While I like this variety and the diversity of people this allows me to meet – I sometimes feel that none of my many hats is a true fit. I always feel a bit of an outsider. To illustrate my point I’ll need to bring in some stereotypes (or are they archetypes?); in any case bear with me:
I’m not a real Science Communicator because science communicators are people who spend their entire working days evangelising about the importance and benefits of science to our lives.
I’m not a real Museum Professional because I don’t have a specific subject or collection about which I’m particularly knowledgeable; furthermore I’ve never actually worked in an operating museum.
I’m not a real Interpreter because interpreters are outdoorsy types who love spending all their time in national parks and getting people excited about the value of nature.
My roots (and qualifications) are in Science Communication, but the closest fit these days is probably Visitor Studies, which spans my interests across all these fields. However, the small and distributed nature of Australia’s population makes it difficult for a dedicated Australian Visitor Studies community to be vibrant and self-sustaining (for instance, the Evaluation and Visitor Research Special Interest Group of Museums Australia is small and has limited resources). I’ve recently joined the Visitor Studies Association in the US and I hope to be able to afford to travel to their conference in next year. But it’s no substitute for the face-to-face collegial and social networks you can foster much closer to your own backyard.
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That said, I think I can turn my ‘outsider’ status into an advantage. Perhaps I can build bridges and offer broader insights that can inform each of the respective fields?
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As I noted before, at the joint Museums Australia / Interpretation Australia conference held earlier this month I noticed some instances where the different histories and assumptions of the respective fields came together on a bit of a collision course. I’ve been thinking about why that is, and have come up with a few ideas. I’d be interested in hearing what you think:
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Collections value is axiomatic; environmental value isn’t (yet)
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For museums, the starting point is collections: unlike visitor centres, or other exhibition sites, museums have collections which they are duty-bound to study and preserve for the benefit of future generations. Because this is so wrapped up in a museum’s identity, no-one expects museums to have to justify it. There is no apparent need to explain to the public why looking after a bunch of Picassos or ancient artefacts is important. It’s just generally accepted that it’s something that advanced civilisations should do.
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Unfortunately, the same cannot always be said for our natural heritage. Those same civilisations that have treasured their Picassos and potsherds have often given their environmental assets short shrift. National Parks have a shorter history than museums, and their intrinsic value is questioned more frequently (this might also be because National Parks are more likely to be in direct conflict with economic interests such as mining and logging).
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Whatever the reason, it means that Museums and Interpreters (of natural heritage) probably assume a different starting point when it comes to communicating with their audiences – for museums, the collection is axiomatic; for natural heritage the battle for full recognition is still being won (or is perceived to be so).
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Interpretation is all ‘Front of House’
By definition, Interpretation is about communicating with the public (especially visitors). Thus interpretation will attract people who are visitor-focused and genuinely interested in how visitors think, act and react. Museums, on the other hand, have many staff whose roles do not bring them into direct contact with the visiting public. They may not even be particularly interested in that aspect of the museum’s operations. At a museums conference, there will always be a mix of ‘back of house’ and ‘front of house’ interests. This is less so in the interpretation world, and I wonder if this difference was why some of my interpretation colleagues expressed frustration at some museum professionals not ‘getting it’ when it came to interpretive concepts such as themes and narrative.
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Parallel Literary Canons
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You will see I’ve made the generalisation that Museums tend to be more about Collections and Interpretation is more about National Parks. The lines are blurred for sure, but this distinction is rooted in history.
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Freeman Tilden, the ‘father of interpretation’, was from the National Park Service – not a museum. Thus the origins of interpretation being an outdoorsy, Parks-led discipline can be traced to Tilden and his interests. Similarly, Sam Ham, who is among the most cited contemporary writers on interpretation, has a background in forestry management. It would be impossible to do a course in Interpretation without encountering the work of Tilden and Ham. However their names rarely (if ever?) appear in the museum studies literature.
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By contrast, comparable literature in museum education / visitor studies is more explicitly grounded in the theories of pedagogy and psychology. Most of the authors in this field are from this more academic background, and have sought to apply a more theoretical approach to understanding the museum space. The roots of museum visitor studies is traced to psychologists (Robinson and Melton) who tracked visitor movements through art galleries in the 1920s and 1930s. The landmark literature, mostly from the 1990s, was by museologists (Eilean Hooper Greenhill), educators (George Hein and John Falk & Lynn Dierking) and psychologists (Stephen Bitgood). While this work is not incompatible with the Interpretation literature, there are different starting points and assumptions, and I’m not sure how well-known their work would be to most Park-based interpreters (with the exception of Falk & Dierking, whose work is probably the closest to bridging the nature-culture divide in the literature). A special hat tip to my PhD supervisors here too, Jan Packer and Roy Ballantyne, whose work spans museums and natural heritage settings – no surprises why I was attracted to their work!
