Museum/iD Issue 10

MUSEUM/iD

The International Magazine for Museums Vol. 10

Future of Museums www.museum-id.com

Features Exploring the Future of Museums The Rise & Fall of the Curator Alternative Museum Establishment Climate Change & Public Engagment Curators & Game-makers Collaborate Mobile Interpretation & Multimedia Contributors

Jakub Nowakowski, Ulf Grønvold, Levent Calikoglu, Georgia Krantz, Tracy Puklowski, Camilo Sanchez, Lin Stafne-Pfisterer, Christine Conciatori, Okpalanozie Ogechukwu, Linda Duke, Corey Timpson, Peter Stott, Lisa Junkin, Clint Curle, Fernando Almarza Rísquez, Sharon Ament, Victoria Okoloagu, Peter Skogh, Martha Henson, Danny Birchall, Stuart Gillis, Adam Rozan, Jesús Carrillo, Roy Clare, Nicholas Poole, David Fleming, Iain Watson, Tony Butler, Mona Rashid Bin Hussain, Mark Graham, Richard Freedman, Steph Mastoris, Julie Obermeyer, Ailsa Barry, Jean-Yves Gallardo, Gina Koutsika, Lucy Hockley, William Blair, Celia Dominguez

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inside - vol. 10

4 Editorial The future is not what it used to be 8 The Rise & Fall of the Curator The past decade of progress in museums has seen an assault on curatorship.

Without returning to the past hegemony of the curator what’s the alternative?

11 The Alternative Museum Establishment - part 2 Second part of our interview series exploring innovative museum practice with leading contemporary museum thinkers. In this instalment we speak to Lisa Junkin, Camilo Sanchez, and Peter Stott 26 Innovation Nation Cover: Waterloo Region is considered a centre of innovation in Canada. A new museum exploring identity, immigration, community, and ideas is a fitting addition to the area 32 Galleries of Ancient Egypt & Nubia, Oxford Building on the success of the Ashmolean Museum’s recent extension, this second £5 million phase of redevelopment redisplays their world renowned collections from ancient Egypt and Nubia with state-of-the-art facilities 37 The Future of Museums Museum leaders and innovators from around the world tell us what the future holds for museums 75 Super Natural A Naturally Compelling Future: Sharon Ament, Director of Public Engagement at the Natural History Museum, London, on why natural history museums have a vital role to play in the future of the planet 84 Game Play Making a good museum game means serious collaboration between game-makers and curators. Danny Birchall and Martha Henson of the Wellcome Trust on how to develop engaging games for a discerning audience 95 Mobile Interpretation & New Media Audio-guides, multimedia devices, handheld interpretation, mobile apps, digital technology, multimedia, audio-visual, film, and interactives 114 Museums & Me Georgia Krantz, Senior Education Manager, Adult and Access Programs Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

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The future often looks a pretty frightening place. With the current scary combination of economic stagnation and environmental degradation, the tempting response seems to be one of generally hiding under the bed singing la la la while holding your fingers in your ears. As the French poet and essayist Paul Valéry commented: “The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be”.

Valéry, of course, died nearly seventy years ago which perhaps goes to show that for each generation the future has frequently appeared bleak. Invariably for good reason. Valéry also had a problem with museums so is probably not the best dead public intellectual to rely on for a quote here. So I’ll turn to the redoubtable Christopher Hitchens and his view that hard choices constantly present themselves and “you have to choose your future regrets”. On third thoughts we should all simply follow these sage words of wisdom: “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one”. Thank you Dolly Parton.

Anyway, while perhaps understandable, I’m fairly certain the whole hiding and singing la la la response probably isn’t the best way to make a positive contribution to society. And that’s one thing museums should definitely be about and often excel in doing. So, in this edition we’ve brought together a remarkable group of leading museum thinkers from around the world to share their ideas on the future of museums.

Direct and thought-provoking, the feature makes essential reading and I’m grateful to all those who contributed.

The Alternative Museum Establishment series of interviews continues in this edition featuring Lisa Junkin, Camilo Sanchez and Peter Stott; Sharon Ament of the Natural History Museum argues that museums have a central role to play in a sustainable future; and Danny Birchall and Martha Henson of the Wellcome Collection explain why making a good museum game means serious collaboration between game-makers and curators. We also feature two exceptional projects - the new Waterloo Region Museum in Canada and the Galleries of Ancient Egypt and Nubia at the Ashmolean in Oxford. To complete this edition Georgia Krantz of the Guggenheim Museum provides the answers for our regular ‘Museums & Me’ feature.

Finally, with our continued success in mind, we’ve taken the opportunity to refresh the magazine and website. I hope you like the results. As ever, many thanks for all your support and please do get in touch with your ideas for future editions.

Gregory Chamberlain

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Nick Poole argues that the past decade of progress in museums has seen an assault on curatorship from numerous angles all at once.

The risk of not having access to ‘old school’ curators is that museums will gradually stop moving forward. So, without returning to the past hegemony of the curator, what’s the alternative?

W

hat are the essential ingredients of a museum? If you’d asked the question perhaps 10 years ago, the list would have been pretty straightforward - walls, objects, respectful visitors, curators. The mental archetype of the museum in the popular consciousness would have been a place with things in it, cared for by people who knew about the things. Probably wearing tweed, and almost certainly male.

Fast forward a decade, and the picture is nothing like as simple. Walls? Pah. A museum is so much more than walls - it is an attitude, a belief, a set of principles, a pop-up in a shopping centre, a tent on the foreshore of the Thames.

Things? So 90’s. Yes, of course we need some stuff, but only to the extent that they help us tell the human story of the world.

Respectful visitors? Sod that. Museums are places of joy, celebration, learning, entertainment and egalitarianism. They’ve even got kids in, for god’s sake.

And Curators? Well, thereby hangs a tale.

Every good story needs its heroes and its villains.

It needs simple 2-dimensional characters we can boo and cheer at. And in the story of the progress of museums in the past decade, it is very often the curator that has found themselves the villain.

If the thrust of museum discourse is essentially progressive, the curator has come to represent everything that is retrograde about the ‘old’ museology. Where much of the rhetoric about museums is about openness and equality of participation, the lazy characterisation of curators is as hoarders of knowledge, using their control over ideas to exter control over their colleagues - indeed over the museum itself.

The archetypal curator is essentially an academic - highly specialist, extremely focussed and driven not by the impulse to share knowledge with a non-specialist audience but by the urge to enhance the general fund of scientific 8

understanding. This is a gross characterisation, there are many curators whose greatest gift is communication, but there are many for whom the public role of museums is an unfortunate inconvenience to be tolerated not celebrated.

The heyday of the ‘old-school’ curator in England really ran between 1890, the great period of expansion and collecting, and the 1950’s.

During this period, the supremacy of the curator as the arbiter of knowledge and objective truths was largely axiomatic - nobody really questioned it.

Then, of course, society changed, and museums changed - the great expansion of social policy, the invention of social history, the re-coding of the museum’s role in society all happened and things have never been quite the same since.

Today, in all but the largest museums, the idea that every collection should have a curator is almost an anachronism. This assault on curatorship came from numerous angles: • There was the argument of simple economics - as museums have had to increase delivery on diminishing budgets, the idea of a specialist curator attached to every collection became simply untenable. Indeed the idea of having a specialist curator in every museum is now regarded simply as a financial impossibility by many.

• Then came the Collections Manager - if you look back over the last 10 years of recruitment ads, there is a marked trend. People stopped advertising for specialist roles like ‘curator’ and ‘documentation officer’ and instead started advertising for more broad-spectrum curatorial roles like the slightly suspect ‘keeper’ and, particularly ‘Collections Manager’. In the process curatorship came to be seen as a set of repeatable processes, and started to become detached from the idea of scholarship and subject authority.

• Then came a profound shift in the design idiom of museums. We abandoned almost completely that onslaught of skeletons and picture frames and handwritten labels and camphor fumes that characterised the Victorian museum and

The Rise and Fall of the Curator

embraced instead light, space, sparseness the idiom of the art gallery and the experience.

Where once people came to a museum to see as many unusual things as possible, now they come to experience the whole museum.

• Then came the Internet, and with it the appropriation of the word ‘curate’. People today curate their shoe cupboard, they curate online exhibitions by choosing some pictures, they curate social media strands of conferences. A ‘curator’ meant someone who had deep specific technical and/or scientific knowledge of the subject of their collection, and who used that knowledge to develop the collection, to research it and to enhance the general fund of knowledge.

Like an academic forced to perform on a reality TV show, the need for the curator to reduce this knowledge to a form suitable for public exhibition was not always a comfortable fit.

There are all sorts of reasons, practical and political for the devaluation of the currency of curatorship. And yes, there is a case to be made that the control exerted over the museum by its curators had become a limiting factor on its ability to change, and that some degree of positive action was necessary to redress this balance. But we have to guard against the risk of going too far in the opposite direction.

The Collections Trust’s vision of a sustainable museum is inherently about balance.

Museums can’t function without curators.

Curatorial knowledge cannot function without the support of learning, access, outreach, gallery and web. Neither can function without money. None has a purpose if they are not used.

The risk of not having access to ‘old school’ curators is that museums will gradually stop moving forward, and will instead begin to feed on the knowledge and collections accumulated in the 40 years either side of the turn of the century.

Many museums have quietly stopped acquiring, stopped carrying out new research.

Two candidates have emerged in recent

years to backfill the loss of specific knowledge that comes from having a curator. One is crowdsourcing, the other is joining together what remains of the UK’s ‘network of expertise’ into Subject Specialist Networks. The crowdsourcing vision holds that knowledge of the collection is not the preserve of the museum, and that if we can but unlock the vast untapped reserves of knowledge in the community, we can extend the idea of participatory culture to embrace participatory curatorship. I have always been troubled by this - the flipside of the ‘Wisdom of the Crowd’ is the ‘immense self-reinforcing stupidity of the crowd’ - the fact that when crowds are right, they can often be more right than experts, but when they are wrong, groupthink can make them forget to question.

Subject Specialist Networks are a vital, indeed thriving way of opening out specialist knowledge, of filling gaps and of helping people support one another - but they are an adjunct to, not a replacement for, the idea of having curators in museums working with their collections.

And so what to do? We cannot go back - a return to the hegemony of the curator would help neither curators not the rest of the essential functions of a museum. But perhaps we could made some different decisions about how we go forward. Instead of regarding curators and ‘other staff’ as being at odds, perhaps we could focus instead on their common aim to preserve heritage and to make it available for education, enjoyment and research. I think too much has changed to reassert the old role of the curator. Perhaps instead we could think about how we assert a new role that is fundamentally predicated on balance.

Nick Poole Chief Executive, Collections Trust Originally published on the Collection Trust’s Open Culture blog: http://openculture.collectionstrustblogs.org.uk 9

10

the {alternative} museum Establishment part 2

in the second part of our series of exclusive interviews exploring innovative museum practice Gregory Chamberlain talks to alternative museum thinkers about their work and the future of museums. alternative (al-ter-na-tive) adjective: 1 [attributive] (of one or more things ) available as another possibility or choice / 2 of or relating to activities that depart from or challenge traditional norms noun: one of two or more available possibilities origin: mid 16th century (in the sense ‘alternating, alternate) from the French Alternatif, -ive or medieval Latin alternativis, from Latin alternare ‘interchange’

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Lisa Junkin

Lisa Junkin is an art educator who works with diverse communities in Chicago. Since 2008, she has directed the education program at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, managing a staff of museum educators and coordinating cultural and civic engagement programs for children and adults. She co-founded the museum’s SEX+++ Documentary Film Series and assisted in the creation of the Re-thinking Soup program and the Hull-House Heirloom Farm. In 2010, Lisa helped the staff to re-curate the museum’s permanent collection with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Lisa has a a bachelors degree in Art History from the College of William and a master’s degree in Art Education from the School of Art Institute of Chicago.

T

he Jane Addams Hull-House Museum serves as a memorial to social reformer Jane Addams. How do you continue her work in terms of promoting social justice?

The Hull-House Museum creates space for public dialogue and action on the issues of our day, many of which are the same issues that Addams dedicated her life to. I feel strongly that museums can encourage an active citizenry, even as we broaden and innovate the kinds of behaviors that constitute civic engagement.

I also think “basic” museum work of interpreting the history of the Hull-House Settlement directly promotes social justice. My staff of museum educators is well aware of their crucial role in educating our audiences about an significant and often overlooked figure in American history. Every day these educators, who are students at the University of Illinois at Chicago, talk with visitors about democratic ideals and grapple with questions about the role and size of government, civic and cultural rights, and strategies to foster peace. It is our site’s history that allows us to have these conversations, to unleash our radical imaginations and to understand how to create a better world.

You’re currently running programs that promote feminism, tackle the criminal legal system, and explore the lives of immigrants. But can museums be truly radical and engender change in society?

There seems to be a basic assumption among museum professionals that institutions, by nature, cannot be radical, but the Hull-House Settlement reveals otherwise. The residents of the Hull-House advocated for public health, fair labor practices, full citizenship rights for immigrants, public education, recreational and public space, public arts, women’s rights, food security, and free speech. The Hull-House Settlement was a laboratory of social change, growing into a 13 building complex at its height and serving more than 9,000 immigrants per week. It became one of the world’s most famous addresses and a place where the great visionaries of the day came to think and work. John Dewey, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, W.E.B. 12

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Dubois, Eleanor Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett are just a few of the people who passed through the Hull-House doors. As an institution, HullHouse was inclusive, imaginative, and committed to justice. It was both a cultural and a political space. Its mission was fulfilled by working class immigrants as well as by Chicago’s elite. It is an inspiration in imagining how urgent radical and political work can be taken up by the most respected institutions.

The other thing to say is that museums have always been an active part of civic life, helping to shape or confront cultural and political ideologies. This responsibility should never be taken lightly. The more radical museums today use their unique assets as trusted cultural institutions and repositories of history to inform and create dialogue and action around critical issues. The radical part of museum practice comes when institutions rethink their positions of authority. Staff must see their work as intensely ideological, political, and relevant to today’s society.

Do you think Jane Addams would have agreed with everything the museum does? What do you think she would have made of your ‘Sex +++’ series of events?

