World Museum Liverpool
Twenty-one years ago, towards the end of the city's long economic downturn, the Tall Ships' Race came to Liverpool. For the crowds who poured in to watch, the race and the International Garden Festival of the same year were symbolic that this much-loved, much-maligned, battered city was once again on an upward curve.
It has been a long time since that overcast evening in 1984, and the regeneration of Liverpool has been a slow and sometimes painful process. But in museums and galleries terms, the race - which coincided with the opening of the Maritime Museum at the Albert Dock - was a turning point.
Since then, Liverpool has seen the opening of a branch of the Tate, the Museum of Liverpool Life and the FACT film centre, the refurbishment of the Walker Art Gallery, has hosted the Liverpool Biennial and experienced an explosion in artist-led studios, events and
galleries.
The latest step in the process is World Museum Liverpool: a seven-year, £35m project to refurbish about half of the Liverpool Museum, and reopen galleries above what was once the Technical Institute.
The museum now spreads down William Brown Street, from the neoclassical steps of its original home to the end of the block: a monolithic, somewhat intimidating pile, softened by a smart new entrance with an airy atrium inside.
Like the rebirth of its home city, the World Museum Liverpool project has had a long and difficult gestation. It must have been particularly difficult for all the staff and museum supporters who knew and admired the National Museums Liverpool's former director, Richard Foster, who sadly died in 2001.
It was always possible that a big, complex project like this could undergo a discordant swerve with the arrival of a new director, in this case David Fleming from Tyne and Wear Museums.
But whatever has happened behind the scenes, the result is a satisfying mixture of elegant galleries showing off the magnificent world art and artefact collection, with some genuinely enjoyable - and surprisingly object-rich - discovery galleries.
The new displays cover 5,000 sq metres, more than doubling the size of the former museum, and putting more than 20,000 objects on show. Many of these objects have not been displayed before. The galleries are spread over three floors, plus the new atrium, shop and cafe at ground level.
The new sections are split into world cultures, natural history, and a new aquarium, a much-missed feature of the old museum, on the first floor. It adjoins a new, experimental space called the Treasure House Theatre - an open access demonstration area for films, talks and performances.
The third-floor World Cultures Gallery opens with an exuberant video of the local performance poet Levi Tafari introducing the galleries. Beyond that the galleries are arranged in an arc, which can be viewed from either end, so the video is played at the start and finish and the key introductory labels are placed on either side of the larger cases.
The gallery is divided into four sections: Asia, Oceania, the Americas and Africa. The main labels are a lesson in good design: short, to the point, well thought out and illustrated with photographs, drawings and maps.
Not everyone will like the style of the displays, which are rather elegant, classic, and object-led. But they make an excellent contrast to the supporting Weston Discovery Centre on the same level - which focuses on things to touch and try, themed around communication, archaeology and celebrating life.
For everyone who feels a more context-driven, social history-led approach would be better for the main galleries, there will be others, like me, who will really appreciate these rather beautiful, peaceful, and inspiring displays.
The one thing that bothered me was the secondary labelling: while only some of it was ready for pre-opening visits, what there was seemed dry and its positioning across the front of some cases rather spoiled their aesthetic.
On the floor below, there is something of a treat. The child-focused Bug House - which includes some fun interactives, including a giant animatronic bluebottle, and real live creepy crawlies in tanks - opens out onto the Clore Natural History Centre.
Based on the museum's ground-breaking 1995 natural history centre, the new discovery area is one of the most interesting I've seen: the museum has ditched the trend for clunky computer interactives, and created galleries stuffed with objects: butterflies in drawers, fossils on table tops, specimens in jars, staffed by knowledgeable
demonstrators.
Children will love it, especially the microscopes and scratch-and-sniff interactives.
There are several successful aspects to the World Museum Liverpool project - perhaps the most surprising, to me at least, was finding discovery areas that adults can potentially enjoy as much as children. But possibly the best thing is the way the project team has created pace and variety around the displays.
A bit like a good TV channel, there's something for everyone in almost every section: but individual areas have been designed with different ages and interests in mind. There's no sign of the beautiful but one-note displays of, say, the National Museum of Ethnography in Leiden, or the uniformity of appearance and intellectual level of some recent natural history displays, such as Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh.
The downsides are few, and mostly nit-picking details and easy to resolve. In fact, the biggest problem is how old-fashioned the rest of the museum now appears. It is true, as one curator said, it is not always good to change large museums in one fell swoop (the danger being galleries all ending up looking the same), but the difference in the quality of display between the two halves is simply too great.
In the next few years the museum needs to get a project underway to tackle the museum's older half. But with plans to create a new temporary exhibitions space, deal with a magnificent, but empty, gallery on the second floor, create a new transatlantic slavery centre - not to mention a new museum of Liverpool in a purpose-built building, Liverpool's staff have got their work cut out for them.
By the time the Tall Ships' Race returns in 2008, if all goes to plan, it seems Liverpool's museums will be almost completely transformed.
Jane Morris is a freelance writer
Twenty-one years ago, towards the end of the city's long economic downturn, the Tall Ships' Race came to Liverpool. For the crowds who poured in to watch, the race and the International Garden Festival of the same year were symbolic that this much-loved, much-maligned, battered city was once again on an upward curve.
