Drawing from the Well of Language: Droughts, Floods, and Flows of Meaning

Drawing from the Well of LanguageDroughts, floods, and flows of meaning

Peter SamisAssociate Curator, Interpretive MediaSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art

MUSEUMS AND WRITTEN COMMUNICATION. Tradition and InnovationICOM-CECA 2012 Yerevan, Armenia 21 October 2012

Even if they look like this on the outside...

Museums.

...they look like this on the inside.

…and this...

Offering chamber. Withholding chamber.

JustinCozart, Drought

Modern art—like all the objects we exhibit —exists in a framework of meanings.

• Physical aspects• Process of its making• Relationships (to its maker, to ideas, to

other works)• Documents (journals, letters, sketches)• Media• Methods of approach and understanding

Of these, art museums typically strip away all but one or two.

• Method(s) of approach and understanding• Physical aspects

Experts………………Novices

Somewhere along the linethat leaves us to restore the

context.

Olafur Eliasson states the problem.

“The very basic belief that is behind my work is that objecthood, or objects as such, doesn’t have a place in the world if there’s not an individual person making some use of that object…”

So what’s our toolkit for hooking visitors on the objects we share?

urbanmkr, ...in our borrowed tackle box

ONLY CONNECT: A research project on visitor-centered museum interpretationwith Mimi Michaelson, Ph.D.

sponsored by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

1. Gallery texts and object labels.

So, some lessons on a continuum from Analog to Digital:

All too often, we do it like this.

An indigestible inundation of text & audio.

Compare this...

Detroit Institute of Arts, USA

In two sentences, the entrance panel sets you up for a highly charged

experience.

“Much of the art in this suite was made before the French Revolution for European aristocrats who lived grandly, luxuriously, and fashionably.

“The works of art help reveal how the privileged few wiled away their days and how they perceived others in the world.”

Or this...

Detroit Institute of Arts, USA

Or this:

[Black lung]

Atemlos = Out of breath

Ruhr Museum, Essen, Germany

[Along with a paragraph on the side telling the story of the miner whose lung this was.]

How about this?

33 words.

Kelvingrove Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland

Minimum words. Maximum impact.

BELLAMY: “With visitor research, most people… read the first couple sentences and then you move on. So we thought, ‘Okay, we’ll just give them the first couple sentences. We’ll put everything that we need to in those first couple sentences.’”  PERRY: Our word count on labels is

thirty words. And within that thirty words, you have to say why that object is good.

—Interview with Martin Bellamy and Anne Perry of the Glasgow Museums

Consider the longer wall text…

rewritten with personality!Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Consider the wall text…

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Passion.Hatred. Emotions validated.

And with them, the visitors’ potential discomfort.

“Their art can hurt, can be ugly.”

2. Audio (& Multimedia) Tours

With audio/multimedia tours, the issue is the same—but different.

It’s just as easy to run on at the mouth and try to cram too many points in, ignoring people’s tired feet.

Photo: FreakingNews.com

So what can you say in a minute that keeps people looking at—and engaged with—the object?

Add great video as a sub-level, but keep it short!

[Micro-doses ofcontent. Touch the screento access each one.]

One museum director told us:

“I don’t like the idea of everything gravitating toward a predictable, or best-practices model… You know, it’s sort of a phantom idea, and it could spell mediocrity. And so I think, you know, there’s the best practice for the project…

But I’m always interested in seeing what people think ‘best practices’ means, and I’m always ready for a debate on that, with anybody who cares to talk about it.”

—Dan Spock, Director, Minnesota History Center

Dosing = Scaffolding

Photo: RocPX

The same applies to video and multimedia, on-site and online.

[Touch each thumbnail to reveal a paragraph of content, a facet of the topic.]

Knowledge on demand, just in time.

Points of Departure: Connecting with Contemporary Art, SFMOMA, 2001

Updated.

Art Institute of Chicago, Decorative Arts galleries, 2012

Words, effectively written and dosed, can turn seemingly neutral objects into passionate subjects.

[How many ways are there to make a black painting—and what are some of the reasons one might want to do so?]

Unfamilar objects need stories—and people who are passionately involved.

[Segments from Dorothea Lange’s oral history.]

The spoken word is powerful medicine.

Especially combined with images & text.

http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/interactive_features/68

http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/215

So hopefully this…

Yogendra Joshi, Flow

Yogendra Joshi, Flow

Can turn into

this:

Yogendra Joshi, Flow

Thank you.