Flexible thinking
Should museums and galleries be looking at radical new ways to present their permanent exhibitions? Rob Sharp investigates this complex issue
In 2006 Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Britain’s most visited museum outside London, relaunched after a £28m refurbishment. Its renaissance partly prioritised flexibility: the regular alteration of numerous small displays or “stories” about its exhibits every year to win back repeat visits.
Six years on, the gallery has seen its visitor numbers halve back to one million annually, about the same as before its huge outlay on the redevelopment. Small-scale flexibility, it seems, is not the panacea the institution hoped it would be.
“We’re still refreshing stories, but people would often come expecting full-blown redisplays, and not notice we’d done anything, so we got some negative feedback,” says Kelvingrove museum manager Neil Ballantyne.
The museum is now mixing “story”, or small-scale refreshes, with changing entire galleries and temporary shows. Anything smaller, says Ballantyne, and the public simply doesn’t notice. ”The things that really register are temporary exhibitions and gallery changes,” he says.
So how can museums keep their displays up-to-date without spending millions of pounds? In July, the Museums Association (MA) launched Museums 2020, its consultation document on the sector’s future. The MA is positing something radical: that current approaches for permanent displays might be outmoded.
“All the money that has been spent on permanent displays might not have been that sensible,” says Maurice Davies, the MA’s head of policy and communication. “Everyone’s making feature films: they need to be making news programmes.”
While most would agree that museums will die out without regular, fresh injections of energy, the sector is divided as to how to focus its resources.
Ken Arnold, the Wellcome Collection’s head of public programmes, thinks rapid technological change will soon make the delineation between permanent and temporary displays obsolete.
“One solution could be visible storage, where an item is at rest but happens to be publicly viewable,” he says. Tablet computers, web technology and advances in electronic sensing may exponentially increase the ways objects can be interpreted.
Think simple
Arnold says he could envisage a new “reading room” model – part museum, and partly a concept that blurs the line between exhibition space and resource centre.
“We may eventually see a system where, through advances in personal computing, people make inquiries and curate for themselves, send pictures to their friends, or participate or organise their own events.”
Cheaper, durable materials might also extend temporary exhibitions’ lifespans into the realm of the semi-permanent.
“You can have a minor intervention in an old building and stories can come to the fore,” says Stephen Greenberg, creative director of design firm Metaphor. “Temporary exhibitions have a sense of theatre and vitality; permanent ones are often architectural spaces with objects placed in them.”
He points to work his firm has delivered for the Historic Dockyard in Chatham, where “plywood, simple printing and films” were employed very cost effectively. He claims that the work could last up to 15 years.
He also points to temporary design work undertaken at the British Museum, where a graphic refresh of a temporary show could keep spaces appearing contemporary for decades.
“I think people are going to be more forgiving of the more rugged language of the temporary exhibition,” he says. “You can still pack an emotional punch without high-spec costs.”
In the shifting vocabulary of future years, however, directors should take care not to throw the baby out with the bath-water. Henry McGhie, the head of collections and curator of zoology at the Manchester Museum, says all of his institution’s galleries will soon have had significant redevelopment work in the past 13 years – and he insists that it is necessary.
Beating obsolescence
“We have a temporary exhibition programme and we had been trying to move away from the gallery redevelopment model,” McGhie says. “But we realised you have to do it at some point, otherwise you are only nibbling at the edges.”
A cheaper solution could be the one pioneered by the museum’s acclaimed Living Worlds exhibition (see p29), which explores humans’ relationship to the natural world.
“Moving forward, the objects will stay the same but their interpretation will change,” he says. He adds that, rather than “reinventing the wheel”, an iPhone app allows visitors to view information from the museum’s collections database, before, during and after arriving in person.
“We are trying to develop projects which are a bit more future-proof than in the past,” he says. “We want to avoid messages or technology which dates quickly.”
Jonathan Griffin, the director of the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, also issues a stark warning against replacing permanent with temporary.
“If you don’t have a narrative somewhere, saying: ‘This is our big picture,’ how could you understand something like the Battle of Naseby [the key battle of the first English Civil War]?
"You need to talk about what was going on in the 17th century to understand why that battle occurred. If you don’t talk about that with reference to Charles I, say, you’re completely lost. My big worry is that if it’s all temporary, you lose that context.”
Events should also be part of that context, says Griffin, highlighting a recent “pirate workshop” which opened his institution up to families.
“These events are brilliant if they encourage people to look again,” he says. “But our starting point is, ‘How do we communicate history?’ We’re not a theatre; we are not about one-off emotional experiences.”
A possible bottleneck to innovative gallery refreshes is the use of a small band of “elite” exhibition designers who pick up all the contracts, lending museums what some have described as an “identikit” design feel.
“There seems to be a blueprint for a best-case museum and it’s akin to what has happened with shopping centres across regional centres,” says Julie Finch, head of Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives.
“I think companies need to come up with a display solution which is truly flexible. You need to have more on display more of the time and you need to have the back-of-house resources which can help you programme that.” She adds that it is not good if people are seeing the same thing in different locations.
Flexible friends
However, Griffin thinks the public is unlikely to notice the identikit problem. “I think those of us who are in the trade recognise the handwriting of a certain designer,” he says. “But not many people visit museums in Dorset, Somerset and wherever else, in the same way we do as professionals.”
Esther Dugdale is the creative director of exhibition design consultancy Event, which has worked on projects such as Kelvingrove and Bristol’s M-Shed, which opened last year. She says that overall trends will always spread between institutions and be reflected in their designs.
“While no two projects are alike, there are always elements or directions which you want to encourage,” Dugdale says.
She says that flexible components – labelling, plinths, wall structures – will become increasingly common in the industry.
Museums 2020 has set a deadline of 31 October to collate people’s opinions and come up with recommendations for next year. At the heart of this is the suggestion that museums need to rethink how they use their space. It is clear that those who use their institutions’ existing infrastructure most creatively get the most value for money.
“Who can predict what’s two weeks away?” asks Davies. “If you have lots of tourists and regular visitors from a specialist audience, it doesn’t seem pressing. But the challenge is getting repeat visits by non-specialist audience.”
Rob Sharp is a freelance journalist
When the Manchester Museum’s Living Worlds gallery opened to the public last year it was the biggest gallery change in the institution’s 120-year history.
The museum worked with a firm based in Brussels called Villa Eugenie, which designs and stages fashion events. One of the results is that origami birds, clockwork teeth and neon signs have been used to lend the Living Worlds gallery a contemporary feel.
Also, instead of using labels that quickly date, the gallery encourages visitors to download an online guide to their smartphones. Staff with tablet computers provide supplementary information.
“The good thing is that by controlling the information on people’s phones we can easily signpost things to do after people’s visit,” says Henry McGhie, the head of collections and curator of zoology at the Manchester Museum.
“I think the key thing with gallery developments is to link them absolutely to your mission, so that they can become a springboard for related activities and programmes,” McGhie continues.
“So far, Living Worlds has been the impetus behind an exhibition of photographs of people who were tattooed with images of endangered species, an allotment in front of the museum where people could grow vegetables, and an adult education course for wildlife recording. All of these fit perfectly with Living Worlds and help to further our main work.”
Six years on, the gallery has seen its visitor numbers halve back to one million annually, about the same as before its huge outlay on the redevelopment. Small-scale flexibility, it seems, is not the panacea the institution hoped it would be.
“We’re still refreshing stories, but people would often come expecting full-blown redisplays, and not notice we’d done anything, so we got some negative feedback,” says Kelvingrove museum manager Neil Ballantyne.
The museum is now mixing “story”, or small-scale refreshes, with changing entire galleries and temporary shows. Anything smaller, says Ballantyne, and the public simply doesn’t notice. ”The things that really register are temporary exhibitions and gallery changes,” he says.
So how can museums keep their displays up-to-date without spending millions of pounds? In July, the Museums Association (MA) launched Museums 2020, its consultation document on the sector’s future. The MA is positing something radical: that current approaches for permanent displays might be outmoded.
“All the money that has been spent on permanent displays might not have been that sensible,” says Maurice Davies, the MA’s head of policy and communication. “Everyone’s making feature films: they need to be making news programmes.”
While most would agree that museums will die out without regular, fresh injections of energy, the sector is divided as to how to focus its resources.
Ken Arnold, the Wellcome Collection’s head of public programmes, thinks rapid technological change will soon make the delineation between permanent and temporary displays obsolete.
“One solution could be visible storage, where an item is at rest but happens to be publicly viewable,” he says. Tablet computers, web technology and advances in electronic sensing may exponentially increase the ways objects can be interpreted.
Think simple
Arnold says he could envisage a new “reading room” model – part museum, and partly a concept that blurs the line between exhibition space and resource centre.
“We may eventually see a system where, through advances in personal computing, people make inquiries and curate for themselves, send pictures to their friends, or participate or organise their own events.”
Cheaper, durable materials might also extend temporary exhibitions’ lifespans into the realm of the semi-permanent.
“You can have a minor intervention in an old building and stories can come to the fore,” says Stephen Greenberg, creative director of design firm Metaphor. “Temporary exhibitions have a sense of theatre and vitality; permanent ones are often architectural spaces with objects placed in them.”
He points to work his firm has delivered for the Historic Dockyard in Chatham, where “plywood, simple printing and films” were employed very cost effectively. He claims that the work could last up to 15 years.
