Category: Museums

New article on museum closure

I’ve published an article on some aspects of museum closure in the journal Museum and Society: Museum Closure in the UK: Themes, Issues, and Trends. The journal is open access, so it’s free to read.

The article looks at a variety of examples from the UK and elsewhere, and draws on data from the Mapping Museums project to show trends in the UK’s museum sector. As a quick overview of some of the themes, here’s the abstract:

Museum closure has received little attention within museum studies. In this article I set out some of the main themes and issues that pertain to museum closure, with examples drawn mainly from the UK. Closure is difficult to define precisely, and in some cases it is also hard to date with accuracy, but I present a way of defining closure that focusses on museum sites. I also outline a typology of closures, distinguished using differing levels of impact and loss of access. Recent data makes it possible to analyse the trends of opening and closing in the sector during a period of over sixty years, and shows that, partly due to increasing closures, the sector has shown signs of stasis, if not shrinkage.

The Imperial and Commonwealth Institutes at the Design Museum

The Design Museum moved in 2016 and now occupies the building that was constructed for the Commonwealth Institute, which opened in 1962. Although the building was significantly (and controversially) refurbished so that little of the original structure remains, there are still reminders of the building’s history.

A map of the world showing the Commonwealth countries as they appeared in 1993

In the basement a gently curved map of the Commonwealth as it was in 1993 is accompanied by a series of plaques. These plaques mark the building’s history, from its original opening to the recent reopening as the Design Museum.

Close up of the map of the Commonwealth, showing amongst others India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Australia.
Detail of the Commonwealth map

Another historic feature is on the back wall of the mezzanine level. Contrasting with the polished wood finishes throughout the museum, the mezzanine wall is entirely faced by grey flecked marble.

This stone was used as the floor of the circular viewing gallery at the centre of the Commonwealth Insititue. From there visitors could survey the various galleries devoted to the Commonwealth countries. That marble had originally been used for the staircases of the Imperial Institute, which stood a short distance away in South Kensington where Imperial College now stands.

The original exhibition hall, as seen on a plaque in the Design Museum
Plaque on the mezzanine bench at the Design Museum

Little remains of the Imperial Institute on its original site. The only extant structure is the Collcut or Queen’s Tower (shown on the right in the picture below). The tower now stands at the centre of a quadrangle within the college, but was originally at the crossing of some of the Institute’s galleries.

As far as I know the marble wall at the Design Museum is the only other part of the Institute to remain. Despite the disquiet at the gutting of the Commonwealth Institute, at least the refurbished building contains reminders of its longer history that began in 1893 when its predecessor opened.

The Imperial Insititute in South Kensington
The Imperial Insititute in South Kensington (via Wikimedia)

Li Yuan-Chia and the LYC Museum – an amateur artist-curator?

‘Making Museum Professionals, 1850 – the present’ is an international research network bringing together academics and museum professionals to investigate the past, present and future of museum work.

At their first workshop in May 2023 I spoke about the artist Li Yuan-Chia, his LYC Museum, and whether his work there could be seen as amateur, professional, or in another category altogether.

You can read a shortened version of that workshop paper on the Making Museum Professionals website.

The UK museum boom: continuity and change 1960–2019

My first joint-authored academic article has been published. A result of the Mapping Museums project, it serves as an overview of much of the research that the team conducted.

The abstract:

During the late-twentieth century there was a significant increase in the number of museums in the UK. Apart from the polemic heritage debates of the 1980s and 1990s, the boom in museums was not much investigated. Our project “Mapping Museums” collected and analysed data on over 4000 UK museums that were open in the period from 1960 to 2019. Here we present our findings. We show that the number of museums increased from around 1000 to a highpoint of 3360 in 2016, that the sector continuously expanded for 55 years, but that the rate of growth and closure varied depending on the museums’ size, governance, subject matter, and location. Small and medium museums proliferated, as did independent museums; growth in the South of England far out-paced that in the North; local history museums multiplied and new subjects came on stream. The museum boom re-shaped the sector.

Read the article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09548963.2023.2227864. It’s behind an academic paywall, so if you want to read it but don’t have access, feel free to contact me.

How long do museums last?

The Museums and Galleries History Group recently ran a competition for new blogs about any aspect of museum history, and my entry won a prize. I looked at data on hundreds of museum closures to see what it could tell us about how long museums survive:

All closures in the UK since 1960 have been recorded by the Mapping Museums project, and as the project’s database includes the opening and closing dates for most of these museums, it’s possible to get an insight into how long museums typically last before they shut. What can examining the lifespans of those closures tell us about the nature of the UK’s museum sector?

You can read the whole thing here: http://www.mghg.info/blog/2023/1/15/how-long-do-museums-last

London’s Lost Museums

Londonist has an article about London’s Lost Museums, including the Theatre Museum, the Cuming Museum, and the Bramah Tea and Coffee Museum. You could argue that not everything featured in the article is a museum – the London Planetarium, for example – but it’s a nice sampling of the diversity of now-lost venues.

Cardiff Bay then and now

Part of my PhD on museum closure is about the Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum. The museum stood on the waterfront of Tiger Bay, the part of Cardiff once filled with canals and large docks. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation redeveloped the area, renaming it as Cardiff Bay in the process. During the redevelopment, the Corporation bought the industrial museum’s site and sold part of it to a property developer. The Mermaid Quay shopping centre opened on the site in 1999.

These photos show the transformation of the bay area. The bay was tidal, and mud flats were exposed when the tide was out. That changed when the bay was enclosed with a barrage to raise the water level to a consistent height. The black and white photos were taken in 1979, two years after the Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum opened. I took the colour photos in February 2022.

The former Steam Packet Harbour in 1979. The Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum (centre) and the Pierhead Building (right) are seen in the background. Photograph by Gordon Hayward, © Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales.
Cardiff Bay in 2022.
The Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum (left), and Pierhead building, 1979. Photograph by Gordon Hayward, © Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales.
Cardiff Bay in 2022. Mermaid Quay (left), and the Pierhead building. The Wales Millennium Centre and the roof of the Welsh Senedd building are just visible on the right.

Research on Museums and Collections in the Pandemic

I work as a researcher on the project UK Museums during the COVID-19 crisis: Assessing risk, closure, and resilience. It’s just one of many projects funded by AHRC researching the impact of the pandemic on the arts and humanities. At a recent workshop for some of those project teams, I found that many others are also working on research related to museums and collections. The workshop was organised by the Pandemic and Beyond project, and I wrote a summary of the museum-related research for their blog.

Read it here: https://pandemicandbeyond.exeter.ac.uk/blog/research-on-museums-and-collections-in-the-pandemic/