Turning visitors into users. Strategies for the museum in the 21st century

Our museums are in crisis - assailed on two sides by changes that threaten the very core of the institutions mission. On the one hand, museums, the repositories of the real are becoming victims of their own success. The enormous number of visitors drawn to large museums by 'blockbuster' exhibitions and aggressive marketing now makes it almost impossible for those visitors to experience the museum collection in any but the most trivial sense. On the other hand, many smaller museums are seeing visitor numbers drop drastically, as the museum visit is considered to be 'old-fashioned: and many new educational opportunities formerly provided by the museum visit are now available, at home, on the computer. It is the position of this paper that to survive into the next century, our museums must augment those experiences which can only be had in situ, while aggressively exploiting new approaches to informal learning.