Art of Craft Exhibit Design/”By Hand” Curator Talk – presented during the Museum of Vancouver Art of Craft curator talk and tour evening, January 14, 2010
by Kirsti Wakelin

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Earlier this spring, Darren Carcary of Resolve Design, and I were handed a stack of paper containing photographs and dimensions of over 120 objects for “Unity in Diversity” and “By Hand” that were to make up two of the three galleries in the Museum of Vancouver’s January 2010 exhibition Art of Craft. Immediately inspired by the objects we were to be working with, we began by creating a virtual model of each piece so that we could begin the long process of designing the Art of Craft exhibition.

It became quickly apparent that this was an incredibly diverse show. For all intents and purposes, the only thing many of these objects had in common was that they were made by skilled hands. We also realised that we wanted to keep the design out of the way of the objects. This approach informed our colour pallete and typographic treatment for all three galleries, and the pathing and display decisions for “Unity in Diversity” and “By Hand”.

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The exhibit Darren Carcary and I co-designed for the Museum of Vancouver opens January 14th, 2010.

The opening party is January 13th at 7pm – for more info on the event and to buy tickets please visit the MOV website.

There is also a curators’ talk and tour on the evening of January 14th.

The exhibit includes amazing Canadian and Korean craft talent and we feel very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to design an exhibit around such inspiring pieces.

December 17, 2009 was the first day of vinyl install for the MOV Art of Craft exhibit. We started with Unity In Diversity – the Canadian National exhibit space and also began installing a few of the objects in the space.

National Gallery – with platforms, shelving and title wall installed

A few of the objects were installed by the end of the day – the mannequin is in the process of being dressed before being moved to its location on one of the platforms.

We shot a time lapse over the course of the day – the vinyl installers were in so it’s mostly video of a lot of people running around, climbing up and down ladders, punctuated by Darren and I standing around deciding on exact hanging placements for wall mounted objects.