Robert P. Taylor's Musicians: Reflections of Music Making

Concurrent exhibiting of the same image in Musicians

The simultaneous exhibits into which Musicians is organized were suggested by a variety of ideas. Some are simple and some complex. Some are self contained and some overlap others. Some spring directly from the fact that the images are all of musicians, some have little or nothing to do with the musical nature of the site. The brief comments here elaborate some of these ideas slightly for two reasons: (1) to assist those interested in better understanding one or more of these concepts and their applicaton in organizing a particular exhibit, and (2) to make clear how considerably the resulting exhibits naturally overlap with each other, and why the site makes extensive use of the web's digital technology base, offering more than 40 concurrent, virtually simultaneous exhibits for the same set of drawings.

The eleven exhibits by musical role, the sixteen by concert or event, and the single exhibit of drawings executed upon musical scores, all sprang directly from the musical substance of the drawings. The idea behind exhibits by year has nothing to do with music - six years passed and many drawings were done, too many to display in one chronological mass, so they were divided into years. Other schemes reflect two factors of a very different sort, factors that together helped to determine who was drawn, how often, under what conditions, on what paper, and so on. They were: (1) my own musical interactions with the musicians involved and (2) serendipty. Both, for example, played a part in creating the exhibit of those drawn thrice or more. And serendipty was also a factor in defining whole exhibits themselves, exhibits like (1) drawings upon scores and (2) drawings upon programs and bulletins.

The net effect of appreciating the many overlapping exhibits these and other factors suggested, though, was to underscore the potential value of organizing the site around concurrent exhibits that could display the same drawing in many different installations, each with a different focus, each thus potenitally able to trigger different understandings of the same image.