Museums and Exhibition Design

Arseny Zhilyaev in conversation with Boris Groys: "Contemporary art is the theology of the museum". This recent conversation is part of the Center for Experimental Museology, a collaborative project between COLTA.RU and the V-A-C Foundation. The material was published on e-flux conversations for the first time in english.

The current museographical approach seems to go towards a form of interdisciplinarity, which leverages the encounter between visual and performing arts. From the Tate Gallery in London to the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, this dialogue not only gives rise to aesthetic experiences but also defines new forms of exhibitions: choreographed exhibitions. Within a migration from the black box to the white cube, the theatrical body becomes a work of art, through a process of objectivation. Likewise, the exhibition space turns into a hybrid place of creation. Through a kind of ontological negotiation between different art languages, the beholder is thus called into question: his participation is choreographed, as well as the very act of observation.

This article traces the conception, planning, and execution of the 1931 Arab Exhibition in Jerusalem, followed by a Second Exhibition in 1932. The two Jerusalem exhibitions were held during a critical political period, as several Arab countries were at the height of their struggle against British and French colonial rule. In Palestine the timing was all the more acute. Executed between the two major Palestinian revolts of 1929 and1936, the exhibitions were held at a time of direct and violent Arab confrontation with the Zionists and the British, but also at a formative moment when Palestinians were articulating their national identity and making real attempts to establish national institutions.
The two Jerusalem exhibitions were events of profound importance for both Palestine and the Arab region. Drawing on historical Arabic newspapers, memoirs, and photographs, this article shows that the exhibitions were intended to demonstrate that Arab countries were witnessing remarkable innovations in the industrial and agricultural sectors despite, and not because of, European colonization. Further, the pan-Arab nature of the exhibitions facilitated an exceptional opportunity for the exchange of knowledge and expertise among the Arab countries in the face of their geopolitical division following the Great War.

In recent years, there has been increasing scholarly interest in the history of museums, academies and major exhibitions. There has been, however, little to no sustained interest in the histories of alternative exhibitions (single artwork, solo artist, artist-mounted, entrepreneurial, privately funded, ephemeral, etc.) with the notable exception of those publications that deal with situations involving major artists or those who would become so—for example J.L. David's exhibition of Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799) and The First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874—despite the fact that these sorts of exhibitions and critical scholarship about them have become commonplace (and no less important) in the contemporary art world. The present volume uses and contextualizes eleven case studies to advance some overarching themes and commonalities among alternative exhibitions in the long modern period from the late-eighteenth to the late-twentieth centuries and beyond. These include the issue of control in the interrelation and elision of the roles of artist and curator, and the relationship of such alternative exhibitions to the dominant modes, structures of display and cultural ideology.

The research illustrates multiple experiences and strategies adopted in museums and in the world of cultural heritage in the field of digital storytelling to guide the future design of narrative digital solutions. Its aim is to provide as complete a picture as possible of the different solutions set in this specific sector of the field of cultural communication, their uses, and the accessibility of culture. It identifies and analyzes 14 types of digital storytelling: oral, written, video, visual, animated, interactive, Immersive, Social Media Storytelling, Participative, Generative, Geo–Storytelling, Multimedia Mobile Storytelling, Crossmedia and Transmedial storytelling. Finally, a new vision of the museum is proposed in which, beginning with the antiquarian and nineteenth–century vision of museum collections, develops into what should be defined as a connected museum or museum of connected narration.

Il volume attraverso fonti in gran parte inedite (disegni, immagini, interviste), fornisce un'analisi critica delle opere di architettura e di design di Manuel Aires Mateus, protagonista dell'architettura portoghese contemporanea. Un capitolo specifico è dedicato ad aspetti compositivi e tecnologico-costruttivi di exhibit design. Il volume è interamente bilingue (italiano/inglese).

