Editing Museum (section)

==Exhibition design==
{{Main|Exhibit design}}

[[File:Dresden - Japanese tourist with baby - 1786.jpg|thumb|left|Paintings arranged in groupings in the "salon style"]]
Most mid-size and large museums employ [[exhibit design]] staff for graphic and environmental design projects, including exhibitions. In addition to traditional 2-D and 3-D designers<ref>{{cite journal|title=Exhibit supports for sandstone artifacts designed through topology optimization and additive manufacturing techniques|journal= Journal of Cultural Heritage|date=2022|doi= 10.1016/j.culher.2022.04.008|last1= Barbieri|first1= Loris|last2= Fuoco|first2= Fabrizio|last3= Bruno|first3= Fabio|last4= Muzzupappa|first4= Maurizio|volume= 55|pages= 329–338|s2cid= 248439991}}</ref> and architects, these staff departments may include audio-visual specialists, software designers, audience research, evaluation specialists, writers, editors, and preparators or art handlers. These staff specialists may also be charged with supervising contract design or production services. The exhibit design process builds on the [[Interpretive planning|interpretive plan]] for an exhibit, determining the most effective, engaging and appropriate methods of communicating a message or telling a story. The process will often mirror the architectural process or schedule, moving from conceptual plan, through schematic design, design development, contract document, fabrication, and installation. Museums of all sizes may also contract the outside services of exhibit fabrication businesses.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Taheri|first1=Babak|last2=Jafari|first2=Aliakbar|last3=O'Gorman|first3=Kevin|title=Keeping your audience: Presenting a visitor engagement scale|journal=Tourism Management|volume=42|pages=321–329|doi=10.1016/j.tourman.2013.12.011|year=2014|url=https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/46406/4/Taheri_Jafari_O_Gorman_Pre_Print_Draft.pdf|access-date=20 November 2018|archive-date=11 November 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211111120326/https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/46406/4/Taheri_Jafari_O_Gorman_Pre_Print_Draft.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

{{multiple image
| total_width       = 400
| align             = right
| image1            = Museum, Winona Normal School.jpg
| alt1              = Exterior of building
| image2            = Chihuahuita exhibit at the El Paso Museum of History.jpg
| alt2              = Exterior of building
| footer            = Left: "Cabinet of curiosities" style of exhibit, {{Circa|1890}}. Right: Contemporary history exhibit, 2016.
}}

Some museum scholars have even begun to question whether museums truly need artifacts at all. Historian Steven Conn provocatively asks this question, suggesting that there are fewer objects in ''all'' museums now, as they have been progressively replaced by interactive technology.<ref>{{Cite book
| title = Do Museums Still Need Objects?
| last = Conn
| first = Steven
| publisher = University of Pennsylvania Press
| year = 2010
| location = Philadelphia
| page = 26
}}</ref> As educational programming has grown in museums, mass collections of objects have receded in importance. This is not necessarily a negative development; [[Dorothy Canfield Fisher]] observed that the reduction in objects has pushed museums to grow from institutions that artlessly showcased their many artifacts (in the style of early cabinets of curiosity) to instead "thinning out" the objects presented "for a general view of any given subject or period, and to put the rest away in archive-storage-rooms, where they could be consulted by students, the only people who really needed to see them".<ref>{{Cite book
| title = Why Stop Learning?
| last = Canfield Fisher
| first = Dorothy
| publisher = Harcourt
| year = 1927
| location = New York
| pages = 250–251
}}</ref> This phenomenon of disappearing objects is especially present in science museums like the [[Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago)|Museum of Science and Industry]] in [[Chicago]], which have a high visitorship of school-aged children who may benefit more from hands-on interactive technology than reading a label beside an artifact.<ref>{{cite book
| title = Do Museums Still Need Objects?
| last = Conn
| first = Steven
| publisher = University of Pennsylvania Press
| year = 2010
| location = Philadelphia
| page = 265
}}</ref>