Museums and galleries are always on the lookout for ways to make their collections more accessible to the wider community, and this means moving outside of the traditional museum space – bringing art, artefacts and museum activities to the people rather than other way round.
Disused buildings
The pop-up exhibition is becoming a popular way of achieving this. The concept has been around for a while, but it’s no coincidence that it’s spread in tandem with the economic downturn and the decline of the high street, which has led to empty shop units and offices in many town centres.
New Art Spaces is one such project making the most of disused spaces; launched this year in Leigh and Widnes in north-west England, the initiative, which is run by the Castlefield Gallery, uses empty commercial spaces as studios where the public can watch and talk to artists at work.
Local partnerships are essential to the New Art Spaces initiative. The gallery identified usable spaces with the help of Leeds-based organisation East Street Arts, which has a well-established history of brokering deals with landlords to use unoccupied buildings. It has also built relationships with the Turnpike Gallery in Leigh and Cross Street Arts in Wigan to develop workshops and artist exchanges.
The initiative has numerous advantages; the pop-ups are helping to engage hard-to-reach parts of the community and bring increased footfall to nearby businesses, with the added benefit of creating publicity for the gallery itself.
The spaces give emerging artists a much-needed creative forum where they can develop their work. And though the property owners offer the spaces rent free, the gallery covers business rates and utility bills, giving landlords a small saving along with the security of having their building occupied.
A larger-scale New Art Spaces initiative is planned for the eight-storey Federation House building in Manchester in January 2014.
Inspired interventions
Often a building itself can inspire an exhibition. This year’s Edinburgh Art Festival featured a number of site-specific pop-ups, one of which involved artists Christine Borland and Brody Condon refurbishing a derelict watchtower in the burial ground on Calton Hill, which was once used in the early 19th century to deter grave robbers.
Bringing out stored collections
But the concept isn’t just for artwork. In a hugely successful experiment two years ago, Derby Museum used objects from its stored collection as set dressing for a 1970s stand at the Vintage Festival in London’s Southbank Centre. The installation touched a nostalgic nerve with the 9,000 people who stopped by one weekend.
Starting a dialogue
Because of the more informal setting, pop-ups offer an opportunity to begin a dialogue on more equal terms between the museum and the visitor. The Amsterdam Historical Museum in the Netherlands has created a travelling vending machine where people can buy historical objects with museum labels attached, and then go online to add their memories and opinions about the object to the museum’s database.
In the US, one museum professional, Michelle DelCarlo, has worked with numerous institutions to create “participatory community events” that promote story-telling through co-curation. She has formulated a pop-up template that lasts just two hours and involves a limited number of people in a simple setting.
The advice is:
http://popupmuseum.blogspot.ie
“One of the core aims of Castlefield Gallery is being able to nurture talent and strengthen audience engagement with contemporary art.
In some areas the gallery might be seen as remote – what we’re hoping to do is transfer what we’re doing outside the gallery and make it accessible to the public. These spaces have immediately broken down what seemed like barriers between the people and the gallery.
We’ve had an amazing response – every day, people are coming in for a chat and bringing their artwork in with them to hang on the wall. It’s also created a dialogue between emerging artists, who are really keen to get feedback on what they’re doing.”
Disused buildings
The pop-up exhibition is becoming a popular way of achieving this. The concept has been around for a while, but it’s no coincidence that it’s spread in tandem with the economic downturn and the decline of the high street, which has led to empty shop units and offices in many town centres.
New Art Spaces is one such project making the most of disused spaces; launched this year in Leigh and Widnes in north-west England, the initiative, which is run by the Castlefield Gallery, uses empty commercial spaces as studios where the public can watch and talk to artists at work.
Local partnerships are essential to the New Art Spaces initiative. The gallery identified usable spaces with the help of Leeds-based organisation East Street Arts, which has a well-established history of brokering deals with landlords to use unoccupied buildings. It has also built relationships with the Turnpike Gallery in Leigh and Cross Street Arts in Wigan to develop workshops and artist exchanges.
The initiative has numerous advantages; the pop-ups are helping to engage hard-to-reach parts of the community and bring increased footfall to nearby businesses, with the added benefit of creating publicity for the gallery itself.
The spaces give emerging artists a much-needed creative forum where they can develop their work. And though the property owners offer the spaces rent free, the gallery covers business rates and utility bills, giving landlords a small saving along with the security of having their building occupied.
A larger-scale New Art Spaces initiative is planned for the eight-storey Federation House building in Manchester in January 2014.
Inspired interventions
Often a building itself can inspire an exhibition. This year’s Edinburgh Art Festival featured a number of site-specific pop-ups, one of which involved artists Christine Borland and Brody Condon refurbishing a derelict watchtower in the burial ground on Calton Hill, which was once used in the early 19th century to deter grave robbers.
Bringing out stored collections
But the concept isn’t just for artwork. In a hugely successful experiment two years ago, Derby Museum used objects from its stored collection as set dressing for a 1970s stand at the Vintage Festival in London’s Southbank Centre. The installation touched a nostalgic nerve with the 9,000 people who stopped by one weekend.
Starting a dialogue
Because of the more informal setting, pop-ups offer an opportunity to begin a dialogue on more equal terms between the museum and the visitor. The Amsterdam Historical Museum in the Netherlands has created a travelling vending machine where people can buy historical objects with museum labels attached, and then go online to add their memories and opinions about the object to the museum’s database.
In the US, one museum professional, Michelle DelCarlo, has worked with numerous institutions to create “participatory community events” that promote story-telling through co-curation. She has formulated a pop-up template that lasts just two hours and involves a limited number of people in a simple setting.
The advice is:
- Choose a theme
- Invite people to bring an object that is meaningful to them, based on the theme
- Invite them to write a label describing why their object is meaningful
- At the pop-up, people talk with others and view objects.
http://popupmuseum.blogspot.ie
Nicholas James, coordinator, New Art Spaces
“One of the core aims of Castlefield Gallery is being able to nurture talent and strengthen audience engagement with contemporary art.
In some areas the gallery might be seen as remote – what we’re hoping to do is transfer what we’re doing outside the gallery and make it accessible to the public. These spaces have immediately broken down what seemed like barriers between the people and the gallery.
We’ve had an amazing response – every day, people are coming in for a chat and bringing their artwork in with them to hang on the wall. It’s also created a dialogue between emerging artists, who are really keen to get feedback on what they’re doing.”
