So we've had a productive week looking at the Exhibition Lay-out and Design. We showed the plans to Russ, who will be making the cabinets and to Victoria, who looks after the collection, and apart from a few tweeks the plans have been o.k'd to go ahead. Our next job was to take our model box of the lay-out into the gallery space to work out if our plans would work in the space, it looks very different in a model box! Unfortunately the Castle closes at 4 during the winter so we had to go in during the day which meant most of the exhibition team couldn't join us. However Sophie from the team was free and came along as spokesperson for the group.
Tris (assistant exhibitions officer) and Russ had given us a few things to think about when they saw our plans. The first thing being that our main motif was going to be placed in a corner of the Gallery between two doors, a space we thought would be hard to put any objects in. Both described that wall as dead space and said it would be a shame to have the main motif there as it may get over looked, also there may be a problem with objects being displayed over the radiator. This meant re-looking at our lay-out and potentially re-jigging it, once in the space as well, areas we thought were quite large suddenly looked fairly small and we had to re-think pathways through the show. After a slight moment of disappointment at needing to move things around we came to a solution fairly quickly. We still need to go over the plans with the rest of the group but think the new arrangement will make better use of the space whilst still keeping the original feel of the exhibition.
The exhibition design in particular has had to have the most changes to it as we meet with different people in the museums and learn more about the possibilities and practicalities of putting on this exhibition. On a good note, we had bought a selection of paper lights into the space to see how they would look as additional lighting, and as a way to visibly lower the celling and make the space more inviting. We all decided they looked really good, particularly in clusters of different sizes. We just need to talk to the Museums about the best way to light them.