Beyond the constructivist museum: Guided interaction through an exhibition interface

In a recent exhibition, the curatorial team used a visitor-exhibition interface to guide interaction, providing viewers the information and support necessary to engage with the artworks and generate personally relevant meanings. An earlier exhibition project on Chican@ art informed our work. At that time, we included visual referents in the form of labeled thumbnail images to enable visitors to identify traditional Mexican, mainstream U.S., and Chican@ imagery that Mexican American artists used to express their identities. In this paper, we introduce guided interaction as a step beyond the constructivist museum and detail how we use la lotería, a popular Mexican game similar to bingo, to encourage visitors to explore themes and visual traditions in an exhibition.