The Issue of Experiences

The Experience Economy and the New Museology

If we are to look at how a new museology came to prioritize the visitor experience, it is significant to note that the very idea of experiences gained currency with B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore’s The Experience Economy (1999).451 _{Explaining the death-by-}

commodification of the agrarian, industrial and service economies,it argued that at the start of the twenty-first century people preferred to spend money on memorable, staged

448 _{George, “Historic House Museum Malaise,” http://download.aaslh.org/historic+house/kykuit1report.pdf.} 449 _{Note that George makes no mention of refocusing on conservation in these prescriptions.}

450 _{Young, “Welcome to our House,” 138-139.}

451 _{B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press,}

experiences rather than on commodities, goods or services.452 _{Pine and Gilmore argued that,}

in an Experience Economy, it was not enough to simply entertain audiences or to provide them with appealing images to look at. Companies, according to the authors, had to take up the role of experience stagers; they would gain economic value by offering differentiated experiences and by allowing guests to participate and become immersed in themed environments.

Significantly, in this new economy customers have been prioritized. As Pine and Gilmore assessed the commercial realm they asserted that “[e]very business competing for the future is customer-centric, customer-driven, customer-focused, customer-yadda-yadda- yadda.”453 _{They urged manufacturers in this economy to concentrate “on the individual’s use}

of the good” rather than how their goods performed. In abiding by this advice the focus of these companies was to “shift to the user.”454 _{Unlike commodities or goods, experiences are}

personal; they cannot be had by others and they are kept within the customer in the form of memories rather than by the customer “at arms-length.”455 _{Successfully staged experiential}

offerings, therefore, should be engaging and memorable, allowing companies to connect with their customers. Since the nineties, this formula, used to help companies connect with their

customers, has come to inform the way museums connect with their visitors.456

Pine and Gilmore’s ideas have infiltrated the study of museums through such writers as Neil and Philip Kotler, Wendy Kolter, Martin Hall and Tiina Roppola. Where Tony

452 _{Pine and Gilmore indicate that services were delivered, goods were made, commodities were extracted and}

experiences are staged. House museums are based on the idea of staging the domestic lives of the past.

453 _{Pine and Gilmore, The Experience Economy, ix.}

454 _{Ibid., 15. Where the industrial economy made goods for anonymous “users” and the service economy}

viewed its “buyers” as clients, the Experience Economy caters to “guests” (Ibid., 6).

455 _{Pine and Gilmore, The Experience Economy, 12.}

456 _{In fact, George and Young’s assertions that audiences might gravitate more to house museums that}

encourage participation, inspire personal involvement and offer “behind-the-scenes” tours suggest that Pine and Gilmore’s philosophies had reached the ears of house museum professionals by the start of the twenty-first century. If the house museum offered experiences, and was to compete with other experience stagers, then the standard visitor experience was in need of enrichment.

Bennett compared the museum to the fair, menagerie, amusement park, international exhibition and circus, Martin Hall compares it to other themed environments such as

Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge and Epcot’s World Showcase. His article reviews Bennett’s formulation of the modern museum as a civilizing institution of the exhibitionary complex, which he ultimately argues is no longer valid. Citing a number of ways that the postmodern age differs from the modern era, he advises “not stretching the exhibitionary complex beyond the historical context for which it was formulated.”457 _{Rather, making reference to}

Pine and Gilmore’s work, and to the characteristics of a new economic and social order, he proposes that museums should now be thought of as part of an experiential complex.458

In contrasting Bennett’s museum with the museum of the late-twentieth and twenty- first centuries, one of the key differences that Hall addresses involves the degree of control (and manipulation) or freedom (and participation) that the museum allows its visitors:

[T]he exhibitionary complex seeks to change the individual’s worldview and behavior through institutions of order and control. In contrast, I suggest, museums in the experience economy start not with institutions but with the individual, offering to those who can afford to participate the fantasy of a customized world, the opportunity to be who they want to be through the technologies of simulation.459

457 _{Martin Hall, “The Reappearance of the Authentic,” in Museum Frictions, ed. Ivan Karp, Corinne A. Kratz,}

Lynn Szwaja and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto (Durham, NC; London, UK: Duke University Press, 2006), 76.

