December 8 , 2006
Award-winning Designer Selected for Hawaiian Hall
Ralph Appelbaum in Hawai‘i for Design Presentation
ArtNews Magazine called him a “revolutionary” for his provocative approaches to his spectacular designs of the Holocaust Museum in Washington , D.C. , New York ’s Hayden Planetarium/Hall of the Universe, Detroit ’s Museum of African American History , and Fossil Halls in the American Museum of Natural History. An environmentalist and humanist, Ralph Appelbaum wants to make sure museum-goers understand the implications of scientific and political history.
His next project is the Hawaiian Hall Complex at Bishop Museum where he’ll mastermind, along with a group of museum staff, board members, and cultural and community leaders, the presentation of Hawaiian artifacts and antiquities from the collections of the Ali‘i, such as those of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the Museum’s namesake. A long-time coming, the historic renovation will give visitors access to a record number of the Museum’s deep and rich collections, together with a native interpretation layered in meaning and authentic in voice.
Since 1950, a new museum has opened every week in the United States (including historic homes and botanical gardens.) These new institutions are dealing with social and cultural themes and no longer function as simple repositories for ancient artifacts.
Appelbaum is known for not manipulating emotions with the cheap and obvious design gestures or graphic imagery, especially in dealing with serious and emotional subjects like the Holocaust. Instead, he chooses narratives that are often small things, like a tea strainer someone in a death camp took for his “new life in the East,” as shown in one of the powerful displays in the moving Holocaust Museum. Appelbaum is known for his demonstrated ability to draw emotion from visitors and for creating searing moments of clarity.
“The Holocaust Museum is sheer brilliance,” claimed J. Michael Carrigan, the Chief of Exhibitions at the National Museum of American History in Washington, when it opened to rave reviews.
Appelbaum was a Peace Corps volunteer. A graduate of Pratt Institute in 1964, he planned to become an industrial designer. But three years of living among the Peruvian Indians changed everything for him.
He said of the experience, “I saw how beautiful objects made by indigenous peoples were sold to dealers and ended up in museum collections that functioned only as repositories. Most curators weren’t bothering to engage anyone but the expert.”
Following his time with the Peace Corps, he trained in the field of museum exhibitions at the design firms of Robert P. Gersin Associates and Raymond Loewy International. In 1978, he opened his own company, Ralph Applebaum Associates. His culturally and ethnically diverse staff of nearly 100 writers, editors, childhood experts, model-makers, artists, dancers, architects, and engineers , generate computer images of proposed installations, turn them into laptop models, and then larger ones that look like movie sets.
He works with ideas first, then seeks out the visual material that best tells the story---a switch from the age-old museum tradition of starting with the object first and then telling a story about the object. The larger cultural context often becomes a secondary afterthought. His organization is the largest in the country devoted exclusively to developing museum exhibitions.
His revolutionary and novel approaches to controversial subjects keep him very, very busy. His projects include more than 90 commissions for science or history museums including the Taiwan’s Museum of Prehistory and its National Science and Technology Museum, the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta, the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the Interior of Sotheby’s Auction House in New York, The Newseum in Virginia, and a new exhibition space in the Museum of the City of New York.
He believes museums exist to create wonder, that they should be active forums that encourage people to talk about ideas, and engage crucial issues. His mission as an exhibition designer is to help museums find their voice and then to aid in the search for relevance. He believes that when he “makes heritage clear and accessible, that it encourages a kind of social engagement that lets complete strangers marvel and talk to each other.”
He sees each commission as an opportunity to vent the generosity of spirit bottled up in human nature. Appelbaum was named Designer of the Year by Interiors in 2000. His striking designs have a strong social mission and are often experiential for the visitor, such as the full-size hull of a slave ship crowded with human figures and sounds that visitors are required to walk over at the Museum of African American History; Or the world’s most foreboding elevators at the Holocaust museum and an authentic railroad car used to transport victims to their deaths.
His exhibition designs enforce personal connections as a way of keeping memories alive. Most museums fall into one of three categories: Art, science, or history. Bishop Museum has all three, and so poses an especially challenging opportunity for a master’s work. Appelbaum’s painstaking design process often helps institutions rebrand and refocus bringing new clarity for presentation and interpretation ideas.
Appelbaum’s plans for Hawaiian Hall will emphasize the Hawaiian oral traditions, both spoken and written forms. His interpretations will be informed by the concept of kaona, or layers of meaning, from first to the third floors, offering deeper meanings as visitors move up through the building. The $20 million renovation project is expected to be completed in Fall, 2008.
For more information about the Hawaiian Hall Renovation Project or Ralph Applebaum, call (808) 847-3511 or visit www.bishopmuseum.org.