From the Director: 2006 Archives

A New Model for Interpretation

This article first appeared in the November–December, 2006 issue of Insight, published by the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

As I wrote in the last Insight, the installation of our future collections galleries will be at the heart of the new UMMA. Even though construction on the expansion and restoration of Alumni Memorial Hall has, as I write, just begun, it is by no means too soon for the curatorial and education staff here to be thinking about these galleries in detail, and the character of the experience that is inevitably shaped by the works of art we select for installation and the interpretive framework that will help present them. That interpretive framework is an essential component, for through it we hope to challenge our future visitors to develop their own meanings of great artistic masterworks.

It’s tremendously exciting for us on staff to anticipate double the number of galleries for the display of collections highlights than we’ve ever had before. Installation checklists are currently under preparation, and we anticipate that some 1,200 artworks will go on view in the galleries (roughly twice the numbers of the past) when the Museum reopens in early 2009, along with another 1,200 in “open storage”—non-gallery spaces that will provide immediate visual access to works from the collections, essentially in art storage conditions. In the galleries themselves, each work of art on display will be accompanied by a brief interpretive label, labels that will resist defining meaning for the visitor but will help inform so that a visitor may be better able to engage in individual dialogue with the work—and the many meanings that most great works of art allow for. Each gallery will have additional text materials fostering comparisons across objects, texts specifically prepared for in-gallery use—although we haven’t yet finalized our plans as to the exact form these materials will take.

We’re also moving beyond text—in part to resist the temptation to let reading overpower the act of close looking—to take advantage of some of the coming new technologies that can be adapted for gallery learning. When we open the expanded Museum, we hope to have approximately 150 objects on view ready to be explored in depth via the handheld multimedia tool on which we are just beginning to work—making a great leap forward from any past audio tour visitors are likely to have encountered in other art museums. These multimedia tools will foster deep investigation into specific objects for those who wish it—investigation that will include multiple voices and vantage points, as well as materials from other creative contexts, such as music from the time a work of art was made, or poetry from the period. At the same time, the multimedia tools will facilitate deep looking across galleries, following certain strands and themes—such as art and faith, or art and science—across the boundaries of time, geography, and culture.

What form will this multimedia tool take? That, too, is a decision still under investigation. Many of you may have experienced some of the recent advances in this area—including more interactive audio guides that allow for random access to interpretive information (in which you, the visitor, set the tour route); podcasting, in which pre-recorded information is downloaded to your iPod or other device; or the use of cell phones, through which visitors dial up pre-recorded information while in the galleries. But these breakthroughs are already becoming yesterday’s news. With the help of one of the nation’s great technology “gurus,” Technotrends author Daniel Burrus, UMMA is seeking to marry the best of these recent advances with new possibilities still in development. So, I invite you to stay tuned to learn more as we narrow down to a choice that will allow us to capture and present more of the “brain trust” that is to be found in and around the U of M while affording us maximum future flexibility.

These interpretive tools, along with others we are developing for use outside the galleries—specifically including a very exciting social learning tool we are developing for the heart of the Museum’s future public spaces—are specifically being developed to create a uniquely dynamic experience for our visitors. Rewarding repeat visits in ways we have never done in the past, this layered program will help make the Museum a dynamic environment even for those for whom art has in the past been unapproachable or even irrelevant—including those who have simply never visited us before. Funded to date by major grants from the Getty Foundation and the Institute for Museum and Library Services, this project to reinstall and reinterpret UMMA’s growing collections represents far and away the most significant such investment we have made in our 60-year history—an investment in our visitors and in the collections. In making choices that go well beyond what is still commonplace in American art museums—and in putting the collections front and center in the most compelling ways we can think of—we may well be establishing a new model for what a great art museum should be for this still-young century.

back to top