Fred Wilson: Mining the museum [openingmuseums]

[Music] [Music] I'm here today with Fred Wilson who will be looking through our collections um and with some of the objects that he finds doing a workshop on creativity and making exhibitions for our exhibition development students so Fred tell us the kind of things that you look for um when you go into collections and mine them well I um

I'm never looking for anything specific when I do this sort of thing I I'm sort of generally scanning what what there is uh to see how they coales and how they come together and that's usually the first thing we do is really get an overview and um it gives me a little sense of of what the place is like uh

maybe not in a sense of what it is today but what it what it has been and how it's uh how what it's become um and then when I'm looking for specific things once I have a sense of it I can choose things that make sense for that place and uh so I I do that in

order to not just sort of fall back on patterns from before just saying looking and choosing things that I I like you know from at where I've been successful in previous uh visits to collections so I thought hang back and just sort of see what's there usually the things sort of pop out but you never know sometimes it

takes a little while and how do you draw from the expertise of the staff that works with those collections uh well it's a very kind of I wouldn't say collaborative but very much uh get involved with the staff because they know the collection is much better than I would uh even things that you know

might be familiar to me it's very informal I usually ask staff what you know about things things that that I have questions in my mind about uh what there's there and um and just s let them kind of tell me about them fill in the gaps um and as we get to know each other