Between Space - Exhibition Design

THE NOVELTY OF THE REAL

Through an over saturation of media and our accelerating retreat into virtual landscapes, reality has gained an unprecedented novelty. But can reality now exist as anything other than an artifact or specimen?

The focus on the artifact has pulled back into a wide shot. While formal considerations, aesthetic qualities, and craftsmanship of an object might have once been the focus, the value of most museum experiences seems to have shifted to the spectacle of the objects interpretation. The value of the objects has migrated from the thing itself to how it is presented. What seems to matter is not the pure experience of an object, but the experience of its mediation.

Real objects in replicated environments, like artifacts placed in dioramas or animals in habitats at the zoo constitute one of the more common approaches of “activating” real things through contextualization. There are varying degrees to how far this is taken and how immersive this context becomes for the visitor. The faux environment attempts to help us imagine the artifact or specimen before it became an artifact or specimen.

A reverse to this approach is often applied when the artifact or specimen is an environment itself. For example, Colonial Williamsburg is an artifact. This preserved colonial town is inhabited by actors dressed in eighteenth century clothing that “activate” the building and streets by carrying on daily life as it was done centuries ago. Habitation, in this case, replaces contextualization in transporting the visitor’s experience of the artifact to a pre-artifact state. The activation happens from the inside out. Another example of habitation is the reenactment of a battle on its actual site.

Actors in Colonial Williamsburg (Image by Rachel Echols)

Both habitation and contextualization are means of activating artifacts and specimens. But these devices are more for the museum visitor’s benefit as they are for the thing exhibited. In the case of live animal specimens, it should not be overlooked that contextualization can benefit the animal as well, providing them opportunities found in their native conditions. Many zoos have made great strides in providing more naturalistic environments for their animals, but many have not. The antiquated jungle scene painted on the back wall of a tiger cage was never enough to convince the tiger. Today such an outmoded illusion doesn’t convince us either and no longer works to transport us into the world of the tiger, not because we have actually experienced the tiger’s natural environment, but because of the innumerable examples of “nature” offered through the media. If the habitat in a zoo carries the realism of a movie set we can imagine the animal as “at home”. But is there an accompanying effect, that casts the animal as simply part of the replication, albeit extremely realistic?

Unabomber's cabin, Lincoln Montana

Unabomber's cabin: photo by Richard Barnes

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Unabomber's cabin on exhibit, The Newseum, 2010

Above are three images of the Unabomber’s (Ted Kaczynski’s) makeshift cabin.

The first image is of the cabin in its original location, outside Lincoln Montana. The second image was taken as the cabin sat in an FBI storage facility. The third image shows the cabin on exhibition at the Newseum. Not too dissimilar from a storage facility, the cabin on exhibit feels entirely dislocated from its original context. Like Kaczynski himself, the cabin is isolated, imprisoned. Of course, we can imagine that the exhibit designers might have considered creating a replicated context for the artifact, one that allowed the visitor to be transported to the Montana woodlands where Kaczynski made his bombs. But not doing so was probably a wise choice.

I had the opportunity to see this exhibition and there is something startlingly real about isolating the cabin. I had gone to the Newseum with my son, Max who was 15 at the time and a hard core gamer. He spent most of his free time playing and socializing in virtual environments. Museums are not typically a place teenagers care much about, so I chose the Newseum because I knew it was media heavy and figured Max would be more engaged. But to my surprise, the numerous screens and electronic interactives didn’t interest him in the least. Instead he was drawn to the artifacts and looked at them with astonishment. Towering chunks of the Berlin Wall, "Pretty Boy" Floyd's shotgun, the Unabomber’s cabin. Their realness was jolting.

When I think back to Max's reaction I am reminded of a photograph I once saw of a deaf child who had undergone an operation to restore his hearing. The child’s expression was a mixture of surprise and confusion as he heard sound for the first time. Max was particularly moved by the charred cameras and press passes of Bill Biggart, a journalist killed when the World Trade Center collapsed. The objects were damaged and covered in dust. That is when I realized that it was not just the meaning of the object that was important but the novelty of its reality. Reality was now bearing an uncanny resemblance to the simulated rather than the other way around. This is an experience many of us have had when seeing someone in public who you had only seen on television. Their detail is almost beyond real.

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Bill Biggart's charred belongings on exhibit, The Newsuem, 2010

Now I don’t want to suggest that Max is somehow different than the rest of us. To him the virtual environment is more comfortable and controllable than most real environments and it is his preferred location for spending his free time. The fact of the matter is that most of us are just like Max. What we know of the world is shaped by media. The average American watches a little over 5 hours of television every day and approximately 2 hours of radio. We participate in a wide variety of social media, games and online shopping. We work and live in controlled atmospheres and rarely, if ever, occupy non man-made environments. We travel from place to place inside vehicles surrendering our self-reliance in getting around to the guidance of GPS devices. I could go on, but the point is that we are immersed in information about the world rather than in direct contact with the world itself. So, when we encounter that world directly it tends to occupy the place of specimens and artifacts.

Exhibition designers are always looking for new conditions of engaging the museum visitor. Ways of offering visitors “memorable, informal learning experiences”. Think of preexisting environments where families play, explore and discover. Think of places where age appropriateness is not an issue. Think of the beach or the forest. Think of looking under rocks, turning over leaves or peeking under the bark of a tree.

Like their clients, designers are often seduced by the latest technology or rummage around in a box of “old stand by” techniques. Unfortunately, most exhibitions seem to be designed by referencing an “exhibition” rather than referencing places where people already have these kinds of experiences. What is it about natural environments that make them work?

THE BEACH

I saw a family at the beach. They were jumping rope with a 7 meter long stalk of sea kelp. Its safe to say they were learning about sea kelp in a deeply memorable way. Sea kelp’s durability, flexibility, smell, color and texture, its pneumatocysts, and fronds, while not labeled, are easily studied. Some might argue that it is completely out of context. Or is it? Perhaps it is far more in context being found washed up on the beach than floating gracefully in an aquarium habitat.

When we dig in the sand and hit water it begins the conversation about the sand’s permeability and the water table. We learn that when sand is wet it tends to stick together. And when it’s dry the wind can make sand sting our feet and shins. And dry sand gets hot, but is much cooler just below the surface. We learn that wet sand is easier to run on than dry sand and that it is made up of the tiniest of stones. Just a handful offers more of these tiny stones than most would venture to count, let alone the mind-boggling beach full!

There is so much to take away from a simple day at the beach. Exhibition designers can only dream that their exhibitions would provide the range of experiences and informal learning opportunities that the beach holds and we haven’t even gone in the water yet.