eye tee pea

(I visited MoMA the week we were scheduled to, on a free Friday, and then again this week, with the specific purpose of seeing the Design and the Elastic Mind and Colour Chart exhibitions. This time I made sure not to go when it was free. This review is a mix of responses from both visits - I hope that’s ok.)

First Impressions

The lobby is spacious, with lots of places to sit, which is nice. Some of its design is counter-intuitive - the ticket counters are quite far into the main hall; there is what looks like a ticket counter right near the entrance but apparently that is for special events only. Odd. This, coupled with the fact that the ticket counters are placed such that the coat check runs from the right side of it, behind and around the ticket counters, and then out the left side means that when there are lots of visitors that whole area is just a mess of people who don’t know where to go or what to do.

The coat check is a nightmare and a half. Its exit is actually nearer to the building entrance, so instinctively you head towards that opening, only to be stopped by a burly security who points you to the far side. Apparently the sole purpose of this man being there is to redirect human traffic. What a waste of human resource. Why not either label things better or just switch the flow of traffic in and out of the coat check?

Informational, Emotional, Social

I found it hard not to compare MoMA to the Hall of Science, which made me wonder about the expectations we have of museums. Do we expect them all to be the same? Surely not. It seems to me a dichotomy: art museums do one thing (present rarefied objects in a see-don’t-touch format), science museums do another (aim to teach by presenting in an example-and-experiment environment). Like Charles pointed out, MoMA has lots of ‘Do Not Touch’ signs. But I can accept that, to an extent, because of the unique nature of the pieces, their propensity to disintegrate, blah blah blah.

Perhaps that’s why I found the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition so maddening. It was a science museum exhibition in an art museum space with all its art museum rules. I think they tried to stuff too much into the exhibition, but that aside, there were some truly fantastic things there, that would have all the more impact had we been able to interact with them! I just find it silly (and by silly I mean ineffectual) to have pieces which are supposed to impress us because of their innovative design and use of technology, and not let us understand the affect of these things because we’re not allowed to experience how they work! Take for example the Pong Table where players control their paddle with one hand and place their other hand on a metal plate that delivers electric shocks to a player every time he or she loses a point. How is the visitor meant to be moved by it or understand it if they’re not allowed to experience it to understand its affect? There were so many items in there where you just had no sense of how they worked because you weren’t allowed to engage with it beyond reading a little description on a plaque. And those plaques! Placed so low you walked around with your head hung. Worse still, you could barely read anything through the shadow of yourself that you couldn’t help but cast as you stood over the plaques trying to read them!

There were other pieces that you were allowed to interact with, but they failed to be effective because of the way the interactions were framed. Shadow Monsters seemed to be the only piece that was really effective. The one thing I found most amusing and maddening was the immersive video space that had screens lining the walls and curving into the ceiling. Of course this encouraged people to lie down in the space to look up at the videos on the ceiling, except for the fact that straight away, the security guards came over and started telling people to get up off the floor.

In sum, great exhibition in so many ways, but absolutely the wrong place for it. MoMA should stick to what MoMA does best - displaying objects that have an aura and inspire hands-off awe. Either that, or change the rules of the space.

I felt most sorry for the kids in the ‘Design..’ exhibition. It was like they’d found a place that seemed to encourage play, but didn’t really; not in a consistent fashion. And it was ridiculously crowded, even on the ‘not free’ day.

Exhibitions should be coherent experiences, framed by a theme or a narrative.

Before design of exhibits begins, be clear on what you want to say. Decide on a central message, and work out different ways to convey that message. People learn through repetition and variation - it doesn’t hurt to say the same thing in various ways. On the contrary, attempting to say too many things - to communicate too many messages - will only overwhelm.

If you can avoid overwhelming visitors, you are better able to engage them.

In having decided what to say, consider who you are speaking to; your target demographic.

Be inclusive. If you cannot do this in content, make concessions in other ways. For example, if the content of your exhibition is just not for children, make sure the space allows for visitors with children. Protect your exhibits if need be, but let there be space for children to run around a little without doing damage, and provide child-friendly areas of rest; like seating throughout the space, cafes, and so on.

It is important to engage people emotionally. People who remember an exhibit remember their reaction to it. Weaving narratives through the exhibition is an effective way of doing this, as it is through stories that people respond and identify. If you make exhibits that are relevant to people’s experiences, they will take these responses with them and extend the effect of the museum beyond the exhibition space.

Test things! It is easy to make assumptions about the ways in which people will interact with and respond to the things you design. Where ever possible, let your target audience trial run your ideas and work with their feedback. In keeping with that: design exhibits that are flexible, scalable, changeable. Don’t design yourself into a hole.

