Curators and exhibition designers the éminences grises of exhibitions
MúzeumCafé 9.
In the opinion of László Baán, director of the Fine Arts Museum, the best exhibition designers are not employed full-time by museums but work on the market as freelance agents. Exhibitions are more varied and cheaper if there are competitive tenders for design. The museum’s exhibition of El Greco’s Saint John has been designed in house as an exception, but larger exhibitions require so many good quality professionals that it would be a luxury to permanently employ them. Smaller institutions like Debrecen’s MODEM (Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art) in eastern Hungary work with their own full-time staff, yet even here the special installations for the exhibition The Mind of Leonardo were built by an Italian team. Exhibition design is an independent specialist field in western Europe, yet in Hungary there is still no training for curators. As it happens, architects are the most sought after exhibition designers. The permanent exhibition set up in the 1990s at the Hungarian National Museum lacks any interactive device; no film reels are rolling about the 1956 revolution – visitors cannot step out of the strict chronology. However, the museum’s archaeological exhibition, which opened six years ago, is quite different. One of the designers, architect Zsolt Vasáros, entered an application for the job in 2001 thinking he had no chance, yet he was successful and won the commission. In fact, he was no outsider. He was granted an archaeological research scholarship in Germany and since his university years has been working on excavations in Egypt and elsewhere. Vasáros believes that the key to a good exhibition is communication between clients and designers. The installation often determines the professional direction of an exhibition. For instance, with the exhibition …And the Incas Arrived a decision had to be made whether to explain the many horizontal and vertical cultures or focus on the aesthetic principles. Two enormous reconstructions – a totem pole and part of a pyramid – presented monumental pre-Inca architecture, but to avoid overshadowing the small original objects their glass cabinets were extended. The chief designer of the exhibition Dreamers of Dreams: World Famous Hungarians was Ákos Eleőd, an architect but not a ‘professional exhibition designer’. According to Eleőd, designing the 13,000-square-metre display didn’t simply involve technical and artistic considerations, but mainly a psychological one. The architect used effective tools as ‘bait’, for example a matchbox in connection with János Irinyi, the inventor of safety matches. Eleőd constructed a ‘matchbox’ which a person could enter. Just two buttons were lit in the dark chamber. When pressed one produced the sound of a match being struck before Irinyi’s invention, the other what it sounded like afterwards. “As in the period of Baroque, when architecture led the other arts, in the case of an exhibition the designer is the principal creator,” asserts architect László Rajk. He presented Empress Elizabeth’s corset at an exhibition in Vienna in 1996 in the manner of a peep show. The museum authorities were not shocked, rather they were pleased the item did not have to be lit too strongly. According to Rajk, it is no longer worthwhile designing chronological exhibitions, since the generation socialised on the internet does not let itself be led in that way – they are bored if the single ‘correct’ way is marked out for them. Chronology can be the main thread, yet visitors should be able to step out at any time and also return. In the case of the Hungarian exhibition at Auschwitz Rajk broke from narrative design. The exhibition’s only objective and permanent reality is the building itself, the former barracks. The installations do not aim at visitors ‘living’ through the horrors of the Holocaust, they intend to raise consciousness rather than emotional reception. Emotion is represented only by the sound of a quiet and constantly beating heart. Another important element of the visual concept is that it sets out from the ‘disappearance’ of millions of people destroyed in the camps. Thus objects and relics are only presented virtually, by means of projected pictures. Making a link with the past, web cameras show the present view of the Birkenau concentration camp, the place where most Hungarians who were deported perished. Krisztina Jerger – unlike the others, not an architect but an art historian – approaches the spectacle of an exhibition from the aspect of emotion. She prepares for an exhibition for months, even sometimes years. She initially studies the oeuvre of the artist in question and as an expert of a period with a sharp eye she selects the works of art destined to be included. As she puts it, she is the first critical viewer of her displays. She set the four figures of Polish sculptor Gustaw Zemla’s Auschwitz monument in darkness so that visitors could not even sense the boundaries of space and saw only illuminated, terrified faces. Directing attention to an object has its own architectural and interior design techniques, which can be learnt. Jerger is one of the few who did so at university in Warsaw. She says that the spectacle of an exhibition can sometimes overwrite professional principles, particularly when a client wants to put on a show. However, she avoids accepting such commissions. “Exhibition design is not only a professional but also a moral issue.” “Exhibition areas themselves and not only museum buildings must be made freely accessible,” says Zsolt Vasáros. “It certainly does matter how objects are placed. They should be enjoyable for children, wheelchair users, and people of all sizes.”