Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, London
Does anyone really still need convincing of the importance of sports museums? The Sports Heritage Network recently counted 54 sports museums in the UK following an explosion in the field over the past two decades.
Many of our local and regional museums have shown a complete lack of interest in the subject (with apologies to the few notable exceptions) and this has seen sport-specific museums fill the gap. Was it not Boris Becker, after all, who first proposed that nature abhors a vacuum?
The first Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum was opened in 1977, the year Virginia Wade became the last British Wimbledon singles champion. At the time, very few other sports museums existed. Almost 30 years on, with the creation of its new museum, Wimbledon is ahead of its peers yet again.
An enormous leap forward has been taken that puts most other museums (of all types) firmly in the shade. A new location within the site was necessary because the previous museum had to make way for a much-heralded retractable roof over Wimbledon's Centre Court.
That structure will also prevent Cliff Richard from engaging in impromptu rain-lashed sing-a-longs, so that's very welcome progress on two fronts.
It is worth pointing out that the museum's owner - The All England Lawn Tennis Club - is a private members' club and not a governing body with a constitutional obligation to plough all profits into the development of its sport.
It continues to demonstrate an admirable desire to preserve and display its sport's history and the income generated at the annual Wimbledon Championships provides it with a relatively large purse. But I challenge you to find out how much the new museum cost - it's tight lips all around SW19.
We can all name expensive disasters where bundles of cash have been used as an alternative to creativity, but that is far from the case here. A heady mixture of gorgeous objects, sumptuous audiovisual displays and responsive interactives has been produced.
The declared aim - to create the best tennis museum in the world - has been met and the team has succeeded in developing one of the best displays of its size in this country.
Free audioguides (in eight languages) are simple and effective. Narrated by comedian Tony Hawks, they provide an overall summary of the first four or five showcases (which cover the complex origins of the sport) before becoming an additional companion for highlighted objects throughout the rest of the museum.
These include such fascinating gems as the origin of the (frankly baffling) scoring system, which derives from the quarters of the clock (15, 30, 45) - or did, until someone decided that 40 had a better ring to it than 45.
To improve accessibility to the collection, there is a specially described tour for the visually impaired. For the profoundly deaf, there are British Sign Language handheld screens that recreate the audioguide information. No expense is spared.
Originating as a leisure pursuit for well-to-do Victorians, tennis has generated more decorative art than most other sports. The Wimbledon collection is by common consent one of the greatest sporting archives in existence and nowhere are these treasures better shown off than in a gorgeous art deco-styled interwar showcase.
It also contains an audiovisual presentation that cleverly splices together elements from tennis posters and cigarette cards of the period with footage that includes the original King Kong film and shots of New York's Chrysler Building to build up a dramatic stylistic context for the objects.
Inventive interpretive techniques jostle for attention, such as the film of EF Brewtnall's 1891 painting, Wimbledon Tennis Party. A screen placed next to the painting presents actors depicting the characters in the picture as they chat and interact in period costume.
The camera pans across the individuals, eavesdropping on snippets of conversation. John McEnroe appears in an enormous Pepper's ghost, walking into the old Wimbledon dressing rooms, picking up objects and narrating footage.
Given the club's financial status, maintenance of the interactives should not be a problem and neither will the demands of replacing graphic panels as personalities within the game rise and fall and as records are broken. Tongue-in-cheek humour permeates the museum, not least in the costume interactive entitled The Rise and Fall of Men's Trousers.
A slight identity crisis has been carried over from the museum's previous incarnation: is it a museum of the Wimbledon Championships or a museum of tennis? The answer is probably the former, but this is certainly no throw-away celebration of Henmania.
In the modern section, visitors walk through an (object-free) tunnel where they are bombarded with sounds and images of aeroplanes taking off, fashion shoots, television interviews, product launches, flashbulbs, and the endless circuit of tournaments. The pressured, claustrophobic superstar lifestyle of the elite athlete is perfectly expressed.
An Italian poster in the collection advertises a tournament for the 1937 Mussolini Trophy, which throws up many tantalising questions about political patronage. Such subjects are not hidden or avoided, but they do seem to be glossed over somewhat.
Tennis is a fascinating lesson in social history (to 'serve' derives from the tradition of a player shouting out 'service', so that a member of the lower orders in their pay would lob a ball into play), but there remains an unfortunate tendency for many sporting museums to ignore the world beyond the court or pitch.
Little more than lip service is paid to the political, cultural and social environments in which the sports develop and which they, in turn, inform. In an age of instant internet information, well-researched sports histories and affordable footage on DVD, sports museums need to be so much more than they were in the last century.
Unpalatable subjects are by implication not to everyone's taste, but surely a museum is obliged to examine, not just mention, them. We are told that the acceptance of professionalism by Wimbledon in the late 1960s forced the rest of the game to also go 'open'. No attempt is made to explain why or place the decision into context.
Small quibbles apart, this accessible and wonderfully designed exhibition is essential viewing for everyone with the slightest interest in museums. The rest of us need to raise our game.
Jed Smith is the curator of the Museum of Rugby, Twickenham, Middlesex
Project data
Cost: Undisclosed
Main funder: All England Lawn Tennis Club
Exhibition design: Mather & Company
Interactives: Aivaf
Audioguide: Antenna Audio
Does anyone really still need convincing of the importance of sports museums? The Sports Heritage Network recently counted 54 sports museums in the UK following an explosion in the field over the past two decades.
