What’s in store
Jonathan Knott delves into the world of stored collections to find out how museums are using them to engage audiences
This month sees the official opening of Kelvin Hall, a cultural and sports venue in Glasgow that houses collections from three institutions. There are 400,000 objects from Glasgow Museums, part of Glasgow Life, most of which are from its social history collection and were in commercial storage; 1.5 million items from The Hunterian, part of the University of Glasgow, which are being united from nine different locations to support research and teaching; and digital and film resources held by the National Library of Scotland.
Duncan Dornan, the head of museums and collections at Glasgow Life, says that Glasgow Museums will provide access to its collection through guided tours, as well as other programming, including workshops with community groups. He anticipates that the building will help improve engagement by enabling more flexible conversations with audiences.
“It allows us to identify a range of interactions that can be tailored much more closely to what people aspire to have from the service,” Dornan says.
Kelvin Hall is the latest episode in the seemingly Cinderella-esque journey of stored museum collections from obscurity into the limelight. Sometimes spurred on by immediate pressures on space, museums have been working to make their collections more accessible for many years – and they are now doing so in increasingly bold and imaginative ways.
Dornan anticipates that Kelvin Hall’s central location and its long opening hours will make it easier to engage with specific groups in the city. There is a dedicated community room, while frequently changing public displays provide a flavour of what the stores contain. Current exhibitions reflect recent discussions with local communities about relevant parts of the collection. One looks at the history of Glasgow’s Polish residents, the other focuses on show entertainers.
“The show community has a long history with Kelvin Hall, because there used to be a winter fair at the building,” says Dornan. “We have a series of show mirrors that distort reflections in the collection. One of them is back on display in Kelvin Hall, and we have been able to animate it with stories of the lifestyle that accompanied it.”
The move towards opening up stored collections goes back as far as the 1970s, but it gathered real momentum in the UK in the noughties. In 2008, the UCL Institute of Archaeology published the Collections for People report, which found increasing public demand for access to collections. It argued that “museums should recognise that their collections are public resources and hence that they have an obligation to make them publicly available”.
But a number of museums were already moving in this direction, opening storage centres that allow public access. Kelvin Hall builds on more than a decade of work at the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, which opened in 2003 and was expanded in 2009. This facility, which now holds about 80% of Glasgow Museums’ stored collection (1.5 million objects), receives almost 15,000 visitors a year, mainly through guided tours.
The museum service has become progressively more relaxed about the need to make adjustments for public access, says Dornan. “The resource centre was originally designed with separate corridors for the public and staff. But we later disposed of that notion. Kelvin Hall is simply designed as a store, and we are confident that providing public access to that is not problematic.”
Other accessible stores include the Museum Collections Centre in Birmingham and Leeds Discovery Centre, which both opened in the 2000s. Alongside public tours, these centres provide lots of other activities for audiences ranging from researchers to special interest groups.
The activities offered by Leeds Discovery Centre, which has seen its visitor numbers double in the past year to more than 5,000, include family workshops and evening art classes.
“We have a research room and an education room on site,” says Yvonne Hardman, the head of collections and programmes at Leeds Museums and Galleries. “Because it’s a purpose-built facility, we are well placed to offer a wide range of activities.”
Another technique that is used by some museums is to make the bulk of collections visible in public galleries. Since 2010, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), has shown most of its ceramics (26,500 objects) in densely arranged cases, to accompany its narrative ceramics displays.
For many visitors, the appeal of open museum stores and visible storage is not simply about seeing more of the collection. Museum professionals report that visitors often feel a frisson at the level of access they are granted, awe at the sheer scale of collections and intrigue about the kind of work that goes on in a museum store.
Behind the scenes at the museum
“Being in the store is an exciting opportunity to go behind the scenes,” says Emily Locke, the collections and storage officer at Birmingham Museums Trust (BMT). “People feel a sense of privilege being in this unique environment. The attraction also comes from a desire to understand more about museum storage and how we care for the collection.”
The centre offers guided tours, but BMT has found that many visitors prefer a less structured way of viewing the collection. The museum now holds open afternoons once a month where people can explore freely, with a guide on hand for questions. “When you walk into this Aladdin’s cave, the last thing you want is to be told to focus on one object out of the thousands that are catching your eye,” says Locke.
But some collections require more interpretive work to make them appealing, says Roy Stephenson, the head of archaeology at the Museum of London (MoL). “A social history collection can be visually very interesting, whereas an archaeological collection tends to be rows and rows of boxes” he says.