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The different scholarly traditions may be the origins of another divide I perceived in the conference – between the academically-minded and the more practically-driven. Again, I think I’m a bit of both – I like academic theories and research, but I want to keep sight of how these findings can inform real-life practice.
“Enjoyment” is just part of the story: in John Holden’s opening keynote, he observed that the three main things that audiences want are to Enjoy, Talk and Do. However, several sessions brought our attention to the fact that we don’t always visit places for “enjoyment” – sometimes it’s to reflect on difficult realities or see things that open our eyes and tell us things we need to hear. The Holocaust Memorial in Andrea Witcomb’s talk, interpreting the complicit role of the English in the Irish Potato Famine (in Susan Cross’ talk), and Brad Manera’s talk about the role of war memorials are just some of the examples that emerged during the conference. Revealing difficult truths (and the way this can be sanitised by Government intervention) was powerfully brought home by Professor Peter Read’s closing keynote about the people who were “disappeared” to meet horrific fates during the Pinochet regime in Chile, and the different ways this had been memorialised subsequently. In light of this talk, during the Q&A it was agreed that “Enjoy” was only part of it – and maybe “Engage” is a better word. We can be “Engaged” in something we find difficult, upsetting or cathartic. We wouldn’t call it Enjoyment, but it’s worthwhile nonetheless.
“Social Media Schisms” – the new “Digital Divide”? – during the conference there were many sessions showing how museums and cultural organisations of all shapes and sizes are using social media to reach new audiences and interact with existing audiences in new ways. Just some of the examples I saw were Kelly Eijdenberg’s Scavbot project (an iPhone based scavenger hunt through the Tasmanian Botanical Gardens); Andrew Bowman’s work on putting the small WA town of Carnamah on the Social Media map (his paper is online here); and Rod Annear’s armchair ride of social media tools from blogs to Google Goggles (the only presentation I saw all conference using Prezi!). But I noticed that there still seems to be a big gap between the people who ‘get’ social media, and those who still find it all a bit baffly and scary (and maybe a fad that will pass if they ignore it for long enough). Then there is a bit of a middle ground of people who have dipped their toes in the water and haven’t quite figured out what the fuss is all about, but are keen to learn. I noticed during one social media presentation, the person next to me passed a note to their companion along the lines of: “I can barely figure out how to use my personal email account – never mind this stuff!” It’s hard to pitch the same presentation to the skeptics looking for a reason to care, and the converts looking to see who’s using what new tools and gadgets. Hence my term the “Social Media Schism” – which appears to be alive and well in the cultural sector.
Busting myths about Blockbusters: Carolyn Meehan presented some interesting visitor data from the Melbourne Museum’s last three ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions – Pompeii (2009), Titanic (2010) and Tutankhamun (2011). (Carolyn prefers the term ‘international travelling exhibition’ to ‘blockbuster’, but the latter is catchier.) Contrary to what many people had predicted, the Blockbusters do not seem to ‘steal’ visitors from the rest of the museum for the rest of the year. On the other hand, they do not necessarily bring in a more diverse demographic into the museum. Crowding is the biggest issue, which the Museum is looking at ways to address in the way exhibitions are organised. The three exhibitions each had a different business model: Pompeii was an in-house production using loaned collections; Titanic was an international exhibition that MM modified; and Tutankhamun was a ‘hosted’ international show over which MM had very little creative control. The museum has decided it prefers the former model, and will be pursuing this preferentially in the future. Following Carolyn’s talk, James Dexter reminded us that international exhibitions should not be considered one-way traffic – Australia should seize opportunities to export its own stories as well, such as the AC/DC exhibition (co-produced by WA Museum) currently touring the US.
Together but apart: as one final reflection, I’ll observe that while there are many similarities between the ‘museums’ and ‘interpretation’ communities, as demonstrated by the synergies in the conference program’s content, the two fields also have very different histories, assumptions and scholarly traditions. This also became clear over the course of the conference. This made me think about my own place in the landscape – in some ways I’m from both communities; in other ways I sometimes feel like I’m neither. But exploring that idea further is a whole new blog post . . . .
More conference blogs
As a final wrap here’s a shout-out to my fellow conference bloggers:
An Island Art – this is a wonderfully illustrated blog, complete with photographs and caricatures of the keynote speakers. There are posts for Day 1, Day 2 and Day 4.
