Profile
Eleanor Mills talks to Sonia Solicari, the director of the Geffrye Museum of the Home, about how sweet her new home really is
“Sometimes I just hanker to be sat in a room cataloguing objects,” says Sonia Solicari, the director of the Geffrye Museum of the Home in London. “Part of me still itches to do that, but I’m actually very happy to be directing programmes now.”
Solicari, who began her role in January this year, started her museum career in cataloguing as an assistant curator (paintings) at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). She joined the South Kensington institution in 2002 as part of its Assistant Curator Development Programme.
“It was a really interesting moment when I joined the V&A,” Solicari says. “A lot of the galleries still had their old fusty, dusty labels that hadn’t been changed since the Edwardian period – I witnessed that old order slipping away. The V&A was undergoing a culture change programme at the time, so in the eight years I was there I saw it absolutely transform as an organisation, into something dynamic and international.”
Her career has involved lots of change – she has regularly managed capital development projects, including the V&A’s Painting Galleries – and this will continue as she leads the redevelopment of the Geffrye.
The museum, which backs onto Hoxton overground station, was set up in 1914 and tells the story of the domestic environment from the 17th century until the 1990s through a chronological sequence of authentically made-up interiors.
The Geffrye is in 18th-century almshouses, which are Grade I-listed, meaning that there are restrictions on what can be done to alter the basic appearance of the building. But the previous director, David Dewing, and Solicari believe that the changes that are planned will vastly improve the experience for visitors. The Unlocking the Geffrye capital development project is designed to deliver this.
“It will absolutely fundamentally change how the Geffrye operates, what we can do, and our capacity for running more successful programmes and schemes that we already run,” Solicari says. “This will be a transformative project.”
Home from home
Only 30% of the museum’s buildings are accessible to the public, but the proposed development will increase this to 70%. With a National Lottery grant confirmed last March and having recently become a National Portfolio Organisation, the Geffrye is aiming to fulfil its £18m fundraising target (including £11m from the Heritage Lottery Fund) by December 2018 to complete the redevelopment by autumn 2019.
So what’s the plan? Solicari says the museum will close after its popular Christmas festivities finish on 6 January 2018.
“Our cafe will move to the site of the old pub next door, and where the cafe currently is will become our entrance space. When we reopen people will be able access the museum from two sides – from Kingsland Road still, but also directly from Hoxton overground station.”
As part of the scheme, there will also be a new studio space, for conferences to community meetings, and a new learning pavilion at one end of the back garden, for more formal learning activity.
“We are building new Home Galleries in the lower basement, which will explore different ideas of home,” Solicari says. “And we will have a new library and archive upstairs where people will be able to access our collections. We are opening up the building on three levels. These are spaces that people will never have seen or experienced before.”
Interim measures
The main museum site might be closed while the works go on, but it shouldn’t stop visitors coming. “We will be programming throughout the closure period – there will be lots of activities happening,” she says. “We’ll still do our Christmas season, we’ll keep the front lawns open, and the two restored almshouses that are currently only open for occasional tours, will be open more frequently.”
Solicari is hoping for a big rise in visitor figures following reopening. The museum’s daytime audience tends to be an older demographic, but she wants to broaden the appeal. The Geffrye’s events programme has burgeoned in recent years with garden parties and all-night ghost hunts tapping into the notoriously fickle 18-30-year-old market.
The Geffrye’s well-established youth engagement programme might well have helped bolster this – the museum’s Youth Advisory Panel volunteering scheme, which encourages candidates to become paid Young Consultants, has been a great success.
Diversity in age, ethnicity, gender, wealth and education, in staff and audiences, is something Solicari is very aware of in the museum sector.
“Qualification inflation is a problem, what with tuition fees and exorbitant living costs,” she says. “Museums want to broaden diversity in the workforce, but that does not go hand-in-hand with asking people to have MAs and PhDs. It’s a huge contradiction, and it’s something I want to look at here in terms of recruitment.”
She also points out that many museums, the Geffrye included, have an overwhelmingly female workforce. “It’s part of the diversity problem, but people seem so busy celebrating the fact there are more female directors that everyone’s ignoring the lack of gender diversity in the rest of the sector.”
An area that Solicari wants to concentrate on during closure is the development of the museum’s content. Staff are consulting visitors about this, including specific users such as an Asian women’s group, who are being asked about their experience of housework.
“We want to know that people will engage with the historic objects that we’re considering for the new Home Galleries,” Solicari says. “For instance, is the Victorian stuff just Victorian stuff, or are people finding that the stories associated with the objects are really sparking their imagination?”
She wants the new galleries to encompass a wide range of subject matter. “We’ll be able to explore all sorts of different concepts, such as what’s taste? How is faith practised in the home? How do children change the space? And technology is obviously changing how we experience the home on a daily basis.”
Outside spaces
Solicari also wants to ensure that the Geffrye’s expertly managed gardens will be integrated in the offer.
“The gardens convey historic trends just as our period rooms do. We want to interpret the gardens more fully so that people understand that narrative, and that transition from functional space to one of leisure.”
This social history is key to the Geffrye’s mission. Indeed, the museum’s Documenting Homes scheme concentrates on acquiring photographs and testimonies from people now to build its collection.
“When people donate an object we ask if they’ll fill in a questionnaire, and submit photos of the house the object has come from, so we build up a picture,” Solicari says. “We ask everything from do you have a pot plant in your house? Who does the washing up? Do you have a pet? It’s those kind of questions that become fundamental to us unlocking those more accessible stories. Documenting Homes forms the backbone of our collecting policy.”
Solicari is obviously passionate about her role: “We’re all defined by the idea of home, whether we have one or whether we don’t have one. It’s a defining feature of our cultural identity. It’s a wonderful subject matter to curate, to engage people with, because everybody always has a story about home.”
Her first role was at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) as assistant curator (paintings), where she went on to lead the capital project for the Painting Galleries redevelopment.
In 2006 she became the curator (ceramics and glass) at the V&A where she led another capital project, this time on the Ceramics Galleries.
Solicari became the principal curator at the Guildhall Art Gallery and London’s Roman Amphitheatre in 2010, before being promoted to head of the institution in 2013.
She left to take up her post as director of the Geffrye Museum of the Home in January 2017.
The museum receives grant in aid from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
The museum’s annual operating budget is £2.1m. Visitor figures are approximately 120,000 a year. About 50 members of staff run the museum with a large team of volunteers.
The museum co-manages the Centre for the Study of the Home with Queen Mary University of London.
Solicari, who began her role in January this year, started her museum career in cataloguing as an assistant curator (paintings) at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). She joined the South Kensington institution in 2002 as part of its Assistant Curator Development Programme.
“It was a really interesting moment when I joined the V&A,” Solicari says. “A lot of the galleries still had their old fusty, dusty labels that hadn’t been changed since the Edwardian period – I witnessed that old order slipping away. The V&A was undergoing a culture change programme at the time, so in the eight years I was there I saw it absolutely transform as an organisation, into something dynamic and international.”
Her career has involved lots of change – she has regularly managed capital development projects, including the V&A’s Painting Galleries – and this will continue as she leads the redevelopment of the Geffrye.
The museum, which backs onto Hoxton overground station, was set up in 1914 and tells the story of the domestic environment from the 17th century until the 1990s through a chronological sequence of authentically made-up interiors.
The Geffrye is in 18th-century almshouses, which are Grade I-listed, meaning that there are restrictions on what can be done to alter the basic appearance of the building. But the previous director, David Dewing, and Solicari believe that the changes that are planned will vastly improve the experience for visitors. The Unlocking the Geffrye capital development project is designed to deliver this.
“It will absolutely fundamentally change how the Geffrye operates, what we can do, and our capacity for running more successful programmes and schemes that we already run,” Solicari says. “This will be a transformative project.”
Home from home
Only 30% of the museum’s buildings are accessible to the public, but the proposed development will increase this to 70%. With a National Lottery grant confirmed last March and having recently become a National Portfolio Organisation, the Geffrye is aiming to fulfil its £18m fundraising target (including £11m from the Heritage Lottery Fund) by December 2018 to complete the redevelopment by autumn 2019.
So what’s the plan? Solicari says the museum will close after its popular Christmas festivities finish on 6 January 2018.
“Our cafe will move to the site of the old pub next door, and where the cafe currently is will become our entrance space. When we reopen people will be able access the museum from two sides – from Kingsland Road still, but also directly from Hoxton overground station.”
As part of the scheme, there will also be a new studio space, for conferences to community meetings, and a new learning pavilion at one end of the back garden, for more formal learning activity.
