Center for Creative Connections: Materials & Meanings

Description:

The Center for Creative Connections (C3) at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is not every visitor’s first stop when they come to the museum. Yet if visitors stopped here first, they might find C3’s current exhibition, Materials & Meanings, an appropriate segue to looking at and thinking about art during the rest of their visit. However, as my mom and I discovered, even if visitors drop by after they explore the museum’s galleries, Materials & Meanings can profoundly impact their experience. For us, it complimented our visit and compelled us to reflect on the art we had seen that day.

C3 opened in May 2008 aiming to evoke curiosity, inquiry, reflection and creativity by connecting audiences of all ages to artwork more intimately. Materials & Meanings is the first exhibition installed in the new space and it successfully conveys these underlying ideas of C3. This yearlong installation highlights eight masterworks in the DMA’s collection and focuses on the meaning of materials used to make each piece. Replicas of artwork, hands-on interactives, and make-and-take projects allow visitors to experience the art up close and engage with it in meaningful ways. The goal of the exhibition, prompted by the introductory panel, is for visitors to discover what materials in art mean to artists as well as what materials in art might mean to them.

As we entered the first gallery of the exhibit, I immediately noticed the curvy design and open-space feel. Subtle organic shapes and lines are painted on the walls or turned into platforms to define each interactive area. The flow of these shapes provides a natural path to navigate the exhibition, yet the openness of the installation still allows visitors to freely choose where they want to go. Each section is clearly labeled and categorized by material; both traditional and non-traditional mediums are represented. Though there is a wide range of examples from different cultures and time periods, the design of the room seems to unify all of them.

The experience begins with visitors closely observing actual works of art through different interactive activities. One of my favorite experiences was within the velvet section. Here, visitors can listen to a guided looking exercise while they observe a large, oddly-shaped sculpture by Dorothea Tanning. The exercise is calming, thought-provoking, and surprisingly effective! The open-ended questions asked throughout the audio left me to my own interpretations of the materials and provided me with a new lens for looking at and thinking about art during the rest my exploration of the exhibit.

At other stations, labels facilitated what visitors are supposed to do, look, and reflect on as they explore the material – they are especially helpful at drawing people’s attention to the unique qualities of the medium being observed. The labels don’t give it all away, but I think that’s good because it was just enough to give visitors a taste and not overwhelm them with information.

Looking and listening aren’t the only interactive experiences visitors have in Materials & Meanings – you can also smell non-traditional materials that Janine Antoni uses to sculpt her self-portraits, or scroll over an image on a computer to learn about the origin and meaning of natural materials from the Democratic Republic of Congo. You can even have the chance to feel how uncomfortable, yet sturdy, a chair made out of cardboard is by sitting in a replica of Frank Gehry’s chair design, Easy Edges.

If the experience and labels aren’t enough to satisfy your hunger for facts, the Learning Links section of the exhibit is the place to go and learn more about the artist, materials, and their meanings. Here visitors can flip through books or settle-in at a computer station to browse a custom-made program that links up to exhibit related websites, videos, and more. My mom and I took the opportunity to learn more about the art that intrigued us, which for her was Frank Gehry and for me, Janine Antoni. Nearby, there is a visual timeline that illustrates the history of different artist materials by placing sample images and shadow box displays from the DMA’s collection alongside its chief material.

As Learning Links tapers off, visitors have the chance to express their encounters on post-it notes at a touch and feel display that has samples of different mediums hung on a wall. My mom and I left our reactions to the touch of velvet and cardboard amongst the sea of post-its. We felt like we were talking back to the exhibit and communicating with the rest of the public. Ultimately, this experience leads to the Materials Bar where visitors can take home their own souvenir from the exhibit by creating a work of art using materials inspired by the exhibit, further cementing the concept of what materials mean to the individual. This sort of component to interactive exhibitions can be intimidating for those who are not creative or are uninspired. But what I found interesting was how the Materials Bar encourages those people to try their hand at creating by providing an “Inspiration Wheel” that they can spin to get an idea or follow a step-by-step video of a preplanned project. There was a friendly volunteer tending to the Materials Bar when my mom and I stopped by – it reminded me that up until that point, my experience had been completely guided by labels.

For those with young children, there is a mini version of the Materials & Meanings exhibit designed for kids’ ages 5 to 8. It’s is a culmination of almost everything displayed in the main exhibit, except it doesn’t have the actual artwork and it acts as an exploratory play area where kids could learn about materials through touching, talking, and creating. In my opinion, audiences of all ages could enjoy either one of these exhibits.

Overall, Materials & Meanings successfully engages audiences and creates meaningful experiences through unique interactions that fuel the visitor’s curiosity. By creating multi-sensory experiences and offering a variety of media to explore the subject matter, the exhibit clearly proves its consideration for different types of learners as well as a general audience. Its design and innovative approach model what a visitor-centered exhibition looks and feels like. In addition, giving visitors a chance to express themselves through notes and projects creates a dialogue between the exhibit and viewer that reaches people on a personal and intimate level. For me, that dialogue had the greatest impact to my looking and thinking about art because it gave me confidence to make my own interpretations.