Interesting people, interesting people

Zara Matthews Hallaton Treasure Exhibition

1. What is your favourite part of the ʻHallaton Treasureʼ exhibition and why?
The Rotunda - the concept of putting the displays into the round. This changed the whole nature of the museum displays, creating the feeling of both space and place. The sense of a special place was essential to the project and this absolutely achieved it.

2. What qualities do you look for in museum exhibition designers?
Understanding museum best practice, attention to detail, experience of similar projects, creativity, flexibility, patience (preferably endless), ability to fit quart into pint pot. With Blue I especially enjoyed developing ideas together. Also understanding that the budget really was the budget - you didnʼt try and sell us something we couldnʼt afford.

3. Whatʼs the most interesting artefact youʼve exhibited and why?
My personal favourite is the tankard handle. It Is so beautiful, and the design could place it in the 21st century just as easily as it does in the 1st.

4. To you, what is the biggest challenge for curators today?
I remember writing an essay on this topic about 15 years ago! Now, the short version: Survival - making it through the recession.

5. What has been the visitor response to the ‘Hallaton Treasureʼ exhibition?
Wonderful! All our hard work paid off, it is so wonderful to see people engaging with their history and loving every minute of it. Everyone from toddlers to academics (including Sir Barry Cunliffe and Michael Wood no less!) have said they found it interesting and enjoyable. It is clear from watching people that all ages and abilities find something that interests them. Visitor numbers have more than doubled since the museum re-opened! The exhibition has inspired more people to write more in the visitor book. Previously books lasted several years, with people declining to write in them or only the briefest of comments.

Liz Hide Sedgwick Museum (Oak Wing)

1. What is / was your favourite part of the Sedgwick Museum (Oak Wing) re-development project and why?
My favourite part is still - eight years on - the mobiles which we commissioned from a kitemaker and installed above the cases. They reflect the objects and themes in the cases below, and add colour, movement and informality to the gallery space. On a practical note, they are lightweight so their fixings arenʼt damaging or invasive to the historic fabric of the building.

2. What qualities do you look for in museum exhibition designers?
I look for a small, dedicated company who will work hard to understand the museum and its audience and who, for the length of the project, will understand, live and breathe the exhibition. I want them to share my obsession with perfecting the wording of a particular label, but also to bring a fresh, outside vision for the space in which we are working.

3. Whatʼs the most interesting artefact youʼve exhibited and why?
It's got to be the amazing, crazy fossils from the Burgess Shale. These animals lived 500 million years ago, and many of them looked nothing like anything alive today, but they are so enormously important in helping us to understand how animals evolved.

4. To you, what is the biggest challenge for curators today?
The biggest challenge is funding, especially the lack of recurrent funding.

5. What has been the visitor response to the re-developed Oak Wing?
Visitors have reacted very positively, they feel the space is more welcoming, and they are more able to explore and understand the collections.

6. When developing a new exhibition with designers, which approach is your preference and why?
I think lengthy discussions with the designers, over several sessions, are vital to develop and clarify ideas, to challenge preconceptions, and to absorb and respond to the expertise that they bring. Ultimately, it is important that the museum itself feels ownership of the project through involvement in all stages of its development, and feels that the final product best reflects the objects at the centre of the exhibition and the aims of the museum.

Daru Rooke Abbey House Museum

1. What is your favourite part of the Abbey House redevelopment and why?
My favourite part of the development was the re-creation of over 15 historic shops, workshops and houses. Blue worked closely with us to envision each shopkeeper and householder thereby providing a specific framework in which to display collections and define decorative schemes. The end result provides a vivid showcase for thousands of collection items.

2. Whatʼs the most interesting artefact youʼve exhibited and why?
In my present post at Cliffe Castle Museum, Keighley, I discovered the Wife Taming Cradle. Created in the 1860s for local pub landlord Harry Tap, the cradle was adult size and could be borrowed by members of Mr Tapʼs Hen Peckʼd Husbands Club. If wives (despite cosseting and care) still nagged, the cradle would be brought to the house by club members, and the wife rocked until ʻsoothedʼ. The cradle stimulates lots of debate and is a great museum object: controversial and quirky whilst giving an insight into a past era and making us think about our own. We also have a two faced sheep but perhaps the least said the better...

3. What qualities do you look for in museum exhibition designers?
A capacity to develop an idea with the museum team rather than provide a standard format gallery or display. Beyond the creative side, the designers have to provide long lasting displays that embody value for money.

4. To you, what is the biggest challenge for curators today?
Aside from dwindling resources for cultural projects there is perhaps too much debate about what museums are for. Anyone who sees the joy, delight and inspiration museum objects can engender in our visitors can see their value to society. The past helps us understand the present and its material culture should be cherished and articulated.

5. What has been the visitor response to the ʻAbbey Houseʼ exhibition?
Visitor figures have continued to develop and grow. Despite early concerns that those who had known the old museum displays would feel alienated by refurbishment, these were not realised. Past visitors have seen the collections in a new context whilst a new generation now have the place close to their hearts.

