Museums and Design for Creative Lives

Suzanne MacLeod

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429676871
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Museum Studies

Museums and Design for Creative Lives questions what we sacrifice when we allow economic imperatives to shape public museums, whilst also considering the implications of these new museum realities. It also asks: how might we instead design for creative lives?

Drawing together 28 case studies of museum design spanning 70 years, the book explores the spatial and social forms that comprise these successful examples, as well as the design methodologies through which they were produced. Re-activating a well-trodden history of progressive museum design and raising awareness of the involvement of the built forms in how we feel, think and act, MacLeod provides strategies and methods to actively counter the economisation of museums and a call to museum makers to work beyond the economic and advance this deeply human history of museum making.

Museums and Design for Creative Lives will be of great interest to academics and students in museum studies, gallery studies, heritage studies, arts management, communication and architecture and design departments, as well as those interested in understanding more about design as a resource in museums. The book provides a valuable resource for museum leaders and practitioners.

PART 1

Museums and design for creative lives

CHAPTER 1

The economisation of museums and the ‘truth of space’

On 1 November 2015, Launchpad, a gallery at the Science Museum in London dedicated to fun and active science learning for children and with exquisite collective use interactives such as the Big Machine (where a group of children have to work together to make the machine work), closed ahead of its redevelopment as Wonderlab (Science Museum Blog 2015). News of the closure and redevelopment, released in 2014 (Gosling 2014), generated very few responses, which is perhaps unsurprising when one considers the long history of the gallery; Launchpad had been redeveloped a number of times since its inception in 1986. Its lineage reached back to experiments with children’s galleries at the Museum in the 1930s (the Museum opened its first Children’s Gallery in 1931) through the visit of the Ontario Science Circus to the Museum in 1981 and experiments with Discovery Galleries in the school holidays immediately following (Bunney 2010). At the heart of all of these developments had been a desire to demythologise science and open up the possibility of learning about science to all children by providing entry-points into the formality of science education. The Museum’s early success in this is evidenced by reports of unaccompanied children arriving at the Children’s Gallery in the 1930s (ibid.). The new plans, for Wonderlab to be developed by muf art/ architecture, a practice with a strong reputation for prioritising the social and the public, seemed exciting and full of potential (Watkins 2014).

In June 2016, a good way in to the redevelopment, the Science Museum announced that Wonderlab would be branded ‘the Statoil Gallery’¹ in recognition of one of its funders and that it would be placed behind a paywall as a route to a more sustainable funding model and in order to enable more free school visits. Tickets would cost £6 for a child and £8 for an adult. This time, the announcements generated significant news coverage and debate. Numerous visitors to the museum voiced their concerns about the introduction of charges on top of travel and food costs as well as the unfairness of entrance fees for parents with young children and disabled children who may only want to spend a small amount of time in the gallery (Parker and Macrae 2016; Tincture of Museums 2016). If for some the Science Museum was forgetting its responsibility to be inclusive and open up exhibitions at the Museum to the widest possible audience (Dawson 2016), for others the decision to place Wonderlab behind a paywall was ‘the beginning of a slippery slope to two tier museum access’ (Tincture of Museums 2016).

The protests continued at the VIP opening of Wonderlab on 16 October that same year when Art-not-Oil and a collective of climate change activists staged a protest displaying their own modified Wonderlab posters and pouring oil around a model oil-rig placed on a white carpet to represent the Arctic, the site of Statoil’s latest explorations. Following the protest, a petition was set up online demanding that the Museum reconsider both the entry charge and the oil sponsorship. The petition very quickly amassed over 40,000 signatures. On the ‘ethical contradictions’ that the project seemed to suggest to many outsiders, Chris Garrard (2016), a member of Art-Not-Oil, penned a public criticism of the Museum in the Guardian, pointing out the retrograde step of associating the future of science with fossil fuels ‘at a time when society and policy makers have finally accepted that it is not compatible with a sustainable future and a stable climate’. Most recently, an open letter willing the Science Museum to end its association with oil was signed by some 50 scientists and environmentalists (Picheta 2018).

Throughout the protests, the debates and the news coverage, the museum has maintained a consistent line. In fact just one week after the opening of Wonderlab, Ian Blatchford, the Science Museum’s director, issued a robust defence of the Museum’s actions suggesting that the only choices the Museum had for Launchpad were either to introduce entry charges or watch its gradual decline (Blatchford 2016b; see also 2016a). ‘Ticket income will go’, he argued,

towards the, frankly very high, cost of running and maintaining this interactive space and, most importantly, this sustainable funding model enables us to waive the charge for this inspirational experience for school children, who are our most diverse and demographically representative audience.

The Museum has maintained this line of reasoning since.

Whilst the discussions about entry charges and oil sponsorship rumble on and whilst the Museum maintains its stance, what feels most evident to a regular visitor to the Science Museum is the dramatic change in space and experience that a form of decision-making shaped by economic imperatives and dominated by corporate imagery has triggered. Visiting Wonderlab is a vastly different experience from visiting Launchpad and it is clear that this redevelopment is of a fundamentally different variety from previous Launchpad redevelopments. Since 2007, Launchpad had occupied the third floor of the Museum in a large open space (Figure 1.1). The small pop-up café at the entrance to the gallery (a refuge for exhausted parents and carers) acted as the marker that families and groups had arrived and one would invariably see children breaking away from their groups and running into the gallery space from this point. Brightly lit with its colourful, functional and robust aesthetic, Launchpad looked like a fun mechanical laboratory and it was, for many years, an educational playground for children and their carers. Always busy, it could at times be overwhelming, a hive of activity centred around highlights such as the Big Machine and the Water Rocket demonstration which would see a plastic bottle shoot across the Gallery with a great pop! Visits for my family were always long, active, full of chat, and both exhausting and highly memorable (Figure 1.2).

Almost the opposite of Launchpad, a visit to Wonderlab is characterised more by constraints and challenges than it is by excitement and experimentation. Timed tickets must either be booked in advance or bought on the day from a kiosk outside the entrance to the gallery; on the day we visited the queue was long and it took 40 minutes to secure our tickets. Accessing the gallery involves joining a second queue underneath the Statoil branding from which visitors are allowed in on a one in/one out basis. Once inside, visitors are faced with a spectacular scene; a large dimly lit space full of sparkle, many of the same interactives from Launchpad (though not, sadly, the Big Machine) and some fabulous new additions such as the friction slides (only accessible, though, via stairs and again involving a queue and, this time, a turnstile) and a giant interactive representation of the solar system. On our visit in October 2017, the dimmed light forced us to move around quite slowly, to peer, and ensured that we constantly worked hard to locate where we were in the gallery. The experience was tiring and we exited – happy enough, though £28 poorer – just 40 minutes later.

The differences between Launchpad and Wonderlab couldn’t be starker. Whereas Launchpad was bright, open, practical, robust and energising, Wonderlab is spectacular, closed, dark, precious and tiring. If in Launchpad we felt that the interactives and knowledge within were for us, in Wonderlab we gingerly took part, experiencing the different elements where we could. Whereas in Launchpad we propelled ourselves in according to the level of energy we had that day (with members of our party moving in and out and taking tea breaks at the pop-up café as required!), in Wonderlab we were corralled and allowed access when our slot became available. Sadly, there was no raucous enjoyment. And whereas in Launchpad we felt like citizens with a right to access our Museum, a right to knowledge, a right to be a scientist and the right to access the gallery on our own terms and as part of our own complex lives, in Wonderlab we were unquestionably consumers, allowed to immerse ourselves in the mystery of science because we bought the ticket and another paying guest had exited.

Figure 1.1 Launchpad, Science Museum, London. Image: Science Museum/Science and Society Picture Library.

Would we have felt differently about the experience in Wonderlab and embraced it more fully if we hadn’t had to queue, if we hadn’t had to pay, if we could have moved in and out freely, and if the gallery hadn’t been branded as the Statoil Gallery? Very possibly. If the entry charges exclude many, the larger economic framing of Wonderlab results in very particular spatial and social forms (queues, turnstiles, enclosure, passivity, reliance on others, an urgency to move on, and so on). Each of these elements placed very specific physical demands on our group, narrowed our experience and amplified the sense of spectacle, consumption and constraint. Whilst the defence that funding is sparse and must come from somewhere has to be taken seriously (even if the ‘corporate sponsorship and entrance fees or gradual decline’ narrative is less convincing), what is clear is that as soon as economic imperatives take over and become the defining frame for museum development, the visitor experience is changed.

Other changes have taken place at the Science Museum in recent years that also alter the character of public space, challenge the ideal of museums as places of wonder and public trust, and narrow the range of experiences open to visitors. In 2012, the Museum introduced a new entrance sequence designed by Universal Design Studio and MAP. Described rather awkwardly by the designers as ‘a beautiful barrier’ and the direct result of a drive to encourage visitors to donate, the entrance has been reshaped to push visitors through one of two narrow touchpoints where they are encouraged to give money to the Museum (Universal Design Studio 2013). At exactly the point where visitors should be transitioning into the world of science and experimentation, they are channelled into a spatial arrangement which speaks to them purely as a potential source of income. Anecdotes abound of people who, unsure whether they have to pay, end up giving money to enter this free museum.²

On the day that we visited in October 2017, high numbers of visitors were entering the Museum. In order to maintain the new spatial and social dynamic as visitors streamed in, one member of the Museum team stood by the barrier shouting loudly and using his arms (rather like traffic police) to direct visitors through the two small gaps. The experience – jumbled and noisy – was unpleasant and stressful for all. However, unlike the experience of being a consumer in Wonderlab where image and spectacle reign supreme, here we experienced cold pragmatics – the brute survival of a cultural organisation. An image of life to be avoided at all costs – and a dire warning of how grim our shared social world will be if we allow our public spaces to be shaped by economics alone – this is a space where any notion of ‘the fullness of life’ is purposefully abandoned to facilitate monetary exchange.

