The first round of ASK labels featured a questions with a large, blue ASK logo that was very visible in the galleries though the final version was smaller than the test version shown here.

Given our lofty engagement goals for ASK, we started to question this type of exchange. It felt too superficial and not at all what we were hoping for as far as engaging visitors with art. Additionally, Shelley and I began to worry about how these seeded questions were polluting our data. After all, one of the most important aspects of ASK is what we learn about what visitors want to know and providing questions doesn’t offer us that organic insight.

So as part of our Launch (with a capital “L”) we revisited the gallery labels, removed questions and instead focused on advertising the app with a variety of generic invitations to ask. While admittedly having any label at all would potential skew the data in favor of visitors asking about those objects, at least the questions would be original to the visitor. We noted in the dashboard which works had ASK labels so that we would know if “most-asked about” works were ones with labels or not.

The updated version of the ASK labels focused on generic invitations such as “ask us for more info,” and blended in with the label design.

During soft launch, 31 out of the top 100 most-asked about works had first round question labels. For Launch, only 5 of the top 100 works were ones with ASK labels. That’s a huge difference. One caveat that is important to note, is that the visibility of the labels themselves decreased because the design approach changed radically in the second version. In both cases, as we’d seen before, most questions were about works in the permanent collection. However we’re seeing a shift in that this exhibition season (more to come in a future post).

For special exhibitions we include ASK messaging with the introductory text as well as with individual objects. Early versions, such as this one from the Sneaker exhibition from summer 2015, did not include a directive to “download,” which we include now.

Special exhibitions provided great opportunities to test different versions of ASK labels and we went through several variations trying to find the right combination of visibility and prompting while keeping the invitation fairly generic. Interestingly, works with ASK labels in special exhibitions have also averaged about 30% of app traffic in those shows with the exception of the recent Beverly Buchanan exhibition, where we reinstated question labels. Those works represented 52% of user queries. However, unlike the first version of ASK question labels, rarely did users ask the question on the label.

I’ll be curious to see how this compares to the questions in the Marilyn Minter exhibition up now. As I hinted above, we’ve seen a lot more chats in special exhibitions recently and, anecdotally, people are using the ASK question labels in the Minter show, which doesn’t close until May, so I’ll have to wait and see.

What all this tells me is that although the provided questions may have skewed our data in terms of determining visitors’ organic curiosities and questions, they were also doing some heavy lifting in terms of getting people into and using the app. This also speaks to one of the issues raised in our recent evaluation about some visitors feeling pressure to ask a question or just not having one readily available. Looks like perhaps these prompted questions were helping those folks get into the app so you’ll see those begin to roll out again both in special exhibitions and in the permanent collection in the coming weeks.

Connecting Cultures is the first museum installation to utilize Optium for every vitrine and glazed surface. Optium is an anti-reflective, anti-static, abrasion-resistant and clear-coated acrylic produced by Tru Vue. Unlike regular Plexiglas glazings which mirror and reflect adjacent surfaces, these Optimum cases appear completely transparent. Optium has various coatings and is not easy to fabricate into 5-sided vitrines, but Allen Blum at Grewe Plastics had developed a fabrication method. The second challenge was that Optium is produced in very small quantities and when Allen contacted Tru Vue about our project, the President of Tru Vue personally called Allen to assure him that they would guarantee enough material to complete all 32 vitrines and glazing for the Pitcher Wall.

A visitor activates a Smartglass case to view the light-sensitive object inside. Optimum is used on other casework (like the Buddha tower in the upper left), so the vitrines are anti-reflective.

Working with Van Wood at the Small Corporation (SmallCorp), we were able to develop a new type of exhibition case for light sensitive materials using Smartglass as an electronic curtain for art. Smartglass is often used in architecture for privacy; it looks white or grey, but when activated it diffuses light or becomes transparent. Many people have also seen it used for unique applications, such as the dressing room doors at Prada in Soho. Smartglass is composed of two sheets of iron-free glass, with a 1/64″ film between that contains microscopic particles. When opaque, these particles are scattered; when electrified, the particles align vertically to allow light to pass through. At the Museum, our Conservation lab tested the Smartglass and found that when opaque it only allowed less than 1% of light diffusion, and less than 1% UV. For light sensitive works on paper and textile, these Smartglass curtains will extend the exhibition period of fragile works and do away with the need for fabric coverings and light locks.

Smartglass curtains will extend the exhibition period of fragile works. Visitors push a button to reveal the object sitting inside the case.

