By: GERALDINE FABRIKANT
Source: http://www.nytimes.com
Category: Film Schools Online
WHEN Deborah Nadoolman Landis first began work for the coming show “Hollywood Costumes” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, she wanted to provide visitors with iPads that would let them observe an outfit, view a relevant movie clip and watch interviews with those involved with the film.
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Vivien Leigh's curtain dress from “Gone With the Wind.”
She ultimately discarded such an elaborate use of technology, but she still has ambitious plans to take the show beyond a simple display of costumes.
“How do you bring in new audiences?” asked Ms. Landis, the senior guest curator for the exhibition and a Hollywood costume designer. This is an era where “we all want and expect more information,” she said.
Exhibitions of clothing from films are particularly challenging because “movies are kinetic art while museums are static and frozen,” she said. “This exhibit could not be dead frocks on dummies. Costumes are created for movies to provide a narrative and visual context. They cannot stand on their own like the clothes of the great couturiers.”
And so, for “Hollywood Costumes“ (which runs from Oct. 20 to Jan. 27, 2013), Ms. Landis and her team are trying to put costumes in context by highlighting the lines from the screenplay that best illustrate what the outfit is meant to convey. For example, the gallery will show the relevant excerpt from the script of “Gone With the Wind” next to the green dress (now faded) made from curtains that Vivien Leigh wore as Scarlett O’Hara when she tried to borrow money to save Tara, the family plantation. The display will also feature a projection of the actress in the costume.
The Victoria and Albert is not alone in trying to enhance the exhibition of costumes. Museum curators agree that clothing exhibitions are increasingly likely to include a technological component, or at least efforts to create an ambience to amplify the experience of seeing the outfits.
A prime example is the show featuring the work of the late designer Alexander McQueen last year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, which included a hologram of Kate Moss as well as videos from the designer’s runway shows and a video of one of his collections projected onto the ceiling.
“McQueen was a watershed because it was more than a fashion show,” said Valerie Steele, the director and chief curator at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, who has curated a number of shows there. “People could feel the passion, and it was quite different than most shows. It was a theatrical experience. It captured the magazine experience of his worldview.”
Ms. Steele said she had also been influenced by the show “Malign Muses” at the Mode Museum in Antwerp several years ago. The curator, Judith Clark, used two cog wheels that turned and at the point where they came together would be a dress from the past and its present version. Ms. Steele recalled that the drama of that exhibit affected how she created the evocative background for her 2008 show on Gothic clothing. “It made me realize how important the mise-en-scène was,“ she said. “The setting of the clothes can help tell the story of the meaning of clothes.“
Yet even clothing exhibits in the same museum may strike different notes. Curators who embrace extravagant backdrops will also mount more bare-bones shows if they feel that is what a collection merits.
For example, André Leon Talley, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, recreated a scene from the play “The Women” by Clare Boothe Luce for each designer’s dress in a show at the André Leon Talley Gallery, part of the new museum at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he is a trustee. But Mr. Talley is taking a more minimalist approach to the next show, “The Little Black Dress,” which features about 60 dresses.
“In this case the narrative can be achieved in a much more straightforward show,” he said.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/arts/artsspecial/adding-technology-to-museum-costume-displays.html#h[WDNWDN]
Source: http://www.nytimes.com
Category: Film Schools Online
WHEN Deborah Nadoolman Landis first began work for the coming show “Hollywood Costumes” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, she wanted to provide visitors with iPads that would let them observe an outfit, view a relevant movie clip and watch interviews with those involved with the film.
Enlarge This Image
Selznick Properties, Ltd
Vivien Leigh's curtain dress from “Gone With the Wind.”
She ultimately discarded such an elaborate use of technology, but she still has ambitious plans to take the show beyond a simple display of costumes.
“How do you bring in new audiences?” asked Ms. Landis, the senior guest curator for the exhibition and a Hollywood costume designer. This is an era where “we all want and expect more information,” she said.
Exhibitions of clothing from films are particularly challenging because “movies are kinetic art while museums are static and frozen,” she said. “This exhibit could not be dead frocks on dummies. Costumes are created for movies to provide a narrative and visual context. They cannot stand on their own like the clothes of the great couturiers.”
And so, for “Hollywood Costumes“ (which runs from Oct. 20 to Jan. 27, 2013), Ms. Landis and her team are trying to put costumes in context by highlighting the lines from the screenplay that best illustrate what the outfit is meant to convey. For example, the gallery will show the relevant excerpt from the script of “Gone With the Wind” next to the green dress (now faded) made from curtains that Vivien Leigh wore as Scarlett O’Hara when she tried to borrow money to save Tara, the family plantation. The display will also feature a projection of the actress in the costume.
The Victoria and Albert is not alone in trying to enhance the exhibition of costumes. Museum curators agree that clothing exhibitions are increasingly likely to include a technological component, or at least efforts to create an ambience to amplify the experience of seeing the outfits.
A prime example is the show featuring the work of the late designer Alexander McQueen last year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, which included a hologram of Kate Moss as well as videos from the designer’s runway shows and a video of one of his collections projected onto the ceiling.
“McQueen was a watershed because it was more than a fashion show,” said Valerie Steele, the director and chief curator at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, who has curated a number of shows there. “People could feel the passion, and it was quite different than most shows. It was a theatrical experience. It captured the magazine experience of his worldview.”
Ms. Steele said she had also been influenced by the show “Malign Muses” at the Mode Museum in Antwerp several years ago. The curator, Judith Clark, used two cog wheels that turned and at the point where they came together would be a dress from the past and its present version. Ms. Steele recalled that the drama of that exhibit affected how she created the evocative background for her 2008 show on Gothic clothing. “It made me realize how important the mise-en-scène was,“ she said. “The setting of the clothes can help tell the story of the meaning of clothes.“
Yet even clothing exhibits in the same museum may strike different notes. Curators who embrace extravagant backdrops will also mount more bare-bones shows if they feel that is what a collection merits.
For example, André Leon Talley, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, recreated a scene from the play “The Women” by Clare Boothe Luce for each designer’s dress in a show at the André Leon Talley Gallery, part of the new museum at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he is a trustee. But Mr. Talley is taking a more minimalist approach to the next show, “The Little Black Dress,” which features about 60 dresses.
“In this case the narrative can be achieved in a much more straightforward show,” he said.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/arts/artsspecial/adding-technology-to-museum-costume-displays.html#h[WDNWDN]
