Museum Graphics

In the last decade museums have added big business and popular entertainment to their traditional role of patient scholarship. As their purpose has been redefined, their importance and prestige have been enhanced. Museum Graphics reveals how they and other arts organizations - festivals, temporary exhibitions, galleries - have fostered this trend by commissioning graphic designers to establish clear, compelling visual identities which communicate effectively with their various publics.
An essential tool for professional graphic artists, this volume is also extremely valuable for curators and staff of galleries and museums, and for local and civic authorities. In addition, it offers an intriguing insight into the disparate characters and aims of many of the foremost bodies in this unique sphere, where high culture meets the marketplace.
Museum Graphics contains fifty-nine projects from ten countries, carefully selected by Margo Rouard-Snowman, the eminent curator and graphic artist, to represent the most outstanding achievements of the past decade. They are drawn from diverse institutions: the Design Museum, London; the Louvre, Paris; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; ARTEC, Nagoya; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. All aspects are covered: the creation and application of logos; exterior and interior sign systems; posters and banners; stationery, brochures, leaflets, promotional material and merchandise. The result is an exciting anthology of eye-catching images, from the austerely classical to the fiercely contemporary.
A full introduction details topics such as the growing numbers of museums; the mushrooming audience for museums and exhibitions; user-friendly techniques of presentation; the history of graphics; and the stages in creating a visual identity. Valuable information sections, including designers' biographies and addresses, complete the book.

Today's art museums not only patronize and collect art; their innovative promotional graphic design generates a significant art of its own. This book surveys how some of the world's great museums (e.g., the Louvre, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, New York City's Museum of Modern Art) employ logo designs and exhibit promotions in many forms (shopping bags, stationery, stamps, tickets, posters, even T-shirts). Museum entries are only brief, the print is small, and the prose is unexciting. However, the illustrations are quite attractive, and the biographies of prominent designers are useful. As a roundup of current design trends, this can be recommended for museums and large graphic design collections.
- Stephen Rees, Bucks Cty. Free Lib., Levittown, Pa.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.