How Do They Label Art Pieces in a useum

The best museum labels do more than than provide information. A corking museum label takes its reader on a revelatory journey, reframing perceptions along the mode and provoking a lasting reaction.

Swarupa Anila, Director of Interpretative Appointment at the Detroit Institute of Arts and juror for the American Alliance of Museums Excellence in Exhibition Characterization Writing Contest, sums up but how powerful a single label can be: 'A brilliant label sweeps you into a bodily feel. Eyes widen. Breath stops. Skin rises to goose bumps. Heartbeat quickens. You lot look around and feel you lot're seeing a world that never existed before that moment.'

Constructive museum labels anticipate and answer visitors' unspoken questions nearly the artwork or object they accompany. At the same time they forge emotional connections with those visitors. Information technology'southward obvious, then, that anyone writing gallery or exhibition labels needs detailed noesis in two areas: the objects themselves and the visitors who will exist looking at them. Plus, they need a articulate goal that defines what they hope visitors might think, feel or practice in response.

A well-worded label meets the company in familiar territory, using concepts and terminology that feel like second nature, before revealing a new, and relevant, perspective.

In just a judgement or two, a skillful object label equips visitors with the tools to expect back at the object and draw their own new conclusions about information technology, conclusions that volition be influenced as much by each visitor's unique experiences equally by the museum's words.

How museum labels reveal other worlds

Consider this sentence, taken from a label stretched between two artefacts in the dinosaur gallery at London's Natural History Museum:

When I first read this characterization, I found myself acting out the movements of these long-dead creatures, imagining my own hands equipped with spikes and claws. It made me expect more closely at the remnants of the 2 dinosaurs and encouraged me to consider how each might take used its in-built tool.

These twenty-ane words are effective because they combine three elements: familiarity, focus and visualisation. Aside from the names of the dinosaurs, the words are familiar ones I can relate to, which makes for a quick and easy read. The meaning is clear considering the text focuses in on only one aspect of the fossils. My thoughts are therefore unencumbered by competing pieces of information. Finally, the use of agile terms helps me visualise how these animals, which took their last breaths over 100,000 years ago, might accept lived and interacted with one some other.

The post-obit paragraph too paints a picture of a very dissimilar earth. It comes from a label at the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, which houses a sixteenth-century warship:

The Medieval Machine Gun

Lightweight and portable, the English longbow was the super-weapon of its time. Accurate at distances over 200 metres, an archer could shoot over 12 arrows every infinitesimal. Shot in volleys, these arrows created an inescapable and deadly cloud.

The title and first line incorporate a modern analogy – another use of familiarity – to give new meaning to these 500-twelvemonth-old weapons. A snippet of factual information and then reveals how powerful a longbow could be. The final 8 words, like the active terms in the dinosaur characterization, assist u.s.a. visualise what information technology might exist like to exist on the receiving end of their arrows. Endeavour googling 'longbow' and you'd be hard pressed to find such deep insight, even afterward reading several hundred words online.

Both these labels reveal something to the visitor, and they practice and so by reinstating some of the context that is lost when objects are placed in a museum. Reinstating that context helps visitors understand the origin, purpose, use or impact of an object. Truly groovy interpretation goes even further: information technology provokes the visitor in some way.

How museum labels provoke reactions

In his classic volume Interpreting our Heritage, get-go published in 1957, Freeman Tilden defines interpretation as 'an educational activity which aims to reveal meanings and relationships'. Tilden emphasises that while estimation includes information, it besides reveals larger truths about the world, just like a well-written story.

Stories can, of class, be entertaining merely, for Tilden, the chief aim of museum interpretation is to provoke. Interpretation, he suggests, should inspire a visitor to want to know more and encourage them to search out meanings for themselves, 'join[ing] in the expedition like a fellow discoverer'. In particular, visitors often accept the opportunity to question how they would react in a like situation.

This questioning is explicit in the opening lines of this characterization from the Like Me: Our Bond with Brands exhibition at The Blueprint Museum, London:

The label goes on to share the results of a research report, which found people would pay significantly less for Clooney'due south sweater if they couldn't tell anyone well-nigh information technology, even less if it had been washed.

Combining that information with our ain answers, we realise a more than general indicate, that people sometimes value the story behind an item, and the power to share that story, more than the item itself. This realisation might, in plow, provoke united states to consider what nosotros personally value or why sharing stories is such a fundamental part of human nature.

Each of these three labels reframes our initial view of an object, but hither the reframing is, again, explicit. If we don't read the label, we come across a evidently onetime sweater, to which we wouldn't usually give a second glance. If nosotros read the label, we reframe our view of the sweater every bit something potentially valuable.

How museum labels reframe perspectives

When nosotros frame data about an object we focus attention on certain aspects of that object or its history. It's simply like choosing a new frame for a painting, which then highlights different qualities of the artwork. Framing is less about the information we feature in a characterization and more virtually how we present that information.

Marketers are the masters of framing information for the greatest impact. For instance, describing a burger every bit '90 per cent lean' will prompt different thoughts and deportment than saying it has '10 per cent fat', fifty-fifty though both statements derive from the same bones information.

