Amazingly enough, you can visit this museum on Google Arts & Culture - but this exhibition isn't on show in that version.
Are creative display ideas more likely to pop up in small museums than large ones? Sometimes it seems that way; perhaps they are more flexible and more closely in touch with their community, opening doors for conversations and collaborations. In any event, the small museum at the archaeological site of Baelo Claudia (modern Bolonia) in southern Spain offers a heartwarming display that seems to come from this sort of background. Contemporary two-dimensional artworks inspired by the site and the excavated objects are tastefully hung on the limestone walls. The works give a wonderfully lively impression of the site through the artist's eyes. The paintings of amphorae (above) encourage you to consider the shapes and colors in new ways, while the paintings of a famous arch at the site (below right) alert you to a now rather degraded feature that you might otherwise walk right by. As you know, I'm a big proponent of juxtaposing ancient and modern art for exactly these reasons: in complementing each other, they enrich our experience greatly!
Amazingly enough, you can visit this museum on Google Arts & Culture - but this exhibition isn't on show in that version. Making the past feel present is tough, and can be helped along with all sorts of sensory cues. In the historical museum in Écija, Spain - the Museo Histórico Municipal housed in the Palacio de Benamejí - there were several visual cues that I quite liked because they border on the tangible. One is a Roman pottery kiln reproduced in the museum at roughly half size; as the text explains, they could be up to 6 meters tall! The area of modern Écija was a prime site of Roman amphora production because the olive oil industry there was also booming, and required transport vessels to be made locally in great number. Over 20 kilns have been found between Écija and the Guadalquivir river alone, in just 25 kilometers! Being able to see the structure of a kiln, complete with a tiny paper cut-out man checking on the wares, helps to make this massive production feel more real.
Another such trick is the recurring use of a tall glass box filled with different layers of dirt serving as a timeline. The relevant dates for a specific gallery are marked on the box in each case. Along with the different colors alloted to each time period, this is a useful visual marker of the rather abstract time periods in question. Using a dirt timeline is effective not only because it is three dimensional, verging on the tangible as well as the visual, but also because it recalls the physical location of the objects when they were discovered, as well as the archaeological methods by which we learn about them. On a study trip with students recently, I got to visit the wonderful historical museum in Écija, Spain - the Museo Histórico Municipal housed in the beautiful Palacio de Benamejí. Both the town and the museum are less well-known than they should be; they are not only beautiful, but full of treasures waiting to be discovered! As archaeologists we were thrilled by the artifact collections and the exciting excavations that took place under the main plaza, once the Roman forum. In addition, the museologically oriented among us delighted in the presentation in the museum. Thanks to a tour by museum director Antonio Ugalde, we got an in-depth look at the history of the area from the prehistoric to the late Roman periods. The school groups that come through here can hardly know how lucky they are!
Including a hugely enlarged photo of the piece (see below) is a good way to help viewers appreciate the detail. At the same time, it's important to lure them to look at the piece itself rather than stopping at the picture alone. This is done by the special case and lighting on the gold piece: the case is a cone shape projecting from the wall, highlighting the tiny treasure in a way that lures you irresistibly to take a closer peek. The conical bubble draws you in like a magnet! It is helped by the single light from overhead, lighting it in a golden glow. We were pulled toward it like a moth to the flame.
Museum Exhibition Reviews return to AJA: J. Shaya on the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid3/16/2017 Given that the mechanics of museum exhibitions can make all the difference between an effective show and an ineffective one, reviews of museum exhibitions are surprisingly hard to come by. In the scholarship on Greco-Roman civilization, at least, exhibition catalogs are much more commonly reviewed than the exhibitions themselves. This is a shame because exhibitions can communicate just as powerfully as books—and sometimes, of course, more so. They are an invaluable tool of scholarship that can propel research forward as well as public interest in it! Taking them seriously is a win for scholars, museums, visitors, everyone.
So three cheers for the resumption of museum exhibition reviews in the leading U.S. journal of Mediterranean archaeology, the American Journal of Archaeology. In the newest issue, Josephine Shaya evaluates the recent renovation of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid, Spain. An online photo gallery accompanies her article. The same issue, in fact, includes a review of an exhibition catalog that illustrates how productive the synergy (or unity?) of brand-new scholarship and groundbreaking exhibition can be: Power and Pathos (Getty Museum, 2016) by Jens M. Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. |
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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