Anatomy of an Exhibit

Apr 21, 2009 13:57 Filed in: Art | Photography | Photojournalism | Steve Liss | Business | Friends of RWFG | Social Issues | Exhibits | 2009 | April09
The Catholic Charities USA held their Centennial Leadership Summit at the College of St. Catherine yesterday (April 20, 2009). This was the inaugural exhibit of the "In Our Own Backyard: U.S. Poverty in the 21st Century" photojournalism awareness project. This meeting initiated the ambitious goal of Catholic Charities to reduce poverty in the United States by 50% by the year 2020.

The entire exhibit process was documented, so if we let T = the actual exhibit time (4 pm, 04-20-2009), then T-x is some amount of time before the exhibit. Think of the television show '24', except instead of saving the country from terrorists with nuclear weapons, we are hanging art (the lamest metaphor to date on the entire internet).

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1) T-2 weeks: Once the project is defined, the supply chain of raw materials begins to fill up. This exhibit required two cases of 4'x8'x1/2" black Gatorboard.
2) T-1 week: Each image was printed on a premium luster photo paper (a wide color gamut, scratch resistant, but susceptible to fingerprints), vacuum mounted to the Gatorboard and then trimmed to size and packaged. 50 images were printed and mounted for this exhibit.

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3) T-24 hours: The finished materials were delivered the day before the exhibit opening. The exhibit panels were problematic for a few reasons, but the image layout was deemed the most critical.
4) T-12 hours: The image title blocks completed the story-lines. I was delighted to see that Carlos Gonzales from the Minneapolis Star Tribune was participating. I came to know Carlos from the Max Becherer exhibit.
5) T- 4 hours: No exhibit is complete without a politician. In this case it was the Honorable Mayor Chris Coleman of St. Paul.
6) T- 0 hours: This exhibit generated a lot of discussion. A 'first person, photojournalistic' style was used.

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7) T+x: From St. Paul, the exhibit moves to Portland, Oregon and then begins a nine city nationwide tour, with the goal of ending at the White House in 2010.

Math, art and terrorists in a single blog entry. Now that is efficient blogging.