First impressions

Why is it that when I hear of a children’s museum I automatically assume it’s a science museum? What does that say about me/my experience of children-friendly museums/how child-friendly museum spaces are usually constructed or conceived of? Although the large giraffe at the entrance should have tipped me off, it wasn’t till I stepped into through the entrance that it hit me - this place is all about play. PLAY in big joyous capital letters. play, and all the joyous noise and mess that comes with it.

Everything about this place seems to embrace childhood. Even the young woman at the ticket counter, who looks like she’s in her early 20s, is wide-eyed, smiling and chirpy; childlike in a completely sincere and endearing way. I couldn’t help but think that they must hire for that position based on personality, in keeping with the spirit of the place.

Informational

I want to address this first because I was, quite honestly, bowled over by how amazing this place was in terms of what was being made accessible to the kids there. Stop-frame animation! DVD-making! Digital photography! Green-screening! All things I paid way too much money to learn at university! Now being learnt by kiddles with single-digit ages whose skills will so far eclipse mine by the time they’re half my age! I had to laugh at the sheer rate of technological inflation. At the same time I’m thrilled that kids these days (do I sound about 80 years old yet?) are being introduced to technology at such a young age. They have no fear of it, and I think that is fantastic. I watched 4- and 8-year-olds giggling at their disembodied heads and dislocated arms as they mucked around with the greenscreen fabric, and thought about how that experience would return to influence them when they get older. As with science museums, do kids who are constantly immersed in creative arts environments gravitate towards these careers in later life? I watched an toddler sitting on her father’s lap drawing a giant purple monster part by part so that the museum helper could capture each image and turn it into an animation later and wondered what kinds of work she would be making for art projects when she gets to primary school.

Then I picked up a flyer advertising summer courses (in all the above things - animation, photography, etc), saw the prices and doubled up. Okay. Accessible, yes. But to a particular demographic. And then I wondered about how much a place like this costs to run. Would it be something I could apply for a government grant from the Ministry of Arts or Community Development to set up in the lower socio-economic suburbs of Western Sydney? (I mean to investigate this, by the way. How fantastic would it be if it could be done, and we could train high school kids in those areas these skills so that they would teach them to younger kids?)

Ok, technology aside - as cool as that is, the other thing I really liked about this place was its tactility. It didn’t neglect good old-fashioned messy painting, crayon, plasticine fun. It taught kids those skills as well more sophisticated tools, in such a variety of engaging ways. A station on self-portraits becomes more than just working with paper and crayons. It becomes an exercise about scale as well. What makes you consider your size more than having to trace yourself? How lovely to have a moment of awareness of your body and its form.

I love that if this is a museum, it is a museum of activity more than artefact. Although the displays of the children’s work was most enjoyable to take in, it is the doing rather than what’s done that makes this place. In that sense it’s a lot like science museums where there is a lot of experimenting and play, even though those activities there don’t usually end in an object (like a painting, or a plasticine dinosaur).

Social

I was at the CMA on a Saturday afternoon and it was full. But not uncomfortably. It felt like an intimate hive of activity rather than too many bodies packed into a space. Mainly parents with children, of course, so my friend and I rather stuck out, being two young-ish females with no children in tow. Where classes were being conducted there were lots of children working away on their own; where the children were quite young they were usually accompanied by a parent who would help them with the activity they were engaged in. Being there, I rather wished there was a place like this for adults! How about it? An arts museum that is not only hands on, but instructional and about activity, for adults to play with creative arts mediums.

Emotional

I got an overwhelming sense of joy as the primary energy in this place. I didn’t see any kids crying or fighting. I did see a few shy and/or confused and hanging back, but most of the kids here were having a ball. Some of them literally, in the ball room, which was made up of giant exercise balls. I thought they were an improvement from the ballrooms of my childhood - plasticky hard little things that stuck in your back. These balls bounced. And the kids loved it.

I really enjoyed visiting this space, even though I wasn’t its target demographic and stood completely apart from all its activity.

Reviews

Boy, 6

Mummy wanted me to play with the clay and make things but I liked the green room best. I could see myself on the TV and I could make myself disappear. I made my legs disappear and then my arms disappear and then my head was floating in the air. Andrew laughed and laughed and then he tried to do it too, but he couldn’t. He’s too small. Daddy said I had to share with Andrew and made me get off the chair so Andrew could have a go. I helped Andrew and he looked really funny and we all laughed. Daddy said I was a good big brother because I teach Andrew how to do the green thing.

Mother, 36, with 3 year old daughter

Mark is away on business this week so I took Caitlin to the CMA. We played with some paint and she had a grand old time mashing up the plasticine. Wasn’t at all interested in making anything with it of course - just wanted to pound it flat and roll it up and pound it again. A little boy came and sat next to us at the plasticine table and offered his plasticine to Caitlin, to get her to play with him I suppose, but she just hid her face in my sweater and wouldn’t look at him. She’s so shy. It’s only our 2nd time here but I think might try and bring her here more regularly. Perhaps in time she would learn to be less shy and play with other children more. She’s far too introverted as it is - I worry about it sometimes. This would be a good place for her to learn some social skills.

