Videos Archives - Paul Orselli

Just One Thing about Exhibits!

Paul Orselli Talks Museum Exhibit FAQs TOO!

The Solo Exhibit Designer's Survival Guide October 13, 2025
Let's set the scene: You're the "exhibit team." Not part of the team—you ARE the team. Content research, design concept, fabrication planning, vendor coordination, installation supervision, and probably writing the press release, too. Your business cards should just say "Department of Everything."Sound familiar? Welcome to the reality of small museums, where "we need a new […]
POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.)
How Do You Design One Space That Works for All Ages? October 4, 2025
Here's a question that keeps exhibit designers up at night: How do you create a single museum experience that genuinely engages a curious five-year-old, their design-savvy parent, and their retired grandparent—all at the same time, without patronizing any of them?The answer isn't "dumb it down for kids" or "add a separate kids' corner." The secret […]
POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.)
The Room(s) Where It Happened ... September 24, 2025
Here's something that museums can give you that Artificial Intelligence or Virtual Reality can't touch -- the literal "room where it happened."As someone who was born and raised in Detroit, it was incredibly powerful to stand inside "Studio A" at the Motown Museum, where amazing musicians like Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, and Marvin Gaye created […]
POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.)
Museum Work as (Quiet) Resistance September 11, 2025
You know that moment when a board member suggests you "tone down" that civil rights exhibition? Or when a donor hints that your climate science display might be "too political"? Or when local politicians start making noise about your programming choices?Welcome to the front lines of cultural resistance.Guess what? Our work is inherently political. Every object we choose to […]
POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.)
The Secret Sauce of High-Quality Museums: Internal Capacity August 29, 2025
Here's something I've learned after years in the trenches of exhibit design and development: all truly high-quality museums share one critical characteristic. It's not their flashy architecture, their famous collections, or even their generous budgets. It's something far more fundamental.High-quality museums have strong internal capacity.Now, I'm not saying these museums create everything internally—that would be […]
POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.)
Postcards from the Future! August 20, 2025
Last month, during a workshop in Bulgaria, I did an activity called "Postcards from the Future!"It allowed workshop participants to synthesize some of the work we did earlier in the week and to share a future goal related to the workshop content with a partner.Basically, each participant chatted about their goals, and then had a […]
POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.)
Museum Materials Hacks: When Home Depot Meets High-Touch Design August 11, 2025
Today, we're diving into the delightfully scrappy world of unconventional exhibit materials. When creativity kicks into overdrive, and the hardware store becomes your new best friend. Because sometimes the best exhibit solutions are hiding in aisle 7, next to the paint brushes.Here are some of my favorite "Wait, That's Not What It's For" materials:Pool NoodlesThose colorful […]
POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.)

The Solo Exhibit Designer's Survival Guide

Let's set the scene: You're the "exhibit team." Not part of the team—you ARE the team. Content res...

How Do You Design One Space That Works for All Ages?

Here's a question that keeps exhibit designers up at night: How do you create a single museum experi...

The Room(s) Where It Happened ...

Here's something that museums can give you that Artificial Intelligence or Virtual Reality can't tou...

Museum Work as (Quiet) Resistance

You know that moment when a board member suggests you "tone down" that civil rights exhibition?&nbsp...

The Secret Sauce of High-Quality Museums: Internal Capacity

Here's something I've learned after years in the trenches of exhibit design and development: all tru...