I think Myra's idea is good, use the voice can make the paintings alive, it's an interesting interpretation approach.We can discuss the possibility of this approach after we have confirmed our big idea.

I chose 2 paintings, A Mother Delousing Her Childs's Hair( A Mother's Duty) and Figures in a Courtyard behind a House. They are all from the Dutch painter Pieter de Hooch. Then I thought we could use the Doll's House of Petronella Oortman as our first collection, it's just like a micro dutch home that could arouse the audience's curiosity about the 17 to 19 century Dutch family.

Today's Progress: Starting write the labels.

 

The owner of this doll’s house, Petronella Oortman, was a widow before she decided to make this dollhouse. After she remarried, she spent a lot of time and energy on it, not just to show off her wealth. This doll’s house carries her fantasy of perfect family life; perhaps she was eager to achieve this dream through marriage.  Here, the doll’s house is not merely a toy, but a teaching device, allowing girls to practise for their future domestic roles.

Was this an arranged date between the couple? Perhaps in the near future, this young woman will become his wife.

His intense stare is full of provocation, but this look is not reciprocated, as the woman continues to squeeze the lemon with no response. There appears to be an ambiguous atmosphere between them.

Is this shyness or avoidance? Maybe she isn’t ready to accept this man as her husband, but it seems clear that the woman had little say in the matter.  Has the man taken over and made women uncomfortable, in the space that supposedly they embody? 

 

In Dutch family life in the seventeenth century, mothers seemed to take on most of the responsibilities of educating and caring for children, even such trivial things were dubbed "A Mother's Duty". But why must this be the mother's duty? How is the division of family duties defined?

First, I shared our group work with Yumiko. 

Our online exhibition is based on the collections in Rijksmuseum; we named it ‘Fetishised  Domesticity’. We selected portraits of Dutch women from the 17th to the 18th century. These women appeared in domestic scenes and conveyed a moral message to the audience. We wanted to interpret these paintings from a modern perspective.

Q1: What is ‘ Fetishised Domesticity’ mean? 

A: Yumiko thinks the word ‘Fetishised Domesticity’ is complicated. Some audiences may feel hard to understand, and I realised that it’s hard for me to explain it to Yumiko. So I thought we should change our exhibition’s name to a more common and straightforward one.

 

Q2: What’s your Big idea, and how to show it to the audience?

A: Most of our collections are given by classic labels - focusing on the content, colour and painting skills. But we try to interpret them from a modern perspective and an emotional aspect. So we will write two labels for each collection, one is the classic label, and the other is a modern perspective interpretation. Yumiko thinks we don’t have to write the classic label as we are supposed to emphasise the contemporary perspective’s interpretation label.

 

I told Yumiko that we were confused about the Big idea and had not found what we wanted to show to the audience directly; Yumiko gave me some helpful advice. She thinks if we focus on the women in the family, we can think about the Dutch women’s s duty in the 17th to the 18th century. Has it changed nowadays?

 

Yumiko thinks that Mother is the loneliest person in the family, especially a housewife. Everyone in the family needs her, her husband wants her to be a good wife, and her children want her to be a good mother. But what about herself? In addition to being a mother, she is also an independent individual. She also has the right to pursue the life she wants. 

 

Dutch women in the 17th and 18th centuries did not have this right. They were shackled in family life, lost their characteristics as independent beings, and became stereotyped as good mothers. So, in contrast to modern society, have modern women broken free from these moral shackles? I think this could be our Big idea.

 

Then we talked about I can try to find some data about our university, like the proportion of male and female students in a university in recent years; the number could be more intuitive and powerful. If the number of female students in schools continues to increase, this will be a powerful answer to the above question.

 

 

Q1: Tell me about your Big idea.

A: Yumiko described their Big idea with What/Where?Why, which represents:

What - What is the Anti-Art against?

Where - Where is Anti-Art comes from?

Why - Why is Anti-Art can be accepted by the Art Market?

She explained the difference between Art and Anti-Art, as well as the relationship between them. The explanation of the big idea is completed through the interpretation of these three elements - What/Where/why. I think this approach is straightforward for the audience to understand.

 

Q2: How to interpret the Anti-Art in this online exhibition?

A: The collections, label design, and poster design will contain the concept of Anti-Art. For example, they rotate some collections, making the opposite of what they should be.

 

Q3: Can you tell me something about your collections and their order of them?

A: They chose Minimalism and Dada as examples, especially Minimalism. The order of collections will follow in chronological.

 

Q4: What do you think about the consequences (So what) and how to make your online exhibition related to the audiences?

A: Yumiko did not find a connection between the exhibition and the audience. I suggested she find an interesting way to show the audience that Anti-Art exists in our daily life.

 

This exhibition for me is very attractive because I have basic knowledge of Dada and Surrealism. So If I were an audience from the University, I would like to check this. But many audiences do not know about Dada and Minimalism, so I think this story-telling approach may not be attractive enough for others.

But on the day of the presentation, I realised that marketing is essential for an exhibition, and we must take this exhibition seriously. So I created an Instagram account, made some posts on it, and invited viewers to leave their comments.

_{[1] Beverly Serrell, Exhibit Labels: An interpretive Approach, Second Edition (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), pp. 7.}
 

At this point, we finally decided on our big idea, and all the works had to be modified around this big idea, as it was the one that connected all the elements.

Our Big Idea: The duties of Dutch women in the family from the 17th to the 18th century.