>I don't know.  Sounds like high art, to me.  The current Carnegie
>International
>Art Exhibition (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh  PA) has something just
>like this.  It is a suit of clothes standing upright, with a flattish white
>thing (looks rather like a sofa pillow) where the face should be.  Projected
>onto the pillow is a human face, talking.  I haven't stopped to listen to
>what
>it says, but it sure sounds a lot like the mannekins answering canned
>questions.  The CI is supposed to be a prestigious show (as a biologist, I
>can't claim to know), so I guess talking mannekins must be "in".


For me and my purposes the interesting part of of your response is that
you  claim to have never stopped to listen to the manekin.  nother
respondent claimed that when you use manekins you run the risk making the
figure the object of attention, and not the information.  And in that way
you undermine your own purposes.  You seem to imply the same thing.  If
we were to include talking manekins as part of our interpretation, and an
obviously  well educated and interested museum goer were to claim to have
never stopped to listen to the manekin, we would consider ourselves
failures.   As a history museum we care most about what the manekin has
to say.  The message is the end and the manekin the means. Were this a
work of art we would care more about the manekin as an end in itself and
how it is displayed.   Please correct me if you feel my interpretation of
your response is incorrect.  I care deeply about your, and everyone
else's, thoughts on this subject.

Thank you for your response.

Matthew A. White
Director of Education
Baltimore Museum of Industry
1415 Key Highway
Baltimore, MD 21230
(410)727-4808
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