Author: Darcy Foster (Page 3 of 4)

This week I traveled home to Pittsburgh, PA for a few days. While in town, I was able to stop by The Frick Pittsburgh to see the exhibition Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage & Screen. The exhibition included clothing, pictures, posters, and original play bills from Hepburn’s productions and films. The clothing collection came from the Kent State University Museum, and it included a mix of clothes that she wore in movies, on the stage, and pieces that she commissioned for her personal wardrobe that matched styles she had previously worn during performances.  

As a fan of Katharine Hepburn and her iconic style, I was excited to see the clothing up close to examine the details of the pieces. The clothing was beautiful, and most galleries showed a comparison for the clothing on mannequins and pictures of Hepburn on set.  However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much this exhibition embodied her personality. Quotes from Hepburn and personal stories were interspersed in the labels, and they truly enhanced the exhibition. In the space where her wardrobe makes the transition from mostly dresses that tightened at her 18-inch waist to a much less form fitting and comfortable wardrobe (which included pants!), there was a story about a movie studio that wanted Hepburn to return to wearing dresses and skirts because they were more feminine. So, someone snuck into her dressing room and stole her pants. In a display of her bold personality, Hepburn proceeded to walk around the movie set without her pants to show that returning her trousers was the better option for the studio. Rather quickly, they were returned to her, and she proceeded to continue to wear them because they allowed her to have more mobility. 

Her pants were such an iconic part of her wardrobe because she pioneered comfort in women’s clothing and made pants a common fashion staple for women. A display of pants from her personal clothing collection was actually my favorite part of the exhibition. Hepburn seemed to be a creature of habit, and therefore, she owned many pairs of the same type of pants, which were usually beige or brown. From the museum and exhibition design perspective, I can see how these pants would have been a challenge. While immensely important to Hepburn’s style and a testament to her fierce personality, these pants are not very interesting to look at. The colors alone (beige and brown) don’t draw in the visitor’s eye.  

So, what did the exhibition designers do? They displayed 7 pairs of pants on mannequin legs that were not attached to a torso. Then, they set them in a variety of positions that mimicked the way that Hepburn moved. One pair was upside down to imitate a pose that she did during a photoshoot with LIFE magazine in 1968. The unique placement of these pants not only drew the visitors into the room and immediately to these objects, but it also simulated Hepburn’s personality through its movement.  

Overall, the exhibition was wonderfully done. Only three galleries were filled for it, but they were packed with information and anecdotes about Hepburn. They were set up in mostly a chronological order, so even people who were not fans of her productions would be able to see the evolution of her style.  

This exhibition is up at the Frick Pittsburgh until January 12, 2020, so if any readers find themselves in the area, I recommend checking it out! If you are not in the area and would like some more information on the exhibition the website is: https://www.thefrickpittsburgh.org/Exhibition-Katharine-Hepburn-Dressed-for-Stage-and-Screen 

The past few weeks, our blog has focused on what is a museum, and hopefully, you have a few ideas about it yourself now. However, this week I’m shifting my focus to discuss a new survey from ArtNet and the podcast “In Other Words” produced by Art Agency Partners. This survey recently revealed that despite the growing awareness of gender inequity in the art world over the last decade, the top twenty-six museums in the United States acquire artwork from female artists at the basically the same rate that they did ten years ago. So, what can museums do to change this? 

1. Actually, purchase their pieces – don’t just showcase them. While highlighting works of art through special exhibitions has increased exposure for a lot of female artists, it is not a Band-Aid solution that can be slapped onto the greater inequities in the field. This study specifically looked at the numbers of works of art that were acquired into the permanent collections of these museums. Solo or group female artists exhibitions are helpful in many ways, like name recognition and visitor exposure to the artists’ work, but these shows certainly do not solve the inequities between male and female artists in the field.
2. Prioritizing female artwork, particularly female artists of color, even when works of art are donations. Museums get some of their pieces through direct purchases, they also often receive them through donations. In this case, donors have a lot of control over because they are the ones purchasing and offering the artwork. If museums truly want to correct the gender inequity in the art world, then they need to prioritize work by female artists in their collection by setting stricter guidelines, or possibly creating a vision statement for the evolution of the collection to guide the acquisitions committee. 
3. Changing who is on the acquisitions committee. By having new voices and perspectives represented within the actual committee that controls the new additions to the collection, the museum will likely expand the perspectives within its collection as well.  
4. Deaccessioning pieces by white, male artists and using that money to purchase new pieces by female artists or artists of color.  One example of this comes from the Baltimore Museum of Art (pictured below) in 2018: in an attempt to “[diversify] its collection to enhance visitor experience,” the BMA deaccessioned seven pieces of art that it found to be redundant in its collection. With the money from these deaccessioned pieces, the institution set a goal to purchase works from both female artists and artists of color.  

The gender inequity can be improved in the art field, but there may be some backlash or discomfort along the way. Both large and small changes can aid the process, but this new study has made it clear that new mindsets are needed to improve this problem in the decade that’s to come.  

To read more about the survey mentioned here, please see the ArtNet News article: “Museums Claim They’re Paying More Attention to Female Artists. That’s an Illusion” and the New York Times article: “Female Artists Made Little Progress in Museums Since 2008, Survey Finds.” 

Last week, Jennifer wrote about “what is a museum?” and this week, I’ll be jumping off of that by writing about how our visitors see museums and how we can understand their expectations. This post is basically an encouragement of more evaluation in our practice to better our understanding of visitors and their expectations of museums. While summative evaluation sometimes appears in the museum field, I think that formative evaluation is just as useful, but less common, in museum practice.

For the Tufts’ Museum Evaluation course this summer, each student had to formulate an evaluation plan to determine what visitors associated with museums and what the visitors expected to gain from their museum visits. My evaluation resulted in most people expecting the atmosphere to be quiet and contemplative while they observed old objects from afar. These answers echoed John Cotton Dana’s commentary of the museum in his book The Gloom of the Museum in 1917. This idea of the museum as a – well – gloomy steward of static objects has clearly survived, despite the fact that many institutions have wonderful programming and amazing, relatable stories that they tell.
Of course, in some cases, a reverent museum atmosphere might be the best choice for a specific institution, but it certainly isn’t the only choice. Institutions can also use evaluation with their marketing to make sure that their audiences know about the programming that already exists.

Mostly, institutions should be responsive to their surrounding communities, and they can use evaluation to do so. Specifically, formative evaluation allows the institution to gather information about the needs and desires of the community before pouring time and money into projects. Summative evaluation can provide useful information about success of the project in meeting its goals, but formative evaluation really provides the opportunity to set goals that are in line with what visitors hope to see. Formative evaluation also makes it clear that the institution values the input of their visitors because the organization is making a concerted effort to gain insight into the wants and needs of the people who it is serving.

My class on evaluation and my interviewees’ views of museums have encouraged me to incorporate more formative evaluation into my practice, which I have found to be incredibly useful, and I encourage you to do the same!