458 _{Ibid., 77. The steps taken by scholars, such as Hall, to pair the museum with the economists’ work seem to}

correspond with the increasing commercialization of the museum. If Pine and Gilmore proclaim “Experiences are profitable!” and Hall is urging “Museums take note!” it is likely that Hall understands the museum’s need to compete with other attractions of the leisure landscape for tourist dollars. It is also somewhat limiting to say that museums became part of the experiential complex as a result of the changes of the last quarter of the twentieth century since the living history movement associated living history museums with experiences in the 1960s (although these ideas did not gain academic consideration until the 1980s). See the “Living History…” heading below. Claims by researchers, like Richard Crowest, who state that “heritage sites are often trailing behind commercial organisations that have already capitalised on the popular appeal of the ‘experience’…” are not completely accurate when viewed in light of this tradition (Richard Crowest, Making Sense: Multi-sensory and Visitor Experience (University of Surrey, MA Thesis, 1999), http:www.corvidae.co.uk/research/Making- sense.pdf, 6). It should also be pointed out that Bennett seems more aware of this tradition than Hall. His analysis of Beamish in section four “Museums and ‘The People’,” is particularly indicative of this.

The dictates of a new museology place less emphasis on collections and more on visitor experience. In the second half of the twentieth century, at a time when the value of museums became measured according to its audience numbers (and visitor studies began providing institutions with demographic statistics and detailed responses from their audiences) priorities shifted. The visitor replaced the collection “at the centre of museum work and of museum policies.”460 _{If Pine and Gilmore are right, that the commercial realm prioritizes its}

customers and focuses on product use, it also appears that museum management has become more audience-driven and flexible about the direct interaction with artifacts.

Tiina Roppola’s text from 2012 provides a more in-depth examination of museum experiences than is available through Hall’s article. She delineates what it means for museums to focus on staging and offering experiences. Referring to the work of John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking (2000), she asserts that “a ‘revolution’ in museology” has meant that museums are no longer viewed “simply as providing spaces for displaying objects but as environments for experience.”461 _{Exhibition design, according to Roppola, is now akin to}

“holistic experience making.”462 _{This re-conceptualization of the museum has not only}

influenced exhibition design. It has also impacted a) the museum-visitor relationship and b) the visitor’s relationship with museum objects. When a museum capitalizes on the term “experience,” it evokes ideas about transaction or exchange between the museum and its visitor as well as “encounters with objects” in the form of use or physical contact, or through

460 _{Daniel Jacobi, “Dialogism in Museums,” The Dialogic Museum and the Visitor Experience ICOFOM40, Taipei}

and Kaoshiung (23-26 October 2011), 17; Tiina Roppola, Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), 19; This has also come up in Fiona R. Cameron and Sarah Mengler, “Cosmopolitics, Border Crossings and the Complex Museum,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 18, 6 (November 2012): 637- 653.

461 _{Roppola, Designing for, 38.} 462 _{Ibid., 38-39.}

interpretive media. 463 _{In these ways, experience suggests something other than contemplative}

gazing. It implies an active and involved visitor.464

Visitor Spaces, Museum Conveniences and the Visitor Experience

If house museums adopt Pine and Gilmore’s business model they come under great pressure to focus on their customers/guests (visitors) and consider the ways their audiences can make use of museum spaces and collections. Canadian house museums show signs of an increasing visitor focus through the establishment of visitor spaces like those described by Pinna.In Pinna’s analysis, Italy’s commitment to the conservation of its cultural assets was reflected in the lack of sitting areas, cafes and boutiques at its museums. He compared non- visitor oriented museums (which displayed catalogued objects without explanatory texts) to the post-1993 museums with “[r]estaurants, bookshops and sales outlets” that catered to the visitor.465 _{In his article, the provision of these visitor spaces equated to a consideration of the}

public’s needs on the part of the museum.

At Bellevue House (Kingston, ON) and Point Ellice House (Victoria, BC) visitor centres receive, welcome and introduce visitors to the sites [Fig. 3.11].466 _{Laurier House and}

463 _{Ibid., 39. For a more critical take on the museum’s attempts to attract visitors by offering direct encounters}

with objects refer to the discussion of The Onion’s article, “Struggling Museum Now Allowing Patrons to Touch Paintings” (2009), in this dissertation’s conclusion.

