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Studio art professor Sarah Buie is a designer whose primary interest is in museum exhibition design. She creates three-dimensional spaces that help visitors experience a given topic in the most complete way possible. |
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Shaping space to tell a story
Professor Sarah Buie's creative work
When was the last time you explored a museum? Looking back on that experience, do you
remember individual objects? The way a larger theme was presented? Perhaps you remember
feeling transported to another place or time.
Modern museums offer us ways to explore such diverse topics as life in the oceans, global
climate change, the lives of workers in the Industrial Revolution, Mayan civilization, Egyptian
death rituals and Greek vases. With the expanded scope of today’s museums, exhibition design
involves much more than hanging pictures on a wall. Now it often involves creating a total
experience that allows us to touch, look, listen, and sometimes even smell and taste.
Professor Sarah Buie
is a designer whose primary interest is in exhibition design. She creates
three-dimensional spaces that help visitors experience a given topic in the fullest
way possible. Toward that end, she might help
- define and develop approaches to the exhibition theme
- create an architecture for the exhibition
- assist in the selection of the objects to be shown
- decide how objects, photographs, texts, audio and video displays, and interactive kiosks will be arranged, positioned, and illuminated
Over the past few years, Professor Buie has been involved in creating three very different exhibitions for
- the EcoTarium in Worcester, Massachusetts
(jump
down!)
- the Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence
(jump
down!)
- the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut
(jump
down!)
Often she involves undergraduate students in her projects, either by having them participate directly, or by bringing her experiences with particular projects into the classroom. For example, students have recently assisted her in installing the exhibition "Matrix: seeing beneath the surface" at Clark's University Gallery.
Discovering the natural environment: exhibition design at the EcoTarium
The EcoTarium is a museum of environmental science featuring both indoor and outdoor exhibitions located two miles from downtown Worcester. It has recently undergone a process of redefining its identity and mission. Professor Buie was asked to create an exhibition in the museum's entrance area. The purpose of the exhibition is to introduce the visitor to the environmental focus of the museum and set the tone for his or her experience there.
The exhibition consists of a long, custom-designed wooden cabinet that fronts one wall of the museum shop. By creating display spaces that can be opened and closed by the visitor, Professor Buie hoped to foster an urge in the visitor to explore and discover. The cabinet contains three levels:
- a bottom level with drawers that can be opened and closed, as well as some display cubbies fronted with plexiglass
- a middle level consisting of transparent panels that slide horizontally, panels that can be pulled out perpendicular to the cabinet, cupboard doors that can be opened to reveal shelves, and a video kiosk with changing displays
- a top shelf
Professor Buie and the museum staff decided on "tree" as the organizing theme for the materials displayed in the cabinet. Professor Buie has for many years explored Buddhist, Hindu and Himalayan cultures. There she has seen the tree used as a sacred symbol representing the interdependence of life, and as a natural space for worship. (Her course Studio Art 204: Sacred Space unites her interest in spatial design with the ways in which natural space and objects are utilized in spiritual life.)
A tree is actually incorporated into the cabinet and serves as its central axis. The tree branches emerge from the top level and are flanked along the top shelf by stuffed birds. The cabinet is made of wood and features tiles of locally grown woods. The cabinet also features artworks centered on the tree theme that were created by several Clark faculty and local students. The drawers and cupboards contain objects from the museum's collection relating to trees and forest life of the New England region. Included are
- birds' eggs and nests, and stuffed birds
- insects and butterflies
- petrified wood
- branches and nuts from different kinds of trees juxtaposed for comparison
- plaster casts of forest animal tracks
- printed stories from different folk cultures centering on the tree theme
- dioramas that include a live garter snake and a twig-like insect called a walking stick
- silhouettes of leaves on transparent panels, and inlayed on the floor in front of the cabinet
From Providence to Paris: exhibition design at the Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design
In 1905 two sisters, Anna and Laura Tirocchi, emigrated to New York from Italy and moved to Providence in 1907. In 1989, the Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design was provided with a rather unusual gift: an haute couture dressmaker's shop. That highly successful shop, created by the Tirocchi sisters, gave Providence society women access to Parisian fashion.
The Tirocchi shop, which contained fitting, reception and workrooms, as well as living quarters for the sisters, closed in 1948. It remained undisturbed until museum staff opened the building and took a step back in time. Present were hundred of bolts of exquisite fabrics, clothing inspired by Paris designers, furnishings, photographs of clients and employees, sewing equipment, letters to and from society women, and business accounts.
The Museum asked Professor Buie to design an exhibition based on the Tirocchi shop. The exhibition's purpose was to extend beyond the display of textiles and costumes. The Museum wanted an exhibition space that would set the shop in economic and social context of early 20th century Providence, and emphasize its tie with Paris fashions and trends. The exhibition would reveal the shop as a link between
- the provincial and international fashion industry
- working class seamstresses and society women
- Italian immigrant and wealthy Anglo-Saxon neighborhoods in Providence
As well as some of the beautiful clothing produced at the shop, the exhibition allowed the visitor to view
- correspondence from society women
- photographs of employees and clients
- sewing tools
- imported textiles
- photographs of the building
- furnishings from the shop
A low level of lighting was needed to prevent damage to delicate textiles. Professor Buie turned that constraint into an asset. The soft, dimmed light created a warm and intimate space in keeping with that required at a shop patronized by society women. The Tirocchi establishment was a space wherein wealthy women revealed their physical flaws at a time when a woman's appearance was her greatest asset. In the privacy of their shop, the sisters assessed and dressed their clients to withstand the harsh and unforgiving light of public scrutiny.
Defining Moments: exhibition design at Yale University Art Gallery
This year the Yale University Art Gallery is helping to celebrate Yale's tercentennial with an exhibition called 'Art for Yale: Defining Moments.' Professor Buie, a Yale alumna, was selected to create an exhibition that would focus on the story of the arts at Yale since 1701.
For Buie, there were two significant design challenges
- How to incorporate the human side of the Art Gallery story-the voices of people who had contributed artwork and who had visited the gallery
- How to make the exhibition 'read' three-dimensionally when so much material was textual
In addition to 125 of the greatest works of art in the collection, the exhibition includes
- The names of all donors (over 3000) to the collections inscribed on sheer panels positioned over the windows
- Files containing stories and visitor comments
- A patchwork wall of 11-inch squares that includes quotes from many different people who have loved the Gallery
- Quotations by, for example, a donor in 1870 juxtaposed with the words of a local 6th grade child, addressing similar feelings and thoughts
- Images
- Photographs
- Videos
- Plexi panels
- Floor spiral
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Additional Resources
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Sarah Buie's exhibitions
Click below for images
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See pictures of the EcoTarium exhibition.
See pictures of the RISD exhibition.
See pictures of the Yale exhibition.
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