Just so you don’t think I’m too one-sided here, I will say that, as a curator, I acknowledge that we have great power over how artifacts are interpreted—that every stage of the process of exhibition changes or ads or subtracts value to objects that the visitor may or may not have expectations for. A skilled curator will balance the requirements of interpretation and the needs of the visitor to achieve something satisfactory to both.
Dan made a good comment below. Sometimes the visitors don’t expect any interpretation and are happy to just see things put out. I believe that’s fine. And that “just putting stuff out” may be the best thing you can do depending on the exhibit, the artifacts, the visitors, and the expectations. That was the idea with the exhibit From the Museum’s Attic I worked on at the Museum and I think it works real well.
And speaking of just putting things out… As much as I like to manipulate visitors with interpretive trickery, I also think unloading piles of artifacts with no curatorial guidance is just as fun. In Chattanooga we visited a house museum of some old lady who collected late 19th/early 20th century glass and they’ve got the entire house lined with pitchers, trays, cups, mugs, butter dishes, beer steins—everywhere. Even on the ceilings. I walked in and rolled my eyes and muttered about the old kook, but after dutifully entering the fourth or fifth room, it all began to overwhelm me and I began to take notice: the old kook had collected some really neat stuff and good gawd, look at it all. This is neat. I’ve never been more interested in a glass gelatin mold with a paper label of the HMS Dreadnaught on the side in my whole life.
I think that works if you’ve overwhelmed the visitor. Crush them with your fetish and they’ll momentarily go along with you. But there is a danger of underwhelming. Not enough and the visitor won’t be convinced. The new exhibit, What We Wore, at the history museum is good, but imagine how much more powerful that gallery would be if it had two or three times the number of dresses.* And the wall case at Duke Homestead with the meerschaum pipes falls short. Instead of twenty cool pipes, think five hundred. Now that would be neat.
*I know, I know. The logistics of conserving, mounting, and moving just what got put out probably strained every resource the museum has. Asking for more is just my imagination at work.
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