The role of design in developing exhibition and display for Museums in Kenya

Abstract

Museum exhibition is essentially a form of visual communication. It achieves this through the museum objects and works of art, aided by the use of graphics and written information in the form of text panels, captions and individual object labels. The ultimate intention should be to communicate the message of the display or exhibition in a clear and precise visual and written language. Such language should be easy to understand at whatever level or levels of interpretation, just as in a good newspaper or magazine. The purpose of this study is to establish whether the current display of artefacts in museum exhibitions is ideal for learning. The study focuses on labeling, circulation and display considerations in museums. The methodology takes the particular form of a case study. The target population of this study was visitors in the two museums, exhibition designers and curators. The findings point out that two obvious factors in capturing attention are the salience or distinctiveness of the label and the traffic flow patterns in the environment. The two factors in this thesis determine the possibility of interaction between visitors, exhibits and display. Thus design does have a crucial role to play in developing museums in Kenya