Early American Reinstallation
Crystal Bridges began conversations with the community and peers about making our galleries more inclusive and engaging in 2016. The outcome was renovated and reinstalled spaces that better reflect the complexity of the American story—and looks forward to ongoing dialogue and discoveries as new connections with historic American art are revealed.
We reinstalled Crystal Bridges’s Early American collection in 2018, making key changes to the architecture to make the art and architecture better work together. We created new design solutions that highlighted Moshe Safdie’s soaring wood ceilings without diminishing the art, while also making the flooring continuous to increase flexibility in the future. Partnering with curators, we interspersed contemporary works at key moments to make the story both educational and more inclusive.
The reinstallation included atypical seating and activities; shown here is a puzzle activity created from one of the artworks on display nearby.
The temporary exhibition Border Cantos opened during the Early American Reinstallation planning phase, which allowed us to gather feedback and test design theories in an impermanent space. One lesson we learned from Border Cantos focused on the wall text. Providing bilingual text doubles the amount on the wall, so we implemented a word count max length for panels and labels, and implemented this strategy for the Early American Reinstallation.
One constraint we had was the founder’s priority to display as much art as possible. We went back to our community and had a discussion about the priority of displaying languages side-by-side. The decision, after feedback, was to continue this equal alignment with panel titles, which are the most visible. This allowed us to meet our goal to make the space inclusive and still provide as much interpretation and art as possible. For the Early American Reinstallation, our bilingual strategy was implemented in full: text panels, labels, engagements, and wayfinding.
The Early American Reinstallation project kick-off was held in 2016. With a longer timeline than most, this gave us the opportunity to test several concepts in the galleries and collect community feedback to be incorporated in the final product.
For the first experiment, we relocated the main gallery section texts to be on sight lines on paint accent colors to draw more attention to them. The museum’s evaluation team then compared the percentage of visitors that engaged with the new texts against the old to prove the location and design changes were successful. This feedback informed the section text designs and locations in the final project.
The second and third experiments made their way into final reinstallation design as well. A Native American bandolier bag was installed in conversation with Thomas Sully’s Colonel Samuel Boyer Davis and Roxy Paine’s Bad Lawn was installed in the center of the 19th century landscapes gallery. These experiments tested the community’s openness and response to mixing Native American and contemporary works in with the Early American works.
To collect feedback for the latter experiments, we kept it simple. We cut a hole in the top of an unused pedestal and attached holders for comment cards with prompts on them and golf pencils. Overall, both installations were received positively by the community and the team introduced Native American loans and collection objects from outside of the Early American period into the reinstallation.
