Transformations: From Oral History to Museum Exhibition. In September 2004, the Smithsonian s National Museum of the American Indian

Transcription

1 Transformations: From Oral History to Museum Exhibition In September 2004, the Smithsonian s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) opened on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Our Lives: Contemporary Life and Identities, one of four inaugural exhibitions, focuses on the identities of Native peoples in the Western Hemisphere at a local and global level. As part of Our Lives, representatives from eight Native communities, from as far north as Igloolik, Nunavut to Carib Territory, Dominica in the Caribbean, collaborated with NMAI to develop smaller sub-exhibits within Our Lives highlighting their communal identity. This was significant for these communities since this was the first time a large institution asked them to engage in self-representation as curatorial partners. As part of this request, communities established committees that served as the primary collaborators with NMAI. They came to be known as the community co-curators. The community co-curators and I begin this experience by having regular workshop meetings to begin to develop the concepts and themes for their community exhibits. For the most part, I did not enter the collaboration with the communities with my own ideas as to what their exhibits should be about other than having general parameters since it was an exhibit on contemporary Native identity. I told each group of community co-curators that their exhibit in Our Lives should not solely be: 1. A history of the community although I knew history would undoubtedly be part of each community s exhibition; it should not be the focal point. 2. It should not be a sanitized, tourist version of the community and 3. It should not be focused solely on traditional or historical practices of the community. The community co-curators begin their discussions with these parameters always in mind. It shaped how they talked about various experiences and events in the life of 1

2 their communities and over the course of a few workshops certain topics, ideas, and phrases consistently surfaced. By the end of the second meeting with each group of co-curators, I realized I needed a way to present information back to them and begin using an outline format to identify prominent ideas and significant quotes. After a couple of co-curatorial revisions of the working outline, I shared them with NMAI staff, including script editors and designers, only to find that while this format was useful, it did not meet their needs to create exhibit labels or an exhibition design. Consequently, two things happened simultaneously, but I will start with the exhibit labels. NMAI used a two-column format for writing exhibit labels and asked me to convert the working outlines into what they called a script structure. For the script editor, this format was familiar and useful, but the designers found it did not help them visualize how exhibition content was organized or divided on the exhibit floor. The designers needed visuals and asked me to create bubble diagrams indicating major themes and sub-themes to show they were connected and to determine an overall concept or main message of each community exhibit. They also wanted percentages attached to the major themes to begin to get an idea of how much exhibit space need to be allotted to each thematic area. Once the bubble diagrams were completed, we met with community co-curators to review and revise them and further discuss the design of each of the community spaces. Designers asked the co-curators about colors, symbols, and tones of their community. Although the designers wanted to be familiar with the exhibition content, their main concern was making sure the exhibit evoked a sense of place and the people. They wanted the co-curators to identify a visual icon of their community and 2

3 they were also concerned with visitor interest and enjoyment of the exhibit and begin to get ideas from the co-curators about what was termed a main attraction. From the design reviews, the designers eventually developed schematic drawings to begin to provide a general feel for the community exhibits. These drawings included the icons and main attractions as well as the revised bubble diagrams. The bubble diagrams proved quite useful especially once we incorporated all the community revisions. It was from these that the designers decided we needed to revert back to a worksheet format because despite the obvious connective nature of the exhibition content, this was still going to be ordered linearly on the exhibit floor. Hence, schematic design worksheets were created from the bubble diagrams and we began to standardize certain parts of the community exhibits such as having a similar introduction area for each community. The schematic worksheets basically incorporated the entire exhibition content and design ideas developed up to that point, but more importantly, themes and sub-themes were assigned numbers that were going to be used consistently throughout the design process. Once a numbering system was in the place, the designers begin to move forward in the design process and created graphic layouts illustrating what the exhibit could look like by incorporating placeholders for object cases, photos and maps, and text labels against the background of a graphic design. The numbering of themes and sub-themes proved extremely important because we began to see how the content was organized in the exhibit which led to questions of what did not work either due to lack of space or incorrect placement. These issues led to even more questions like Well, how many words are going to be in that exhibit label? We then realized that the writing of the 3

4 exhibit labels, a.k.a. script, had to move forward quickly. Two kinds of worksheets had been developed throughout the process, but the original script structure was now obsolete since we were working primarily with the schematic design worksheets. However, familiarity won out and for exhibit label writing, we reverted back to a script structure format although we continued to use the same numbering system found on the schematic design worksheets. What was far more interesting and frustrating about the script was the actual script editing process. I worked directly with the script editor who had no familiarity with any of the communities so I essentially had to explain the content and justify, at times, the inclusion of certain topics or information. The script editor was approaching the process purely as an editor whose primary concerns were visitor comprehension and interest. As an example, this particular slide shows the Kahanawake exhibit label It s How We Balance Our Lives. This label serves as an introduction to the ironwork and education sections and explains how the roles of men and women have been consistent over time and have contributed to the strength and continuity of Kahnawake and its traditions. I had many discussions with the script editor over this label because he continually questioned its relevance because in a linear sense of the exhibition floor it stood alone, but in the community understanding of it it was central to who they are as a people. The divergences between communities and NMAI s priorities while creating Our Lives had much to do with typical museum visitor experience, comprehension and attention span. Some staff throughout the development challenged particular exhibit topics and eventually text because they felt visitors would not get it or that they would 4

5 be bored by too much explanation. Complex, interconnected beliefs, traditions, histories, and spiritualities often became compartmentalized and simplified as they transformed into physical spaces in the exhibit design and text. Often, media in the form of first-person interviews or interactives became the vehicle to transmit information considered too complex or uninteresting as a text panel. The idea of survival was intrinsic to many of the communities exhibit concept development. Communities could not overlook the fact that they existed in the 21 st century despite immense hardships and that the homogenous culture of their ancestors had undergone much transformation resulting in a contemporary identity forged from specific choices and circumstances. As Sylvie Warrington from Carib Territory said I would like [visitors] to know how we survived [up to this day] and how we are living,... because we go through a lot of struggles, and we are still struggling for survival. [I want them to know] where we come from and where we are and where we hope to be in the next century. Of course, who we are, as it would have been in any exhibit had to be negotiated and navigated within the context of approximately 500 square feet for each community, words understandable to a general visiting public, a specific budget, and timeframe. 5