The Bones of an exhibit 2

Hi. Welcome back to Aunt 3 61 Museum exhibit design.

I'm gonna talk to you about the bones of an

exhibit. Um, and in order to do that, I'm going

to talk about big idea, Um, as well as the

different types of exhibit levels.

I'm gonna be showing you a lot of different kinds

of exhibit labels.

And so I decided that I would put them in

a file so that you can refer to them later

because they're a little bit hard to see on this

presentation. We're gonna start off with a big idea.

The big idea is basically a way of answering the

questions. So what?

Big ideas are always created collaboratively.

They shouldn't be created by a sort of democratic vote.

They should be created by compromised by debate by argumentation.

Um, basically, you craft a sentence, and until everybody is

happy with that sentence and everybody is excited about that

sentence, you don't stop.

A big idea will contain a subject to cast of

characters, a particular topic as well as a verb.

A set of actions for those individuals or those objects

to be able to be engaged in a big idea.

will help address the question.

What about?

Or maybe what kinds or what types, But it's really

important to know what a big idea is.

Not a big idea is not about visitors.

It shouldn't say Visitors will learn.

A big idea isn't meta.

It shouldn't say This exhibit is about and most importantly,

should understand that the big idea is not a goal.

It's not an objective.

It just is.

It's the topic of the of the entire exhibit and

so big ideas.

They provide the sort of main focus of the exhibit.

They may not actually appear in the exhibit, though.

In order to be able to communicate your big idea

really effectively, we suggest engaging in interpretation and inside Beverly

Swells book, she talks about the six principles of interpretation

that are explored by Freeman Tilden Freeman Tilden was a

park ranger with the National Park Service, and he learned

how to tell a really good story.

That basic principle of interpretation is you always need to

be relating whatever it is that you're talking about two

people and through their interests into their everyday lives.

In order to engage in interpretation, we need to be

riding labels that are interpretive and so interpretive labels.

They tell a story.

I'm gonna show you some examples.

They're gonna be hard to read.

So again, refer to the file that I will be

putting on campus so that you can actually look at

these labels.

So one label that tells a story is this one

that I found in Northrop Canyon over near Steamboat Rock

State Park here in, um Shalane County, Washington.

And this tells the story of Joel A.

Davis and Northrop, a very small woman who got married.

Her marriage didn't work out, but she ended out commanding

this entire community, running a whole orchard and taking in

anybody who needed needed a home.

I love this story of Joel A.

Davis and Northrop.

Another thing that interpretive labels might do is they might

draw a connection between the visitor and the exhibit.

Here's an example from the National Museum of African American

History and Culture.

It talks about African American social clubs in what they

call the brown paper bag test.

It invites visitors to actually see whether their skin color,

um, is similar to our different from a brown paper

bag. Another thing that an interpretive label will do is

it will make a reference to what the visitor can

see. But it will also then compare that to what

you can't see and ask you to imagine.

And so here is an example of that, and this

is about a gray well, and all of the things

that were found inside the body of a gray well

incident stomach.

And so looking at the label and then looking at

the objects themselves really gives you a clue about how

polluted our oceans are.

And so that is big idea in interpretive labels.

But what about the different kinds of labels?

Well, we're going to start off with the very beginning,

with title labels and introduction labels, title labels and introduction

labels, they provide the sort of organization for your entire

exhibit. This is an example right here, um, of a

title from the Museum of Pop Culture.

They can't look Away Exhibit, which is about horror films,

and in the interpretive label.

They talk about how war films sort of draw upon

our primal fears as humans.

They also ask us to think about how our primal

fears air connected to historical moments.

and just sort of cultural contexts.

These two photographs are also for Museum, a pop culture

and great detail.

The Fantasy Fantasy Worlds exhibit in this this label right

here. This is the door that opens up to the

fantasy world, and they talk about how fantasy worlds they

help us escape reality.

But they also are a reflection of reality, and in

that way they help us cope with reality.

In this label, right here we see a sort of

map of that exhibit space, and it helps us understand

how to move through that space and what the different

themes are inside the exhibit.

Arcane wizardry, role playing, the art of fantasy.

Another kind of label.

Our section labels, or sometimes called theme labels, section labels.

They help us understand the different themes that exist within

an exhibit.

I'm gonna talk you through an exhibit that was at

Pacific Science Center in their current research area, their current

research gallery.

This exhibit was about memory and smell and was called

memory fragrant flashbacks, which is kind of hard to say

that was the title label.

This is the introduction label and the introduction label.

As with the labels I just showed you.

It actually says that the organization of the exhibit it

talks about the two different themes that are in this

exhibit one famous neuroscience and the other theme is individual

memories and including your own individual memories.

So in the neuroscience part, we learn about how smell

is actually processed neurologically within our brains.

And we also learn about the history of the science

of smell in terms of neuroscience in the sort of

part about individual memories were invited to talk about our

own attachments to smell in terms of memory.

How are smells can actually bring back memories in a

really visceral way.

We also learn about individuals who have had a diminished

capacity of smell and thus a diminished memory or ah,

heightened memory because of their heightened sense of smell, another

kind of label, and probably the kind of label that

most people are aware of our group or caption labels.

Group labels are labels that interpret sets of objects altogether

and cash in labels interpret specific objects.

And when I say object, I also should be saying

images, circumstances, settings, et cetera.

This is a group label.

It's from the museum of history and industry.

And in this label, they use this bottom part right

here to talk about the history of coal in Washington

state and specifically in this sort of Brenton black diamond

area. And they use that sort of main interpretive label,

that main group label, in order to be able to

set up the different artifacts that you see in the

case above.

This is kind of a group label, but it's also

kind of a caption.

It goes with a particular nurse log that is on

the Icicle Gorge Interpretive Trail.

Um, and so a nurse log.

It's one object that is also a set of species,

Um, and they talk about the different holes and how

you can look at the different holes and understand what

kinds of animals made those holes.

This is a caption label for Hudson Bay blanket.

It talks about the different meanings of the Hudson Bay

blanket in terms of its colors and specific to native

people. The last kind of label we're gonna talk about

our labels that are not interpretive or other kinds of

labels, not interpretive labels, provide information, but they're not interpretive,

meaning they don't necessarily tell a story.

They don't necessarily connect visitors to the objects.

Um, what they really do is they provide basic information,

and they're really important.

One kind is an identification or a tombstone label.

They're called tombstone labels because they contain basic information.

When you're creating a tombstone label and this is most

often seen in art museums, you need to think about

what visitors want to see first.

Usually it's the title of the work, and then next

to that, they want to see the author of the

work or the artists behind that work.

Um, sometimes tombstone levels can also include some interpretive text,

and this is this example right here is from Alison

Marx is exhibit at the Fry Art Museum, where she

has both an interpretive label as well as some interpreter

Sorry in Information label and I D label as well

as interpretive label below.

Another kind of label that is not interpreted is a

credit or Acknowledgments panel, and this panel is usually a

compendium of all.

The resource is that helped to put on exhibit together,

and that includes things like donors, sponsors as well as

the people who laboured to put it together.

And then, finally, there are also labels that are for

orientation for way finding or prohibitive labels way.

Finding orientation labels are things like Where is the bathroom

located? How do I get to the gallery that has

the art that I want to see, um, and prohibitive

labels or things like this?

No food or drink in the exhibit hall label right

here. I like to make those funny because it's really

important to make sure people feel a sense of humor.

When you tell them that they can't do something they

might want to.

D'oh! So those were the bones of an exhibit and

I hope you enjoy this small presentation.

Thank you very much.

The Bones of an exhibit 2

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