MUSEUMS
Modern palette: The Peabody Essex Museum wanted to show that Native American Art is also contemporary art COLLECTION POINTS
How does an idea about a collection evolve into a memorable, attention- grabbing exhibition? Three interpreters give advice on how to achieve it
KATHLEEN WHYMAN • MANAGING EDITOR • ATTRACTIONS MANAGEMENT
hopefully not because it was so dreadful it stuck in their mind.
JULIETTE FRITSCH
CHIEF OF EDUCATION AND INTERPRETATION PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM, MASSACHUSETTS, USA
WHAT IS EXHIBITION INTERPRETATION? Interpretation is a process, not an out- come. The worst thing you can do is start a project by saying: “Right, we’ll make three videos and an audio tour.” It’s got to come out of what you’re try-
ing to communicate, what your visitors want to communicate and what the col- lection is. If you decide before you start that you’re going to make a fi lm, then it’s topsy-turvy – the idea should come out when working through the stories.
WHAT MAKES AN EXHIBITION? An exhibition needs to have an element of the collection in it. There are places that call themselves museums, but instead of having objects that they’ve taken into care, they have interactives, which I fi nd challenging. An exhibition needs some kind of object – something that’s been desig- nated as special, that’s been taken into care and studied and protected and put on display with other things to make some kind of statement or tell a story.
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HOW DO YOU START THE PROCESS? We decide on the relationship between the key message and the objects on display. The other element is, who’s the target audience? If the exhibition is for schoolchildren, you’ll need more space for large groups, which will dictate case positions: for example, 360-degree cases so people can walk all the way round.
HOW ARE EXHIBITIONS CREATED? The interpretation manager works closely with the curator and designer. After a period of discussion and brainstorming, which can take months or even years for a big project, we start developing pro- posals for interpreting devices. There are drawings, mock-ups, then the installation, which always results in seeing things that don’t work and that need moving around and tweaking. Then you open it and see what happens.
WHAT MAKES AN EXHIBITION GOOD? When people come out and they’re talking about it. And they remember it –
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WHAT WAS ONE OF YOUR RECENT EXHIBITIONS? Our Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art exhibition, which had three key audiences: schoolchildren; people who are interested in contempo- rary art; and people who are interested in Native American art. Those three audiences have different needs and perceptions and understanding of the exhibition materials. With this exhibition, there’s an inter-
pretive device all the way through, as we wanted visitors to be able to respond to the issues that were being discussed and have a dialogue with other visitors. The key message is that Native American art is contemporary art, so we steered clear of established themes associated with Native American art, such as terracotta and wood, and gave it a very modern pallet. It’s not traditional and was a pleasant surprise. That came about through many talks.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON?
A very ambitious $650m (£403m, 498m) reinstallation of the Peabody Essex museum, which we started work- ing on last November.
AM 1 2013 ©cybertrek 2013
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