On the Thursday morning I chaired a plenary session featuring Andrea Witcomb, Susan Cross and Denis Byrne. This session was broadly intended to kick off a day that was focused on the role of interpretation to give voice to sites and collections, with the three speakers exploring the media of space, story and place respectively.
Andrea Witcomb: space, affect and difficult stories
Andrea Witcomb talked about the role of immersive environments in interpreting traumatic experiences. She began with a critique of the experience at the Watch House at Old Melbourne Gaol, in which visitors take the role of prisoners being processed. Andrea posited that the role play and theatre of the experience had become a superficial end in itself, preventing visitors from considering the social significance of the site in greater depth – for instance exploring the complex social and power relationships between the prisoners and the police. The pacing of the experience, she claimed, left no place for contemplation. Her implication was that the experience did not successfully convey key parts of its interpretive message, much to the disquiet of some of my interpretation colleagues (who in 2009 had singled this project out as an example of excellence).
In did appear that Andrea’s critique was based on observation of the behaviour of a limited number of visitors over the course of just a couple of visits. The visitors’ own perspective, both during and subsequent to the experience, was an absent voice in the criticism. Did visitors engage in the theatre in an (apparently) light-hearted way and then reflect more deeply on it subsequently? Or is this possibility of depth indeed crowded out by the theatrics? Based on the available evidence, I’d contend that we do not know. However, it does seem fair to say that there is quite a disconnect between how the site is viewed from an academic perspective compared to a more practice-led one.
Andrea’s second example was a holocaust memorial, showing how design of immersive environments can be used as an interpretive tool to create a more nuanced message (some people thought the implied direct comparison between the Watch House and a Holocaust memorial was unfair; I’m not sure if this was the intent or not).
Given my research into the way visitors respond to environmental cues in exhibitions, I found Andrea’s descriptions on the uses of space, light and colour to evoke affective responses interesting, although I would have liked to have seen more about visitors’ responses. Having said that, her call to have more space for listening, dialogue and internal reflection in interpretive spaces was a compelling one.
Susan Cross: “Interpretelling”
As a counterpoint to Andrea Witcomb’s talk about space as an interpretive device, Susan Cross spoke about the interpretive value of story – coining the term “Interpretelling” as a mode of interpretation through storytelling. She practised what she preached, getting out from behind the lectern to add a level of performance to her keynote.
The key premise of Susan’s keynote was that humans are natural storytellers – it is the way we preserve and perpetuate the things that have meaning to us. Stories are contagious. Getting people talking is the ‘silver bullet’ of interpretation; it means our stories will continue to live on and be shared.
Good interpretation can pick up its cues from good storytelling: compelling characters; a narrative arc; suspense, revelation, surprise twists, resolution. (Looking back at this now, it reminds me of a workshop facilitated by theatre director Teresa Crea at Adelaide Gaol, which was organised by the SA Branch of Interpretation Australia in 2009. We built our own stories inspired by and based upon the Gaol’s history, with some artistic license allowed. . . )
So while the storytelling ideas may not have been particularly new to me, Susan distilled the key points into a presentation that was well crafted, paced and delivered in a way that held the audience’s attention – in short, she told a story. (This made a refreshing change from the far too many presentations I saw that were essentially papers read out in a monotone – I can read it later online thanks! </rant>)
Another idea that Susan presented was the concept of broadening the ‘storytelling circle’ – making our stories relevant to a broader audience (particularly across cultures, to shed light on meanings that are implicitly shared within a cultural group), and also listening to the stories of others to add richness to our own experiences. This can be particularly important for sharing difficult histories and getting to grips with the less savoury legacies of our past.
I’m looking forward to participating in Susan’s interpretive writing workshop later this week.
Rounding off the session, archaeologist Denis Byrne talked about the interpretive potential of place – and the implications of choosing to highlight (or ignore) certain footprints of history on the landscape.
Denis described his experience with cultural sites in Bali – between political upheaval at home and the imposition of assumptions from abroad, many stories of Bali’s historic and cultural sites remain silent. Creeping into this absence was a kind of mythology derived from the Western depiction of Bali as an island paradise.
This story was juxtaposed with Denis’ more recent work on post 1788 Aboriginal culture, and how it has evolved in this time (contrary to assumptions that Aboriginal culture did not develop and change in post-contact history).
It was the first time I had chaired a plenary session but it appeared to go well, with the questions and answers at the end bringing the threads of the three talks together into a single broader narrative about the roles of space, place and story. I also managed to introduce the concept of soliciting questions from the floor via Twitter – as far as I know a MA / IA conference first!
