This project was developed as part of the Curious Beast team in Fall 2018 – Winter 2019.
CLIENT:
Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP)
Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP)
DESIGN TEAM:
Matt Cole, environmental designer; Eli Stillson, industrial designer; Ken Burns, art director; Jacob McMurray, curator
Matt Cole, environmental designer; Eli Stillson, industrial designer; Ken Burns, art director; Jacob McMurray, curator
PHOTOS:
Lara Swimmer
Lara Swimmer
In Fall of 2018, I worked with the Curious Beast team to develop a new iteration of the Guitar Gallery for the Museum of Pop Culture, replacing the original version that had remained practically unchanged since the museum opened. The space selected for this exhibit was the smallest (and strangest shaped) gallery in the museum, so one of the big challenges was working out a way to include the maximum number of guitars without making the space feel too crowded. We solved this by turning the two windows looking into the space into artifact cases. Curatorially, we worked to highlight the guitar players associated with the instruments instead of focusing solely on the technical aspects of the guitars. All citations told the story of the musicians who played the selected guitars. We also focused the large timeline on iconic guitarists who made specific models of guitars famous to help create a more diverse representation of artists in a compact space. Large environmental graphics were direct printed to ply to warm the space up and vertical lengths of 2x4 were used to provide a physical, textural component that referenced recording studio sound baffling.
Exhibit run: March 2019– Present
