interpretation

Beyond the Basics
Olivia Buck
The British Museum
Much has been written about accessible text, regarding word counts, active rather than
passive tense, straightening out sub-clauses and so on. This is now becoming embedded
in good museum writing practice. At the British Museum, our aim is to maximize
visitors’ engagement with our collections. Beyond the basic guidelines outlined above
and in the light of the results of recent visitor research and evaluation we have begun to
look again at the way in which we write interpretive text.
This article focuses on writing text for permanent galleries, rather than temporary
exhibitions, and uses the recent Japan Gallery as a case study. The article also aims to
provide some practical tips for writing and the interpretation process.
Role of the Interpretation Officer
The interpretation officer is a key member of the core project team for all exhibition
and gallery projects. He/she works with the curator in the initial stages to scope the key
messages and narrative of the gallery or exhibition. Formative evaluation will then be
carried out to gauge visitors’ interests and levels of understanding of the subject. The
results of this evaluation inform our decisions about what texts should be written and
enables the interpretation officer to brief the curator before they begin text writing. He/
she then edits the texts to ensure they support the agreed key messages and themes and
are intellectually accessible to visitors. The interpretation officer also works closely with
the graphic and three-dimensional designers to ensure that the location of objects and
panel texts and design encourages visitor engagement with the objects.
Permanent galleries and paying exhibitions
The results of our visitor evaluations have shown that visitor behavior is significantly
different in permanent galleries to paid exhibitions, above all in terms of the amount
of time spent. In paid exhibitions visitors will follow the exhibition narrative, read the
subject panels and labels and engage with other interpretive media. Visitors tend to
spend between 30 to 90 minutes in paid exhibitions. By contrast, visitor dwell time in