How to Lay Out your Museum Exhibit Chronologically

Planning an exhibition in a museum can be daunting. What artefacts do you include, and where do you display them? How should you organise your exhibits so that your visitors can fully understand the story you are trying to tell? Is chronology in museums always best?

Luckily for you, here at Proportion London, we have years of experience helping our museum clients with their visual merchandising and supplying mannequins, busts and other display products to boost their visual merchandising. In this article, we will explore the benefits of a chronological exhibit layout and run through some other exhibition space designs if chronological order doesn’t make the most sense for you, so that you can organise your museum layout in a way that makes the most sense for your visitors!

Benefits of a chronological exhibit layout

When exhibition planning, chronology in museums is often a go-to layout. By organising your artefacts in the order that the events happened in, you are able to paint a play-by-play picture of the historical events that happened during the period you’re showcasing. Let’s explore some of the main benefits of organising your museum display in chronological order:

• Creates a sense of journey: By moving your exhibition visitors through different periods, a sense of travel is created. This journey through time builds anticipation and helps them to feel like they are experiencing historical shifts themselves.
• Improves understanding: A chronological museum exhibit design makes the story easy to follow, guiding visitors from one event to the next in an intuitive order. This structure mimics the way history is often taught in schools and universities, which makes it familiar and allows visitors to progressively build their understanding.
• Aids retention and educational value: People tend to remember information better when it’s presented in a logical sequence. Chronology in museums reinforces the order of events, helping visitors remember important details and understand how one event influenced another period.
• Builds emotional connection: Following a timeline within the museum exhibit layout enables visitors to see the cause and effect over time, making historical events feel more impactful. 
• Creates a clear flow: With a clear start and end point, a chronological layout minimises confusion about where to go next. Visitors can move naturally from one museum display to the next, reducing congestion and creating a smoother overall experience.

By structuring your museum display chronologically, you are able to provide your visitors with a more immersive experience that has the ability to both educate and engage. This approach not only brings history to life but also ensures a clear, memorable journey through time.

How to achieve a chronological layout

Now that you know the benefits of a chronological museum layout, you probably want to learn how to mimic it within your exhibition space design. Read on to discover our step-by-step guide to achieving chronology in museums.

Step 1: Define your exhibit’s timeline

When you know your museum topic and period, identify key historical events that you want to include in the exhibit and decide on major milestones to help guide your layout decisions.

Step 2: Plan the exhibition space design and traffic flow

When exhibition planning, it can be easy to get so swept up in choosing what artefacts to display that you forget about ensuring the layout is clear and easy to navigate. To avoid this mistake, make sure that you have a clear navigational plan. Establish an obvious entrance and exit, and arrange open walkways with clear sightlines, signs and floor markers. Not only does this create an intuitive path that guides visitors smoothly through the timeline, but it helps to maintain flow and reduce bottlenecks. 

Divide your museum layout into distinct zones for each period, using colour-coding or decor changes to make transitions between each time zone more obvious. Use mannequins representing historical figures as focal points to highlight key events and pair these with interactive stations to draw attention and encourage more engagement. 

Step 3: Use visual cues and signage

The best museum exhibit layouts don’t just rely on the artefacts to move their visitors through time. Incorporate clear signage, visual markers, and strategic lighting to help guide your visitors along the chronological path and around your museum.

Step 4: Incorporate engaging visual merchandising techniques

We’ve spoken in the past about how visual merchandising can enhance museum exhibition designs. By displaying mannequins in period attire or showcasing artefacts and combining these displays with exhibit graphics, sounds, and interactive technology, you can easily transport your visitors through time in a truly immersive way. 

Group your mannequins together to display artefacts that came from the same place and time, and dress them in period-appropriate attire to bring the historical context to life. Position these groupings in different areas to help smooth the transition between time periods.

By following these tips, you will create a chronological museum display that doesn’t just encourage visitors, but engages them as they travel through time throughout your exhibit.

How else to lay out your exhibit so that it still makes sense

The most important thing to think about when designing your museum exhibit layout is your visitors. What artefact order will work best for them and will leave them with a clear understanding of your museum’s topic?

If you don’t think a chronological museum exhibit design will work for your exhibition and its visitors, there are a number of alternative layouts that you can incorporate instead that will still create a coherent narrative. Let’s explore a few:

• Geographical layouts: If your museum displays artefacts that span a number of different locations or cultures across the world, why not organise your exhibit by geographic region? This will help your visitors to grasp the broader context of events and understand any similarities and differences between artefacts that came from the same area, highlighting advances through time. 
• Thematic grouping: If your museum covers a number of different themes, grouping similar artefacts together can help visitors connect related ideas together, even if they span different periods. Incorporating clear visual cues, such as colour-codes and signage, can help distinguish themes from one another in a clear and obvious manner, creating a seamless museum exhibit layout.
• Story chapters: Dividing the exhibit into chapters focused on specific stories or individuals enables a more immersive storytelling experience. By organising your museum display around these narratives, visitors can gain a better understanding of the story and its context. 

If chronology in museums isn’t for you or your visitors, by planning an exhibition with one of these layout designs, you will still be able to guide your visitors around your museum in a logical and easy-to-understand way.

How Proportion London can help

At Proportion London, we have worked with a number of different museums and retail clients to help them improve their visual merchandising and boost their customer experience. 

Using our range of products and years of expertise, we help our customers to design and create engaging displays and exhibitions. We have different museum specific mannequin and bust ranges available for both purchase and hire, that include body shapes to support different historical time periods.

Get in touch with us today to discuss your requirements and discover how we can help you.