In light of this, I started reflecting again on an exhibition I recently went to: ‘Hello My name is Paul Smith’ at the Design Museum. I liked how the Curator’s hadn’t attempted to control and confine the visitor by restricting how you moved around the space. Although there were different themed areas in separate rooms, they surrounded one central ‘hallway’ filled with photos from Smith’s own personal collection. This meant that from the entrance, you could then access any area at any time. As a result it didn’t feel like a linear, set narrative was being forced on you- the visitor could chose the order of the story, and easily return to a space if they wanted to re-engage with the ideas being explored there. Rather than presenting an overly clean, simplified and sanitised story of Smith’s work, the exhibition covered his whole creative process. Some fashion exhibitions and retrospectives seem to focus primarily on displaying countless beautiful final outcomes, but here rooms were made into reconstructions of Smith’s messy office and studio, with only a small area dedicated to showing a selection of finished garments. I thought this worked to give much more of an interesting insight into the process behind Smith’s work. As a result, I felt I understood his finished pieces better, as we’d been given a view into the thinking, struggles and development that led up to it.
In summary, a few mantras I'll take away from last term's theory are: be inquisitive, question things...and if a museum tries to control and confine you- attempt walking around the exhibition backwards just to defy their prescriptive narrative!