It has been a long time since that overcast evening in 1984, and the regeneration of Liverpool has been a slow and sometimes painful process. But in museums and galleries terms, the race - which coincided with the opening of the Maritime Museum at the Albert Dock - was a turning point.
Since then, Liverpool has seen the opening of a branch of the Tate, the Museum of Liverpool Life and the FACT film centre, the refurbishment of the Walker Art Gallery, has hosted the Liverpool Biennial and experienced an explosion in artist-led studios, events and
galleries.
The latest step in the process is World Museum Liverpool: a seven-year, £35m project to refurbish about half of the Liverpool Museum, and reopen galleries above what was once the Technical Institute.
The museum now spreads down William Brown Street, from the neoclassical steps of its original home to the end of the block: a monolithic, somewhat intimidating pile, softened by a smart new entrance with an airy atrium inside.
Like the rebirth of its home city, the World Museum Liverpool project has had a long and difficult gestation. It must have been particularly difficult for all the staff and museum supporters who knew and admired the National Museums Liverpool's former director, Richard Foster, who sadly died in 2001.
It was always possible that a big, complex project like this could undergo a discordant swerve with the arrival of a new director, in this case David Fleming from Tyne and Wear Museums.
But whatever has happened behind the scenes, the result is a satisfying mixture of elegant galleries showing off the magnificent world art and artefact collection, with some genuinely enjoyable - and surprisingly object-rich - discovery galleries.
The new displays cover 5,000 sq metres, more than doubling the size of the former museum, and putting more than 20,000 objects on show. Many of these objects have not been displayed before. The galleries are spread over three floors, plus the new atrium, shop and cafe at ground level.
The new sections are split into world cultures, natural history, and a new aquarium, a much-missed feature of the old museum, on the first floor. It adjoins a new, experimental space called the Treasure House Theatre - an open access demonstration area for films, talks and performances.
The third-floor World Cultures Gallery opens with an exuberant video of the local performance poet Levi Tafari introducing the galleries. Beyond that the galleries are arranged in an arc, which can be viewed from either end, so the video is played at the start and finish and the key introductory labels are placed on either side of the larger cases.
The gallery is divided into four sections: Asia, Oceania, the Americas and Africa. The main labels are a lesson in good design: short, to the point, well thought out and illustrated with photographs, drawings and maps.
Not everyone will like the style of the displays, which are rather elegant, classic, and object-led. But they make an excellent contrast to the supporting Weston Discovery Centre on the same level - which focuses on things to touch and try, themed around communication, archaeology and celebrating life.
For everyone who feels a more context-driven, social history-led approach would be better for the main galleries, there will be others, like me, who will really appreciate these rather beautiful, peaceful, and inspiring displays.
The one thing that bothered me was the secondary labelling: while only some of it was ready for pre-opening visits, what there was seemed dry and its positioning across the front of some cases rather spoiled their aesthetic.
On the floor below, there is something of a treat. The child-focused Bug House - which includes some fun interactives, including a giant animatronic bluebottle, and real live creepy crawlies in tanks - opens out onto the Clore Natural History Centre.
Based on the museum's ground-breaking 1995 natural history centre, the new discovery area is one of the most interesting I've seen: the museum has ditched the trend for clunky computer interactives, and created galleries stuffed with objects: butterflies in drawers, fossils on table tops, specimens in jars, staffed by knowledgeable
demonstrators.
Children will love it, especially the microscopes and scratch-and-sniff interactives.
There are several successful aspects to the World Museum Liverpool project - perhaps the most surprising, to me at least, was finding discovery areas that adults can potentially enjoy as much as children. But possibly the best thing is the way the project team has created pace and variety around the displays.
A bit like a good TV channel, there's something for everyone in almost every section: but individual areas have been designed with different ages and interests in mind. There's no sign of the beautiful but one-note displays of, say, the National Museum of Ethnography in Leiden, or the uniformity of appearance and intellectual level of some recent natural history displays, such as Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh.
The downsides are few, and mostly nit-picking details and easy to resolve. In fact, the biggest problem is how old-fashioned the rest of the museum now appears. It is true, as one curator said, it is not always good to change large museums in one fell swoop (the danger being galleries all ending up looking the same), but the difference in the quality of display between the two halves is simply too great.
In the next few years the museum needs to get a project underway to tackle the museum's older half. But with plans to create a new temporary exhibitions space, deal with a magnificent, but empty, gallery on the second floor, create a new transatlantic slavery centre - not to mention a new museum of Liverpool in a purpose-built building, Liverpool's staff have got their work cut out for them.
By the time the Tall Ships' Race returns in 2008, if all goes to plan, it seems Liverpool's museums will be almost completely transformed.
Jane Morris is a freelance writer
Project data
Funding: £35m Into the Future fund (Heritage Lottery Fund £32m, European Objective I £3.65m, Northwest Regional Development Agency £1.9m, plus donors such as the Garfield Weston Foundation, Clore Duffield Foundation, Littlewoods)
Exhibition design: JJA
Architect: LDN Architects
Funding: £35m Into the Future fund (Heritage Lottery Fund £32m, European Objective I £3.65m, Northwest Regional Development Agency £1.9m, plus donors such as the Garfield Weston Foundation, Clore Duffield Foundation, Littlewoods)
Exhibition design: JJA
Architect: LDN Architects