The museum has previously offered tours of its off-site archaeological archive in Hackney, but has recently been experimenting with different approaches. A current exhibition shows objects found during the excavation in 1975 of the General Post Office site, next to St Paul’s tube station, but also focuses on the process of archaeology itself, by displaying records from the dig. And a project in February asked visitors to the museum to pick a number for staff in the archive to identify and retrieve an object, then show it to the visitor via Skype.
Many museums with archaeological collections face an additional problem: space. Archaeological archives are continually amassing because property developers are required to pay for excavations by law – but there is no comparable obligation to fund the care of what is dug up, so archaeological finds often remain in limbo with field units.
“All the museums in Wiltshire are full,” says David Dawson, the director of Wiltshire Museum in Devizes, who estimates that the total volume of undeposited archaeological material in the south-west is at least 50 cubic metres. A similar problem is faced by many other museums. A 2012 report from the Federation of Archaeological Managers and Employers estimated that there were 9,000 undeposited archaeological archives in England alone.
Wiltshire Museum is the lead partner on the Seeing the Light of Day project, which was given £45,000 by Arts Council England in August to explore sustainable solutions to this difficulty. The project will commission consultancy work examining the potential for creating shared storage and using contributions from developers to fund this.
The project will in effect be looking to formalise a solution that is already emerging in the south-west. “We have been working very closely with Salisbury Museum and the Wessex Museums Partnership on purchasing a building as a joint store,” says Dawson. “Wiltshire Council are supporting us, and have committed to provide a capital investment of £200,000, which comes from developer funding.”
Blythe spirit
As well as encouraging collaboration, pressure on space can also be the spur for radical approaches. The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam is creating a publicly accessible store for all of its art, alongside private collections, in a striking building due to open in 2019 (see box). The museum’s director Sjarel Ex says that the project has stimulated interest from institutions in other countries – one of which has been the V&A.
Along with the Science Museum and the British Museum, the V&A will need to relocate its stored collection from Blythe House in west London, which is to be sold by government. The museum is considering moving its collection close to its planned outpost in the “Olympicopolis” cultural quarter in east London. A museum spokeswoman says: “The V&A has been looking at options to relocate its world-class reserve collections to a state-of-the art, purpose-built and accessible collections centre in London. We are considering sites close to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and in close proximity to the proposed new V&A East.”
While the Science Museum plans to move its collection to its existing facility in Wroughton, Wiltshire, the British Museum remains undecided but has not ruled out a move to Olympicopolis.
In his 2015 autumn statement, the then chancellor George Osborne framed the decision to sell Blythe House as a triumph for accessibility, enabling collections to be moved “out of storage and on display”.
But Nicky Reeves, a curator at the Hunterian in Glasgow, who also researches and blogs about museums, believes that this binary narrative does not do justice to the variety of ways that museums can make their collections accessible.
“There is a lot of anxiety to make visibility visible and to be seen to be accessible,” Reeves says. “We need to be careful not to get into a metrics game, where objects are only seen to have value if they are immediately accessible.”
Reeves thinks that the appeal of open storage ties into a growing public interest in deconstructing processes, as well as a general tendency to disclose more information. “This is all part of a much longer story.”
The six-storey building, designed by Rotterdam-based architects MVRDV, is to have a striking appearance. It will be shaped like a huge bowl, covered with “mirror cladding” to reflect the surrounding park, and will feature a tree-lined roof terrace, complete with a restaurant.
This will be a good spot to take in the city, says the museum’s director, Sjarel Ex. “At 39 metres up, under the trees, you will find a nice place to look at the inspiring panorama of Rotterdam,” he says.
The project got the go-ahead from Rotterdam council in November last year. Construction is to begin next month, with the opening planned to take place in 2019.
The building will have 15,000 sq m of space, 9,000 sq m of which will be taken up by stores. Of that, 1,900 sq m will be reserved for private collectors – impressively, 50% of that space has already been rented.
Visitors will be able to access the roof terrace and a ground-floor cafe for free and explore more of the building with a ticket. For a further charge they can join a guided tour of the museum’s storage areas. Private collectors will decide whether to allow access to their collections: it is hoped some will even mount exhibitions.
The project has been driven by the inadequacy of the institution’s current storage spaces, which are too full, with poor climate control. The museum also wanted to share its conservation expertise more openly, because it has been fielding large numbers of queries from the public.
“We saw that it was necessary to make the everyday things that we do in a museum transparent,” Ex says. “This project makes the collection accessible, and also active. People start to think with you about what it’s about, and what the contents are. We think that it will improve our system of working tremendously.”