Aunt, 25, with niece and nephew, 6 and 8

Jenny and Joseph were just driving me crazy today, so I thought I’d try taking them somewhere where they could expend their energy. As soon as we got to the museum they just ran inside and got right into the activities. Good thing the upstairs level is so small and I could keep one eye on them as I hung up our coats at the entrance. They tried almost everything, although not together, but we were there for 3 hours and they didn’t fight once. Phew. When Jenny was learning how to make an animation Joseph came over from the ball room and got a bit bossy in “teaching” her what to do, but once I reigned him in he actually sat and watched quietly for about 2 minutes before he was off and running again. Boys! It was a good day after all, but man, I am never having kids.

First impressions

I am finding it very hard to be objective about this museum because I love science museums. My parents always knew they had a couple of dorks for kids, and the best family outings I can remember were when my parents took my sister and I to the Singapore Science Centre or the Powerhouse Museum (in Sydney) and let us run wild for the day. On the walk up to the entrance I feel like a little kid again. Ooh! Rockets! Ooh! A sundial! Ooh! A spinning twirly thing in the lobby!

Social, Emotional, Informational

The weekend is the best time to visit a museum like this, because you can observe it as it should be - full of families. Families of all sorts and sizes! Infants in arms, young children, teenagers, adults, older adults! Everything from big groups of 2 sets of parents and 4 or more children, to grandparents with grandchild, to parent and child pairs. I had almost as much fun observing the interactions of these different sets of people as I did playing with the exhibits myself.

This is definitely a social space. A lot of the experiments and some of the most fun ones require a friend. I’m so glad I dragged my friend along with me, because watching him in the mirror doing the anti-gravity can-can in the ‘Seeing the Light’ section made me laugh so hard I nearly wet my pants. Who knew cognitive dissonance could be so goddamn funny?

As you would expect, I saw lots of parents accompanying their kids and explaining things to them, but more interestingly, I also saw kids who played while giving their parents running commentary on what they were trying out, and the parents were looking on keenly in a way that suggested they were learning. Not about the exhibit perhaps, but about their children’s thought processes, and the looks on some of their faces was as if a door in their kid’s skull had opened for a few shining minutes and they could see cogs turning even if they didn’t know what that meant.

Being here and observing families brought on an interesting kind of nostalgia for me. My parents never went through the museum with us - usually they would just wait for us at the cafe, my dad having mysteriously procured a newspaper from somewhere - so my sister and I must have had quite a different experience although I can’t remember exactly what that was and what I took away from those visits, apart from a great sense of fun. Perhaps that’s enough? Maybe if we had had exhibits explained to us and a more structured learning experience, my sister and I may have been more inclined towards scientific careers, but although neither of us pursued those paths, what we did get was a sense of fun and play, and therefore grew up without a fear of science, if that makes sense. I think we still engage with that area of inquiry with enthusiasm in large part because of all the experiences we had as kids, and in that sense, our parents did a wonderful thing for us both.

And on the level of adults, with a whole different set of learning abilities, the museum still holds so much. Trying all the experiments to do with vision did so much to illuminate a lot of the reading I’ve been doing about neuroscience and perception. Being able to consolidate my learning in that way is just delicious. Why aren’t all museums like this? Why, in art museums, do we just look at works without having another level on which we can experience the work? Why when I look at a Bridget Riley work at MoMA is there not a little bit about the way our brains process luminance and how looking at two colours with equal luminance creates an effect of movement? And similarly, why isn’t there a bit about Dan Flavin’s work next to the exhibit about afterimages in NYHoS? What interesting forms of learning might come out of a more interdisciplinary approach to museums?

Reviews

Family of 4 - parents in their early 30s, children (boy) 5 and (girl) 3

Lisa and I took the kids to the science museum today. They were getting restless at home and it was too cold to be outside. At first Robert had fun playing at the exhibits with some other kids, but then became suddenly shy and wouldn’t leave our sides, so Lisa took him round the exhibits and I took Sarah. At ‘Seeing the Light’ I had her on my lap at the station with the black and white spiral wheel you could spin, and I was showing her how it worked and explaining it to her, feeling a bit silly about trying to teach a 3 year old about visual illusions, but who knows what may lodge itself inside her brain for later? As it was, when I walked her away from it to another exhibit, she suddenly broke free from my grasp, ran back to the wheel and started spinning it madly!

