Every Spring the museum hosts the Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair (ONAYLF) as part of its ongoing commitment to the use and preservation of Native American languages. A component of this event is a poster contest that features work of students from around the country.
The yearly challenge for our department is to have all of the pieces on display and properly labeled by the events opening at 8am on Monday morning. Another difficulty for us is that the event is growing while our available space for the display dwindles due to our expansion of permanent exhibits.
Our solution was to create reusable mats for the works that can be placed in the windows of the museum's rotunda. Since the contest's format remains consistent from year to year, we were able to standardize the displays to facilitate the mounting of the works and their object labels.
The panels are made from 1/8" Sintra. White was used against the window to reflect sunlight and reduce warpage. Black on the face to create the mat spaces and to allow us to incorporate the curved design element at the top of each panel. The layers are adhered using double-sided Nitto-Denko No. 512 low VOC tape.
On the Friday prior to the fair we place the works in the mats spaces, adhere the object labels (printed ahead of time to re-positionable label stock) and place them on a panel cart. At that time we also apply 3M Command double-stick tape to the back of each panel to speed up the next phase of the process.
Come Monday morning we roll the whole lot into the Rotunda, peel off the tape backing, and place them on the sills. High-fives all around. Commence eating doughnuts.
Posts
1 comment:
This is another of my very favorite projects from your department. There is something genius about taking a space that was never meant to be anything but a window < or insert other terribly underused resource here> and make it into something spectacular and special.
Post a Comment