As a pro-peace, -immigration, and -women’s rights museum, JAHHM’s public programs often mirror the issues and ideals that Jane Addams and other Hull-House residents fought for.

“staff must see their work as intensely ideological and relevant to today’s society” With the Sex Positive Documentary Film Series (SEX+++) however, this is not entirely the case. At SEX+++ we screen films about sexual identities and issues, seeking to discourage harmful stigmas and stereotypes around homosexuality, bisexuality, sex work, masturbation, and more. Addams’ Progressive Era values of course would not have included tolerance for some of these issues, though I find the “What would Jane do?” game to be problematic.

Addams would perhaps not agree with all of the museum’s work today, but that question doesn’t need to drive our work. We would never ask an historic plantation site, for example, why it does not uphold the values of the plantation owner. This may encourage museums and historic sites that would like to offer progressive programming but do not have a progressive legacy. Their unique histories should be used to inform and challenge our values today, for example, the stately home of a robber baron would be an excellent location to talk about the state of today’s economic climate and the movement to Occupy Wall Street.

How does your museum respond to the issues of environmental sustainability – both locally and globally?

Much of our work in the last several years has addressed issues of environmental sustainability through our Re-thinking Soup program, Urban Farm, and Heirloom Seed Library.

In the spring of 2008, we re-opened Hull-House’s kitchen and organized a new weekly program called Re-Thinking Soup, a public and communal event where every Tuesday at noon an average of 100 people gather together and eat delicious, healthy, soup and have fresh, organic conversation about many of the urgent social, cultural, economic, and environmental food issues that we should be addressing. Located in the historic Residents’ Dining Hall, a place where progressive era reformers met to share meals and ideas, debate one another, 15

and conspire to change the world, this program greatly diverged from our previous model for public programming to embody - literally - our values. By feeding our visitors bowls of healthy and delicious soup, organic and locally sourced, we were all participating in the delicious revolution. And by sharing our time with doctors, farmers, economists, artists, chefs and activists, we fed our minds along with our bellies.

Because of this work, we decided to become producers, and not just consumers, of our food. We started a pocket-sized urban farm, less than ½ an acre, just one block south of the Museum. At this site we grow produce for our soups, teach volunteers how to garden, explore sustainable gardening techniques, and teach visitors about issues of food security.

This year, we are piloting an Heirloom Seed Library, which provides free, regionally adapted seeds to urban farmers. The seed library is dedicated to conserving the diversity of our planet’s seed stock and fostering sustainable food systems and communities throughout the city. The project changes the way cultural institutions address the pressing issue of sustainability, making new connections between environmental diversity and cultural diversity. Like the heirloom artifacts in our museum, we also preserve, interpret, and share the histories of the heirloom seeds in our collection. These seeds tell stories of migration, hardship, and survival, just like the communities that have cultivated them.

One of the buzzwords around sustainability is repurposing, which I’ve been thinking about in terms of our work. In some way, we’ve repurposed our history - usually about peace, women’s rights, immigration - to tell those same stories through a lens of food. As a result, we have gained new audiences and a new energy for interpretation. I think this fosters a kind of cultural sustainability that allows historic houses to be relevant in the 21st century.

“making new connections between environmental and cultural diversity” It seems yours is an organisation that tries to do things a little differently. I noticed your ‘Alternative Labelling Project’ which seems to symbolise this desire to experiment.

Labels define a person, place, or thing, providing explanation and clarity. But labels may also confine our understanding of the world. Museums are filled with labels that typically offer a single lens through which to understand what you are seeing and experiencing. In our museum’s Alternative Labeling Project, we hope to expose and innovate the conventions that museums use to provide information to visitors. We use this project to ask, “can a common museum label - so often the omniscient voice that provides factual evidence - sensually engage us, inspire revolution and reform, or provide pleasure and comfort?”

For our first alternative label, we invited Luis Rodriguez, one of the USA’s leading Chicano writers, to compose a poem. “A Hunger Song in the Shadows” is inspired by several artifacts in the Museum’s collection. For our second alternative label we unveiled a new essay by artist and scholar Terri Kapsalis. This essay serves as the label for a small artifact in our collection: Jane Addams’ travel medicine kit. Kapsalis followed forensic experts as they tested the contents of the kit using cutting-edge technology. The essay pairs observations about this scientific investigation with a meditation on the history of women’s health and mental illness. In addition to the label itself, we are also providing a hospitality experience for a limited number of museum visitors, who may sign up for time to sit in Jane Addams’ bedroom and read the label as they are served a cup of herbal tea by museum staff Lisa Junkin in conversation with Gregory Chamberlain 16

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Camilo Sanchez

Camilo is an Industrial Designer from the Pontifical Javeriana University (Bogotá, Colombia) with a Master of Arts in Museology from the University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK). Since 1999, he has worked in museums and cultural centres as exhibition designer and museum consultant.

Camilo has developed projects in several museums around Colombia and abroad. He is lecturer of exhibition design at the School of Museology of the Externado University of Colombia and the MA in Museology of the National University of Colombia.

He is currently the Museological advisor of the Museum of Independence and Secretary of the Board of ICOM Colombia.

T

he Museum of Independence in Colombia deals, in part, with a troubled past and contested history. How do you approach these controversial issues?

I think there are two diferent kinds of controversial issues presented in the museum. First, there is the concept of independence. The museum used to be a shrine to the country’s heroes and kind of a holy place to celebrate the date of the independence of Colombia (20th July 1810). Today, the museum focuses on independence as a general concept (national, personal, etc) rather than on a historical fact (although historical facts are of course presented). Themes are presented in a way that encourages people to make reflections about what it means to be independent (Is Colombia independent?; Is independence desirable? Is it even possible nowadays?; Do you consider yourself to be independent?).

On a second level, we have more sensitive topics, as the “holocaust of the Palace of Justice”, where many people were killed in the building next door to the museum, 25 years ago. We decided to present the facts in “cold figures” (number of people killed, disappeared, dates, facts) and then present the motivations and feelings (condensed in to one paragraph) of three diferent groups of people: the guerrilla group that took the Palace by force, the Army forces that re-took the Palace, and the group of people that were caught inbetween. We present videos, texts, images and objects from the event, and most importantly, we ask the visitors what they feel about what happened, the repercussions, and the new developments of the investigations and justice decisions (which are still on-going) to finally display their answers.

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Do you hope that the museum provides some kind of explanation and ‘closure’ for the relatives of victims or is it a place for discussion?

I think that the museum is not able (and it is not its goal) to give a “closure” for relatives of the victims, or even the general public. It’s impossible. It is rather a place for debate, discussion and reflection. We hope we can give visitors new tools of interpretation, and make them realize there are many ways to understand a historical or political fact. We hope to encourage independent thoughts, which imply that personal views are not universal truths.

You’re background is in design – what design approach has the museum taken and why?

We have tried to be very respectful to the original house, so display cases and wall texts are not flashy or intrusive (non painted woods and glass). The design firm has chosen to use the architecture of the house to make projections (rough ceilings and walls) rather than using tv screens. We decided to display less objects than the museum used to (it used to look like a cabinet of curiosities), so the cases display every object more dramatically (kind of a French museographical approach).

Are you optimistic for the future of museums in Colombia?

I feel museums in Colombia, and in Latin America, are entering a golden age. Not in

“Museums in Latin America are entering a golden age” investments or money, but rather on a new generation of people that think about what museums should do. Five years ago, if you wanted to do museum studies you had to go abroad. Now there is a degree and a master’s degree in museology, in Bogota, and others courses in several cities of the country. There are new projects, new job opportunities, and although the construction of new museums is not as vibrant as in, for example, Brazil or Mexico, I think museums in Colombia are getting better every day, and more significant for Colombians, who are starting to feel that museums are part of their community. I might sound too optimistic, but I remember 20 years ago things were very different, and you felt that you were going back in to the 19th Century everytime you went in to a museum in Bogota - which you visited always by force on a school trip.

What could other museums learn from the approach the Museum of Independence takes?

I think that our museum is recognized, at least in Bogota, for being a place where we hear what people say, and in order to talk to them, we ask them lots of questions, all the time. We try to make visitors feel they are important, make them feel that what they think is always relevant. In fact, the museum motto is: “a place where each visitor constructs history with its own history”

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Camilo Sanchez in conversation with Gregory Chamberlain 20

Peter Stott

In a career which began in 1981, Peter has sampled life in the UK’s national, local authority and independent museum sectors. He is Team Leader Heritage with Falkirk Community Trust. Along the way he has contributed to several professional development schemes, including as a mentor and reviewer for the Museums Association’s AMA programme.

Since 2005, he has been a Board Director of Museums Galleries Scotland (previously Scottish Museums Council), and is presently helping to develop a national strategy for Scotland’s museums.

M

oney sometimes seems to define museums. Their role often described as ‘drivers for economic development’ or ‘tourist attractions’. Is there a danger in this line of thinking? Does it lead to the conclusion that unless you can show an economic value for something then it has no value at all?

In London Review of Books (vol 33. no 16), Stefan Collini writes about a similar positioning of universities as contributors to economic growth. Responsibility for higher education gradually passed from the Department of Education and Sciences, to Education and Employment, to Education and Skills, to Innovation, Universities and Skills, to Business, Innovation and Skills.

Compare this to the Robbins Report of 1963 which, making the link between universities, the arts and museums, recommended the creation of a Ministry of Arts and Sciences to “recognise the importance to the spiritual health of the community” (my emphasis).

‘Value’ in public life is measured by contribution to economic development. Whether this is dangerous depends on what is understood by ‘economic development’. Work by the likes of the New Economics Foundation, Tim Jackson in his report Prosperity Without Growth, and WWF point to the systemic interconnection between global environmental challenge, economic policies and social justice, with a consumer/growth-based economic model acting as the destructive driver at the core of human activity. The alternative, necessary in the eyes of the foregoing, to an economics of acquisition and ownership, is one based on relationships between people, between communities and between humans and the environment – which is what I understand Robbins to mean by ‘spiritual health’.

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Culture and cultural practitioners work with meaning, identity and creativity, and their contribution to economic development of this sort is fundamental. This fact has been recognised not only by the above and, for example, Mission Models Money, Culture Futures, UK Museums Association and the Royal Society of Arts, but also by the Scottish Government, whose work on climate change behaviours includes considering ‘the role of the cultural sector which has the capacity to educate, influence and stimulate debate’.

The challenge to mainstreaming this kind of thinking, however, is the dichotomy for government and society between their awareness of the need for an economics of sustainability and their continued attachment to the concept of growth – as the former becomes more evident the latter increasingly appears pathological. For museums, it’s a matter of deciding whether their future lies in the leisure section of a consumerist society, or as core to a cultural transformation in support of sustainable living.

Are you optimistic that museums can move beyond the era of big projects?

Optimistic, if not yet confident. The ‘big projects’ as you put it, do have the effect of defining what museums are to the world outside, and so overlook the wide variations in delivery methods employed in the sector. The idea that a museum should take the form of a static building has potentially limiting impacts within the sector, with some dynamic communitybased activity being diverted into the narrow focus of the desire to acquire a building. A

“conversations about change are becoming more insistent” building may provide definition, but it brings with it the problem that managing the building is an end in itself and the risk of a loss of flexibility and energy. It is the diversity of provision which will enable the sector to move on, and for such a small sector, museums do present a remarkable diversity of provision. At one end of the scale we have the kind of monumental visitor attraction institutions we’ve already talked about, at the other there are those actively integrated with their community’s identity and well-being, and there are variations on these two extremes in between. The ingredients for responding to change exist to one degree or another depending on the nature of the organisation.

The conversations about change are becoming more insistent and the nature of what change will look like is becoming clearer. There are tangible examples, too, pointing the way – Tony Butler’s work in Stowmarket is particularly interesting.

How should the museums sector move forward and how should museums define their role in society? For example, how should museums respond to environmental sustainability, social justice, and the wellbeing of society – both locally and globally?

We talked about ‘big projects’ earlier to describe large-scale capital developments in museums. The big project for human society globally is to find ways of living on a resourcefinite planet. Museums are part of this project, because absolutely everyone is. Arguably, museums are uniquely suited to being part of it because they deal with heritage, which is about what generations pass to their successors.

A few years ago, Tim Jackson spoke at the Museums Association conference in London. In Prosperity without Growth he alluded to the role of museums as being a key ingredient of an economy based on well-being, social justice and environmental sustainability, 22

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and furthermore recommended investment in them to enable this role to be fully realised.

Peter Head at Arup has said similar things about cultural provision in his vision of cities retrofitted for sustainable living and functioning.

Responding to this opportunity is not without qualifications however. Jackson added that museums had to think of themselves not as places ‘full of stuff’ but as a means of connecting people to each other, to their environment, and to the ongoing change in these relationships. I draw two conclusions from this. The first is that a museum needs to think of itself primarily as a process, as opposed to a bricks-and -mortar institution. The energy of the relationship with society is the platform for its future development, not the museum’s physical self. This has many consequences, not the least of which is for the notion that museums exist because of their collections, but then dismantling the edifice of that idea has been underway for some time, and recent developments in attitudes towards disposal are indicative. The second is that museums’ treatment of heritage cannot stop at dealing with the evidence of the past for its own sake. To be part of a cultural transformation contributing to the big project, their value will be in underlining the fact that heritage is being created all the time. Museums should take their cue from the Native American proverb – ‘We don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children’.

“a museum needs to think of itself primarily as a process”

Museums do evolve. The fact that there is such a thing as a definition of museums, and that it demonstrates how over time museums do change, illustrates this. At the moment, the ICOM definition is: A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.

Looking at how this compares with the first 1946 definition, you can see a marked development, from museums as places firstly for collections, secondly for people, to the present definition where this order of priority is reversed. The same change is true of the UK Museums Association’s definitions. Given this fluidity in response to changing circumstances, perhaps the next phase in the definition’s evolution might look something like this A museum is a public, collective process by which people are enabled, through the understanding of their relationship to the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment, to contribute to the long-term well-being of communities and sustainability of environments, globally and locally.

When I’ve introduced these kinds of perspectives into the working environment, they have often been received as ‘philosophical’. Which is very flattering, but I tend to think that trying to prevent us running out of planet is more about hard-nosed pragmatism.

