DisplayCase

Online from April 2011 to Spring 2022

The 2011 site was created by Heather Anderson and Martha Kroeker

The 2017 site was created by Orvis Starkweather

DisplayCase was an online archive of Museum Studies Capstone Exhibition Projects. Under Cheryl Meszaros, the Program had begun documenting and promoting the graduating student exhibitions with a class poster. DisplayCase was created as an additional resource and archive for the projects.

DisplayCase described its purpose in this way:

Every year, students from the University of Toronto’s Museum Studies Program create exhibition projects as part of their coursework. Typically, students collaborate with a partner institution to create an exhibit on a topic related to art, culture, history, or science. From the planning stage in September, through the exhibit launch in the spring, students gain experience with a variety of tasks such as interpretive planning, installation, project management, budgeting, graphic design, event planning, and promotion. As an alternative to a masters’ thesis, these projects represent an enormous investment of time and critical thought.

 DisplayCase is an online platform which showcases these projects. It is a professional way for students to show their work to employers and colleagues. It acts as a record and allows current and potential students to learn from the previous years.

Below is the History of DisplayCase Orvis Starkweather wrote in 2017.

History of DisplayCase

2010- 2016

During the 2010-2011 academic year the first version of Display Case was realized. It was powered by Omeka and an archive of the original site can be viewed through the Way Back Machine. The first about us page contained information about the history of the project:

In 2010 the founders of Display Case, Heather and Martha, attended a conference at the University of Toronto celebrating the 40th anniversary of Museum Studies in Canada. The keynote speaker at this conference was Robert Janes, author of the book Museums in a Troubled World: Renewal, Irrelevance or Collapse? During his address, Janes discussed a troubling trend he had noticed: Museum professionals were not publishing. The attendees of the conference quickly responded that they had neither the time nor the confidence to publish. In this moment, the idea for Display Case was born.

Heather and Martha recognized the issues raised by Janes, and the concerns raised by museum professionals, in the course of their own studies. The exhibition course, despite being one of most anticipated aspects in the program, has minimal material on record to prepare students for the road ahead. It is hard to anticipate the amount of work and level of professionalism required of the exhibitions if you are not exposed to the projects of previous years…

So here’s where Display Case comes in: Designed by Museum Studies students (Martha and Heather) for Museum Studies students (you), Display Case is a University of Toronto, Faculty of Information website for publishing exhibition project case studies. Display Case is designed to help students to write, publish, and access concise 750 word case studies that quickly and confidently outline the process of exhibition development. The website also provides the platform to get in contact with alumni of the program who can help answer your questions and concerns. 

Display Case is only one solution, but we hope that through our case studies, the next generation of students (you!) will know what to expect, where to start, and who to ask when embarking on your own exhibition projects. We hope that Display Case inspires you start thinking about your project early, and gives you an idea of all the options open to you. 

Welcome to Display Case!

Heather and Martha

2017-present

Heather and Martha had been disappointed that some of the website functions never worked as they had envisioned them. They had wanted a carousel of images on the desktop to pull random entries. The results, however, were static and never changed. Additionally, they had wanted it to be easy to navigate through the items based on the year. Not all the entries would populate these screens and there were some entries that could only be reached by navigating through the “previous” and “next” buttons. Because the platform was built on Omeka, it used Dublin Core metadata fields which only roughly met our needs. The comments sections had become filled with Spam.  In 2015, it became impossible to update the website with new content because there was no space on the server. 

These shortcomings resulted in Matt Brower approaching Orvis Starkweather to update and rethink the website. Hillary Walker Gugin was brought on to assist with the project in her capacity as a TA. As a team, we formalized the goals that DisplayCase would act as an archive of past exhibition projects and as a platform for students to show off their work to employers. Heather and Martha had envisioned that the site would accept submissions from any museum professional, but the site was never used for this purpose. As such this shift resulted in the alignment of goals and practice. 

It turns out that the version of Omeka used by the website was so old that it was impossible to bring it up to the current version. We explored several options for moving forward including a new version of Omeka, migrating to Squarespace, or migrating to WordPress. We chose WordPress because we were able to get managed hosting, which would install updates automatically, because of the flexibility the platform afforded, and because it would display the content in an aesthetically pleasing manner. 

Using Omeka allowed for changes in how the content was organized. The new version of the website maintained being able to sort entries by year, but also added the ability to sort by partner, location, format, and type. The location option includes a map with markers for each project. A search function was added and 3 related projects are pulled for each entry to allow users to organically explore the content. The carousel on the home screen now pulls random projects to give users some entryways into the content. The comments section was eliminated and users are now able to easily share content over Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. The “Sign Up” form was preserved but under a new name, “Contact”. This allows users to interact with the course instructor on a wider set of topics. The new website is responsive to allow users to interact with the content on any screen size.

To achieve these results, we purchased managed hosting, a wordpress theme, and a map plugin. The managed hosting is with SiteGround, the WordPress theme is “Bridge” by Qode, and the map plugin is WP Maps. The WordPress theme included the plugins “JetPack” and “Visual Composer” as part of the purchased bundle. 

To supplement this new website, Orvis created a new file architecture and naming conventions. An excel sheet is used to manage the content in one convenient location. To improve search results the tags were standardized and refined. All entries were edited with an eye to grammar and spelling. Missing text and images were identified.

2022: The Closing of DisplayCase

When I left Museum Studies in the Summer of 2021, I transferred responsibility for maintenance and upkeep of the site to the Museum Studies Program. The site had been hosted separately as the Faculty’s main site could not incorporate subsites.

In academic year 2021-22, one of the project links led to a porn site. In investigating the problem, the Faculty identified significant problems with the stability/security of the site last year and had to disable it. When I was notified about the issue, the hosting site contract had not been renewed and the underlying content was gone.

I would like to thank Heather and Martha for their original vision for the project and Orvis for their update to the site.