Farewell Pompeii – Howdy Menagerie

MuseumExhibitions's blog | Created 1 decade ago

The exhibition department always get to work on the cool stuff in the museum. After A Day in Pompeii exhibition closed to the public it was time for us to break it down. That included working with conservators and registrars to pack up and crate the objects ready for Singapore.

: A Day in Pompeii; Image from WA Museum; Image copyright of WA Museum

A Day in Pompeii turned out to be our most successful exhibition ever. We had roughly ten weeks to design and produce the Perth version and compress it down to 400 square metres. When A Day in Pompeii was shown at the Melbourne Museum it was a whopping 1000 square metres. Here is a plan that shows the Perth gallery in dark red overlayed on the Melbourne Museum plan. This gives you an idea of the huge size difference between the two venues.

: Maps of Melbourne and Perth Museums overlayed; Image from WA Museum; Image copyright of WA Museum

There was much design work that took place to work out what fitted where and how. All the objects were drawn up in 3d and showcases were allocated.

: Deciding object size and orientation; Image from WA Museum; Image copyright of WA Museum

Then all the internal showcase furniture and object props were designed for production applying conservation principles.

: Appropriate furniture was developed; Image from WA Museum; Image copyright of WA Museum

All the plinths for all the large objects had to be designed and built. Here is a picture of the plinth layout ready for construction.

: Plinth design; Image from WA Museum; Image copyright of WA Museum

And a 3d floorplan was them developed that managed to fit all objects and allowance for 200 visitors at any given time. Shown below is part of the plan.

: 3D Floorplan; Image from WA Museum; Image copyright of WA Museum

We had to get everything built in a short timeframe ready for the two week install. Working accurately to the millimetre in a scaled environment enabled us to build and fit every component into the tight space. Fabricators were working nights to get everything to us on time.

Without getting into too much detail we also had to ensure that the multimedia and graphics were all installed on time as well. This included large environmental graphics to go on walls and object labels to go inside the showcases.

: Two week install; Image from WA Museum; Image copyright of WA Museum

There was also a lot of interior and exterior signage to be designed and produced to show visitors how to get around the Perth site. Pictured here is a direct solvent print onto Dibond©

: Signage was also developed; Image from WA Museum; Image copyright of WA Museum

We even found time to design and produce the largest ever window sticker in the history of Perth that was installed on the foyer.

: Installation of the Pompeii window sticker; Image from WA Museum; Image copyright of WA Museum

We also had to knock up a 3d theatrette under the foyer. Here is a 3d concept of the tunnel drawn up in Sketchup.

: 3d theatrette - sketchup design; Image from WA Museum; Image copyright of WA Museum