How Museums Tell Stories: An Interview with Amelia Wong

ABSTRACT In this article, museum exhibit developer Katherine Whitney sits down with Amelia Wong, User Experience Manager at the J. Paul Getty Trust, about her forthcoming book How Museums Tell Stories, (Routledge, forthcoming). Recent research and literature assert that as humans we are “wired for story.” And we’ve seen the use of storytelling skyrocket everywhere, from social media to marketing to museum exhibitions. But do we know we mean when we talk about story? Wong asserts that if we in the museum field are going to use storytelling effectively, we have to understand what story is, and what it isn’t.