When I began this article, my original aim was to try to make some progress towards
developing what I called an ‘affective syntax’ of exhibitions. I have, however, become more wary of specifying the ‘affective’ as a distinctive realm, as explained above.
Moreover, I have developed reservations about whether the idea of such a ‘syntax’ will
ever be possible. Exhibitions are, perhaps, too complex, consisting of multiple elements,
to be formalised into sets of common rules. Nevertheless, this does not mean that there
should not be more attention given to trying to understand ‘how exhibitions work’. Here
I have looked especially at studies which are based on empirical research with visitors. As
these are necessarily about specific exhibitions, alongside any more theoretical aims, they
usually provide case material of varying degrees of richness. The value of such case
material should not be underestimated. For example, the ‘case-near’ design observation
that Ciolfi and Bannon (2003) make about a cabinet of curiosities needing to have some
of its drawers left open to entice visitors to open others, should prompt designers of other
exhibitions to think carefully about how visitors can be encouraged to interact with a
particular exhibit. Building up a bigger ‘bank’ of visitor studies that is drawn on to really
play back into exhibition design is vital here. Too often, once an exhibition is finished
everybody wants to just move onto the next project and no in-depth visitor research is
conducted. Such evaluative work as is done is more likely to be thought of in terms of
judging and perhaps minor ‘fixing’ of that finished exhibition rather than as a tale for the
future. Too often, exhibitions are created with very little awareness of such studies as
there have been, many museums simply relying on observations from their own
institution. Moreover, even where there is more systematic attempt to conduct visitor
research, there is, I think, sometimes a fetishisation of methodology and evaluation per se
rather than on building up sets of ideas and insights. So visitor studies units in museums
or outside them are more likely to offer expertise in methods of evaluation—summative
and formative—than to act as repositories of examples and ideas. The fact that these are
generally institutionally disconnected from designers also means that there is often
insufficient attention to the matters that could really influence design, and that the visual
and other expertise of designers is rarely i ncorporated into the studies.