Just a quick "lightning" topic for the group. Where do you go for inspiration when designing an exhibit? Let's list out a bunch of them here for everyone to see. It start off:
Pinterest (sorry to say it's true) - a quick reference guide, a way to start absorbing the color palates and forms
SEDG.org - Powerhouse of information
POW ( https://www.orselli.net) - a great personal take on museum exhibitory
Now you...
Hi Matt, I've been researching the sources that inspired mid-twentieth-century exhibition makers and thought you might be tickled to see this sketchbook from a curator at Leeds Museum in the UK from the 1960s. In this page, musing on the British Museum's 1965 'Henry Christy: A Pioneer of Anthropology’ exhibition, he was struck by the use of gold hessian (!) but not so keen on the large white boards that the BM's first professional exhibition designer had used. Visiting other museums and processing that experience by writing and drawing obviously worked for him!
I'm really interested in practice of sketching as thinking anyway, and wondered what role sketching plays today in design practice, for you and others.
WE Nicholson, 'Display' sketchbook, 1965, (C) Leeds Museums
… on this note, I loved Michelle Elligott's "René d’Harnoncourt and the Art of Installation" (2018) -- really fantastic sketches from the development of d’Harnoncourt's exhibitions at the MoMA, wonderful content maps especially, and great insight into the process of thinking through sketching!
@claire-w I LOVE this kind of stuff! Beautiful! We stretch all the time here. It's the best way to get out very early iterations. Most of us here are visual people so it helps make a thought more concrete for us. Paper, white board, side of a box, whatever....
I hope nobody minds me posting a link to one of my own blog posts? It just answers exactly the question you ask and is one of the techniques I've only honed more recently through listening to and absorbing the ideas of people who practice 'vision boarding'. For me the visualisation is in my head and it's around what people are doing not what things look like but I explain it here: https://www.ltclark.co.uk/how-to-connect-with-museum-visitors-1/
@lyndseyc Thanks Lindsey, that's another way to take it. I'll take inspiration where I can get it. Are you enjoying the conference thus far?
Cheers,
Matt
Hi @mattisble I am enjoying it yes - but i'm only managing about 60-90mins a day so will take me a while to get through all the amazing content! So many great speakers!!!
Maybe, maybe not. It is a fun read though. I just came across these in a pile of stuff from my predecessor. One, still in it's original plastic wrapping. OOooooo, premium collectors item. Not really.
