At Home in London, 1600-1800, Geffrye Museum, London
The Geffrye Museum has always been one of my favourite London museums. On a quiet day, I could lose myself in its displays of middle-class interiors. They are intriguing, other-worldly, intimate, voyeuristic and celebratory.
I'd always loved the incidentals hidden in the gloom of the 17th- and 18th-century rooms - the stuffed armadillo, silhouettes strung up with ribbon, the annual display of authentic Christmas decorations of the period.
The displays prompted me to imagine what life might have been like at the time. Like the tenement museums in Glasgow and New York, the temporary creation of the 1940s house in the Imperial War Museum, or even the recent At Home in Renaissance Italy exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Geffrye has typically employed a light touch.
Its displays contrast strongly with the overblown theatricality of the Dennis Severs' House in Spitalfields, east London; Deborah Warner's St Pancras Project: A Fantastical Walk, one of the highlights of the 1995 Lift festival; and H.G. by Robert Wilson and Hans Peter Kuhn, which Artangel commissioned in 1995 for the Clink Street Vaults by the river Thames.
These are deliberately constructed Mary Celeste moments, evoking ghostly presences through the creation of smells, sounds and the overheard whispers of actors.
The rationale for the Geffrye Museum's new galleries is that the old displays had remained largely unchanged for almost 50 years and that museum practice, scholarship and society have all moved on. The museum refurbished its 19th-century rooms in 1995, and opened new 20th-century rooms in 1998, as part of its extension designed by architects Branson Coates.
The 17th- and 18th-century displays, which opened in November 2006, feature four new period rooms. They are not simply intended to be evocative or nostalgic, but to accurately represent the changing homes of London's middle classes.
David Dewing, the director of the Geffrye, says they are also designed to represent changes in history. He says: 'As new evidence is discovered, knowledge is enhanced and fresh interpretations are reached.' The new displays are for an audience that is 'diverse, demanding, engaged and questioning'.
The Geffrye's research has resulted in a series of new galleries that lack the comforting gloom of the old displays. The 1630 hall is panelled floor to ceiling with new oak, lightly stained and polished. This unexpectedly brightly-lit and immaculate interior is more reminiscent of Ikea's unsullied showrooms than the dark, and possibly dusty, interiors that the Geffrye used to house.
The same could be said of the 1695 post-Fire of London parlour, and the 1745 and 1790 parlours. But unlike Ikea's seductive displays, these have been largely cleared of their accoutrements. Such paraphernalia has been consigned to glass cases where it can be scrutinised at close quarters. The newness of the rooms' 'shells', emphasised by the replica curtains, floor coverings and the gleaming paintwork was overwhelming.
Uncharitably, I would have preferred the pristine paint colours 'supplied by the Little Greene Paint Company, whose history at home initiative aims to bring accurate, historic paint colours to the public', to have been confined to the shop.
Nonetheless, the new displays and interpretation are fascinating in what they reveal about the urban middle classes, how they lived, how their tastes and aspirations were formed, how they expressed their identity through the rooms they furnished. The displays track the rise of the middle class from a relatively tiny group in the 17th century to the dominant group it is today.
As the press release points out: 'They have been an increasingly powerful and influential force and in many ways they are closer to what we mean by "English" than the royalty and aristocracy.' By definition, the displays and the interpretation play to an audience caught up in its own times.
Much is presented through simulations: you can touch replicas of fabrics, floor coverings and japanning and read contemporary newspapers. Two new audio-guides intriguingly use contemporary accounts to describe the lives lived in, and around, these rooms. If you want to know what the desperate housewife of her day did to pass the time, it's there.
Recorded extracts include those from a housewife's diary from 1599-1600; incidents in a bachelor's life during 1715-16; and an account of coffee house culture in 1720. At a time when the UK Tea Council is telling us that four cups of tea a day are as essential as five portions of fruit and vegetables, my favourite piece of advice was the 1744 recommendation that tea's depressive qualities should be countered by a rum chaser.
But, just as these audio accounts got going, they stopped. A three-minute sound-bite if ever there was one. The limitations of the Geffrye's technology means that you have to stand against the wall to listen to the four earphones provided.
So there's no way that you can listen while you're looking at the displays, or sitting down somewhere. It would be nice to imagine that these accounts could be changed monthly, or that they could be collected and downloaded from the museum's website.
Other aspects of the interpretation are disappointing: the same images are repeated on information panels within sight of each other - as if these were all the researchers could dig up. The fullest information I could find when I visited in November was in the press release, although the museum's guidebook, re-written to reflect the new displays, was published in the new year.
The experience of visiting the Geffrye to see 17th- and 18th-century gallery refurbishments was somewhat underwhelming. Five days after opening there was nothing to announce the new displays to visitors. Drawers designed to be pulled out under another display cabinet were empty.
The installations evidently hadn't caught up with the information provided. Panels in each of the four new rooms promised the reader that 'details of the room are listed on the paddles behind you'. There was no sign of them.
The arguments for funding the new displays must have been persuasive. At Home in London 1600-1800 was supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the DCMS/Wolfson Fund and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.
Having opened its £5.5m extension in 1998, the Geffrye Museum's attendances peaked in 1999/2000 at 104,000 but have declined since. Its estimated visit outturn for 2006/07 is 70,000 - a third down on the numbers following its reopening in 1998 - back to pre-Lottery levels.
This begs questions about how much and how often museums (even those with capital-funded lottery developments) need to reinvest in major refurbishments. More specifically, it makes you wonder what museums as seductive and interesting as the Geffrye need to do to remind the public that they are there and worth revisiting.
Sara Selwood is the head of department of cultural policy and management at City University
Project data
Cost: 1.1m
Main funders: Heritage Lottery Fund, DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund, DCMS, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
Exhibition design: Richard Greenwood Partnership
Graphic design: Sally McIntosh
Lighting: Concord:marlin with Dynalite controls
Display cases: Conservation by Design as UK agents for Rothstein Vitrinen
Listening posts: Antenna Audio
The Geffrye Museum has always been one of my favourite London museums. On a quiet day, I could lose myself in its displays of middle-class interiors. They are intriguing, other-worldly, intimate, voyeuristic and celebratory.
I'd always loved the incidentals hidden in the gloom of the 17th- and 18th-century rooms - the stuffed armadillo, silhouettes strung up with ribbon, the annual display of authentic Christmas decorations of the period.
The displays prompted me to imagine what life might have been like at the time. Like the tenement museums in Glasgow and New York, the temporary creation of the 1940s house in the Imperial War Museum, or even the recent At Home in Renaissance Italy exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Geffrye has typically employed a light touch.
Its displays contrast strongly with the overblown theatricality of the Dennis Severs' House in Spitalfields, east London; Deborah Warner's St Pancras Project: A Fantastical Walk, one of the highlights of the 1995 Lift festival; and H.G. by Robert Wilson and Hans Peter Kuhn, which Artangel commissioned in 1995 for the Clink Street Vaults by the river Thames.
These are deliberately constructed Mary Celeste moments, evoking ghostly presences through the creation of smells, sounds and the overheard whispers of actors.
The rationale for the Geffrye Museum's new galleries is that the old displays had remained largely unchanged for almost 50 years and that museum practice, scholarship and society have all moved on. The museum refurbished its 19th-century rooms in 1995, and opened new 20th-century rooms in 1998, as part of its extension designed by architects Branson Coates.
The 17th- and 18th-century displays, which opened in November 2006, feature four new period rooms. They are not simply intended to be evocative or nostalgic, but to accurately represent the changing homes of London's middle classes.
David Dewing, the director of the Geffrye, says they are also designed to represent changes in history. He says: 'As new evidence is discovered, knowledge is enhanced and fresh interpretations are reached.' The new displays are for an audience that is 'diverse, demanding, engaged and questioning'.
