During last year’s fairytale summer for English football, the Piccadilly tube station of Southgate renamed itself Gareth Southgate in tribute to the England manager.
In the months since, we’ve seen the department store Harvey Nichols temporarily rechristened Holly Nichols, and Johnnie Walker scotch whisky as Jane Walker, both in moves to support female empowerment.
Impermanent name changes and brand takeovers are perhaps a reflection of our constantly evolving social media culture – modern consumers have shorter attention spans and far more options to choose from. A break from the norm, however, captures people’s attention, providing them with a quick Instagrammable moment.
If done well, it’s an easy way for brands to break down the barrier between them and their audience. Hardly surprising, then, that museums are starting to get involved.
In June 2018 Dundee’s McManus Art Gallery and Museum rebranded itself as the “McMenace” in a tribute to Dennis the Menace, star of the Dundee-born Beano, for the duration of an exhibition that celebrated the comic’s 80th anniversary.
Carly Cooper, the museum’s curator of social history, says the success of the renaming exceeded anything they had anticipated, and that they were well aware of the pitfalls of alienating traditionalists.
“We were worried about how the name McMenace would go down – we knew that the V&A received some negative press for their plans for ‘farting’ statues at a similar Beano takeover,” Cooper recalls. “But I think we got the balance just about right between humour and taste.”
In the end the exhibition became a runaway success, attracting over 100,000 visitors (the museum’s most popular exhibition of all time), and according to Cooper, the name change played a large part.
“It created intrigue around the McManus Museum, and attracted visitors that wouldn’t have otherwise come to us. It also showed that museums aren’t just these very quiet spaces – they can be fun.”
These temporary rebrands don’t have to be puntastic or tongue-in-cheek, however. Like the millions who daubed their Facebook profile pictures with the French Tricolour after the Paris attacks in 2015, museums can make important statements with a timely and socially conscious gesture.
Cuban contemporary artist Tania Bruguera, who undertook Tate Modern’s Hyundai Commission in the Turbine Hall last autumn, used her platform to rename the gallery’s Boiler House the Natalie Bell Building for one year, after the founder of SE1 United, a youth-led organisation for social change.
Speaking to Apollo Magazine at the time, Bruguera said: “Natalie became involved as a result of my interactions with a group of 21 people who live and work in the same postcode as Tate Modern. I asked what they wanted to see at the museum, and what the museum could learn from them.”
The wheels were set in motion for the renaming after the group requested better recognition of the good work that had been done in the local community. Bruguera said: “I’d like to see a return to the times when buildings would be named after people who had done wonderful things, rather than people who are rich.”
The Manchester Jewish Museum closed its doors recently in order to carry out a £5m redevelopment. It will reopen in 2020 with new galleries, learning spaces, a shop and cafe, but in the meantime it has renamed itself the Wandering Jewish Museum.
This is part of a two-year project that will see museum volunteers work with artists, theatre makers, creative producers and curators during the closure to bring Jewish stories to life in schools, libraries, museums and community centres across Greater Manchester.
But whether museums are proffering an image of wokeness or making a seasonal pun, such as those perennially jocular tweeters at the Museum of English Rural Life (or Museum of English Rural Undead during Halloween), these temporary identity changes ultimately serve the same purpose.
Miles Rowland is a freelance journalist