One of my favorite museums that I’ve visited is the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades. This location of the Getty focuses on Ancient Mediterranean art, specifically the art of the Romans, Greeks, and Etruscans. The materials in the Getty Villa are categorized by the object type and the object subject matter. They have objects of the same type or subject matter exhibited together in sections or rooms. For example there are rooms for “Silver Vessels” and “Terracotta and Marble Vessels”, corresponding to object type, as well as “Gods and Goddesses” and “Stories of the Trojan War”, corresponding to the subject matter. This is definitely a logical way to organize materials and it creates an environment that is conducive for viewers to make comparisons between objects, since the pieces are presented alongside similar objects. It is not very clear from the map of the museum if there are more specific subcategories that the museum uses; they probably do not need many subcategories because their general categorization is pretty specific.<\/p>\n
I think that categorizing their exhibits in this manner shows that the museum is trying to highlight the similarities between the art of Romans, Greeks, and Etruscans. Having a section such as “Gods and Goddesses” would show objects from all the Ancient Mediterranean cultures that feature their gods and goddesses. This setting is perfect for drawing comparisons and contrasts between different cultures’ depictions of the same subject matter or the way they created the same objects (such as silver vessels). This categorization provides a specific theme that is easy for the viewer to see and make impressions about.<\/p>\n
One alternative way to categorize all these pieces would be to separate them based on the culture that they came from: Greek, Roman, or Etruscan. This would mean that each section would really focus on one culture; they objects they made and what they depicted. This would give viewers a very different experience of the museum. They would end up with very complete ideas about each culture in general, seeing all of that material at once, and after experiencing all of the exhibits they would be able to draw more general comparisons and contrasts between the cultures. I don’t believe that either way of categorizing these objects is better or worse, they just give slightly different experiences; however, separating the materials based on culture might be a little overwhelming because it is hard to know what to focus on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my favorite museums that I’ve visited is the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades. This location of the Getty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}