Research has long-been a vital part of the museum and gallery sector but new funding streams and innovative partnerships between curators and academics have given this work a growing profile in recent years.
The digital revolution is having a major impact as it is changing the way research is done and is increasing the number of people who can get involved in museum research.
Expertise is no longer seen as being held by a few specialists. Instead, a far wider range of people are able to contribute to knowledge about museums
and their collections.
And the work of museums and higher education bodies seems to be coming together as both get more involved in working in partnership with different communities and groups.
But there are some challenges for research in museums, including a loss of specialist expertise and the difficulties created by short-term funding streams.
Glenn Adamson was the former head of research at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
“Scrapping entrance charges meant researchers knew their work was likely to hit a sizeable audience. As a result, academics – finding their funding structures have shifted towards reaching wider audiences – have become hugely motivated to work with museums to show ‘impact’.
[In museums] it is about promulgating a research culture along the lines of what’s happening in the nationals into small institutions where grants and aid funding are limited.
In smaller museums or historic houses, curators should be encouraged to think of themselves as connective entrepreneurial individuals striking up partnerships with nearby universities and ensuring that their work is relevant and of benefit to local communities.
[Before digital technology], everything from finding factual knowledge about your collection to knowing who to call for advice or participation used to be slow and cumbersome. Obviously, it’s usually just a starting point but there’s no doubt that online searching has transformed museum research just as it has everything else.
Eventually, the audience and curator will share responsibility for having expertise in collections. Some people who came to the David Bowie show had more knowledge than the curators, but that’s OK because we are creating a platform for people to exchange ideas.”
“Achieving IRO (Independent Research Organisation) status has made a huge difference to national museums.
We can apply for funding from bodies, particularly the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), on the same footing as a university department as opposed to being a partner organisation. This makes us a more attractive proposition in the research field.
We are also benefiting from a change in the AHRC’s policy on collaborative doctoral students; via a grant application process, curators and academics are now able to prioritise research projects and students can produce work based on our collections or museum policy.
For around 20 years, the Science Museum has had a strong tradition of audience research in terms of our contemporary science shows but we hadn’t done a tremendous amount into how historical artefacts add meaning to our visitors. Our research and public history department – launched last year – is addressing that in interesting ways.
Firstly, we ran a series of articles in a genealogical magazine – illustrated with objects in our collections that were the tools of old trades – to encourage family historians to connect with how their ancestors lived and worked.
We also took an old 1920s manual telephone exchange switchboard back to where we acquired it half a century ago. People who had actually used the apparatus came to tell us things about it and their working conditions that we couldn’t possibly have found out any other way.
Similarly, we used the museum blog and Facebook to recruit 12 people who were really into electronic music to co-curate an exhibition in order to discover the nature of lay-expertise and how it can be brought closer to museum practice for the benefit of everyone.
For a long time we concentrated on our very important and much-loved family and schools audiences while probably overlooking the needs and wants of our adult audience.
But I’ve been a curator long enough to remember the time when there was a suspicion about having people other than permanent staff conducting research on collections.
Curatorship is often considered to be rather old-fashioned. Things had to change as curator numbers dropped and funding fell in real terms.
We know less about our collections and there are fewer stories we know how to tell. The new research opportunities provide the chance to discover new ones and to understand a great deal more than we were able to in the past.”
“This university is a wonderful community in which to learn about different aspects of museum research. There are students at different stages in their careers and some who have never worked in museums; so many people bringing in so many different ideas.
I had worked in community museums and projects for four years and the PhD gave me the chance to reflect on – and improve – my practice.
I’m interested in why funding seems to drive so much audience development work. Museums need funding to carry out projects with specific groups but it always seemed quite arbitrary and often didn’t necessarily mean reaching the audience it needed to.
There might be funding, for example, for projects to reach young offenders but does that mean every single museum should do that even if it’s not a specific issue in their area?
Facing such heavy cuts, I don’t think long-term resilience comes from a lot of short-term projects. Reaching out to people doesn’t have to be difficult. Demographics can be reductive and we shouldn’t assume certain groups are just interested in certain subjects.”
