Thanks everyone! I am looking into all that. As far as details on our exhibit...no way no how right now. It isn't because we don't want you all to know, it is for security reasons. We are opening up something huge and don't want anyone knowing the location or what exactly is in the collection, or they could try to cut in and beat us to the punchline, copy us before we open....etc. I know you all understand. Just know when it opens it will blow all sci-fi fans away, we have been collecting artifacts for the last few years to open this up and have some really iconic pieces! Thanks again everyone for your help.
Sounds like what Martin Netter's been planning; is that you guys? :confused At any rate, I wish you luck and hope for the success of any film and TV related museum.
However, such entertainment museums don't have a track record of great success. While some traveling exhibits or specifically themed venues have had good temporary success, it's hard to sustain because they seldom evolve and grow: unless you're a diehard fanboy or you have some first-timer friends to bring, venues like the Star Trek and Doctor Who exhibitions are worth a visit but not so much repeat visits.
More general museums and exhibits devoted to entertainment have often been wonderful, but seldom last. The Science Fiction Museum in Seattle exists solely because of Paul Allen's deep pockets and probably couldn't be self-sustaining; if he were to die tomorrow, his heirs would likely pull some of his collection from loan to be auctioned, and the museum would most likely eventually fold. The Museum of the Moving Image in London was brilliant and included practical demonstrations as well as memorabilia, but the British Film Institute lost interest after the museum's founders retired and it was closed after just a few years. The Hollywood Entertainment Museum had an impressive collection but never had enough space to display it well, and after a decade of financing and donations opened it a decade of fizzling interest in a museum which never grew and changed closed it. The past few decades have seen several entertainment museums open in the U.S. and Europe; the hard part is making them work and last. I wish you luck.
The Movieum, now the London Film Museum, has some good permanent exhibits and great temporary installations like their Ray Harryhausen exhibition, but I doubt its staying power. Reviews in the popular press have been mixed. A look at their recent exhibition of 20th Century Fox costumes shows what I think is largely wrong with their approach and the approach of so many other entertainment museums:
The London Film Museum Celebrates 75 years of Twentieth Century Fox : HeyUGuys – UK Movie / Film Blog
20th Century Fox at The London Film Museum: Costumes Galore | Clothes on Film
That's a pitfall I hope your museum project avoids. Look at all those costumes just sitting there, haphazardly grouped and with very little information presented about them, the films they represent, and what place those films had in the larger popular culture. The job of a museum isn't to present shiny things for people to stare at, it's to educate in a fun way--and that's what people want when they go to museums, to learn something about the exhibits, not just to look at them.
For example: how can they have a Tyler Durden outfit from
Fight Club on display without using it to discuss the controversy about the film's violence, or the censorship of lines from the script, or the place of the film and its source novel in the cultural backlash against consumerism and against the politically correct demonization of masculinity? There are so many things a museum display of such a costume could tie into.
If one is reluctant to bring sociopolitical currents into an exhibit, one can still make connections to put costumes or props into a wider context. Sue Storm's
Fantastic Four jumpsuit for example displays a very common inverted wedge design that's been used many times in science fiction costumes since at least
Captain Video in the 1950s, and notably in
Galaxy Quest. It would make a great jumping-off point for a display about common motifs reinvented throughout sci-fi costume design.
Groups of costumes can represent chronologies, themes, cultural implications, etc. Each group can often have some relation to the next and create a certain flowing experience. That isn't the case for many LFM displays, which have a less cohesive feel.
Possibilities are endless, but instead it's a room full of costumes with very little context and opportunity to learn anything. The relatively cheap availability of LCD screens and playback devices these days means it should be trivial to fit far more information into each display area, including additional text, images and, permissions allowing, video, to enhance each exhibit and audience interest. Entertainment museums should look at recent installations in mainstream museums and take inspiration from how they do things, how they fit items into a larger context and present a flow of history or a continuity of theme, and how they use technology to make experiencing their items interactive even when the item is safely behind glass.
Geppi's Entertainment Museum, which focuses on comic books and superheroes rather than TV and film or science fiction, has done some good things to relate their collections to what's going on in the larger culture, as well as making a visit to the museum an interactive experience:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/arts/design/06pop.html
At any rate, good luck. :cool
