Narrative Beyond Artefact in Exhibition Design

Exhibitions have undergone a shift from being presentation oriented to visitors’ experience focused. Visitors associate themselves with stories stronger than other methods of absorbing information. Therefore, museums and galleries invite specialists from film/theater industries to design exhibitions for enhancing experiences in space. Bal points out the potential of merging these two disciplines by analyzing an exhibition through film criticism, mise-en-scene, which shares similar methods to exhibition design techniques but has wider perspectives in supporting the completion of the narrative. This research investigates the possibilities of applying mise-en-scene as an exhibition planning tool for narrative based exhibitions. Two self-curated exhibitions explored the benefits and challenges for the application of this film technique using an action research methodology. The intent of this research is to offer insights into the cross-disciplinary merger in exhibition design, additionally, evidence of its possibilities and limitations is provided