Erwin Olaf has a thing for wallpaper. The art photographer, known for his hushed and ominous compositions, thinks what is on a wall is at least as important as what is in front of it. The New Institute has now managed to combine that idea beautifully in an exhibition which shows both the sets of Erwin Olaf's most famous works, and a few wallpaper designs from the quivers of great artists. It works and is absolutely beautiful to see, but what happens in one corner of the exhibition hall is the reason to come back again. That's the corner where you can get to work with your own wallpaper. Nothing more fun than that. But it goes much further: it could well be the blacksmith's secret: putting the audience to work as the way to get them to come back more often.
Doing it yourself: the Egg of Columbus for art buildings
"I can do that myself!", or "My three-year-old niece can do that better!". Familiar reactions in modern art, and the horror for every museum director. Then you can do two things: hold a difficult story, in which you place the creative process in a historical context and here and there let out some mystique about methodology used, or you can accept the challenge. The latter option is increasingly finding favour with museums. And for good reason, because your audience keeps coming back for more.
Seeing creativity unleashes creativity
The Centraal Museum in Utrecht as far as I know, is the first museum to experiment with DIY sections at major exhibitions. At a fashion exhibition, people could make their own dresses, and the major Rietveld exhibition a few years back yielded many hundreds of miniature Rietveld chairs that they pieced together themselves. All thanks to the construction kits that visitors could get to work with in the museum. The DIY wallpaper in The New Institute is based on the same simple idea: people get creative from looking but creativity. Making your own wallpaper by designing a pattern and then trying it out digitally multiplied, tilted, enlarged or reduced on a wall: simple, yet ingenious thinking from the exhibition makers.
Only for children? Definitely not.
A play-and-paste corner in a museum is not just for children. A museum director who thinks so is just as limited in mind as the onlooker who says 'his three-year-old niece can do it too'. The will to engage in your own experience in a museum is a bit more on the surface with children. Adults feel equally triggered. A museum that doesn't get that is a museum that is doomed. Museums that display their art as untouchable and impenetrable make that mistake.
[Tweet "A play-do-and-paste corner in a museum is not just for children."]Do this especially at home
'Do'nt try this at home!'. That people are inspired by things they see, the makers of spectacle programmes on TV know. That natural principle, which has to do with mirror neurons and group pressure ignore the bringers of serious art, whether on stage, or in an exhibition space. That some artworks are too fragile or too valuable to be touched is a logical reason to keep the audience at a physical distance, but then allow the inspiration, and recognise what that does to your spectators.
That vase fits right in
Huize Sonneveld, next to the New Instuituut, was for many years one of those untouchable monuments you could only look at in admiration. The perfectly preserved interior and the residential innovations unique to the construction period (1920s) are still sublime. But more than a one-off "oh! and "ah!" doesn't deliver. Once you have seen it once, there is little reason to return later, unless with your grandmother. The house is frozen in time, as it is with heritage. Unless you get a contemporary designer to work with it. An intervention they call it, and with a regular rotation of such interventions, the people of The New Institute hope to get more people to return to Huize Sonneveld for a second, or even third time.
Do this especially in a museum
And what exactly does such an intervention entail? In fact, nothing other than whatever the people living in such a house themselves would do with it: a new mug will be put in the kitchen cupboard. Or they put a hideous seating area on the balcony in the 1970s. It is these everyday things that inspire you to do exactly what such art calls you to do: look differently at the world around you, and then act accordingly.
[su_service title="Good to know" icon="icon: check-square"]Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam: 1:1 Sets for Erwin Olaf & Bekleidung 17/11/2013 - 30/03/2014.
Richard Hutten in Sonneveld House 17/11/2013 - 11/05/2014
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