Stories from the Stoopdvqlxo2m2q99q.cloudfront.net/000_clients/77600/file/matthew_horto… · Culture (NMAAHC), The National Mall, Washington, D.C. “The museum seeks to help all

Stories from the StoopA Family HistoryCorcoran College of Art+Design Graduate ThesisExhibition Concept for the National Museum of African American History and CultureDesigned by Matthew Horton

Mission Statement . . . 1Introduction . . . . . . . . . 2-5

The Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-5

Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-8Children & History . . . . . . . . . 7Traumatic Content . . . . . . . . 8

Interpretive Design . . 9-14Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Illustration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Content Delivery . . . . . . . . . . 12Visitor Experience . . . . . . . . . 13Inspiration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Exhibition Layout . . . . 15-17Visitor Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Content Sections . . . . . . . . . . 17

Elevations . . . . . . . . . . . 18-28Entrance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Overall Elevation . . . . . . . . . . 20-21Front Porches . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22-28Typical Detailing . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Renderings . . . . . . . . . . 30-47Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48-53Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . 54-55

Mission StatementThis thesis proposes the design concept for an exhibition targeting elementary age children and their families at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, D.C. The exhibition intends to encourage conversations about race and identity between family members through the method of storytelling by presenting historically inspired fictional stories of seven generations of African American children.

Stories from the Stoop: A Family HistoryMA Thesis by Matthew HortonCorcoran College of Art+DesignNot for Commercial Use

1© 2014 Matthew Horton

Introduction

Stories ask much of us. They beckon us out of the comfort of our front porch and into the lives of others.

Stories from the Stoop: A Family HistoryMA Thesis by Matthew HortonCorcoran College of Art+Design

2Not for Commercial Use© 2014 Matthew Horton

Every story has a beginning . . .

A grandmother sits on the front stoop with her granddaughter. “Grandma,” the child asks, “What was it like when you were a kid?” Grandma smiles, “Memories are like stories we sketch in our mind. Everything has a story, all you need is your imagination to see it. Like this quilt for instance, oh has it got a story to tell!”

Key messages:• Stories are important. They help us

learn about others and ourselves.• Family is important. They help us tell our

own stories.• Everyone has a story to tell. Every

story is important, whether it happened yesterday or a hundred years ago.



Introduction: Location

Site: National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), The National Mall, Washington, D.C.

“The museum seeks to help all Americans remember, and by remembering, this institution will stimulate a dialogue about race and help to foster a spirit of reconciliation and healing.”- NMAAHC



Stories from the Stoop

Location: second floor, education and public programming space

Exhibition Gallery: 4,000 sq ftVisitor Approach: public elevators and escalators or separate school group elevators

Introduction: LocationGeneral Public

School Groups

Classroom

Classroom



Audience

Children are capable of truly extraordinary acts of courage and understanding far beyond the limitations adults often impose upon them. In an age when children’s lives are dominated by the digital screen, the museum provides a unique opportunity to confront the world face-to-face. Museums stimulate authentic conversations about the world.



Too often, the assumption is that young children do not yet possess the capacity to understand the abstract concepts needed to understand history. Yet, research shows that children comprehend abstract concepts long before they can articulate them. They do so through the structure of the narrative. By inspiring the imagination, stories help all people create meaning out of experience. Imaginative storytelling is a powerful tool for museums to reach all visitors, especially children.

Audience: Children & History

The most famous stoop of them all: on Sesame Street

Audacious Freedom, The African American Museum in Philadelphia



Audience: Traumatic Content

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. walks children to desegregate a school

No subject is off limits. Children’s literature provides precedent that proves even the Holocaust can be presented to children in a responsible way. Using strategies such as mediating content through a child narrator, authors are able to simultaneously engage and protect their unique audience.

A school group walks through Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, AL where statues recreate the civil rights protests



Interpretive Design

Instead of explanations, traumatic stories need strategic silence in order to allow their audiences to wrestle with meaning in their own way. The conspicuous and intentional absence of interpretation, arguably a difficult concept for museums to embrace, can be a powerful message and an invitation for contemplation.



Interpretive Design: Imagination

Storytelling is a way of preserving and reinterpreting the past, transporting the imagination to another time and another place, returning to the present with a new outlook on the future. Stories can mediate difficult experiences, provoking and communicating emotions while encouraging empathy.

Visitors will leave the comfort of a familiar realistic environment and enter the world of a child’s imagination.

Imagination

Reality



Inspired by illustrations from The Sunday Outing by Gloria Jean and Jerry Pinkney

Interpretive Design: Illustration As visitors venture inside, the exhibition itself gradually becomes hand drawn, a three dimensional storybook illustration, symbolizing the step into a child’s imagination.

Transition from Realism . . . . . . to Illustration



Museum objects also have stories to tell, but in a different, more formal manner than the narrators. Artifacts are distinguishable from props by vitrines and standard museum labels.

