Exhibits and Galleries and Displays, Oh My! (La’akea Ai, Hawai’i USA, ITP 2025)
Written by La’akea Ai, Digital Humanities Specialist, Bishop Museum (Hawai’i USA, ITP 2025)
When you get a group of passionate museum professionals in a room and ask them – what are your plans for the weekend? The only response you will hear will start with mu and end with seum. Galleries, exhibits, showcases, installations, art-walks, estates; these are the places you will find us. Although our weeks are filled with thoughtfully organised visits, we all commonly will plan to spend our free time exploring yet another unseen nook of London.
This specific weekend we were assigned a group task titled Museum Project Day, though our weekend plans might have looked exactly the same if not for this prompt. We were asked to tour an exhibit, be open-minded, but think critically, and produce a collaborative blog post to present our thoughts, experiences, and hopefully, some moments of inspiration (however with this lively bunch we rarely need a reason to share our thoughts). ITP members were grouped and sent (on the rainiest day yet!) to either of the following museums: The Horniman Museum and Gardens, V&A, Tate Modern, London Transport Museum, and Bank of England Museum.
My group included Thuy Pham (Vietnam), Nabhan Al Barwani (Oman), Perihan Donertas (Turkey), and myself. We were tasked with visiting the Tate Modern temporary display, Gathering Ground, which showcased art that highlights the relationship between the natural world and each other. In a beautiful and thought-provoking display amongst nine artists and six galleries, patrons were invited to reflect on the destructive nature of mankind for the purpose of urbanization, industrialization, and militarization. What are the consequences? What is our role in repairing the loss and damage caused by mankind? Is it our role?
Our group moved through the galleries methodically; first, we intently read through exhibit labels and texts, second, we photographed everything for good notes, and lastly, we put our phones down and viewed the collection with all our senses, taking the moment to be present. Some art made us smile, some caught us in awe, some were bewildering, and some made us tear (that you will have to find out in our group blog).
Our day began with the Gathering Ground display and we continued through to five other exhibits. My favorite of the day was The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House. Prior to my arrival in London, a few friends sent me advertisements of the exhibit and expressed their slight jealousy of me being able to view it. I was drawn in by the short, vibrant, social media highlight reels of the display, but had no context yet. The introduction text, quickly conveyed the artists feeling of home – memories of a home, memories within a home, and the homes that have housed us and shaped us. It was a small yet deeply impactful visual reminder that although I am physically 7,241 miles away from my house, I carry my home with me everywhere I go.
I know that I can speak for us all in saying that Tate Modern had us feeling a myriad of emotions, and although there are many more sites to see before I leave, I might have to revisit this space just one more time.
