{"id":5569,"date":"2019-04-11T15:56:42","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T19:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/?p=5569"},"modified":"2019-04-11T15:56:46","modified_gmt":"2019-04-11T19:56:46","slug":"the-world-between-empires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/2019\/04\/11\/the-world-between-empires\/","title":{"rendered":"The World Between Empires"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I recently paid a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art\u2019s exhibition The World Between Empires: Art and Identity in the Middle East<\/em>. The show covers art from about 100 BC to 250 AD, an era during which the Roman Empire in the west and the Parthian Empire in the east ruled the region. It occupies the museum\u2019s largest exhibition space which has been subdivided into about a dozen galleries, each focusing on a particular area or culture within the region as a whole. Objects in the show were overwhelmingly \u2018artifactual\u2019 in nature \u2014 pieces of architecture, sculptures, coins, and decorative arts \u2014 with a handful paintings on plaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These galleries are arranged in a linear fashion, such that every\nvisitor proceeds through the show following the same path, which conceptually\nfollows the trade routes from southwestern Arabia, up through the Levant, and\ninto Mesopotamia. By \u2018guiding\u2019 viewers through the show with a predetermined\norder, the curators are able both to enforce a narrative as well as draw out\nsimilarities and distinctions between bordering cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with most exhibitions at the Met, the primary source of\ninformation is in the form of the artworks themselves, wall plaques which\ndescribe and give context to the works, and supplementary commentary usually introducing\na particular gallery and thus a particular culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visitors are first greeted by a large wall text that\nintroduces the show. This is the one bit of text which nearly every visitor\nstopped to read \u2014 perhaps due, in part, to the fact that it is nearly the only\nthing in the gallery \u2014 and thus must do a lot of the heavy lifting for\ncontextualizing everything else that they will see. It also means that the design\nof that space is one of congregated people staring at a wall for a few minutes\neach. It\u2019s something of an odd sight but it emphasizes the power that these few\nparagraphs will have in priming visitors\u2019 engagement with the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having entered the exhibition proper, one of the first\nthings I wanted to focus on was the \u2018speed\u2019 with which visitors moved through\nthe galleries. How many were looking at each object? How many were reading the\nwall plaques? &c. I sampled these patterns at three points in the show: in the\nfirst gallery, about midway through the show, and in the final gallery.\nInterestingly, it was in the middle gallery where people were most engaged with\nthe works and with the texts. The final gallery saw the highest percentage of visitors\n\u2018just walking through\u2019, and the early gallery was between the two, but closer\nto the high level of engagement of the middle gallery. I suspect that part of\nthe reason the early gallery saw less engagement was because it was also the\nmost crowded, so either consciously or unconsciously, more \u2018skipped\u2019 this\ngallery to space themselves out, rather than waiting behind crowds to view\nobjects. Curiously, the percentage of people reading wall texts (i.e., the\ngeneral context-setting texts in each gallery, not the plaques for particular works)\nwas about the same in each location: only ~15%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second thing I wanted to observe was, of those who\nengaged with works\u2019 plaques, how did those plaques interleave with their viewing\nof the object myself? For example, I myself usually take a brief glance at the\nwork, read the plaque, and then returning to the work. About two thirds of\nvisitors engaging with the texts, however, essentially did the reverse: view\nthe work, turn to the plaque for a varying amount of time \u2014 sometimes skimming,\nsometimes reading the entirety \u2014 glance back at the work briefly, and then move\non to the next work. This variation in the order of engagement will inevitably\nshape how the plaque interprets the work and vice versa. \u2018What did I just see?\u2019\nversus \u2018What am I about to see?\u2019 Understanding how people move between object\nand text might in turn inform what text should accompany a given work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I wanted to observe the effect of object placement within\nthe galleries. For example, objects along a wall, rather than in the center of the\ngallery; or objects in the middle of the wall or in a corner. On the whole, placement\nin this regard largely did not seem to matter. The one exception to this is\nthat objects furthest from the \u2018flow\u2019 of a gallery were viewed slightly less\nthan those in the mainstream of that \u2018flow\u2019; and this was regardless of how\nlarge or small the out-of-the-way object was or whether against a wall or in\nthe middle of the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were, however, individual visitors with identifiable\nviewing patterns. Several people \u2014 most often those moving through the gallery\nmost quickly \u2014 primarily engaged with objects not against walls (which often tended\nto be larger \u2018feature-size\u2019 objects). On the other hand, one visitor stuck\nclose to the walls, and for the entirety of the time I observed him, never\napproached an object not against the wall. From the general observations,\nhowever, it would seem that placement is more flexible than I would have\nthought, leaving curators free to use placement as a means of relating objects\nto one another without having to worry much about an object being in a \u2018prime\nlocation\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was not much digital information throughout the\ngalleries, with the exception of one gallery dedicated solely to a 12-minute video.\nPreceding the galleries on Palmyra, Dura-Europos, and Mesopotamia, the video is\nan interview with three archaeologists discussing the recent destruction of\nmany monuments and artifacts in these regions by Islamic State and others. I\nwas curious to see how many visitors would watch the video and for how long.\nNearly everyone (~80%) stopped to watch for at least some time. About 60%\nwatched for only a few minutes, while the remaining 20% watched all, or nearly all,\nof the video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would be curious to know how this compares to video\ninstallations in other exhibitions. Unlike many installations, the gallery is\nnot \u2018off to the side\u2019, such that one must actively choose to entire the installation\nspace, nor is it a small screen alongside other works. This is the only thing\nin the gallery, it is projected against an entire wall, and one must<\/em> pass through in the course of making\none\u2019s way through the show. These gallery features, along with its darkness between\nother brightly lit galleries, serve both to \u2018confront\u2019 viewers with the\ninterviews, easing their way into watching it, while also convey that this is\nsomething important, which the curators want everyone to watch, and not just\nanother work alongside the other 200 in the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All in all, though a museum exhibition like this is largely,\nto the passive observer, a largely non-interactive experience for visitors,\nthere are nonetheless clear patterns of interaction which develop as visitors\nengage with the works, with descriptive plaque texts, and context-setting wall texts\nand maps. By consciously looking for these patterns, one can see ways in which\na curator might draw special attention to an object, such as was done with the\nvideo gallery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently paid a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art\u2019s exhibition The World Between Empires: Art and Identity in the Middle East. The show covers art from about 100 BC to 250 AD, an era during which the Roman Empire in the west and the Parthian Empire in the east ruled the region. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":624,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/624"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5570,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5569\/revisions\/5570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}