In Spring 2025, executive director of The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life Hannah Weisman led an intensive weekend Art of Writing undergraduate workshop on writing for museums. Melina Kritikopoulous participated in the “150 Words or Less” workshop, and produced this birding exhibit slideshow during that weekend.
In keeping with the Art of Writing ethos of writing as a teachable art, Melina reflects here on how she would approach reworking her piece in the next draft.
I worked on creating a museum exhibit all about birds and birding for a science center. I am happy with how it turned out, and I really appreciate Hannah’s guidance in the process of writing these museum labels. Given more time, I might spend longer parsing through each word in my label– although they fit the “150 words or less” limit, I would love to spend more time tweaking each word so it provides the right voice and information for each piece. I would also want to work on bringing in more object description. An example of that is the duck decoys: perhaps I could explain what/why the materials used were important to their construction.
— Melina Kritikopoulous