Many of our local and regional museums have shown a complete lack of interest in the subject (with apologies to the few notable exceptions) and this has seen sport-specific museums fill the gap. Was it not Boris Becker, after all, who first proposed that nature abhors a vacuum?
The first Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum was opened in 1977, the year Virginia Wade became the last British Wimbledon singles champion. At the time, very few other sports museums existed. Almost 30 years on, with the creation of its new museum, Wimbledon is ahead of its peers yet again.
An enormous leap forward has been taken that puts most other museums (of all types) firmly in the shade. A new location within the site was necessary because the previous museum had to make way for a much-heralded retractable roof over Wimbledon's Centre Court.
That structure will also prevent Cliff Richard from engaging in impromptu rain-lashed sing-a-longs, so that's very welcome progress on two fronts.
It is worth pointing out that the museum's owner - The All England Lawn Tennis Club - is a private members' club and not a governing body with a constitutional obligation to plough all profits into the development of its sport.
It continues to demonstrate an admirable desire to preserve and display its sport's history and the income generated at the annual Wimbledon Championships provides it with a relatively large purse. But I challenge you to find out how much the new museum cost - it's tight lips all around SW19.
We can all name expensive disasters where bundles of cash have been used as an alternative to creativity, but that is far from the case here. A heady mixture of gorgeous objects, sumptuous audiovisual displays and responsive interactives has been produced.
The declared aim - to create the best tennis museum in the world - has been met and the team has succeeded in developing one of the best displays of its size in this country.
Free audioguides (in eight languages) are simple and effective. Narrated by comedian Tony Hawks, they provide an overall summary of the first four or five showcases (which cover the complex origins of the sport) before becoming an additional companion for highlighted objects throughout the rest of the museum.
These include such fascinating gems as the origin of the (frankly baffling) scoring system, which derives from the quarters of the clock (15, 30, 45) - or did, until someone decided that 40 had a better ring to it than 45.
To improve accessibility to the collection, there is a specially described tour for the visually impaired. For the profoundly deaf, there are British Sign Language handheld screens that recreate the audioguide information. No expense is spared.
Originating as a leisure pursuit for well-to-do Victorians, tennis has generated more decorative art than most other sports. The Wimbledon collection is by common consent one of the greatest sporting archives in existence and nowhere are these treasures better shown off than in a gorgeous art deco-styled interwar showcase.
It also contains an audiovisual presentation that cleverly splices together elements from tennis posters and cigarette cards of the period with footage that includes the original King Kong film and shots of New York's Chrysler Building to build up a dramatic stylistic context for the objects.
Inventive interpretive techniques jostle for attention, such as the film of EF Brewtnall's 1891 painting, Wimbledon Tennis Party. A screen placed next to the painting presents actors depicting the characters in the picture as they chat and interact in period costume.
The camera pans across the individuals, eavesdropping on snippets of conversation. John McEnroe appears in an enormous Pepper's ghost, walking into the old Wimbledon dressing rooms, picking up objects and narrating footage.
Given the club's financial status, maintenance of the interactives should not be a problem and neither will the demands of replacing graphic panels as personalities within the game rise and fall and as records are broken. Tongue-in-cheek humour permeates the museum, not least in the costume interactive entitled The Rise and Fall of Men's Trousers.
A slight identity crisis has been carried over from the museum's previous incarnation: is it a museum of the Wimbledon Championships or a museum of tennis? The answer is probably the former, but this is certainly no throw-away celebration of Henmania.
In the modern section, visitors walk through an (object-free) tunnel where they are bombarded with sounds and images of aeroplanes taking off, fashion shoots, television interviews, product launches, flashbulbs, and the endless circuit of tournaments. The pressured, claustrophobic superstar lifestyle of the elite athlete is perfectly expressed.
An Italian poster in the collection advertises a tournament for the 1937 Mussolini Trophy, which throws up many tantalising questions about political patronage. Such subjects are not hidden or avoided, but they do seem to be glossed over somewhat.
Tennis is a fascinating lesson in social history (to 'serve' derives from the tradition of a player shouting out 'service', so that a member of the lower orders in their pay would lob a ball into play), but there remains an unfortunate tendency for many sporting museums to ignore the world beyond the court or pitch.
Little more than lip service is paid to the political, cultural and social environments in which the sports develop and which they, in turn, inform. In an age of instant internet information, well-researched sports histories and affordable footage on DVD, sports museums need to be so much more than they were in the last century.
Unpalatable subjects are by implication not to everyone's taste, but surely a museum is obliged to examine, not just mention, them. We are told that the acceptance of professionalism by Wimbledon in the late 1960s forced the rest of the game to also go 'open'. No attempt is made to explain why or place the decision into context.
Small quibbles apart, this accessible and wonderfully designed exhibition is essential viewing for everyone with the slightest interest in museums. The rest of us need to raise our game.
Jed Smith is the curator of the Museum of Rugby, Twickenham, Middlesex
Project data
Cost: Undisclosed
Main funder: All England Lawn Tennis Club
Exhibition design: Mather & Company
Interactives: Aivaf
Audioguide: Antenna Audio
