Spring 2018

We worked with the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and their Amistad Center for Art & Culture to help them find a way to display some of their most controversial artifacts. We went about solving this problem by meeting with the museum director to brainstorm ideas, researching and preparing proposals for these ideas, and ultimately presenting them to the museum director. After these steps, we prepared another consolidated and specific proposal that encompassed his notes, and passed that off to him to work on with another group or contractor in the future.

Throughout this process, we worked hard every week to flesh out the proposals with mockups, 3D models of the space, and in-depth breakdowns of the logistics of the project. Given that we were not actually implementing these ideas ourselves, we ended up having plenty of time to complete the work- perhaps even a little too much. All in all, we are proud of the work that we did and enjoyed the class and experience working with Frank immensely.

At the beginning of this semester, the Amistad Center at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford came to us with a unique problem, and an open mind in terms of how they wanted to solve it. Their problem was the unanswered question of how to display racially charged artifacts as part of their ongoing exhibit rotation in their corner of the Wadsworth. The director of the Amistad Center, Frank, was worried that if they just put the items out for display without some sort of curator, they would be misinterpreted and become the source of criticism towards the museum.

Our Student Agency group planned to help Frank begin solving this problem by first getting a clear understanding of the situation at hand, and then preparing a variety of digital solutions to help bridge the gap between the Amistad Center’s intentions and the public’s interpretations. We did not intend to actually implement these solutions, due to the limited length of the semester, however we intended to leave Frank with a detailed plan to either pass on to the next Agency class, or to some sort of independent contractor chosen by the Center themselves.

The first step we took in preparing our battle plan for the Amistad Center, was to visit the facility itself to meet with Frank and size up the problem with our own eyes. We drove to Hartford as a group and met Frank at the Center. He gave us a tour of the items already on display, and then took us into the storage section of the center to show us some of their more controversial pieces. We then sat down at talked about some of his ideas for the projects. With that information, we went back to UConn and began developing our proposals.

Over the course of the rest of the semester, we prepared 3 potential approaches to the problem. One was a database of museum-goer questions and answers, in video format and readily accessible via ipads displayed with the exhibits. Another was a looping series of facts about the items on display, projected on the wall next to the pieces to give them context. The last was an interactive “guided-tour/choose-your-own-adventure” hybrid. After completing mock-ups and presentations for each of these ideas, we met with Frank again to get his thoughts on them. Given his notes, we ultimately decided to combine the first two ideas-the final proposal: project the Q&As and the facts on the wall next to the exhibits.

We spent the last few weeks of the semester preparing our most in-depth proposal yet, which included a 3D modeled mockup of the idea implemented in the space. Finally, we presented this final proposal to Frank and the rest of our peers in Student Agency, and passed the proposal and all of our project materials of too Frank for future implementation at the center.

Overall, with the work that our group had accomplished throughout the duration of the semester, we believe that we did pretty well. The proposals that we prepared were in-depth and well thought out. We also took time to develop various mockups and prototypes for each idea that we proposed, which was helpful both for Frank and ourselves during our meetings with him. We wanted to be able to demonstrate models of how each idea could work, so that when we would discuss our concepts, everyone could be on the same page. Even though our job was to help develop a concept that could be implemented, we reminded ourselves about the logistics and parameters of what the Amistad Center could be able to install. We were allowing our creativity to get the better of us, while still being mindful of costs.

One weak area was created by the amount of time we had to complete the task at hand. In some instances, it felt that we were allotted too much time to work on these concepts. This led to some days where not much work was accomplished, because we felt our ideas were already fleshed out. That being said, we worked hard, traveled, and put lots of thought into our proposals. And in the end, Frank was happy with the work that we had completed for him, which is what we strived to obtain the client’s satisfaction.

Project Team
Alexander Crosett
Estelle MacDonald
Christian Partenio
William Rios
Benjamin Schultz