Illumination!  That’s what I’ve been looking for.  It’s been weeks since my last post–lots of work and nothing inspiring me to write.  So this evening, on the way home from dinner at the local neighborhood bar/restaurant, I saw something that did finally inspire a post.

We (my son and a friend) were driving back through Cleveland Heights neighborhoods chock-a-block with Christmas lights and we pass this house that is minimally decorated.  The stone porch has a single strand of white lights. Near a tree, at the side of the same yard, an elegant white reindeer, with a slender evergreen collar, illuminated from within, ghostly and pale, appears to search for food in snowdrift.  The deer has a kind of unearthly festiveness to it that is strange in a neighboorhood where most of the folks seem to take pride in adding something new to their displays each year.

Anyway, the illuminated deer set me thinking about the person in the house. Are the owners of the house in-ordinately fond of monochromatic color schemes?  Are they impoverished with only a single strand of lights, a lone reindeer, and one extension cord to connect the two?  Where did they find the deer, which is so different from the colored plastic variety that over-populates the neighborhood at this time of year?  Did they consciously choose a minimalist approach to holiday decorations in order to rebell against the encroaching plague of 8ft inflatable Christmas yard ornaments? [Earlier in the day I saw an inflatable carousel with Santa and a snowman riding deer in a snowglobe.]  

From those thoughts my brain turned to a tiny lingerie shop on the main street in Brighton in the U.K.–you will understand why in a moment. Over the past decade I have had the occasion to visit Brighton once or twice a year.  I can remember the very first time I noticed the shop.  I was on my way to work, headed toward the coffee shop across the street.  I glanced in the window of the store and, at some level, my brain acknowledged that someone had dressed headless and mostly legless mannequins in the tiniest bits of lingerie imaginable.  I didn’t pay much attention to the display, long married, it was more the type of lingerie the party girls (and boys) heading down to Brighton for wild weekends would notice.

I felt rather differently about it some 14 hours later (those were long workdays back then).  Coming out after dark and heading off to hotel, I noticed that the mannequins in the window were illuminated from within and that the lingerie–which I had heretofore practically ignored–looked fabulous.  You could see every nuance of the lace pattern of the dainty items, every diamond in the fishnets, every tendril in the marabou border of the corset.

Now that’s marketing because the upshot of the issue is most women (and men for all I know) do not actually glow in the dark.  We do not have some type of interior illumination which will set off fine lingerie in the same way as those marvelous torsos in Brighton.  I found, every time I passed the store on those balmy September evenings that I would have to remind myself that–as great as that stuff looked–I myself did not glow in the dark.

So…if you’ve gotten this far you are probably wondering what the relationship is between my comments above and technology in museums?  I’m wondering a little bit myself but I think what I’m aiming for here, folks, is to use the appropriate technologies for the appropriate content. 

My neighbor with his white deer is making some type of statement, I don’t know what it is, but I know his decorations stand out in a neighborhood that is overly decorated.  I know that filmy lingerie can look awesome if I can find someway to illuminate myself from within.  And I know that new technologies, like holiday decorations, can be used to enhance, under-whelm, or over-whelm content.  To underline an intended message or obliterate it. 

Given a choice of a slender band of evergreen or a marabou border, choose the evergreen. You can always add feathers later.

Happy Holidays.

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