Why is the conclusion of the museum exhibition so heart-pounding?
In the dim light of the exhibition hall, these closing words shine like stars in the dark night
Unconsciously, the conclusion of the museum exhibition is becoming a topic that many netizens continue to forward and share. It first started collecting and sharing from netizens on Douban, and then gradually moved to Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and WeChat official accounts. "Everywhere I go" it always arouses admiration and emotion.
In many collections, the texts vary, but there are a few "classic copywriting" that appear in almost every repost. For example, "Human beings cannot walk alone between heaven and earth. Where the world goes depends on how we get along with life. Use the way of nature to nourish all things."
There are also Shaanxi Archaeological Museum’s “Let the Past Own the Future”; Hunan Provincial Museum’s “Infinite Beauty—Literature and Female Image in Figure Paintings of the Ming and Qing Dynasties” exhibition conclusion “Eternal Women Lead Us to Rise”; and Qinghai Tibetan Culture Museum’s "May I be like the void and the earth, forever supporting the lives of all boundless sentient beings."
These extremely poetic and philosophical epilogues shine like stars in the dark night in the dim light of the museum exhibition hall, making people's hearts beat.
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The conclusion of the exhibition that attracted much attention, where did the material and inspiration come from? The “cultural surroundings” of the exhibition itself are of course an important and rich treasure trove.
For example, the ancient Syrian civilization exhibition held in many domestic museums quoted a verse from the famous Syrian poet Adonis at the end, which many viewers will never forget - "When I sink my eyes into your eyes, I glimpse the deep." At dawn, I see ancient yesterday, everything I cannot comprehend, and I feel the universe flowing between your eyes and mine."
And the world-famous global tour of Afghanistan's "Wandering Treasures": In order to stay away from the war as long as possible, more than 200 precious ancient Afghan cultural relics have been touring overseas for more than ten years since 2006, traveling through the United States and China. , the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands and other countries and regions.
The affectionate and convinced phrase "A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive" at the end of the exhibition deeply touched the hearts of many viewers.
There was also the "Love in the Age of Love - Exhibition of Fine Cultural Relics from Pompeii, Italy" held at the Nanshan Museum in Shenzhen on May 30 last year. This exhibition presents a total of 128 pieces/groups of collections from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Italy, including various types of precious cultural relics such as sculptures, murals, bronzes, pottery and glass products, recreating the splendid civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome.
The shimmering lines of Latin "love graffiti" projected on the black wall at the exhibition were photographed and forwarded by many people - "Pain will eventually end, love will come."
These words that warmly praise love and embrace love are graffiti words collected by archaeologists along the streets of Pompeii. In the era when the Pompeii people lived, graffiti was allowed and even encouraged. Long and short Latin sentences can be found almost everywhere in Pompeii: in temples, cemeteries, taverns and private homes. After nearly 2,000 years, more than 10,000 graffiti are still left, vividly restoring the daily life of the ancient Romans. many little fragments.
Pompeii people would write eulogies for their pet dogs, campaign for votes, demonstrate to their opponents, even review the hotel they just stayed in, and of course express their love without restraint. "When the pain dissipates, love returns to my heart" "Whoever has never fallen in love is not a complete young man"...
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The Pompeii fine cultural relics exhibition quoted the poem of the ancient Roman poet Catullus - "Where is the eternity? The sun shines and sinks into the sea; the bright moon shines and fades away; the wind roars and fades away. Take a breath."
A moment is eternity. The strong sense of time is also a point that is invariably emphasized in the closing words of the museum's exhibition, reminding everyone: Seize the moment and cherish what is in front of you. The history of mankind collected in museums may span tens of thousands of years, or it may only last a moment—depending on the time scale.
As the conclusion of the "Dinosaur Park" of the Beijing Museum of Natural History says: "If the history of the earth is compared to a day, the earth was formed at 0 o'clock in the morning, and now it is 24 o'clock, then the dinosaurs appeared at 22:48 and perished at 23:40. They We have lived on the earth for 52 minutes. Even if we humans start from Zhoukoudian Peking Man, we have only 9.4 seconds. Compared with the dinosaurs, our time on the earth is too short. But now we are facing many survival problems, so we We must cherish the environment and cherish life.”
Wang Fang, deputy director of the Jinsha Site Museum, believes that the preface and conclusion are a highly concise summary of the theme and meaning of an exhibition, and are also places that test the academic level and literary quality of the curator.
She took the preface and conclusion of the permanent exhibition of Jinsha Heritage Museum as an example - from the preface, "Here, the fog of history gradually disperses, the figure of the ancient country slowly emerges, and a glorious civilization 3,000 years ago appears before people's eyes like a dream. "Guide the audience into Jinsha, and in the conclusion, "Excavations and research in recent years have revealed a corner of the mystery of Jinsha, but there are still many mysteries that cannot be answered, and people have to search for them." The audience is full of expectations. Leaving - In her opinion, these two exhibition texts from more than ten years ago not only refined a major feature of the Jinsha site, but also left enough room for the audience to reflect.
“How to introduce the theme of the exhibition to the audience clearly and concisely, and finally leave some reveries for the exhibition trip with a paragraph of text, while leaving some unfinished aftertaste and imagination space for the audience, has always been a question for many curators nowadays. The goal of pursuit and exploration." Wang Fang said: "In today's era of information explosion, if a large paragraph of professional text appears every time, many viewers may not be willing to read it carefully. The museum is open to the whole society and must take care of as many people as possible Audience acceptance.”
