Juror's Choice

Exhibition: Bear Essentials

Institution: Cable Natural History Museum, Cable, Wisconsin

Writer: Laurence J. Wiland

Editors: Allison Slavick, Thomas Williams

Brief Description: The exhibition Bear Essentials introduced museum visitors to the world of bears, and in particular the black bear, a common but secretive resident of our region. The exhibit featured natural and cultural bear artifacts including the skull of an 800-pound cave bear, a pictorial display of a year in the life of a bear, black bear mounts, a replica of a bear den that children could explore, a garden menu of bear food, and an exploration of the long relationship between humans and bears.

This writing sample was included as an insert in a bound, water-resistant menu for the fictitious "Blueberry Way" restaurant. Visitors were given the menu as a guide to a self-paced tour of the museum's outdoor native landscape and classroom. Entrees on the main menu (not featured here) were numbered and corresponded with numbered labels marking different plants along the landscape tour.



Blue Plate specials
All "u" can eat

Monday
Roadkill Hot Dish: For the meat lover in the family. Please specify freshly splattered or lovingly aged in a dirty winter snow drift. Topped with a pate of tender maggot.

Tuesday
Berry Bar: Visit our new berry bar and enjoy a chilled culinary montage of raspberries, bunchberries, blueberries, serviceberries, wild sarsaparilla berries and dogwood berries. Fill your plate as many times as you like; please mind the sneeze guard.

Wednesday
Forest Salad Smorgasbord: A variety of forest-floor greens will add important fiber and roughage to your diet and help clean out your gut. Garnish with grubs, ants or hornet pupae.

Thursday
The Neighborhood Graze: Enjoy a lip-smacking tour of the human neighborhood's compost bins, garbage cans and bird feeders. For the daring ursine only. If caught, you may be deported to Ashland County.

Friday
Fish fry.



Jurors' Comments:

For a self-guided brochure this one could really work. The strength and originality of the menu idea is a good attention-getter. The shock of realizing that bears eat roadkill and dip into compost bins comes across well and is memorable. I liked the humor and cleverness of the format as well as the concrete information. Patterson Williams

The concept, and writing, is cute, and probably works well in its outdoor setting. I bet it's particularly effective with kids. Joshua Dudley

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Jurors' Choice

Exhibition: Magic: The Science of Illusion (Opened July, 2000; now traveling)

Institution: California Science Center

Writer and Editor: Bonnie Wallace, Senior Exhibit Writer

Brief Description: Magic is more than a simple trick. The interplay between simple mechanics, optics, electromagnetism, math, psychology and the art of performance makes magic the science of illusion. Magic: The Science of Illusion is an 8,000-square-foot traveling exhibition designed around four magical illusions: mindreading, levitation, transformation, and the disembodied head. Through interactives, artifacts, film, live shows, and immersion experiences, guests explore the scientific and social principles behind a successful illusion. A history wall tells the story of stage magic through the years. This writing sample is part of the history wall.



Wanted: magician’s assistant

Must be able to:

• set, pack and care for all props
• handle animals, from rabbits and doves up to large cats
and snakes—no allergies allowed
• be beautiful, glamorous, charming, sexy, persuasive
and funny without upstaging the magician
• make sure lights and music hit their cues
• bring props to the magician openly and secretly
• fit into small boxes and holes
• take the bumps and bruises of a show night after night

Jurors' Comments:

Assuming a relatively high level of visitor interest in this subject to start with, I thought the length of this panel was on target. I especially liked the use of bullets. The selection of information seemed visitor friendly and well chosen for involving readers in a natural and direct way. It’s a very nice touch to use the idea of a magician's assistant as an entree to the topic. I could really see myself in this scenario, and it made the subject come alive in a concrete way. Patterson Williams

I especially liked the way this panel took an aspect of the magician’s act that is thought of as essentially decorative – the female assistant – and made the person into a human being who has to work hard and who gets bumps and bruises along the way. There is a wonderful clarity and efficiency to the language, and the social commentary is handled delicately, without the sledge hammer approach that must have been tempting to the writer. Brian Peterson

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Jurors' Choice

Exhibition: Ride the Wind: The Story of Hang Gliding (April, 2000 – March, 2001)

Institution: Museum of Flight, Seattle, Washington

Writer: Cory Graff, Exhibits Research and Development Manager

Editor: Hollis Palmer, PR and Marketing Director

Brief Description: From the earliest bamboo, plastic, and packing tape backyard inventions to today’s super-light titanium high-flyers, Ride the Wind explored the interesting and sometimes strange world of this special breed of pilots who fly without a motor. The exhibition utilized artifacts and videos as well as twelve actual aircraft, and also allowed visitors to experience what it feels like to fly a hang glider in two flight simulators.



