Total time spent: around 7 hours
When deciding on what artifact to showcase in my museum exhibit, I knew that I was not too interested in focusing on a historical one. That led me to look for another kind of object for most of the given time until I stumbled upon a Vox video that I have watched before in the past. The video describes the design choices that led the Cesca chair to become so widespread and common. I was really fascinated by these “common objects” and knew that I wanted to cover a chair in my exhibit.
Despite the fact that human beings have probably sat on things for as long as they existed, it was very difficult to find notable chairs that would fit the criteria (design related and within the time frame). Most of the Western chairs I found were developed in the mid to late 1900s or had too little information on them. One chair that I would have considered was the Akerblom chair, which introduced the ergonomic curve in the back of the chair, but it was developed in 1944-47.
That was when I found the Chinese High Yoke-Back chair. This chair is completely recognizable as having the parts found in modern chairs, while featuring some unusual qualities to it. The thing that made me especially interested in it was how it had that ergonomic curve, and dated around 500 years before the Akerblom chair’s development. The chair also has beautiful subtle curvature and a restrained design which explains the high prices it can fetch in current auctions.
For the overall composition of the exhibit, I was heavily inspired by the museums I visited over the summer break and furniture shows. I noticed that most exhibits take care to control the lighting of the exhibit to keep the artifact well lit and to exemplify its most significant qualities. I took extra care in the shading of the chair for this reason to showcase its texture and curves. In research on the thought process of developing an exhibit, the B.C. Museums Association states that most museum visitors experience fatigue an hour into their visit and start selectively reading after that. I made the choice to keep the text block simple to avoid battling for attention with the artifact itself. I figured that when visitors spend seconds on each exhibit I would rather that attention be focused on the object. This choice seems to be reflected in most exhibits that feature many items in a collection where fatigue is a genuine issue. I recalled specifically that in the Royal Ontario Museum’s gem collection, since there were so many pieces they were numbered off and had short descriptions for each category in one text box further away from the individual objects.
Overall, I am pretty happy with what I was able to accomplish. I had a lot of difficulty with the composition and I am still a little unsatisfied with it in the end product, but I am proud of the individual elements. I believe that the perspective of the piece is slightly off as well as unrealistic to a real exhibit but I do not currently have the skills to get to a point where I would be satisfied with it. Personally I feel like there is an uncomfortable amount of empty space in the background, however I took note of one thing Instructor Paul said while going over our yearbook spreads – get comfortable with negative space. I also know that I have a tendency to fiddle too much and add too much to a piece so I reluctantly left it alone.
Sources:
Exhibition Development the Art of Writing for Exhibitions – Museum. B.C. Museums Association, Apr. 2019, https://museum.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/BCMA-Exhibit-Dev-The-Art-of-Writing-110.pdf.
“High Yoke-Back Armchair.” High Yoke-Back Armchair | Yale University Art Gallery, https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/74641.
“The History of Sitting, Explained (With a $2.5 Million Chair).” YouTube, YouTube, 19 Apr. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YknIwwQqO9o&ab_channel=Goldthread. Accessed 17 Oct. 2022.
artist, Unknown. “Armchair with Continuous Yoke Back, One of a Pair, China ^ Minneapolis Institute of Art.” Mia, https://collections.artsmia.org/art/4275/armchair-with-continuous-yoke-back-china.
Rybczynski, Witold. “Sitting Up.” The Paris Review, 23 Aug. 2016, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/08/23/sitting-up/.
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