ExhibiTricks: The Museum Exhibit Design Blog: If you live anywhere near the East Coast, you spent last weekend watching the sky. A nor'easter rolled in with heavy rain, gusty winds, and coastal flooding.
Here in New York, everybody's first question before a big storm is some version of: "Is the subway going to flood again?" We've all seen those viral videos of water pouring down station stairs like an indoor Niagara Falls.
3 comments:
The flooding crisis in the New York City's MTA is no joke. I appreciate the comparison the author is attempting to make with the flood-system prevention mechanisms with the problems in museum exhibits. Additionally, I feel that the words Jugaad and Можело hold influence in the argument the author is, poorly in my opinion, making. This entire post's purpose is to highlight how small steps together solve larger issues.
I believe that the article's comparison is stronger than the actual argument. Possibly Sydney wanted an outlet to share the exciting steps the MTA are doing to prevent flooding in the future while also critiquing problems in the museum industry. Additionally, while I agree that these seemingly menial tasks do improve museum infrastructure, I find it difficult to believe that most professionals in this particular industry are unaware of these steps. I absolutely agree that being in the mindset of "What can we do right now, with what we've got" is a smart way to looking at museum improvements.
This is such a great article. I love how it compares storm prep to maintaining an art exhibition. The small fixes that the Metropolitan Transit Authority are making to the subway stations to limit flooding when the next storm comes are a great example of using what you have and being proactive. I especially like the solution of adding benches around grates to act as collars preventing water getting in but also serving the community with some more places to sit. Linking this to exhibits works well because similarly you want to be prepared to maintain the display for a long run and so need to have the tools and plans in place to be able to make minor repairs without having to shut down the exhibit for an extended period of time for maintenance. This also applies to live theatre, when something can go wrong during a performance, we need to have already had measures in place to ensure the safety of everyone involved but we often have to improvise to fix a mishap should anything happen.
As a person who lived in New York for 5 years, honestly the flooding never bothered me. It might also be the fact that I rarely went outside, and the stations I used the most on the R and Q were usually at a higher elevation compared to the ones on the 4 and 5. Whenever it flooded, my stations never seemed to get bothered. I had seen news reports about it, but it was never that serious for my daily subway needs. That said, I do agree with the author’s approach to solving a problem when the bigger issue, the sewer, cannot be fixed. That also reminds me of how, as a TD, we often have to build something that looks like what the designer wants rather than exactly what they drew. The point is to get to the same result with what we actually have. Funny enough, the author mentions two words, Jugaad and Можело. It is pretty fun to learn about those words, though it does feel a little random within the article.
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