Interpretive Design: Content Delivery

Designing exhibition space that engages in a dialogue with silence is no easy task, but a necessary undertaking for any exhibition of traumatic or difficult content, especially if the target audience is children.

In this exhibition the narrators are children who tell their stories in the first-person. Each narrator speaks through the built thematic environment in the form of hidden projections that appear and vanish at random.



Interpretive Design: Visitor Experience

Socially interactive space.

Front porch storytelling spaces

Sensory interactive objects.Cotton bail interactive exhibit

Storytelling is encouraged by dedicated front porch façades to each individual story, which acts as both a space for storytelling and a physical entrance into those stories. The exhibition is centered on a gathering space, reserved for reflection.

Front porch storytelling spaces

Children benefit greatly from the opportunity to explore independently, to exercise their imaginations as well as their bodies. Young visitors will interact directly with the exhibition and its contents through hands-on learning and pretend play.



Homey. Curious.Grandma’s Attic, The Museum of Alabama

Dramatic. Enveloping.Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Dynamic. Unconventional.Noah’s Ark, Skirball Cultural Center

Interpretive Design: Inspiration



Exhibition Layout

The overarching goal of this exhibition’s design is to create a safe and welcoming environment for children and their families. To this end, a guiding goal for the exhibition’s overall layout was to create a safe zone, an intentionally neutral space reserved for reflection, discussion, and interaction, whether prompted or not.



General Public

School Groups

Gathering Space

Exhibition Layout: Visitor Flow

For this exhibition there are specific benefits to allowing a non-sequential visitor experience. There may be areas of the exhibition that parents, or children themselves, may wish to avoid for any number of valid reasons. While sequence is very important to a coherent micronarrative, sequence is less important to the metanarrative of this exhibition because family stories are often told out of sequence. The casual nature of a grandmother’s storytelling lends itself to investigation rather than recitation.



Slavery and Labor - 1860s

Education and Reconstruction - 1880s

Domestic Service - 1910s

Segregation and Public Places - 1930s

The Church and Civil Rights - 1960s

Family Heritage - 1980s

National Pride - 2000s

Exhibition Layout: Content Sections

Using representative artifacts and immersive environments, children and families will chart their own path through the exhibition, alternating between an overarching narrative of a child exploring her family and individual stories of children from various regions and time periods.



Elevations

Each façade serves two essential functions. Like a real front porch, the façade is both an introduction to the narrative inside and a storytelling backdrop. Each porch is designed to allow a separate area beside the doorway for a storyteller to face a crowd seated on the floor without obstructing traffic. Visitors can choose to stop and listen or continue past and enter the exhibit.



Realistic fabrication

Inspiration

Perspective rendering

Entrance Facade



Entrance Facade Elevation, front and side - note rendering: visitors walk past not throughTyp ceiling height: 10ft

1

19

Front Porches: West



West Front Porch Facades Overall ElevationTyp ceiling height: 10ft

2

20

Front Porches: East



East Front Porch Facades Overall ElevationTyp ceiling height: 10ft

3

21

Painted scenic treatment

Inspiration

Slavery & Labor: 1860s



Slavery & Labor - 1860s Section, Front Porch Facade Elevation, front and sideTyp ceiling height: 10ft

4

22


Inspiration

Education & Reconstruction: 1880s



Education & Reconstruction - 1880s Section, Front Porch Facade Elevation, front and sideTyp ceiling height: 10ft

5

23


Inspiration

Domestic Service: 1910s



Domestic Service - 1910s Section, Front Porch Facade Elevation, front and sideTyp ceiling height: 10ft

6

24


Inspiration

Segregation & Public Places: 1930s



Segregation & Public Places - 1930s Section, Front Porch Facade Elevation, front and sideTyp ceiling height: 10ft

7

25

1960s Front Porch Facade Elevation


Inspiration

The Church & Civil Rights: 1960s



The Church & Civil Rights - 1960s Section, Front Porch Facade Elevation, front and sideTyp ceiling height: 10ft

8

26



Inspiration

Family Heritage: 1980s



Family Heritage - 1980s Section, Front Porch Facade Elevation, front and sideTyp ceiling height: 10ft

9

27



Inspiration

National Pride: 2000s



National Pride - 2000s Section, Front Porch Facade Elevation, front and sideTyp ceiling height: 10ft

10

28

Typical Detailing



Renderings

There are two narratives at work in this exhibition. The top-level narrative, or metanarrative, is that of a grandmother sharing family stories with her grandchild. Within this metanarrative are seven micronarratives, each one telling the story of a family member. The narrators are children of varying ages, places, and periods, linked through time by a family bond.



As visitors enter the exhibition they are greeted by a conversation between a grandmother and her granddaughter about their family’s history. This conversation serves as a model for visitors to engage with one another.



