workshops in a museum to learn and increase participation

Fashion and Textile Museum, London  has an interesting program of activities to visitors and making an effort to engage the audience and the community in recurrent visits to the institution.

Will US museums succeed in reinventing themselves? (From "The Art Newspaper" article)

Will US museums succeed in reinventing themselves? | The Art Newspaper:

“Caught up in historical change, dependent on new sources of support, and torn by conflicting pressures from both within and without the profession—toward what shapes are museums being pulled and pushed?” Museum analyst Stephen E. Weil posed that question in a seminal essay titled “The Multiple Crises of Museums”. That was in 1971. Today’s museums confront much the same question. The circumstances of the moment may prompt surprisingly reassuring responses."

An excerpt from the article in The Art Newspaper about North American museums dealing with economy and budgets, after almost two years of recession and finding a better way to shape their mission as cultural (and research) institutions.

Continuing with previous post

I revised the video once more to check on what I had transcribed and I found one more interesting sentence that I like to inlcude here:

..."if there is a good existing collection it gives you a lot of confidence to build the museum around...."  D. Chipperfield

 I find this idea inspiring to debate the notion of collections and mission statements, for museums in the 21st century.

The Folkwang Museum in Essen, (Germany) reopens with new architecture

A partial transcript of an interview to the architect David Chipperfield on the occasion of the opening of the new Folkwand Museum in Essen in Germany is giving me the opportunity to reflect on some concepts regarding experiencing the museum's visit.  When an architecture is airy, has open floorplans and invites to enter it, then the building is a succes, expecially when the construction houses an institution, which its mission statement presumably reads something like .... "art for the community"...

but also the design of the new building, clearly is modernising the institution but not forgetting its roots and the connections to the city.

The one-floor-courtyard-plan and the huge scale glass windows of the façade, are opening the museum to the city in an inviting way: you walking down the street and looking directly to the works of art inside.

Perhaps, this new building could do more (or maybe faster) for engaging an audience than a calendar full of public programs.

Folkwang Museum Essen, interwiew with architect David Chipperfield
From DW-World TV

"Light, airy, transparent", some concepts defining the new building of the Folkwang Museum in Essen, with a collection in contemporary art, mainly paintings. 

we had a double desire in designing it: easy to find your way in, and at the same time to loose yourself.

.... unestructured ways to view the works inside. The circulation is around these courtyards and this give you the oportunity to see really into the collections, so from the front door you can actually begin to see art.  Everything is visible like a little village.

... (there was) another part of the museum from 1960s, we really wanted to embrace it and we borrowed the spirit...

.... everyne can enjoy uninterrupted views, the glass façade has open the Museum to the city, making it a part of every day life.

... and I think we have to counterbalance all of the superficial tendencies, as the world get faster, also the need to slow down is more important and I think that the museum is one of the only places left, apart from reading a novel, where you occupied yourself not with something external, but with something internal. 

Musée Hergé

A visit to the new Musée Hergé (or should we say Tin Tin Musée?) in Louvain- la-Neuve, opened last June 2009. Still wondering for an opinion ....

An always new discussion

We are already entering the second decade of the 21st century and discussions in the museum world seem to be more centered in whether museums should extend their facilities (meaning exhibit space) commissioning new architectural "jewels", and thus embarking themselves on millionaire projects sometimes impossible to maintain in the current economic situation; or put all the efforts in working in enhancing the experience of visitors by means of fascinating media and a, sometimes overwhelming, extensive calendar of full education programs and social activities.

I am a very interested in architecture, media and exhibition planning, but my question here is, if it should not be consider more important a discussion about:

• what should be the content of museums?
• what should museums have to offer to visitors beyond their, many times, too popular temporary exhibitions, but less impressive experience?
• what should be the new definition for museums as research-education centers, especially if they are only to display temporary shows?
• What is left of function of museums as repository of collections based on an intellectual statement?

Many are the questions to revise in the next years, if museums are here to stay for long time as centers of intellectual content.   Or is that museums will inevitable fall in the stream of not evolving but changing their own essence, to become what?  Are new current museums, "the next museum" to imitate?

At the entrance

An organized reception entrance area preludes a warm welcome, and a positive experience after the visit, is almost granted.

Entrance of the SMAK Museum, Gent (Belgium)