Exhibition frictions
June 2nd, 2009 by Wendy PollockGretchen Jennings, editor of the NAME journal, is looking for leads for an upcoming issue. You can get in touch with her or post here. Here’s Gretchen’s note:
Hello all. For the Spring 2010 issue of “Exhibitionist,” the exhibitions journal that I edit (www.name-aam.org), we want to look at issues that come up over and over again in developing and designing exhibitions – like should we do an intro film? are dioramas out forever or in again? lighting for accessibility or low lighting to preserve objects? Should this be a staffed exhibition? etc? I’m soliciting examples of exhibition frictions that you experience continually – and especially those that have been addressed creatively. Any ideas? I’d love to hear them. I would like to hear from you by end of June 2009.
Thanks, Gretchen
June 5th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Scheduling and timing are the issues that should come up very often in the planning stages for the displays/exhibits that I’ve worked on. In my experience, only the project leader takes the deadlines seriously, who runs around crazy as a loon. The others saunter over to the coffee machine then take off to the bakery or go to lunch for six hours while I worry. For the most important exhibit I coordinated, everything went wrong that could, and everything came down to a few days to hang the exhibit, get the lighting right, etc. The exhibit was incredible…everyone loved it, and we were disappointed that the gallery had another exhibit schedule after ours. So we only had three months for this exhibit to be up, then all the pieces went back to their dusty closets and boxes.
June 14th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
That sure sounds familiar.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Hi,
We constantly struggle with the needs of visitors and the intellectual ambitions of our institution. How much should an exhibition reflect the interests, concerns, and questions of our visitors and how much should it reflect the biggest issues in the academic field most closely allied to it? I have 17 years of case studies. If you are looking for contributors, I would love to participate.
Michael