Chapter 1 · Purpose, audience and sources
Begin with what you want people to notice.
An exhibition brings sources and interpretation together. Before choosing an editor, decide what you want visitors to explore and which materials can help them do it.
You will have a short exhibition brief: a guiding question, an intended audience and a small set of sources to examine.
1. Turn a topic into a question
A topic gives your exhibition a subject. A question gives visitors a reason to look closely. Start with something that can be explored through your materials.
An example to think with
A painting of the Bogotá savanna.
What can this painting help us understand about people and land?
This is a possible starting question, not a finished interpretation. The details you examine will shape the argument.
Write the idea you want visitors to leave with, even if it is provisional. Then consider which questions could help them reach it. The opening should give them a way in; the ending should return to what the exhibition has helped them see.
2. Picture your visitors
Imagine someone arriving without the knowledge you bring to the material. What can they recognise? What will need an introduction? Which words or assumptions could get in the way?
- For whom are you making this exhibition?
- What context will they need before the first close look?
- What should they be able to notice or explain afterwards?
Use those answers to choose your opening, your language and the amount of context you offer. A glossary can explain recurring terms; a panel can develop the context of a particular step.
3. Read your sources before arranging them
Choose a manageable starting set: an image, a document, an audio recording, a video, or a few related items. You can return to the same source in more than one step.
Look and listen closely. Note significant elements, how they relate to one another, the questions they raise and what remains uncertain. Connect each possible observation to a detail you can actually show.
What is there?
People, words, symbols, sounds, gestures, arrangements and absences.
What does it raise?
Questions about making, use, audience, time, place and interpretation.
Keep the source address, catalogue information and credit alongside your notes. Identify what can be shared and what needs further checking. Mark uncertain interpretations as questions to investigate.
4. Draft a brief you can build from
On paper or in a document, finish these four prompts:
- My exhibition asks…State one guiding question.
- I am making it for…Name your intended audience and the context they will need.
- I will work with…List a small starting set of sources and the details worth examining.
- By the end, visitors should…Describe an understanding or observation your exhibition can help develop.
Planning is iterative. As you examine the sources and try the story with readers, revise the question, the sequence and the conclusion.
Next: sketch the narrative arc
Turn your brief into an opening, a sequence of questions and an ending. Continue with the narrative arc, then connect each step to a source view, plan optional layers and arrange the whole exhibition.
The narrative planner gives you a beginning and ending to build between. The workshop slides demonstrate how to add questions, sources and layers.
Sketch the narrative arc →