important in the city I'm visiting.
Nikhil Lingireddy
3/30/2017 09:20:20
This reading introduced 5 categories of identities of people that influence their motivation to visit museums. It claims that the identity is specific to the visit and that it can be different from the identity of the person, which explains why such broad categories could be applied.
Andrew Wang
3/30/2017 09:46:32
I do believe that the categories described for the most part fit into the three E's. It looked exhaustive to me as the research done was done pre museum visit, during museum visit, and post museum visit and then synthesized to create this overall picture. I really do agree with the described aspect of museums where individuals go to seek self fulfillment, and I think that really fit into the explanatory category. I've never seen this way of looking at it before, and it really intrigued me to know what else this cycle applies to, as I'm sure it applies to many many different aspects of life. The only thing that I'm not too sure about is how well it fits under the exclusive category. I think that it definitely fulfills a good amount of exclusivity, but to me it feels like there's some overlap between explorers and experience seekers. I also think there's definitely the groups of people who are forced to go and don't want to be there and etc. However, for the purposes of target audience I think it does a fine job of identifying the vast majority of museum visitors.
Sai Dhulipalla
3/30/2017 09:56:05
In Falk's article, he discusses the how the visitor's experience is created by their personal drives, group identity, decision-making and meaning-making strategies, memory, and leisure preferences. He uses this knowledge to predict the types of experiences people would have and how professionals can suit the visitors’ needs. In doing so, he identifies five key types of visitors who attend museums and then defines the internal processes that keep them interested. These 5 categories do meet two out of the 3 qualitative E's that we discussed. It is definitely exclusive because each category is relatively distinct from each of the others in describing interests and personalities. It is explanatory because it does describe phenomena of interest and have explanatory power for each of the personalities. However, it fails to be exhaustive because these five categories don't depict the full range of visitors that come to a museum. Although they do cover the large majority of visitors, the five categories fail to represent that minority and thus as not exhaustive, which by definition means to considering all elements or aspects.
Mary Safy
3/30/2017 09:59:02
The categories seem to be exhaustive. I found it interesting how many of the things people remembered from their museum visits also seem to describe why visitors go to the museum in the first place. Many visitors view museums as a social activity, a way to have an educational experience with the company of friends and family. One category that seems seems to be missing is that many people go to museums because others want them to go.
Joyce Chen
3/30/2017 12:52:06
In my opinion, the five categories (Explorers, Facilitators, Professional/Hobbyists, Experience Seekers, and Rechargers) are definitely explanatory, and they do a good job at describing the topic area. The categories seem mostly exhaustive, since a typical visitor that goes to a museum would have motivations matching at least one category’s description. However, I do not think that the categories are exclusive. The reading makes it appear as though each category is a purely exclusive type of visitor, but it is not always easy to match people to one specific category. For example, consider the Experience Seekers category. A family visiting from out of town might be influenced to visit the museum since it is a well-known museum, but there are also other factors that affect the decision. Why should they choose the museum over, say, a sports game? If the answer is that they want a more quiet and relaxing environment, then this same family could fall under the Rechargers category. If the answer is that they want to learn more about natural history, then this family could also fall under the Explorers category. There are many motivations that impact a visitor’s decision to visit the museum over another destination, and it can be impossible to point at only one specific reason to categorize a visitor.
Sean Q Moore
3/30/2017 19:54:26
The paper presented by Falk designates 5 categories that are meant to categorize museum-goers by initial goals towards visiting the museum. The metrics he created to separate these groups was derived from the most prominent correlations he saw between goals that museum goers identified and what they learned 6 months later. These correlations were meant to describe different ways people’s learning was largely dependent on their intentions and initial intentions for going to the museum.
Obed Appiah-Agyeman
4/25/2017 01:33:47
Falk identifies the categories of visitors’ identity as explorer, facilitator, professional, experience seeker, and spiritual pilgrim. In my opinion, I believe these categories accurately meet the three qualitative coding criteria of being Exhaustive, Exclusive and Explanatory. Though there may be outlier if you were to group every visitor based on these categories I feel as though there is a spot for each visitor. In terms of the Exhaustive criteria, the categories of visitors’ identity does the best job it can at describing a full range of visitors’ motivation because it is impossible to truly derive the motivation of every visitor that visits a museum. However, the categories provide the most common information analysis on common museum visitors according to Faulkner. Additionally, the Exclusive criteria is met because there are no overlapping categories and they are all fairly different. The closest may be explorer and experience seeker but they differ by the intent of the motivation. Falk explains that our identities are constantly changing which means that there is no sole/absolute category or opinion. Moreover, I do believe that the categories have explanatory power. Falk elaborates these conclusions by explaining how museums can alter their exhibits and their marketing based on the categorization of their visitors. Museums can curate better the experiences for their visitors for specific groups/kinds of people. As far as my own motivations, I believe that I am more of a recharger. Falk explains that these type of people are “Visitors who are primarily seeking to have a contemplative, spiritual and/or restorative experience.” I wouldn’t say I visit museum as a religious prerogative but I do find myself visiting the Carnegie museum to break away from the daily stress of the CMU workload. I find creativity and expression in any form of art fascinating and liberating. Comments are closed.
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