6. When developing a new exhibition with designers, which approach is your preference and why?
Working closely with the design team to develop ideas over several brainstorming sessions, is my preferred approach. No brief can encompass the project or staff and public aspirations for it. The brief is a starting point for the design journey to begin.

Joanna Bells Grace Darling Museum

1. What is your favourite part of the Grace Darling museum re-development and why?
For me, it was to see the collection properly displayed for the first time. We had inherited a very old fashioned looking museum where the objects were not displayed to advantage. Blueʼs design layout made sense of the Grace Darling story by segmenting Graceʼs life into a number of areas, supported by the appropriate objects. Blue designed an innovative ʻlayeringʼ technique using rods and mounts to give a really 3D feel to the display cases. For the first time, visitors could see all the objects clearly and in the right thematic context.

2. What qualities do you look for in museum exhibition designers?
Imagination and genuinely listening to what you want! Also, to have excellent practical knowledge of conservation requirements and materials. I would look for a bespoke service that suits my museumʼs particular needs rather than an “off the shelf package” - as each of us likes to think our museum is unique.

3. Whatʼs the most interesting artefact youʼve exhibited and why?
For many of the museumʼs visitors this has been Grace Darlingʼs dress which was revealed, by conservation work, to be bright pink rather than dusty brown. Local people really could not believe this was the same dress and for me it symbolises the transformation of the museum.

4. To you, what is the biggest challenge for curators today?
The knowledge drain - not giving curators the time to research their collections and collate that knowledge for the future. Also, small and volunteer-run museums are still woefully underrepresented at national level; and the changing demographic of volunteering will affect museums everywhere in the next few years.

5. What has been the visitor response to the re-developed Grace Darling museum?
Overwhelmingly enthusiastic, from old and new visitors alike. The exhibition strikes just the right tone, without being mawkish, and our visitors are genuinely moved by Graceʼs heroism and its links to the RNLI crews of today.

6. When developing a new exhibition with designers, which approach is your preference and why?
We began with quite a specific brief, as this was a requirement of the Heritage Lottery Fund, but my preference would be to work with the design team early on. Even at this stage, you are pretty saturated in the collection and what you want to achieve, and the input of fresh minds on your exhibition can be invaluable to see the collection a new and from the visitorsʼ viewpoint rather than yours.

Joanna Hashagen The Bowes Museum

1. What is / was your favourite part of the Fashion and Textile Gallery development and why?
The Glass Cube is the ʻheartʼ of the gallery. When Blue first proposed the Cube concept it seemed just too ambitious an idea, but I was determined to try and make it a reality. What I now have far exceeds expectations, it is a real pleasure to work in; it is changing the textile departmentʼs relationship with our visitors into something much more ʻtwo wayʼ and is providing access to and storage for so much more of the collection.

2. What qualities do you look for in museum exhibition designers?
A good working relationship between curator and designer has probably the most dramatic effect on the success of a gallery development. For me, as a textile curator, designers who have a real understanding of the challenge of displaying textiles and dress is essential. A designer full of ideas and enthusiasm for the objects really helps me to be more creative in developing my aims. A designer who pushes the boundaries and develops new approaches within conservation guidelines, is very exciting to work with.

3. Whatʼs the most interesting artefact youʼve exhibited and why?
A length of 17th century needle lace in the Blackborne Collection intrigued me by its shape and size. I decided it may have originally been a headdress, known as a frelange, a name given to an exaggerated type of gathered lace headdress that evolved in France in the 1680s. For the exhibition of lace, ʻFine & Fashionableʼ, Blue were keen to put lace into context and so we had this length ʻremadeʼ by the conservator following the method seen on a 17th century doll in the V&A.

4. To you, what is the biggest challenge for curators today?
The passing down of knowledge about specialist collections to the next generation of curators is a huge challenge. We have lost the traditional structure within museums; this was to have a keeper for each collection with an assistant keeper/s. I began as an assistant keeper and worked closely with the keeper and was also encouraged to study the collections on my own, going through stores etc. Having spent 30 years doing this, I feel very fortunate, but when I retire, so much understanding of this particular collection will be lost.

5. What has been the visitor response to the new Fashion and Textile Gallery?
The reaction to our new gallery has been quite simply overwhelming. We have had visitors with specialist knowledge and from other museums from all over the world, who are quite stunned for a second or two when they step in. Watching the public in the gallery, reading their comments and talking to them leaves us in no doubt that they feel drawn to the display and can find connections through the interpretation to the story behind each object.

They love the ʻinvisibleʼ acrylic mannequins which have been developed specially for us, after Claire rightly felt that there was nothing on the market that was not distracting.

A visitor survey conducted by Audiences North East in summer 2010 concludes that the highest percentage of visitors (36%) named textiles and dress as their favourite collection, while the highest percentage again, (44%), named the Fashion and Textile Gallery as their favourite in the Museum.