“In the past, there has been a tension between university research and museums and gallery practice because they have been regulated and assessed in different ways.
Now, there’s a much greater emphasis on practitioner relevance and practical outcomes. Greater importance is being placed on ‘co-productions’ with different communities and groups and this is probably the direction in which university research is heading.
For example, we’re working on a project – with funding from the New Dynamics of Ageing Programme – aimed at improving the wellbeing of older people with dementia.
Some of the work is hard science such as the study of the cardio-vascular system from a genetic point of view. But there’s a humanities element where we work with galleries to find out how arts experiences influence health and happiness.
We have an economist on the programme as the government wants us to ‘monetarise’ the whole exercise; this, obviously, makes humanities people hyper-ventilate.
But if it’s possible to have a mechanism that proves the value of arts interventions for people with early-stage dementia, you have the potential to save the country billions of pounds.
It’s all about research addressing a societal challenge rather than the blue sky stuff where you go and sit in a Northumberland shed for six months to write a book. It’s increasingly difficult to get that approach funded these days, after all.”
“There’s a lot of anecdotal talk about a crisis in curatorial expertise but not much firm evidence to back it up; you could do a head count to prove numbers were falling but it would be difficult to assess the impact without knowing exactly who knew what.
It’s more pertinent to look at how the curator’s job has changed as museums find themselves subject to fluctuating funding climates and political contexts.
I think change is particularly painful and difficult in the sector because people who work in museums tend to be interested in the past. This isn’t to say everyone is afflicted by rose-tinted nostalgia but an interest in preserving what has been historically good might lead to a different attitude to change than you find in other lines of work.
No one seems to be writing definitive catalogues on, for example, English alabaster anymore. Is that because there’s no one to do it or because that kind of scholarship is not really what audiences want or need today?
There’s some truth in both answers. There has been a loss of specialist knowledge but that subject-based expertise was often communicated really poorly.”
The digital revolution is having a major impact as it is changing the way research is done and is increasing the number of people who can get involved in museum research.
Expertise is no longer seen as being held by a few specialists. Instead, a far wider range of people are able to contribute to knowledge about museums
and their collections.
And the work of museums and higher education bodies seems to be coming together as both get more involved in working in partnership with different communities and groups.
But there are some challenges for research in museums, including a loss of specialist expertise and the difficulties created by short-term funding streams.
Glenn Adamson, director, Museum of Arts and Design, New York
Glenn Adamson was the former head of research at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
“Scrapping entrance charges meant researchers knew their work was likely to hit a sizeable audience. As a result, academics – finding their funding structures have shifted towards reaching wider audiences – have become hugely motivated to work with museums to show ‘impact’.
[In museums] it is about promulgating a research culture along the lines of what’s happening in the nationals into small institutions where grants and aid funding are limited.
In smaller museums or historic houses, curators should be encouraged to think of themselves as connective entrepreneurial individuals striking up partnerships with nearby universities and ensuring that their work is relevant and of benefit to local communities.
[Before digital technology], everything from finding factual knowledge about your collection to knowing who to call for advice or participation used to be slow and cumbersome. Obviously, it’s usually just a starting point but there’s no doubt that online searching has transformed museum research just as it has everything else.
Eventually, the audience and curator will share responsibility for having expertise in collections. Some people who came to the David Bowie show had more knowledge than the curators, but that’s OK because we are creating a platform for people to exchange ideas.”
Tim Boon, head of research and public history, Science Museum, London
“Achieving IRO (Independent Research Organisation) status has made a huge difference to national museums.
We can apply for funding from bodies, particularly the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), on the same footing as a university department as opposed to being a partner organisation. This makes us a more attractive proposition in the research field.
We are also benefiting from a change in the AHRC’s policy on collaborative doctoral students; via a grant application process, curators and academics are now able to prioritise research projects and students can produce work based on our collections or museum policy.
For around 20 years, the Science Museum has had a strong tradition of audience research in terms of our contemporary science shows but we hadn’t done a tremendous amount into how historical artefacts add meaning to our visitors. Our research and public history department – launched last year – is addressing that in interesting ways.
