© Copyright 2018 Benjamin Benschneider.
Tearing Down/Building Up Exhibition Design
“Tearing Down & Building Up” was an exhibition created for the 50th Anniversary of the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity (OMA&D) at the University of Washington. The final design was created by Studio Matthews, and was displayed in the North Allen Library on UW campus. The final exhibition was called “Revolution and Evolution.
This was a collabration project which started in teams of four or five people in our Exhibition Design class at the University of Washington. We were tasked to design an exhibition to celebrate the 50th year anniversay of the OMA&D office, which was created to people of color a voice on campus. Each team in the class presented our concepts to the Studio Matthews team along with members of the board for the OMA&D office. Where they then picked their favorite concept to be created into a real concept to be displayed on campus. Well…
My team won! Alongside another team where Studio Matthews took elements from both our designs to create the final exhibition. The following the designers on the student teams who contributed.
Tearing Down and Building Up Concept Team: Angela Piccolo, Christen Miyasato, Monica Niehaus, and Samantha Spaeth
Celebrate/Absorb/Reflect Concept: Dana Golan, Eva Grate, and Jazmine
This image shows an overall view of the exhibition from the front side of the walls and two women looking at the exhibition. It shows four different walls made out of particle board to give a construction feel. On the front of the boards the words Injustice, Exclusion, and Underrepresentation are displayed in a stencil font and a large X through the words symbolizing getting rid of these conflicts on campus. \
This image shows an overview of the backside of the walls with large scale black and white images from the OMA&D archive along with the timeline of events that correlate with the attribute on the wall.
This image is a close-up view of the front of the wall which reads “Underrepresentation”, in a stencil font and a large taupe X going through the word.
This image is a close-up view of the front of the wall which reads “Marginalization”, in a stencil font and a large blue X going through the word.
This image is the backside of the “Underrepresented” wall, This side’s title is “Building up Representation”. This combined with large scale black and white images which are paired with timeline events that have contributed to creating Representation through OMA&D.
This image is the backside of the “Injustice” wall, This side’s title is “Building up Agency”. This combined with large scale black and white images which are paired with timeline events that have contributed to creating Agency through OMA&D.
This image is the backside of the “Marginalization” wall, This side’s title is “Building Up Diverse Spaces”. This combined with large scale black and white images which are paired with timeline events that have contributed to creating Diverse Spaces through OMA&D.
This image shows the backside of the “Exclusion” wall, This side’s title is “Building Up Diversity”. This combined with large scale black and white images which are paired with timeline events that have contributed to creating Diversity through OMA&D. This image also shows the backside of the “Injustice” wall, This side’s title is “Building Up Equity”. This combined with large scale black and white images which are paired with timeline events that have contributed to creating Equity through OMA&D.
The Process
For this project, we were given a presentation by the OMA&D office and were able to meet some key people who have been members of the organization for decades. They provided us with an archive of images and a timeline of all the significant events which have happened over the 50 years since it began. We were then asked to take this content and break it down to be digestible by visitors of all ages and abilities.
As a team, we felt overwhelmed by the content provided in the timeline and so we wanted to find a different way to organize the content rather than a continuous timeline. A big part of the history was when the originators wrote a letter to the president of the university, and in this letter, they included five demands. These demands addressed the issues and desires for improvement for those of color on campus. As a team, we decided these five demands would be a good way to categorize the content of the timeline and make it more accessible to the visitors. We then took the demands and pulled out the attributes they were asking to be changed or torn down and then paired it with the antonyms that would be the goal to build up and so the timeline on each would show the significant progress OMA&D made towards building those attributes.
