Reading Between the Lines
Reading Between the Lines
a museum about New Harmony, Indiana, one of America's first socialist experiments. everything on the walls is true. a UV flashlight shows graffiti about what the museum left out.
the installation · May 2024
misinformation isn't always a lie. institutions shape what we believe through what they choose to show, and a museum's voice is hard to question.
i researched New Harmony and built a whole museum about it alone: wall text, portraits, a documentary, audio, and brochures. then i added a second layer of graffiti, invisible until you shine UV light on it.
visitors walked in trusting the museum and, flashlight in hand, started questioning it. i added new graffiti during the run, so the critique kept growing.
This exhibit completely changed how I'll approach museum information in the future. I never realized how much power lies in what institutions choose NOT to show us.a visitor
every signal of a real museum
i studied museum conventions, from type and wall text to framed portraits and narration, and copied what makes them feel authoritative.
graffiti under UV light
i wrote the graffiti by hand, straight onto the museum: on the portraits, next to the documentary, across the wall text.
it points at omissions and framing and never invents facts. a project about misinformation couldn't make its own.
the brochure explains it
a tourist-style brochure at the door explains the project and points to media-literacy resources.
the museum's film
the documentary from the installation, with its authoritative narration.
omission shapes what people believe more than outright lies do, because every fact on the wall still holds up.
visitors took the museum at its word at first. i had earned that trust with the same things real museums use: the type, the framed portraits, the narration. having to search for the graffiti with a flashlight is what got people reading closely.
it also raised a question about my own role. an exhibition about misleading exhibitions can mislead too, so the brochure at the exit matters as much as the graffiti. it explains the project and points to media-literacy resources, so nobody leaves with the wrong idea.