THE AUDIENCE

Museums are becoming much more visitor orientated. Part of this trend is a desire to retain and even increase visitor numbers to justify their existence and generate income, but there also seems to be a real concern for the quality of the visitor experience (Eilean Hooper-Greenhill 1988:

p. 215). The previous chapter illustrated curators' concerns to make

history accessible, using familiar genres to interest the visitor and innovative interpretative techniques to bring their presentations to life and relevant to their audience. The research was interested to see to what extent professionals felt that they were meeting audience needs. Although many museums did carry out visitor surveys, they seemed to provide little real information on whether museums were offering the right product for their public, rather they gave detailed visitor profiles. Many of the interviewees argued that since visitor -numbers remained constant or were Dn the increase, they were giving people what they wanted. Several of the interviewees alluded to positive comments in visitor books or congratulatory letters they received. Others relied on observing visitors in their exhibitions. Richard Doughty commented;

"The main motivation for coming here is simply, unashamedly for

entertainment and enjoyment and the very fact that they g o out of

here bussing and that they are proud of the centre is an indication

that we are giving them what they want" (Doughty 1992).

Both Oakwell Hall and Tolson had done quite detailed visitor surveys to discover whether they were giving people what they wanted. It appeared that their visitors were satisfied with both institutions, fet, as John

Rumsby explained, in the Tolson survey visitors were asked what they would like to see mare of in the Museum and the museum received a different answer in each questionnaire, so he concluded;

"You might say that you are not actually satisfying anybody, because everybody has a different thing about what they want. Another way of looking at it is to say that because we are getting demands for such a wide variety of things, then probably we are getting it about right" (Rums by 1992).

He went on to say that the museum received few complaints, but while he was prepared to acknowledge that this was partly because the museum was giving people what they wanted, he felt it was also because people do not have very high expectations about what they want from museums; "so

what they get here is Ok for them" (Rumsby 1992). This was a theme taken

up by Richard Hall of Y.A.T on Jorvik;

"J don't think that many of them really had a very clear perception of what they were g oing to see before they came, so I don't think we can claim to have fulfilled or not fulfilled their preconceptions, because they probably didn't have many preconceptions as far as I can see" (R.Hall 1992).

Matthew Burnby from the Virksworth Heritage Centre asserted that in general the public was fairly undiscerning and characterised his visitors as;

"Public of all ages 7-to 70 plus, all types of backgrounds, they are in my terms the rubber neckers equally well they might be at Dudley Zoo one day, Alton Towers the next and hopefully here the following day" (Burnby 1992).

Janet Peteman of Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, interviewed in the pilot study, argued that people didn't know what they had come for, and so

"its up to us to try and put into their minds as to what they have come for and to make sure that they go away feeling they have achieved

something" (Peteman 1992). So although curators were constrained to the

perceived clear visitor expectations, ensures that they retain a large degree at freedom in the content and perspective presented to the public. This freedom represents the division between the professional and the lay person. Peter Lewis explained that he was once criticised at a Museum Association Conference for arguing that"the function of a

museum was to give the public what they needed, not what they wanted

(Lewis 1992),

The curator has the knowledge to know what is available for display in an exhibition or display, they have the knowledge to research the

historical background of the objects on display and give them a meaning and value. Armed with this knowledge, the curator has the authority to present their interpretation of the past to the lay person. As Myna Trustram commented; "I think part of our role is to introduce ideas to people and things they didn't k n o w they previously wanted" (Trustram 1992).

It is their role as guardians of society's heritage that provides

curators with the right to ignore to a certain extent the demands of the market. As Martin Watts remarked, curators were also constrained by the nature of their site and collection;

uthey get what they are given in this museum and I presume in a lot

o f other museums because we can only give them what we have got to

give them" (Watts 1992).

By asserting their professional integrity and academic scholarship, the curator avoids the need to provide the purely escapist or entertaining displays, found in other types of visitor attraction. Jane Whittaker argued that it remains a delicate balance;

-J think that more and more these days the emphasis tends to be more and more on entertaining the public and to a certain extent

that is what we want to do here, but sometimes there has to be a compromise between entertainment and what we as curators consider to be more curatorial, in the sense, ot what is right tor the objects in the museum's care" (Whittaker 1992).