Yale School of Art
Exhibition Design
GD 762b
Spring 2020


« Every writer has only one story to tell, and he has to find a way of telling it until the meaning becomes clearer and clearer, until the story becomes at once more narrow and larger, more and more precise, more and more reverberating. » —James Baldwin



To my students:


While the future promises us only uncertainty which makes us feel uprooted and disoriented, perhaps we could try fully surrendering to the uncertainty and actively embracing the unknowable. Then we can shift our focus back to what is graspable, what we can control. We can solidify what we already have, recalibrate and redefine our frame of orientation, and plant a seed for eventual efflorescence.


So here is what we will do.


This last assignment is to acknowledge, celebrate, and preserve all the work you have done together in the exhibition design class this semester and to encourage to still explore and apply your own thesis pressed against the exhibition class’ collective thesis. And more importantly, this is how we look toward our uncertain future from a ground that would be made solid by you, and maybe even appreciate the spaciousness of the uncertainty.


Each person will leave something behind—for your show that will happen at some point in the future. It is a note, a brief, a proposal, a set of instructions, a script, a blueprint, a schema, a statement, or any combination of these... in other words, any form of embodiment of your idea, which will be translated into a physical show in the future. There are some conditions to this (I’ll simply call this “document” from here on):



  • Suppose somebody else who was not part of the process will execute your idea, solely relying on this document.
  • Suppose your document is the only document based on which the show will be realized. Meaning, each document is not a part of a bigger whole. It is one version of the potential reality. Each version should be complete within its own world.
  • It should be grounded in the ideas that you have collectively developed, but doesn’t have to be limited to only what has been discussed and agreed upon. What that collective idea is, is really up to your own interpretation. Re-examine the idea if necessary. You are the conceiver and author of this reality.
  • It can be as general or specific, as literal or poetic, as comprehensive or selective as you see fit. Your focus can be on defining ideas, sensory qualities, or it can even include specific designs for any parts of the show. It can also be very practical (i.e. the perfect ratio of the reflective paint to water) if you think that’s crucial and meaningful.
  • It can take any forms (text, image, moving image, sound... or any other medium). However, how you articulate and externalize the idea should reflect your own interest, thesis, and methodology. This document is your work on every level. It just needs to be in a transmittable form.
  • What is important to remember is that you are handing something concrete and finite over to someone else, in order to ensure what is important to you about the show gets heard, considered, and manifested without your presence and direct participation. The document itself is your own expression, but made with profound consideration of the receiver of your document, who is also the realizer of your idea. Knowing it will be decoded with some level of inevitable subjectivity, what will you provide, and how? Thus this is an exercise in speculation, but moreover, an exercise in empathy.
  • The document must include your own title of the show.

You know, this show was always going to be about immateriality, or rather, dematerialization of work, and documentation and circulation of ideas, one way or another. Think about it.


We will do quick individual check-ins on April 23 during our usual class time. Your final document should be submitted to yeju.choi@yale.edu by May 6. We will have one final class meeting during the week of May 11 (we should talk about what day would be good for everyone) when you see everyone’s document and give comments—before we put everything in a box(or, a folder), and away, for now.



« Talk of unstructured content or an unconceptualized given or a substratum without properties is self-defeating; for the talk imposes structure, conceptualizes, ascribes properties. Although conception without perception is merely empty, perception without conception is blind (totally inoperative). Predicates, pictures, other labels, schemata, survive want of application, but content vanishes without form. We can have words without a world but no world without words or other symbols. » —Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking

and again,

« Every writer has only one story to tell, and he has to find a way of telling it until the meaning becomes clearer and clearer, until the story becomes at once more narrow and larger, more and more precise, more and more reverberating. » —James Baldwin



April 12, 2020
YC