Museum Making: Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions

357 Pages·2012·12.04 MB·English

by  Suzanne Macleod

MUSEUM MAKING
Over recent decades, many museums, galleries and historic sites around the world have
enjoyed an unprecedented level of large-scale investment in their capital infrastructure; in
building refurbishments and new gallery displays. This period has also seen the creation of
countless new purpose-built museums and galleries, suggesting a fundamental re-evaluation
of the processes of designing and shaping museums.
Museum Making: narratives, architectures, exhibitions examines this re-making by exploring
the inherently spatial character of narrative in the museum and its potential to connect on
the deepest levels with human perception and imagination. Through this uniting theme, the
chapters explore the power of narratives as structured experiences unfolding in space and
time, as well as the use of theatre, film and other technologies of storytelling by contemporary
museum makers to generate meaningful and, it is argued here, highly effective and affective
museum spaces. Contributions by an internationally diverse group of museum and heritage
professionals, exhibition designers, architects and artists, with academics from a range of dis-
ciplines including museum studies, theatre studies, architecture, design and history, cut across
traditional boundaries including the historical and the contemporary and together explore
the various roles and functions of narrative as a mechanism for the creation of engaging and
meaningful interpretive environments.
Suzanne MacLeod is Senior Lecturer in the School of Museum Studies, University of
Leicester, UK.
Laura Hourston Hanks is Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture and Built
Environment, University of Nottingham, UK.
Jonathan Hale is an architect and Reader in Architectural Theory at the University of
Nottingham, UK.
Museum Meanings
Series Editors
Richard Sandell and Christina Kreps
Museums have undergone enormous changes in recent decades; an ongoing process of renewal
and transformation bringing with it changes in priority, practice and role as well as new expec-
tations, philosophies, imperatives and tensions that continue to attract attention from those
working in, and drawing upon, wide ranging disciplines.
Museum Meanings presents new research that explores diverse aspects of the shifting social,
cultural and political significance of museums and their agency beyond, as well as within, the
cultural sphere. Interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and international perspectives and empirical
investigation are brought to bear on the exploration of museums’ relationships with their
various publics (and analysis of the ways in which museums shape – and are shaped by – such
interactions).
Theoretical perspectives might be drawn from anthropology, cultural studies, art and art
history, learning and communication, media studies, architecture and design and material cul-
ture studies amongst others. Museums are understood very broadly – to include art galleries,
historic sites and other cultural heritage institutions – as are their relationships with diverse
constituencies.
The focus on the relationship of the museum to its publics shifts the emphasis from objects
and collections and the study of museums as text, to studies grounded in the analysis of bodies
and sites; identities and communities; ethics, moralities and politics.
Forthcoming:
Museums, Equality and Social Justice Heritage and Identity
Edited by Richard Sandell and Engagement and Demission in the
Eithne Nightingale Contemporary World
Edited by Marta Anico and Elsa Peralta
Also in the series:
Museums in a Troubled World Museums and Community
Renewal, Irrelevance or Collapse? Ideas, Issues and Challenges
Robert R. Janes Elizabeth Crooke
Recoding the Museum Re-imagining the Museum
Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change Beyond the Mausoleum
Ross Parry Andrea Witcomb
Rethinking Evolution in the Museum Museums, Society, Inequality
Envisioning African Origins Edited by Richard Sandell
Monique Scott
Museums and the Interpretation of
Museums and Education Visual Culture
Purpose, Pedagogy, Performance Eilean Hooper-Greenhill
Eilean Hooper-Greenhill
Museum, Media, Message
Museums Texts Edited by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill
Communication Frameworks
Louise Ravelli Learning in the Museum
George Hein
Reshaping Museum Space
Architecture, Design, Exhibitions, Colonialism and the Object
Edited by Suzanne MacLeod Empire, Material Culture and the Museum
Edited by Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn
Pasts Beyond Memory
Evolution, Museums, Colonialism
Tony Bennett
Liberating Culture
Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Museums,
Curation and Heritage Preservation
Christina F. Kreps
MUSEUM MAKING
Narratives, architectures,
exhibitions
Edited by Suzanne MacLeod,
Laura Hourston Hanks and Jonathan Hale
First published 2012
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2012 Suzanne MacLeod, Laura Hourston Hanks and Jonathan Hale,
selection and editorial matter; individual chapters, the contributors.
