If Only Things Could Talk
Brief: Museums must find ways to expand their community segments — embracing those that do not already go to the museum and reinvent themselves to be relevant across social, cultural, economic, and technological changes. What are other alternatives to reach the non-museum goer and provide memorable experiences that build a connection between them and the museum? This project presents the opportunity to radically reimagine new futures for museums and their connections to communities outside of museum walls.
Coming out of a summer-long exhibition design internship at a museum, the prospect of transforming and reimagining traditional museum interactions is very exciting. In the coming weeks of the discovery phase for this project, I hope to dive deeper into some of the following “big picture” questions:
- Museums were initially intended to display culturally and historically relevant artifacts that might otherwise not be seen (by who it is or isn’t seen is a whole different question). However, today with widespread access to the internet, what is the remaining value of seeing and/or interacting with those artifacts in a museum setting?
- Who gets to decide what is exhibited in museums? And for who? Who is represented, not represented, or misrepresented?
- What factors determine the value of an artifact?
Visiting “Extraordinary Ordinary Things”
As the starting point for our pop up museum experience, we visited the Extraordinary Ordinary Things exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Having perused the artifacts on display online prior to visiting, I came in with the primary intention of understanding more of the context behind the objects and starting to identify interconnections between them (both those pointed out by the curators and those I could draw for myself).
I took note of artifacts, themes, and points of interest.
Some of the immediate themes that came to mind were:
- Nostalgia
- Materiality
Across the artifacts shown above, I began thinking a lot about the lineage of artifacts and how they’re made, how artifacts get passed down over time, and how their meaning might change through generations.
Other themes that I noted throughout the exhibition (though not necessarily tied to a single artifact) were those of appropriation, accessibility, and agency. The exhibit itself even mentioned most of these themes in writing (see below), though I felt a certain disconnect between the paragraph descriptions and the actual content of the exhibit. For example, museums are constantly talking about accessibility, but what would an entirely accessible museum actually look like? As a society designed primarily for neurotypical and able bodied people, are we actually willing to sacrifice efficiency, comfort, or aesthetics to create accessible experiences? And in terms of socioeconomic accessibility, are we able to let go of classist ideals?
Some of the biggest takeaways and lingering questions that came out of my visit had to do with the posture of artifacts in an exhibition and how we derive value for those artifacts. A lot of questions came out of this…
- What makes an artifact placed in a glass case feel more important? Who gets to decide that it’s more important?
- Do we actually care more about something when we’re told it’s important?
- How does the formal and removed posture of artifacts in a museum change our interactions within the space? What would happen if we engaged with all of our surroundings in this way? Would we value our surroundings more if they were encased or made to seem more important?
- Do we value things more when they’re taken out of their original context? Why?
As I obviously left the museums with more questions than answers, I wanted to return to the fundamental question; “why should we care about museums?” I jotted down a few points to remember as I continue my discovery and exploration.
Observations in Schenley Plaza
In addition to my general observations within the museum, I also wrote down a few things I noticed in Schenley Plaza. I chose to mainly observe Schenley Plaza because I find it a fascinating place and a very promising location for a pop up intervention.
- From the hammocks to the benches and open grass area, Schenley Plaza is designed to be a social space. (Especially when the weather is nice)
- It is just as much a destination as it is a place to simply pass through. There are people that go there to read or hang out with friends, while there are people that sit on the benches to wait for their reservation at The Porch, or simply need a place to quickly drink their Fuku Tea.
- For the same reason, the plaza attracts a wide range of people, from CMU to Pitt students to families and visitors.
Thus, some of the opportunities that came to mind included; leveraging this social nature in order to start conversations, using movement through the entirety of the space in order to piece together a story, and utilizing the natural landmarks as metaphors for the materials/ modes of making of artifacts (getting to show people first hand where our things come from).
Two Week Reflection
Apart from visiting the museum and the surrounding areas of Schenley Plaza and Craig St, we also underwent a workshop with Greg Manley and a visit to Carrie Furnace.
The workshop, which surrounded the idea of enchanting objects, prompted me to think more about how we encode/ inscribe meaning into everyday things and how designing the ritual, experience, or interaction you have with an object (or even just an idea) is just as important, if not more, than the designed object itself. That being said, the workshop also showed me what goes into the creation of a ritual and the significance of properly setting up or easing people into an experience. For our class, it took several hours to be somewhat comfortable with the unusual nature of some of enchanting objects through rituals we weren’t accustomed to. And that is with a group of thirty students that know each other fairly well. Thus, if rituals or collective experiences (especially among strangers) are a part of what we want to create for our pop up museum, we have to be mindful of how we are introducing people into the experience and how we might prompt genuine and meaningful contribution and/or vulnerability.
This idea is something that museums really struggle with, as I witnessed firsthand working in exhibitions this past summer. Current participatory strategies (mentioned also in Nina Simon’s, “The Participatory Museum”) such as response, or “talk back” boards or communal installations often give the appearance of involving or co-designing with visitors, but really don’t provide enough time or specific enough actions for meaningful contribution. Moving into the design exploration phase of this project, I want to be especially careful that I don’t get caught up in the optics of an experience and that I really consider how to ensure that participation in the experience is seamless and actively engages/challenges/provokes/inspires the audience.
The trip to Carrie Furnace, on the other hand, reinforced some of the themes that caught my eye at the Extraordinary Ordinary Things exhibit. Specifically, I left Carrie Furnace thinking a lot about the elaborate process of making that goes behind our everyday objects, which most people do not think about (or even care about). The challenges of prompting visitors’ curiosity surrounding the built world and inspiring greater appreciation for the things we disregard as mundane are definitely some that I would be interesting in tackling through my design.