Weston Park Museum, Sheffield
Sheffield folk are nothing if not forceful. One website, redolent with as many significant capital letters as a Victorian hellfire sermon, reads: 'Seven Hills carved by Six Rivers that powered the Wheels that Ground the Steel that made Sheffield famous.'
The imperative promotional material for the reopening of the Weston Park Museum continues this theme, demanding that 'breath will be taken… minds will be opened… heads will be turned… jaws will be dropped'. Is the unspoken phrase at the end of such exhaustive exhortation 'or else'?
The aim of three years of development, much rebuilding and a multimillion pound spend by Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust has been to create a 'family-friendly' museum in which 'fascinating histories, incredible facts and hands-on interactives bring beautiful, varied and unusual treasures to life'.
Such a task is often easier for copywriters to suggest than for curators to achieve. Most town and city collections are amassed haphazardly - that is frequently the major part of their charm - like Harriet Beecher Stowe's Topsy, they 'just growed'.
I am a great believer in museums having their own identity. I've never held with those self-appointed 'cultural historians', hopefully now discredited, who argued that museums should be 'neutral facilities'. I believe museums should have personality.
That's why places such as the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and the Museum of Croydon, though disparate in size and resources, are so successful and inspiring. They are modern versions of the traditional cabinet of curiosities; spaces in which stuff is used to tell stories.
Weston Park is different; it is a place of split personalities. With its wide central walkway it feels more like a shopping mall than a museum. The six gallery spaces have clearly been planned by individual curators.
Some work well, most notably those devised by Kim Streets (Sheffield Life and Times) and Paul Richards (What on Earth!). Both these keepers have long service and clearly a deep love and knowledge of their collections. It shows.
The natural history gallery has great vitality. The exhibits are varied and theatrically lit. Prehistoric creatures, including a splendid woolly rhinoceros, vie with colonies of living ants and bees.
As a centrepiece, the realistic cast of a 300-year-old oak tree from the nearby Chatsworth estate is imaginatively used to explain the wildlife that shelters in its branches and roots. Visitors were awe-struck by the re-creation of lightning strikes.
I was persuaded, with the aid of a computer, to design my own creature, choosing shape, scales, fins and teeth, sure in the knowledge that my sea serpent would be the scourge of the oceans. It survived for three seconds, a salutary lesson both for me and a scornful audience of schoolchildren.
The weird and wonderful eating, camouflage and mating habits of peacocks and crocodiles are shown. The back windows of the gallery cleverly give glimpses into the outside world of the park. Information sheets, telescopes and binoculars are provided for research.
These were being used avidly by the very young to study the lunchtime courting and mating rituals of the next generation. One special treat for me was to discover the stuffed remains of one of my childhood icons, Guy the Gorilla from London Zoo, in a temporary exhibition.
The social history galleries set out to show the life and times of the city using objects, images and film clips. Such displays are commonplace in provincial galleries, but they are frequently bland, as if the designers were conscious of the councillors peering over their shoulders.
The theme of 'plenty of steel in Sheffield still' is expounded with skill and wit. The processes of steel manufacture are managed credibly. I liked the dividing walls of cogs, tools, Stanley knives and liquorice allsorts. In a small space the key political and social events that marked the city, from chartism and radicalism to the 1984 miners' strike, are explained well.
I was much taken with the Attercliffe butcher's shop and its captured interviews, in which the female owner explained that she served the meat while her husband, 'in full prattle', provided the entertainment. There had clearly been considerable research and consultation with a wide range of community and ethnic groups.
Both of these galleries, crammed full of objects and information, were also crowded with local visitors; elderly people reminiscing, family groups, or that most wonderful and potent of museum sights, children with grandparents. The craic was loud, intense and appreciative.
The other galleries were quiet, and briefly and scantly attended. The reasons are clear. There has been less passion, perhaps less cash, expended in About Art. The gallery space is beautiful but the art is spread as thin as workhouse margarine. A few perfunctory explanations about materials and the use of colour were uninspiring. The room has the air of a rarely used performance space.
The adjacent Treasures gallery has some stunning objects - a beautiful North American Indian Shirt, a few Egyptian mummies and a grotesque carved Benin ivory tusk from Nigeria. It also houses an exquisite ivory carving from China that deserves to be displayed in the round.
Both these galleries have too few artefacts and too much artifice. They are places to enter on tiptoe, whisper and leave reverently. I can't understand the significance of Arctic World, where visitors are invited to 'meet Snowy the Polar Bear and explore life in a land of ice and snow'.
This is anthropomorphism at its lowest, not so much family-friendly as infantile. There is no sense of the cold, desolation and dimensions of the Arctic. All that is missing from this monument to tweedom is Father Christmas's Grotto.
Quibbles aside I enjoyed the visit. There are some minus points. One, outside the museum's control, is the paucity of parking spaces and a lack of directional road signing. But there are many plus points - admission is free, the shop is wonderful, and the cafeteria elegant. A brief glimpse at the education centre was enough to judge that the service is both creative and useful.
The greatest strength of the Weston Park Museum lies with the front of house staff, who are amiable and non-custodial, pleasant rather than pushy. Assets I would judge as precious as the artefacts.
Peter Lewis is a writer and a past director of Beamish, the North of England Open Air Museum
Project data
Cost: £19m, Heritage Lottery Fund £13.7m, Sheffield City Council £2.5m, European Regional Development Fund £1.2m
Exhibition design: Redman Design Associates
Architect: Purcell Miller Tritton
Lighting: Lighting Design and Technology
Audiovisuals: Centrescreen
Display cases: Click
Project management: Turner & Townsend Group
Quantity surveyor: Davis Langdon
Structural engineer and mechanical and electrical engineer: Ove Arup
Building contractor: Mowlem
Display fit-out contractor: Mivan
Sheffield folk are nothing if not forceful. One website, redolent with as many significant capital letters as a Victorian hellfire sermon, reads: 'Seven Hills carved by Six Rivers that powered the Wheels that Ground the Steel that made Sheffield famous.'
