Royal Onterio Musem

There have been some interesting article showing up about museums and how they are displaying and grouping exhibitions.  Just the other day there was a good article in my home town newspaper, the Washington Post on how the Corcoran has hung paintings in its important Mantle Gallery in the Parisian salon style (see image). The paintings have to compete with each other for the viewers attention. Click HERE to read the Washington Post article.

While the Wall Street Journal has an article on how the Royal Ontario Museum is mixing and matching diverse yet connected items in exhibitions.  For example, mixing items from different cultures and providing a link between them.

The WSJ reports

Here's another example: A display contains ceramic vases, silver, clocks, weathervanes and furniture from the 18th century, across from painted portraits of men, women and children who lived in Canada back then. None of the individual objects have their own labels, and only some wall text describes life in that time. Who were those people in the portraits? Who painted them? Where were those chairs and vases made? Did those people own that silver? Presumably, the curators know and aren't telling us. At the ROM, the point isn't so much the individual objects as creating a big-picture view of life at a certain time and place. "We encourage visitors to make connections in their own minds," Ms. Carding said.

Part of the ROM's goal is to better reflect the Canadian experience (25%-30% of its visitors are Torontonians, 70%-75% are Canadians generally, with the rest being from outside the country), and it is Ms. Carding's own goal to better understand Canada. Born, raised and educated in England, the 45-year-old earned a master's degree in the history of science and medicine at the University of London before working at the Science Museum in London in a variety of roles between 1987 and 2004. Her first job there was in the history of medicine department, making acquisitions.

To read the full WSJ article on the ROM click HERE.