“We are building new Home Galleries in the lower basement, which will explore different ideas of home,” Solicari says. “And we will have a new library and archive upstairs where people will be able to access our collections. We are opening up the building on three levels. These are spaces that people will never have seen or experienced before.”
Interim measures
The main museum site might be closed while the works go on, but it shouldn’t stop visitors coming. “We will be programming throughout the closure period – there will be lots of activities happening,” she says. “We’ll still do our Christmas season, we’ll keep the front lawns open, and the two restored almshouses that are currently only open for occasional tours, will be open more frequently.”
Solicari is hoping for a big rise in visitor figures following reopening. The museum’s daytime audience tends to be an older demographic, but she wants to broaden the appeal. The Geffrye’s events programme has burgeoned in recent years with garden parties and all-night ghost hunts tapping into the notoriously fickle 18-30-year-old market.
The Geffrye’s well-established youth engagement programme might well have helped bolster this – the museum’s Youth Advisory Panel volunteering scheme, which encourages candidates to become paid Young Consultants, has been a great success.
Diversity in age, ethnicity, gender, wealth and education, in staff and audiences, is something Solicari is very aware of in the museum sector.
“Qualification inflation is a problem, what with tuition fees and exorbitant living costs,” she says. “Museums want to broaden diversity in the workforce, but that does not go hand-in-hand with asking people to have MAs and PhDs. It’s a huge contradiction, and it’s something I want to look at here in terms of recruitment.”
She also points out that many museums, the Geffrye included, have an overwhelmingly female workforce. “It’s part of the diversity problem, but people seem so busy celebrating the fact there are more female directors that everyone’s ignoring the lack of gender diversity in the rest of the sector.”
An area that Solicari wants to concentrate on during closure is the development of the museum’s content. Staff are consulting visitors about this, including specific users such as an Asian women’s group, who are being asked about their experience of housework.
“We want to know that people will engage with the historic objects that we’re considering for the new Home Galleries,” Solicari says. “For instance, is the Victorian stuff just Victorian stuff, or are people finding that the stories associated with the objects are really sparking their imagination?”
She wants the new galleries to encompass a wide range of subject matter. “We’ll be able to explore all sorts of different concepts, such as what’s taste? How is faith practised in the home? How do children change the space? And technology is obviously changing how we experience the home on a daily basis.”
Outside spaces
Solicari also wants to ensure that the Geffrye’s expertly managed gardens will be integrated in the offer.
“The gardens convey historic trends just as our period rooms do. We want to interpret the gardens more fully so that people understand that narrative, and that transition from functional space to one of leisure.”
This social history is key to the Geffrye’s mission. Indeed, the museum’s Documenting Homes scheme concentrates on acquiring photographs and testimonies from people now to build its collection.
“When people donate an object we ask if they’ll fill in a questionnaire, and submit photos of the house the object has come from, so we build up a picture,” Solicari says. “We ask everything from do you have a pot plant in your house? Who does the washing up? Do you have a pet? It’s those kind of questions that become fundamental to us unlocking those more accessible stories. Documenting Homes forms the backbone of our collecting policy.”
Solicari is obviously passionate about her role: “We’re all defined by the idea of home, whether we have one or whether we don’t have one. It’s a defining feature of our cultural identity. It’s a wonderful subject matter to curate, to engage people with, because everybody always has a story about home.”
Sonia Solicari at a glance
Sonia Solicari has worked in museums for more than 15 years. She has a BA in English Literature, an MA in 19th century studies, and an MA in museum studies.
Her first role was at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) as assistant curator (paintings), where she went on to lead the capital project for the Painting Galleries redevelopment.
In 2006 she became the curator (ceramics and glass) at the V&A where she led another capital project, this time on the Ceramics Galleries.
Solicari became the principal curator at the Guildhall Art Gallery and London’s Roman Amphitheatre in 2010, before being promoted to head of the institution in 2013.
She left to take up her post as director of the Geffrye Museum of the Home in January 2017.
The Geffrye Museum of the Home at a glance
Businessman Robert Geffrye funded the construction of almshouses in 1714. The building remained in its original use until the early 20th century, when the residents moved out. The Geffrye Museum of the Home opened on site in 1914. The museum receives grant in aid from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
The museum’s annual operating budget is £2.1m. Visitor figures are approximately 120,000 a year. About 50 members of staff run the museum with a large team of volunteers.
The museum co-manages the Centre for the Study of the Home with Queen Mary University of London.