Dr. Stephanie Pearson
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Essay on Museum and the City - Out of the Ground, Into Awareness

12/18/2019

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An essay of mine about museum displays of antiquities appeared today in Museum and the City, the official blog of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Berlin State Museums)! You may recall that I led a student workshop in the temporary museum called "Pergamonmuseum. Das Panorama." This essay is a writeup of the themes I presented there and then workshopped with the students in the exhibition. Archaeology, museum methodology, and teaching - just my cup of tea!

Because the essay is in German, an English summary is in order (see also this previous post):

The antiquities we see on display in museums constitute only a tiny part of the objects found in excavation, and those in turn form only a tiny part of the material that actually existed back then. The selection process between being buried in the ground and being exhibited in a museum is rigorous. It includes the decision of where to excavate, what to do with the excavated material, and what material is chosen for exhibition—based on money, available space, and the personal interest of museum staff and visitors. Sometimes the decisions are carefully made, while sometimes coincidence or luck takes over (it does happen that excavations miss an important find by just a few centimeters, leaving it undiscovered). Realizing that there is a complex process behind the scenes is one step towards understanding museums as a laboratory, not a finished presentation of a topic we know everything about. The "Pergamonmuseum. Das Panorama" exhibition is great for driving this home because the explanatory texts often mention uncertainty or differing scholarly opinions. For visitors this can be exciting, or unnerving—but either way it promotes the critical thinking skills we need to deal with our modern world.
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Labels Now and Then - Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

9/7/2019

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I'm a sucker for exhibitions about making exhibitions! And who doesn't love a peek behind the curtain into the inner workings? A show at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin until the end of this month focuses on the "Labels of an Exhibition"—how they changed over time and what this tells us about changing priorities. Reminds me of other shows, about nose jobs and frame games of the past...
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Creating Knowledge Together: Pergamonmuseum. Das Panorama

6/6/2019

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Museum display is just the last step in an ancient object's long life. This is the topic of a student workshop I'll be leading on Saturday in Berlin's Pergamonmuseum. Das Panorama. What is selected for display? What is researched, and how? What gets left out? How is the "knowledge" that the museum finally decides to communicate created? All of these are subjective processes, despite the impression that the "knowledge" presented in museums is singular, objective, and perfectly known. As Ian Hodder famously said, "Interpretation begins at the trowel's edge"—at the moment of excavation. (And, I argue, actually before that, since excavations are sited and carried out based on decisions as well.)
As part of our exploration we'll closely examine the museum labels. I was inspired by those in the interim Pergamonmuseum because they often express a certain uncertainty or scholarly debate about the objects, which I found refreshing. Not just refreshing: it brings us to think critically, one of the most important things a museum display can bring us to do! (But I repeat myself.)
All Berlin higher-ed students are welcome! The details (in German, as the event will be):


Unsicherheit und Debatte in Museumstexten: Wissen zur Antike gemeinsam bauen
Sa / 8. 6. 2019 / 15 – 17.30 Uhr
Treffpunkt: Pergamonmuseum. Das Panorama, Besucherinformation
Keine Anmeldung erforderlich. Die Teilnahme ist für Studierende kostenfrei.

Das Format TISCHGESPRÄCH findet im Rahmen von ABOUT THE MUSEUM statt, einer Initiative des Referats Bildung, Vermittlung, Besucherdienste. Weitere Informationen: studierende.smb.museum und auf Facebook: ABOUT THE MUSEUM.
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"Working" Podcast Features Exhibition Design at MoMA

12/12/2018

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The three latest episodes of the podcast Working (tagline: "Slate interviews Americans about their jobs") are dedicated to the work processes in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. One of them, "Working at MoMA: How Do Exhibition Designers Do Their Jobs?," features a conversation with Lana Hum and Mack Cole-Edelsack, the Director and Senior Design Manager respectively of MoMA's Exhibition Design & Production Department. (I was lucky enough to meet Lana Hum in 2014 as part of the Center for Curatorial Leadership/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice.) It's a fun conversation to listen to: both the interviewees and interviewer (Jordan) have smart things to say and seem to be having a good time. A few novel points jumped out at me:
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  • At one point Lana Hum calls her job a sort of translating, in that she and her team talk with curators to understand the vision and then get to work shaping that into a realizable form. This metaphor seems really useful for thinking about what exhibition design can be.
  • She also talked about exhibition design as a push-pull between, on the one hand, the "open space" that lets a visitor choose a path, and on the other a planned (often chronological) route through the show.
  • Before hearing it mentioned here, I had never thought about the need to get fire department approval for every new exhibition layout! But it makes sense that the emergency exits would need to be verified.
  • The penultimate question is brilliant for getting down to the essence of any job: What counts as an emergency in your job? For most of us, this is far from a life-or-death scenario; that certainly offers some perspecitve.

