Exhibition of Exhibitions
Inside the museums conference marketplace: Saudi Arabian flash, robot trees & an18-wheeler
Characters Unlimited literally offers unlimited characters.Photo by Steven Thomson
Saudia Arabia's King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture.Photo by Steven Thomson
Menil Collection employees Judy Kwon and Amy Chien are titillated by the dynamicfuture of museum displays.Photo by Steven Thomson
Interactive characters abound at the MuseumExpo.Photo by Steven Thomson
The Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, Inc. repairs and fabricatesfossils.Photo by Steven Thomson
The ideas exchanged at this week's American Association of Museums Annual Meeting are crucial for imagining the "Museum of Tomorrow." But to build those institutions, a wealth of goods and services will be enlisted. Welcome to the MuseumExpo, the concurrent vendor exhibit at the George R. Brown Convention Center that complements the museum seminars.
Installation designers, lighting dealers and shipping experts are just a few examples of the sundry exhibitors at the fair. It's not all mundane industry mechanics, though.
Consider architect Frederick Fisher, whose LA architecture firm, Fisher Partners, has a booth at the fair. Fisher has worked closely on installations with artist James Turrell, whose light-based works define the subterranean tunnel at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Heights-area Live Oak Friends Meeting House.
"I've known Jim for more than 20 years because he lived in LA for a long time," Fisher told CultureMap at his firm's booth at the MuseumExpo. Fisher has served on the board of Turrell's Sky Stone Foundation, which has helped produce the Roden Crater Project, a massive naked-eye observatory by the artist in the Arizona desert designed for observing solar and celestial phenomena. Fisher's firm has also been integral in a moving skylight installation by Turrell at New York's MoMA PS1.
"When Fisher designed the back garden as PS1, it established the model that museums use," said Contemporary Arts Museum Houston director Bill Arning, who presented with Fisher on a collaboration-themed panel. "When we activate the front lawn at the CAM, it's taking that same concept of a space where highly intellectual people can go to, well, flirt."
Also putting in its fair share of self promotion at the MuseumExpo was the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture. Undoubtedly the flashiest section of the MuseumExpo, the nascent Saudi Arabian institution had its thin intellectual agenda on full display. The ostentatious museum's advent comes as little surprise as starchitect-designed cultural palaces crop up all over the Middle East, China and Latin American, but in comparison to, say, the South Dakota-based Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, Inc., the Kind Abdulaziz Center comes off as fluffy.
Larry Hutson of Black Hills illuminated the trying process of repairing and replicating dinosaur fossils: "It's very slow, tedious work. We have preparators that can actually spend weeks preparing a single bone. Also, many of the fossils we're working with are broken and fractured."
Hutson compared the task to assembling a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, with half missing pieces and half damaged pieces. Once a mold is conceived, foaming urethane is injected.
"It gives us very good details and makes for lightweight specimens," he explained.
Like Black Hills, Characters Unlimited specializes in making museum displays visually dynamic — but with the help of robotic figures, including tree trunks, bison heads and loquacious longhorns. "We're looking down avenues to help museums add some attraction and movement to information stations," said Grant Grieves at the Characters Unlimited booth.
Sparking interest in new audiences sometimes takes more than a talking bald-headed eagle. To broaden its audience, the Library of Congress outfitted an 18-wheeler that is on display at the convention center.
The "Gateway to Knowledge" vehicle, currently on a national tour, expands to three times its road width, revealing sections of museum-style exhibits that flaunt the Library of Congress' endless store of knowledge. As the museum conference ponders the future of museums, the truck rolls forward in tandem as it tells the story behind the nation's oldest federal institution.