40 year old woman with 5 children below the age of 10

If you’re going to be foolish enough to offer to take your nieces and nephews to a museum by yourself, be sure you take them to this museum. Give each of the kids a penny, put the eldest in charge, and leave them to play with the spinning coin vortex in the lobby while you attempt to check everyone’s coats in. Leave a big tip for the nice boy in the coat room who let you dump all the coats down and run off with the tag before he could put all the coats away on hangers. Thank you, designers of this building, for putting the toilets in the entrance hallway so I can make sure all the kids go before we get inside! For once, no having to run out with each of them every 15 minutes when they decide one by one that they all need to pee. It’s the little things that make a difference, you know? When it comes down to it, it was more fun than work. The kids had a great time - they ran around playing with things, expending their energy, and by the time I took them home to their parents they were quiet as tired mice.

12 year old girl

So for our last day in New York, Dad took Michael and I to the Hall of Science. It was a great place with lots of cool things to play with. I loved the giant bubble wands although I couldn’t make a bubble no matter how many times I tried. Michael didn’t even try and kept banging his wand into the soap and splashing it around. Little brat. Boys are so stupid. Next to the bubbles there was also this cool long bar you could pull up on a rope and make a sheet of soap with lots of pretty rainbow swirlings in it. I tried being really careful with it, but it kept popping when it was only a little bit above the soap, and then I realised the faster I do it the better it lasts! Weird, right? The museum shop was my favourite - there were so many cute stuffed toys there! They even had these germs and things - blood cells and like, sore throats and the flu and stuff! I wanted them all but Dad wouldn’t even let me reason with him. He kept saying there was no room in our luggage to pack them all. It’s not fair. All I wanted was a dinosaur and a few of those germs.

First impressions

Lovely, well-lit place. Lobby is clear and easy to navigate. From the entrance I could see some of the exhibits, which made me keen to get right into it. I’ve not seen many photo exhibitions since I’ve been here, let alone a whole building dedicated to the medium; I felt quite keenly the pleasure potential of this trip as I stood in the lobby.

Social

As it was a weekend, the museum was quite crowded. There were a few children about, but not many, and there weren’t many young people there either. Lots of couples and a few large groups of friends. In spite of the populousness, we were able to view all the video works and see all the pieces comfortably. Perhaps it’s the nature of the medium, but taking in photography seems to be a personal activity. Not many conversations between people while they were looking at the works. My friend and I split up as well, wandered through separately, and met up and exchanged notes at the end.

Informational and Emotional

I quite liked the economy of their exhibitions and space - 2 exhibitions, one on each floor. I really enjoyed the Barbara Bloom collection and the way they used the space to present it. That exhibit was curious in that there were a lot of non-photographic artefacts, to the extent that it felt more like an arts exhibit than a photographic one, but they worked with the prints in a complementary way.

I actually picked the ICP with the specific intention of wanting to see the Archive Fever exhibit, which turned out to be unlike what I’d expected. Many of the pieces themselves were interesting, but for me the accompanying text plaques detracted from my enjoyment of the work. They were written in such dense language that I wonder if even academics would find that they added anything to their experience of the works. I mean, obtuse writing has its place, but this is not it. After a while I stopped reading anything besides the name of the work and the artist. I suppose it’s not necessary to read them at all, but when that text can illuminate and edify our experience of a piece and instead obscures it, it really frustrates me. In that sense, it was perhaps better to be a non-English reading visitor for whom just the pieces would form the bulk of their experience.

All that said, I enjoyed my visit and really liked being in the space, particularly on the upper floor, which was very airy and full of natural light - nicely designed.

Reviews

51 year old father there with 17 year old daughter

Lucy is very keen on her new hobby, so I thought a visit to the ICP would be a good way for us to spend some time together and hopefully connect over something she enjoys. We were there for a while as she took her time with every single exhibited piece. We walked through most of it together, but when we walked into the room with all the photos of the naked men I had to make a quick escape - far too awkward for me!

Before we left we browsed through the shop and she picked out a book that I bought for her. A successful afternoon in all, I would say.

20 year old female student

The Barbara Bloom exhibit was fantastic! Everything I expected it to be. I especially loved the way they used the space for ‘Doubles’, but the whole collection was well-presented. The text for ‘Doubles’ too! It was quirky and complemented the piece really well - more than I can say for the other exhibition, which made no sense to me. There were pieces I liked; the newspaper covers from the day after 9/11 were interesting, and some of the video work was too, but I didn’t stay down there too long.

62 year old male tourist

Lovely building but why do they call it the centre for photography? Looks more like an art museum to me! Seemed like there were a lot more sculptures and video things than photographic prints. Is this what they call that “new media” thing? Well, at least there’s a lift for old folks like me to get from floor to floor. That charming little cafe is well placed too, eh? Nice place to sit in and have a cuppa when the exhibition space gets a little too much. Bit dark and crowded, but serves me right for coming on a weekend.