Maeve Day 12

From 10 AM to just before 11 AM, Dani and I caught up on our blog posts. We then went downstairs to meet up with Monique and the other Bryn Mawr professors (I don't know how to spell anyone's names!) crafting the 360 for a tour of Look Again with John Vick. He mentioned that this was the fourth time the PMA had collaborated with the Penn's African department for an exhibit, but that the last one had been in the 1980s. He said that the goal of the exhibit was to be "noticeably different" and encourage visitors to look closely at objects to come to their own conclusions, but he apparently meant the exhibit should be noticeably different from the Penn Museum's displays. This stems in part from a key difference between anthropological and art museums: the former (in John's opinion) uses objects to illustrate points about culture, while the latter wants to treat the objects as primary sources that speak without text.
I'd be interested to know more specifics about how the objects were chosen for this exhibit by the so-called "expert users" John mentioned. I also want to know if his statement that the visual aspects of the works are often overlooked in exhibitions on Africa holds any water--though it might be kind of difficult to do a comprehensive survey of exhibits of historical African art/ifacts in art museums. I appreciated the thought that had gone into the exhibition design. On the first visit to the exhibit, I was struck by the openness of the exhibit as well as the choice of blue, white, and grey as the main design colors, as this is definitely unusual for exhibits on Africa. I liked that the design team had made the conscious choice to avoid dark, "earthy" tones and theatrical presentation, because apart from the labels, the exhibit looks quite similar to what you might find in any room of an art museum--especially a contemporary gallery. I like how the unusual presentation sets visitors up to have their expectations of African art disrupted, but I'm still not convinced that the exhibit itself follows through.
I thought it was interesting when John elaborated on the internal struggle of art museums as they try to balance academic information and aesthetic appreciation, not wanting to be a 3D textbook but also wanting to get the public invested in art. It seems that all museums have been juggling learning and enjoyable experiences, and I'm glad he believes that they can and should go hand in hand. I'm just not sure museums exist to pique people's curiosity. It was interesting that John said this exhibit was supposed to have an inviting approach that could be used for any other time of work, and I loved how Monique immediately asked him if these kinds of prompts would ever be used for Monets. While I still want to watch the Penn Museum's "What in the World?" TV show, I'm not sure it was really the best basis for an exhibit--the guests on that show were experts who knew how to look at objects and were bringing their knowledge of the cultures to the table, while the average museum visitor doesn't have a background in African anything.
The conversation with John provided a lot of insight into the museum's inner politics. It intrigued me that the main reason they were able to experiment so much with display practices was because nobody at the museum had any ownership over the collection, but it was also dismaying to know that nobody at the PMA has any investment in African art or in changing up their exhibition style. They don't have a very diverse staff, their community outreach committees aren't always relevant to the exhibitions and rarely seem to have any effect on the outcome, and the majority of higher-ups at the museum don't seem invested in changing any of that. After the tour, we briefly discussed some of what had been shared with us. Carrie (?) mentioned that the prompts all seem uncomfortable and like they're trying to justify their presence, while Monique pointed out that nobody seems to know who their audience is or what to do with the Penn collection. Look Again is physically presented as the historical context for the contemporary exhibits, but it's barely emphasized in their marketing, visitors are always walking right past it, and it doesn't actually contain much historical context at all. It's not really tied into the other exhibits. I was reminded of my visit to the East Asian galleries, which contain far more contextual information about the objects (without sacrificing aesthetic/formal information) and actually do a spectacular job of integrating contemporary and global art without privileging outside voices. In one of the Chinese galleries, for example, they've included some prints by an American artist who was inspired by the shapes of the Chinese tables and the cracks in the pottery. His art is presented in the same hall with labels explaining which pieces he drew from and what his vision was, but it all hangs above the Chinese art, so that visitors could easily pass through the room only noticing the ancient works. In Creative Africa, the Vlisco exhibit has been promoted as the must-see, and it barely contains any work done by actual African designers, which raises a lot of questions we've discussed many times.
At about 12:45, we took lunch, and Dani and I set up our recorders and wrote out neater versions of the interview questions. We started doing interviews around 2 PM. I did 9 interviews, many of which were with 2 or 3 visitors who had come together. While it was definitely difficult to balance 3 people (and one person would usually start to answer more of the questions than the others), it was interesting to see how the visitors would interact with each other and draw out more information. I'm also not sure how to get people to separate and if it's even worth it. I was rejected by five of the visitors (or pairs of visitors) that I approached, and it got especially difficult to get people to come with me after 4 PM because they wanted to finish their visits before the museum closed. Almost everyone I interviewed said they liked the prompts or thought they should stay, even if they'd admitted to not really reading them or being frustrated by them. It got a bit repetitive hearing visitors tell me that they thought the prompts were useful for children before backtracking and admitting they'd also found them helpful. I was also fascinated by how many visitors told me they thought it was helpful to have more information about the history or cultural context of the objects--I'm not convinced they were telling me the truth when they told me that they "strongly agreed" with the statement "I understood what the prompts were asking me to do." I did get one visitor who said she appreciated the prompts because she thought they helped people look more closely at art and appreciate it aesthetically, which is exactly what they were designed to do. Many visitors seemed wary of saying anything negative to me, as they believed I worked for the museum and had had something to do with crafting the labels. I look forward to transcribing them and having more concrete things to share.