On Designing Exhibits

The assigned readings this week focused on the methods of designing museum exhibits. In her work “Objects of Ethnography,” Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett asked, why display objects of little visual interest? After she posed this question, she described different types of objects, including tangible, ephemeral, immovable, and animate objects that have limits of detachment.  She focused largely on exhibits that involved humans—both dead and alive. She referred to exhibits in which living humans acted their daily activities out for an audience from another culture, including an African display in 1853 in Hyde Park.  I found this article extremely interesting, but thought her discussion on objects similar to ours was lacking. Reading Kirschenblatt-Gimblett forced me to consider all types of exhibits and the issues involved with designing them.
Alice Parman’s booklet “Exhibit Makeovers: Do-It-Yourself Exhibit Planning” seemed to relate more directly to objects like Emma’s corset. The information was straightforward and allowed me to easily consider the corset when reading her step-by-step guide of designing an exhibit. I enjoyed her use of the term “free-choice learning” when she described why individuals choose to visit museums.  Her description of telling a story through an exhibit, and how to best draw visitors in to this story allowed me to consider the story of my corset. The idea of romancing the viewers certainly seems possible when considering the story of Emma Hendel Spang’s lavish and well-attended wedding. Her advice to include juicy ideas, drama, and human-interest pieces should fit well with the information I have gathered so far. Towards the end of the guide, she goes into very specific instructions of how to physically prepare for an exhibit—including considering the scale, color, and angles, creating a blueprint beforehand, and even how to best clean the space before installing the exhibit. 
Ken Yellis discussed what he terms the history wars in his article “Fred Wilson, PTSD, and Me: Reflections on the History Wars.” He describes a jarring exhibit created by the artist Fred Wilson and explains both the positive and negative aspects of an exhibit like this. He believed that it caused visitors to ask heartfelt questions about history and feel humbled from their experience there. On the negative side, he stated that the curator can lose control of the visitors’ experiences in this situation. 
Both John W. Durel in “Forecasting the Future of History Museums” and Beverly Serrell in “What Are Interpretive Labels?” and her following articles, described how to create a successful label in a museum exhibit. I took extensive notes on these brief articles and began to consider how best to describe Emma’s corset in three fifty word captions. Durel advises readers to be short, snappy, and colorful while anticipating the visitors’ questions and being careful not to talk down to them. Serrell gives more detailed instructions about different types of labels, when and where to use them, and what information should be included in them. Both of these articles caused me to consider the corset within the collection and will be helpful on future assignments.