Choosing the title of an
exhibition, activity or event is not something easy. Not when one wants it to
convey something about the content and to be curious or funny enough in order
to attract people’s attention – and also, to be efficient when applied on promotional
materials. What one usually finds when opening a cultural agenda are titles
that either claim the obvious (for instance, the name of an artist we might or
might not know) or attempt to describe the content in a rather dry, dull,
repetitive way – words like “place”, “memory”, “look”, “treasures” are words
museums are very fond of. Another case we should consider is that of
contemporary plays and performances, whose titles may be 2-3-lines-long, only
to be abbreviated for “everyday use” by
the artistic team itself and by the audience, leading to what should have
probably been the title in the first place....
I tried to remember titles
that worked well for me, and two came immediately to mind:
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| Wien Museum (Photo: Maria Vlachou) |
“Unter 10 – Wertvolles en Miniature” (Under 10 – Treasures in miniature), at the Vienna Museum, was a 2013 exhibition that presented objects from the
museum’s collection based on the strict rule that no item could be more than
10cm in width, height, depth or diametre. From objects that aimed to simply
respond to the challenge of miniaturisation to baby utensils, smelling bottles or
illegal political leaflets, this exhibition made us look (also with the help of
magnifying glasses..), and look
better, differently, into the collection. The museum was not on my visit list,
but I couldn’t resist the title.
 |
| Entrance of the exhibition "Disobedient Objects", V&A (Photo: Maria Vlachou) |
More recently, “Disobedient Objects”
was another exhibition title that caught my attention. It first came up in my
news feed last summer, among dozens of different news titles. I stopped
scrolling down and opened the piece. Quoting from the Victoria & Albert Museum website, “From Suffragette teapots to protest robots, this exhibition was the first to examine the powerful role of objects in
movements for social change. It demonstrated how political activism drives a
wealth of design ingenuity and collective creativity that defy standard
definitions of art and design.” I was
able to visit the exhibition last November and it lived up to my expectations.
The object that touched me the most was a defaced lybian banknote (the
scribbled face being Gaddafi). It reminded me of a Lybian man being interviewed
right after seeing Gaddafi’s corpse and saying: “We had always thought he was a
big man. He is small, he is so small.”
 |
| Defaced lybian banknote from the exhibition "Disobedient Objects", V&A (Photo: Maria Vlachou) |
It is also worth talking about
some refreshing examples that have recently come up in Portugal.
“Vivinha a saltar!” (Alive and jumping!) is an exhibition at the Bordalo Pinheiro Museum about two symbols of the city
of Lisbon: the “varinas”, the women selling fish in the streets, a popular figure in the work of Rafael Bordalo
Pinheiro; and the sardine, which has developed into an icon of the city and a
source of inspiration for contemporary artists. The name of the exhibition,
“Vivinha a saltar!”, was one of the varinas’s most famous cries when promoting
their merchandise and had been the title of a chronicle about portuguese
politics and society published by the newspaper “A Paródia”, founded by Bordalo
Pinheiro.
Last week, the Municipal
Museum of Penafiel, in the north of Portugal, celebrated World Poetry Day on 21
March with “Dois garfos de conversa” (the literal translation being “Two forks
of talking”),
a conference about the town’s poets, followed by a dinner at the museum. The
museum director explianed to me that both title and poster were created by the
museum team.
On that same day, the youth
collective Faz 15-25 celebrated its first year of existence at the Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva
Museum with films, poetry, talks, workshops and food, inspired by the museum’s
temporary exhibition “Sonnabend | Paris – New York” and addressed to youth audiences. The
title of the initiative: “Faz-Tá POP!”.
Finally, the Calouste
Gulbenkian Foundation surprised us last December with an invitation “P’ra Rir”
(To Laugh), a cinema series (now in its second edition) which gives people the
opportunity to watch cinema in a big room, the Foundation’s recently renovated
Grand Auditorium. According the João Mário Grilo, responsible for the
programming, the laugh seemed to be an appropriate inaugural gesture. “And it
would be wrong to think that this is a (yet another) “comedy series”, because
in cinema, as in life, one laughs in different ways, even with dramas.”
In both big and small
cultural institutions, the process of choosing a title may involve different
people and departments: curators, directors, publicists, education and communications
staff. Recently, the Gulbenkian Foundation decided to involve the public in the
choice of the title of a 2016 exhibition at the Gulbenkian Museum. As mentioned
in the beginning of the post, the objective when choosing a title it to come up
with something that is able to convey the content, to attract people’s
attention, to be efficient when applied on promotional material (in this case,
good graphic design is a definite plus). One last piece of advice, from our colleagues from the Australian Museum:
“Make sure staff at reception/front-of-house are
comfortable saying the name aloud as they'll often be the ones selling the
exhibition to visitors.” They’re
right!
With thanks to: Elisabete Caramelo, Isabel Aguilar, Maria
José Santos, Rui Belo, Sara Pais
More readings:
Ann Landi, Title fights: how museums name their shows
Australian Museum, What’s in a name? Evaluation of exhibition titles
Susan Mumford, Exhibition titles: love or hate them, we must create them
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