Exhibition design past and present
The term ‘museum’ has its fans and its detractors. The familiar trail of showcases, plinths, graphics showcased in galleries is part of a lexicon of exhibition-making that has become familiar to generations. But as the nature of exhibition-making is changing, and immersive environments and digital interpretive tools have become more commonplace, will the object-led exhibition and its attendant structures of lighting and plinths continue to serve? What happens to the term ‘museum’ in this changed landscape?
As collections become increasingly digital, institutions are beginning to collect social media posts and data files in bulk. The questions are being asked ever more persistently about what a future exhibition landscape might look like. The taxonomic museum has a structure that is associated with its own particular ends which have been traditionally expressed in a form of museum furniture, of which the showcase is an important part. Will the exhibition furniture of a bygone era survive or will it be made new?
There will always be a place, it seems, for the perfect anachronism. Some of the most loved institutions were conceived and built long ago, which had a very different ethos. Most famously, the dioramas with taxidermy specimens at the American Museum of Natural History have survived many museum refits and new directors. New Yorkers it seems have grown up with these extraordinarily detailed dioramas and refuse to see them removed. Likewise, the stunning, great 19th-century Galerie de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie Comparée, a self-styled mecca of bones and organs from extinct and living species in Paris, has survived countless trends and fashions. We continue to reinterpret and create new opportunities for storytelling in these spaces. Digital producers are able to create digital binoculars or forms of augmented reality that enhance and reanimate these displays. They are the wonders of the future as well as the past.
As these technologies shift and advance, some will become obsolete while new technologies mature and are adopted. The onus will be on exhibitors to choose technologies which are sufficiently new to excite new audiences, but also sufficiently mature to be serviceable in use. These new technologies are a kind of superpower - which seems a good description of how digital technologies have enabled audiences to radically enhance the experience of visitors, and to enable them to analyse, interact and contextualise so differently. Their great advantage is their ability to work in and around old technologies. The new museum can have both traditional displays and super-advanced technologies together. The combination of new and historic, physical and digital interpretive methods side-by side is rich. And so the term ‘museum’ as it is redefined and re-energised seems set to continue into the future.