Stratus Bowsprit VB

Was the Stratus well loved?  It depends on whom you talk to.  Some say, “That glider was my Shelby Cobra, my P-51 Mustang” while others lament, “They should all be destroyed or burned!”  The Stratus was a radical new flexible wing tip glider touted to make smooth and stable turns.  But some flyers say the words “tricky” and “slippery” are more appropriate.

There are believers: “Beautifully designed and built.  I have yet to fly a more agile glider.”  

And non-believers: “Landings were all bad or total luck.”  

One thing can be said for sure, it stirred up emotions:

The Stratus was art.  But like art, she didn't appeal to everyone.  She had a dark, foreboding side.  Oh, but I loved her looks and I was fascinated by her reputation.  ‘If I only owned her,’ I thought, ‘my life would be sublime.’  God, she was beautiful, but those looks could kill.  I soon learned that I wasn't man enough for her.  She delighted in humiliating me in public.  She exposed me for what I was.  Years later as I look back through the fog of my scarred psyche, I'm grateful that she spared my life.
                                                —Jon Dawkins

Jurors' Comments:

The use of a surprising and thought-provoking question, not just a rhetorical one, seemed a good way to grab the visitor with the first line of text, so often the most important line if visitors are going to continue reading. There is a nice breakdown of text into short paragraphs for easier reading. The selection of content is excellent for concrete, punchy, and memorable bits of information. I especially like the use of contrasting points of view in the believer and non-believer quotes. Patterson Williams

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Jurors' Choice

Exhibition: Pastime and Pleasure

Institution: The Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Writer: Diana Johnson

Editor: Elizabeth S_vik

Brief description: Pastime and Pleasure was developed for the annual Educators' Evening, an open-house event attended by nearly 500 teachers. Teachers searched the permanent collection galleries for five works of art from a variety of traditions, each evoking a strong sense of place. At each work of art they collected an information sheet, written for a student audience, to use with a lesson plan on the topic they received upon arrival at the event. Besides introducing teachers to the full range of the Institute's permanent collection, the goal of this project was to provide teachers with written materials that balance new information about the works of art with prompts for thoughtful looking. The complete unit is available online at www.artsmia.org/education/ed-eve-2001.



Marc Chagall
Russian, 1887-1985
The Poet with the Birds, 1911
Oil on canvas
61.36.7

A man lies peacefully under a tree. Surrounded by the bright colors of a warm summer day, he escapes into a carefree world of his own. “The Poet with the Birds,” the title tells us. What might a poem inspired by this moment under the tree be about?

Marc Chagall was a young man living in Paris, France, when he painted this picture. The city’s busy shop windows and rich museums inspired him to paint and paint. But he filled his pictures with memories of the world he had left behind in the countryside of Russia, not scenes of Paris.

Take this scene of the poet, for example. The sun, the trees, and the birds could be from anywhere. But the poet’s tunic shirt and loose trousers are the dress of a Russian peasant. Do you get the feeling that Chagall spent many afternoons this way himself?

Marc Chagall was a painter, not a poet, but he saw similarities between the two occupations. Poets search for those few right words to create the feeling of a particular moment. Painters use colors to do the same thing. “Color is the blood of the painter, as poetry is the blood of the poet,” Chagall once said. How are the colors of this painting like the words of a poem?

Jurors' Comments:

Texts that ask questions can seem patronizing, or like something from a school field trip, but this work transcends that genre. Although the writing is simple, the ideas explored are not (e.g. similarity between painting and poetry). For every question the text asks, it gives something good back (contrast between Paris and Russia, the quote about "blood of a painter," etc.)  Also, the questions are not pointlessly open ended, but really make you look again at the painting. Joshua Dudley

While the style of this label is conversational, it’s actually full of useful information about the artist and the work in question. More importantly, the text opens the door to a more emotional and psychological connection with the painting, without assuming a preachy or overbearing tone. The artist becomes a real human being dealing with  common human experiences in his work, and I want to learn and see more. Brian Peterson

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 Jurors' Choice

Exhibition: Jellies: Living Art (Opened April 8, 2002)

Institution: Monterey Bay Aquarium

Writers/Editors: Elizabeth Labor, Melissa Hutchinson, Jaci Tomulonis


Brief Description: Jellies: Living Art explores the ways in which jellies and the marine world have kindled the artistic imagination. From sea nettles to flower heats, sea angels to moon jellies, diverse drifters share a museum-like setting with paintings, sculpture and other works of art. Features artists include Dale Chihuly, David Hockney, Pegan Brooke and others. The exhibit focuses on three main concepts: the variety of jellies’ shapes and sizes, their mesmerizing rhythm and movement, and the myriad colors and patterns they display. Gallery walls come alive with poetry and quotes from Pablo Neruda, Jimi Hendrix, Terry Tempest Williams and others.



