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

Drawing from the Well of Language
Droughts, floods, and flows of meaning

Peter Samis
Associate Curator, Interpretive Media
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
MUSEUMS AND WRITTEN COMMUNICATION. Tradition and Innovation
ICOM-CECA 2012 Yerevan, Armenia 21 October 2012

Museums.

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

...they look like this on the inside.

Offering chamber. Withholding chamber.

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 line
that 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 interpretation
with Mimi Michaelson, Ph.D.

sponsored by the
Samuel H. Kress
Foundation

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

1. Gallery texts and object labels.

All too often, we do it like this.

An indigestible inundation of text & audio.

Compare this...

Detroit Institute of Arts, USA

“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.”
In two sentences, the entrance panel
sets you up for a highly charged
experience.

Or this...

Detroit Institute of Arts, USA

Or this:

[Black lung]

Atemlos =
Out of
breath

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

Ruhr Museum, Essen, Germany

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

“Their art can hurt, can be ugly.”

Passion.
Hatred.
Emotions validated.

And with them, the visitors’ potential
discomfort.

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?

[Micro-doses of
content.
Touch the screen
to access each
one.]

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

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

Can turn into
this:


Thank you.


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

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