Renee’s boxer-briefs are part of the premier exhibition of the First Person Museum in Philadelphia. Our class has been asked to imagine our own versions.
The mission of First Person Arts is to transform the drama of real life into memoir and documentary art to foster appreciation for our unique and shared experience. The rest of the mission statement gives us the “take-home message” – that everyone has a story to tell, and sharing our stories connects us with each other. The exhibit encourages visitors to consider their relationship to their own “stuff” as receptacles of memory and interpersonal connection. My plan separates visitor encounters with the objects into three distinct experiences -- an audio experience, a direct experience with the objects, and a video experience -- to explore how each works on our sense of emotional connection.
Gallery 1, the audio gallery, has ample, central seating and surround-sound speakers. I’m a really big fan of StoryCorps, an oral history project that collects and archives stories about personal lives, as told by one person to a close friend or family member. I will borrow their model, setting up audio interviews with each of the exhibition participants and someone from their social or family circle, but focusing on questions relating to the object and its story. From an interview of 40- to 60-minutes, a 1- to 2-minute section will be selected for the looping audio program featuring all of the interviewees. Gallery 1 offers a chance for visitors to connect on an emotional level with the objects before seeing them in person.
In considering my design for Gallery 2, the word “drama” jumped out at me from the First Person Arts mission statement. To me, light equals drama. Gallery 2 is a dimly lit space that gets its light from two main sources, a 3-sided structure in the center of the space for projecting photo slideshows, and 19 window-like vitrines that resemble jewelers’ display windows built into the peripheral walls. Each object will shine in its window, illuminated with small, angled lights and raised slightly from its black fabric background. Each window carves out a pocket from the darkness. The visual metaphor of the jeweler’s window will, I hope, help visitors make the connection that the objects are precious and valuable to their owners, without adding much context about the object and where it came from. Next to each vitrine, placards will identify the object (“Beth’s Sock,” “Rocky’s Tie-Dye Shirt”) and contain a 100-word blurb (yeah! A hundred!) about the object’s historic context. The 6' x 5' sides of the projection structure will silently play slideshows of personal images from participant archives -- a photo of Jon and his father, the original owner of the fishing license? Vicki wearing her dress when it was new? Carla on her wedding day? The photos do not have to show obvious connection to the object, and a small title on the bottom of the slide will connect the photo to the participant.
In Gallery 3, set up in the same fashion as Gallery 1, short documentaries and home movies will be projected, showing the objects in their context. I leave the documentaries as the last step in the museum flow; I'm curious to see whether and how the power of the moving image has been mediated by or augmented by the first two galleries. On the way out, visitors can schedule their own interviews at an Interview Center connected to the lobby, where visitors can talk about objects that are important to them and take home their interview on a CD. This might provide the First Person Museum with new material that can be switched out for an evolving collection.
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