John Holden from UK thinktank Demos gave the opening keynote of the conference. He described three main forms of culture:
“High” culture – this category includes the fine arts, opera and other cultural pursuits that are considered the pinnacle of cultural expression. They rely on patronage (either philanthropic or government), as their relatively limited audiences are not large enough to make them self-sustaining. However, this lack of broad appeal is worn like a badge of honour by proponents of High culture. As soon as something becomes too popular, there are accusations of ‘selling out’ or ‘dumbing down’ – thus by its own circular logic, High culture can never be popular culture. (As Holden said, this would be like BMW saying “our last car was too popular – what did we do wrong?”) High culture has gatekeepers, “experts” who act as arbiters of taste.
“Commercial” culture – popular culture which is self-funded commercially, such as television, movies and pop music. They depend on attracting large enough audiences to fund their production and dissemination. By the assumptions of the High Culturists, commercial culture will always be of inferior quality, although this distinction is not necessarily drawn by audiences. They will find quality in any medium. Holden asks – is a popular drama such as the West Wing automatically inferior to an obscure stage production with a limited audience? Similarly to High culture though, Commercial culture has gatekeepers too – someone has to provide the initial capital investment to commission the program or award the recording contract, or else it never gets made.
“Home made” culture – the culture we produce ourselves in our own homes and communities: creating our own music, crafts and performances for sharing among our peers. This is the oldest form of culture. Since it relies on our own initiative and creativity rather than money, there are no central gatekeepers deciding who makes or does what. In the 20th century, home made culture was somewhat marginalised by the explosion of commercial culture. However, the internet and social media has since lowered the cost and complexity of sharing and disseminating home made culture (Holden observed, “everyone I know under 25 is in a band”). In fact, the rise of home made culture is threatening the traditional gatekeeper role of the commercial culture producers, most notably in the music industry where the traditional record company’s business model is in terminal decline.
Holden observed how the boundaries between the three cultural types were being blurred and redefined. He challenged the cultural sector to acknowledge and respond to this change in relationship between ‘expert’ and ‘audience’. Holden predicted that while the traditional music megastore may be a thing of the past, soon in its place will emerge niche music stores that essentially ‘curate’ the mass of material being circulated in cyberspace. This example is a good one to ponder for museums who wonder what the changing landscape means for the role of curatorial expertise. It occurs to me that the time of the ‘expert’ isn’t dead, but that the role will evolve from being one of Gatekeepers to one of Guides.
Memories and stories
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The following session had three keynotes, from Dr Viv Golding, Gail Richard, and Sam Walsh. They were all broadly about the role of memory and stories in our communities and bringing life to museum collections, albeit from very different perspectives (Viv is a museum studies academic; Gail is an interpretive trainer and Sam is from the mining sector).
Speaking to delegates afterwards, it appears these talks divided opinion somewhat. From my own perspective, I thought a lot of what Viv Golding talked about (the role of multisensory experiences in evoking memory and incorporating multiple voices in exhibition spaces) were things that exhibition designers and planners were doing already. She spoke about her work with a Carribbean Women’s group in a museum, but it was not apparent how this project subsequently influenced the design or implementation of exhibitions or programs in the museum (which is where my interest lies).
Gail Richard discussed cultural differences in communication, broadly dividing cultures into “low context” and “high context” communicators. Low context cultures, such as Western cultures, rely more heavily on explicit language and clearly articulated procedures in the way they conduct business. Directness is valued because it gets to the point and doesn’t waste people’s time. Conversely, in high context cultures, what is actually said is less significant than its nuances. There is more emphasis placed on non-verbal communication and building relationships gradually. Directness can be taken as rude or aggressive. She offered tips for bridging the gap between high and low culture communicators. I thought it was interesting, and the Twitter feed was positive, however I spoke to someone else who felt that the low context vs. high context model was an oversimplification bordering on stereotype. Another difference in communication styles perhaps?
Hat tip to the other conference bloggers
Some other blog articles I’ve found from the At the Frontier conference – I’ll post more if I become aware of them:
Last week I went to Perth to attend a national conference jointly organised by Museums Australia and Interpretation Australia – At the Frontier.
It was the first time these two organisations had jointly staged a conference, with over 500 delegates attending from around Australia (and a few overseas). Whereas there was a reasonable contingent of people, like me, who are members of both organisations, I would guess that the majority of delegates would have been more clearly from either the “Interpretation” or “Museums” camp, and may not have had much to do with the other organisation previously. This led to some interesting cross-fertilisation, and for me brought into sharp focus where the similarities (and differences!) between the two organisational cultures lie.
Although I wasn’t presenting any papers I had a pretty hectic schedule – in my capacity as Interpretation Australia’s Vice President I chaired a few sessions (including chairing a Plenary – a first for me!). I’m also on the organising committee of next year’s Museums Australia conference in Adelaide and so was busy spreading the word for that too.
Thus, while some others have been far more quick off the mark with their blogging on the conference, I’m still collecting my thoughts (not helped by the fact that I managed to lose my notebook on the last day of the conference!). Fortunately, I have the Twitter archive to fall back on, which given I was tweeting from two accounts in addition to my own (@InterpretAu and @MA_SA2012) is probably more or less a good summary of my notes anyway.
I’ll trawl through them and give my perspective over the next few days.
Exhibit Files is a website designed for exhibition designers and developers to share their experiences, mostly though posting case studies of exhibition projects they’ve worked on, or reviews of exhibitions they’ve seen.
It’s been running for about 4 or 5 years now, and while originally there was a strong science centre focus (it was developed under the auspices of the Association of Science-Technology Centers or ASTC), there are now case studies and reviews of a range of different exhibit types. For instance, I recently added a version of my Saatchi Gallery review on the site.
There are nearly 400 case studies and exhibition reviews on Exhibit Files to date. Anyone can register and add their own case studies and reviews to the collection. The case studies are particularly helpful as it’s a rare forum for exhibition developers to share the lessons they’ve learned from past projects (with the hope that others won’t make the same mistakes!). The reviews are also a great armchair ride of exhibitions from around the world, that we’re unlikely to all get a chance to see.
To the exhibition developers among you, I encourage you to sign up and share your expertise and experiences.
A couple of weeks ago I finally made the time to check out the Saatchi Gallery in Adelaide: British Art Now exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The Art Gallery has turned over some 70% of its total exhibition space to the display of items from the famous (infamous?) Saatchi Gallery in London.
I’m not going to pretend to know or understand anything about contemporary art – I’m not sure if ‘understanding’ is even the point of the particularly iconoclastic and challenging brand of art that Saatchi seemingly favours – so I’m not going to contribute to the ongoing ‘is this really art?’ debate that surrounds these kinds of works. Rather, I’ll share some general impressions and pieces I found interesting.
Firstly, particularly given my recent post on the issue, I should observe that there were no obvious restrictions on photography without flash, making experiences like this possible:
Photography seemingly *is* allowed when it's contemporary art on display. This makes me seriously question the logic of "copyright" claimed by other museums. If it's not an issue for works where the artist is still living, why is it an issue for the old masters?
I don’t go to contemporary art exhibitions expecting an overall theme or ‘interpretive message’ to emerge as I might expect at a science or history exhibition. But one thing I did notice about a lot of the art on display was that it seemed to be as much about the process of making art as it was about the finished piece itself. This is exemplified by Juliana Cerqueira Leite’s three works Up, Down and Oh.
Leite’s work “Oh”
The label for “Oh” describes the painstaking process of creating the clay mould for the balloon structure:
A similar process was used to create the works “Up” and “Down” by hand-digging into a large block of clay, either from the bottom up or top down, and then casting the form created in plaster. “Up” is black to represent the increasing darkness of boring up into the clay block. “Down” in particular shows numerous indentations from the artists hands and knees as she excavates the clay.
"Up" (left) and "Down" (right)
Probably one of the most well known and controversial works on display was “My Bed” by Tracy Emin. I was living in the UK the year this work was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and I remember the media and political outcry it caused at the time.
“My bed” by Tracy Emin
While I’d seen many pictures, descriptions and criticisms of the work before (so its contents were no surprise), the label accompanying the work gave me a new insight: apparently, the idea of the piece came about after Emin (legendary for her hard living) woke up after a two-day drinking bender, feeling lucky to be alive after all she had drunk. Looking at the squalor of her room, it occurred to her that, had she died, this would have been the setting her body would have been found in. This piece of back story made me look at the work with fresh eyes as a statement on mortality and the legacy we leave.
On reflection though, I think my favourite work in the exhibition is one I almost missed – Tessa Farmer’s “Swarm”. At first glance, it just looks like a display case suspended with dead insects, and I almost walked straight past thinking that was all there was to it:
"Swarm" by Tessa Farmer (photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/appelogen/5179704948/sizes/z/in/photostream/)
However, while in one sense it is indeed a case of dead insects, Farmer has used insect parts to create amazingly intricate sculptures of fairy-like creatures waging battle:
Close-up of 'swarm' showing the army of creatures made from dessicated insect parts.
