For this final post about my recent trip to DC, I am sharing some photographs from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. NMNH is a big museum, with some exhibits dating back to the Paleolithic era, so I skipped a lot of it. The three permanent exhibits below are a few to see if, like me, you’re primarily interested in a museum’s graphics.
The Sant Ocean Hall recently re-opened, in 2008, with exhibit redesign by Maryland-based Gallagher & Associates. (Exhibit photos on the fabricator, D&P’s website.) Each subject area in the Ocean Hall had color palettes distinct from other area; important because there wasn’t a prescribed path for a visitor to follow — everyone wandered around in whatever direction struck their fancy. The colors unified the island-like display cases. I liked the color selections and image/title compositions for the area introductions. (Seahorses, they are photogenic!) The infilled, etched illustrations were quite nice.
In the Bone Hall; cheerful colors and swirling, retro patterns. This is an old exhibit, but wonderful nonetheless, with clever interplay between the patterns at the backs of display cases and the skeletons’ poses. I didn’t look closely at how these graphics were produced but I would hazard a guess that patterns were painted/stenciled on the wall and text was silkscreened. (Thanks to my colleague Jeff for these two photos.)
And finally, the Hall of Mammals, an excellent redesign by Canadian firm Reich + Petch. (Great photos of the exhibition at that link.) The gallery panels were beautiful: they were scenically-treated and textured lightboxes (the third image below is a close-up of the texture on the North American panel) which was in beautiful contrast to the overall minimalism of the exhibit. I also liked the use of vector art in the diorama backdrops (an example is shown in the “Getting Around in Open Woodlands” photo), which added another element to the graphic palette. The line illustrations on the specimen labels were great. (Thanks to my colleague Jeff for the Australia diorama and the ‘Rainforest’ text photos.)
Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed or replaced. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 14 November 2009.