In museums, reframing can be a result of choosing to brandish an particular in the start place or of multiple interpretation decisions beyond an entire exhibition. Sometimes even a single word can reorient our thoughts. Every bit MuseumNext speaker Seth Godin has written, 'How should I judge this', is something we inquire ourselves all the time. When yous brand the effort to requite usa a hint, we'll frequently have the hint'.

Take the black and white photograph, simply 14 by 11 inches, displayed in a 2018 exhibition at Delaware Art Museum (DAM) in Wilmington. Some visitors will instantly recognise the scene and its significance. At my starting time glance, I saw what looked like a sink in the corner of an empty room. However choosing to identify this photograph in a gallery is, in itself, an human action of framing. It suggests there must be something special or important virtually this identify or virtually the photo that has been taken of it. Information technology is more, I am led to think, than simply an architectural study.

The exhibition label for the image is a masterclass in how to reveal, reframe and provoke. It starts off with the title:

Segregated drinking fountains in the canton courthouse in Albany, Georgia, 1962

In but x words and a date, this reveals a lot. I realise that my perceived sink is in fact a water fountain. I realise at that place are fifty-fifty ii water fountains in the scene, one far smaller and less accessible than the other. Most importantly, the very first discussion acts equally a frame that changes my perception over again, considering I realise each fountain has been demarcated for use by a detail group. Looking back at the photo, my optics are now fatigued to the signs placed to a higher place each fountain; one says 'WHITE', the other 'COLORED'.

Those x words give new significant to the photo, but the residuum of the label reveals even more than about the globe information technology represents. Written in the first person, these 150 words tell the true story of a vi-yr-former girl and her come across with a like water fountain:

Mame was the strongest, smartest well-nigh beautiful adult female in my six yr old earth. On Saturdays she took me with her to the hair dresser and later on on a short stroll to Atlanta'southward municipal market. The market was alive with smells, and voices. Mame would treat me to a hot dog and a pocketbook of warm roasted peanuts. One time while eating the peanuts, I needed water. Looking about, I spotted the fountain which had modest wooded steps on ane side and so that children could climb upwards to fill tiny newspaper cups. Feeling pretty dauntless, I went to the fountain and started to climb the steps. Mame tackled me as I reached the peak stride and lifted me to a tiny bowl where she turned on the water spigot, and in a quivering voice appear that "this one is for us." Her voice frightened me—it was barely aural, awakening something for which I had no name.

These are the words of African American writer Melva Ware. Ware was one of several people invited by DAM to share personal perspectives when the Museum hosted a travelling bear witness of Danny Lyon's photographs. Every bit part of a wider plan marker the fiftieth anniversary of uprisings in Wilmington following the assassination of Martin Luther King, DAM wanted to include a plurality of voices in the prove and, in particular, local voices.

While the title frames the photo as a symbol of racial inequality at a specific time and place, Ware's personal perspective shifts our thoughts to the impact of such inequality on the lives of ordinary people. For anyone who shares like experiences, Ware's words will resonate and reframe in myriad other ways.

Similar any skilful story, this 1 helps u.s.a. imagine ourselves right there. It even gets our senses buzzing. We hear the hustle and hurry of the market, smell the hot dog and warm peanuts and feel the comfort of being close to someone we trust. Finally, we capeesh the confusion, fright and loss of innocence experienced by Ware at the moment she is redirected to the smaller fountain – an feel probable to provoke a range of different emotions, depending on our own experiences and views.

Offering revelation, reframing and provocation, it'southward no surprise this label was ane of the winners of the 2019 Excellence in Exhibition Label Writing Competition. But did information technology piece of work in do? Equally any interpreter knows, many museum visitors don't read labels at all, while others just check out the title. All the same, exit surveys at DAM showed that most viii out of 10 visitors read these 'community contribution' labels. A third stated that reading them changed how they saw the photographs in the exhibition.

Part of the success of these labels was, says Amelia Wiggins, Assistant Director of Learning & Appointment at DAM, down to involving the right people as contributors. Wiggins advises anyone wanting to follow DAM'due south example to beginning off doing ii things: 1. Be clear on your goals and the perspectives y'all want to incorporate, and ii. Listen.

Developing close ties with communities and customs leaders, says Wiggins, enables you to bring in their perspectives at an early on stage of exhibition development, while clarity of purpose volition help yous choose advisable collaborators and brief them finer.

For the Danny Lyons showroom, Ware and her swain contributors were brought together at the Museum to select the images they wished to reply to. They were and so given a adequately open brief in terms of the characterization text: to write i or two paragraphs that shared a personal response, a retentiveness, a reaction, a question or a call to action, all written in the kickoff person or as if writing to a friend.

DAM are now integrating community-created content into all their interpretation for special exhibits. I tin can't wait to see how their approach pays off in even more labels that reveal, reframe and provoke.

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Source: https://www.museumnext.com/article/what-makes-a-great-museum-label/

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