Peter Stott in conversation with Gregory Chamberlain 25

Waterloo Region is considered a centre of innovation in Canada. a new museum exploring identity, immigration, community, and ideas is a fitting addition to the area

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Image Š Waterloo Region Museum, Region of Waterloo

INNOVATION NATION

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he vision for a community history museum in Waterloo Region, Canada, was first suggested almost a century ago by the Waterloo Historical Society. That vision has now become a reality with the new Waterloo Region Museum.

Designed by Toronto based architects Moriyama + Teshima in partnership with local firm WalterFedy, the Museum is located on over 60 picturesque acres in Kitchener, Ontario, and forms a new gateway to Doon Heritage Village.

Founded more than 50 years ago, the living history village provides visitors with an experience of what life was like in the area in 1914.

The Museum is designed to reflect the development of Waterloo Region through time, showcasing community growth, prosperity, ingenuity and the areas connectedness to the world-at-large. The story of Waterloo Region spans thousands of years, from First Nation’s Peoples’ connections, to Mennonite immigration from Pennsylvania, German immigration throughout the 1800s, to the diverse community found in the area today.

This idea of the area being a cultural crossroads underpins the new Museum which becomes an inspiring and entertaining destination that connects visitors to the diverse people, ideas, stories and experiences that have defined and shape Waterloo Region.

A long-term exhibit gallery - What Makes Us Who We Are? - focuses on the past, present and future of the area. The gallery traces the human history of Waterloo Region from approximately 12,000 years ago, to European settlement at the start of the 1800s, to the manufacturing heydays of the 1900s, to the high tech sector boom of recent years.

The first temporary gallery exhibit Unconventional Thinking: Innovation in Waterloo Region - looks at the reasons why people from around the world have immigrated to this region of Canada - whether they came for love, education, a new job or to find freedom, while also explaining First Nations peoples’ connections to the land.

Waterloo Region is considered a centre of innovation in Canada and this new museum exploring identity, immigration, community, and ideas is a fitting addition to the area. www.waterlooregionmuseum.com 28

All images © Waterloo Region Museum

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he Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has opened six new galleries for its Egyptian collections, among the most important outside Egypt and one of the Museum’s most popular attractions, exhibiting objects that have been in storage for over 50 years, and doubling the number of mummies and coffins on display.

Building on the success of the Museum’s extension, which opened in 2009, this second phase of major redevelopment redisplays the world-renowned Egyptian collections to exhibit objects that have been in storage for decades. The galleries will take visitors on a chronological journey covering more than 5000 years of human occupation of the Nile Valley. The conservation of the vast collections was a huge undertaking using cutting-edge conservation techniques. 40,000 artefacts have been rehoused in stateof-the-art facilities.

The £5 million project received lead support from Lord Sainsbury’s Linbury Trust, along with the Selz Foundation, Mr Christian Levett, and other foundations and individuals. Rick Mather Architects have led the redesign and redisplay of the pre-existing Egypt galleries and the extension into the restored Ruskin Gallery, previously occupied by the Museum Shop. TGA provided interpretation consultancy and Meyvaert the glass engineering and showcases. The construction partner Beard completed the work in the historic building. New openings link the rooms, presenting the collections under the broad themes of Egypt at its Origins; Dynastic Egypt and Nubia; Life after Death in Ancient Egypt; The Amarna ‘Revolution’; Egypt in the Age of Empires; and Egypt meets Greece and Rome.

The Ashmolean is home to some of the finest Egyptian and Nubian collections in the country, with Predynastic and Protodynastic material which ranks amongst the most significant in the world. With new lighting, display cases and interpretation, the project completes the Ashmolean’s Ancient World Floor, comprising galleries that span the world’s great ancient civilisations – from Egypt and Nubia, Prehistoric 32

New Galleries of Ancient Egypt and Nubia

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Europe, the Ancient Near East, Classical Greece and Rome, to India, China and Japan. The new displays have been developed in line with the Ashmolean’s display strategy, Crossing Cultures Crossing Time, to integrate the collections within the wider Museum. The project provides new lighting and showcases with state of the art facilities and completes the Museum’s Ancient World Floor.

Dr Christopher Brown CBE, Director of the Ashmolean, commented, “We are enormously grateful to Lord Sainsbury and the Linbury Trust for initiating this transformative project for one of the most important and popular areas of the Museum. Rick Mather’s design for the galleries now allows us to display material that, for reasons of conservation, has not been seen for up to half a century.”

Images: Dynastic Egypt & Nubia Gallery; Egypt at its Origins. © Richard Bryant and arcaid.co.uk

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Professor Andrew Hamilton, ViceChancellor of the University of Oxford, said, “These remarkable collections are among the most important outside Egypt and one of the Ashmolean’s most popular attractions. With an exciting series of new galleries, the redevelopment transforms opportunities for using the collections for teaching and research at all levels, and the way they are enjoyed, cared for and integrated within the wider Museum.”

The new series of galleries have transformed opportunities for using the collections for teaching and research at all levels, and the way in which they are enjoyed and cared for well into the future.

The Ashmolean Museum The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, was founded in 1683. It is Britain’s oldest public museum and possibly the oldest museum in the world. In 2009 it reopened following a 10-month period of closure and a £61 million redevelopment.

The new Ashmolean building, designed by architect Rick Mather, has received critical acclaim and numerous awards. It houses 39 new galleries, including the new special exhibition galleries, a dedicated Education Centre, stateof-the-art conservation studios, and Oxford’s first roof-top restaurant. Although completely invisible behind Charles Cockerell’s neo-classical façade, the Rick Mather building has provided the Museum with 100% more display space and the facilities to launch a major exhibitions programme.

The Ashmolean received more than 1.2 million visitors in the first year since it reopened and now receives the highest visitor numbers of any free UK museum outside London. www.ashmolean.org

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Images - top: The Daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti Detail of a wall-painting from the ‘King’s House’ at Tell el-Amarna, 18th Dynasty, c.1345 – 1335 BC; Above: Limestone fragment from a column, from Tell el-Amarna, possibly from the Great Palace, 18th Dynasty, c.1345 – 1335 BC; Below: Shrine of Taharqa - the only pharaonic building in Britain and centrepiece of the Dynastic Egypt and Nubia Gallery. All images © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

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Bringing stories to life

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Authentic, Trusted, Accessible Mark Graham Director of Research, Canadian Museum of Nature The future is full of tall challenges and that is not a new thing. Some of those are certain, and of the serious-decision-making-new-direction sort. We know this because we can count, and we know the human population is growing faster than we can accommodate. Every economic, environmental and social challenge can be traced in short order to our remarkable ability to reproduce and survive. Considering the road ahead, the museum of the future has important roles to play.

Museums are full of trusted evidence (collections) marking time and place that we use to tell stories to remind us of what has happened on Earth, and beyond.

It reminds us of the way we live our lives (our cultures), and how millions of other species live their lives. More than ever, we will use that knowledge to be informed, and to nourish our sense of being. The evidence will remind us of what we like and need most, and help us to plan for those things more and better. The collected knowledge will also remind us of the worst we are capable of. If we are wise and strong the knowledge will be used to guard against our failures.

The future museum will provide easy access to its trusted knowledge base, and to the stories to be told. Relevant, successful museums will find affordable, timely solutions for this access, made possible by adapting to ever-emerging technology; a continuing enslavement. Because of their authenticity and new-found accessibility, museums will be the enduring “-pedias”.

The Future is Now Adam Reed Rozan Audience Development Manager, Oakland Museum of California

For most centenarians, a birthday is a celebrated with family, friends, and the chance encounter on the local news for such a feat. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for museums, our communal super-centenarians, which now, more than ever, believe thinking and acting younger is better, and reinvention is key.

This trend started several years ago, and is easily spotted in marketing departments, which are now re-titled with fancy descriptors like audience development. New to this mix is engagement, a role/function which stems from the need to further align curatorial, marketing, and education in an effort to capture the attention of today’s visitors. After all, it’s about the visitors.

For museums and museum employees, the debate between objects and visitors will continue to grow - each side believing their argument is right. If the idea of museums being in the “forever” business is no longer a wise business model, what is? The future is a working relationship in which collections become the ‘all-stars’, used as entry points for visitors, including those who may only participate online. By using collections creatively, engaging in the dialogue and activity of today’s culture, while presenting our institutions as thought leaders is a glimpse of a hopeful future.

The next 10 years will continue to prove challenging for museums. Today’s issues will not dissipate; if anything they will multiply. Yet, despite such a negative outlook, many museums will thrive, using challenges as opportunities to test new business and engagement models, and, in doing so, meeting the future head on.

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Sustainability and Well-being Tony Butler Director, Museum of East Anglian Life

How different will museums be in the future? On the surface not much. They will still be situated in large buildings, they will still have abundant collections and people will still desire to see and feel the real thing. I hope they will be as diverse as they are now.

The museums of the future that will really connect with their audiences will be the ones which place sustainability and well-being at their heart. They’ll reflect the global challenges of climate change and the decline in living standards with which we are now becoming familiar. Museums should not just see themselves as places for learning or houses of collections but as civic connectors leading the re-imagining of a more liveable world.

As more and more public space is privatised museums should realise their advantages as accessible places for encounters. They’ll also be rallying points for the community, leading local campaigns, connecting up civic society groups, using their collections in a more activist way to illuminate local concerns. Alternatively they should realise their roles as places for sanctuary from commercial messages and reflection.

Being a high well-being, sustainable organisation isn’t just about programming or collecting decisions. It is as much about institutional behaviour. Museums should be judged on what they are as well as what they do. Ask the following questions: • Do you have people who play a true leadership role in local civil society?

• Do local people make decisions both about programming and governance?

• Do you actively lead campaigns in your locality based on clearly articulated values?

• Have you ever measured the museum’s impact on the environment?

• Have you ever shared your assets with community groups and enterprises?

• Do you really know how emotionally engaged your users are? Are they happy or sad or are they just indifferent?

Embracing these challenges could lead to an invigorating transformation that places museums at the heart of an active public realm with significant benefits for society and museums alike.

Democratisation and Co-production Iain Watson Director, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums

Over the next 5 - 10 years, I think, and hope, that the big change in museums will be a further shift in the balance of power between funders and investors, museum staff and volunteers and museum users.

The last 20 years have seen great strides in democratisation and co-production, with fantastic exhibitions and projects led by and initiated by user groups. In publicly funded museums we need to see more of a join up between consultation and engagement and the overall strategic direction of the organisation.

Current initiatives around impact assessments and public consultations on the expenditure of public money are often either very high level (for example Whole Council level), or very specific (for example at ward level). I am convinced that museums will develop new ways of bringing their users in, not just to plan an exhibition on the story of a particular locality. The permeability of museums and communities to each other will increase.

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Collaborations and Imagination Celia Dominguez Education and Development Officer, Museum of East Asian Art

The future of museums is becoming a balancing act between surviving the devastating consequences of funding cuts and striving to make the best of the creative minds working in the sector. Over time, the image of museums has evolved throughout history. Two centuries ago, the French author and politician Alphonse de la Martine (1790 -1860) said that museums were “the cemeteries of the arts”, you can find similar quotes by John Burroughs (1837 –1921) or J.D. Salinger when he writes in his infamous novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951) “… museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. …Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.” Contrary to these ideas of immobility associated to museums we can affirm that, no matter how hard the current situation is, museums are experiencing an exciting and vibrant moment. We proudly belong to one of the few sectors that does not completely stop because of the lack of funds since our capital also relies on so many other aspects such as collaborations, contributions, partnerships etc. The use of imagination in order to get as many visitors involved as possible in what is not now just a “place full of objects” but rather a total vital experience. Therefore it is not the “Big Society” but the passion, creativity and will power of all the professionals in the sector that is going to put the weight on the right side of the balance.”

Reflecting in Real-time Julie Obermeyer Curator and Manager, The Peace Museum I work for an independent museum that currently has little technology (display screens, computer interactive consoles, hand-held devices, etc) in its galleries. But increasingly I see museums embracing new technologies and opening up to the idea and practice of more democratically created exhibitions with museum audiences as co-creators. These changes have been taking place for some time and will continue apace into the foreseeable future but what will remain that will distinguish museums from theme parks and entertainment centres is the fact that museums have historically important collections and staff who have the expertise to make creative but informed use of the collections.

With the opening up of museum interpretation by more democratic practices museum interpretation will change quite significantly in the years ahead. Specifically, museums will be able to move further away from having a dominant narrative to multiple narratives which can dialogue with one another and with museum audiences both meaningfully and respectfully. This will in turn affect the content and themes which museums will want to cover and will effectively enable museums to approach subjects and themes which hitherto may have appeared too problematic or controversial for them to want to tackle. This will in turn provide museums with more confidence to respond to and reflect on more contemporary topics, almost in real-time. Contemporary collecting will become more important, too, as museums rise to the challenge of being more responsive to the unfolding of recent events.

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Uniquely Placed for Reflection Richard Freedman Director, South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation

In South Africa, as we struggle with the legacy of apartheid, including pervasive poverty, racism and xenophobia, the place of human rights and democracy education has assumed added importance. Museums are uniquely placed to engage in using history to reflect on contemporary issues. Using the platform of Holocaust history has proved successful in moving South Africans through time and space, away from the context in which they live, and by so doing to engage with their own history and the issues of our time.

The themes that run through the programmes conducted with school and university students, police and correctional services and in-service educators include the fragility of democracy, the dangers of stereotyping, marginalization, apathy and silence, all of which emerge so eloquently from Holocaust History. In a post traumatic society like South Africa there is a need to engage with our own past in order to recognize were we have come from and to find a way into the future. South Africans have not had sufficient opportunities for healing and thus the experience of visits to the Holocaust centre and exposure to its programmes have provided, for many, a sorely needed opportunity to reflect on the deep issues troubling us still.

South Africa’s High school curriculum is closely aligned to the National Constitution and Bill of Rights. Teachers are enjoined to infuse human rights awareness into all aspects of the curriculum. The inclusion of Holocaust studies as a mandated unit has begun to have significant impact and has placed our institutions in a unique position to support both teacher training and development of appropriate materials which contextualise the teaching of the Holocaust in South Africa’s own history. The South African Holocaust Centres (we do not refer to ourselves as museums) regard their permanent exhibitions as a teaching tool and we see that through their use as such we will be able in some measure to contribute to nation building. There is much work to be done.

