A Museum Makeover Montage
Or, I offer some unsolicited advice
Museu Nacional do Azulejo. Photo © Eithne Owens
While I sometimes irritate myself with my caveating about museums, the reason is pretty simple. Most of the people I have worked with in the past two decades have been truly well-intentioned. Most of them really care about what they do and are often performing miracles with small teams and over-stretched budgets. I don’t want to be the person on the sidelines sniping about all of the things I would do if I were in charge, when I don’t know all of the issues the museum staff are dealing with every day, not to mention the basic challenge of, you know, keeping the lights on.
But now I have an opening for some unsolicited advice! On a recent visit to the Museu Nacional do Azulejo (national tile museum) in Lisbon I spotted a sign explaining that they soon going to be doing a programme of renovation. So I am indulging myself in an imaginary makeover, also an opportunity to show my work, so to speak.
I’m going to start in a slightly roundabout way, by describing the existing museum. Or what I think of as the raw ingredients for the project. The museum is in an absolutely gobsmacking 16th century convent just outside Lisbon’s city centre. The building literally made me gasp, and I was charmed to see the QR code (linking to the museum app) rendered in blue and white tiles at the entrance.
Around the building you can see tiles from the convent in situ, including in the former Chapel, where the blue and white panels form a cooling contrast to the extravaganza of gold, wood panelling and velvet. (As well as the tiles from the original building decoration, there is an impressive collection of tiles from the 15th century to the present day, arranged chronologically through the building.)
What there isn’t (or isn’t much of) is information about the tiles themselves. Well, there is some basic introduction in each room, along with an app that provides a bit more detail, and (my favourite piece of interpretation) some tactile displays of glazed but unpainted tiles, demonstrating the different techniques alongside interpretation in Braille. And after a while it all started to get (whisper it) a bit same-y. Without understanding more about the art and technique and production and context, the panels melded into a 2D blur of blue and white (and occasional yellow and green).
On the bus home I thought about how I would approach a transformation. Given my philosophy that the concept emerges where the need meets the assets, I thought about the audience need. Everyone in the museum when I visited was a tourist. There were no young people in the museum, besides a couple of babies in prams. You need to keep the tourist audience and encourage them to spend money in the café and shop, but also attract a sustainable, potentially repeat-visiting, local audience. What do you do?
I kept coming back to two things. How much I like the tactile interpretation and how so much of the appeal of the tiles as objects is their tactility. You yearn to touch them. And yet, most of the interpretation is (literally and figuratively) as flat as the tiles themselves.
So here’s the concept. The tile museum becomes totally hands-on. Much of the interpretation is tactile, although I like the idea of making it multi-sensory and foregrounding smell, taste (edible tiles, inspired by Modern Art Desserts), sound (the Chapel is so sensorily overwhelming that perhaps it needs nothing … or just a simple soundscape?). Extend the collaboration with blind people (the Braille panels suggest there’s some work already happening) and give space to people who are visually impaired: co-create displays and commission blind and partially-blind people to run programmes (like this one? ) and create interventions. How far could this go (in a meaningful and equitable and sustainable way)?
Have workshop space embedded through the building where people can watch artists and conservators at work, conserving old tiles and creating new ones (which can be sold in the shop). You can ask them questions about different techniques and learn more about the tradition and role of tile craft in Portuguese culture. Young people can do apprenticeships. Develop collaborations with some of the wonderful ceramics studios and shops dotted about Lisbon and create spaces where anyone and everyone can sit (pottery café style) and play with material and techniques and even create a sampler tile to take home (people would pay for this too).
Look, like a makeover montage in a movie, there’s probably a dozen (at least …) reasons why this is unrealistic. I’m sure whatever plans the museum has are grounded in research and extensive understanding of the potential, not a scheme dreamt up on the bus. They also have the challenge of taking a museum that is beloved (there’s a reason that it features in every guidebook to Lisbon) and preserving the essence of what makes it special, while refreshing it for the future. This requires time to listen and reflect.
But it was really fun to take the huge inspiration of the building and collection and give my imagination free rein. Obrigada.
Food for Thought
VISIT: It's funny how museums of just one thing (tiles, say) can often be a byword for people outside the museum world for the niche aspect of museums. But there are some amazing museums of one thing (plus, of course, there’s my belief that every museum is also presenting the idea of what a museum can be / do for its community). Step forward Atlas Obscura, with this list.
FOLLOW: The Sensational Museum is not just a project about making museums accessible to disabled people. It is a project that uses what we know about disability to change how museums work for everyone. It deprioritises sight as the most important sense in the museum experience, and applies a ‘trans-sensory’ way of thinking. They’ve just announced a group of partners for pilot projects so these ideas will be coming to the museum floor soon.
READ: From museums of one thing, to museums with one visitor.
AND JUST FOR FUN: Caitlin Freeman of Modern Art Desserts is no longer supplying SFMOMA, but you can buy her book (I have it, I love it) and try your hand at making your own edible Mondrian. This lovely piece will whet your appetite.