What Makes an Exhibition Space Great?

We've all been to exhibition spaces -- some extraordinary and magical -- and some not so good. Thinking back on your experiences, what makes an exhibition space "great"?

Name a few (two or three) exhibition spaces or museums that you've really enjoyed...

I love the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco because of how dense it is. There are exhibits everywhere, both outside and inside the space, and if you are not careful, it is easy to miss it. The amount of exhibits in the Exploratorium speaks to a feature that I believe is crucial for an enjoyable exhibit/museum and that is interaction. The Exploratorium, for context, is a museum of science, art, and human perception, that features hundreds of explore-for-yourself exhibits that always leaves you more educated than when you stepped in. It is by no means a museum where you simply stand and stare, but it is one where your experience is directly shaped by your participation with the museum itself. An example of this is one of its most iconic exhibits, that of a water fountain constructed out of a porcelain toilet. It’s humorous, makes you think twice before rehydrating yourself, and teaches you a thing or two about human psychology.

This pattern repeats itself throughout the museum and it is very easy to spend an entire day here and still not experience everything. I put the Exploratorium at the top of the list because I have yet to visit a museum that teaches, entertains, and inquires its visitors at the rate and density that the Exploratorium does.

The California Academy of Sciences is also one of my top museums, in part for the reasons shared about the Exploratorium, but also for its immersion. My reason for why the California Academy of Sciences is a fantastic museum is because of the diversity of its spaces and how, similar to planet earth, they each represent different biomes. There is an aquarium, planetarium, rainforest, and natural history museum within the California Academy of Sciences, each with a unique floor plan that immerses the guest into the world the museum wishes the guest to learn about. Within each “biome” there are distinct features that make it seem like entirely different museums within the museum itself. The rainforest has the iconic “sphere” enclosure, the planetarium is a huge screen that makes you feel like you’re in space, the aquarium has a tunnel, and the natural history museum features an incredible whale skeleton.