Its hard to see thanks to my really cool, but slightly bad usb-stick camera, but here's my official badge of the Vermeer center. Looking at the badge this morning I found it already tells me important things about the center which I can think about while waiting for the official mission statements. If you put "meet the master of light" on the badges of all your volunteers (and graduating exhibition designers) I guess this will qualify for something of a mission. The center wants us to meet Vermeer and persumably get to know more about him.Tricky in the least, as Vermeer left us only 36 paintings to date (unless this helps) and not many other real clues as to the rest of his life. And while waiting for him to become Delfts most famous resident we tore do
wn all buildings that had anything to do with him in the centuries after his death.Noticing there was nothing left of Vermeer in his home town (he lived in Delft from his birth in 1632 up to his death in 1675 and theres no evidence to suggest he ever lived anywhere else) the vermeer center was founded and housed in a replica of the saint lukes guild (see picture). The actual building used to stand on exactly the same spot and looked relatively similar.
The Vermeer center doesn't have any real paintings by Vermeer. To see these visitors will have to travel to nearby Mauritshuis in the Hague or the slightly further Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. For this reason the center sees itself as an information center rather than as a museum. By means of an interactive exhibit spread over two floors it educates (or informs, is there a difference here?) people about the little we know of the painter. It is also the only place on earth where you can see reproductions of all Vermeer's known works c
ombined in (assumed) chronological order!The basement
I know the picture is too dark and perhaps hardly discernable for those of you who haven't been to the museum, but ill get better pictures as soon as I find a better camera. Meanwhile my description; the picture shows part of the wall in the basement where the reproductions are on display. From left to right; Christ in the house of Mary and Martha, The procuress, sleeping maid, A girl reading a letter by an open window, and The little street. Besides these and the rest of Vermeers works the exhibition contains headphones allowing visitors to listen to expert opinions about subjects such as "who was vermeer teacher" and "what was vermeer family life like" There's also a table which visitors can sit at and listen to similar earphones which each feature a different actor impersonating a painter. In this way the visitor by joining the table can become part of a guild meeting as it were. Though there are no further interactive options, the visitor can only listen...not join in. Finally the basement gives insight into the world vermeer lived in, by means of informative panels on the walls, little bits of scattered around text and globes symbolizing the explorative nature of the dutch at the time.
The first floor
More interaction on the first floor as the exhibition continues with a glimpse into the work and techniques of Vermeer. Visitors have the possibility to photgraph themselves in a picture of vermeer (woman writing a letter), take a look at (unfortunately glued and unaccessible, but nontheless real) pigments vermeer used in his day, take a look through a camera obscura (an optical instrument used by vermeer to create the perspective in his paintings) and play with a repoussoir cupboard. This actually sound very fancy for something very simple. It means vermeer places objects slightly in front of the main object of his paintings to generate a greater feeling of depth. The cupboard takes the scene from the loveletter and allows visitors to remove elements which should show them the effect (I wonder if it actually does though). Furthermore the visitor is led through a series of informative panels explaining how vermeer used light in his paintings and how he tells stories by means of his paintings.The second floor
This floor I get to design an exhibition for. It has to fit in with the rest of the museum of course, but we're not totally clear yet on what it should include. Over the next few weeks im hoping to find out where the center wants to go from here on and how this floor can help in achieving that. What is missing about Vermeer? which aspects of his life or world would we want to highlight? how can we involve the visitor further into the exploration of the painter?
Interesting, interesting... ideas?