I could have spent ages looking at all the different pieces and their amazing attention to detail. Although this was getting towards the end of my visit and by this stage my feet were killing me.
This brings me to some final comments about the design and overall experience of the space – the works were well-spaced out, allowing each its own space to ‘breathe’ and allowing viewing from multiple vantage points. There are apparently something like 120 pieces on display, spread over what I’d guess to be at least 2000-3000 square metres of gallery space. However there was precious little seating provided over this large area (I only remember seeing one seating unit), hence my aching feet towards the end.
My other issue is that I could have very easily have missed half of the exhibition: it is spread over two levels, one that is accessed via the main entrance on North Terrace, and another level two floors below (the middle floor is the rear access to the Gallery and includes the cafe and shop). I only realised there was more to see when I joined a guided tour of the exhibition after I thought I’d already ‘seen everything’ and was just curious about what the tour guide would have to say. The two parts of the exhibition were linked by a staircase where there were temporary signs that indicated you needed a ticket to enter. However there was nothing on these signs to suggest that the exhibition continued on another level. Had I decided to bypass the shop or cafe and go back the way I came in, I could have missed the lower level completely.
Photography is a spectator sport only in most galleries
The “No Photography” sign. It’s so ubiquitous that even when I don’t see a sign, I’m still wary that if I whip my camera out a stern-looking security guard will materialise to have words. ‘No photographs’ is still the default setting in many museums and most galleries, to the extent that when the ban is mostly absent, as it is in GoMA, it brings a markedly different complexion to the exhibition environment.
Not all exhibitions are so censorious of photographic activity – indeed, in one of the first exhibitions I worked on, at the National Space Centre in Leicester, some exhibits were deliberately planned to work as photo opportunities. Generally speaking, hands-on exhibitions and venues that target families seem to welcome photography as an important way for their visitors to record, share and recollect experiences.
A quick tot-up of my ‘Exhibit Photos’ file folder revealed some 3000 images of exhibits and exhibitions, in approximately 20 cities around the world, all taken since I first bought a digital camera back in 2003. For me, this is a valuable repository of all the places I’ve visited; the good, bad and ugly of exhibit ideas; and a way to remember far more than if I’d travelled with just my eyes, ears and unaided memory. Just looking at the pictures brings back the experiences, and I remember far more about what I did, how I felt and what I learned at all the exhibitions I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited. Without these images, most of these experiences would have been lost in the blurry mists of time.
Admittedly, the purpose of my photographic jaunts was primarily professional (and the emphasis of each batch of photos is an inadvertent record of whatever particular kind of exhibition I happened to be researching at the time – it inevitably influenced what was ‘photo-worthy’). Even so, compact digital cameras (and more recently smartphones) have transformed photography from a way of documenting holidays and special occasions to the way we increasingly document and share our day-to-day lives. We see, therefore we photograph. We photograph, therefore we share. These actions help to reinforce our memories and add value to our experiences. But have museums recognised this cultural shift? And are they doing anything to accommodate it?
The photography ban is based on some sound reasoning. However, I want to deconstruct some of this reasoning to see if it still holds in the 21st century, or whether museums and galleries are simply sticking to historical habit to the detriment of the visitor experience:
Conservation reasons: Light damages delicate objects like paper and textiles. Their ideal environment from a conservation perspective is complete darkness, so having sensitive objects on public display at all is always a matter of compromise at some level. So banning flash photography makes sense. Non-flash photography may be impractical (although not damaging) as the objects are often displayed in low-light environments. However, while it depends on the objects of course, I wonder if the ‘no flash’ rule is applied more liberally than it needs to be, given that modern camera flashes are nowhere near as UV-intensive as the old-fashioned ones that the rules were presumably designed for?
Pointless or disruptive photography: in these circumstances, banning photography makes perfect sense. Other people snapping and flashing away (in the photographic sense) can inhibit the experience of other visitors, particularly during shows or theatrical presentations. One person’s right to document their day shouldn’t trump the rights of other visitors to enjoy the experience in peace if they so wish. Live animals displays are also an inappropriate subject for flash photography. A final note in this regard, I always have to have a bit of a giggle to myself when I see people attempt to take a flash-photograph of a projection. Do they really not realise that all they are capturing is a blank screen?