The representation of Mexico in France through three exhibitions since 2014, is the subject of
this memory. The exhibitions studied are: "Maya: revelation of an endless time", (Museum
Quai Branly, October 2014-February 2015); "Mexico: Living it to believe it" (La Villette,
July 2015) and "Mexico (1900-1950): Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Jose Clemente Orozco
and the avant-gardes "(Grand Palais, October 2016-January 2017).
The body of this memoir is a comparison between three exhibitions, three commissioners, three
different exhibition venues, three scenographers, different target audiences, and three visions
different from the same country. Similarly, the thesis focuses on understanding interculturality
between Mexico and France, and the strategy of each commissioner to show a Mexico
real.
The result of this thesis is to highlight the different challenges for the professionals of the
museum, specifically, the scenographers, for the creation of an exhibition that represents the
Mexico in France, through stereotypes or prejudices.

This essay offers a case study about the Wildwalk museum in Bristol, UK. Wildwalk, originally called Wildscreen, was the brainchild of the internationally renowned wildlife documentary producer Christopher Parsons. Parsons conceived of the attraction as a peripatetic version of wildlife TV; Wildwalk was, in effect, to bring together the best of wildlife films and natural history museums – but also zoos and even botanic gardens – in order to promote a better understanding of biodiversity. Despite some initial success, the museum, which opened in time for Britain's Millennium celebrations, was forced to close less than seven years after it opened. The chapter develops a genealogical inquiry, and employs social semiotic analyses to describe the museum's remarkable innovations, but also to explain its failure to bring to fruition a truly new genre of exhibition.

Chapter 5, Experiencing the Art Museum: Methods for Public Engagement:

Methods for interactive, socially engaged art museum experiences are explored. They examine the utility of developing larger, institutional philosophies to specific techniques via case studies at the U.C.L.A. Hammer Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, and the Walker Art Center. Employed by a spectrum of practitioners such as artists, designers, and museum professionals, these approaches created new avenues for interaction. Specifically, artists entering into visitor services to drive institutional evolution, techniques for engaging atypical visitors, and approaches for engaging with “the crowd” with ephemeral art movements.

With articles by Noémie Drouguet, Areti Adamopoulou, Esther Solomon, Jonathan Paquette, Christopher Gunter, Éric Giroux, and Karen Worcman.
------ See also follow up article "Museums Without (Scholar-)Curators: Exhibition-Making in Times of Managerial Curatorship" published in Museum International (2016):

https://www.academia.edu/33024164/Museums_Without_Scholar-_Curators_Exhibition-Making_in_Times_of_Managerial_Curatorship

Reshaping Museum Spaces: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions is a book edited by Suzanne MacLeod, emerged out of a conference held at the University of Leicester in April 2004. The book is composed of seventeen chapters, written by different authors, which are divided in four sections that would like to lead to one idea: how come museums had such a radical reshaping in the recent years. Each author explains, with some examples, his own opinion about what are the most evident reasons of these changes, both on the architectural (inside and outside), social and cultural aspects. The authors keep questioning what kind of types the new museum spaces are required, and highlighting a range of possibilities for creative museum design.

The authors reflect about the complexity, significance and malleability of museum space, which is always open to change. In the recent years, while museums became consciously «recognized as drivers for social and economic regeneration, the architecture of the museum has developed from its traditional forms into often-spectacular one-off statements and architectural visions».
Unfortunately, the most highlighted example of this phenomenon, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao designed by Frank O. Gehry, that succeededto transform a provincial city in Spain into a touristic destination, isn’t explained enough but only mentioned as the «Bilbao Effect» (known as the power of iconic architecture to place a city on the cultural map). Also other iconic museum architectures such as Berlin’s Jewish Museum or Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati are absent.

In parallel, Suzanne MacLeod and the other authors try to analyze the reciprocal relationship between construed and curated space, or in other words, between museum building, exhibition and exposed objects. The difference of approaches about the book’s topics result as a mix of descriptions; in certain cases the description is structured by the author’s opinion on a specific topic (architecture or exhibition) lead by some examples. In other cases the authors choose to give only a detailed description of one/two museums and their exhibition, in order to touch both arguments (architecture and exhibition) which results more complicated to understand.
I think that an interesting result of this book stays on the comparison between the different opinions on the same topics, and in this way I try to compose this summary. I followed the book four sections, trying, from one hand, to bring all author’s viewpoints, and from the other hand to have a logical connection between the different parts, considering also my own position and adding some comments from other books.

