John H. Falk

Since the mid-20th century, attendance at museums throughout America has dropped drastically, resulting in museums that cannot fulfill their educational missions and leaving museums faced with difficult decisions of how to balance stable futures with past methodologies. In this book, Falk and Sheppard propose that one reason for the decline of museums is that they are a remnant of the Industrial Age that has not aged well in the modern Knowledge Age. The authors present dynamic new business show more models for museums, models that focus on visitor experience and staff involvement as keys to a successful museum.

Although I know that museums must alter current operating models in order to survive in a weak economy, I did not find this book particularly helpful. This is mostly because I disagree with most of the authors’ fundamental arguments about what museums should do and be. I believe that in an age where people seem to prefer entertainment to education, museums need to maintain a high standard of learning rather than embrace the latest technological gadgets in order to draw a larger crowd. show less

The first book to take a "visitor's eye view" of the museum visit when it was first published in 1992, The Museum Experience revolutionized the way museum professionals understand their constituents. Falk and Dierking have updated this essential reference, incorporating advances in research, theory, and practice in the museum field over the last twenty years. Written in clear, non-technical style, The Museum Experience Revisited paints a thorough picture of why people go to museums, what show more they do there, how they learn, and what museum practitioners can do to enhance these experiences. show less

Huxley's bleak future prophesized, in Brave New World was a capitalist civilization, which had been reconstituted through scientific and psychological engineering, a world in which people are genetically designed to be passive and useful to the ruling class. Huxley opens the book by allowing the reader to eavesdrop on the tour of the Fertilizing Room of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning center, where the high tech reproduction takes place. Bernard Marx (one of the characters in show more the story) seems alone, harboring an ill-defined longing to break free. Satirical and disturbing, Brave New World is set some 600 years into the future. Reproduction is controlled through genetic engineering, and people are bred into a rigid class system. As they mature, they are conditioned to be happy with the roles that society has created for them. Concepts such as family, freedom, love, and culture are considered grotesque. show less

The first book to take a "visitor's eye view" of the museum visit when it was first published in 1992, The Museum Experience revolutionized the way museum professionals understand their constituents. Falk and Dierking have updated this essential reference, incorporating advances in research, theory, and practice in the museum field over the last twenty years. Written in clear, non-technical style, The Museum Experience Revisited paints a thorough picture of why people go to museums, what show more they do there, how they learn, and what museum practitioners can do to enhance these experiences. show less