The Exhibitionists

Move over Dance Moms and get the hell out of my kitchen Gordan Ramsey! The National Museum Wales and BBC 2 Wales have come together to create a whole new kind of reality television experience, The Exhibitionists, a competition to design and implement an exhibition for the National Museum Cardiff. There are many contestants with creative and new ideas, but only one can win! Read more about it on the walesarts blog here.

I think this is a fantastic idea because not only does it make my inner museum geek very happy, but it also reaches out to a whole new audience. Thousands of viewers who may not already have an interest in museums can now get an in-depth look at what goes into the making of an exhibition. It also has a very strong chance of encouraging more visits to museums from these viewers. Finally a reality TV show I can get behind!

I've noticed, since my time studying in the UK, how the BBC embraces museum institutions in their programing.  Since January 2010 BBC One has broadcasted the popular children's game show, Relic: Guardians of the Museum. This is a behind-the-scenes museum adventure for kids, where the young protagonists have nighttime quests in the British Museum in London. Much of the filming is done on a sound stage, but the British Museum did open its doors for the shooting of several linking scenes.

Another series that I really enjoyed while I lived in Scotland was the BBC Two series Museum of Life. This was also a behind-the-scenes look at another popular British institution, the Natural History Museum in London. With Jimmy Doherty guiding the viewing audience, he took cameras back into areas of the museum your average visitor does not get to see. These are just two examples of BBC museum-centered programs, and I have to say it's one of the things I miss the most about the UK.

There are similar shows in the United States, such as the Travel Channel's Mysteries at the Museum, which goes behind the scenes at multiple museums across the US to examine their most bizarre and intriguing artifacts. Yet, where Museum of Life is a journalistic enterprise that inspires wonder, Mysteries at the Museum is a series that does more to incite intrigue in order to attract more of a Dan-Brown-enthused audience.

The BBC has done a lot more to generate museum-based programming that leans strongly towards education rather than entertainment. Not to say the shows are not entertaining, because they really are. The Exhibitionists is actually a really good example of this, because you'll get the reality TV staples of intense challenges met by multiple characters of varying personalities, while simultaneously learning something about how museums work; about how an exhibition comes to life. It will be both insightful and entertaining.

The difference may be in the public and private nature of the respective channels. The BBC is government funded and thus more prone to develop educational programming. Much of the US television world exists in the private sector, so the shows are all about RATINGS! RATINGS! RATINGS! I think the only exceptions are PBS and the Smithsonian Channel.

So my questions are: Can there be a similar behind-the-scenes televisions series in the United States? Can there be museum shows that are more about education than they are about entertaining or just freaking viewers out? Shows that really encourage a wider audience to visit museums? Are there any  shows that already do this that I have just overlooked? If I have, please do point them out to me.