No place for Elitism Carlos Alejandro López Ramírez Director, Salsa Museum - Cali, Colombia

First of all it is vital to reflect on museums in their own cultural and social context. It will be different for museums in Europe or North America, or as in my case, in South America, specifically in Colombia. The Latin American context is very different, so if the museums here do not become cultural centers where you can integrate education, recreation and preservations, in 15 years there are not going to be any museums. It is vital to show the community that the museum is not a temple or elitist, but a place where they can find leisure activities, knowledge, entertainment, and over all, identification of their own heritage and culture. Therefore, it is very important to have authentic governmental promotion policies for museums.

The fight for these rights must be done by the union of the museums administrators and workers; it is fundamental to work in networks and groups to have a real voice.

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A Naturally Compelling Future Sharon Ament Director Public Engagement, The Natural History Museum

In a world which necessitates the navigation of scientific issues for people to live their daily lives and one which has rapidly changing natural resources the future for natural history museums is compelling.

As the repository of the world’s natural heritage the collective contribution that the international network of natural history museums can make to some of the most pressing scientific issues of the day is profound.

We in London alone have more than 70 million specimens and in European museums it numbers more than 500 million. Each collection has its strengths, built up over hundreds of years, drawn from particular geographies and with particular specialisms.

Internationally this represents a rich picture of the world’s natural diversity over time and place; a resource which is drawn on by thousands of scientists each year. The future challenge is to consider it collectively as a shared global resource. To meet this challenge we will need to have stronger collaborations within the museum sector and beyond with universities, government agencies, libraries, digital enterprises and business.

Natural history museums are at the centre of public discourse. With the environment high on the agenda I can think of no other part of the museum sector that has the potential to engage at the highest political level and with such potency at the personal level. Looking to the future we will need to tread a careful path, as trusted institutions we must continue to guard public confidence in our objectivity, whilst putting forward strong views on evolution, climate change and biodiversity loss.

Moreover, simply by inhabiting the spaces we do in cities and towns, natural history museums will become even more significant, in the urban lives of the majority of the world’s population where perhaps we are the only connection with the natural environment for people who will never venture into or feel comfortable in the countryside.

Due to our roots to the past our contribution to the future is likely to have a greater impact than many of us can currently imagine.

Have a Strong Focus or Struggle Paul Rowe Joint CEO, Vernon Systems

Every museum needs to develop a clear area of expertise. This shapes their collecting policy and gives a focal point for the public. In their area of expertise they need to be trusted, sharing and engaging. Museums that don’t have a strong focus will struggle to find the resources to manage their collections and will find it difficult to build an audience for their content. The world is changing - people look for sources they can trust when they need information, but they are increasingly expecting to be able to re-use that information in different ways, and to be able to discuss the information with the provider and a wider audience.

Museums of the future will engage with their visitors in the museum, with the physical spaces outside of the museum and with virtual audiences they build around specific subjects. Conversations between museums and the public help fill the gaps in our stories. Without these conversations museums risk the audience moving on to a new venue.

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Evolving for the 21st Century?

Roy Clare Director, Auckland Museum - Tamaki Paenga Hira, New Zealand

Museums face two major challenges: how to collect sustainably; and how to remain relevant. These challenges reflect the abiding principles of museums: collectionscentred, audience-focused.

No museum can afford to acquire everything that is available. Discernment is crucial, coupled with a rigorous analysis of the collections, focusing both on acquiring and disposing.

Expectations of museums are changing. Leisure time is at a premium.

Consumers make choices based on perceived value and potential for excitement.

Some museums neglect their collections and become ‘attractions’, losing authority as places of scholarship and learning. Others fail to keep up with changing patterns of use, with risks for viability. Digital media are core to people’s lives, so museums need fluency in that environment too, from promotion and access to engagement.

Museum Boards and executives need to: • Drive policies for managing collections. A whole life-cycle strategy should systematically encompass: goal-setting; acquiring new items; caring for collections; making as much as possible available to the public (physically, in galleries; virtually, on-line; and intellectually, through research programmes and published resources); assessing duplication and merit; and enabling disposal.

• Really understand their market. Including those people that are neither visitors nor users. Based on that evidence, decision-makers can reach conclusions about the style, pace and nature of programmes. Partnerships can support delivery in more than one location, reaching more diverse audiences, being innovative and generating revenues.

The profile of a museum starts with leadership and risk appetite; creative ambition and entrepreneurialism should follow, so that evolution matches public demand.

Leading Social Change Camilo Sanchez Museum of Independence, Colombia

Museums in the future will have to respond faster to social and economical change. I am writing this while attending at an international museum conference, and I keep hearing byzantine discussions about the rather old conundrum of what is more important between objects or people, or how important, or not, it is to have standards in museums. I really hope that in the near future that kind of discussion will be superseded and we start talking seriously about how to become relevant social agents that can quickly adapt to a world that changes faster every day.

I know it might be Utopia, but I would love to see museums become important for communities, not only because they guard their heritage, but rather because they lead social change and become places that help to effectively solve problems (or at least think of solutions) that are becoming sadly recurrent, like economical global crisis, terrorism, rapid climate change, racial discrimination, increasing poverty and crime. That way, people will stop thinking that culture and museums are, like a Dutch politician stated recently, “a leftwing hobby”.

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To Ponder and Participate Ailsa Barry Head of New Media, The Natural History Museum

What is this life if full of care We have no time to stand and stare?

This poem, published in 1911 by Welsh poet William Henry Davies, conjures up for me the very essence of a museum - a place to pause, reflect and ponder on the amazing world and universe that we inhabit. In the 21st Century I hope it continues to be as true as it was for the 20th Century. But the 21st Century is a very different environment from that of a hundred years ago, and the museum of the future will require a rethink on how to captivate a generation brought up on gaming and Facebook.

Our future visitors will expect to be able to enrich and layer their experience by seamlessly accessing multi-dimensional experiences about the objects around them through a plethora of personal mobile devices. Data about their visit will be captured and analysed in real time, giving a dynamic experience that responds to their needs. And they will want to respond, participate and share their experiences with a global audience as the mood takes them.

There will be challenges in meeting such demands. How much museums invest in creating such rich and varied experiences will be a significant consideration, and new partnerships and ways of working internally, regionally and internationally will be key to successful delivery. But in developing such a digitally rich and accessible environment, museums will be able to reach out and engage a broader global community - enabling them to stop, stare, ponder and participate with the world around them.

Change and Variety Mona Rashid Bin Hussain Head of Adult and Academic Programmes at Sharjah Museums Department, and PhD Candidate at Leicester University, School of Museum Studies Over the last 40 years almost 40 museums have opened around the United Arab Emirates (UAE). All of them are local government funded and half of them display heritage/history collections that are intended to preserve the cultural identity of the region. 10 years ago the common idea was that museums would display collections intended for the tourist market. Nowadays there is more variety. There are 22 museums in the Emirate of Sharjah and 9 museums in the Emirate of Dubai. Abu Dhabi is currently building a cultural district on Al Sadyaat Island which will include 2 internationally linked museums, the Guggenheim Museum and the Louver Abu Dhabi. It will also have two national museums, The Maritime Museum and The Zayed Museum. These expansions, part of Abu Dhabi 2030 Urban Structure Framework aim to place UAE on the cultural tourism map.

While museums are planned for a diverse population that reflects the large expatriate community of the UAE, the museum planners are researching ways in which a museum visit would become part of the local Emirati culture. Change is already evident with increasing number of studies have shown that people who visit museums in the past are the most likely to visit in the future. This will create a museums lovers’ community and hopefully a place where museums can be places where the community can learn about each other and the world around them.

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Museums are Mirrors Linda Duke Director, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University

Museums are mirrors. In them we see the history and complicated features of ourselves, we the human beings. It doesn’t matter if the focal subject of a museum is history or culture, science or art, the natural world or the most “unnatural” outcomes of human activity; all museums are about us because we have made them. In their display cases and gallery installations museums show us in tangible forms the qualities of our own perceptions, understandings, and ways of thinking.

People are made up of many parts and pieces, physically, intellectually, and emotionally. Some of these parts are not easily compatible – and so we keep them separate, often unconsciously. Museums reflect this tendency; science, art, and history each have their stories. The next challenge for museums is to become places where wholeness can be glimpsed, places that allow us to step above the separate narratives and benefit from the intriguing implications of their contradictions. The really enduring spiritual traditions of humanity have always had paradox at their cores; but they have also taught oneness. Oneness: so simple it hurts; so complex that the logical functions of our minds cannot encompass it.

Oneness is a spiritual insight; wholeness is its grounded, material counterpart.

My hope for the future of museums is that they will become places that help us sense wholeness so that our science, arts, and history may bring us insight, not simply knowledge.

Flexible and Resilient Gina Koutsika Head of National Programmes and Projects, Imperial War Museums

My view is that the fundamental components of museums - collections and people - will remain the same. However, the way we define them has been evolving and will continue to do so to reflect social, political and economic trends. Our mechanisms of acquisition, conservation, access and delivery will also develop to mirror both technological advances and society’s attitudes to leisure activities and learning. Our programme of activities will be more focused on key strategic aims and comprehensive across teams.

We will probably become more flexible and resilient, both as institutions and as professionals. We will aim to be integrated and integral to our communities so that we build a culture of sharing and of creating mutually beneficial partnerships. The projects and programmes we prioritize will be increasingly more outwards looking and sustainable.

In the very near future, technologies such as cloud computing will change the way we work with each other and with our communities. Social networking will probably become more integrated in the way we operate, form partnerships and position our institutions. We will learn to be creative, effective and happy in an ever-changing environment.

Am I too optimistic?

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The Future is Interaction Jakub Nowakowski Director, Galicia Jewish Museum, Poland Museums that exist today are certainly different in many ways than those in the past. Before, museums were institutions of authority that transmitted specific messages down to the public about the past from behind glass display cases, tape, and “do not touch” signs. Gradually, they evolved into places that invite visitors to participate in an interactive and exciting journey. They have changed from institutions where information was directed in only one way: towards the viewer into institutions that are increasingly creating conversations with the viewer. Visitors are invited to participate, are pulled into the life of the museum, not only as passive spectators, but also as active participants.

The Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, Poland, is one example of these new dynamic institutions, and has launched a variety of programs for visitors (both Polish and foreign) creating opportunities for them to use the museum space for their own cultural projects like plays, concerts, and temporary exhibitions that contribute to the museum. Through the “Museum Means More”, program the Galicia Jewish Museum held over 200 such events for all age groups.

It seems that the future of cultural institutions lies in interaction - and not just through the connections created by increasingly popular modern technologies – but, most of all, by inviting visitors to become involved in the life of the museum – their museum.

Re-invent the Museum

Stuart Gillis Head of Derby Museums

The near collapse of public sector funding leaves (UK) local authority run museums in the tightest of all situations. It is almost impossible for this sector to escape the current unprecedented savagery of cuts.

And the introverted economy of local councils can leave managers without the entrepreneurial edge to compete in the harsh new environment.

The senior museum professional needs to consider if their part of the organisation has become an outpost of an over-reached empire in semi-terminal decline. If there is a plan to address this – jump on board: shape it; add value to it; do all that you can to maximise your influence. You may not be running the programme, but expand your authority by being the person who spends the most time building support and shaping agendas.

It is even better if you can be the person that makes the plan. Start by understanding the power priorities of your local area. Understand where power resides and what is it trying to achieve. Is it about jobs? Is it raising school attainment? Is it a major urban development? And then work out where the museum’s resources (collections, buildings, skills, values) can be best aligned to support this top agenda.

At this stage, work with and listen to as many people from beyond the museum as you can. Be prepared to re-invent what a museum is. Do not be swayed by pessimists. Come up with something that is highly relevant to your area; something that looks like part of the solution; something that captures the imagination; something that is too good to be ignored. And then dig-in and fight for it.

Our museums carry the incredible story of human creativity, a story often propelled forward through response to adversity. So don’t just aim to preserve our museums. Be inspired to take action by what we hold.

We will need vision, bloody-mindedness and a fair slice of luck. But the future of Museums can still be in our hands – if we’re good enough to realise it.

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African Museums in the Next 20 Years Okpalanozie Ogechukwu Elizabeth National Museum, Lagos, Nigeria The museums in Africa have come a long way, evolving from museums known only to the indigenous community into museums that are recognised globally because of the rich and unique collections in their custody.

The trend of development that is witnessed in African museums in the present day will be sustained in the next twenty years. In years to come, capacity building would have been achieved to a great extent, opening doors to greater impact of the museum on the indigenous communities. These museums will cease to function only as museums where collections are kept and exhibited for the public.

The museums will use the tools they have: tangible cultural heritage, to develop the communities in which they exist. The development will cut across different aspects of the community: politics, education, human rights and health. The museums will be working hand in hand with the communities and the communities will feel the positive impact of the presence of the museums.

In addition to this, the museums will be in a better position to care for the collections in their custody. The emerging and young museum professionals working currently in African museums are participating in different types of training, workshops, and networking. The result of this proactive approach is museums with better ethical practices and stable collections.

In the next two decades, African museums will evolve into museums that will touch the lives and soul of African communities and custodians of stable and healthy collections.

Active Participants & Ownership Corey Timpson Director, Design + New Media & Collections, Canadian Museum for Human Rights

Museums, now more than ever, are looking for new ways to engage visitors. In a world that is dominated by rapid changes in attention, excessive multitasking, and massive media bombardment, it has become increasingly difficult to engage target audiences in meaningful ways. Yet some basic premises remain. Active participants, collaborators, shared owners, are more likely to care, to feel engaged in something, than those passively standing by.

Allowing for personalization is a simple way to attain a more engaged audience – via personalized content or personalized access to content. Providing an opportunity for visitors to engage in dialogue, and for this dialogue to be shared, is personalization taken to the next level.

Where a museum’s interaction model used to be the visitor is informed by the museum, a new interaction model of the visitor is informed by the museum - the visitor informs the museum - the visitor informs the visitor, will provide for greatly increased visitor engagement.

The premise is not to ignore or do away with the museum’s responsibility to curate, to be authoritative or be a steward of its collection.

While it continues to evolve and rapidly change, technology will be an important facilitator of a dialogic interaction scenario, as museums look to build increased engagement among their target audience in meaningful ways.