Rhythm and Movement

Jellies were the first to move,
and today they move in myriad ways.

Prehistoric jellies were the first animals to swim
free of the seafloor. Today’s jellies possess
an impressive repertoire of swimming styles—
some pulse peacefully like living lava lamps;
others beat fast and furiously. Still others row
with oarlike paddles or throb forever upside-down.

Jellies travel up and down, back and
forth, in and out of seasons

For jellies, being on the move might mean
migrating long distances every day—from dark
depths to food-rich surface waters. Other jellies
travel horizontally, pulsing across lakes and
lagoons. Some even travel by season—swarms
of moon jellies usually appear here in the fall.

I spin on the circle of wave upon wave of the sea.
             

                                    — Pablo Neruda


Jurors' Comments:

Lots of alliteration here. The emphasis in this text on sensual and poetic words and phrases seemed well suited to the sensual approach of the exhibit. The headline is welcoming, to the point, and short. I also thought the headline would help visitors decide if they wanted to read more. In the nice short paragraphs the similes may help visitors notice things about jellies and remember them. I particularly enjoyed the lava lamp simile. Patterson Williams

Pablo Neruda is a hard act to follow, but this label manages to bridge the gap between poetry and museum writing quite nicely. It was obviously written by people who are conscious of the power of language to create images in our minds; phrases like “pulse peacefully,” “throb forever upside down,” and “dark depths” particularly resonate with me. I also like the sense of rhythm in the words. I want to read them slowly, linger on certain delicious passages, then move on, almost like a jellyfish floating on a current. . . . Brian Peterson

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Jurors' Choice:


Exhibition: Inner Expressions: German Art from the Fort Wayne Museum of Art Permanent Collection and the Pamela and James Elesh Collection

Institution: Fort Wayne Museum of Art

Writer: Mary M. Schroeder

Editors: Jack Cantey, Robert Schroeder, Patricia Watkinson, Sachi Yanari-Rizzo

Brief Description: Inner Expressions consists of twenty-one prints and drawings produced between 1907 and 1948 by seven of the most innovative artists in Germany at that time. Barlach, Beckmann, Feininger, Heckel, Kollwitz, Nolde and Dix are the seven artists included in this exhibition.


[introductory panel copy]

This is not happy art.  These were not happy times.  During the time period represented by these works (1907-1948) the Germans fought and lost two world wars.  The economy failed to stabilize between wars so the German people faced fifteen years of inflation, depression and poverty in addition to the haunting memories of World War I. Most artists living and working in Germany during this period considered it vitally important to document their feelings. Their sorrow and confusion is the true subject of this exhibition.

Art in which there is less emphasis on what the artist sees and more emphasis placed on the subjective, or individual, feelings of the artist is called “expressionistic” art. Even though it is easy to recognize people and places in these works, their emotional content overpowers the subject. The artists represented here describe feelings that are private and public and political. The challenge to anyone with an opposing viewpoint is immediately apparent.

On July 19, 1937 the Degenerate Art exhibition opened in Munich, Germany. Its purpose was to clarify for the German public exactly what type of art was unacceptable or “un-German.” Most of the artists shown here were included in that exhibit.  Degenerate art was considered to be so far beyond what was acceptable that it had become non-art.

Today these artists are recognized not only for their contributions to the history of modern art but for their courage and determination. The darkness that fills their work is not self-indulgent or contrived. In addition to being publicly ridiculed, they were fired from their jobs as teachers and labeled insane. Their artworks were destroyed. They were threatened with prison, or worse, if they did not stop creating their “non-art.” No, this is certainly not happy art, but it is a true testament to the power of the creative impulse and the human spirit.


Jurors' Comments:

This is a long text, but it starts out so strikingly that I felt compelled to continue reading, and probably would even read the whole thing on a wall in an exhibit setting. Sentences are short and to the point. Each paragraph rewards the visitor with a powerful idea that will serve as a reference when viewing the show.  Particularly good to see is writing about art that uses no adjectives to describe the art itself, only the artists, and every adjective is backed up by a fact. Joshua Dudley