5 Museum Visits That Changed My Life

 

From the desk of Tim Willis, 

Director of Exhibitions and Visitor Experience

I learned recently that the wonderful exhibition developer, Judy Rand had written about museum experiences that changed her life. One of them was the moment she smelled apple pies baking in the kitchen of our Old Town gallery at the Royal BC Museum. This got me wondering if I could say the same. Had I experienced a museum visit so profoundly affecting?

Well, indeed, I've had a few. Here are five of them I'd like to share them with you:

1. Weather Permitting exhibition at the Minnesota History Center

For me, this is a text book demonstration of how to tell a story simply and powerfully. With a simple setting – a basement ‘rec’ room and a few props - a bare light bulb, an old radio and television and a basement window - one is transported in just 8 minutes into a the heart of a terrifying [ and particularly topical] event – the effect of a devastating tornado.

2. The Lifeline at the Churchill Museum, London

The Lifeline is a 15-metre-long interactive table on which visitors 'open files' documenting each week of Churchill's life during the war. I chanced upon the day that the Battle of Britain started and a squadron of Spitfires in silhouette flew down the entire length of the table. It is a superb and surprising application of technology.

3. Michelangelo's David, Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence

I've never had my breath taken away by an object - well, perhaps once when I received a rugby ball in the face - but I've never been so moved by an inanimate object. He’s is bigger and much more beautiful than I'd ever imagined. The approach to David at the Accademia is an exercise in extraordinary anticipation. (Michelangelo's David Photo: David Gaya License: {{GFDL}}

4. The Akely Hall of African Mammals, American Museum of Natural History, New York

Is it any wonder that the museum has not changed this space in eight decades? It's old school for sure, but still a wonder!

5. Wilson Fur Suit, Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, UK

My first museum... well the museum I loved as a boy in my home town in England. On my way home from school I would drop in a stare at a simple display of artifacts in a case, including a fur parka that was owned by Edward Wilson. Wilson was Robert Scott’s closest friend, and died with him in 1912 on their terrible trek back from the South Pole. He grew up in my hometown and his story inspired me through my life and left me an insatiable interest in stories of exploration.

Do let me know: what museum moments have stuck with you and why?

Tim Willis

The Mother of Invention

Some places are cool because of the mess. When you step into our basement audio visual workshop, you just know you’re not going to be able to understand what goes on down there… but that whatever it is they do… it’s damned clever.

It looks like that place in Star Wars where the obsolete droids were dismantled for their parts. The place is strewn with circuit boards, wires and computers with their innards exposed. It’s here that invention takes place, or rather where invention is tested. View of the audio visual workshop below:

The moment of invention took place over a morning coffee. We needed a microscope for our upcoming Behind the Scenes exhibition… one that would allow visitors, particularly children, to study specimens – and one that would also allow for more than one person to participate. We could not quite find anything on the market that fit the bill. But a coffee-time discussion between four members of our staff led to a beautiful solution. The Masterminds at coffee below – from left to right: Mark Dickson - Manager of Exhibitions, Ken Johnson - Senior Exhibition Designer, Norm Charbonneau - head Image Management and Technical Services and Nigel Sinclair - Exhibit Arts Technician:

Instead of a microscope, this team imagined that a tiny high definition digital camera linked to a flat screen monitor would do the trick. The camera moves back and forth on a rail over an illuminated box holding the specimens. The whole unit is transportable… which makes it useable elsewhere in our galleries when the current show ends. Prototype of the unit on the IMTS lab bench below:

And once the testing is complete, the unit can be reproduced. In Behind the Scenes, we’ll have seven of these… these… now what should we call it? Anyone want to suggest a name? The almost finished …er …thing being prototyped with visitors below:

Two things stand out for me as I observed the development of the magnifier. First of all, the inventive process was just such a modest, collaborative affair. No great fanfare or eureka moment, just a group of colleagues talking over coffee, bringing their collective experience to the table. If I came up with this idea, I’d be dancing in the street! The second thing that struck me was just how much work was needed to take the idea to completion. Initial prototyping of the technology (camera, lighting and monitor) was followed by the evolution of the mechanical parts of the device: parts were machined, tested with users and then reengineered repeatedly until it worked smoothly without failure.


Tim Willis

Slowing Down Real Life

This is my first blog entry. I’m going to write about the stresses… and joys of creating exhibitions.

Maybe there are only a few of us ‘exhibition geeks’ who think that what we do might interest others. But I hope that the strange world in which questions like ‘how do you simulate French fries?’ and ‘can you mould a slug?’ are commonplace, might be of some interest to others.

Our business is unusual. There are few professions that stretch so far between art and science, academia and showbiz, business and pleasure. In fact, are there any? Indeed, the very way we develop exhibitions seems to be fraught with paradox – is it science or art… education or entertainment?

I’ll try to focus on projects that we are working on right now, and give a glimpse of the magic and the confusion of this work.

I’m going to start with an exhibition called Royal BC Museum: Behind the Scenes. It opens on June 25. In it, we turn ourselves inside out to expose the work we do… behind the scenes [quelle surprise!]. Part One will run for more than a year and focus on the work of our Natural History staff. Part Two opens in 2011 with a focus on Human History.

How odd that for this inaugural post on the topic of contemporary exhibition challenges, I turn to one of the most traditional of museum art forms – the diorama. Not the great sweeping spectacles of the American Natural History Museum or the forest and coastal dioramas of our own museum, but tiny dioramas starring slugs, goldfish and mosquitoes! (Image below: Colin Longpre’s simulated French fries are a hit with starlings!)

A few years ago, I learned a big lesson from a small museum. Dioramas don’t need to be epic in scale. In fact, being tiny can sometimes focus the attention. The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles is a lesson in the power of great storytelling in miniature.

I think dioramas are exquisitely interesting. They are low tech in a world of digital showiness. And yet, there is something compelling about them, even in the digital age. They are masterful representations of life in the original 3-D. Visitors love them for their clarity, their apparent reality and for the skill of the diorama artist. And maybe in a world where life is fleeting, transitory, and intangible, the diorama provides a welcome respite. Dioramas let us slow down and wonder. (Image below: Kate Kerr does a little miniature farming.)

To the challenge at hand – Behind the Scenes will feature a special presentation on the topic of invasive species. Our curators presented a menu of 30 invasive species as the focus. Now… we have a very talented and resourceful exhibitions team, but I have to say that the first reaction as they got their assignment was less than enthusiastic. Let’s face it… sometimes the subject of the show is not exactly movie star material... slugs, mosquitoes, starlings, goldfish… I mean, come on! But this is where the magic comes in. The creative process sometimes needs a few days of gestation… and before long our wonderful team of Exhibit Arts Technicians had started to mock up a whole series of scenes... miniature snapshots from life. I think the mundane nature of the topic became the very challenge. What I love about what they have done is how they resisted the temptation to use media and accepted the challenge of creating a world in three dimensions. And I love that the scenes are not the pristine visions of nature that the old dioramas represent… but rather they are about nature and us… starlings and French fries.

Tim Willis

Recommended reading and other links:

Great article: Diorama-o-rama by Jesse Smith

Great book: Windows on Nature: the great habitat dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History, Stephen Quinn

Great visit: the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles