The Micro Gallery - Observations from three projects: London; San Diego; Washington D.C

The first Micro Gallery opened at the National Gallery in London on July 21st 1991. The first facility of its kind, it provided visitors with a comprehensive multimedia reference to the Gallery's collection. Since then the author and his colleagues have had the privilege of working on two further projects of a similar nature. The Image Gallery at the San Diego Museum of Art opened on October 26th 1994, the MicroGallery at the National Gallery of Art will be open to the public on October 29th 1995. The concept is simple: provide visitors to a museum or gallery with an enjoyable information system that they can use to find out more about the works on display. The underlying motivation is the belief that people visiting a museum want to find out about the exhibits the more they learn the more they will appreciate and value their experience. So far as we can tell from research and observation this belief is reasonably well justified. Beyond their use of computers all three projects have elemeilts in commcn In what follows we discuss our experience, topic by topic, trying to identify common themes and lessons.