My fourth day started with Kathryn, who showed me the museum’s Wim Botha exhibition and helped to elucidate the planning process museum workers have to go through to prepare for an exhibition. They have to think about lighting (certain pieces require more or less lighting depending on how fragile they are), layout (especially for sculptures/objects like in the Wim Botha exhibition), preservation (some pieces have safety railings or barriers), and comprehensibility (panels have to be close enough to the artwork to make it clear which piece they are talking about). On top of all that, artists themselves tend to have a lot of opinions as to how their work should be displayed and laid out in a gallery–opinions that often conflict with those of the exhibition design team. Despite these challenges, the Wim Botha gallery looks great. (Y’all should check it out.)
After lunch, I helped move cases and displays out of the Ancient America gallery, which the design team had started to clear out on Tuesday. We were able to finish getting everything out of the room in preparation for the new exhibition.
Before:
After:
I also got to tear down a mural (basically a big sticker) from the wall. The design team had to get out a lift to tear down the top of it since it didn’t all come off in one piece. Tragically, I wasn’t able to ride the lift because of “liability concerns”. Whatever.
Tearing down the mural:
