Every
week we get one step closer to getting this show on the road! With the
opening night date of November 16th (mark your calendars!) looming in
the not-so-distant future, we are starting to kick it into high gear.
Today we met with Dennis and Tom to talk through the exhibit themes and
basic details. Today was a bit of a reality check both to the fact that
the opening is closer than we think and that we need to lock down a
final theme. When planning an exhibit, creating a narrative is
absolutely essential. Your exhibit needs a story, a thesis, a point of
departure for everything in it. You cannot simply collect a few
garments, mock up some descriptions and put them into a museum gallery.
That would be too easy and entirely incoherent. The public needs to
know why pieces were selected, how they fit together, what type of
message they are collectively trying to convey. And you cannot really
finalize garments until you know how they should work together!
After
much discussion and brainstorming of ideas it appears that tentatively
our narrative revolves around “why people came to Vegas.” We will have
evening wear from visitors who would have dressed up to attend events or
gamble in the casinos. There will be pieces from the showgirl shows
“Jubilee” and “Hallelujah Hollywood” as well as the aforementioned
celebrity pieces from my last post, along with spectacular Helldorado.
Now
that we have a workable theme and accompanying narrative, we can move
forward with garment selection and finalize all pieces that fit into
that overarching idea. At our meeting we also saw a mock-up design of
the gallery. For a comfortable yet full gallery we are looking at having
between 13-15 pieces with some possible film clips from the News Bureau
and several plaques with images and information about pieces we were
not able to acquire but which fit into our narrative.
Putting on a museum display is a long and involved process with many challenges along the way so stay tuned.
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