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Violence & Museums of Conscience Clint Curle Researcher, Canadian Museum for Human Rights

My particular interest is in museums of conscience. When I think of the role of these museums in society, I always come back to something philosopher Paul Riccoeur once wrote: “there exists a place within society - however violent society may remain owing to its origin or to custom where words do win out over violence” (Paul Riccoeur, The Just, ix). Museums, of course, are not limited to words alone but have an ever-expanding palette for presenting and representing subjects, and subtle forms of violence can tincture these representations. But the role of the museum of conscience in society fits well with Riccoeur’s insight – a bounded social space where reflection, memory and story win out over violence.

I think violence, broadly understood, is always the context and perhaps even the threat that constitutes the museum of conscience. Past violence and the ubiquitous potential for new violence makes the museum of conscience necessary.

Riccoeur’s words, however, also raise a concern. He wrote them in reference to a courtroom trial. One of the temptations that museums of conscience face is to function as courtrooms, places where evidence is sifted, perpetrators are sentenced and innocents are exonerated. Museums are not courtrooms, and are ill equipped to provide decisive adjudications of guilt and innocence regarding violence.

The task, then, of the museum of conscience is to create social space within which violence can be brought to light, representatively encountered and ultimately decentered, without becoming an ersatz courtroom. Museums of conscience have two potentialities which courtrooms lack; the capacity to foster empathy, and the capacity to stimulate rich conversations within and between people. The mining of these two potentialities as mutually constructive responses to violence, for me, represents the future of museums of conscience.

The Museum of Tomorrow Jean-Yves Gallardo Director of Communications, The National Museum of Art, Architecture & Design, Norway ‘Forum artist’ is the name the architect Klaus Schuwerk has given his winning proposal for a new building to house Norway’s National Museum, due to open in 2017. As a name for a museum it is well suited to our century.

In planning the museum, we try to imagine how art and audiences might come together five years from now, in an institution that not only houses and cares for a collection, but is also a meeting place of major social significance. In brief: a forum for the arts.

The museum of tomorrow should be able to satisfy the diverse approaches to time and space that its visitors are likely to apply; some will have just fifteen minutes to spare, some a couple of hours, while others will want to spend a whole day there. Should the museum be a white cube for contemplation, a black box for meditation, or a forum for production?

Gaining space and functionality is not enough. Added value lies in creating an environment where it is good to be, an arena for interaction between artwork, visitor, museum and society.

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Promoters of Global Dialogue Nick Poole CEO, The Collections Trust Society needs museums to provide stability and context. People need museums to provide meaning, identity and entertainment. Industry needs museums to support innovation & development. For these reasons, I see a tremendously positive longterm future for museums worldwide as drivers of economic tourism, agents of social change and promoters of intercultural dialogue and tolerance.

The initial, disruptive generation of technologies will recede, leaving the museum of the future as a fundamentally and naturally hybrid organisation combining collections, technologies and relationships to engage new audiences. There will be less emphasis on digitising everything, and more on delivering value and lasting impact through integrated services.

I can foresee that the definition of ‘museum’ will become blurred – with an increasing number of heritage attractions and public-facing services which package heritage in new ways. While this will create a more competitive environment for individual museums, it will also help with the current oversupply of skilled museum practitioners. It will also provide us with new strategies to address the perennial challenge of stored collections and the relative lack of display space in our museums.

The international museum community is hardworking, professional and dedicated. Collectively, we perform an essential social, economic and personal role.

Even though there is a profound lack of recognition of this from Governments in some countries, the value of museums is in the hearts and minds of the public they serve. Museums will continue to adapt to reflect the needs of their communities, and I am tremendously excited about what they have the potential to become.

Future of Museum Architecture Ulf Grønvold Senior Curator, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo

In 1792, three years into the French revolution, the National Convention in Paris decided that a state museum should be established in the Louvre. Museum galleries had been part of royal residences for several centuries, but it was in the first decades of the 19th Century the museum was developed as a building type. For the next hundred years museums were built to more or less look like palaces.

With the arrival of Modernism a new concept was introduced: The informal museum pavilion in an idyllic park. Modern architecture is often at its best in a virgin situation when it doesn’t have to relate to a demanding historic context. And the Kröller Müller Museum in the Netherlands and the Louisiana in Denmark illustrate the success of this approach. Starting with Ronchamp by Le Corbusier architecture became a giant version of modern sculpture.

Guggenheim in Bilbao was celebrated as the museum of decade, but when Frank Gehry repeated the same shapes everywhere, it became too private a vocabulary, it was his signature and not buildings based in a lager social context.

The 21st Century should be a period of sense and sobriety. Museums are monuments of lasting values, and our buildings should express that without going back to the metaphor of the palace. We need museum buildings that belong to their location and their community, not the ego of a Star architect on a brief visit.

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Global Museum Community Lucy Hockley Adult Education Officer, Weald & Downland Open Air Museum A favourite quote of mine is ‘not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child’ (Cicero). Museums have fantastic learning potential and can broaden their visitors’ horizons. This should be shared as widely as possible and explored more fully in the future.

On the other hand, a term often used in the press, ‘community’, is not generally one of my favourite words. Yet, I feel the term ‘museum community’ is used accurately and a just cause for pride at my current organisation, and I’m sure this is the case in many other museums. Issues around well-being and social involvement with heritage organisations are due further future consideration.

In the future I’d like to see museums working in innovative, imaginative ways whilst retaining their core principles. In-depth research and specialist knowledge is vital to underpin other museum activities. Volunteering roles will need to reflect changing models of work to engage wide sections of society and enable people to continue to contribute at different life stages in a way that suits individuals.

As funding cuts continue to be felt and organisations adapt, they will need to search for new sources of income but should resist being overly swayed by funder’s objectives or short-term agendas. Of course museums must show their relevance to society, but they can’t try to be everything to everyone.

Social media and other technologies will encourage museums to form links with others and increased international co-operation is the way forward.

Digital Impact on Museums David Masters Lead Consultant, Imagemakers

Museums will continue to evolve and respond to their social, cultural and economic context. New social paradigms, such as the widespread adoption of social networking, together with ever-changing visitor expectations and the opportunities presented by digital media, will all impact on museums.

The near universal adoption of smartphones, for example, will require a considered response, with apps produced for permanent and temporary displays and collections. Computer 3D modelling and animation will vividly bring objects to life.

But there will also be a digital backlash, with some people visiting for an ‘authentic’ encounter with a collection.

Curating will increasingly include digital resources, which will be accessed and interpreted on-site and on-line. People will become more involved in the curatorial process through social networking and crowd-sourcing activities. The use of digital media will still be balanced with more traditional forms of display and interpretation, both to meet audience expectations and due to the cost implications of digital technology.

Environmental design standards will become more widely adopted, with an emphasis on re-use, modular design, recycled materials, and low energy IT.

Overall, there will be further emphasis on improving access, establishing meaningful narratives for collections and displays, story-led interpretation, and environmental responsibility.

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Collections and Communities Tracy Puklowski Senior Operations Manager, Collections and Research, Museum of New Zealand -Te Papa Tongarewa

Museums build their reputations around their collections, and the knowledge and experiences that those collections generate. However, without recognising the real and ongoing connections between collections and communities, museums are only telling half the story. For this reason, I believe that one of the futures of museums (for there are many) revolves around the notion of shared authority.

Rather than giving up curatorial authority, shared authority enhances curatorial knowledge by recognising the significant impact communities (and particularly source communities) can have on our understanding of the collections that we keep in trust on their behalf. In turn, communities benefit from the knowledge that museums build around collections. Objects need multiple and varied voices to tell their stories fully. Source communities, particularly, have social, spiritual, and innate connections to objects – and they accordingly have a right to define that knowledge, and how it is used. This requires the creation of fully reciprocal partnerships between museums and communities, as well as processes that are transparent, accessible, and flexible.

Shared authority requires museums to rethink their role as guardians of collections.

Rather than being about guarding or owning collections, guardianship is about using and holding collections responsibly, and this includes the obligation to find new ways of sharing collections - intellectually, physically, and virtually.

Without learning how to explore, understand, and enhance the connections between collections and communities, museums will tell limited stories and consequently limit their futures.

Guided Tours by Robots?

Lin Stafne-Pfisterer Museum Educator, Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway The future of the museum, I think, will move in parallel directions. Increased digitalisation in all areas of life is already changing museum reality. This will be even more important in the future. Recently, I listened to a science researcher telling children about their digital future. He convinced them, that in 50 years, a robot will wake up the children in the morning, and assist families at home. We’ve heard this before, but these days we see mechanical human look-alikes being developed.

Transferred to the museum, it is maybe not that far out to imagine a robot giving a guided tour presenting art works in a museum.

Still, I believe that the digital development will bring exclusivity to museum experiences with personal guides for smaller groups. The handmade art work will perhaps be given an almost reliquary-like value in a growing digital society. Increased development of digital material for exhibitions is perhaps most interesting when recreating the past: creating virtual versions of destroyed buildings, sculptures and artist’s homes that are materially lost.

The growing “edutainment” functions of museums will probably continue, but I hope research based museums will have more sustainability bringing valuable content to their visitors. Last, but not least, I think we will see much more participation from museum visitors, who will be actively involved in the exhibition processes.

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Culture of Digital Creativity Steph Mastoris Head, National Waterfront Museum, Swansea

If the study of the past teaches us anything it is not to trust predictions for the future! So my thoughts about the future of museums are really more about how I feel and hope current technological developments will shape them over the next few decades.

Of course, in any institution worthy of the name “museum” the prime resource is its collections. It will be fascinating, therefore, to see how these artefacts will be made available and experienced as the digital age progresses. While the ease of physical and virtual replication will increase and become more sophisticated, the “magic” of experience of the original, real artefact is bound to become more important to people. In this way we should all be winners.

Such increased access to collections is also bound to improve interpretation.

Indeed, the very media that will allow artefacts to be accessed remotely will also provide limitless possibilities for dynamic, user-driven interpretation. Already we are experiencing how sophisticated, multi-layered narratives can be delivered through digital media. And what is equally exciting is that such information uses (in fact demands) material from a wide range of traditional museum disciplines. Digital interpretation is bound to create more joined-up working by museum professionals, so the future museum is surely going to be not only multi-disciplinary, but inter-disciplinary.

Era of the Virtual Museum Christine Conciatori Content Project Manager, Canadian Museum for Human Rights In an era where technology and new media seem to evolve faster than we can keep up, what is the future of the museum? We are already living in the era of the virtual museum.

Museums are not made of just bricks and mortar. Technology has been entering museums for a number of years already and has changed the face of these institutions. Touch screens and interactivity are now common parts of a museum visit. Furthermore, museums around the world are now accessible on the web and social media is now a part of daily museum life.

Visitors, experienced and knowledgeable with technology, expect museums to follow these trends. They want opportunities to interact with museum content. Visitors’ expectations for rapid change are also increasing. Museums have to address these expectations by being increasingly dynamic.

Museums are also increasingly becoming overt places of dialogue. New technologies are a wonderful way to reach visitors. But, as with any mean of communication, even the best technology has its limitations. Museums must stay relevant to the society of which they serve, they must also work to expand their reach.

Using the web, museums can reach a wider audience, and within this audience, touch a segment of people who have not traditionally been museum goers. However, using technology cannot be simply motivated by the desire to have a “cool app”. Technology is not a goal in itself. It offers a powerful medium to deliver a message, content to the visitor, in person or virtually. The pressure to attract new visitors forces museums to try to be more “seductive”. New technologies may be part of the answer; however, it cannot be empty and devoid of substance. Without a solid message, technology merely becomes a gimmick. The message is what sets museums apart.

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Human Rights and the Environment David Fleming Director, National Museums Liverpool

The only thing threatening a bright future for museums is museum people themselves, should they fail to persuade the politicians who provide most of the funding for museums that in doing so they are supporting something that has fundamental social and educational importance. Over the past twenty or so years, museums have begun to come into their own, worldwide, as cultural phenomena that play a number of roles: they have educational power; they have social impacts; they have economic impacts. Museums are valued in all countries for at least one of these roles, and in some countries they are valued for all of them. Consequently, the future for museums should consist of playing these roles, which will vary, obviously, depending upon local circumstances.

The most exciting and valuable role that museums should develop is fighting for social justice – through campaigning for human rights and protection of the environment, and through championing inclusivity. Museums are there to serve the whole of society, and they need to work hard to serve marginalised groups and individuals, not be content with super-serving traditional museum-going audiences.

Funding for museums will ebb and flow, as ever, but a commitment to social justice is the best way in the long term to secure financial support from the rest of society. It’s a commitment that will always be needed, and will always be valued.

Rethinking the Museum Alex Saint and Steve Connor Independent consultants and co-authors of Rethinking The Museum In Rethinking the Museum, a series of thinkpieces commissioned by NW Fed, we look forward to the year 2030. Read it, debate it, it’s complex and impossible to summarise in a few words. So let’s just take one idea forward here....

We progress the idea that a visit to a museum should be like getting a rush of the hormone oxytocin - the cuddle chemical or empathy-drug - and deliver an extraordinary group hug. Museums as the virtual equivalent of the social-media network, joined-up, connected, commissioned delivery agents for social change, trusted, healing fractures, glueing, bonding - and above all developing our individual and community capacity for real empathy.

Indeed, we’d argue even more strongly now that the desire to create a developed capacity for human empathy should the principal purpose of museums – raised collective empathy and conscience is crucial for the successful re-engineering of our ecologically and economically fractured society, our best way out of seemingly unsolveable social and political drift and rift.

So, in our oxytocin-charged museum, collections are used to foster an understanding of the histories and ideas that matter – of suffering, of self-expression and of achievement, and also to elicit a positive response, to prompt creative conversations, and draw out the desire to share and build a better world, locally and globally. Are these Museums of Social Justice, or Social Enterprise?

We prefer to call them Museums of Empathy, which work as hard to bring about a change in attitude or behaviour in the mainstream visitor, the corporate supporter, the cross-sector partner as they do with the disenfranchised communities and individuals that so many museums seek to engage, but too often with limited real or lasting impact.

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To Be Part of the Solution Peter Stott Team Leader Heritage, Falkirk Community Trust Here’s the ICOM definition of a museum: ‘A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.’