464 _{Roppola, Designing for, 38-39. Roppola explains through Neil Kolter’s work: “‘Experiencing connotes active}

engagement (direct observation of or participation in an event), immediacy (knowing something through sensory stimuli), individuality (something that is lived through), and intense, memorable, or unusual encounters’ (Kotler 1999, 32)” (Ibid., 41). It should be obvious that Kolter works closely with Pine and Gilmore’s ideas. Roppola also notes that, as a concept, “experience” can be unaligned with learning or can be used to transcend the “opposition between education and entertainment” (Ibid., 41). Many scholars have argued the importance of pushing beyond the dichotomy that frames spectacle and pedagogy as oppositional. Museums in North America have long tried to both educate and entertain their visitors and Pine and Gilmore’s study also seems to do away with the purist division. Entertainment and education constitute only two of their four realms of experience. Experiences can be educational or entertaining but they are richest and the most engaging when they fuse the educational, esthetic, entertaining and escapist.

465 _{Pinna, Heritage, 64. In 1993, Italy adopted the Ronchey laws, which prompted a “veritable revolution…in the}

Italian museum system” as well as in the management of ‘cultural assets’ (Ibid.).

466 _{In 2012, Craigdarroch Castle and Laurier House were still in the planning stage of adding such centres to}

their sites. Visitor centres are sometimes constructed to maintain the separation between the museum’s modern facilities or visitor spaces and the “historical” elements and environments. Constructed outside the house, they

Craigdarroch Castle both have plans to construct similar centres in the future. Other house museums across the country make room in their historic structures for modern visitor conveniences such as public washrooms, accessibility elevators and coat closets or racks. Hutchison House (Peterborough, ON) and Myrtleville House Museum have raised money to incorporate modern kitchens and/or laundry facilities to support their programs and

refreshment-centred events, which draw large crowds to the sites annually. Others have made room for reading rooms and research centres that are open to publics interested in local heritage, genealogical research and historical figures. A look at house museums such as Rutherford House and Lougheed House, in 2012, showed that both had gift shops on site (The Whatnot Gift Shop and Treasures Gift Shop) and played host to the Arbour Room and The Restaurant, respectively [Figs. 3.12-3.14].467

These enhancements of the visitor experience have an obvious profit motive.468

While various amenities ensure the comfort of visitors, and reassure them of their welcome, retail and dining spaces have been incorporated as revenue-producing. Dining facilities enable house museums to compete with other venues to host weddings, conferences and

protect the historic buildings from being modified to accommodate modern conveniences. They are additions that help preserve the structures’ historic integrity.

467 _{Without question, these facilities add different experiential dimensions to the house museum visit and can be}

used to attract audiences that would not otherwise take notice of the site. Tour the home and have lunch in the historic environment. Explore the historic interiors and shop at the boutique of speciality items or local crafts.

468 _{Resistance to the application of Pine and Gilmore’s ideas to house museums likely comes from those who}

have long criticized the commercialization of the public museum. In 1988, Madhu Suri Prakash and Sivitz Shaman argued that museums should not allow “commercial manipulation” to win out over “cultural education,” that they should remain a realm immunized from commercial motivations and attitudes (Madhu Suri Prakash and Sanford Sivitz Shaman, “Museum Programs: Public Escapism or Education for Public Responsibility?” Art Education 41, 4 (July, 1988), 20). Harkening back to solidly-formed ideas about the modern and progressive-era museum as educational institutions, they bemoan museums that mimic showplaces, playgrounds and department stores and function as “centers for consumption and entertainment” (Ibid.). Some argue that “[i]n order to thrive, museums might have to adopt commercial or consumerist concepts” where others worry that “[c]ommerce will swallow museums if educators try to copy the norms of business for immediate financial reward” (Cristina Russo, “Selling Memories: The Line Between Museum Education and Consumerism,” Sci-Ed, 7 January 2013, accessed 21 March 2014, http://blogs.plos.org/scied/2013/01/07/ selling-memories/). While dichotomous thinking about education and entertainment, play and pedagogy, amusement and instruction persists in various circles, in the postmodern era it is often asserted that museums need not commit themselves to one side of the binary at the expense of the other (Roppola, Designing for, 40).

other such meetings. Some of the refreshments are included in regular admission prices and validate a hike in the cost. At other times, the house museum gains additional profit by tempting their visitors to dine and shop on-site. This is not unlike other attractions, such as the CN Tower, which advertise add-ons (i.e. access to other platforms) and package the attraction with unique dining experiences (i.e. meals at the 360 Restaurant). This is the Experience Economy at work in the historic house museums of Canada. Art, architecture and history are fused with food, retail pleasures and nature and become photogenic backgrounds for social and celebratory events. The house museum offers experientialized goods and cultural/consumer experiences that visitors are willing to pay for.

