The idea that foods can be grouped into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ was explicitly stated as
erroneous on one of the text panels in the exhibition that we studied—although in over
100 visitors interviewed it was never mentioned and the majority saw the exhibition as
doing precisely what it criticised. While it would be wrong to imply from this that visitors
do not read text panels at all—an argument that is often made but that some research has
contradicted, arguing in part that people are much better at reading quickly on the move
and from a distance than is often assumed (McManus 1989)—it was clear in our study
that they tended to do so much more at the beginning of the exhibition and that overall
the physical exhibits themselves commanded more attention and shaped visitors’
immediate post-exhibition narratives much more than did the text. Falk and Dierking’s
observation that ‘Visitors tend to be very attentive to objects, and only occasionally
attentive to labels’ (1992, p. 77) was born out. Just which kinds of physical exhibits elicit
particular attention is, however, an area that requires more research. The Science
Museum research found that while most time in the exhibition was spent at hands-on
exhibits, traditional static exhibits—in this case, especially four reconstructed kitchens
over the ages—elicited most discussion during the exhibition and in post-exhibition
interviews. This seemed to be due to the fact that their juxtaposition itself invited
comparison; and it was also because they easily acted as prompts for memory narratives
(‘We used to have one of those