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One
of the biggest joys for an ex-Museum Director, Museographer and Cultural
Consultant, is the challenge of planning and setting up an Exhibition, specially one
that can bring some mind boggling situations into solution.
The second floor is the largest exhibition hall at the
Macao Museum of Art and where the most important
exhibitions are held.
To think of a way to display and occupy the numerous walls with a
total of 73 watercolours whose average size is in the 8 x 10 inches area,
was challenging.
As usual and almost mandatory, museum walls are generally white,
neutral. When viewing the walls, hanging the paintings in the traditional
frames would make them disappear, vanish in the huge
walls and space.
To solve this problem I devised a way to keep the white soft
atmosphere and yet create rythms by encasing each watercolour into a
raised platform about 110 cm wide by 240 cm high and with a thickness of
about 7.5 cm. This would create a volumetry that would interplay with
light, occupy more space, and encase each watercolour in a such a way that
it would confer to the paintings a status of visual preciousness.
This was one of the early proposals that I made when I took charge
of the project. The Museum director gave me his approval and we proceeded
under this concept. It was very gratifying to deserve full confidence and
then see that Ung Vai Meng liked it.
A small team was assigned. Just me and Fong Zhao, and it
then grew according to need. It is amazing what just 36 people in the
entire Museum can do in a year.
These are top notch people, enthusiastic, dedicated.
As much as Ung Vai Meng, I believe in motivated people by creating a
warm and genuinely friendly atmosphere. It does miracles.
I tend not to concentrate decisions. I believe that everyone
has its share of responsibility and I must say that I came to know Fong
Zhao, who is assistant coordinator as well as I knew Staci, as
well as Isabel Vicente, Margarida Saraiva and the designers.
They all were encouraged to be creative and take the decisions that they
felt they could take without consulting me.
Margarida for instance, did a very nice video of a gentleman who is
now 86 years old that knew Smirnoff. I told her to handle
everything from scratch to end. She was to interview the gentleman and let
him speak about the war years. Then she was to fill in the interview with
pictures and outdoor views.
I suggested that we should, hereafter, have a CD-Rom for each
exhibition, and as usual, with strong effort from a young girl who was my
design student at the Polytechnic, managed to make a very nice work
in just about two weeks. That is what I love about Macau. We do miracles
all the time. |
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