Label troughs are not an area that would seem to be terribly innovative, but if you think about it, most labels are either on walls or on the sides of cases. There is also the variation of having a label installed on an angled deck inside the case. Though it has its advantages, I always felt that having angles above the collar line read too much with the artwork and changed the shape of the casework. My solution was to sink the label rail into a trough below the deck and collar line. This retains the casework’s squareness, doesn’t compete with the shape of the artwork, and perhaps surprisingly is very easy to read especially through reflection-free Optium.

Together these three advances in casework design give Connecting Cultures a state-of-the-art look and feel.

The easy solution would have been to choose one color for each section, but since the room is 24-feet high, and most of the art is under 4-feet tall, that would have left a lot of empty visual space, even after double-hanging. And so I began to explore the idea of using over-sized murals as backgrounds, and asking myself questions like, “what is something visual that connects all of these works together?” Immediate answers for the place section for example would be to use the weather or landscape. I even thought about things like seismographs or lightning, which are universal experiences. Then, I moved to think about what structures, or frameworks, could hold each group together. I began to think map, and then met with the Museum’s librarian Deirdre Lawrence who showed me our 1680 Sanson Atlas, and its beautiful world map. Taken to greyscale, and then with a white-to-transparent overlay, the Sanson map clearly indicated Place and gave the artwork installed on top of it an instant cohesion; the greyscale then allowed the artworks’ color to pop forward.

One of the first things you'll notice upon entry are the gigantic murals that we've installed on the walls as background images, each one relates to the themes we are highlighting. Here, a world map from the 1680 Sanson Atlas is getting installed in the "Place" section.

I then extended this idea of structure and greyscale to the other sections. One common framework of all people is the skeletal system, and so I worked with a skeleton drawing by Daniel Hungtinton from our American collection. Skeletons and anatomy also being one of the first subjects you draw as an art student. For Things, I met with the planning department, and paged through decades of old blueprints produced for the Museum. A drawing of one of the Museum’s staircases from 1954 by Brown, Lawford & Forbes, became the background for a display of historical and contemporary mirrors.

The Egyptian eye that you see upon entry is just a mere 2.5 inches in real life, but has been digitally captured and rendered in hi-definition. Enlarged to 19' wide x 22' tall, its 1000% enlargement makes the statement, "look."

And last, was the question of what to use as an “entrance” for an installation about new ways of looking at out collection. Our common structure for looking is the eye, and in our Egyptian collection we have a life-size eye made 3,500 years ago, from Obsidian, limestone and blue glass. This 2 1/4″ eye was photographed in HD by Karl Rudisill from Duggal, in 6 parts, re-assembled into an 18GB file, and then enlarged to 19′ wide at 1,000% enlargment, without pixellation. A miracle of photography.

Together, these monumental murals form a dramatic set of indicators that provides unity for all of the places, people and things that artists in our Permanent Collection, have created as records of our amazing world . . . A world in Brooklyn.

To conclude our series, I would like to share one final work. Red Escape II, by Viyé Diba, a Senegalese artist who lives and works in Dakar, is a brand-new acquisition, making its debut in African Innovations. The work was purchased as a joint acquisition by Eugenie and me, on behalf of both the African and Contemporary collections. Thus, it may also find its way into a Contemporary collection rotation at some point in the future.

Viyé Diba (Senegalese, born 1954). Red Escape II, 1999. Cotton strip cloth, paint, sand, wood, metal , 67 x 55 in. (170.2 x 139.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Elliot Picket, by exchange and Alfred T. White Fund, 2011.30. © artist or artist's estate. Photo by Bonnie Morrison.

The painting itself is composed entirely of materials Diba found in Dakar, making the accumulated hands that previously touched these materials part of the work’s story. The piece of painted yellow wood, projecting between the seams of this woven canvas, and the abstract forms that suggest fleeing figures at the top, all evoke the possibility of liberation—from the plane of the canvas, from the strictures of either painting or sculpture or, perhaps, from the history of Dakar itself, a former minor way station in the odious historical trade in human captives.

While currently the only significant abstract contemporary work in the African collection, in its materials and surfaces Red Escape II evokes the centuries of more figurative creative expression that came before it. With its themes of community and freedom, it offers a fitting coda to African Innovations.

Installation in progress.

Through a series of discussions and plans with Matthew, our Chief Designer, I have come to see that openness as one of the most exciting features of the new layout (instead of a problem to be overcome). The African Innovations galleries will be visible from many different angles within the Great Hall, and will allow visitors to move between the two spaces with ease, while still creating a number of separate galleries within the new installation.

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The design cleverly use of a series of diagonal walls, aligned with the existing architecture of the building, to create seven distinct spaces within the installation, for each of the exhibition’s themes. These mini-galleries have the benefit of organizing related works in close proximity, while still drawing upon the openness of the original space.

