In a field that demands scholarly research and careful analysis, museum exhibitions provide a medium for creative visual storytelling. They are more than just history put up on a wall; they are metaphors, poetry, and imagination. They can also help us understand how historical concepts have relevance to the lives of people today.
The symbiotic relationship between museums and the communities they serve requires that the latter be involved in the process of designing exhibits. Ideally, the design process starts with conversations between the project team and representatives of local groups to determine how a proposed exhibit can best engage community members.
Twenty-first century visitors expect museums to tell stories that are relevant to their own lives. To do so, museums must reach beyond their traditional collections and into new sources of information. This can be accomplished through a variety of methods, including new types of scholarship, new partnerships, and outreach to underserved audiences.
In a era when many museums have been criticized for neglecting social history, this exhibit used a wide range of artifacts to illustrate the richness of Virginia’s social history-artisans and yeoman farmers, planter aristocrats, merchants and manufacturers, slaves and free blacks, and soldiers. It was one of the first modern social history exhibits in a Southern museum.
As the nation wrestled with how to pay off its debt after the Civil War, this exhibit showed how Americans assigned cultural meaning to money. It also illustrated how these values shaped politics, patriotism, and race in America.
Located only a few miles from the site of Robert E. Lee’s surrender, this exhibit told overlapping stories of the end of the Civil War and the reunification of a nation. The exhibit included the uniform coat and sword that Lee wore to surrender as well as a large collection of letters, documents, poems, songs, cartoons, and newspapers.
The complexities of the battles at Gettysburg and Appomattox were explored in this exhibition that combined the Museum’s own collections of artifacts and photographs with those from other institutions. It featured the encampments and flags of the various regiments in Lee’s division as well as portraits of the commanders of each.
It’s A Living Archive
Exhibits in historic buildings have unique requirements, especially if the structures are a National Register of Historic Places landmark. In addition to ensuring that all work is reversible, it’s vital to have conversations between the museum staff and historic preservation experts early in the design process about how the work will impact the physical condition of the building. Proper lighting is another critical component of exhibit design in historic structures. In addition to being energy efficient, proper lighting can also protect delicate objects and surfaces from overexposure to ultraviolet light. Fortunately, advances in technology have made LED lighting increasingly available at affordable prices.