Da Vinci - The Genius Exhibition review

One of the first things you think about when creating an exhibition is, of course, location. From this point this gallery is a great choice, as it is located in downtown, surrounded by many other different galleries and shops, in an area with a good transportation: metro’s, trams, buses and cars all around.
Right after entering the house through the main doors I caught myself admiring the place and the paintings of different artists, which were located just on the walls in the yard. This was the first time I ever been in this gallery-house, and must say it excited with its huge exhibition areas and lightness. 2000 m2 of an underground space and capability of inviting over 700 people into only that area are worth taking advantage of. I think that’s a great location for an event like this, as they had enough space for exhibiting all the works of the genius, and at the same time it wasn’t that huge and long; a visitor can go through all the works within two hours, that’s quite enough. Of course there are people wishing to watch all the videos and read each note, then it will take much more; in this case I must say there was a disadvantage, as they didn’t have seats for people wishing to rest a little bit before going further.

Besides that I’ve noticed that the owner is also aware of the new technology, like for example their security system, a software which keeps track of people entering the gallery, visitors downstairs; this let’s security guards be aware of what is going on, know exactly how many of their crew must be where. As we were informed, there are also trainees especially for the crew, like what to do in case of fire, emergencies, accidents etc. That is very important. And that actually can work as a promotion as well, employers inform their friends about these trainees, and then friends feel protected while visiting the gallery, this can bring more people to the exhibition.

Talking about the exhibition lay-out and media, I can say it was well-done. While entering the exhibition you find yourself in a room with walls covered with paintings and historical notes – quite useful, works well as an introduction. Then the curators probably wanted to get people’s attention by showing them huge and impressive installations built from Da Vinci’s engineering drawings. That makes people think of Leonardo Da Vinci as a genius whose inventions helped the progress and influenced many other inventions and discoveries. Wooden tools coming next were seen as something new for me, as I could touch and try how things work by me myself. That was interactive and interesting for me. Besides installations, wooden tools and pictures there were video tapes, which were made in two languages (English, Hungarian). And of course, all the descriptions and different extra notes were in two languages; that helped to have foreign people attracted as well as local. Notes were easy to read and understand. Though I didn’t really like all the 25 points of Mona Lisa’s secrets, for me they didn’t seem that exciting after reading.

What I’ve noticed, and I’m sure, not only me, it was quite cold downstairs. Air conditioning worked too well, people were freezing and had to go through objects quicker, so they could leave the exhibition sooner. I don’t think that was intended by the organizers.

Touching a little bit of marketing, this exhibition was not that vivid as “The Bodies”, for example. Advertisings are everywhere: in subways, on billboards, in magazines and internet; but for people it just doesn’t seem that expressive and a must-to-go, as bodies. Bodies were shocking and something new. But still, I think, they get good quantity of visitors every day thanks to their advertisings and also good promotion made by clients themselves, as they share their opinions on the exhibition with their friends, relatives and colleagues.

Concerning HR must say they work well. For example, I’ve seen a girl working for the exhibition helping other people to understand an object, in this case that was a mirror box where you could enter and watch your own reflections in different mirrors, but you couldn’t really close the door yourself, so she was helping people to get in. Or another case in the cloak-room, when a worker didn’t know there were two separate coat racks for our group he asked about that his colleague, who proved that; and a man did apologize for his ignorance. But that was ok, as he was operative and polite.

Overall my impression was quite good, as I felt the effort the organizers put into this exhibition: managers, curators, technicians and crew. It was well-done, though there were some mistakes, as I think, like lack of seats, inappropriate air conditioning, and even wrong use of light. Sometimes lighting was not good enough, I was losing some details of the pictures because of lights in a picture, the organizers didn’t use special light for this exhibition, and they just used a usual one taken from the gallery. But in my opinion, that was a mistake.