This volume argues that museum exhibitions can eff ectively work as a particular way of doing research, a way of exploring the world around us rather than mirroring it. More than that, while this may not at fi rst glance seem to be a particularly revolutionary statement, we contend that, if taken seriously, it does shake a number of the basic pillars of museum practice. If the exhibition is research and not merely a way of communicating research, a number of questions arise: Can we exhibit something, which we do not know the end result of, which is still in the making? Which concepts of "knowledge" apply to such a format? How do we conceive of the roles between the partakers in an exhibition process if this is not a matter of giving shape to a given content? How do we conceive of the role of audiences in exhibitions if research is extended into the exhibition itself? Why, indeed, should we even think of exhibitions as research rather than as a platform to communicate the results of research to a wider audience? These are all questions that we will touch upon in the volume. The idea of exhibitions as research Museums and exhibitions have increasingly been referred to as "laboratories" (MOMA, 2014 ; Heller, Scholz and Wegner, 2015 ; Treimo, this volume; J ø rgensen, this volume) or "experiments", respectively (Healy and Witcomb, 2006 ; Macdonald and Basu, 2007). These terms point to a move away from understanding the museum as a site for representing the world to perceiving the museum, instead, as an agent that produces its own particular eff ects. The museum does not simply mirror the world, but constructs new perspectives and ideas that are generated through the particular mechanisms and qualities of the very institution (Bjerregaard and Willerslev, 2016 , pp. 226-235; Thomas, 2016 , p. 9). One eff ect of this approach to museums has been a focus on the capacity of exhibitions to generate research in and through themselves (Macdonald and Basu, 2007 ; Lehman-Brauns, Sichau and Trischler, 2010 ; Herle, 2013 ; O'Neill and Wilson, 2015). Working intensely with collections, testing ideas out in a physical environment, and relating more or less directly to a lay audience does not only tell us something new about how to make exhibitions, but may also provide us with more insight into the subject matter of the exhibition. That is, the exhibition has the potential to create a research surplus ; through the making of exhibitions we are liable to learn more about the topic of the exhibition. But, as we will explore further 9781138646063_pi-194.indd 1 9781138646063_pi-194.indd 1

Studia o niepełnosprawności odróżniają „uszkodzenie” (impairment) od „niepełnosprawność” (disability). Uszkodzenie lub uszczerbek dotyczą fizyczności, (nie)możliwości, jakie daje nam ciało, które zamieszkujemy, natomiast niepełnosprawność jest warunkiem społecznym związanym z kulturowym postrzeganiem osób z niepełnosprawnościami oraz ze stopniem dostępności miejsc wspólnych. Pierwsze to kategoria medyczna, drugie – polityczna. To o społeczeństwo, które uniepełnosprawnia, toczą się gorące debaty i aktywistyczne walki. W Polsce najbardziej znamiennym wydarzeniem w historii działań na rzecz godnego życia osób z niepełnosprawnościami pozostaje trwająca 40 dni okupacja budynku Sejmu w 2017 r. Na jej podstawie powstał spektakl Rewolucja, której nie było w wykonaniu aktorów(-ek) Teatru 21.

One of the main accepted functions of museums is to exhibit things. The organization of exhibitions is an important activity: exhibitions must run to timetable, keep within budget, attract high audience figures and be academically respectable; and the implementation of ...

This article presents a paper-based Tangible User Interface (TUI) that facilitates the production of complex queries on a Cultural Heritage (CH) repository. The system helps to easily make use of the data elements and Boolean logic that describe the collections. This research presents a design methodology divided into two main phases: A User Experience (UX) and User Centred Design (UCD) where potential users’ behaviours are analysed, followed by the development and evaluation of the TUI prototype.
The TUI uses off the shelf electronics and a paper-based set of tokens to engage the user with the system, thus facilitating the exploration with CH collections through querying.

