FRAME!
)FRAME! is a self-directed identity for the MFA built on one idea, that framing is the single thing every object in the museum shares, across culture, era, and medium. The guide walks you through seven works and names the kind of framing each one is doing, so the thing you usually look through becomes the thing you look at.
- Year
- 2023
- Role
- Concept, identity, editorial
- Scope
- Speculative museum identity, visitor guide, poster
- Location
- MFA Boston
I picked the pieces because they had nothing to do with each other. An Egyptian door, a Chinese Guanyin, a Chihuly, a Copley portrait. The plan was to find a line of logic running through them, the way museums usually do it, by culture or period or some shared theme. I spent most of the early work trying to make those links hold. They never really did. The two I started with were so far apart that the only way to connect them was to invent a reason, and the reasons got longer and more strained the more I wrote.
At some point I admitted the obvious. I was forcing it. A door from one century and a painting from another do not belong together because I can write my way there, and the more convoluted my path got, the more I was leaning on the text to do a job the objects could not. That was hard to drop, because the complicated version felt smarter. Letting it go meant accepting that the whole idea of linking them by theme was the problem.
What was left when I stopped was sitting in plain view. Every object I had chosen was framed, each one differently. The Egyptian door is frames inside frames. The Guanyin lives in a carved protective case. The Chihuly is held by the room and the cafe around it. The Copley uses a dark background to push you toward the figure. I had been hunting for a connection and the objects already shared one. I just had not been looking at the part of them I usually look past.
So the project became about that. I went piece by piece and named the kind of framing each one was doing, layered, protective, environmental, positive space, idea, pattern, photographic. Once they were laid out the bigger thing showed up, that the museum is nothing but frames stacked on frames. The border, then the case, then the gallery, then the building, then the institution. You are trained to see through all of it to get to the art. FRAME! tries to make you stop and look at the frame instead.
The identity had to do this without a caption. I cut the frame down to a few deconstructed panels, kept that the same everywhere, and let color be the one thing that moved. Same structure, different content, over and over. That is the museum logic again, one way of framing holding a thousand different things. I built the panel system before I could explain it. The why came later.
A few things I am not going to pretend about. This is speculative. The MFA has a real identity with a long history and FRAME! would never replace it, and I never built it to. It came out of an idea I had been sitting on for a while, and the museum was somewhere to try it. The visitor guide is the weakest part. The framing categories are sharp. The writing around them mostly is not. The part I still stand behind is the decision in the middle, when I stopped manufacturing a connection and used the one that was already there.
The name
I named it for the lens rather than the museum. FRAME! is the instruction. The exclamation mark turns the word from a label into a prompt, the way a sign tells you to do something. I wanted the title to ask you to notice before you read a single object.
The type and the bar
The type is loud and blunt on purpose. The MFA speaks quietly and classically, so a heavy condensed grotesque in all caps reads like a guest who walked in talking. The thick bar under the title does real work too. It is the first frame you meet on the page, a line drawn under the word for framing.
Sitting on the museum
FRAME! sits on top of the museum's identity rather than standing in for it. I kept the real MFABoston wordmark, ligature and all, and let FRAME! ride above it as a layer. That borrows the institution's authority while making clear this is a way of seeing you could lift off again. The logo at the foot of every page is the museum reminding you it is still the museum.
The panel system
This is the center of the whole thing. I took the idea of a frame and broke it into a few flat panels I could arrange and rearrange. That set stays the same across every page and every object, a frame abstracted down to parts. Keeping the structure fixed is the point. It is the argument made visible, that one way of framing can hold anything.
Color as the only variable
If the panels are the frame, color is what sits inside it. The structure never changes from object to object. The color does, and it is the only thing I let move. An Islamic door and a Chihuly tower get the same panels and a different palette, which is the museum logic made literal, one apparatus of framing holding a thousand different contents. I will be honest that I got here by feel and only worked out why it was right afterward.
The spreads and the taxonomy
Each object gets its own spread, image on one side, the framing it performs on the other, sides alternating as you move through. Every entry carries the same label, the object and then its mode, layered, protective, environmental, positive space, idea, pattern, photographic. Read in order, the labels build the taxonomy without me announcing it. The guide teaches its system by repeating its shape.
The poster
The poster is the system with nothing to wrap around. No object, no spread, just the panels and the color at full size. It is the identity said plainly, the thing the guide demonstrates one object at a time, shown all at once.
The loop back
The last thing on the guide sends you back to the real collection, a prompt to search and find a work in the galleries. After teaching you to look at the frame, it hands you to the museum to go look.
Mind the frame, not the art.