Copyright reasons: this is the big one. And by far the knottiest. It sounds serious, but at the same time is sufficiently vague that it can seemingly be used as a convenient excuse to point to in order to stick to the comfort zone of the status quo. This is a cynical interpretation, to be sure, but visitors are seldom given any evidence to counter such cynicism. Sometimes it seems as if copyright is too complicated to figure out; that it’s easier for museum and gallery management to just lump everything together into the intellectual property equivalent of the maximum security wing. Looking at society more broadly, the copyright genie is well and truly out of the bottle – attempts to bring it back under old business models seem doomed to failure (the recording industry and rights management is a salutary tale here). In any case, I find it hard to understand how a few iPhone snaps in a gallery pose a serious copyright threat to anyone: people will still want to buy properly produced prints and postcards of the items they really like, and how can the extra publicity generated by the sharing of photos be a bad thing for artists’ careers?
I’m not saying that photography should be a free-for-all by any means. But I think the default should be for museums and galleries to allow photography unless there is a good reason not to (rather than the ban being the norm). Rules with clear reasons (i.e. signs which explain why photography or flash are not permitted in certain areas) are more likely to be respected than blanket bans which appear to treat the public with suspicion.
Some people, because they do not value photography themselves, may not consider it an issue. Going further, some may even consider taking snaps too vulgar or somehow not reverent enough for the gallery environment. But then again, the ‘establishment’ has been complaining about the poor behaviour of ‘the uneducated masses’ in museums for as long as public museums have been in existence. And if photography is done respectfully of objects, their creators and other visitors, where is the harm?
On my recent trip to the UK, I managed a quick visit to the newly refurbished National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
Our visit was on a Sunday morning at the height of the Fringe season, on our way to meet some friends for lunch. Having somewhere we had to be, combined with the fact that one of our group was only five months old, meant that realistically this was only ever going to be a lightning trip. Consequently, this review will be of first impressions and a critique of what I did get time to see.
According to this blog post by museum commentator Tiffany Jenkins, the refit took three years and £47 million. It’s proved popular, with visitor numbers passing the 100,000 mark less than a week after opening. Exhibition spaces were certainly beginning to fill up by the time we left.
Arrival and Entrance
One of the changes they have made is to the way visitors enter the building – rather than scaling the prominent steps, you now enter via an adjacent street-level door (although once inside the building it feels more like a basement than an entrance statement).
The steps to the original entrance, with signage pointing to the new entrance. (Photo from Tiffany Jenkins' blog, see link above)
In her review Jenkins criticised this move, observing that many visitors gravitated toward the more prominent original entrance and missed the new entrance completely. To be honest I’m still in two minds about what I think about this myself – on the one hand, the street-level entrance was much easier to negotiate with a baby stroller, and I can see the rationale for having an entrance which meets universal access requirements. On the other hand, changes to navigation that go against the grain of usual expectations can be disorienting and counterproductive. It will be interesting to see how this settles in – the photo above shows how the steps have already been adopted as an informal outdoor gathering and relaxation space now that they don’t have to deal with volumes of visitor traffic. If this new purpose settles in and gains currency over time, then the street-level entrance could easily become ‘the new normal’*.
Once you pass through the basement you reach the central atrium of the original grand hall – this is where the original entrance would have taken you. This has been left quite open and minimal with only a few key objects – this works well as a space where you can make the psychological transition from ‘street’ mode to ‘museum’ mode. Most of the exhibition spaces run off this central space; this aids visit planning and site orientation. It could do with a bit more seating though:
The central atrium, National Museum Scotland
Exhibitions
We started our visit in the Natural History area, and having a limited time budget this was one of the few galleries I managed to look at properly. (Later I broke away from the group so I could have a whistle-stop tour around more spaces and get more of an overall sense of the place.)
In the animals exhibition, displays were organised by characteristics of animals, eg. flight, adaptation to climate extremes, locomotion, size. This allowed interesting comparison of different animals’ adaptation to their respective environments and ecological niche. These displays were generally well grouped and signposted, so it was clear why certain animals had been placed together.
Overview of the animals exhibition, National Museum Scotland
The introductory signage in each exhibition space gave a good, simple overview of the intended interpretive goal:
Introductory text to "Animal World"
However, while I generally liked the succinct and well-layered interpretive text, I think it erred too much on the side of brevity. For instance, in many cases I was left wondering where certain animals were from, and whether they were extinct or abundant in the wild. Such information was all but absent, which struck me as a real gap (particularly as we are used to thinking about animals in terms of where they are from; the displays were not organised by habitat so there wasn’t any conceptual ‘anchor’ in this respect).
There were a few tactile displays, such as this one which allowed you to feel and compare the difference between horns which were made of bone, tooth or keratin:
Tactile display, National Museum Scotland
Next to the Natural History galleries were the spaces dedicated to World Cultures. These were arranged by theme, allowing you to compare and contrast how different peoples around the world approach common aspects of human experience. I watched an interesting video about different wedding traditions, and found a Ghanaian coffin shaped like a Mercedes Benz both fascinating and disconcerting.