Entrance Perspective 111

31

Down the entrance corridor, the setting gradually becomes illustrative and various theatrical techniques are employed to heighten the drama. The conversation continues along the wall as projected text appears and disappears at random.



Entrance Perspective 212

32

In the center of the gathering space is a collection of trunks and suitcases, serving as both seating for guests and containers for reproduction artifacts, encouraging young visitors to engage in drama and pretend play.



Gathering Space and Centerpiece Perspective 113

33

The facades interpret several different kinds of “front porches,” or communal storytelling spaces, including residential homes, public places, schools, churches, and even the White House.



Gathering Space and Centerpiece Perspective 214

34

Facing the Church and Civil Rights exhibit, visitors confront the exterior of 16th St. Baptist Church of Birmingham, AL. They enter the exhibit through a police barricade of grey officer and dog figures blocking the entrance into the sanctuary.



The Church & Civil Rights - 1960s Section Facade15

35

Using projected interpretive text, the child narrator guides visitors through memories of civil rights meetings, protests and police brutality, and the bombing that killed three little girls that all took place in the church during 1968.



The Church & Civil Rights - 1960s Section Entrance16

36

Visitors listen to a recording of Dr. King speaking to a mass meeting about the Children’s Crusade protests and the arrest of thousands of children as they sit in the pews and contemplate the damaged stained glass window missing Jesus’ face.



The Church & Civil Rights - 1960s Section Interpretive Text17

37

In each exhibit, it is not until the visitor reaches the artifact, in this case shards of glass from the damaged window, that they officially meet the narrator of that story. Here visitors can take brochures giving historical background to the narrative and challenging them with questions and action steps.



The Church & Civil Rights - 1960s Section Integrated Artifact Case18

38

The exhibition layout mimics a city streetscape, with just enough alteration in style to imply an imagined scene rather than an actual one.



Gathering Space Centerpiece Seating and Artifact Reproduction Storage Containers19

39

Visitors enter the Slavery and Labor exhibit through a ramshackle slave cabin transporting them into an illustration of a cotton field where they will learn about the hardships of slave labor.



Slavery and Labor - 1860s Section Facade20

40

The cotton field consists of realistic cotton plants containing actual pieces of cotton that visitors can touch. Feeling the rough edges of the plant, young visitors realize how painful picking cotton can be.



Slavery and Labor - 1860s Section Interactive Cotton Field21

41

A slave master grey figure on a horse stands watch outside a cotton storehouse containing the exhibit’s artifact and a mechanical interactive feature.



Slavery and Labor - 1860s Section Entrance to Cotton Interactive Exhibit22

42

Visitors can pull a working scale to experience the surprising weight of a day’s worth of picked cotton while imagining life without freedom observing a child’s slave shackles. Caregivers can read a brochure on how to talk to their children about slavery.



Slavery and Labor - 1860s Section Cotton Interactive Exhibit and Artifact Case23

43

The facade of the exhibit on Segregation and Public Places depicts the exterior of a Woolworth’s store, complete with a storefront window and a “Whites Only” shoeshine stand.



Segregation and Public Places - 1930s Section Facade24

44

Visitors are transported to a train station, where inside a breakroom they find a child baggage handler’s uniform, brochures on segregation, and a radio announcing news from the era.



Segregation and Public Places - 1930s Section Artifact Case and Radio25

45

Visitors find baggage ready to board a train car. Inside the train car they can see the white passengers and wonder about their destination but they appear just out of reach.



Segregation and Public Places - 1930s Section Train Station26

46

Near the ticket booth visitors encounter a working segregated water fountain. The narrator, a child baggage handler at the station, wonders, “Does the water taste the same?”



Segregation and Public Places - 1930s Section Segregated Water Fountain Interactive27

47

Model

Intricate components of the physical model were created using 3D printing technology in which plastic parts were produced from CAD drawings. The model is designed to detach into separate pieces to allow for optimal viewing and photographing.





Exhibition Model, Overall PlanScale: 3/8 inch = 1 foot

28

49



Exhibition Model, Front PorchesScale: 3/8 inch = 1 foot

29

50



Exhibition Model, EntranceScale: 3/8 inch = 1 foot

30

51



Exhibition Model, The Church and Civil Rights Section FacadeScale: 3/8 inch = 1 foot

31

52



Exhibition Model, Segregation and Public Places Section EntranceScale: 3/8 inch = 1 foot

32

53

In Conclusion

If an eight-year-old can go to jail for her freedom in 1963, an eight-year-old can go to a museum exhibition about it today. Using informed strategies, museums can and should tell difficult stories to children and their families and inspire authentic conversations.





Documents

Stories from the Stoopdvqlxo2m2q99q.cloudfront.net/000_clients/77600/file/matthew_horto… · Culture (NMAAHC), The National Mall, Washington, D.C. “The museum seeks to help all