The right of Suzanne MacLeod, Laura Hourston Hanks and Jonathan Hale to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted, in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Museum making : narratives, architectures, exhibitions / edited by Suzanne MacLeod,
Laura Hourston Hanks, and Jonathan Hale.—1st ed.
p. cm.—(Museum meanings)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Museum architecture.2. Communication in architecture.
I. Macleod, Suzanne. II. Hourston Hanks, Laura.
III. Hale, Jonathan. IV. Title: Narratives, architectures, exhibitions.
NA6690.M8685 2012
727'.6—dc23
2011037793
ISBN: 978–0–415–67602–1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978–0–415–67603–8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978–0–203–12457–4 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon
Printed and bound
CONTENTS
List of illustrations x
List of contributors xiii
Acknowledgements xviii
Introduction: Museum making: the place of narrative xix
Laura Hourston Hanks, Jonathan Hale and Suzanne MacLeod
PART I
Narrative, space, identity 1
Introduction 1
1 Imaginary museums: what mainstream museums can learn from them 5
Rachel Morris
2 Staging exhibitions: atmospheres of imagination 12
Greer Crawley
3 Writing spatial stories: textual narratives in the museum 21
Laura Hourston Hanks
4 Athens, London or Bilbao? Contested narratives of display in the
Parthenon galleries of the British Museum 34
Christopher R. Marshall
5 This magical place: the making of Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the
politics of landscape, art and narrative 48
Suzanne MacLeod
viii Contents
6 Narrative space: three post-apartheid museums reconsidered 63
Nic Coetzer
7 The museum as narrative witness: heritage performance and the
production of narrative space 74
Jenny Kidd
8 Beyond narrative: designing epiphanies 83
Lee H. Skolnick
9 Place, time and memory 95
Stephen Greenberg
PART II
Narrative, perception, embodiment 105
Introduction 105
10 Scales of narrativity 107
Tricia Austin
11 City as museum, museum as city: mediating the everyday and special
narratives of life 119
Dorian Wiszniewski
12 Narrative transformations and the architectural artefact 132
Stephen Alexander Wischer
13 Architecture for the nation’s memory: history, art, and the halls of
Norway’s national gallery 144
Mattias Ekman
14 Arsenic, wells and herring curing: making new meanings in an old
fish factory 157
Sheila Watson, Rachel Kirk and James Steward
15 Accessing Estonian memories: building narratives through game form 168
Candice Hiu-Lam Lau
16 Narrative landscapes 179
James Furse-Roberts
17 Narrative environments and the paradigm of embodiment 192
Jonathan Hale
Contents ix
PART III
Narrative, media, mediation 201
Introduction 201
18 Narrative space: The Book of Lies 203
Paola Zellner
19 Productive exhibitions: looking backwards to go forward 213
Florian Kossak
20 Incomplete stories 223
Annabel Fraser and Hannah Coulson
21 In the museum’s ruins: staging the passage of time 234
Michaela Giebelhausen
22 Meaningful encounters with disrupted narratives: artists’ interventions
as interpretive strategies 247
Claire Robins and Miranda Baxter
23 Where do you want the label? The roles and possibilities of exhibition
graphics 257
Jona Piehl and Suzanne MacLeod
24 The narrative of technology: understanding the effect of New Media
artwork in the museum 267
Peter Ride
25 The thick present: architecture, narration and film 277
Samantha L. Martin-McAuliffe and Nathalie Weadick
26 A narrative journey: creating storytelling environments with
architecture and digital media 288
Tom Duncan and Noel McCauley
Select bibliography 298
Index 305
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
2.1 Space and Light, Edward Gordon Craig Exhibition, V&A 17
2.2 Atalanta, Ashmolean Museum 19
3.1 Large-scale glass relief replica of the damaged Treaty of Waitangi,
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa 25
4.1 British Museum, Elgin Gallery, London, 1923 35
4.2 Edgar John Forsdyke, sketch-plan of a screened room for the sculpture of the
Parthenon, late 1929 38
4.3 Richard Allison, proposal for new Parthenon Sculpture gallery, May 1929 39
4.4 John Russell Pope, proposal for new Parthenon Sculpture gallery, early 1930s 40
4.5 Acropolis Museum, Parthenon Sculpture Galleries, Athens 41
4.6 Acropolis Museum, Parthenon Sculpture Galleries, Athens. View of the
Parthenon 43
5.1 Map of Yorkshire Sculpture Park 50
5.2 View of Bretton Hall 51
5.3 Visitor centre, Yorkshire Sculpture Park 58
6.1 District Six Museum, Cape Town, South Africa 65
6.2 The Apartheid Museum, Soweto, Johannesberg, South Africa 67
6.3 Interior of Red Location Museum of Struggle, Port Elizabeth, South Africa 69
6.4 Exterior of Red Location Museum of Struggle, Port Elizabeth, South Africa 71
8.1 The Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, California 89
8.2 The Villa Savoye, Poissy, France 90
9.1 Types and uses of museum buildings 99
10.1 Axis of narrativity 111
10.2 Narrativity bi-axial quadrant 113
10.3 The narrative process in context 116
10.4 Der Ruine der Kuenste, Berlin 117
11.1 The Medici Bank Museum, Florence: allegorical model 121