If you’ve been to the museum in the last month, you have been able to watch this process play out in the open, at least in part. In that same spirit, here are a few “behind-the-scenes” shots to fill you in on parts of the construction and re-installation process that have been less visible.

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Situ Studio installs reOrder in the Great Hall

The space has been a hive of activity, truckloads of equipment and pre fabricated wooden and steel parts made their way into the building each labeled and numbered and sorted; as the stacks grew I quickly realized that the substructure of these forms contained a serious bit of engineering. Teams quickly began fitting the columns with collars and hoops of varying sizes skewed in a variety of positions with a complex system of chords. These underlying structures are quite beautiful within themselves and although they will obscured from view upon completion, visitors will be able to experience the project in its early stages through detailed film documentation which will be presented within the space upon its opening to the public.

Situ Studio installs reOrder in the Great Hall

While the teams working at dizzying heights begin assembling and installing the “bones” they are being swiftly followed by workers installing interior lighting and preparing fabric which has begun to be stretched and painstakingly folded over the massive structures. Despite the project’s complexity, it has began to rise with a certain grace and beauty not often seen in a hardhat area.

Situ Studio, Brooklyn. Rendering of reOrder

Situ Studio is a Brooklyn based architectural and fabrication firm whose reOrder project will open to the public March 4^th 2011, in the Brooklyn Museum’s Grand Hall.

Situ Studio (2005–present), Brooklyn. Rendering of reOrder, an installation to open in the Great Hall of the Brooklyn Museum in 2011

It has been my pleasure to be able to watch this process develop from its very early stages to its current project milestone: the first full scale mock up of one of Situ Studios column distorting creations.

Situ Studio. Full scale column mock up with fabric form at top and table or seating area options at the base.

I was invited to visit a construction site in mid-town Manhattan where a donated space housed the gigantic model that the Situ Studio team had been on working for weeks. I might add that my feet went numb almost immediately in the raw unheated space where this team has spent many consecutive hours constructing the mock up. Upon encountering the model, what struck me immediately was the shift in scale from previous prototypes. Because of this change, the form went from being merely viewed to being experienced.  In addition to the main fabric form, each column ends at its base in either a bench or standing table that are being fabricated from a solid surface material shaped by a cutting edge heat forming technique. These areas of respite will provide a dramatic vantage point to experience the reORDER installation.

What was an exciting project on paper is beginning to take shape; I can only imagine that when these forms transform the 16 giant columns of the Great Hall it will be truly spectacular.

Pouring over hundreds of photographs,  the exhibition slowly took shape . . . the section themes emerged . . . and I started to work with different design concepts.  Should the design span the past 50 years of rock, from blue suede shoes to psychedelic to punk to grunge to today? Or should it feel like an austere Chelsea gallery . . . like a “serious” photography exhibition? Should it feel more round and analog . . . or more geometric and digital? Like drums and guitars, with wailing vocals? Like Led Zeppelin is in the room?

The final design, which you’ll see at the end of the month, is the result of thinking through many ideas of what an exhibition about music could look and feel like and how the visitor should move through the space. Next week we’ll begin hanging the works in the gallery, one-by-one . . . but in final preparation, there is one special component of the show that I’ve had a guilty pleasure assembling: the album cover chronology.

Over the Summer, I’ve rummaged through most every rock-and-roll memorabilia store in the city . . . scoured listings on ebay endlessly . . . encountered many vinyl aficionados . . . and had quite a few “a-ha” moments. And yes, we’re including all formats . . . 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs . . . . but mostly vinyl . . . hopefully you’ll have a cool walk down memory lane, just like I did.

Last week we received a query via Twitter asking how we did the lighting in the Luce Visible Storage Study Center. This was a long-term design project that lasted from 2001 until the Center opened in 2005. At the beginning of the project, I visited other Luce Centers to explore what had been done, what worked, what could be improved. One aspect that needed to be addressed was how to light artworks displayed on shelving units—much of the artwork tended to fall in shadows since they were mostly lit from the ceiling. Some tried using glass shelving to alleviate the problem.

And so, I went on a search to find a kind of light that would evenly light each shelf, that generated minimal heat, didn’t produce UV, and could be dim enough to meet conservation standards for light sensitive artworks. It was challenging! The winner was E-lite, which is an electro-luminescent film that is attached to aluminum and powered by high-voltage electricity. You might more familiarly know it from your Timex Night-Glo watch . . . same technology. In the late ’90s, Timex no longer owned the exclusive rights to the light, so E-lite was looking for ways to re-purpose their flatlite.  Once I knew I was using E-lite, my next task was to design thin shelves! Here’s how it looked before the art was installed: