Otto Marek
Museum label writer, object caption editor, and reluctant defender of the 72-word wall text. I help small museums, galleries, and private collections say enough without saying everything.
Experience
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2019–now
Independent label writer and exhibition editor
Görlitz, for museums on both banks of the Neisse
Works in German, Polish, and English, often all three in one label meeting. Commissions tend to arrive from one side of the river and get argued over in a café on the other, which is the fastest way to learn how much a caption can lose in translation and still mean the same thing.
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2014–2019
Interpretation editor
Lindner Collection of Applied Arts, Dresden
Rewrote 1,100 object captions for the permanent galleries, then wrote the house style guide so nobody would have to do it again.
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2012–2014
Collections assistant
Lindner Collection of Applied Arts, Dresden
Catalogued the metalwork stores, which is where the spoon comes from.
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2009–2011
MA in museum studies
Frankfurt (Oder), with lunch across the bridge in Słubice
Thesis: Please Do Not Touch, a short history of the sign visitors touch most.
Projects
Work that lives outside the gallery walls: walking guides, house style sheets, and the material behind the label clinics.
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Bridges of Zgorzelec
2026 · Bilingual walking guide, Polish and German on one signboard
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House Style for Small Collections
2025 · Label style guide for a network of nine regional museums
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Fifty Words at Standing Height
2024 · Workbook for the two-hour label clinics
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Reading Time at the Vitrine
2023 · Visitor study with a university museum course, 312 observations
Notes on Short Text
Small essays about labels, captions, room panels, and the useful pressure of writing for people who are already standing up.
References
What colleagues say once the labels are on the wall.
Otto cut our wall text by a third, and visitors started reading it. Nobody on the curatorial team could say what was missing, which is the whole trick.
Marta Kowalczyk
Head of Interpretation, Lusatian Regional Museum
He argues for every word and then gives half of them back. Our donors have never been happier with their credit lines, or more puzzled about how it happened.
Jonas Weber
Director, Haus am Fluss
The most useful label clinic our team has sat through. We left with fewer words and more to say.
Ines Duarte
Collections Manager
Exhibitions
Shows Otto wrote or edited the text for, listed by opening year.
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2026
Small Hours: Clocks from Private Collections
Object captions and room panels, 64 labels
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2025
Lantern, Hook, Spoon: Everyday Metal 1700–1900
Full exhibition text, 140 labels
Every label kept to the house word limits, apart from the donor credit lines. Those were negotiated separately, over three meetings and one very long lunch, and the spoon still lost.
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2023
Glass Under Pressure
German and Polish labels for a show split across the river, so every word count was argued twice
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2022
The Donor's Cabinet
Wall text and credit lines, which took longer
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2020
Paper Rooms
Room panels and audio-guide script
Tools
What sits on the desk between the object file and the printed label.
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iA Writer
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Hemingway Editor
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Merriam-Webster
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Zotero
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Getty Vocabularies
- Collection database
- 2B pencil
- Tape measure
- Loupe
- Test prints at 1:1
- A second proofreader
Selected Links
What Otto is up to, and two guides worth keeping open while writing labels.