2.6 Designing Exhibitions as Narrative Space

by a clear curatorial concept and themes or overarching narratives.250 These exhibitions, to be discussed in later sections, show how contemporary curating strategies use the exhibition environment as an interpretation tool. The exhibition is a setting for the staging of spatial relations between the work and the viewer. The curator creates structures and experiences that allow the viewer to engage with the work. Narrative can address the relationship between a single object and its setting in space or it can involve the creation of displays that build a background storyline to the objects on display. It creates a strong linking dialogue between the space and the visitor and can play an important part in the creation of powerful visitor experiences.

This approach would seem to support the views of former Tate Director, Nicholas Serota. Writing in 1987, he identified that the new museums of the future would seek to promote different modes and levels of interpretation by subtle juxtapositions of experience explored by visitors according to their particular interests and sensibilities, “in the new museum each of us, curators and viewers alike, will have to become more willing to chart our own path…rather than following a single path laid down by a curator.”251

2.6 Designing Exhibitions as Narrative Space

The concept of narrative space has influenced a further area of design practice over the last decade, the field of exhibition design. David Dernie has identified how narrative has become central to exhibition design. In his view, the sector has become a varied, media-rich highly interpretive landscape where exhibitions engage with the clarity and persuasive techniques that once belonged to the world of advertising reaching out to a broader range of visitors:-

250

Examples include; David Bowie Is… at the V&A, London, 2013 and Hussein Chalayan: From fashion and back at the Design Museum, London, 2009. The exhibitions are discussed in Section 2.7.

251

Nicholas Serota, Experience or Interpretation: Dilemma of Museums of Modern Art, London: Thames & Hudson, 2000: 55.

“The emphasis on narrative space that has characterised modern exhibition practice has recently refocused, as museums and galleries respond to an increasingly sophisticated and competitive leisure market. What is now fundamental to contemporary exhibition design is the creation of an ‘experience' that is engaging, multi-sensory and rewarding.”252

Many ideas have influenced the development of exhibition design as an essential component of curatorial practice. The intrinsic relationship between the curator and the exhibition designer can be understood as a legacy from the Bauhaus and the experimental approaches to exhibition design developed by designers such as Herbert Bayer (1900-1985) who was first a student and then a teacher of advertising, design and typography at the design school. Writing in 1937, Bayer accorded exhibition design a new status as a distinct discipline:-

“Exhibition design has evolved as a new discipline, as an apex of all media and powers of communication and of collective efforts and effects. The combined means of visual communication constitutes a remarkable complexity: language as visible printing or as sound, pictures as symbols, paintings and photographs, sculptural media, materials and surfaces, colour, light, movement, films, diagrams and charts. The total application of all plastic and psychological means makes exhibition design an intensified and new language.”253

He argued that every aspect of design, from graphic to lighting to interiors, should be brought to bear on an exhibition’s design and that the creation of a rich visual and physical relationship between the viewer and the works on display encouraged engagement. He argued that the theme should not retain its distance from the spectator, but that it should be brought close to him, to penetrate and leave an impression.

Bayer’s approach is cited as one of the foremost influences on the early years of temporary exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Art historian Mary Anne Staniszewski argues that in the

252 David Dernie, Exhibition Design, London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd, 2006: 13.

253

Herbert Bayer, ‘Fundamentals of Exhibition Design’, PM 6, 2, December 1939 - January 1940: 17.

installation design of the first half of the twentieth century, the sources of such practices as viewer interactivity and site specificity alongside multimedia, electronic and installation-based work are to be found.254 In The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art, Staniszewski asserts that visuality, display and narrative are central to any curated exhibition, with display understood as the core of exhibiting.255 Staniszewski also emphasises the influential part played by artists, designers and curators such as Alfred H. Barr, Herbert Bayer, Frederick Kiesler, László Moholy-Nagy and William Sandberg in contributing to this discipline.

The work of American mid-twentieth century designers Charles and Ray Eames in the field of exhibition design and media presentation provides a good basis from which to explore these principles of curatorial practice.256 Best known for their development of new techniques in furniture production, architecture and industrial design, the Eames achieved an incredibly diverse output throughout their careers spanning fields such as photography, filmmaking, exhibition design and multi-media work. Exhibitions such as Mathematica: A World of Numbers (1961) presented an engaging exploration of mathematical concepts through an interactive exhibition. Sponsored by IBM, it included five short animations and can be viewed as pioneering interactive formats later adopted by science and technology museums.

