Top 5 Museum Market Integrators of 2015

These innovative, market-leading firms offer advice on how to stay at the forefront of this experience-centric vertical.>

CI Staff

Demand for museum integration seemed to be slowing down at the beginning of 2015, said Electrosonic CEO Jim Bowie during CI and NSCA’s annual Business Outlook webcast earlier this year, but that hasn’t stopped firms like his and these other market leaders from continuing to do impressive work in museums.

It’s a market in which the stakes are raised for integrators. Museums, nervous about losing the next generation of customers, are often moving toward interactive technology to better engage young visitors. These five integration firms are not only able to deliver but do so within the market’s notoriously rigid project schedules.

Evolving Challenges

Many museum projects take place in old buildings or otherwise hallowed grounds with inherent challenges. No setting speaks more profoundly than where Electrosonic worked on the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.

“This was a very large museum project located several stories underground, which made it a bit of a logistical challenge,” said project manager Jackson Benedict. “The site is spread out over nearly eight acres, so just getting from one side to the other took a long time.”

Working in New York City is “always a challenge,” he said, mentioning the ability of getting equipment where it needs to be by truck and ensuring they maintain good relationships with the various trades in the city. Because of the museum’s underground location, there was no cellular phone service in case someone forgot something or needed to get a message to someone who wasn’t working on the project at the time, says Benedict.

There was also no elevator on the site until close to opening day, making the coordination of freight deliveries even more challenging, he says. “We became very aware of having everything we need,” says Benedict.

Electrosonic put an emphasis on making sure the projection met the design intent of the project, says Benedict. That meant ensuring hidden projectors, unique angles and other one-of-a-kind aspects were done to perfection, he says.

“We had to make sure all of the projectors fit the way they were supposed to and the image was the right size to be seen,” says Benedict.

In some ways, an effective museum integrator is defined by how well it can rise to the challenges posed by the unique environments in which the technology is to be deployed. In Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum, integrator Westbury National created a unique pedestrian tunnel video wall that became an integration focus.

Images and content displayed in the tunnel are among the first things visitors encounter walking from a parking garage and it sets an impressive stage for all of the other stunning, colorful art and artifacts to be found inside. The tunnel also proved to be among the most challenging aspects.

Apart from the technical nature of seamlessly blending 11 projectors, the team had to take into account the hallway’s sloping walls (the ceiling becomes lower as visitors near the museum entrance), concealing the projectors, and providing for ventilation and maintenance of the projectors.

Hidden behind the wall opposite the projection, a hard-to-spot cutout allows for the projection mirror system to work; meanwhile, other design elements extract heat away to ensure system longevity and enable access for chores like swapping out projector lamps, according to senior project manager Doug Wildeboer.

The More Things Change …

As much as museum technology has evolved, the essence of being a museum integrator hasn’t changed all that much since Videosonic launched three-and-a-half decades ago.

“Clients demand the same thing as they have demanded since day one: a strong relationship with a skilled AV company that provides consistent service and reliable systems year after year,” says Glenn Polly, Videosonic’s president.

Last year CI stumbled upon a Denmark-based integration firm that is doing dynamic work in the museum market. For the second straight year Stouenborg cracks our top five list with an approach that is unheard of in the North American market.

In a nut shell, says Anders Jorgensen, “We have found a solution where we both work as advisor and integrators and because we know in both worlds we are chosen as a main leader in museums in Denmark.”

While being an integrator who advises is nothing new, that’s just where it begins for Stouenborg. “It’s difficult to compare what we do with how the [North American] market works,” Jorgensen says.

Even so, there are lessons to be learned from a unique approach that involves Stouenborg’s customers disclosing their budgets early in the sales process.

“Instead of saying, ‘This will cost $25,000 to do,’ we’ll ask them how much their budget is,” he says. “We can give them advice based on what they can budget and explain at that point how much of it needs to go toward service.”

With only six employees you’d think service would be a challenge for Stouenborg, but Jorgensen says his firm employs over 180 contractors per year in large part to support its service contracts. The nature of those contractors is discussed during the budget conversation.

The customers will learn, for instance, how much technical expertise it will get access to as a result of its service budget — they can choose to be supported by fewer contractors with high levels of technical expertise or more contractors with fewer credentials.

“It’s a completely different way of thinking.”

Download the complete report: Meet the 2015 CI Industry Leaders.

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