Telling the Story Through People
by USS Constitution Museum Team
- Tell the human story. People connect to people.
- Present narratives in ways that foster personal connections between visitors and the stories we have to share.
- First person text panels and cut outs convey to visitors that history is about real people and real objects, some of which are right here!
- Use real individuals and related objects to help transport visitors into the past, allow them to make personal connections, and enjoy an emotional as well as an intellectual experience.
A Sailor's Life for Me? uses life-size human cutouts and first person text panels
Telling the story through people
Our exhibition set out to reinterpret CONSTITUTION by offering the human perspective. This interpretive strategy resonated with our family audience. By personalizing the story and telling it through people, our visitors connect on a personal level and can feel empathy for what the sailors went through and as a result are better able to imagine themselves in the sailors' shoes. To help bring the crew to life, full-scale photo cutouts visually "people" the exhibit and the text is written as if visitors are hearing sailors' stories first hand. Because we illustrate a diverse range of crewmembers and the families they left behind, minorities, women, and children who may not expect to see themselves in our exhibition can make emotional and intellectual connections.