She told reporters that in exhibitions organized by Jinsha, they usually pay attention to controlling the number of words in the introduction text of each unit and section. They not only pay attention to the rhythm and rhythm of the language, but also try to reduce the number of words as much as possible - as the exhibition slowly moves towards the back, in As the audience's patience and energy are gradually exhausted, the introduction text on the exhibition wall is also becoming less and less.
"We will try our best to take care of each visitor's experience of the exhibition, and will continue to conduct audience opinion surveys and audience evaluation analysis before, during and after the exhibition to better understand the public's interests, meet the growing needs of the audience, and create More and better high-quality exhibitions." Wang Fang said.
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Why is the epilogue more popular than the preface? Wang Fang thinks there may be two reasons. "One is related to the mentality of the audience - many people don't like preaching-style indoctrination and like to leave space for themselves to think and ponder. The other may be related to people's attention." She He said, “When they first entered the museum, many people were not focused enough and were still thinking about finding important exhibits or looking at the surrounding environment. Then as the exhibition progressed, they gradually became immersed in it. At the end, when they were still unfinished, it was a rich moment. Poetic, philosophical and timeless words are naturally easy to move people’s hearts.”
Huang Xiaofeng, deputy director and chief curator of the Chengdu Museum, believes that the frequent closing of "golden sentences" in exhibitions in museums around the world is undoubtedly positively related to the increasing overall level of curators in the domestic cultural and museum field.
"Chinese people always attach great importance to summaries, and museums' conclusions are generally written more carefully. In my personal observation, they should do better than foreign countries. Many foreign curators or museum experts come to Chengdu to see After the exhibition, they all expressed their appreciation for this." Huang Xiaofeng said, "Especially in the past ten years or so, domestic museums have made rapid progress in exhibition formats, and in many places have surpassed the traditional methods of foreign museums."
Although the epilogue has been pushed to a "highlight" hot spot this time, in Huang Xiaofeng's view, all the details of an excellent exhibition are the result of hard work. "The beauty of text, the beauty of artistic conception, space design, moving line layout... there is so much knowledge involved in how to convert exhibition content into spatial expression."
At the same time, Huang Xiaofeng also felt that the popularity of the exhibition epilogue is not unrelated to the "two-way rush" of today's audiences and curators, as well as the sharing trend in the Internet era. "The epilogues of many of our previous exhibitions were also well written, but they were not quoted. That does not mean that the previous audiences did not read them carefully. It should be said that today's audiences not only view the exhibitions more and more carefully, but also want more and more Participate in it. Their capture and sharing of the epilogue in major museum exhibitions is equivalent to participating in the secondary dissemination of this exhibition."
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In addition to the preface and conclusion, the explanatory text of the exhibits is also a crucial part of the exhibition. Through these short texts, the audience can understand the artworks or cultural relics in front of them in the shortest possible time. If the text on the instruction board is beautiful and poetic, it will be a plus. If it can also cleverly add some humor, it will be even more interesting.
In 2008, the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) established an Award for Excellence in Exhibition Signage Writing. The award aims to recognize and encourage outstanding exhibition sign writers and editors, thereby providing "standards and inspiration" for high-quality sign writing.
Take an explanatory sign that won this award in 2016 as an example, and you can get a glimpse of it: In the "Color of Life" exhibition at the California Academy of Sciences, on a picture of a poisonous frog with bulging balls, the caption "The Volume of Color" reads like this wrote——
"If color could talk, its voice might be calling 'Stay closer' or roaring 'Back off!' Many living things communicate through color: showy flowers attract pollinators with their colorful petals, poisonous frogs move quickly, and carry their backs on their backs. The dazzling colors on their coats warn predators to stay away. What else can the colors say? Anoles often declare their claim to territory by rapidly bouncing their heads and tapping their brightly colored chins, called meat hammers, in case another male Coveted.”
There is also an exhibition sign that won the 2015 "Excellence Award for Exhibition Signage Writing" from an ancient African art exhibition——
“Why is brewing beer like nurturing a growing baby? Zulu believe that brewing beer is as much a power of the ancestors as creating a child in the womb. Zulu families drink beer together and pray to their ancestors to help grow the family. Round, dark clay pots like this are the centerpiece of Zulu family 'beer parties', inspiring reunions that connect them to their departed ancestors."
Of course, there are also wonderful and vivid explanatory boards in domestic museums. In the Capital Museum's "Special Exhibition to Commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Archaeological Excavation of Fuhao's Tomb in Yin Ruins", the explanatory board about Fuhao was designed in the shape of an axe, and was decorated with a copper axe. The tiger-eating human pattern clearly expresses Fuhao’s identity as a military commander and the theme of the exhibition.
The text on the display board is also concise, clear and concise - "Who is she? Her name is Fu Hao, and she is the first female general recorded in Chinese history. Her husband is Shang King Wu Ding, who reigned for 59 years and created a prosperous era of Yin and Shang Dynasties. The ancient city where she lived was later called Yinxu, and it was the 'Holy Land' of Chinese archeology..."
With the development of the times and the application of high technology, major museums are becoming more and more "volumetric" in their exhibition design, and their explanations are becoming more and more in-depth and comprehensive - scan the QR code to watch cultural relic explanation videos, and feel the atmosphere immersed in light and shadow. , high-definition three-dimensional animation display information... Eighteen kinds of martial arts are on display, just to leave a clear and unforgettable experience for the audience. Text/Xueyang