The run up to 6 week countdown

Why Stay Silent? Is all about personal stories about acts of remembrance, which meant my starting point for the exhibition was finding those stories. I started by brainstorming with my colleagues in the curatorial department to identify around 30 people who had stories covering all different aspects of remembrance and memorials.

With the people identified, I then had to research the topic, which meant contacting either the featured people or their relatives, going through our archival material and watching documentaries where our featured people had been interviewed.  This gave me a pretty good idea of how the exhibition content would work together.

When we create temporary exhibitions, one of the curatorial staff members project manages it, but they are a team effort. It requires all the curatorial staff to look through their areas of the collections; photographs, paintings, archives and artefacts. We meet with the marketing department to discuss how and where the exhibition will be marketed. We also meet with the estates department to discuss the removal of the old exhibition and installation of the new one. We let them know then too if we have any special requirements for the new exhibition, like sets built or new painting jobs.