Hannah: 11/9/21 Reading Reflection

I quite enjoyed the readings this week. I found them as a whole easier to follow than our previous readings, and was intrigued by Falk’s assertion that museums have been using the wrong metrics to assess their visitors. His premise seems relatively straightforward: everyone will have some reason to visit a museum, and their satisfaction with the visit depends on how well the museum fit their needs in the time they were there. I would not have thought to tie these motivations to facets of identity, but Falk did a great job of linking the two together, as he explained, “Identities are assumed to motivate behaviors. The resulting behaviors provide feedback which then can reaffirm that the individual is the kind of person defined by those identities” (Falk 2009, 76). 

It makes complete sense when I think about it—when any experience is especially positive or negative, it’s often because it is reinforcing or threatening (respectively) some aspect of one’s identity. The first thing I thought of is how badly I feel when I have a disappointing experience at a restaurant I scoped out online. I consider myself reasonably good at picking out new restaurants, so every time it doesn’t go as well as I hoped, I feel somewhat personally responsible. On the flip side, I love the feeling of picking out a restaurant that everyone ends up enjoying.

I am writing this blog post before giving out my survey, but based on general observation, I’d presume that the majority of our adult visitors attend the museum primarily as Facilitators for their children. When I talk to adults who have visited MOXI several times, they almost always talk about how much their kids always love it. While this is anecdotal, it reminds me of an interview participant Falk referenced in “Understanding Museum Visitors’ Motivations and Learning,” who said, “I remember best [what] I did with my kid” (108). I would hypothesize that if we were to survey some of our adult visitors long-term, their primary recollections would also be of their kids’ favorite exhibits. I would also posit that a fair number of our visitors fall in the Experience Seeker category, both from out of town and locally. As one example, I was talking to two adult visitors last week who said they were from Santa Barbara, but had recently been wanting to “try out all the museums in town,” which is what led them to MOXI. 

I can absolutely see how one’s identity would influence one’s decision to visit a museum like MOXI. If you see yourself as someone who “tries new things,” you might visit with Experience Seeker motivation. The decision to visit as a Facilitator almost certainly reflects one’s feelings and identity as a parent, or as a good host to an out-of-town visitor. The one limitation I can find with Falk’s framework is that it is difficult or impossible to apply to young children. In a way this is not a problem at all, because kids do not yet have the ability to arrange a visit to the museum of their own accord. In other words, even if they are highly motivated to visit MOXI, this will not lead to a museum visit if their parents/guardians are not also motivated to act as Facilitators for them. However, as MOXI is a museum primarily geared towards children, I think it would be interesting to see a framework that could apply to a wider range of our visitors.