|
|
|
Exhibition Review
"Seeking St. Louis." Missouri History Museum of the Missouri Historical
Society, Lindell and DeBaliviere in Forest Park, St. Louis, MO 63112-0040.
Permanent exhibition, opened Feb. 2000.
Su–M, W–Sa 9–6, Tu 10–8 except Thanksgiving, Christmas,
and New Year's Day; admission free. 18,000 sq. ft. Myron Freedman, project
director; Eric Sandweiss, Carol Christ, Benjamin Cawthra, historians;
Patti Wright, Bob Mullen, Sharon Smith, Wendi Perry, curators; Whitney
Watson, Margaret Koch, Becki Hartke, exhibit designers; Caitlin McQuade,
Jenny Heim, Margaret Koch, exhibition developers.
"Seeking St. Louis," Gateway Heritage,
20 (Fall 1999), 4–61. Special issue.
Seeking St. Louis: Voices from a River
City, 1670–2000. Ed. by Lee Ann Sandweiss. (St. Louis: Missouri
Historical Society Press, 2000. 1,088 pp. $45.00, ISBN 1-883982-11-1.)
Internet: brief description of exhibition,
photographs of artifacts, links to views of exhibit halls <http://www.mohistory.org/Exhibits3.html>
(Sept. 25, 2001).
|
The Missouri Historical Society's permanent installation "Seeking
St. Louis" is vast, both in size and content. Contained in three
galleries, the exhibition stretches in time from prehistorical Mississippian
culture to last year and addresses sweeping questions of economic,
social, and cultural history. The exhibit teams have done this by
creating an introductory thematic gallery entitled "A Place in Time"
and developing themes introduced there in two other galleries. "Currents,
1764–1904" examines issues key to the city's history from its
founding by Europeans in 1764 to 1904, and "Reflections, 1904–2000"
looks at the city in the century following the Louisiana Purchase
Exposition of 1904. The exhibit's vastness should not be mistaken
for comprehensiveness, however. "Seeking St. Louis" is necessarily
selective. Indeed, for historians the interesting, and for some
the controversial, aspect of this exhibit is the choices made by
the exhibit teams. If they had made the reasons for their choices
more explicit, the exhibits probably would have been more accessible
to the general public. |
1
|
|
Of course, we do well to remember
that what we have here is an exhibit, not a history monograph or
treatise. As such, the medium is as important as the message; how
material is presented becomes as important as what is presented.
One of the measures of a good exhibit is how well it conveys its
message in nontextual ways. Most people do not visit museums to
spend an afternoon reading; they go to absorb, to see, to visualize,
even to listen, and they expect to come away enlightened. Perhaps,
if what they have seen has succeeded in engaging their imaginations
or intellect, they will go back to read the fine print, or even
the large type, that they glossed over the first time through. Unfortunately,
"Seeking St. Louis" is so dense and complex that it has not used
the exhibit medium to good advantage. The exhibit is visually exciting,
but the key questions it seeks to explore are lost in the plethora
of stuff on display. |
. . . |
There are about 846 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