I look forward to hearing the other two episodes about MoMA's operations!
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Nose Jobs gone by - Ny Carlsberg Glyptoteket, Copenhagen

5/24/2018

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Peeks behind the scenes are the best! Everyone loves a glimpse behind that institutional facade, whatever the institution. Museums are no different (see Wiseman's film on the National Gallery), and conservation in action is an increasingly popular way to give visitors a little look-see.

This case in the beautiful Ny Carlsberg Glyptoteket, Copenhagen is fondly knows as the Nasothek—the gallery of noses. (Although there are a few ears in there too.) These facial parts were once added onto ancient portrait sculptures in the modern period in order to fill in the missing parts. This was common practice in past centuries, when ancient art was considered best when flawless. Noses, as a protuberant and thus frequently knocked-off piece of sculpture, were restored by the dozens.

Nowadays, however, the principle of object care has changed. Instead of restoring ancient sculpture to make it look perfect, museums consider their primary task to preserve what they have as best they can. This means no more gluing on modern additions, rhinoplastic or otherwise. In fact, it can even mean removing those additions from previous centuries. This was the Glyptoteket's decision, resulting in a lot of loose noses rattling around in a storage box somewhere. Why not display them in a striking array and thereby tell a bit of the history of modern receptions of ancient art? Still better with a Roman portrait head next to it, its own nose and brow additions removed, thus telling most of the story at the very first glance.
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Wastewater Construction Site = Fun Park Experience - Berlin Mauerpark

3/20/2018

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The building of a large drainage pipe under Berlin's Mauerpark is a triumphant example of how simple display concepts can be transformative. Rather than making yet another annoying construction zone in the city, and this one right in at the entrance to the most popular park, the organizers decided to make it an attraction in itself. They achieved this by erecting a wooden wall around the main building area and decorating it with fun and informative panels. The biggest and most iconic is the cartoon cross-section of the pipe itself (above). The pipe introduces itself through a speech bubble: "I'm a drainage pipe with a 4.4-meter diameter"! More detailed panels describe the water system in depth. Around the corner, a spin wheel with exercise challenges on it ("do 5 pushups!" etc.) is a further attraction. Most surprising of all, you can see it all and learn more on a beautiful modern website devoted to the project! Way to go, Berliner Wasserbetriebe.
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Conservation Made Visible: Alte Nationalgalerie

2/6/2016

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Who doesn't love a peek behind the curtains? At least when the venue is a museum, a look behind the scenes (or curtains, in the German idiom) is always thrilling. Making visible all the work that goes into readying objects for display is not only a highlight for visitors but a well-deserved kudos to the conservation teams whose hard work is rarely recognized by the public—because ideally, their work is invisible! The conservators at Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie are now earning appreciation in a special exhibition about their three years of work restoring Caspar David Friedrich's two most famous paintings, Monk by the Sea and The Abbey in the Oakwood. Numerous series of photographs in the exhibition show the progression from yellowed, cracked, poorly-restored pieces to the radiant paintings now finally back on show. A few of the photographs even showed the conservators' coded markings and notes for planning the restoration, as well as the X-ray images they used to better understand the underdrawings and primer layers. Two full-size photographs of the unrestored paintings (seen above) allow viewers to compare the earlier with the present state (much clearer and less jaundiced!). It is an exciting story to see laid out like this—and today, at least, many people were there to enjoy it.
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    Ideas on Display
    A humble space to reflect on concepts of museum display as enacted across a wide range of subjects, countries, and approaches.

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Stephanie Pearson
steph [at] stephpearson.com