What really gets me about this is not just how cool it is, but the way that Hiroshi Ishii describes this project as having created an entirely new creative medium. I feel that way about Exhibition Design - a unique medium, of which we have barely scratched the surface of possibility. Hiroshi Ishii compares this animated pixel table to the development of movies … that people didn’t know what to do with them when the technology was first developed … Similarly, Exhibition Design is a medium that few people know what to do with. It is a medium that has been around for centuries, but perhaps it has been in the wrong hands? A medium that has been controlled and guided by those who don’t understand the potential? What I love about the MA/Exhibition Design Program at the Corcoran is that we are pushing that question. What can the medium of Exhibition Design really be? What can it do? Where can it go? Answers aren’t the goal, the exploration is.
Last week a curator posted to Museum-L that she was troubled to learn that a board member was upset that he was not given credit for a donation he made to the exhibition. The post stated:
The topic of giving credit where credit is due has troubled me for a long time, yet it is an issue that has become almost taboo to address within a museum setting. Although "Donor Panels" are ubiquitous now, most curators that I have worked with find it abhorrent to consider installing credit panels with the names of the people who have worked on an exhibition with them. I have heard curators argue, when pressed, the same point as listed in the Museum-L post: why give credit when contribution and effort is part of peoples' jobs?
I would argue: Why not?
Why not follow the model of film, theater, and even some journals, where full credit is given to everyone who worked on the creative project? There is a hierarchy, of course, but everyone is acknowledged publicly and within the creative product.
It seems to me that this issue stems from the ever-awkward power struggle that many curators engage in when creating exhibitions. I have know many curators who feel and claim ownership over exhibitions, while they view designers, educators, fabricators and installers as technicians who are merely involved to 'realize' the curators' research. Unfortunately, it seems that many arts critics, museum PR departments, and (often) museum directors buy into this thinking, and promote it.
It is extremely rare that a journalist writing about an exhibition will provide any more information than a summary of the exhibition script. It is usual for a journalist to populate their exhibition critique with quotes directly from the mouths of curators. Occasionally a photograph of an exhibition will appear in a newspaper article, however captions associated with these photographs usually come from a quote by the curator.
In my experience working at four major history museums in New York City and Washington DC, exhibitions usually originate from a curatorial department or division. Curators are given the lead roles to guide the content and design development of the exhibition. What is odd about this model is that most curators, during their careers, have completed a fraction of the number of exhibitions as the designers and educators on the same exhibition project teams. Curators may be content specialists, but they are not experts in the medium of exhibition. They may write marvelous essays, chapters, and books on their topic of expertise, but they have not studied, nor fully understand, the medium of exhibition.
I will never argue that a curator is not an expert in the main topic of an exhibition, however, it should be overtly acknowledged that an exhibition is the creation of many areas of expertise, and the story or content research is only one of them. More balanced or egalitarian collaboration between members of exhibition project teams is necessary.
Within the museum field it is helpful to look at Zoos, Science Museums, and Natural History Museums which often employ a model of using an exhibition developer as the lead on an exhibition project team. In this role the developer, who often has a background in interpretive planning or museum education, will work directly with the designer, and refer to the curator as a content specialist. In this model the curator is not the lead of the project, and the curator is rarely the writer for the exhibition. Often the exhibition developer will translate the highly academic or technical language of the exhibition content, provided by the curator, to make it more accessible and engaging to the museum visitor.
In an exhibition developer-led model it is more likely that public credit will be given to the members of the exhibition team as well as to the fabricators and installers. By starting from a place of relative equality, there is less sense of individual ownership over the end product.
I would love to hear from you:
Have you been given credit on an exhibition credit panel for your work on an exhibition?
If you are a designer, have you ever been quoted in a newspaper about the design of an exhibition?
Do you disagree? Why would we, as a field, opt not to give public credit to the people who create exhibitions?
