Conference time and the museum of the future

Back to back conferences on like themes are always interesting, if only to see how much stamina is required to keep engaged. Sydney has just hosted the Museums Australia Conference, followed by Remix Sydney.

The former is self explanatory, the annual get together of the local museum fraternity, always useful for catching up with old friends and meeting new ones, but this year a bit predictable and uninspiring in programming and discussions. Highlights for me were:

• Xerxes Mazda, formerly of the British Museum, currently at the Royal Ontario Museum and about to be head of collections  for National Museums of Scotland. Xerxes is always worth listening to on how to maximise the visitor experience, by integrating exhibitions, education, web, publications, design, front of house, visitor research, marketing, membership, volunteers and programming.
• Mega museum project updates with Gunther Schauerte from the Humboldt Forum in Berlin and Michael Lynch on M+ in the West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong. Large though these are, we should not forget the New Museum that is arising in Western Australia. I blogged about this when it was announced in July 2012, and amazingly the monies ($428m) still seem to be there and the project is gaining significant momentum with an opening scheduled in 2020. 

I gave a paper boldly entitled 'Conservation in Museums – Whereto from here?', inspired by my own perception of the journey that conservation worldwide has undergone between the ICOM CC Conference in Sydney in 1987 and 27 years on the same conference in Melbourne in 2014.

And interestingly it was Remix that turned out to be in many ways a more appropriate forum for this discussion with the first session asking ‘What functions of museums are best served by external providers?’ Remix is a series of global summits on the future of cultural industries currently taking place annually in London, New York City, Dubai and Sydney, which aims to pull together cultural leaders, corporate directors, technologists and entrepreneurs.

It was a buzzy place to be around, reinforcing how the world of social media is fracturing at an ever increasing pace. With ever more platforms and media to share content on, the move to video as a medium, and mobile as the principal point of access, museums are scrambling to understand how to respond. Inevitably the focus on providing digital content continues to drive decision making on funding, but with it came reinforcement of the urge to see and value the real thing that is continuing to bring people into cultural institutions in increasing numbers.

Pick of the conference for me was Seb Chan’s keynote on the Future of Museums. Seb was at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney for many years before taking up the role of Head of Digital and Emerging Media at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, which has just reopened after a $81 million refurb. Described in the Atlantic as the museum of the future, Seb has lead the charge at the Cooper Hewitt on integrating the digital and the real seamlessly. He and his team have done this by ensuring:

• Everything on exhibition is also online, i.e. not just a representative proportion
• The online data provides a rich array of extra information, so offers significant extra value that can be accessed later
• Visitors select objects they find interesting by touching the label with an interactive pen they are provided with on entry
• These selections are then downloaded upon exit and can be accessed, researched and manipulated at home via a unique url on each ticket
• No time consuming downloading of an app, pre visit or upon arrival
• No privacy issues over requiring an email address
• This is a REALLY NEAT solution

What I came away with is that we are now seeing the next iteration of visitor access through technology, the leader until now being MONA and the O. The ground breaking nature of the O is reflected in how long it has taken to see it superseded, but look to the Cooper Hewitt for the future of this aspect of museums. Read all about it at Museums and the Web 2015. 

Good times in WA and less good times in the UK

The announcement in May of the redevelopment of the WA Museum is good news, but has been a long term in coming. It had a false start along the way in 2008, when under Dawn Casey's directorship the Museum's relocation to the old Swan River powerstation was announced. Although the monies were about the same for the latter project, about half was going to be eaten up by site remediation. And it seems to be generally agreed in Perth that the powerstation was not a good site being off the tourist track and difficult to access.

So the new plan sounds a whole lot better way to spend the not inconsiderable sum of $428.3 million.  

What the good citizens of WA will get for their money is 23,000 m2 of museum, including various refurbished heritage buildings with 8,500 m2 of public spaces, themed around Being Western Australian, Discovering Western Australia and Exploring Our World, and 1,000m2 of temporary exhibition space.

As Australian museum projects go it dwarfs anything we have seen of late, which admittedly has tended to be new wings ($50m at MCA in 2012,  $45m at the Australian Museum in in 2008), is almost 4 times the cost of GOMA (2006) in Brisbane, is twice the cost of the National Museum (2001) and significantly more than the Melbourne Museum (1998). The challenge will be for the director, Alec Coles, to hold onto the funds over various budget cycles. There is no doubt that Coles is a smart political operator and much of the credit for getting this over the line is due to him, but Bill Bleathman, the able director of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, saw the promise of a similar sum whittled away to a paltry $30m for their current redevelopment.

From the largesse of WA’s booming mining driven economy to the other end of the spectrum, and it's interesting to see what happens to museums in an economy that is really being hit hard, namely the UK. The raw facts are that 42% of UK Museums Association member institutions have cut staff in the past year according to their most recent survey, and a quarter have had to close all or part of their sites. Bear in mind that this is what happened in 2011, after at least 2 years prior to that of a similar picture. But the good news is that out of adversity in true British fashion there are good things evolving (and it's not just the lift to the spirits that the Olympics is bringing).  The survey is peppered with comments such as " Challenge does foster resourcefulness", 'There is a more pragmatic approach to service delivery", ' the sector will emerge more radical and responsive to the social needs of the public', and 'being more entrepreneurial has to be good for museums and galleries in the long term'.  Add to this increasing visitor numbers, and 36% of members saying the quality of their services will increase over the coming year ( up from 13% the previous) and it all sounds positively rosy. To top it all, UK public support for the return of the Elgin marbles to Greece is on the decline, because there is real concern that Greece's dire financial state would mean they will be unable to properly care for them. Not sure that view is going to hold water in the long term, but for now it will keep the British Museum’s 6 million annual visitors (and rising) happy. 

Julian Bickersteth

Managing Director

internationalconservationservices