The Geffrye's research has resulted in a series of new galleries that lack the comforting gloom of the old displays. The 1630 hall is panelled floor to ceiling with new oak, lightly stained and polished. This unexpectedly brightly-lit and immaculate interior is more reminiscent of Ikea's unsullied showrooms than the dark, and possibly dusty, interiors that the Geffrye used to house.
The same could be said of the 1695 post-Fire of London parlour, and the 1745 and 1790 parlours. But unlike Ikea's seductive displays, these have been largely cleared of their accoutrements. Such paraphernalia has been consigned to glass cases where it can be scrutinised at close quarters. The newness of the rooms' 'shells', emphasised by the replica curtains, floor coverings and the gleaming paintwork was overwhelming.
Uncharitably, I would have preferred the pristine paint colours 'supplied by the Little Greene Paint Company, whose history at home initiative aims to bring accurate, historic paint colours to the public', to have been confined to the shop.
Nonetheless, the new displays and interpretation are fascinating in what they reveal about the urban middle classes, how they lived, how their tastes and aspirations were formed, how they expressed their identity through the rooms they furnished. The displays track the rise of the middle class from a relatively tiny group in the 17th century to the dominant group it is today.
As the press release points out: 'They have been an increasingly powerful and influential force and in many ways they are closer to what we mean by "English" than the royalty and aristocracy.' By definition, the displays and the interpretation play to an audience caught up in its own times.
Much is presented through simulations: you can touch replicas of fabrics, floor coverings and japanning and read contemporary newspapers. Two new audio-guides intriguingly use contemporary accounts to describe the lives lived in, and around, these rooms. If you want to know what the desperate housewife of her day did to pass the time, it's there.
Recorded extracts include those from a housewife's diary from 1599-1600; incidents in a bachelor's life during 1715-16; and an account of coffee house culture in 1720. At a time when the UK Tea Council is telling us that four cups of tea a day are as essential as five portions of fruit and vegetables, my favourite piece of advice was the 1744 recommendation that tea's depressive qualities should be countered by a rum chaser.
But, just as these audio accounts got going, they stopped. A three-minute sound-bite if ever there was one. The limitations of the Geffrye's technology means that you have to stand against the wall to listen to the four earphones provided.
So there's no way that you can listen while you're looking at the displays, or sitting down somewhere. It would be nice to imagine that these accounts could be changed monthly, or that they could be collected and downloaded from the museum's website.
Other aspects of the interpretation are disappointing: the same images are repeated on information panels within sight of each other - as if these were all the researchers could dig up. The fullest information I could find when I visited in November was in the press release, although the museum's guidebook, re-written to reflect the new displays, was published in the new year.
The experience of visiting the Geffrye to see 17th- and 18th-century gallery refurbishments was somewhat underwhelming. Five days after opening there was nothing to announce the new displays to visitors. Drawers designed to be pulled out under another display cabinet were empty.
The installations evidently hadn't caught up with the information provided. Panels in each of the four new rooms promised the reader that 'details of the room are listed on the paddles behind you'. There was no sign of them.
The arguments for funding the new displays must have been persuasive. At Home in London 1600-1800 was supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the DCMS/Wolfson Fund and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.
Having opened its £5.5m extension in 1998, the Geffrye Museum's attendances peaked in 1999/2000 at 104,000 but have declined since. Its estimated visit outturn for 2006/07 is 70,000 - a third down on the numbers following its reopening in 1998 - back to pre-Lottery levels.
This begs questions about how much and how often museums (even those with capital-funded lottery developments) need to reinvest in major refurbishments. More specifically, it makes you wonder what museums as seductive and interesting as the Geffrye need to do to remind the public that they are there and worth revisiting.
Sara Selwood is the head of department of cultural policy and management at City University
Project data
Cost: 1.1m
Main funders: Heritage Lottery Fund, DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund, DCMS, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
Exhibition design: Richard Greenwood Partnership
Graphic design: Sally McIntosh
Lighting: Concord:marlin with Dynalite controls
Display cases: Conservation by Design as UK agents for Rothstein Vitrinen
Listening posts: Antenna Audio
