Today, Jonah Wright, exhibits Chief Preparator and Roger Topp, Director of Exhibits take a moment to talk about exhibition rotation during this period of often orderly, and often chaotic, rapid change in the museum special exhibits gallery.
The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.
Today, Jonah Wright, exhibits Chief Preparator and Roger Topp, Director of Exhibits take a moment to talk about exhibition rotation during this period of often orderly, and often chaotic, rapid change in the museum special exhibits gallery.
The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.
Roger Topp:
Hey, Jonah.
Jonah Wright:
Hey, Roger, what are you working on here?
Roger Topp:
Okay. Sounds very, very lively. It's a good week. Hello, and welcome to The More You Look: Up Close, a short, unscheduled stop on your behind the scenes journey into museum collections, research, exhibits, and public programming. I'm Roger Topp, Director of Exhibits, Design, and Digital Media at the UA Museum of the North, and today's host. Today, Jonah Wright, Exhibits Chief Preparator and myself take a moment to talk about exhibition rotation, during this period of often orderly, often chaotic, rapid change in the museum's special exhibits gallery.
What I'm doing is:
I am preparing a couple of the media stations in the exhibit. There's not a whole lot in this exhibit. And we use these solid state players which can be programmed and actually monitored from an office somewhere. And so, any last minute updates and uploads can happen remotely. But the visitor has in this case control over the media, selecting between some of the 44 different video clips we have from Akela Space for the Black in Alaska exhibit. And so we have new box here with five buttons on it. And I'm just wiring those buttons into the player. And it's pretty quick, pretty quick job and then we'll get it back on the wall, upload the new content, and we'll see what's working and then make adjustments remotely. And--second of two. The other video is already in place and is already working there. So, it's looking pretty good right now.
Jonah Wright:
Why can't I hear it right now?
Roger Topp:
It's playing in silent mode right now. And until you hit a button, it goes to the next section, starts playing. So, what we're doing here is checking all the media seeing if our programming of the media works the way we expect it to, the way visitors will want it to. And then we'll make edits, changes over the next week, week and a half or so before it actually goes live.
Jonah Wright:
And these button boxes, do we buy them pre-made, or?
Roger Topp:
A leading question? No, of course we don't. Jonah here, you're the Chief Preparator. You've built these boxes and--
Jonah Wright:
And you do all the wiring, the programming--
Roger Topp:
I do the wiring and programming and you do the carpentry. And, in this case, we--the prior video in this location had four buttons. We needed to go to five buttons for this particular exhibit. So we have a second box that we've got for five. And we'll just put this other one we just took off the wall--and storage--and maybe use it again for another exhibit here soon. But tell us Jonah what you've been working on. We're on a two week phase now of changing out one exhibit for another.
Jonah Wright:
We have removable walls in here. So the first thing we did yesterday was move a wall and it opened up the whole entry quite a bit nicer. So--
Roger Topp:
Very different feeling and--
Jonah Wright:
Yeah, six feet shorter. Less tunnel feeling. More open. And then immediately after that, we painted the pylons, the color we want for the next show. So we have a dark black one and a white one.
Roger Topp:
Yeah.
Jonah Wright:
So prior to doing any of that, we get all the art off the walls and all the objects in safe locations. So we're working with our other curators and collection managers in the museum that come and pick those up. Just to make sure that there aren't any new damages to the frames or the art or any of the objects. So--
Roger Topp:
Yeah.
Jonah Wright:
That all worked really smoothly yesterday.
Roger Topp:
The collectors--collections came in helped move their objects back into the collectionc. Cindy today, I see she's patching some of those holes in the wall that get caused when we mount things.
Jonah Wright:
Yeah. And then we had some major repairs over there from the vinyl sticking better than we want. We've had it not stick as well as we want in the past. And this time it--
Roger Topp:
Stuck realy well.
Jonah Wright:
stuck extremely well.
Roger Topp:
Yeah.
Jonah Wright:
But we're getting through it all. It's coming together nice. The next couple of days, we should have this painted. And then we can do our layout on the floor as you see here. We usually kind of have it on paper. And then tomorrow, we'll put all the pieces actually on foam on the floor and kind of look at the layout.
Roger Topp:
See how they're actually filling in the space
Jonah Wright:
How it physicallyt works. And there's a lot of just kind of feeling it out with these movable pylon walls, moving them right and left, just seeing how the flow works.
Roger Topp:
Yep. Yeah, as much as we model and work off maps on paper and in the computer beforehand, there's a fair amount of like, well, this corner here if you stand right here, it's kind of an odd viewing angle. So let's see if we can change it.
Jonah Wright:
Yeah, and this room is quite special with lots of angles, some curves, very sharp angles. And it's a shared space with the cafe too.
Roger Topp:
Yeah, and regarding the cafe there, you ... the freezer and that over there, the refrigerator, and we hear a bit of extra noise right now so it'll help us actually tune the audio and try to get it right so we can hear in the exhibit, but not have it eject too far into the into the barista's territory.
Jonah Wright:
As you can hear in the background.
Roger Topp:
Yes, exactly.
Jonah Wright:
And as we're doing this show, we're thinking about the next show. This shows only up for four months or so--five--four ish. So as we're going, we're thinking about how we can get the next show to happen, which is exciting.
Roger Topp:
Get the pylons in similar pylons--
Jonah Wright:
We like it. Yeah the pylons. Just preparing the walls so they're ready and thinking about where computers and TVs go next time.
Roger Topp:
Yeah, what the needs are. Sounds great. Looking good. We have a two week process here. The first week we generally figure is cleaning out, repairing it, getting ready for the next exhibition. And then the second week is actually mounting that new exhibition.
Jonah Wright:
Yes, which we have a lot of pieces to mount, but they're all the same size, which is nice. A pleasure.
Roger Topp:
Yes, it's gonna be--and all wonderfully large and in color, too.
Jonah Wright:
Yeah, it's gonna be super exciting. And the fact that we're switching it out pretty quick this time is fun to. We're--it's nice when we have these shows we can put up, not leave long, and do another one quick. Yeah. We don't always get that opportunity. But we are now.
Roger Topp:
Excellent. Thanks, Jonah. Let's get back to our job here, and--
Jonah Wright:
All right. Let's get this space ready.
Roger Topp:
The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dene people of the Lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe and share and rate the program. This helps other listeners discover more about not only the work of this museum, but quite possibly other museums in their neighborhoods. The more you look, the more you find.