ICOM acknowledges that the definition of a museum evolves ‘in accordance with the realities of the global museum community’. In other words museums themselves need to evolve to survive and prosper in their changing ecosystem.

There is increasing and, despite the efforts of governments, increasingly unavoidable evidence to demonstrate what the change in the ecosystem consists of – resolving the interconnected system of climate change, resource scarcity, failing economic models and social injustice. An accumulating array of cultural bodies – for example Culture Futures, Royal Society of Arts, Museums Association, Mission Models Money and Visual Arts and Galleries Association – recognise, first that economic policy which tries to reignite the growth and consumer-based economic model is folly on a monumental scale, and second that the cultural sector can be part of the solution to the problem if it takes two things on board: • That the cultural sector can engage with people’s imaginations to facilitate the behavioural change necessary for sustainable living • That the bricks-and-mortar institutional models of delivery created by the passing ecosystem will not suffice as the basis for prospering in the emerging ecosystem.

This is the ‘big project’ of our era. So what would the next evolutionary stage in the definition of a museum look like? Here’s a proposal: ‘A museum is a public, collective process by which people are enabled, through understanding their relationship to the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment, to contribute to the long-term well-being of communities and sustainability of environments, globally and locally.’

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The Museum Geekerati Open Call for Contributors

Museum/iD are currently looking to hear from technologists, developers, new media experts, and social media specialists working in museums to contribute ideas and opinions to the next edition.

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A Naturally Compelling Future for Museums: Sharon Ament, Director of Public Engagement at the Natural History Museum, London, on why museums have a vital role to play in the future of the planet

n 2001 River Restoration, a report published jointly by English Nature, the Mayor of London and the Environment Agency, outlined the opportunities and benefits that restoring the tributary rivers of London would make towards it becoming an exemplary sustainable world city. It argued strongly for those areas of river catchment that were deficient for nature conservation.

Within the report I came unexpectedly across a reproduction of Sir John Everett Millais’s glorious 1852 painting Ophelia. The image is famous and is a part of the collection housed in Tate Britain.

Ophelia lies drowning in the shallows in the clear waters of an English river. The image is captivating and made all the more tragic because of the abundance of life that surrounds the death of such beauty. The Tate’s website confirms that the “painting was regarded in its day as one of the most accurate and elaborate studies of nature”.

Being familiar with the painting I was surprised to find that the very same landscape in which Millais located the dying Ophelia – Hogsmill river in Ewell – was being cited within the report as being in need of critical restoration.

It left me wondering what the picture would look like today, if Ophelia were to be represented in the same waters. Would it be so beautiful and would the wildlife surrounding the body be so abundant and varied? Given the report, I think not.

This ability to reference a piece of art as an indicator of changes in nature shows how simply and effectively museums and galleries could engage with the big environmental issues which are currently the stuff, quite literally, of life.

A personal issue For me two important things have occurred during the past few years which mark a very real shift: the first being that awareness of environmental issues in the UK has become almost universal,

The Cocoon at the Darwin Centre - the new wing of the Natural History Museum containing 47 million specimens © National Maritime Museum

the second is that people are directly experiencing environmental changes for themselves.

Throughout my career I have observed the “environment” go from being an issue confined to a passionate few to being a ubiquitous theme that is part of our daily discourse. What’s more, during the past few years the environment has become personal and is engaged with on an individual basis. There is a heightened consciousness of global warming with people often attributing every 75

unseasonable weather manifestation to it, fuel prices are noted, diminishing fish stocks change the colour and character of fishmongers’ slabs and local government’s approach to recycling has resulted in the array of bins and complex rubbish sorting that now takes place in our very homes.

There are few issues that have such universal currency in the UK at the moment and the public’s understanding of the concepts can be quite sophisticated. These include: the growth in consciousness of human beings as animals inhabiting a planet with other species, the increasing awareness that fragile ecosystems can be fundamentally altered by our actions and the finite nature of readily available cheap resources such as fossil fuels or water. As part of this wider discourse, concepts such as biodiversity, ecosystems, sustainability and climate change are at least recognised if not fully understood.

The issues are played out across all fora: from the media to the daily life of the class-room,

and public programmes to create exciting new interventions about the environment.

We can use the unique collection of skills and talents of the sector to bring new insight to the wide range of topics that nest under the single theme of “the environment”. Our challenge is to deploy our expertise and collections in such a way that new ways of engaging are developed to have a greater resonance with our communities, enabling us to consider the environment through fresh eyes. I believe that every museum or gallery could engage with the environment no matter what the shape, size or character of their collection. The example of Ophelia is proof.

Nothing So Relevant Now is a perfect moment for museums to consider new ways of interpreting the environment as the world prepares for the Rio Summit in June 2012.

Building on the experiences from COP15 Climate Conference in Copenhagen we can expect

“it’s time for attention to be paid by our whole sector - beyond the usual suspects” at a local level through government policies on recycling or debates about the proliferation of wind-turbines in the countryside. People are conscious of food miles, that we all have a carbon footprint, advertisers use green credentials, government policies encourage energy saving and it seems that every household at least knows what compost is even if they don’t have a pile of rotting vegetables at the end of the garden.

So with the pervasion of matters “environmental” throughout society it is time for attention to be paid by our whole sector beyond the usual suspects of natural history or science museums.

Getting Our Own Galleries Alongside the very essential need for our own organisations to examine how we interact with the world and change our behaviours to become more sustainable, we also need to consider within the specificity of each of our missions how we can craft our exhibitions, permanent displays 76

global attention to be focussed on the issues of sustainability and within this heightened awareness we have the opportunity to become part of the zeitgeist.

The UN Conference on Sustainable Development – Earth Summit Rio+20, will be the fourth summit of its kind and represents another milestone in international efforts to accelerate progress towards achieving sustainable development globally. World leaders will address issues such as food security, accelerating ecosystem degradation, climate change and the impacts of population growth.

Thus we are provided with a breadth of rich, powerful topics for our sector to explore further, through our collections.

As well as this opportunity that such a global conference brings, another helpful mechanism for museum curators is that provided by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment framework. This is the output of an international body of over 2,000 experts who came together

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The Darwin Centre - the new wing of the Natural History Museum containing 47 million specimens © National Maritime Museum

to look at the value of ecosystems. By defining four overarching values for nature museums have a mechanism through which they can articulate their collections whether they are the Norwegian Canning Museum in Stavanger, the Imperial War Museum in London or the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.

The framework ascribes values to ecosystems that ensure the health of the planet and thus human well-being. There are both utilitarian and intrinsic values with cultural value being of significance. Ban Ki-Moon, SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations made this value explicit when he said: Nature’s assets underpin the very lives and livelihoods of more than 6 billion people. They make our very existence possible in the vacuum of space.

So far you may think that this is all getting a bit environmentally hard-core. However, it is far from my objective to insist that we all begin to plaster our walls with data or frighten our visitors into paralysis.

What I am advocating is the application of our collective creativity, intelligence and savvy to create amazing, insightful experiences around the theme of the natural world and not worthy, dull regurgitations of the facts of climate change, or the very prosaic list of actions that visitors can take. Let’s use our creative talents to bring new sorts of approaches, to light fires, to inspire, to create wonder.

Stretching Our Thinking All museums and galleries no matter the subject of their collection or scholarly focus can engage in some way. From the local history museum to the industrial heritage centre from the art gallery to the natural history museum, all can and should develop new programmes and exhibits on the environment.

To use a seasonal example we could creatively look at the history, economics and biodiversity of the Christmas cake with all its interesting ingredients or with an example drawn from newspaper headlines, the issue of scarce resources as a cause of conflict and warfare.

At the Natural History Museum, as you might expect with our 350 research scientists and 70 million specimens, it is easy for us to use our assets to tell great stories about the environment.

Our new Darwin Centre where we bring researchers, collections and the public together is a great example. Here scientists work in labs, innovative interactivity plays out on an hourly basis in the Attenborough Studio and people journey through the Cocoon exhibition which traverses two floors of collections storage.

Albeit it is a new kind of museum space and an exciting new way to engage, the Darwin Centre is exactly what you might expect from one of the world’s renowned natural history institutions. But what you might not expect is our approach to using our collections in new sorts of 79

Norderlicht - the field station of the Cape Farewell project. © National Maritime Museum

collaborations, partnerships and disciplines to create new dialogues and discourse.

A recent example was the Amazonia artsscience exhibition in 2010 on which we worked with Lucy and Jorge Orta in a show based on biodiversity and in 2006 when we worked with Cape Farewell to stage an exhibition of works from leading artists called The Ship: the art of climate change.

Cape Farewell is a collaborative of artists pioneered by artist David Buckland that exists to engage artists in issues around climate change.

The project takes artists, educationalists and scientists in inter-disciplinary expeditions on a sailing vessel - the Schooner ‘Norderlicht’ to the Spitzbergen archipelago to explore the impact of climate on the oceans and Arctic.

The collaboration has involved Southampton Oceanography Centre and the Geographical Association and the vessel has been involved in gathering quantifiable scientific data and creating the space for the artists and scientists to share experience and practice.

Such a major collaboration enabled our scientists to share skills with artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey helping them create a new work called Stranded. This work comprised a whale skeleton which had been encrusted with 80

crystals. It formed a stunning centrepiece for the show. Flensing a whale carcass isn’t something that many people know how to do, however, for museum experts it’s a skill applied for very practical reasons to be used in the course of research work on cetacean strandings.

For the Natural History Museum the medium of art has enabled us to create highly impactful experiences. For a science-based museum this has been our great stretch. The challenge to us all is to continue to widen our approach to nature and finally to quote Ban KiMoon once more when he was talking about setting new targets and a vision for biodiversity: Business as usual is not an option.

Sharon Ament Director of Public Engagement, Natural History Museum, London, Chair of the Exhibition Road Cultural Group, and Vice President of Ecsite Bibliography: Millennium Ecosystems Assessment, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being; Synthesis. Island Press, World Resources Centre River Restoration, A stepping stone to urban regeneration highlighting the opportunities in South London, The Environment Agency, 2001 www.capefarewell.com

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game Making a good museum game means serious collaboration between game-makers and curators. Danny Birchall and Martha Henson of the Wellcome Trust on how to develop engaging games for a discerning audience...

“How come I only understood what I’d seen in a museum after playing this game?!’’

Comment about ‘High tea’ on the gaming portal Kongregate It seems traditional for any article about games to start with an introduction which includes a statement about how much money they make each year ($65bn a year according to Reuters), a supposedly surprising statistic about who plays them (a 43 year-old woman is the average player of social games), and a query as to why they aren’t therefore taken more seriously than they are. However, it seems this might finally have become unnecessary since, in many spheres, games are already being taken very seriously indeed.

The potential of games to inform and engage has long been recognised by groups as disparate as the military and schoolteachers. Groups like Games for Change, whose recent conference was opened by Al Gore, believe they can even have a positive impact on our society. So, what about museums? Is there a space in museums for games that will help us achieve the kind of learning and engagement that we have been reaching towards in recent years? Moreover, for those of us working in this area, how can we learn from each other?

Many museums have already been creating or commissioning online games of their own, with varying degrees of success. Games like Rizk or Launchball from the Science Museum, or Vanished from the Smithsonian and MIT notably avoid a prevalent tendency to attach game-like mechanics to didactic exercises in delivering information. We have not always been immune to this tendency ourselves in the past, but since 2010 we too have been taking games very seriously at Wellcome Collection.

We began not just with the desire to make games, but with a vision of what’s important about games, and how they can work for museums. We had five basic assumptions: 1. Good gameplay comes first. A game is no good to anyone if its educational objectives get in the way of it being fun and satisfying to play. An interactive walk-through that heavily predetermines players’ choices in order to deliver text-heavy chunks of ‘learning’ isn’t really a game.

2. There is an audience (and it’s not an existing museum audience) that plays games, and is hungry for more. Millions of people play games on portals like Newgrounds and Armor Games every day: these games are good, but mostly devoid of any educational or cultural content 84

play > 3. Making a good museum game means serious collaboration between game-makers and curators. Many agencies are used to making entertaining games for consumer brands, but if you take the idea of educational gaming seriously, you can’t just ‘hand over the brand’ and expect something that reflects your true mission.

4. Existing game models can be profitably reused. Often, trying to invent a new form of gameplay that uniquely fits your content or mission is a waste of time. Existing game models (the platformer, the first person shooter) are both flexible and familiar. The player wastes little time on picking up the gameplay, and can concentrate on what’s unique about your game.

5. Games can work in unexpected ways. It’s not only through narrative that players can pick up what you’re trying to get across. Sometimes the rules of a game itself, from simple tasks to detailed strategy, can help a deeper, and more intuitive understanding of the subject matter.

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With this in mind, we started modestly, with simple game called Memory, in which the player matches cards in pairs. The game itself was not original but we wanted to create something simple and effective conveying a sense of our collections through images. Though the game would have worked with many fewer, our picture library staff selected and themed over a thousand images into thirty possible game levels.

We also hoped to give a sense of the manner in which the Collection’s founder, Sir Henry Wellcome, collected many different examples of the same kind of object to illustrate his theories about the development of modern medicine. As you progress through the game, levels become harder through virtue of the similarity of the objects: the final level featuring obstetric forceps, is a nightmare challenge to the memory.

Our next effort was less stereotypically ‘gamey’: a quiz engine that drives multimedia quizzes that can be deployed across different websites. Here, the practice of putting the quizzes together is what makes a difference: we bring together exhibition curators and subject experts to write quiz questions for each new exhibition that make the most of our collections as well as the subject material of the exhibition. A question review at the end of each quiz offers links onwards not only to our own website, but also Wikipedia, the Internet Archive and others. For both the quizzes and Memory we are able to see basic statistics about the number of plays, which have been in the low tens of thousands, but have no real qualititative data. For our next game, however, we went much further, launching the game with an extensive programme of evaluation that proved to be very informative.

“both addictively playable and historically robust”

That game, our most ambitious yet, is High Tea. It takes the form of a strategy or trading game in which the player adopts the rôle of a nineteenth century British smuggler active in the Pearl Delta during the 1830s, the decade before the outbreak of the First Opium War. The subject matter was taken from our wide-ranging exhibition about the history and culture of recreational drug use; High Society. The exhibition took an illustrative approach to its subject rather than a didactic or historical one, including both contemporary illustrations of the opium trade and a large installation ‘Frolic’ by the artist Huang Yong Ping, including a giant opium pipe.

