Exhibits and Design, Part 1

My first few posts will be about a current museum or gallery exhibit which I have recently visited, namely, the "Language of Lines" exhibit at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center. In the spirit of talking about “design in society,” this subject will divided into three different posts. This first one is going to deal with the design of an exhibit itself.

I volunteered for the Schulz Museum this summer and actually had the fortune of helping to assemble their new exhibit titled, “The Language of Lines: How Cartoonists Create Characters.” It’s a great exhibit, itself part of a three part series containing cartoonists from different eras and styles spanning at least a century, but that’s for next time.

Designing, and constructing, an exhibit is complicated. It’s a simple fact, but it was only when I actually saw part of the process that I realized just how many elements have to be considered. My part in the process was mostly grunt work. I helped to clean off walls from the last exhibit, stick on labels for the new one, and clean the glass as a finishing touch. I watched though, as my bosses considered where the lighting was going to hit the walls, how the pieces were going to be displayed on the wall, where to put the labels, etc. A lot of work went into the process, and not all of it was intuitive.

For example, when they were arranging the lights, the focus was not on lighting everything properly, though that was of course important, but instead was on breaking up the wall. They had to do this because the pieces on exhibit were all comic strips, black and white, and the walls were all solid colors. Having a homogenous light would have washed the wall out entirely and made it unappealing to look at. By breaking up the light however, they created drama, designed as such to capture people’s attention and draw them in to the works. It’s interesting that though people coming to the museum would be expecting cartoons, the museum staff made sure to increase the interest. For the workers, the effort was equal parts exhibit material and equal part presentation. Perhaps because the design of the exhibition hall increases drama, the design also determines how memorable a museum is. It’s not enough just to have the comic strips up on a white wall, a great inventory is not the only thing a museum needs. The work needs an appropriate frame, or else it won’t be noticed, no matter how exciting or interesting the original intent of the collection is.



copyright Schulz Museum, 2009.
More information about this exhibit can be found at http://www.schulzmuseum.org/