He also points to temporary design work undertaken at the British Museum, where a graphic refresh of a temporary show could keep spaces appearing contemporary for decades.
“I think people are going to be more forgiving of the more rugged language of the temporary exhibition,” he says. “You can still pack an emotional punch without high-spec costs.”
In the shifting vocabulary of future years, however, directors should take care not to throw the baby out with the bath-water. Henry McGhie, the head of collections and curator of zoology at the Manchester Museum, says all of his institution’s galleries will soon have had significant redevelopment work in the past 13 years – and he insists that it is necessary.
Beating obsolescence
“We have a temporary exhibition programme and we had been trying to move away from the gallery redevelopment model,” McGhie says. “But we realised you have to do it at some point, otherwise you are only nibbling at the edges.”
A cheaper solution could be the one pioneered by the museum’s acclaimed Living Worlds exhibition (see p29), which explores humans’ relationship to the natural world.
“Moving forward, the objects will stay the same but their interpretation will change,” he says. He adds that, rather than “reinventing the wheel”, an iPhone app allows visitors to view information from the museum’s collections database, before, during and after arriving in person.
“We are trying to develop projects which are a bit more future-proof than in the past,” he says. “We want to avoid messages or technology which dates quickly.”
Jonathan Griffin, the director of the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, also issues a stark warning against replacing permanent with temporary.
“If you don’t have a narrative somewhere, saying: ‘This is our big picture,’ how could you understand something like the Battle of Naseby [the key battle of the first English Civil War]?
"You need to talk about what was going on in the 17th century to understand why that battle occurred. If you don’t talk about that with reference to Charles I, say, you’re completely lost. My big worry is that if it’s all temporary, you lose that context.”
Events should also be part of that context, says Griffin, highlighting a recent “pirate workshop” which opened his institution up to families.
“These events are brilliant if they encourage people to look again,” he says. “But our starting point is, ‘How do we communicate history?’ We’re not a theatre; we are not about one-off emotional experiences.”
A possible bottleneck to innovative gallery refreshes is the use of a small band of “elite” exhibition designers who pick up all the contracts, lending museums what some have described as an “identikit” design feel.
“There seems to be a blueprint for a best-case museum and it’s akin to what has happened with shopping centres across regional centres,” says Julie Finch, head of Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives.
“I think companies need to come up with a display solution which is truly flexible. You need to have more on display more of the time and you need to have the back-of-house resources which can help you programme that.” She adds that it is not good if people are seeing the same thing in different locations.
Flexible friends
However, Griffin thinks the public is unlikely to notice the identikit problem. “I think those of us who are in the trade recognise the handwriting of a certain designer,” he says. “But not many people visit museums in Dorset, Somerset and wherever else, in the same way we do as professionals.”
Esther Dugdale is the creative director of exhibition design consultancy Event, which has worked on projects such as Kelvingrove and Bristol’s M-Shed, which opened last year. She says that overall trends will always spread between institutions and be reflected in their designs.
“While no two projects are alike, there are always elements or directions which you want to encourage,” Dugdale says.
She says that flexible components – labelling, plinths, wall structures – will become increasingly common in the industry.
Museums 2020 has set a deadline of 31 October to collate people’s opinions and come up with recommendations for next year. At the heart of this is the suggestion that museums need to rethink how they use their space. It is clear that those who use their institutions’ existing infrastructure most creatively get the most value for money.
“Who can predict what’s two weeks away?” asks Davies. “If you have lots of tourists and regular visitors from a specialist audience, it doesn’t seem pressing. But the challenge is getting repeat visits by non-specialist audience.”
Rob Sharp is a freelance journalist
From clockworth teeth to neon signs
When the Manchester Museum’s Living Worlds gallery opened to the public last year it was the biggest gallery change in the institution’s 120-year history.
The museum worked with a firm based in Brussels called Villa Eugenie, which designs and stages fashion events. One of the results is that origami birds, clockwork teeth and neon signs have been used to lend the Living Worlds gallery a contemporary feel.
Also, instead of using labels that quickly date, the gallery encourages visitors to download an online guide to their smartphones. Staff with tablet computers provide supplementary information.
“The good thing is that by controlling the information on people’s phones we can easily signpost things to do after people’s visit,” says Henry McGhie, the head of collections and curator of zoology at the Manchester Museum.
“I think the key thing with gallery developments is to link them absolutely to your mission, so that they can become a springboard for related activities and programmes,” McGhie continues.
“So far, Living Worlds has been the impetus behind an exhibition of photographs of people who were tattooed with images of endangered species, an allotment in front of the museum where people could grow vegetables, and an adult education course for wildlife recording. All of these fit perfectly with Living Worlds and help to further our main work.”