Dr. Stephanie Pearson
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"Working" Podcast Features Exhibition Design at MoMA

12/12/2018

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Picture
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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Reflecting Color: Jacqueline de Ribes at The Metropolitan Museum

12/3/2015

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A view of the exhibition "Jacqueline de Ribes" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo: http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2015/jacqueline-de-ribes/gallery-views
An article in the New Yorker alerted me to a current exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum, specifically in the newly-reopened Costume Institute. It takes as its focus the fashion figure Jacqueline de Ribes and presents her clothing designs in a number of displays, all lovely—but the one that particularly caught my eye is shown above (and linked through the picture; just click on it to see the original slideshow). Using reflective metal (aluminum?) as the backdrop and flooring for these dresses is a simple yet extremely effective way to emphasize the colors and reflect light upon them without distracting from them. As a display solution, in fact, it has much in common with the clothing designs themselves: it is deceptively simple, quite cunning, and above all elegant.
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Online Exhibition: #metkids at The Metropolitan Museum

10/30/2015

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Screenshot of the #metkids website, an exhibition and exhibition supplement by The Metropolitan Museum.
An online (or more broadly, a digital) platform is a great solution to the layers of information embedded in any exhibition, from the large-writ headers to the digging-deeper details for specialists and the especially interested. Formatting these layers so that they are both accessible and beautiful is a challenge—one that The Metropolitan Museum met with gusto in its #metkids project. This website, although meant to introduce children to the museum's collections, is a delight for any age. The cheery red background and lively graphics are pleasing to the eye, and the simple arrangement of text with clear headers makes information easy to find. Further info can be found by clicking the terms highlighted in yellow, another easy visual cue. This site seems like a good point of reference for anyone thinking about digital presentation, be it stand-alone or supplementary to a physical (brick-and-mortar? We need a term for this) exhibition.
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Frame Game

6/9/2014

 
El Greco, Laocoon; National Gallery, Washington DC.
El Greco, Laocoon; National Gallery, Washington DC.
A rare glimpse into those pieces of wood surrounding your favorite painting! The original article can be found here.
carey-2006-frame_game.pdf
File Size: 2416 kb
File Type: pdf
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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