Evaluation of "Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond": An Exhibition at the Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans, Final Report

This is an overview of audience research and evaluation pertaining to the exhibition "Living With Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond". The process of investigating the perceptions of audiences and visitors was mostly designed to inform the interpretive planning process. Then, after the exhibit opened to the public in late October 2010, the intent was to describe and assess the experiences of visitors. Ten audience/visitor studies were conducted over a seven-year period, five of which were designed to inform the planning process and five of which were conducted after the exhibition opened to investigate the experiences of visitors and community audiences regarding the completed exhibition. In addition, a dissemination workshop was held with an experienced group of museum professionals from around the country, seeking to use the evaluation findings to benefit other museums. During the planning process, the audience research activities made several useful contributions. ‘Front end’ research identified a framework for different components of the potential audience, based on their relationship to the storm (directly affected, indirectly affected, not affected) – a framework that turned out to be useful for the rest of the project. Storyline Testing revealed likely strengths in visitor understanding of interpretive messages, including the science behind what happened. Formative evaluation of computer-based media indicated that children were likely to be engaged and interested in hurricane science, and would understand things about levees and storm formation that they had not understood before. After the exhibition opened, the audience research process provided detailed descriptions of visitors’ use and perceptions of the four main rooms, investigated and documented extensive STEM learning on multiple topics (especially about levee engineering and wetlands), discovered that the great majority of visitors to the exhibition were tourists and that few residents were visiting, that residents of the local area who normally visit museums were ambivalent about visiting this exhibition but many who could be interested were not aware of it, and that the experience was emotional and very worthwhile for local and tourist audiences who saw it. A topic of special interest in this process was the character of affective experience (feelings, emotions) and possibly its relationship to learning; a considerable amount of data about affect was collected, leading to the conclusion that affect is an interesting factor in understanding visitor experiences, but does not have a simple direct relationship with learning content.

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