Description of the assignment: Your task is to plan an international, possibly BLOCKBUSTER exhibition with rooms/displays that will explain to the non-specialist public the major essential characteristics of the cities and sites destroyed by Vesuvius.
Your budget for the show and all the material used to mount it is LIMITLESS – spend whatever you need. Use as much realia, “real stuff” (physical evidence and artifacts), as you can to tell the stories of the places we will have worked in the course of the seminar.
Your responsibilities are to choose the material and design the display for sections 1 and 2 (Destruction, Discovery, and Exploration; City Layout and Main Public Spaces and Buildings [incl. Temples]) and sections 3 and 4 (Daily Life—anything from Eating to Entertainment; Death and Remembrance) For each section you work on, you should first list the pieces and material you’ll use
. Then write a substantial paragraph (or two short paragraphs) on how you will display your materials, why you have selected the works, what they say about the topic, and how they “fit together,” conceptually and physically, in the show.
You should repeat this pattern for all four sections, and end the take-home with a concluding paragraph that sums up your main aims and points. In addition to ancient objects like works of painting and sculpture, inscriptions, jewelry, household items, or whatever, please feel free to use plans, sketches, models, interactive audio-visual displays, animations, or any other visual aids that come to mind.