The imperative promotional material for the reopening of the Weston Park Museum continues this theme, demanding that 'breath will be taken… minds will be opened… heads will be turned… jaws will be dropped'. Is the unspoken phrase at the end of such exhaustive exhortation 'or else'?
The aim of three years of development, much rebuilding and a multimillion pound spend by Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust has been to create a 'family-friendly' museum in which 'fascinating histories, incredible facts and hands-on interactives bring beautiful, varied and unusual treasures to life'.
Such a task is often easier for copywriters to suggest than for curators to achieve. Most town and city collections are amassed haphazardly - that is frequently the major part of their charm - like Harriet Beecher Stowe's Topsy, they 'just growed'.
I am a great believer in museums having their own identity. I've never held with those self-appointed 'cultural historians', hopefully now discredited, who argued that museums should be 'neutral facilities'. I believe museums should have personality.
That's why places such as the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and the Museum of Croydon, though disparate in size and resources, are so successful and inspiring. They are modern versions of the traditional cabinet of curiosities; spaces in which stuff is used to tell stories.
Weston Park is different; it is a place of split personalities. With its wide central walkway it feels more like a shopping mall than a museum. The six gallery spaces have clearly been planned by individual curators.
Some work well, most notably those devised by Kim Streets (Sheffield Life and Times) and Paul Richards (What on Earth!). Both these keepers have long service and clearly a deep love and knowledge of their collections. It shows.
The natural history gallery has great vitality. The exhibits are varied and theatrically lit. Prehistoric creatures, including a splendid woolly rhinoceros, vie with colonies of living ants and bees.
As a centrepiece, the realistic cast of a 300-year-old oak tree from the nearby Chatsworth estate is imaginatively used to explain the wildlife that shelters in its branches and roots. Visitors were awe-struck by the re-creation of lightning strikes.
I was persuaded, with the aid of a computer, to design my own creature, choosing shape, scales, fins and teeth, sure in the knowledge that my sea serpent would be the scourge of the oceans. It survived for three seconds, a salutary lesson both for me and a scornful audience of schoolchildren.
The weird and wonderful eating, camouflage and mating habits of peacocks and crocodiles are shown. The back windows of the gallery cleverly give glimpses into the outside world of the park. Information sheets, telescopes and binoculars are provided for research.
These were being used avidly by the very young to study the lunchtime courting and mating rituals of the next generation. One special treat for me was to discover the stuffed remains of one of my childhood icons, Guy the Gorilla from London Zoo, in a temporary exhibition.
The social history galleries set out to show the life and times of the city using objects, images and film clips. Such displays are commonplace in provincial galleries, but they are frequently bland, as if the designers were conscious of the councillors peering over their shoulders.
The theme of 'plenty of steel in Sheffield still' is expounded with skill and wit. The processes of steel manufacture are managed credibly. I liked the dividing walls of cogs, tools, Stanley knives and liquorice allsorts. In a small space the key political and social events that marked the city, from chartism and radicalism to the 1984 miners' strike, are explained well.
I was much taken with the Attercliffe butcher's shop and its captured interviews, in which the female owner explained that she served the meat while her husband, 'in full prattle', provided the entertainment. There had clearly been considerable research and consultation with a wide range of community and ethnic groups.
Both of these galleries, crammed full of objects and information, were also crowded with local visitors; elderly people reminiscing, family groups, or that most wonderful and potent of museum sights, children with grandparents. The craic was loud, intense and appreciative.
The other galleries were quiet, and briefly and scantly attended. The reasons are clear. There has been less passion, perhaps less cash, expended in About Art. The gallery space is beautiful but the art is spread as thin as workhouse margarine. A few perfunctory explanations about materials and the use of colour were uninspiring. The room has the air of a rarely used performance space.
The adjacent Treasures gallery has some stunning objects - a beautiful North American Indian Shirt, a few Egyptian mummies and a grotesque carved Benin ivory tusk from Nigeria. It also houses an exquisite ivory carving from China that deserves to be displayed in the round.
Both these galleries have too few artefacts and too much artifice. They are places to enter on tiptoe, whisper and leave reverently. I can't understand the significance of Arctic World, where visitors are invited to 'meet Snowy the Polar Bear and explore life in a land of ice and snow'.
This is anthropomorphism at its lowest, not so much family-friendly as infantile. There is no sense of the cold, desolation and dimensions of the Arctic. All that is missing from this monument to tweedom is Father Christmas's Grotto.
Quibbles aside I enjoyed the visit. There are some minus points. One, outside the museum's control, is the paucity of parking spaces and a lack of directional road signing. But there are many plus points - admission is free, the shop is wonderful, and the cafeteria elegant. A brief glimpse at the education centre was enough to judge that the service is both creative and useful.
The greatest strength of the Weston Park Museum lies with the front of house staff, who are amiable and non-custodial, pleasant rather than pushy. Assets I would judge as precious as the artefacts.
Peter Lewis is a writer and a past director of Beamish, the North of England Open Air Museum
Project data
Cost: £19m, Heritage Lottery Fund £13.7m, Sheffield City Council £2.5m, European Regional Development Fund £1.2m
Exhibition design: Redman Design Associates
Architect: Purcell Miller Tritton
Lighting: Lighting Design and Technology
Audiovisuals: Centrescreen
Display cases: Click
Project management: Turner & Townsend Group
Quantity surveyor: Davis Langdon
Structural engineer and mechanical and electrical engineer: Ove Arup
Building contractor: Mowlem
Display fit-out contractor: Mivan
