I ❤️ Less is More

Happy Valentine’s Day!  As many of you know, the idiom “Less is More” is attributed to minimalist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.  I am grateful to him for coining the phrase and inspiring me to adopt it into my Intentional Practice.  Intentional Practice has two important guiding beliefs, both of which are hard to practice, but I ❤️ them anyway because of the conceptual and behavioral challenges they present.  I am not one to shy away from pursuing difficult tasks; in fact, they inspire me to learn new ways of thinking, which in turn may push me towards new actions.  I will save the other belief for another post (for the curious-minded—it is “Museums can’t be all things to all people”); today, the three simple words noted above—Less is More—are particularly important. 

The New Gallery, Berlin

 Simple words, only three of them, and all with so few letters, echo the point. Here are two ways of how Less is More supports Intentional Practice thinking (I’ll try to be brief):

 1.  Intentional practice planning and evaluation activities support achieving impact. As such, to measure impact through supporting outcomes among visitors, visitors will have had to experience the museum’s big idea deeply so they can consider and process it and then know it.  Too much noise results in fuzzy and undistinguishable experiences.  Not nonsense necessarily, but the visitor may not be able to make sense of the experience if they feel overwhelmed.  Research has demonstrated that when visitors walk into a space, they begin their sense-making journey.  If programs and exhibitions focus on one idea and go deep with their one big idea, there is a greater chance that visitors will experience more. 

One idea—not two or three—one.  One idea presented in a multitude of ways through a variety of mediums reinforces the one idea.  From a planning perspective, the one idea serves as a guidepost for disciplined, and sometimes ruthless, decision making.  From an evaluation perspective, visitors will be better able to process their experience because there are fewer ideas; in turn, they will be experiencing the idea deeply, and as such, the evaluation process will have a better chance of detecting the effect of their experience. 

 2.  Less is More is also meaningful because it suggests that numbers may not equal success.  For too long, museums’ focus on attendance suggests that high numbers are an indicator of quality.  A number is a number.  If numbers were important, I am compelled to ask, “What number is enough”?  What if success were measured by the quality of the visitor experience?  What if “More” came to mean quality of experience whereby visitors were describing the ways in which the museum did (or did not) help them understand the ramifications of climate change (for example)?  What if people visited, and those who did spoke meaningfully about their experience and how it resonated with them?  Let’s connect the visitor experience to point #1: what if “Less” was presented, thereby creating physical and conceptual space for the idea to sink in, and in doing so, the experience became “More”?  The “Less” part of the phrase invites depth, and experiences become “More.” 

 The New Gallery, Berlin. https://www.dwell.com/article/ludwig-mies-van-der-rohe-architect-19dd30ba