Figure 3.11: A view of Bellevue House’s visitor centre. Figure 3.12: The Restaurant at Lougheed House (Photo by author, 29 September 2012). (Photo by author, 13 February 2013).

Figure 3.13: The gift shop at Rutherford House Figure 3.14: Heritage House Museum’s gift shop (Photo by author, 23 February 2013). (Photo by author, 1 October 2012).

Unfortunately, these additions seldom support conservation aims. Restaurants and tea rooms often necessitate a strict and supervised division between the dining areas and the

restored interiors. Food attracts pests and spills damage artifacts.469 _{Making room for modern}

amenities often means altering the original structures—widening doors, constructing additions or forsaking exhibition areas. That is, attending to the visitor can compromise the historical integrity of the house by requiring its modification rather than its preservation.

The extension of Pine and Gilmore’s arguments to the world of museums has implications for the visitor experience as well as the museum’s sense of its obligation to its collections. Although a commercial realm that produces experiences through simulation and illusions does not need to address the topic of conservation in the same way, if museums are going to provide such experiences they must consider the potential costs to their artifacts.470

Museums that inhabit historical architectures must be even more cautious than those contained in purpose-built contemporary frames. Embracing such ideas may prove harmful to the commemorated structures. Considering their application to house museums in particular, it should be acknowledged that preparing a designated historical environment for interaction and enhanced experiences is a very different task than constructing a simulated environment with the same aim.

Management teams at house museums across Canada are aware that they put their collections at risk by experientializing their spaces.471 _{Nevertheless, making money can be a}

matter of life or death. Many are not sustainable strictly through grant monies or

governmental budgets. They rely on their “feet through the door” earnings as well as income generated through programmes and events. As governments at all levels make cuts, house

469 _{These ideas will be explored in more detail below.}

470 _{Such considerations seem to take place in the application of the ideas more frequently than in the}

formulation of them. That is, in the museums rather than the scholarship. Mark Sandberg suggests that at natural history, folk-ethnographic and open-air museums “there is an allegiance to the object and original space” (Mark B. Sandberg, Living Pictures, Missing Persons: Mannequins, Museums and Modernity (Princeton, NJ; Oxford, Oxon.: Princeton University Press, 2003), 7). Has their allegiance changed?

471 _{For example, the staff at Roedde House Museum (Vancouver, BC) has drawn streams of visitors to the site}

by hosting small-scale productions/plays such as DEBTS (17 Oct. to 3 Nov. 2012). Unfortunately, in making space for the actors, crews and audiences the house and its contents become stressed.

museums are being prompted to look at and adopt business models that generate profit and support sustainability. In such a climate, this community of small museums does not lightly disregard advice about approaches for financial gain. While some house museums—because of a vibrant location, devoted community following or modest endowment—might not feel the effects of a few unsatisfied visitors, a positive visitor experience is generally considered a requirement for survival. There are cases where ignoring the wants of the contemporary consumer or museum visitor would mean the closure of a historic house museum and the deterioration of its contained collections. A house museum in this predicament need only choose between the destruction of its artifacts by use or by the neglect that results from a lack of financial means.

If Canadian house museums have incorporated more visitor spaces, they have also opened more of their historic rooms to the public’s exploration. Spaces inaccessible to the visitor, rooms closed off for conservation or safety reasons, can be construed as denied experiences. Without seeing the interiors—greeted only by rope barriers or sealed doors— the visitor is left to wonder which aspects of the complete experience are being missed. What lies in the loft of the Whyte House? What do the “Employees Only” areas of Laurier House look like? What views can be appreciated from Roedde House’s rotunda? Many house museums in Canada struggle with limitations of space (especially in relation to storage and staff facilities) making non-exhibition areas necessary. Nevertheless, the unsatisfied curiosity