Worcester Art Museum: Renaissance [remastered] Gallery Evaluation

We are a group of WPI students that worked with the Worcester Art Museum to compare the two Renaissance galleries. One favors a traditional approach while the other boasts new iPads, unique seating, and book carts.

The Worcester Art Museum’s ultimate goal is to become a cultural focus of New England. In order to appeal to a wider audience, the museum wants to employ different educational and interactive features. Exhibits must make core clientele feel comfortable while still engaging new visitors. Their attempt to address this was implemented in their [remastered] Renaissance gallery. The staff would also like to focus on engaging more of the college students in the immediate Worcester area.

Our Goals

The goal of our project at the Worcester Art Museum was to improve the quality of the Worcester Art Museum galleries by assessing and analyzing the educational value and appeal of their two different Renaissance galleries using patron and community based data. The purpose was to compare the patron’s experience in the Worcester Art Museum’s traditional Renaissance gallery with their [remastered] exhibit. From this goal we developed three main objectives.

• Understand the Renaissance gallery design motives
• Assess current and potential clientele
• Make recommendations that adhere to the long term vision and mission of the Worcester Art Museum

With these, we were able to provide a set of recommendations to the Worcester Art Museum staff. Using this information, their galleries can improve with the potential to broaden their clientele and maintain their core audience. 

Student Researchers

Final Report