The News* 05.01.11
*According to The Exhibit Designer
A compilation of exhibit design-related web finds
Behind the scenes
+ Creating Material Lab at MoMA
+ Design to Preserve at Cooper-Hewitt
Coming soon…?
+ On the Mall 1: National Women’s History Museum
+ And 2: Proposed Smithsonian Latino Museum Faces Hurdles
+ “Jurassic Park meets Buckminster Fuller”—a zoo that imagines a reunited Pangea
+ MoMath, the Museum of Math in New York, raising funds
In the meantime
+ Vertical Urban Factory at the Skyscraper Museum in New York (slide show here) and Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War at the Canadian Centre for Architecture
+ The World’s Largest Dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History looks amazing; slide show (I love photo 3!)
+ La Plaza de Cultura y Artes Mexican American cultural center in LA, “screens in a public alley space that both bring the stories out of the museum and draw passersby into the experience.” More in this article from GOOD
Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day)
+ The National Museum of American Jewish History opens in Philadelphia
+ Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center; review and slide show
+ The Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles: review and slide show
One for the road…
+ The T steps up its “See Something Say Something” campaign. The package in North Station:
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Music at the MoMA
At MoMA through June 6 is the exhibition Looking at Music 3.0. It explores music’s influence on contemporary art (and vice versa) during the 80s and 90s in NY. Dim lighting, gaudy neon walls, and early music videos blasting on the large screen in the middle of the gallery: it’s almost as though you’ve returned to the time of boom boxes and mix tapes. Social and political issues are mentioned briefly in the exhibit copy—but there are many topics touched upon in this relatively small space, so don’t expect a thorough history lesson. Art and music are loosely grouped by topics such as ‘early hip hop’ but, fittingly, neither chronology nor subject dictate the layout of the exhibition in an obvious way.
Above, a place to sit and watch the music videos. There were only a few in the loop, to discourage lingering I’d imagine. What they may not have realized is that people would stay quite awhile to watch Grace Jones. Also, listening stations throughout the exhibition (below, left) and an interactive media installation by Perry Holberman (right)…
You can read more about the process of creating the exhibit in this Listening to Art blog post.
Bonus pics below of the entrance to Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914, an exhibition of 70 collages, constructions, drawings, mixed-media paintings, and photographs. On view through June 6 and definitely worth seeing.
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Say Something: success
I was honored to be involved with the Say Something Poster Project (mentioned previously, here), lending my exhibit design services to Saturday’s Poster Show.
This was a case of less being much more. Initially I started with grand ideas to incorporate elements from the website branding into the three-dimensional exhibit space, but gradually the exhibit was whittled down to its essence, to give the 25 poster finalists all the attention—and to make the one-day installation manageable.
Below is Matt Budelman, designer of “Think Half Full,” one of the ten winning posters. He’s making a cameo to show the system I settled on—posters hanging on 1.25″ bulldog clips held to the wall with L pins, and labels mounted to black illustration board and attached top and bottom with L pins. Because I’m quite particular, you bet all the edges on those labels were hit with a deft stroke of gray marker.
Other things I helped with: “the poster show” script title on the back was drawn by illustrator Chris Piascik. I simply made it large and put it on the wall in contour-cut vinyl. Working with organizer Jason Stevens, I designed the ballots that guests used to vote for ten top posters out of the 25 finalists.
It was a great concept and a fantastic event—all to benefit The Home for Little Wanderers. Kudos to all the finalists and winners, the volunteers, and to Jason!
The super talented photographer Ben Gebo shot these photos from the event, and more.
Ben was also, incidentally, the photographer for the event I organized for Friday night, the AIGA BoNE Show’s “Meet the Judges” event. Check them out.
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The News* 02.17.11
*According to The Exhibit Designer
A compilation of exhibit design-related web finds
Restoring and Recreating
+ Renovating the Barnum Museum in CT after it was hit by a tornado
+ The winner of the PaleoArt Prize in 3D art for “achievement in…depicting or sculpting paleontological subjects and fossils”
+ China asks the Penn Museum to return all artifacts from its Silk Road exhibition.
Architecture and such
+ On scalies.
+ The just-announced winners of this year’s MoMA P.S. 1 Young Architects program asked local businesses and nonprofits what materials they needed, then designed the courtyard space to use them. In the fall they’ll donate said materials to said businesses.
Visiting exhibitions vicariously through the internets
+ Tattooed arms in Paris
+ Dismembered dandies in Sweden
Visiting exhibitions for real
+ South African printmaking at BU’s 808 Gallery
Or at least planning to (Boston)…
+ Edward Gorey at the Boston Athenæum
+ Tangible Things at Harvard
+ Also, the Planetarium—it’s open!
Or at least planning to (NY)…
+ The Museum of Arts and Design’s new Center for Olfactory Art
+ http://www.cityreliquary.org/
+ The reopening of the American Museum of the Moving Image in January—the inaugural events continue
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Talking about the BoNE Show
February, keeping me busy. On tap this week:
This Friday February 4 I’ll be in Providence for the AIGA Rhode Island event 20|11 reflect | respond | resolve | DESIGN—local creatives speaking their minds for 60 seconds each. I imagine that in those 60 seconds I will have time to stand up, introduce myself, thank the chapter for inviting me to participate and with what time is left, ask if there are any questions. Actually, I’m going to talk about the theme of this year’s AIGA Best of New England (BoNE) Show, “Wicked Problems. Wicked Solutions.”
Friday also happens to be the BoNE Show regular deadline, so New England designers: enter your work now. (Or aim for the February 11 late deadline.) The competition accepts all visual design work—including environmental design.
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Build Boston: three workshops and a pechakucha
Last week A month and a half ago!?!* I attended a few workshops at the Build Boston conference. Presented by the Boston Society of Architects, Build Boston is primarily targeted to architects and those who work with architects; it is “the Northeast’s largest tradeshow and conference for the design and construction industry” so I was surprised and happy to find a few programs on this year’s schedule more of interest to the museum exhibit designers.
First, there were the tours. Options included a tour of Boston’s boutique hotels, tours of the MIT Media Lab, and a tour of the new Art of the Americas wing at the MFA Boston. I didn’t go on any of these. A few of my coworkers got the behind-the-scenes sneak peak of the MFA (read Katelyn’s description); I instead attended a symposium called Cultural Catalysts to Inclusive/ Socially Sustainable Design. The MFA did feature in my conference experience later when it was discussed at length during another symposium I attended, Museums in the Digital Age. I also stopped by the PechaKucha, and—to round out my conference experience with some practical knowledge—I went to the workshop, Sustainability in Environmental Graphic Design. Click through for my recaps of each.
*Apologies for the tardy post. Time these days…somehow seems to just slip away from me. I think maybe because I am entirely wrapped up in organizing the AIGA BoNE Show but who can say for certain. :[ Read more…
Electricity in brief
Electricity at the Franklin Institute gives you some historical artifacts, cute diagrams…
and plenty of whiz bang.
Below, a touch screen to explore Ben Franklin’s book Experiments and Observations on Electricity…
and the “Electrical Signals” wall; use your phone and it responds with flashing LEDs…
group interactives…experiments…
and a “sustainable dance floor.”
A lot of fun. That about covers it. The exhibit is ongoing.
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