Exhibitions are a museum’s most apparent means of communicating. Today, even in an age of ‘post-museums’ where fragmented audiences and competition from other leisure activities impact, exhibitions remain the enduring method by which communication can take place with visitors. However, how this communication takes place and the interpretative strategies realised through the design and narrative constructed in an exhibition space have never been more important.
The Museum of Sydney’s recent exhibition entitled Shooting Through: Sydney by Tram provides a clever example of how a museum can fulfil its mission by utilising an insightful design in the presentation of objects to deliver a thought-provoking narrative about a crucial part of Sydney’s transportation history that still impacts the lives of residents today.
In particular, two striking features of the presentation engaged this visitor in a process where meaning-making and personal interpretation could take place.
Arrangement of objects and the exhibition space
Perhaps nowhere was the feeling of how important deliberate choices of display and communication through spatial arrangement can be, than when a visitor enters the Focus Gallery. Even before arriving in the gallery space, the visitor was literally started (through the display of an original ‘Starters box’ at the door) on a visual ‘journey’ that cleverly tapped into the experience we have all had of travel.
The artefacts and objects displayed were dominated by a large rectangular arrangement down the middle of the gallery, and the scale, orientation and choice of interiors replicated the physical dimensions of a tram carriage rapidly moving forward aided by the repetition in the wall treatments, panels and cabinets of the livery of the common ‘toast-track’ trams of the 1930’s.
Opposite the entrance, the visitor was confronted by a ‘Tramway Indicator Board’ and could choose a destination or orientate their journey through ‘title signs’, included here in the form of ‘tram stop’ signage marked along various points in the exhibition. Although a linear progression was suggested, it was not enforced; rather it provided a continued use of artefact to simulate ‘journey’.
Exhibitions we know have an ‘affective’ experience on the visitor and various presentation methods can elicit different responses. Certainly the journey motif hinted at ‘discovery’ techniques more commonly used in science museums.
However, the most striking aspect was the use of ‘comprehension’ (a common device of history museums), which was put to great use through the arrangement of Max Dupain prints and other documentary photographic works interspersed with oil and watercolour artworks by iconic Australian modernists (many cleverly dating their origins by capturing trams in the foreground with progressing building works of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the background), contrasted along one wall with original ‘rail-board’ advertisements for holiday outings and weekends. Far from a ‘contemplative’ arrangement of art and design, context and contrast suggested by the placement of these objects conjured a slice of Sydney life in the 1930’s and strengthen the narrative concerning the role of trams in commuting and leisure activities.
Use of text and audio visual materials
A transmission approach to communication assumes that one authoritative voice that of the museum, delivers the message. In Shooting Through, the neutral yet colloquial tone suggested through the panel text indeed presented a clear museum voice.
However, this was interspersed with various other voices introduced through reference to other textual sources on the panels (such as quotes) and in the varying perspectives included in audio-visual presentation with its emotive interviews with former tram workers, experts and government officials.
While the text and these voices enabled multiple entry points into the narrative, what was not explicitly stated was almost as compelling. Most of the blacklit text consisted of a white font upon a black panel. However, scattered about the room were seemingly random facts displayed in a larger blue font. Without any other interpretative guide, this visitor was forced to seek their own implicit context linking these facts (mingled with the various voices present into the space) to contemporary debates being played out in broadsheet newspapers about the state of public transport and the role of trams or light rail in metropolitan Sydney. Essentially by allowing a reference to this visitor’s prior knowledge, the arrangement of the display had ensured a ‘meaning-making’ method of communication could be utilised.
These presentation and communication methods only represented a fraction of those utilised in the Shooting Through: Sydney by Tram, they are typical of the ingenuity of the Museum of Sydney and its engaging methods of presenting exhibitions that not only communicate important stories of the city, but through a distinctive presentation style, ensure visitors can make vital connections to larger social issues still so relevant today.
