I think the only good plant in an exhibition is a fake plant (checked
thoroughly for airborne CFC's, of course!).  For historic houses I can
see the desirability of having GOOD fake plants in an exhibition design,
but for art museums I think plants are unnecessary, design-wise.

BUT...re food in exhibition spaces...aside from rentals (which should
never allow food in exhibition areas although it happens more often than
anyone will admit, including at my institution), sometimes it can't be
helped.  Dealing with contemporary artists as I do, I have had
exhibitions that incorporated actual foodstuffs (and water in bags...)
as part of the artwork.  This past year we hosted an exhibition that
entailed spreading 1 ton of cornmeal on the floor.  It had to be real,
because the smell of it was important to the piece.  I worried that it
would attract bugs and mice, so I scheduled it for winter when these
critters were likely to be dormant.  Since we got the cornmeal donated
from a major ag supplier known for clean factories and since it was very
freshly ground before it was taken to us, I didn't think we needed to
have it sterilized, although I considered asking them to flash-heat it.
We discussed having it treated with something to kill any beasties that
tried to eat it, but then we figured we'd just have to clean up dead
beasties so in the end we just put down the cornmeal and crossed our
fingers for 6 weeks.  In retrospect we were very, very lucky that we
didn't seem to get any unwanted activity, but I will think twice (or
three or four times) before we do it again.

I wonder how museums that exhibit Jana Stirbak's meat dresses or Damien
Hirsh's severed cow parts, or Ann Hamilton's installations, reconcile
the bug issue.  One Ann Hamilton installation had live canaries flying
around in the gallery--I'd hate to be on cleanup for that one.

Julia Moore
Indianapolis Art Center




>  What do you (and
> > others) think of the practice of staff designers introducing plants into
> > exhibition spaces as decor?

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