Regrouping in the museum cafe afterwards, my partner expressed disappointment that he had not seen anything particularly Scottish during his visit, given that we were meant to be in the country’s National Museum and all. It’s there, but unfortunately the Scottish history and culture displays are tucked away in an adjacent wing. This extension was probably built in the 80s or 90s, but in the layout of the refurbished museum it is a fair way off the beaten track and it was almost by accident that I found it at all. I’m not sure what the original intent was, but in its current configuration it is a confusing rabbit-warren of dead-end spaces.
The old 'new' part of the National Museum of Scotland - I wonder if this building was conceived and designed from the facade inwards, leaving a legacy of spaces which are less than ideal as exhibition areas.
Few visitors seemed to make it this far, and there was a noticeable thinning of visitor traffic compared to the galleries surrounding the main atrium.
The interior of the museum extension. From this vantage point I could see more exhibition space than I could figure out how to find.
As I said before, I probably only had an hour or so to look around and I’m sure there’s plenty I missed. Plus I never bothered to pick up a visitor map which may have made the extension easier to navigate.
Has anyone else visited NMS either recently or before the refurbishment? What were your experiences?
*Incidentally, I noticed that the National Gallery in London faces a similar dilemma. They have taken the option of maintaining both the original grand entrance as well as a newer alternative at street level. However, the signage was ambiguous and it wasn’t immediately obvious that the street level entrance actually *was* a proper entrance (as opposed to an entrance just for schools or tour groups), so we ended up needlessly lugging our suitcases up the main staircase.
On my daily commute (OK, a rather pleasant walk across Adelaide’s parklands – I’m one of the lucky ones!) I’ve taken to listening to audiobooks. I find it’s a good way to broaden my reading repertoire when there are precious few hours in the day for non PhD-related reading. Even though it’s notionally ‘downtime’, I still have a preference for listening to non-fiction and every so often there is a relationship between what I’m listening to and what I’m studying.
I recently finished the audiobook version of “Why we buy: the science of shopping” by Paco Underhill. Underhill and his company Envirosell have spent thousands of hours watching how people behave in retail environments, giving fascinating insights into how store layout, design and staffing can influence shopper behaviour and purchasing patterns.
A lot of it is applicable to studying visitor behaviour in museums, but by way of example I’ll pick Underhill’s description of something he calls The Big Three:
Design (the store layout and design)
Merchandising (what’s put in the store)
Operations (what staff do)
Underhill describes how these three aspects are completely interlinked, and that a decision about one will inevitably affect the other two. He cites an example where a drugstore chain’s store designers decided to change the shelving to a wireframe style, which was much cheaper than the more traditional display shelves. Money saved, right? Well, no. It turns out that bottles kept on slipping in the gaps in the sheving, making the displays look untidy and causing staff to spend a considerable portion of the day straightening shelves – somthing they hadn’t previously needed to do. The savings on design were soon wiped out through increased staff costs.
Underhill goes on to describe client meetings where the heads of design, operations and merchandising might all be present. He says that it’s clear that these three are normally ensconced in their own respective silos; they barely know each other; and may regard each other with suspicion – if not outright hostility. Their areas all impact each other, but decisions are not being taken in a joined-up way – leading to missed opportunities and unintended consequences.
Throughout the book, Underhill is somewhat critical of both designers and store management for not spending enough time on the shop floor, seeing how their plans work in practice – and not just and 10am on a Tuesday, but during the 4.45pm rush on the day before an important holiday. It’s this culture that allows the silos to flourish as the knock-on effects of decisions are never seen by the people who make them.
It struck me listening to this that museums have their own (very similar) version of the Big Three:
Design (of exhibitions, circulation spaces, etc.)
Collections (both exhibits on display and objects in storage)
Operations (how many staff, what kind of staff, what kinds of facilities are offered, etc.)
As with the retail example, a decision about one will inevitably affect the other, for instance the following (semi) hypothetical scenarios:
An exhibition designed on the assumption that there will be a certain staff complement, only for the staff to be cut back later on in a cost-cutting exercise
A museum accepting a large collection from a benefactor, with an attached condition that the collection be displayed in its entirety
A museum developing a large new interactive exhibition gallery without taking on staff with the expertise to ensure the exhibits are well maintained and can be fixed when they break down
The lessons?
Be mindful of organisational silos – the decisions you make will have wider ramifications than just your own department
Take time to see the consequences of your decisions – it’s all too easy to be ‘too busy’ to spend time just watching how things are working out on the exhibition floor.
