Each of the collector’s that are part of The Saga Museum Initiative have done a great deal of research on the items in our Star Wars collections. We have all also spent a lot of time on interpretation of these items. Interpretation is the art and science of communicating information about the objects in our collections and their meaning.
Interpretation includes plenty of written information, but some of the most powerful tools we have are visual. And perhaps the most effective visual tool we have is providing context by displaying related items together in a way that each enlightens the other.
For example, the item shown here is one of the first props that Lisa and I ever acquired. While Star Wars fans are likely to recognize the nose of an X-wing fighter, it may not be as obvious to a more casual observer, and even though there’s an explanatory plaque, we all know that a lot of viewers don’t read much of the text provided. In a museum setting, each object generally has a fraction of a second to catch someone’s attention, and “non-obviousness” is a prime reason for someone’s eyes to keep moving on.
A few years after we purchased the X-wing, we had the opportunity to pick up this original storyboard art, which is now displayed directly above the model. This provides an additional opportunity to catch the viewer’s eye, and the shared context also increases the recognizability of the model; odds are now good that even a casual viewer will have an immediate understanding of what these objects are, and they might even take a second now to read the plaque.
Once we’ve captured a viewer’s attention, we gain the ability to share more information, and this is where written information can enter the picture. In a museum setting, this pair of items would be accompanied by text that explains what you’re looking at, and why you’re looking at it. The basic information that would always be present—what is it, who made it, and when—is called a tombstone, and it would look something like this:
Star Wars Original Storyboard Art, Lucasfilm, around 1976
Star Wars X-Wing Starfighter Pyrotechnics Model Fragments, Lucasfilm, around 1976
Below that, we’d provide brief additional text that would attempt to answer obvious questions–for example, if you’ve read the plaque, you may be wondering who Joe Viskocil was, so we’d want to explain that he was a pyrotechnics specialist who worked on more than 80 films including Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, and he won an Academy award for his work on Independence Day.
We would also provide brief information, likely just a couple of sentences, specific to the overall theme of whatever exhibit the items are part of. For example, if they’re displayed in an exhibition about modelmaking, we might focus on the construction of the X-wing prop; in an exhibit about moviemaking, we might focus on how modelmakers work from concept art; or in an exhibit about special effects, we might focus on how the model was blown up.
Finally, a good interpretation would encourage you to think beyond the simple facts. For example, in an exhibition about special effects, if we’d already introduced the concept of computer graphics, we might ask you to consider the pros and cons of practical effects compared to CGI. In an exhibit about moviemaking, we might ask you to consider how you would make an X-wing explode in a YouTube short.