Week 6: Space, the Final Frontier...

Last week was an all exhibit, all the time week, which was good because I spent most of the week sick. As sickness = low cognitive ability, having my week narrowed down to filling out call slips, paging books for myself, and writing down a few notes about each item worked well for me. At the beginning of the week, I discussed my proposed exhibit focus with Becky and got her okay on it. The exhibit will focus on a variety of different science fiction authors, and I will be using each author (or in some cases, a pair of authors) to highlight a different theme or aspect of science fiction writing. There will also be a section that looks at the definition of science fiction, mostly according to the writers themselves. I began the week thinking about the different visual impacts of open versus closed books. I shortly realized that before I worried about that, I would need to come to terms with just how many items I could use.

My previous exhibit experience happened in my Manuscripts class this past spring, which I took with the Lilly's manuscripts curator, Cherry Williams. I had one case in the foyer, and I chose to work with music manuscripts, which are rather large. I fit a grand total of six items into my case, which was many fewer than most of my classmates. But it allowed my to tell the story I wanted to tell, as well as having an interesting looking display that wasn't overly cluttered.

So, when I began to select items at the beginning of the week, measuring them and trying to decide whether to display them open or closed, I was in the mindset that I would not be able to fit too many items into each case. And then I did a little bit of math and it hit me. Hardcover books are significantly smaller than the music manuscripts I worked with in the spring. And, unlike the music, they tend to make more of an impact when closed (which makes them smaller still). Bare text, after all, is not visually striking. The score on the right, for example, took up one fourth of my display space. And that worked because it is visually impressive. (If you look at the picture on the top of my blog, you can see at the far right). A hardcover book will never do that, especially if it is open. Even if it has a fantastic illustration, it is simply too small to command so much of the physical space of an exhibit (with very few exceptions).

This put me in a much different position than with curating the music exhibit. I was cutting items out of that one right through my meeting with the woman from preservation who would choose mounts for the item. This time, I realized that I would have space for more items than I imagined. So I decided to add a few more authors to my list. At present, the works of the following authors will be featured in my exhibit:

• Isaac Asimov
• Arthur C. Clarke
• Philip K. Dick
  
• Robert Heinlein
• Ray Bradbury
• Theodore Sturgeon
• Harlan Ellison

Since I have four cases, each of which is divided in half (thematically if not visually), the eighth section is the "What Is Science Fiction?" section. I have a variety of materials with this group of authors, including movie and television scripts, a proof copy of a novel, a paperback book that cost $.35 when it was published, and handwritten manuscripts. And, of course, a lot of books. Over the next few weeks, keep an eye out for extra posts each week about each segment of my exhibit. So, if you are unfamiliar with some of these authors, you will get the opportunity to learn more about them. Exciting, isn't it?