Techniques for Collaborative Label Writing and Assessment at the Art Institute of Chicago 

By Ginia Shubik Sweeney

The Art Institute of Chicago’s mission statement features a line that I ponder frequently. It states, “We recognize that all art is made in a particular context, demanding continual, dynamic reconsideration in the present.” This line lies at the root of the interpretation team’s work on artwork labels and other writing that accompanies the Art Institute’s permanent collection in the galleries. Our work is centered on continual improvement, reflection, and change, anchored by the works of art we are privileged to steward into the future. The stories we tell about these artworks must shift from year to year in order to account for new research, changing gallery context, new perspectives, and more inclusive narratives.

At a museum the scale of the Art Institute—our collection includes over 300,000 objects—this mandate for constant reflection and change presents a challenge. While balancing collection rotations with an ambitious special exhibition schedule, how can we make time for the necessary reflection and re-evaluation? This article will discuss techniques that my team has implemented in order to select and prioritize labels that need revision and increase the interpretation team’s collaboration with our curatorial colleagues. 

Collection Label Assessment

Across the Art Institute’s vast galleries, labels of various vintages share wall space. Staff from our curatorial, interpretation, and editorial departments review every label before it is printed, meaning that works that rotate frequently have their text reread and revised as a matter of course. Labels accompanying works that are installed on a more long term basis, however, may stay in place for years. In 2019, interpretation created our label assessment framework as a systematic and consistent method to evaluate installed labels across the galleries. 

The label assessment was established as an interpretation-led initiative. One collection area at a time, we read all artwork labels on view and evaluated them using a checklist. The checklist asks questions broken into a few key categories: the label content, writing style, placement, and appearance. For example, the checklist asks: 

• Does the label make assertions without reference to visible details in the work of art?
• Does the label include more than 1–2 main ideas or lack any main ideas?
• Does the label replicate a biased viewpoint rather than historicize the context of that viewpoint relative to the work of art?
• Does the label employ passive voice excessively?
• Is it difficult to locate the label and relate it to the object?

Using our findings from this checklist, we recommended labels for revision to our curatorial colleagues; in some cases, we felt labels needed immediate revision, and in other cases, we flagged labels that needed minor adjustments and could be folded into future rotations. We also invited curators to assess their own galleries using the same checklist. 

The label assessment remains an ongoing project. In the years since its implementation, it has led to revised labels that better anticipate and address questions visitors may have about works of art, created increased consistency in tone and style across the institution, and introduced more inclusive, pluralistic narratives about certain objects. 

Staff Writing Workshops

Interpretation began offering a series of gallery writing workshops as another strategy to increase collaboration and consistency in label writing. Amy Peltz, then a senior editor in the publishing department, and I created the workshop slide deck and script together, hoping to teach the key principles of our institutional interpretive guidelines in a fun and interactive environment. We also wanted to share key learnings gleaned from visitor research and provide insight into the processes of interpretation and editorial review of manuscript. This workshop is now offered both in-person and virtually several times a year, led by various staff from interpretation and editorial. Although the workshop was designed for staff who contribute research and writing to the galleries, we invite all staff to attend. Participants from philanthropy, marketing and communications, and other far-flung departments have reportedly found it a useful and relevant lens onto the work that goes into creating visitor-centered, welcoming text. 

Near the beginning of the writing workshop, we invite participants to articulate key differences between catalogue essays and gallery text. Addressing this first through the perspective of a reader, we share an image of a woman sitting comfortably in a chair, in a presumably quiet environment, with a book on her lap. This is juxtaposed with a photograph of a crowd standing in front of one of the Art Institute’s most iconic works, Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884. 

The visuals offer a useful reminder that, although we write at our desks, our visitors read while moving through the galleries, surrounded by noise and distractions. Later in the workshop, during a discussion of audience research at the Art Institute and elsewhere, we delve into key findings about our visitors and their implications for public-facing writing:

Through aligning learnings about visitor behavior with writing tips, we provide evidence to support our interpretation guidelines. The workshop ends with an opportunity for participants to practice their gallery writing and offer each other constructive feedback. 

Writing Resources 

While at work on the initial content for the gallery writing workshop, Amy, our former senior editor, and I decided to create short, informative guides for colleagues tasked with drafting or revising labels. Unlike our lengthy interpretation guidelines or style guide, we imagined these might be pinned to a bulletin board for quick reference while writing. 

The first such document is our label writing checklist. (As a fan of Atul Gawande, I’m clearly partial to the checklist as a format.) It lists a series of questions for the writer to ask themselves both before and after writing a label. These questions are often the same ones that an interpreter conducting a developmental review of a label might ask: what is the main point of this label and where in the label is it located? What visible features in the work connect to this idea? Does the work employ jargon? Long sentences? Does it inadvertently enforce bias? 
The second document, which we call Words that Work, is aimed at reducing the incidence of words used too frequently or are inappropriate for gallery labels. It identifies and suggests alternatives for vague or subjective descriptors like “innovative” or “interesting,” jargon like “bravura” or “oeuvre,” and terms that imply a specific perspective like “famous” or “important.”

Office Hours

I have often found that the most effective mode of collaborating with curators and editors is live editing. Meeting, reading the text aloud, talking through our questions or concerns, and seeking solutions together is, in many cases, the fastest way to an excellent final product. With this in mind, I created interpretation office hours, a designated time each week when an interpretation staff member is at their desk and available to workshop in-progress writing. Our most frequent visitors during office hours are curatorial fellows and interns, who are often charged with writing object labels or content for our website. These hours provide a wonderful opportunity for interpretation staff to mentor early career museum professionals and to shape public-facing text from an early point in its development.

Conclusion

The four strategies I’ve described—our label assessment, writing workshops, writing resources, and office hours—provide venues for interpretation staff to collaborate with our colleagues as well as for us to share our expertise as specialists in visitor learning. Above all, they reinforce the principle that the Art Institute is a place for reflection, learning, and change.