Exhibition Design

Regardless of making it to the Cooper Hewitt exhibition from the last post, my son and I attended something similar, Pompeii and the Roman Villa at The National Gallery of Art, my favorite museum. It was a wonderful exhibit, both in content and exhibition design. The staging was meant to replicate the interior Tablinum of a Pompeiian Villa, complete with deep red & black walls, partially-painted red columns and an abundance of decorative finishes: marbling, colorwashing, plaster, and ornamental filigree. Upstairs included an interior atrium where the huge fresco of the famous Garden Scene from The House of the Golden Bracelet was on view. The entire three-wall frescoes of the Moregine Triclinium of Apollo and His Muses are on view and staged with a recreated, dining room with a three-dimensional dining banquet, to give the sense of what this really looked like during its time. I was just as taken with the art of the exhibition design as I was the actual exhibit. It’s on view until March 22 and I’ll probably go back.

Here are a few visual excerpts from the Pompeii & Herculaneum, Past & Present book by A. De Franciscis and I. Bragantini that I purchased. What made this so fascinating was the before and after pictures to help you visualize what was actually there. The House of the Faun was discussed in the beginning of the exhibition.

Oh, and I meant to include this mention of Shahzia Sikander’s Pop-up books in the previous Cooper Hewitt post, but since it’s also an “interactive” book it still carries over here; however, it is an art book that relates to science — and an interesting combination of the two.