There will be early-morning tours and an evening social event at Kelvin Hall at the Museums Association Conference & Exhibition in Glasgow (7-9 November)
Duncan Dornan, the head of museums and collections at Glasgow Life, says that Glasgow Museums will provide access to its collection through guided tours, as well as other programming, including workshops with community groups. He anticipates that the building will help improve engagement by enabling more flexible conversations with audiences.
“It allows us to identify a range of interactions that can be tailored much more closely to what people aspire to have from the service,” Dornan says.
Kelvin Hall is the latest episode in the seemingly Cinderella-esque journey of stored museum collections from obscurity into the limelight. Sometimes spurred on by immediate pressures on space, museums have been working to make their collections more accessible for many years – and they are now doing so in increasingly bold and imaginative ways.
Dornan anticipates that Kelvin Hall’s central location and its long opening hours will make it easier to engage with specific groups in the city. There is a dedicated community room, while frequently changing public displays provide a flavour of what the stores contain. Current exhibitions reflect recent discussions with local communities about relevant parts of the collection. One looks at the history of Glasgow’s Polish residents, the other focuses on show entertainers.
“The show community has a long history with Kelvin Hall, because there used to be a winter fair at the building,” says Dornan. “We have a series of show mirrors that distort reflections in the collection. One of them is back on display in Kelvin Hall, and we have been able to animate it with stories of the lifestyle that accompanied it.”
The move towards opening up stored collections goes back as far as the 1970s, but it gathered real momentum in the UK in the noughties. In 2008, the UCL Institute of Archaeology published the Collections for People report, which found increasing public demand for access to collections. It argued that “museums should recognise that their collections are public resources and hence that they have an obligation to make them publicly available”.
But a number of museums were already moving in this direction, opening storage centres that allow public access. Kelvin Hall builds on more than a decade of work at the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, which opened in 2003 and was expanded in 2009. This facility, which now holds about 80% of Glasgow Museums’ stored collection (1.5 million objects), receives almost 15,000 visitors a year, mainly through guided tours.
The museum service has become progressively more relaxed about the need to make adjustments for public access, says Dornan. “The resource centre was originally designed with separate corridors for the public and staff. But we later disposed of that notion. Kelvin Hall is simply designed as a store, and we are confident that providing public access to that is not problematic.”
Other accessible stores include the Museum Collections Centre in Birmingham and Leeds Discovery Centre, which both opened in the 2000s. Alongside public tours, these centres provide lots of other activities for audiences ranging from researchers to special interest groups.
The activities offered by Leeds Discovery Centre, which has seen its visitor numbers double in the past year to more than 5,000, include family workshops and evening art classes.
“We have a research room and an education room on site,” says Yvonne Hardman, the head of collections and programmes at Leeds Museums and Galleries. “Because it’s a purpose-built facility, we are well placed to offer a wide range of activities.”
Another technique that is used by some museums is to make the bulk of collections visible in public galleries. Since 2010, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), has shown most of its ceramics (26,500 objects) in densely arranged cases, to accompany its narrative ceramics displays.
For many visitors, the appeal of open museum stores and visible storage is not simply about seeing more of the collection. Museum professionals report that visitors often feel a frisson at the level of access they are granted, awe at the sheer scale of collections and intrigue about the kind of work that goes on in a museum store.
Behind the scenes at the museum
“Being in the store is an exciting opportunity to go behind the scenes,” says Emily Locke, the collections and storage officer at Birmingham Museums Trust (BMT). “People feel a sense of privilege being in this unique environment. The attraction also comes from a desire to understand more about museum storage and how we care for the collection.”
The centre offers guided tours, but BMT has found that many visitors prefer a less structured way of viewing the collection. The museum now holds open afternoons once a month where people can explore freely, with a guide on hand for questions. “When you walk into this Aladdin’s cave, the last thing you want is to be told to focus on one object out of the thousands that are catching your eye,” says Locke.
But some collections require more interpretive work to make them appealing, says Roy Stephenson, the head of archaeology at the Museum of London (MoL). “A social history collection can be visually very interesting, whereas an archaeological collection tends to be rows and rows of boxes” he says.
The museum has previously offered tours of its off-site archaeological archive in Hackney, but has recently been experimenting with different approaches. A current exhibition shows objects found during the excavation in 1975 of the General Post Office site, next to St Paul’s tube station, but also focuses on the process of archaeology itself, by displaying records from the dig. And a project in February asked visitors to the museum to pick a number for staff in the archive to identify and retrieve an object, then show it to the visitor via Skype.