Firstly, we ran a series of articles in a genealogical magazine – illustrated with objects in our collections that were the tools of old trades – to encourage family historians to connect with how their ancestors lived and worked.
We also took an old 1920s manual telephone exchange switchboard back to where we acquired it half a century ago. People who had actually used the apparatus came to tell us things about it and their working conditions that we couldn’t possibly have found out any other way.
Similarly, we used the museum blog and Facebook to recruit 12 people who were really into electronic music to co-curate an exhibition in order to discover the nature of lay-expertise and how it can be brought closer to museum practice for the benefit of everyone.
For a long time we concentrated on our very important and much-loved family and schools audiences while probably overlooking the needs and wants of our adult audience.
But I’ve been a curator long enough to remember the time when there was a suspicion about having people other than permanent staff conducting research on collections.
Curatorship is often considered to be rather old-fashioned. Things had to change as curator numbers dropped and funding fell in real terms.
We know less about our collections and there are fewer stories we know how to tell. The new research opportunities provide the chance to discover new ones and to understand a great deal more than we were able to in the past.”
Laura Crossley, PhD researcher, School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester
“This university is a wonderful community in which to learn about different aspects of museum research. There are students at different stages in their careers and some who have never worked in museums; so many people bringing in so many different ideas.
I had worked in community museums and projects for four years and the PhD gave me the chance to reflect on – and improve – my practice.
I’m interested in why funding seems to drive so much audience development work. Museums need funding to carry out projects with specific groups but it always seemed quite arbitrary and often didn’t necessarily mean reaching the audience it needed to.
There might be funding, for example, for projects to reach young offenders but does that mean every single museum should do that even if it’s not a specific issue in their area?
Facing such heavy cuts, I don’t think long-term resilience comes from a lot of short-term projects. Reaching out to people doesn’t have to be difficult. Demographics can be reductive and we shouldn’t assume certain groups are just interested in certain subjects.”
Andrew Newman, senior lecturer, Newcastle University’s School of Arts and Cultures
“In the past, there has been a tension between university research and museums and gallery practice because they have been regulated and assessed in different ways.
Now, there’s a much greater emphasis on practitioner relevance and practical outcomes. Greater importance is being placed on ‘co-productions’ with different communities and groups and this is probably the direction in which university research is heading.
For example, we’re working on a project – with funding from the New Dynamics of Ageing Programme – aimed at improving the wellbeing of older people with dementia.
Some of the work is hard science such as the study of the cardio-vascular system from a genetic point of view. But there’s a humanities element where we work with galleries to find out how arts experiences influence health and happiness.
We have an economist on the programme as the government wants us to ‘monetarise’ the whole exercise; this, obviously, makes humanities people hyper-ventilate.
But if it’s possible to have a mechanism that proves the value of arts interventions for people with early-stage dementia, you have the potential to save the country billions of pounds.
It’s all about research addressing a societal challenge rather than the blue sky stuff where you go and sit in a Northumberland shed for six months to write a book. It’s increasingly difficult to get that approach funded these days, after all.”
Helen Wilkinson, PhD researcher, School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester
“There’s a lot of anecdotal talk about a crisis in curatorial expertise but not much firm evidence to back it up; you could do a head count to prove numbers were falling but it would be difficult to assess the impact without knowing exactly who knew what.
It’s more pertinent to look at how the curator’s job has changed as museums find themselves subject to fluctuating funding climates and political contexts.
I think change is particularly painful and difficult in the sector because people who work in museums tend to be interested in the past. This isn’t to say everyone is afflicted by rose-tinted nostalgia but an interest in preserving what has been historically good might lead to a different attitude to change than you find in other lines of work.
No one seems to be writing definitive catalogues on, for example, English alabaster anymore. Is that because there’s no one to do it or because that kind of scholarship is not really what audiences want or need today?
There’s some truth in both answers. There has been a loss of specialist knowledge but that subject-based expertise was often communicated really poorly.”