Reading for Oct 8

   I really enjoyed this week’s readings. All readings described meanings of exhibitions. Some of them are theoretically analyze what exhibitions are and some of them are practically explore how to constitute exhibitions.

   Alice Parman describes in her article, “Exhibit Makeover”, constructions of exhibitions with step by step procedures. I intrigued her ideas of "romance" as mind opening experiences for audiences. She uses Whiteheads concepts of three important facts to appeal visitors in exhibitions which are romance, precision, and generalization. Romance is a first step to attract visitors for exhibitions. Learning something new and fall in love to the objects are important steps to get into the world of exhibitions. Then what he calls precision is, visitors absorb information and hungry for learning. Finally generalization is the stage that visitors can learn principles of life from exhibitions. When I first met my wedding dresses, I certainly felt a romance. Those dresses inspired me to search their history, culture, and social background. By searching information, I would like to apply historical meanings of wedding dresses to present time. Parman’s approach showed clear purposes and processes for my wedding dresses analysis.

   Beverly Serrell also showed practical approaches of creating labels in his book, Exhibit Labels. He argues connections between labels and objects that “labels help readers look back and forth between the label and the object, following the details of the narrative.” It is difficult to catch visitors’ interests within limited words and simple descriptions. However, labels and objects interact with each other and create new meanings of objects. If the exhibition only display wedding dresses without any labels, it might be beautiful and enjoyable. However by adding personal histories of dresses' owner and social background of wedding ceremonies in the eighteenth century America, visitors could understand why dresses are there and sense romance.

   Perspectives of exhibitions' ethics that Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Ken Yellis display were really interesting for me. Museums have multiple roles not only display history, but also recreate history. Museums often displayed controversial objects such as people’s bodies, primitive people, and wartime objects. Yellis talks about discussions through the exhibition of the Enola Gay. Because of objections and political reasons, the Enola Gay exhibition no longer has historical observation labels with the display. This action made real history invisible. Since power politics work in many museums, those ethics of exhibitions need to be carefully considered by creators. This idea connected to think about biases when creating exhibitions. Since dominated higher classes with powers created common sense within a society, it is important to consider diversities and see objects with multiple perspectives. Although displaying bones of Inuit is significant in ethnographic perspective, it is not appreciate for descendants. I have learned from this weeks' readings that preparing exhibitions and creating labels are part of creating history.