How Do We Know What We Know About How We Think About Photography?

Abstract

What if we, museum professionals, trusted our visitors to be critical in their own consumption of interpretation? Or better yet, what if we equipped visitors with the critical thinking skills to do so? Across disciplines, critical thinking is widely agreed upon as a valuable skill directly useful in every facet of our lives (Bowers, 2006, p.10). However, it is a difficult skill to impart (Rudd, 2007, p.46). It takes time to slow down, to assess credibility, to ask why things are the way they are. Museums could create that time and space. In fact, museums are particularly well situated as publicly trusted institutions considered to be credible sources of information (Dilenschneider, 2019). Yet they haven't. Very few museum exhibits include aspects of critical thinking. Still fewer exhibits are designed with critical thinking at the forefront. The purpose of this project was to create an exhibit for a history museum that is intentionally designed to foster critical thinking. This exhibit brief was designed to equip visitors with three specific critical thinking skills: to apply knowledge to new situations, to consider different viewpoints, and to evaluate both options and evidence. Each critical thinking skill is accompanied by a corresponding hands-on interactive where the visitor has an immediate opportunity to practice that specific skill while still in the exhibit.