Creating a new history museum : mapping visitors' expectations and needs

The aim of this study was to describe how a new exhibition about modern history was created and which new approaches were used: such as interdisciplinary teams, mapping visitors' expectations or using research for better exhibition planning. The new exhibition is a pivotal part of the Memory of Nations Institute (MNI) founded by Post Bellum, a nonprofit organization with a 20-yearplus history of recording witnesses' memories of historical events from throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. During the design process we applied a visitor-centered approach: we asked visitors what their expectations about this kind of project were and which cultural habits they brought to museums from their previous visits. These research questions were answered via a quantitative survey completed by 808 respondents. We recorded visitors' overall needs which showed that they spent approximately 1–2 hours in museums visited; they came with another person; with increasing age, their willingness to interact with exhibitions decreased; and we discovered preferences regarding particular historic topics. In order to obtain more detailed data we also conducted semi-structured interviews with respondents who originally come from different countries but currently live in the Czech Republic (16). We did similar interviews with Czech respondents (10). This research provided useful information about visitors' general habits in the Czech Republic, influenced the exhibition design and helped with dicision-making process.