How to make an exhibit work
Apr. 22nd, 2006 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
connaticHeidi, Bub and went to see the Hatshepsut exhibit at the Met yesterday - a good show, and well worth seeing.
The amount of material directly related to Hatshepsut was relatively small - not surprising, since her name was obliterated from monuments and statues some 20 years after her death, and transporting her temples and obelisks to the USA is not exactly feasible. The show works around that by providing a lot of context - materials from her predecessors and successors in the 18th Dynasty, photographs of her temples and the archeological digs that found the materials, and by mounting the materials really well.
From one colossal statue of Thutmose I, the exhibit only has the head (close to 5 feet high - the whole statue must have been incredible). The head was mounted on a pedestal about 10 feet high, so you had to look up to it - and that gives a good impression of the artists' intent.
In another room with materials from her temple, the back wall was framed by a number of pillars mimicking the temple portico - but the pillars were painted the same unobtrusive gray as the wall itself, making the overall effect quite subtle.
It's probably very nerdy, but I enjoyed the craft of the museum exhibit as much as the content itself - the materials were presented in context, well lit, and well described. The descriptions were to the point, didn't pander to local prejudice (don't get me started on the descriptions in the Brooklyn Museum), and there was little or no speculation as to why her name had been removed some twenty years after her death. Given the amount of conflicting theories I've read (many of them nothing but unfounded speculation), that was a relief. I'll have to go back and see this exhibit again, after I've read the catalog.
The amount of material directly related to Hatshepsut was relatively small - not surprising, since her name was obliterated from monuments and statues some 20 years after her death, and transporting her temples and obelisks to the USA is not exactly feasible. The show works around that by providing a lot of context - materials from her predecessors and successors in the 18th Dynasty, photographs of her temples and the archeological digs that found the materials, and by mounting the materials really well.
From one colossal statue of Thutmose I, the exhibit only has the head (close to 5 feet high - the whole statue must have been incredible). The head was mounted on a pedestal about 10 feet high, so you had to look up to it - and that gives a good impression of the artists' intent.
In another room with materials from her temple, the back wall was framed by a number of pillars mimicking the temple portico - but the pillars were painted the same unobtrusive gray as the wall itself, making the overall effect quite subtle.
It's probably very nerdy, but I enjoyed the craft of the museum exhibit as much as the content itself - the materials were presented in context, well lit, and well described. The descriptions were to the point, didn't pander to local prejudice (don't get me started on the descriptions in the Brooklyn Museum), and there was little or no speculation as to why her name had been removed some twenty years after her death. Given the amount of conflicting theories I've read (many of them nothing but unfounded speculation), that was a relief. I'll have to go back and see this exhibit again, after I've read the catalog.
