Being put on exhibit is one possibility for the afterlife for the scenic model. Earlier I mentioned such an exhibition—the 2019 United Kingdom’s National Theatre exhibition “Playing with Scale: How Designers Use Set Models”—but this exhibit highlighted the very thing I want most to avoid: the scenic model’s role as a tool for production. Other exhibitions that include scenic models tend to spotlight the name of the scenic designer; in these retrospective exhibits, the designer’s ‘stardom’ appears to have more value than the art itself. For instance, in 2018 the Franklin Stage Company in Franklin, NY mounted an exhibition of the work of scenic designer Marjorie Bradley Kellogg. It ran in conjunction with their production of John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play Doubt, a Parable for which Ms. Kellogg designed the set, and the exhibit was presented adjacent to the theater where the play was being performed. The small company was excited (and rightly so) to tout their association with Ms. Kellogg, a noted scenic designer whose work has appeared on Broadway, in regional theatre, and internationally. Note how the title of the exhibition, Franklin Stage Company Presents Marjorie Kellogg: Drawings and Maquettes, places the name of the theater company in close proximity to the name of the artist. In an article that appeared in BroadwayWorld on July 30, 2018, Patricia Buckley, Co-Artistic Director of Franklin Stage Company proudly stated:
To have a set designer of Marjorie Kellogg’s caliber right here in Delaware County is such a gift. When she graciously agreed to design the set for Doubt, we thought it would be an excellent opportunity to present an exhibit of her models and drawings to run in tandem with the play (BWW News Desk).
Thus, associating themselves in this way with this brilliant designer, served to improve the cache of the producing theatre company. In this instance, Ms. Kellogg’s name was the thing, not her scenic models.
Similarly, the schools of drama and architecture at Yale University staged a retrospective exhibition of the work of Kellogg’s mentor, scenic designer Ming Cho Lee, in 2005 entitled Stage Designs by Ming Cho Lee. Known anecdotally as the “Dean of American Set Design”, Lee had been an acclaimed member of the Yale faculty for more than four decades and arguably, this exhibition was more a celebration of Lee’s association with Yale University than it was a celebration of his art. In both the cases of Lee and Kellogg, reverence for the artist/star is what defined the exhibition and reverence serves to humble the spectator, stifling the impulse for imagination and performance.
Exhibiting the Scenic Model as an Instructional Tool
Exhibits that put the name of the designer first, do, however, speak to the legacy of the artist, and Lee has a significant one. Understanding the legacy of scenic design is important as a way for future scenic designers to put themselves in context with the past. Michael Yeargan, Lee’s former student and current co-chairman of the Yale School of Drama’s design department noted, that when he was honored at the 2005 Tony Awards, five of the six Tony nominees for Design had studied with Lee. In a video interview for the Yale News, theatre historian and scenographer Arnold Aronson opined that, since “theatre disappears”, a younger generation of designers may not know the work of Ming Cho Lee. He stated:
What is now common vocabulary of the American Theatre started in many cases with things that Ming Cho Lee did and it’s important to know where this work came from and to understand, I think, what a great artist he is. [The Lee exhibit allows young designers] to actually see the design of work that was done 50 years ago and to understand why this was revolutionary when it was done; why things that [we] now think are old-fashioned were new at one time, and they were new in many cases because Ming Cho Lee did them first …” (McDonald).
Aronson believes, and I agree, that scenic models can serve as extant artifacts of design careers that continue to instruct and inspire generations of designers yet to come. But in the case of the Lee exhibit, Lee’s models, the extant artifacts of his design career, were displayed inside of glass boxes. A story produced by Connecticut Public Radio explains:
With over 100 works in the collection, the exhibition . . . is a three-dimensional textbook on craft, and each glass case protects a precious piece of Lee’s imagination and evolving creativity (Wierzbicki).
While I understand the move to protect the models from damage, displaying them under glass prompts the spectator to admire them at a distance. Although we can still project our imaginations into them, we can no longer touch them or hold them in our hands.
Conversely, set designer Boris Aronson’s model for the original 1971 Broadway production of James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, was once displayed out in the open in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, serving as a vital artifact for future generations of theater-makers to examine and touch. In my youth, I’d visit it often to study first-hand Aronson’s model-building techniques and the way he composed space. Because the extant model was made available to touch, it presented me with the rare opportunity to connect with this great artist one on one—to touch the Follies model was to touch the hand of Boris Aronson. Gazing into it I’d see Director Harold Prince, Choreographer Michael Bennett, and Composer and Lyricist Stephen Sondheim, blocking scenes, devising dance numbers, and writing songs. They all performed inside of the model in miniature and it remained a container for their creativity. And what of all of those now-invisible-craftspeople in the scene shops and the paint shops who worked from the model? In the process of being handled, the model was physically-forever-changed by their great hands. Bearing the smudges of their fingerprints the model gives testimony to their existence. This model, too, has since been placed under glass. Spectators can no longer get to know it, as I did, in a way that is physically sensual.
Discarding the Model
Only a few, very lucky scenic models get to live out their afterlife under glass in an exhibition. While occasionally a designer’s favorite model might be preserved for posterity, usually, they are scavenged for small, individual elements that are time-consuming to build, like staircases and furniture. What is left is retired to the model graveyard—piles of forlorn models discarded on dusty shelves in theater production offices, or under tables in the studios of set designers, or, in my case, packed into the corner of my garage. These are the remains of what we cannot bear to throw away—stacks of miniature, hand-made works of art left in ruin. This is a terrible fate, but more often than not, the scenic model will not be saved at all. A typical theatre company might produce five or six shows in a season, each requiring a model. As a set designer, I might generate an average of twenty models in a calendar year for various companies. They accumulate at an alarming rate. Few theaters, and few designers, can spare the room required to store their models, so they are regularly thrown away.
In its afterlife is the model just trash, or spare parts for future models? No. On the stage our work exists only briefly and then it is gone, leaving little footprint of itself; this is the bittersweet, ephemeral nature of theater. But the model needn’t meet the same fate. It can continue to take on new meaning and purpose in its afterlife—by making it available for play.
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