More recently, Curator Zoë Ryan has singled out exhibitions at the

254

Mary Anne Staniszewski, The Power of Display: A history of exhibition installation at the Museum of Modern Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998: xxii-xxiii.

255

Mary Anne Staniszewski, The Power of Display: A history of exhibition installation at the Museum of Modern Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998: xxi.

256

Key academic texts on the Eames as designers and curators include; Catherine Ince, The World of Charles and Ray Eames, London: Thames & Hudson, 2015; Pat Kirkham, Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995; Donald Albrecht, The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention, New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1998.

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) such as Modern Architecture: International Exhibition (1932) and Machine Art (1934) where each of the installation designs were particularly influential with display methods conceived to engage and provoke the visitor. The exhibition design for Machine Art, discussed in Chapter 1 (1.3), was very carefully conceived by curator Philip Johnson. A press release for the show explicitly stated that, for the first time, the Museum was giving as much importance to the installation as to the exhibition itself.257

Over the last two decades, museums have changed the way in which they communicate with their visitors through an increasingly diverse range of interpretive tools. Many writers have documented the shift away from curating as an administrative, caring, mediating activity towards that of curating as a creative activity more akin to a form of artistic practice. Jonathan Watkins has argued for curating as a form of artistic practice. He suggested that, in curated exhibitions, the display or exhibition is aided by the curator’s “manipulation of the environment, the lighting, the labels, the placement of other works of art.”258 In 1998 Mary Anne Staniszewski argued that visual effect, display and narrative were central to any exhibition and discussed the important functions of “curating, exhibition design and spatially arranged exhibition forms.”259

A substantial proportion of museum visitor research in recent years has been directed towards the area of exhibition design. Studies of how visitors interact with exhibitions have shown that the designed spaces of exhibition galleries have the greatest influence on the visitor experience. Falk and Dierking, in their research on the nature, quality and impact of museum experiences and discussed earlier in this chapter, have drawn

257

Philip Johnson cited in Zoë Ryan (ed.), As Seen: Exhibitions that made Architecture and Design History, The Art Institute of Chicago, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017: 18.

Jonathan Watkins cited by Paul O’Neill in ‘The Co-Dependent Curator’, Art Monthly

258 291, November 2005. Available at: https://www.artmonthly.co.uk/magazine/site/article/theco-dependent-curator-by-paul-oneill-november-2005 (Accessed 12.07.17).

259

Mary-Anne Staniszewski, The Power of Display: A history of exhibition installation at the Museum of Modern, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1998: xxi.

attention to the fact that too many exhibitions are designed with the assumption that the museum, rather than the visitor, controls the experience.260 They argue that exhibitions are, and should be, designed to engage the visitor in a learning experience that involves them stopping, looking and making sense of the information presented. The research has led to a shift towards exhibition design as now explicitly audience-focused with the aim of creating a relationship between the visitor, the space and the object. Exhibition design operates as an interpretation tool for ordering the work and helps to provide a frame that brings the concept and content of an exhibition alive.

This shift has also brought about a review of the role of exhibition graphics as an interpretive device in the exhibition. In the early years of the museum, exhibitions presented collections for public view and communicated the voice of the specialist curator. Labels and other interpretive materials were often verbose and highly technical. New interpretation methods introduced in the 1990s attempted to bring the world of the expert and the world of the visitor closer together. New guidelines for labelling were introduced that aimed to achieve a balance between accuracy and intelligibility. In 1999 the Campaign for Museums, supported by the Museums Association and the Department for Education and Employment, launched a new initiative. ‘Design a Label’ aimed to generate a debate about labelling and interpretation while at the same time offering practical information for museums and galleries to make labels easier to read and understand by visitors.261 Such initiatives resulted in the development of new writing styles, with labels written in a language that was short, simple and direct. Many museums introduced a hierarchy of information that distinguished between general and specialist information. Standards were established regarding type size and layout, placement, background contrast and other design issues all to improve

260

John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking (eds.), The Museum Experience Revisited, London and New York: Routledge, 2013: 105.

261

Design a Label: Guidelines on Labelling for Museums, Museums Association and The campaign for Museums, May 1999: 1-8.