Laura Vodanovich: Telling the big story

Laura Vodanovich

At the heart of a museum or gallery experience is the exhibitions that are presented for the visitor. Behind each exhibition is a curator responsible for developing the exhibition theme or concept, selecting the items for display and writing the information panels and object labels.

While it's my responsibility to consider the overall offering of exhibitions at MTG (for example, I may request an exhibition on a particular subject), it is the curator's responsibility to then develop this into an exhibition.

Concept development can be approached from a number of different angles. Exhibitions may be aimed at creating an emotional response, challenging conventional ideas, commemorating events, providing information in an accessible way and so on. Each exhibition will have an underlying concept or intent - it is never, or at least should never be, random.

Telling a big story, as we are currently doing with World War 1, requires a lot of discipline by the curator.

There are so many parts of the story, so many individual stories and so many themes and concepts that could be told, it is a challenge to select which are critical to achieve the overall goal.

Exhibitions are reductionist by their nature. Curators will do an enormous amount of research to pull out the core of the story that is then delivered in the gallery. As Albert Einstein said: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

Our curators need to develop a deep knowledge of the subject they are curating in order to present what may seem a simple gallery experience.

It is also the responsibility of a curator to select the objects that end up included in the display. Each object needs to have a purpose within an exhibition " to illustrate a certain fact or idea, to provide an authentic point of reference, to create a sense of time and place, etc. There are always many more objects than can easily or sensibly fit within an exhibition and curators have the difficult task of deciding what is in and what is out.

Having developed the concept and selected the objects, curators then write the information for the labels and text panels. This is the critical intersection between curatorial or academic research and the delivery of clear and engaging communication for the visitor. This is such an important issue - making academic research easily accessible to visitors - that there is a trend within the museum and art gallery world to see this role as a separate discipline. Some larger institutions have employees specifically to interpret curatorial research into easily discernable, engaging and interesting words.

We will soon be advertising for a social history curator and art curator to replace current vacancies. These are specialist professional roles which are fundamental to the visitor experience. I have high expectations for our curatorial team and am seeking people who understand and value the importance I place on creating engaging and accessible exhibitions and experiences at MTG.

Laura Vodanovich is the director of Museum Theatre Gallery (MTG) Hawke's Bay