We wanted to bring this eclectic and thought-provoking approach to bear in making a game to accompany the exhibition. The subject matter suggested a trading game of some kind involving opium and tea; putting the player in the ethically dubious position of a British smuggler selling an illegal drug added a touch of dissonance to a game which is won by amassing money.

The topic is undoubtedly sensitive, not only here but also in China, where the leading opponent of the trade, Lin Zéxú, is now revered as a national hero. Our confidence that we could create something both addictively playable and historically robust came from the collaboration between the exhibition’s curator, Mike Jay, and the agency building the game, Preloaded. Mike understood the logic of games, and Preloaded, who have also built educational games for the BBC and Channel 4, understood how to turn Mike’s knowledge into useful elements of the game.

The game was hugely successful. Within 24 hours of being seeded to popular gaming portals Kongregate and Newgrounds the number of plays went over 100k, and continued to climb once it had also been added to Armor Games before slowly dropping off after the game 86

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left the portals’ front pages. Nearly 6 months after we launched High Tea, the number of plays is close to 3.5million. Dwell time on the game averages around 14-15 minutes.

The number of plays was a surprise, especially the large amount from sites we didn’t actually seed the game to, but which “ripped” the game from the official sites. This had always been our aim: the game had been designed to be both self contained and trackable (Preloaded built in hooks that provide rich data in Google Analytics) , but we weren’t expecting over 50% of plays to come from nearly 1450 unofficial hosts. The number of plays on our own site was tiny, less than 3% of the total. Though sharing to Facebook and Twitter was available at the end of the game, relatively few people did this, and even fewer people were brought to the game in this way.

We believe there are a few key lessons from this: put the game where the gamers are, make it easy to rip and easy to track, and don’t rely on social media to spread the game. But what about beyond the analytics? Why did people play the game? What did they learn from it?

How did they feel about the moral implications of their actions in the game? To answer these and other questions, we placed a link to a survey at the end of the game and then followed up with telephone interviews and a focus group. The findings were interesting and encouraging.

Above screen grabs: The High Tea game by the Wellcome Collection

Players were overwhelmingly positive about the game, which they had been attracted to by the curious name and the subject matter (opium and tea) as well as its high rating and prominence on the portal front pages. The audience demographic appears to have been younger than our normal age group, skewed heavily towards 16-24 year olds, though a significant chunk was 25-34 years old.

Around two thirds of players surveyed had some awareness of the relevant history already but over half said that they were likely to go and find out more after playing the game. When we explored this further in interviews, most felt they had learned something from playing. A quote from one player sums this up nicely, and is also reflected in similar comments on the game portals: “…what you play could probably read in a book and have a test on it, and you probably wouldn’t understand it fully, but when you are actually being put in that situation, you understand it completely immediately and I think it is a really really cool way to learn about certain aspects of history.”

Several interviewees did indeed go on to research the subject further, mostly by searching online, but in one case by reading a book about China, which was especially pleasing for us. Though the game itself is not heavy on information, we had hoped that people 89

would learn a little but then be inspired to find out more, which appears to have been the case.

The issue of ethics was particularly intriguing for us. The game offers no moral judgements, so we were curious to see how players reacted. Some players were shocked by history which they had been previously unaware of. A couple who felt the game showed that the opium trade was a function of impersonal economics were less inclined to dismiss it as evil imperialism. This perhaps explains a survey result that suggested some felt more positively about the British Empire after playing the game.

A huge amount of “unofficial” qualitative information came from comments on the games, reviews on all kinds of sites, comments on those reviews, threads on Reddit and Metafilter, posts on forums, YouTube reviews and walkthroughs, even a podcast review.

The power of the game to generate discussion about the issues and history involved was something we had hoped for, but the breadth and scale of this still took us by surprise.

Some used the game as a hook to write articles about the history of the Opium Wars, others discussed pure game strategy and posted their scores. Some commenters and one in depth review focussed on the economics, which wasn’t something we’d intended at all.

We believe the success of High Tea on so many levels has justified our approach in its development. Combining it with an extensive programme of evaluation has provided a wealth

“sharing and collaboration across the museum sector is key to making more, and better, games” of information for us (and others, we hope) to build on. Questions still remain which we’d love to try and answer in future games: can we replicate the success of High Tea? Just how much can people learn from playing a game? What would we have done differently with more evaluation and user testing during the development of our games?

We can’t answer all these questions ourselves: sharing and collaboration across the museum sector is key to making more, and better, games. After a workshop at Museums and the Web earlier his year, participants set up a Museum Games wiki (museumgames. pbworks.com). It contains links to all the games we’ve mentioned above and more. But more importantly, it offers a place where we can share our experiences, our successes, our research and the results of evaluations like the one we’ve shared here. If you’ve been thinking about games in your museum, please join the wiki and let us know what you’ve been doing.

Together, we think, we can raise our (museum) game.

Danny Birchall, Web Editor, and Martha Henson, Multimedia Producer, Wellcome Collection Wellcome Collection is a free visitor destination for the incurably curious. Located at 183 Euston Road, London, it explores the connections between medicine, life and art in the past, present and future. The venue offers visitors contemporary and historic exhibitions and lively public events. www.wellcomecollection.org 90

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A Museum-iD Special Feature

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interpretation audio-guides multimedia devices handheld interpretation mobile apps

NEW media

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Landmark Chinese art installation to reach international audience thanks to work of imagineear Singapore is hosting its largest art exhibition with the opening of the new animation, A Moving Masterpiece: The Song Dynasty As Living Art. The Moving Masterpiece exhibition is a 128m by 6.5m animated reproduction of the painting Qing Ming Shang He Tu, a national treasure painted by Song artist Zhang Zeduan in the 11th Century. Over 30 times bigger than the original, the installation was the star attraction of the China Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 and has now toured Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, Taipei and Tai-Chung attracting over 10 million people.

Thanks to a partnership with UK cultural multimedia provider imagineear, a wholly international audience will now be able to share this unique cultural experience in Singapore.

Working together with organisers Singex and Singapore Huading, imagineear has interpreted the animation, offering audio-visual guides to visitors in English, Malay, Japanese and Mandarin as well as in the Chinese dialects of Cantonese, Hokkien and Teochew. Organisers expect crowds of over 800,000.

Mr Edmund Chua, Managing Director of Singapore Huading, which has brought the exhibition to Singapore, told us: “Qing Ming Shang He Tu is a landmark Chinese work of art which not many have seen. As we now have the privilege of showcasing the modern digital version, we feel it is only right to make sure that as many people as possible get to appreciate it, and this includes the elderly Chinese who may not be familiar with Mandarin.

We are delighted to be working with imagineear to provide both technology platform, script, wall labels, translations and productions – in short to have entrusted to imagineear the front line interpretation of this priceless work.’

Andrew Nugée, Chief Executive of imagineear is wholly committed to the ambitious aims of this project: 96

“An immersive and total cultural experience” “imagineear is honoured to have been selected to enhance the experience of so many visitors to the digital exhibition in their own preferred language.

We have a strong and highly experienced team both locally and internationally which is focussed on doing justice to this wonderful and captivating work of art.”

The original Qing Ming Shang He Tu is a panoramic 5.3m scroll painting by Song Dynasty artist Zhang Zeduan (1085–1145). Revered through the ages as ‘The Chinese Mona Lisa’, it captures the daily life of people from the Song period in the capital, Bianjing (today’s Kaifeng) and celebrates the festive spirit and worldly commotion at the Qingming Festival. The painting is a Chinese national treasure which is now kept in the vaults of the Beijing’s Palace Museum

but rarely seen by the Chinese populace. An immersive and total cultural experience, this digital masterpiece presents 1,068 characters in minute detail covering both day and night during the festival - from family life to horse-drawn carriages on the roads and boat life activities.

A Moving Masterpiece: The Song Dynasty As Living Art - Singapore EXPO Convention and Exhibition Centre - 7th December 2011 - 6th February 2012 About imagineear Young, dynamic and passionate about interpretation, for over a decade the management team have been leaders in building and delivering outstanding audio and multimedia tours for cultural clients worldwide. www.imagineear.com 97

New Multimedia Guide for Henry Moore Foundation

Opus, launched in 2008, is a multimedia guide offering images, video, gaming, visitor questionnaires, and data collection which can be managed by the staff on-site using the Opus Content Management system. Opus is used in some of the most prestigious sites in the UK including Westminster Abbey, the Roman Baths, Cardiff Castle, Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Shakespeare’s Globe and the Henry Moore Foundation.

The multimedia guide, which is included in the ticket price, has been specifically produced in order to give the visitor a random access tour around the grounds of Perry Green, where Henry Moore lived and worked. The tour explores his workshops explaining the process of his work from concept to sculpture. The guide offers visitors a great insight into the life of Henry Moore thanks to the interviews with his daughter Mary Moore, produced specially for the audio tour. The Acoustiguide is narrated by broadcaster Joan Bakewell, who once interviewed Henry Moore on the estate, and features contributions from members of staff at the Foundation. In addition visitors can also view exclusive archive material about Moore on-screen as well as images of the sculptures.

The Foundation’s Director Richard Calvocoressi said: ‘The Acoustiguide has added an important dimension to our visitor experience. We are dedicated to helping people enjoy and understand Moore’s work, and this is an important part of that effort. First-hand accounts like Mary’s are particularly valuable.’

Opus is intuitive to use, with a number keypad, visitors can explore the site and key in the numbers found on the map to get information on the sculptures.

Opus is also available a touch-screen device Opus Touch™ which uses the same charging facilities as Opus Click™ so the players can offer Visually Impaired and British Sign language tours.

www.acoustiguide.com 98

App and guide for Panorama retrospective at Tate Modern Antenna International has produced a multimedia guide and smartphone app to accompany the Tate Modern exhibition Gerhard Richter: Panorama, a major retrospective spanning nearly five decades and coinciding with the artist’s 80th birthday. Designed as a guide to the exhibition, it covers Richter’s career from his emigration to West Germany in 1961 through to the present day.

From realist paintings based on photographs to colourful gestural abstractions, such as the squeegee paintings, and from grey monochromes to subtle landscapes, Richter’s wide range of artistic approaches and styles are reflected on the app.

App users will hear from exhibition curator, Mark Godfrey, who worked closely with Gerhard Richter to choose which works to include in the show and how they should be arranged in the Tate Galleries. Alongside Godfrey’s insights into this important artist’s body of work, there’s also a chance to listen to commentary from co-curator Amy Dickson and Tate director, Sir Nicholas Serota.

“The app has been designed with simplicity in mind”

The app has been designed with simplicity in mind and features: a scrollable menu of audio commentaries packed with expert interviews from Tate curators with high-resolution, fully zoomable images of the works discussed; a ‘follow us’ tab with links to Tate’s Twitter, Facebook and the Tate Richter exhibition blog; links to the Richter exhibition website, ticket bookings and Tate general information page; plus the opportunity to give online feedback about the app.

The app can be download to use as a multimedia guide in the exhibition galleries and then be kept afterwards as a memento, or if visitors are unable to visit the exhibition, the app can be used as a reference of Richter’s work.

The app was produced by Antenna International and Tate.

For more information: http://www.tate.org.uk/ modern/exhibitions/gerhardrichter/default.shtm www.antennainternational.com

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Imagemakers launch app engine to help heritage sites go digital and save money Heritage interpretation consultants Imagemakers have launched ‘i-explore’, an app engine designed to help the heritage sector embrace digital technology and increase learning and participation. i-explore is not an app in itself, it is a new engine specifically designed to power heritage apps. Based on the much-loved game of I-Spy, i-explore combines visitor information and multimedia with game dynamics, in order to engage audiences. It is this game element that sets i-explore apart from other visitor apps, which often have static information or images (like a digital guide-book). And because i-explore has already been developed by Imagemakers, organisations get the advantage of a system that has been tested and evaluated without the large budgets and time allowances that come with research and development.

For heritage organisations, an app powered by i-explore will help them tell inspiring stories by offering extra layers of interpretation like stunning photography and video, an immersive audio guide, GPS map trail or geo-cache trail and integration with social media. For visitors, an i-explore app will enable them to explore a heritage environment or object on a deeper level, control what form they would like the experience to take, have fun playing game elements with friends or family, share their experiences on social media and follow-up a visit with app ‘extras’ available for download.

Imagemakers developed the Natural History Museum’s (NHM) first App, the Opal Bugs Count Pocket ID Guide. This dual-purpose App helps users learn about invertebrate (bug) life in the UK and act a valuable research tool for scientists. From shield bugs and beetles to hoverflies and bumblebees, users will find interesting facts, identification tips and stunning photographs of the UK’s most common bugs at their fingertips.

The App alsos help scientists at the Open Air Laboratories Network (OPAL) with research into the changing environment. Users can take part in the Bugs Count survey by submitting data and a photo about six Species Quest bugs of particular importance.

This information will appear instantly on OPAL’s Species Quest map online. The App is free to download from Apple iTunes and Android Marketplace.

Imagemakers developed the ‘Bugs Count’ app with new HTML5 technology, which allows the app to be used on Apple iPhones and Android based phones to ensure the widest audience.

As well as the Natural History Museum, Imagemakers have recently launched apps powered by i-explore for a range of heritage sites, regeneration projects, and visitor attractions including Edinburgh - World Heritage City, Bridgewater Canal Trail, Chester Renaissance and the London Borough of Havering. www.imagemakers.uk.com 100

ISO look at new ways of presenting and distributing digital content Random Acts is one of ISO’s latest online projects where they work with cultural organisations to look at new ways of presenting and distributing their digital content.

This is Channel 4 Television’s ambitious plan to commission and broadcast over 260 short films daily over the next year.

With specially created contributions from partners ranging from Tate, Frieze and the Saatchi Galleries, to digital provocateurs such as Vice TV and Dazed and Confused the project aims to mix the push of broadcast with the connectivity and pull of web and social sharing.

ISO have developed a web platform that explores the concept of the Random Act. A fluid, dynamic interface encourages users to filter a rich mosaic of videos, images and filmmaker information, interwoven with random links supplied by the artists and the editors.