A review of the book: Laura Gustafsson &Terike Haapoja (eds.), A Museum of Nonhumanity (Goleta, CA Punctum Books, 2019)

https://nome.unak.is/wordpress/volume-15-no-1-2020/book-review-volume-15-no-1-2020/laura-gustafsson-terike-haapoja-eds-a-museum-of-nonhumanity-goleta-ca-punctum-books-2019/

Izložba Etnografski muzej-palača s potpisom organizira se povodom završetka obnove Etnografskog muzeja kojom je rekonstruirana dekoracija pročelja ove građevine. Jedina u secesijskom stilu namjenski podignuta muzejska zgrada u Hrvatskoj time je dobila izgled koji joj je podario njezin arhitekt Vjekoslav Bastl početkom 20. stoljeća. Cilj je ove izložbe prikazati, s jedne strane, povijest izgradnje zgrade koja je prvotno udomljavala Trgovačko-obrtnički muzej, a s druge njezinu recentnu obnovu kroz arhivske projekte, stare fotografije, fotografsku i drugu dokumentaciju te artefakte.

Exposition de 12 moulages d’œuvres grecques antiques, issus de la collection de l’Institut d’Archéologie Classique de l'Université de Strasbourg conservée au Musée Adolf Michaelis - Aula Marc Bloch du Palais Universitaire, 67 000 Strasbourg du 15 avril au 9 mai 2014.

Commissaires et organisateurs de l’exposition « Via la Grèce » : Anatole Boule & Jonas Parétias

Scénographie : Alexandre Früh, scénographe et enseignant à la Haute École des Arts du Rhin
Maxime Chudeau, Mathilde Melero, Ikhyeon Park, Nastassia Szymczak
Graphisme : Marisol Godard, Elsa Varin - Atelier Terrains Vagues
Son : Stéphane Clore, Rumiko, Lourdes

Comité scientifique :

Jean-Yves Marc, conservateur du Musée des Moulages et professeur d’Archéologie classique
Daniela Lefèvre, maître de conférences en Archéologie grecque
Gwendy Pavicich, doctorante en Archéologie romaine

Ведибіда Б.О. Інформаційно-методичний огляд Висвітлення історії політичних репресій і радянського тоталітаризму в експозиціях музеїв Західної України / Б. О. Ведибіда (автор-упорядник); Національний музей історії України. – К. : НМІУ, 2017. – 80 с.

Newton’s Third Law of Physics suggests that for every action there is a reaction. In “No Justice, No Peace: L.A. 1992,” an exhibition on view at the California African American Museum through August 27, curator Tyree Boyd-Pates re-contextualizes the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles Riots, showing how the violent days following the acquittal of four police officers in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King has its roots in generations of racism, vice and civil unrest going back to the early 1900s -- content that you will not learn in history books.

The Changi story is synonymous with suffering, hardship, and the Australian prisoner-of-war experience in the Second World War. It is also one of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and survival. Combining prisoners’ cartoons, paintings, photographs, and essays, The Changi Book provides a unique view of life in the camp: medical innovation; machinery and tools made from spare parts and scrap; black markets; sports and gambling; entertainment; a library and university. Seventy years after its planned publication, material for The Changi book was rediscovered in the Australian War Memorial archives and appears here for the first time along with insights from the Memorial’s experts, providing unique historical insights into some of the stories and characters behind its rich Changi collection.

Evicted the exhibition is the product of a collaboration
among the museums’ curator Sarah Leavitt, sociologist
Matthew Desmond, and three Brooklyn based firms including
a radio producer, an architectural practice and a graphic
design firm. The experience is delivered almost entirely
through graphics and audio, with a few three dimensional
creations – most notably a shrink wrapped set of boxes
representing the belongings of an evicted family- and yet
the exhibit experience feels fully three-dimensional.

A few reasons to visit Evicted
- The topic impacts each of us in some way
- It demonstrates a novel way for a museum to provide
new content that brings in wider audiences while staying
on mission and keeping related to core expertise and
content
- It is an interesting and well executed collaboration with
a scholar (it is inspired by but not bound by Matthew Desmond’s
book of the same name)
- The map of the U.S. in cardboard boxes and other solid
information design and graphic presentation

The Anniversary Edition is published in the year of the 100th anniversary of one of the most famous museums of Russia - the State Museum-Reserve “Peterhof”. In May – June 1918, the suburban imperial summer residences — Peterhof, Tsarskoe Selo, Gatchina, and Pavlovsk — became the public state museums and received their first visitors.This publication combines the collection of documentary materials stored in the archives of the Peterhof Museum, Pavlovsk Museum, CSALA St. Petersburg, CSA St. Petersburg and NPL.