How can we understand these physical traces of economisation in museums and the new spatial and social realities they create? How do they relate to larger economic and political dynamics in society and why and how do these dynamics play out in the space of the museum? Why, in a climate where we are told there is no alternative, should we pay attention to these new spatial and social forms and what are their implications for our shared social world? Chapter 1 explores these questions and makes the case for a closer look at museum space and the importance of generating a form of museum design suitable to the task at hand; the shaping of our public life and the shaping of ourselves. Drawing on a body of research from sociology, philosophy, architecture, environmental psychology, museum studies and political economy, the chapter explores the ways in which the built and designed forms of museums – from their location in the urban structure through to their architectures, exhibitions and displays – are embroiled in our experience influencing not only how we behave, but also how we think and how we feel. Drawing attention to the new museum realities which emerge as public services, such as museums, are diverted from the realm of democracy towards the realm of economics, the chapter argues for a deeper understanding of museums as vital ‘countervailing institutions’, alongside other public spaces and services, in a context where, crucially, all space is already the space of capital.

Figure 1.2 Frances MacLeod in Launchpad, 2012. Image: Suzanne MacLeod.

The production of space: The ‘truth of space’ and built forms

Any attempt to understand how space and society are intertwined and why we see the physical traces and feel the outcomes of the economisation of cultural work in our experiences, must start from Henri Lefebvre (1901–91) and his investigation of the production of space (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]). Lefebvre famously argued that ‘(social) space is a (social) product’, a view which tells us that rather than being something out there, disconnected from human being, or an empty vessel to be filled, space is made and it is social; it is produced through our human being and action over time from the worldwide scale of territories to the minute scale of the everyday (ibid.: 26). A product of society, space embodies the multiple social structures, relationships, dominant ideologies and values of that society and is, as a result, constantly informing our interactions with others as well as the way we feel, think and act. Social space then, is ‘a tool of thought and action’ (ibid.: 26; see also Hillier and Tzortzi 2006: 283) and to shape space is to shape both people and society.

In order to help us understand how social space is produced and to recognise both its complexity and its potential, Lefebvre elaborated a ‘unitary triad’; a description of three different ‘moments’ active in the production of space (Figure 1.3). The triad draws the actions and schisms of social space to our attention and speaks to their implication in questions of human experience as well as social and spatial justice. As Schmid (2008) has unpicked so thoroughly, Lefebvre described each of the three moments of the triad in two ways and it is this ‘double nature’ that is key to its understanding.

First, Lefebvre identified a three-dimensional and all-encompassing language of space comprising; spatial practice, representations of space and spaces of representation. Spatial practice refers to the material places, spatial configurations and social practices that structure routine and regulate life; the spaces, social activities and interactions evident in the world (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]: 33).

Figure 1.3 Henri Lefebvre’s Unitary Triad.

Variously described as ‘an interlinking chain or network of activities or interactions which on their part rest upon a determinate material basis (morphology, built environment)’ (Schmid 2008: 37) and ‘the cohesive patterns and places of social activity … perceived in the everyday acts of buying, playing, traveling, and laboring, as much as in the everyday spaces of the home, office, school, and streets’ (Gieseking and Mangold 2014), spatial practice establishes social norms and ensures social cohesion (Merrifield 1993: 524). We need to be able to decipher the physical and social space of spatial practice to operate successfully within it (Zieleniec 2018: 6).

Spatial practice exists in contradiction to representations of space, Lefebvre’s second moment in the language of space. Representations of space refer to the abstract representations imagined by disciplines and professions such as scientists, planners, architects and geographers (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]: 38). These abstract representations – ideas, words, plans, designs, drawings and maps – provide the dominant ready-made knowledge about space, the codes and signs that organise and direct spatial practice. The isolation of representations of space as a significant category in the language of space draws attention to those with the power and authority to define space and direct social action. It links the practice of designing space to ideology and the conscious or unconscious work of those who represent the world in maintaining structures and beliefs which oppress and control (Zieleniec 2018: 6).

Finally, the third moment in the language of space is spaces of representation. Spaces of representation describe the symbolic values created by the inhabitants of space, where, based on representations of space and at the level of lived experience, meaning is conveyed and norms and experiences are expressed (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]: 38; Schmid 2008: 37). Spaces of representation are loaded with ideas, symbols and relationships – god, or masculine and feminine, for example – which emerge from lived experience. For Lefebvre, space and society are produced (in part) through this language of space – through the continual interplay between spatial practices, representations of space and spaces of representation.

In addition to identifying the language of space, Lefebvre drew attention to the phenomenology of space. He understood that we access space through our bodies and, through the inhabitation and sensing of space, we learn how to act and play our part in the production of our social world. As a result, Lefe...