The challenge for television at present, as with many Museums, is how to attract the attention of audiences and deliver an experience via the right context at the right time. The Random Acts audience aren’t traditional viewers; they time shift the television they do watch and they are as likely to find a film through a Twitter recommendation than from a TV Guide.

The website is connected to dedicated Facebook and Twitter channels and an ever growing network of our partner’s and artist’s online social spaces; as a new commissioner or filmmaker comes on board their followers and friends become part of our community!

Broadcasting late night weekdays Channel 4 and available at www.channel4. co.uk/random acts www.isodesign.co.uk 101

Sysco AV Create Vivid Insights into Life at Sea

Mary Rose Museum

Sea City, Southampton

Mary Rose Museum: Sysco AV has been awarded the contract for the detailed design and development of the entire audio visual system requirements for the prestigious new Mary Rose Museum currently under construction in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

At a total project cost of £35 million, the new attraction is due to open in late 2012, thirty years after the nation watched as the hull of the 450-year old Tudor warship was lifted from the Solent. Visitors will be enticed with the promise of being able to look into the glass hotbox where the final stages of the 30-year conservation process of the ship are taking place. Alongside this, there will be the opportunity to view a huge array of previously unseen personal, domestic and military artefacts. In 2016, the final phase of conservation will be complete and with the glass removed, visitors will be able to pass through the viewing galleries containing the iconic hull of the Mary Rose.

The audio visual displays, with hardware designed and developed by Sysco AV, provide vivid insights into life on board a 16th century warship. Touchscreens, video and multi-channel audio are used to create soundscapes and interactives that bring alive the stories of those people who served and died on the ship. A large-scale immersive projection engaging a visitor’s whole peripheral vision and using directional audio conveys the experience of seeing the ship raised from the waters.

Sea City: Southampton’s new Sea City visitor attraction has selected Sysco AV for the contract to design, supply and install the entire audio visual system requirements for the new attraction. Opening in 2012 at a total cost of £15 million, the new visitor attraction will celebrate Southampton’s 2,000-year history as a global maritime port. It will be housed in the city’s Grade II Old Magistrates Court and completed in April 2012, in time to commemorate the centenary of the Titanic leaving Southampton. It is anticipated that over 120,000 visitors each year will visit the attraction and immerse themselves in the story of the city and its most famous ship.

Sea City will be home to three galleries, two permanent and one temporary, with Sysco responsible for the design, engineering and installation of all the audio visual and interactive elements. The first permanent gallery, Gateway To The World, will look at the city’s role in the global context of emigration and immigration. In the second, Southampton’s Titanic Story, previously untold tales about the 549 people from the city who lost their lives in 1912 will be recounted. There is also a temporary space, in which the first of a projected series of exhibitions – is entitled Disaster Becomes Romance - looks at the Titanic disaster from different angles. www.syscoav.co.uk 102

Rich virtual experience at Dutch Maritime Museum, Amsterdam

Queen Beatrix opens the Dutch Maritime Museum © Dutch Photo Press

After four years of anticipation, the Dutch Maritime Museum has at last re-opened its doors. The spectacular result is a full renovation of the 17th century building, and a completely rethought presentation of the collection. New multimedia experiences appeal to the modern visitor, but are tastefully applied in a way that maintains the grace of the impressive collection.

One of the sumptuous galleries houses the Maritime Museum’s world renowned collection of antique globes. In pride of place is a wall projection developed by Kiss the Frog, where visitors can explore the beautiful details of nine different globes in high definition. Visitors manipulate the projection with a giant tracker ball, and see the results in a larger-than-life projection. Every movement of the tracker ball translates directly to what they see, as though they were laying hands on the real antique globe.

This is not the only place in the museum that physical interaction is translated seamlessly to a rich virtual experience. In another gallery visitors browse a display case of scale yacht models, moving a rail-mounted touchscreen effortlessly along with them.

The screen acts as a virtual ‘window’ for the display case, where each yacht model is augumented with a clickable layer of information.

In every corner of the Dutch Maritime Museum you can see our work; interactive multimedia experiences that enhance, teach, and entertain. From simple touchscreen games, through to huge interactive projections and multitouch tables, this beautiful museum showcases only a few of our many capabilities. www.kissthefrog.nl

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4D experience for Sydney Tower Eye & animated touchscreens in Bristol Sydney Tower, Australia: Centre Screen have just installed an exciting new 4D experience for the Sydney Tower Eye. Blending highly realistic stereo animation, spectacular aerial filming and both underwater and above water drama, the 4D movie theatre is the first of its kind in Australia. The 3.5 minute film uses the character of a colourful Lorikeet to transport visitors across Sydney harbour, its famous coastline and its iconic landmarks and events. The 3D film experience is taken to the fourth dimension with evocative in-theatre effects including wind, bubbles, floor tremors and water spray.

Centre Screens have worked on a similar project for the London Eye in the UK but Executive Producer Dave Postlethwaite explained, ‘specific elements of the shoot were still technically very challenging’. A specialist 3D aerial rig was designed and built from scratch to film the aerial sequences whilst a Neutron camera rig with special underwater housing was brought from Queensland for the filming of a dramatic ‘out of screen’ shark encounter.

M Shed, Bristol: M Shed is a new, exciting and innovative museum in Bristol where the visitor is invited to contribute his or her own stories and become part of a living record of the city. Animated touchscreen kiosks throughout the galleries enable the visitor to explore M Shed object collections and also the peoples’ stories they illustrate.

Visitors can add their experiences and opinions to those on display through the kiosks and also vote on local issues and have their say. Online visitors can do the same via the M Shed website. The online stories and discussions contributed, are reflected on the kiosks in the M Shed galleries, and vice versa. www.centrescreen.co.uk

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Leading-edge interactive installation at the AHHAA Science Centre in Tartu, Estonia

in collaboration with eMoot

For a recent interactive at the AHHAA Science Centre in Tartu, Estonia, Machine Shop Exhibitions worked with eMoot to create the Art Machine Prime. This new venue - the largest science centre in the Baltic region - showcases a stunning collection of leading-edge interactive installations from around the world.

The latest Art Machine model, the Prime, is designed to be a centre-piece interactive installation. Visitors use the large paint bottles to squirt virtual streams of paint at the circular canvas. As a showcase of colour theory the virtual paint mixes and runs remarkably realistically and the canvas can also be spun around to create fabulous spin pictures. An integrated touch screen allows visitors to browse pictures and email them home.

www.machineshop.co.uk 105

Electrosonic install audio-visual technology at National Maritime Museum

In July 2011 the National Maritime Museum opened its new Sammy Ofer Wing, housing ‘Voyagers’, a permanent gallery dedicated to Britain’s maritime heritage. Electrosonic was selected by the museum to supply, install, commission and provide warranty of the AV hardware. The gallery was designed by Real Studios, with audio-visual creative direction by The Light Surgeons.

‘Voyagers’ brings together hundreds of objects, innovative AV presentations and newly-commissioned videos. The novel projection system helps the Museum tell stories of maritime adventures and discovery in a unique and imaginative way.

The first thing visitors see upon entering Voyagers is a 25 metre dynamic wavelike structure, featuring bespoke video projections and a specially designed soundscape. Intense coloured patterns of images and words appear to wash over the wave’s multi-faceted surface, simulating the rise and fall of the sea. At the far end of the structure individual words and images from the Museums’ collections are projected onto a rotating Pufferspherespherical projector taking visitors on a visual journey throughout maritime history.

The final element of Voyagers is ‘Talking Heads’, a series of video portraits. Eight small video monitors inset into columns show short films of people whose lives have been touched by the sea. These videos provide insights in to how Britan still maintain a powerful relationship with the sea. www.electrosonic.co.uk 106

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Bruynzeel Improves Archive Storage at Imperial War Museum The Imperial War Museum’s unique collections on twentieth and twenty-first century conflict involving Britain and Commonwealth countries now has additional storage space and improved conditions for its documents and books with new archive storage supplied by Bruynzeel Storage Systems.

With funding from the Department of Culture Media & Sports, the project saw the transformation of a 1960’s extension at the Imperial War Museum’s London headquarters, into a modern, low energy and sustainable collection store and archive. Windows were removed, walls were insulated and a Goods Lift lobby was formed to help insulate the Archive from its surrounding environment. The old Reading Room, which was previously located on the top floor, was moved to the main building and given new facilities. Now adjacent to the Library, the new Reading Room also has easy access to the adjoining Archive area.

Bruynzeel Storage Systems was appointed to provide the high-density storage systems. The selection criteria included product

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quality, whole life cost, and previous experience, but it was their ability to optimise the storage capacity of the area that convinced the Imperial War Museum’s project team.

The Bruynzeel installation was carried out in four phases at the request of the Museum so that elements of the collection, that were being held in a temporary store, could be moved into the new Archive in a specific sequence. Beginning in October 2010 the final phase was completed Bruynzeel Storage Systems Murdock Road, Dorcan, Swindon SN3 5HY, England T: +44 (0)870 2240220 enquiries@bruynzeel.co.uk www.bruynzeel.co.uk

ahead of schedule in May 2011. Initially, it was thought that only a quarter of the Library’s archive and documentation could be relocated as part of this project. But once work had begun, additional funding became available enabling the Museum to complete the project.

This required Bruynzeel to respond quickly to changes once the project was underway.

The added project phasing necessitated careful planning of manufacturing schedules and flexibility when it came to delivery dates.

Bruynzeel also had to organise each phase of the project around the requirements of the Museum’s travelling exhibition schedule.

“Bruynzeel was extremely professional throughout the project and very flexible with start dates for the four phases of our project. This enabled us to complete each phase on time”, said Project Manager, Andy Holbrook.

Bruynzeel installed its space saving Compactus mobile storage systems, which are designed to provide high-density storage within a compact area, while maintaining 100% accessibility to every document. The system can be tailored to any room and fitted around any specific building constraints, such as pillars or intrusions into the room. The turn-handle or electronic drive systems allow effortless access to the content, regardless of the number of racks being moved at any one time.

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Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre

Rackline store the BS5454 way A new facility in Cocklebury Road, Chippenham was opened in 2007 for the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office, following the decision by the National Archives that the previous accommodation of an old mattress factory was not suitable as a place of deposit for irreplaceable archives.

The new premises includes a state of the art facility for the county’s and borough’s records but accommodates material from the five other key heritage services; the local studies library, the archaeology service, Wiltshire buildings record, museum service and the conservation service, and more recently the Heritage and Arts, the Victoria County History for Wiltshire and part of the Registration Service.

The Brief

Solution

Rackline was invited by Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office to provide an economic solution for their archive which needed to be in line with BS5454 archive requirements.

Rackline used their experience with BS5454 to design a system that would adhere to the archive requirements including ensuring the air flow throughout the system by raising the bottom levels 150mm above the floor and ensuring the system was away from the external walls.

Apart from archive boxes that had to be stored, there was also a large amount of other articles such as hanging maps, rolled drawings, books (statutes and school log books), plan chests and films etc. that required a storage solution and also the facility to increase the capacity for growth by 30%.

Bespoke Hanging Map Storage System

Rackline created a bespoke solution for many of the articles and labelled them clearly on the drawing to identify their location, for example Rackline developed a unique map storage system that would allow maps to be taken from their hanging location, use and replace.

In order to maximise capacity all storage was mounted onto mobile bases (wherever possible), all top opening and side opening plan chests were mounted onto mobile bases together with 1200 bays of Profile shelving.

In total Rackline provided storage for all the various media and over 41000 box spaces which included 20 years expansion of 30% - equating to approximately 10 miles of shelving!

Maximum Capacity plus 30% Expansion

Plan chests on Mobile Bases (with cantilever map shelving behind)

“The bespoke system provided by Rackline was extremely well designed allowing our wide range of products to be stored in a logical manner. The area was maximised to its full potential allowing us 20 years of expansion” Claire Skinner, Principal Archivist.

Rackline Limited, Oaktree Lane, Talke, Newcastle-Under-Lyme, Staffordshire ST7 1RX

t: 01782 777666 e: now@rackline.co.uk www.rackline.co.uk 112

Old Master Paintbrushes - An intuitive way of discovering Old Master paintings

The Old Master paintbrushes is an interactive exhibit, designed to stimulate visitors’ curiosity and engagment about Old Master paintings in an intuitive and playful way. visit www.evokingspaces.com to learn more about this and other engaging exhibits from Evoking Spaces.

The Old Master Paintbrushes is a product of Evoking Spaces. Š Evoking Spaces 2009. All rights reserved.

evoking spaces

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Museums & Me

Georgia Krantz Senior Education Manager, Adult and Access Programs, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

What made you want to work in museums?

I always wanted to be a full-time university professor of art history and followed the academic path to get there. The more I taught different students and read about social/cultural structuring, identity politics and the like, the more I began thinking about audience, the more I felt compelled to understand and work with more diverse audiences in order to be a better teacher (and person). At the Guggenheim, I have the opportunity to work with not only a fabulously broad range of audiences, but also educators and colleagues who think about what it means to do the same. I give public talks at MoMA and am an adjunct professor at NYU, which expands even further the range of audiences with which I am able to interact.

The mix of work at different institutions allows for a constant cross-pollination of ideas, benefiting audiences at all three, as well as myself.

What do you want to achieve for your museum audience?

My goal is to help create inclusive, diverse, rich environments for learning. Art is such in incredible tool for learning about all kinds of things. I would like every single visitor - regardless of their background or reason for visiting the museum - to leave the museum thinking about at least one new way of understanding or approaching their world. I see learning in the museum as site-/content-/moment-specific as well a tool for understanding how to learn and achieve goals within broader contexts of culture and society.

Are you optimistic about the future of museums?

This is a very complicated question, especially for someone who works in education. If we look at museum mission statements, education is almost always indicated as a top priority.

However, within the increasingly complex structures of museums, that importance tends to be more rhetorically than practically supported. And, clearly, education is being drastically undermined within other spheres of our society. So I do not have a lot of confidence in the future of museums as educational institutions. And I am not particularly interested in museums as spectacle institutions.

Your ideas, published. Contribute to MUSEUM/iD. Write for the next edition of the magazine. Email: greg@museum-id.com

subscribe today www.museum-id.com 114

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