Many museums with archaeological collections face an additional problem: space. Archaeological archives are continually amassing because property developers are required to pay for excavations by law – but there is no comparable obligation to fund the care of what is dug up, so archaeological finds often remain in limbo with field units.
“All the museums in Wiltshire are full,” says David Dawson, the director of Wiltshire Museum in Devizes, who estimates that the total volume of undeposited archaeological material in the south-west is at least 50 cubic metres. A similar problem is faced by many other museums. A 2012 report from the Federation of Archaeological Managers and Employers estimated that there were 9,000 undeposited archaeological archives in England alone.
Wiltshire Museum is the lead partner on the Seeing the Light of Day project, which was given £45,000 by Arts Council England in August to explore sustainable solutions to this difficulty. The project will commission consultancy work examining the potential for creating shared storage and using contributions from developers to fund this.
The project will in effect be looking to formalise a solution that is already emerging in the south-west. “We have been working very closely with Salisbury Museum and the Wessex Museums Partnership on purchasing a building as a joint store,” says Dawson. “Wiltshire Council are supporting us, and have committed to provide a capital investment of £200,000, which comes from developer funding.”
When you walk into this Aladdin’s cave, the last thing you want is to be told to focus on one object"
Blythe spirit
As well as encouraging collaboration, pressure on space can also be the spur for radical approaches. The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam is creating a publicly accessible store for all of its art, alongside private collections, in a striking building due to open in 2019 (see box). The museum’s director Sjarel Ex says that the project has stimulated interest from institutions in other countries – one of which has been the V&A.
Along with the Science Museum and the British Museum, the V&A will need to relocate its stored collection from Blythe House in west London, which is to be sold by government. The museum is considering moving its collection close to its planned outpost in the “Olympicopolis” cultural quarter in east London. A museum spokeswoman says: “The V&A has been looking at options to relocate its world-class reserve collections to a state-of-the art, purpose-built and accessible collections centre in London. We are considering sites close to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and in close proximity to the proposed new V&A East.”
While the Science Museum plans to move its collection to its existing facility in Wroughton, Wiltshire, the British Museum remains undecided but has not ruled out a move to Olympicopolis.
In his 2015 autumn statement, the then chancellor George Osborne framed the decision to sell Blythe House as a triumph for accessibility, enabling collections to be moved “out of storage and on display”.
But Nicky Reeves, a curator at the Hunterian in Glasgow, who also researches and blogs about museums, believes that this binary narrative does not do justice to the variety of ways that museums can make their collections accessible.
“There is a lot of anxiety to make visibility visible and to be seen to be accessible,” Reeves says. “We need to be careful not to get into a metrics game, where objects are only seen to have value if they are immediately accessible.”
Reeves thinks that the appeal of open storage ties into a growing public interest in deconstructing processes, as well as a general tendency to disclose more information. “This is all part of a much longer story.”
Rotterdam's Public Art Depot
The Collectiegebouw, known as the Public Art Depot in English, is an accessible art store that Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is creating in the city’s Museumpark. It will hold its entire collection of artworks – 145,000 objects – alongside private collections. The six-storey building, designed by Rotterdam-based architects MVRDV, is to have a striking appearance. It will be shaped like a huge bowl, covered with “mirror cladding” to reflect the surrounding park, and will feature a tree-lined roof terrace, complete with a restaurant.
This will be a good spot to take in the city, says the museum’s director, Sjarel Ex. “At 39 metres up, under the trees, you will find a nice place to look at the inspiring panorama of Rotterdam,” he says.
The project got the go-ahead from Rotterdam council in November last year. Construction is to begin next month, with the opening planned to take place in 2019.
The building will have 15,000 sq m of space, 9,000 sq m of which will be taken up by stores. Of that, 1,900 sq m will be reserved for private collectors – impressively, 50% of that space has already been rented.
Visitors will be able to access the roof terrace and a ground-floor cafe for free and explore more of the building with a ticket. For a further charge they can join a guided tour of the museum’s storage areas. Private collectors will decide whether to allow access to their collections: it is hoped some will even mount exhibitions.
The project has been driven by the inadequacy of the institution’s current storage spaces, which are too full, with poor climate control. The museum also wanted to share its conservation expertise more openly, because it has been fielding large numbers of queries from the public.
“We saw that it was necessary to make the everyday things that we do in a museum transparent,” Ex says. “This project makes the collection accessible, and also active. People start to think with you about what it’s about, and what the contents are. We think that it will improve our system of working tremendously.”
There will be early-morning tours and an evening social event at Kelvin Hall at the Museums Association Conference & Exhibition in Glasgow (7-9 November)