f Charles and Ray Eameses’ museums without walls: Films as exhibition and exhibitions as film

This article outlines the intersections between the exhibition and film work of Charles and Ray Eames and the Eames Office, and explores the ways in which film was used to create exhibition environments and vice versa. The Eameses’ desire to transmit ideas to the broadest public generated a concept of the ‘museum without walls’ that found its ultimate expression in the creation of large-scale multi-media and multi-sensory exhibition environments. Their influential practice pioneered new methods of immersive exhibition design, experimented with the use of film as inhabitable exhibit and also as a tool to capture and display cultural subjects and artefacts typically experienced in museum settings. Considering the Eameses’ projects afresh allows us to assess their role in shaping the expansive possibilities of film and the exhibition environment and the challenges of communicating ideas that continue to face museum professionals today.