Holding one experience
across three sites.

The Eight Directions of the Wind unfolded across three environments: the Art Gallery, the Chinese Garden, the Japanese Garden. Each one had its own pace, its own cultural associations, and its own relationship to time.

How do you create the conditions for people to slow down and truly pay attention?

My role was to build an evaluation framework upstream, before design decisions were finalized, before the institution had locked in its approach: defining what a successful experience would feel like, and how the institution would know when it was happening.

Most evaluation enters after an exhibition opens. This one was embedded into planning while decisions were still being made.

Working across curatorial, education, and leadership teams, I translated Edmund de Waal's thematic intent into shared institutional goals.

Because the framework was developed before key exhibition decisions were finalized, it shaped the experience as it unfolded. It became a shared decision-making tool, helping teams align programming, interpretation, and visitor experience around the same definition of success.

The central design question: how do you protect curatorial intent across three environments with entirely different pacing, materials, and cultural contexts?

1. Bring evaluation into planning.

   Most evaluation starts after an exhibition opens. I built the framework while decisions were still being made, so it could shape the experience instead of only measuring it.

2. Translate the artist’s intent into shared goals.

   I turned de Waal’s themes of migration, material memory, and belonging into goals that curatorial, education, and leadership teams could all plan toward.

3. Hold continuity without flattening difference.

   Each site kept its own pace and character, while the framework connected all three through one definition of success.

4. Match the method to the environment.

   Observation methods changed with each site, and conversations stayed open so visitors could construct their own meaning.

The multi-site structure was inherent to the work. De Waal’s themes needed room to play out differently in each environment, so the framework set shared goals for visitors and for the institution while letting each site keep its own character.

Programming was treated as part of the experience. What happened in the galleries, in the gardens, and around the artist talks was evaluated as one system.

The framework made the intended visitor experience a shared planning question.

Because it was developed while the exhibition was still being planned, it gave teams a common way to discuss sequencing, programming, and the balance between visitor and institutional goals.