Analyze a museum.
As we talked about in class, musuems are a place that what we value most as a society is stored to be seen and remembered. What is in there, how it is stored and presented, who is seeing it, how accessible is it and what happens to it next are what you will be looking at.
Physical space
Please read this article.
- Start taking notes from the moment you begin to see the museum as you walk up to it from the street. How does the museum building relate to its surroundings? Is it similar, different, larger, smaller than the urban fabric around it?
- What is the exterior interior like? Is it decorated? Can you tell what style of architecture it is? How does it relate to what you see inside?
- What is the entrance lobby to the museum like? How does it shape the beginning of your museum visit?
- Who is attending the museum? What is the general atmosphere like?
- How are the galleries organized? Why do you think the galleries and exhibitions look the way they do? (Think about wall color, lighting, interior arrangement etc).
- How is your object displayed? What other objects is they near to, and why?
- Draw diagrams or pictures to help you remember the layout of the museum and exhibition rooms.
What is being shown
Form
- Note textures and the quality of the surface of the work. What adjectives could you use throughout your analysis? Eg. shiny, dull, had, soft, rough, smooth.
- How does the artist use line, color, light and shadow? (See the first few pages of your Stokstad survey textbook for explanations of these terms under “Formal Analysis”)
- What about the composition? Is it balanced, symmetrical, asymmetrical? Why?
- How big is the work? How does size affect your reaction to the work? How does size affect the depiction of the subject?
- Read the label – what can we tell from the label? Look for the artist’s name, the media/materials used in creating the work, and when and where the piece was made.
- Where was the work originally meant to have been seen, and how might the current context in the museum be similar or different? What might it have been like to view the work in its original context?
- Where is the viewer meant to stand in relation to the work? Is there one viewpoint or multiple viewing points?
- Identify the subject matter. Be certain to describe all of the components depicted. Is this artwork telling a story? Is it religious or mythological?
- Why this piece and why this place?
Visitors
- Who is there?
- What are they doing with their bodies?
- o Body Movements
o Face expressions
o Language – Behavior
Transcribe and translate a three minute conversation that you hear people having in or out of the museum.