Юбилейное издание выходит в год 100-летия одного из самых известных музеев России — Государственного музея-заповедника «Петергоф». В мае–июне 1918 года пригородные императорские летние резиденции — Петергоф, Царское Село, Гатчина и Павловск — стали общедоступными государственными музеями и приняли своих первых посетителей. С этого момента начался их вековой путь, полный триумфов и трагедий, который каждый музей прошел вместе со страной. Данное издание впервые объединяет свод документальных материалов, храня-щихся в архивах ГМЗ «Петергоф», ГМЗ «Павловск», ЦГАЛИ СПб, ЦГА СПб и РНБ и позволяющих проследить его 100-летний путь и знаковые события истории.

Der Vortrag wirft einen multimodalen Blick auf Online-Ausstellungen. Die (linguistische) Multimodalitätsforschung steht in der Tradition der Semiotik, sie betrachtet die verschiedenen semiotischen Ressourcen eines multimodalen Texts oder Artefakts. Angewandt auf Ausstellungen, geht sie einerseits von den Bildern, Texten, Videos, Typographie usw. als Ressourcen aus und fragt nach deren spezifischer Gestaltung und Zusammenwirken im Ganzen. Andererseits untersucht sie die spezifischen kommunikativen Funktionen, die Online-Ausstellungen als einem „multimodalen Genre“ zukommen. Auf dieser Grundlage können konkrete Aspekte wie Navigation, Räumlichkeit usw. daraufhin untersucht werden, mit welchen Mitteln sie erzeugt werden.

Der Vortrag geht auf eine Reihe von Beispielen ein und thematisiert auch Kriterien für die ästhetische Qualität einer Ausstellung, und die Angemessenheit der Gestaltung je nach Thema und Inhalt. An der TU Chemnitz wird derzeit ein Korpus von Online-Ausstellungen zusammengestellt und annotiert, davon ausgehend erfolgt eine Untersuchung der Entwicklung seit den 1990er Jahren, und der Typologie von Online-Ausstellungen. Mittelfristig sollen diese Ergebnisse mit Rezeptionsstudien verbunden werden.

The main theme that I will focus on in my dissertation is the elucidation of the journey of Jason and the Argonauts, which represents a significant part of history both locally and globally. First of all, it is crucial to separate myth from history, and this is exactly what I am doing in Chapter 3. Furthermore, I will present an exhibition proposal for the upcoming Museum of Argo, for which specialists that are working in the cultural sector and some political local authorities are trying really hard to set up and open. After explaining my point of view towards the setting up of the exhibition, I will move on by explaining how a narrative can be created across the gallery and how some pieces of interactive material can cover the educational aspect and add to the museum experience. Lastly, I will refer to some issues that I would take care of, in order to be able to include groups that suffer from any kind of disability and express my point of view on several ideas that could be combined to form a whole cultural route within the city.

The Research Project MeLa* - European Museums in an age of migrations was a four year multidisciplinary and collaborative Research Project involving nine European Partners, which was funded in 2011 within the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission.
The MeLa project ended in February 2015.
http://www.mela-project.polimi.it/
http://www.mela-archive.polimi.it/

Türkiye'de özgün baskı denilince akla gelen ilk isimlerden biri Prof. Süleyman Saim Tekcan’dır (1940). Uzun soluklu akademik kariyerinde Marmara Üniversitesi, Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi ve Işık Üniversitesi gibi sayılı kurumlarda görevler üstlenmiş, sanat yaşamına ise yüzlerce yapıt sığdırmıştır. Ancak bu köşemizde onu konu almamızın nedeni 1960-61 yılındaki mezuniyeti sonrasındaki sanat serüveni değil, Türk baskı sanatının kurumsal bir belleğe sahip olması adına kuruculuğunu üstlendiği İMOGA İstanbul Grafik Sanatlar Müzesi’dir. ...