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8B h h . T ^ ^ 8 . L i ( l v x x x x x x $ %! # l l d v p 0 q$ q$ q$ $ q$ ^ g : Review of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
Elaine Heumann Gurian
11 February 2007
Beware, dear reader! You are about to read an unrestrained rave about Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, Scotland. It also contains a huzzah for the director, Mark ONeill, whohaving written so many thoughtful museum pieceshas now brought forth a substantive example of his thinking. There are a few memorable paradigm-shifting museums that come along in any lifetime. I think of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Te Papa: The National Museum of New Zealand; and the Guggenheim Bilbao They are directed by chief executives who have vision and audacity. I add the Kelvingrove to the list.
The building is a giant imposing Victorian confection listed in historic registersthe kind that, in the past, usually led to tomb-like quiet and a preponderance of scholarly visitors. Nevertheless, even before the reinstallation, Kelvingrove was much beloved; it was reputed to be the most visited museum in the United Kingdom outside of London. In the past, the museum was special though slightly spooky, a dull and dim place stuffed with a large collection of uneven quality, here and there containing mysterious treasures.
What did ONeill and his staff do to change the museum from that old fashioned mausoleum into the home base of the Glasgow community? They closed the museum for three years, refurbished and restored the building, and reinstalled the collection at a cost of thirty million pounds. They reclaimed the original feel of the building, keeping the Victorian fairy tale magic assigned to castles, but adding light and gently warm colors. They installed a food service of surprisingly delicious and affordable comfort food and put the caf in a wonderful people-watching place.
The museum reopened in July of 2006 and has become a peoples palace, in the words of reporter Laura Cumming, writing in the Observer (2006). The museum, she said, has been unapologetically reconceived with [children] in mind, even to the rehanging of several paintings at the visual level of a nine-year-old. She added: The new museum, so imaginatively and empathetically redesigned, deserves as much and more love as the old. It is reason enough to visit Glasgow, and in its incredible range embraces the rest of the world. Not so much a museum of culture as of life itself, Kelvingrove is almost unique: part National Gallery, part V&A, part British Museum and Tateall in one building.
Late on a Saturday in November, a broad cross-section of folks filled the museum: meeting each other, snacking in the caf in the big entrance hall, and generally wandering about. Families are the intended audience of the reinstallation, and families abounded. It was dark, cold and rainy outside (tourist season in Glasgow being a dim memory), and yet the museum was filled obviously the well-loved winter clubhouse of the city. And for good reason. Admission is free. Nothing is dumbed-down. The installations are amusing and great fun, as well as intellectually demanding.
The staff and the designers have executed a surprising installation strategy not to be seen anywhere else. Each gallery is constituted as a short story made up of multiple shorter vignettes. For instance, I came upon a display where the question was asked, What does it mean to be Scottish? The display held artifactssome memorable, some notand a set of videos in which individuals talk. In one video, two boys aged 11 or 12 are seen running near a historic bridge. They say, It feels very nice to be close. . . to such a famous bridge. . . and such a famous village. They talk about a snuff box (which is in the case) decorated with a scene from the Robert Burns poem Tam O'Shanter. They recite the poem in the original pronunciation. And they say about the poem, Its funny and its exciting. . . and its frightening. . . and it gets you on the edge of your seat, really. After more chat, they conclude with Heck, yeah, it makes me proud Im Scottish! The presentation is simple, fetching without being cloying, andtaken together with the other videoseffective. I think about what I would say about being American.
This pattern repeats in other galleries. Each vignette contains objects, text, and often an interactive element. Each small installation is of irregular length and shape. They fit together like puzzle pieces, and like puzzle pieces, each can be lifted and changed by staff over the course of a year to refresh the exhibits without de-installing the whole gallery. Each chapter piece is both intellectually self-contained and also makes some associative cumulative sense with the one that abuts. Each vignette is based on an intriguing question. The answer is not imposed. Rather we are given the evidentiary visual pieces needed for a satisfactory solution. Often, audible pondering by audience members can be overheard. In the center of many areas is a family-friendly interactive so the children can play with something relevant. The parents stand about, casually minding their charges, while studying the pictures on the walls and discussing the issue at hand. Often the whole family is engaged in some part of the question.
These installations are, in turn, brilliant, funny, intriguing, and controversial. I felt free to cease engaging with the posed question and just gaze at the objects (which I did sometimes), but I was soon caught up again in the visual puzzles. A case called Patterns of Change, for instance, presents Native American beadwork and examines the European influences (such as the shape of the Glengarry, a Scottish type of hat) that were incorporated into Native crafts. The case is small, its in an area filled with other cases concerned with other issues of design, and the episode works alone and coheres with the others. Visiting this room, I pondered the diversity and human ingenuity in design worldwide.
In another room is the gem many foreign visitors (myself included) go to the museum to see: a portion of the Womens Tearoom designed by Glasgow-born architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, leader of Art Nouveau in Scotland. The tearoom opened at 91-93 Buchanan Street, Glasgow, in 1896. It is set in the middle of the gallery. As you circulate around it, you come upon a picture of the tearoom in use in 1900. The caption reads: . . . tearooms provided women with spaces where they could meet for lunch or tea after theyd been shopping in the new department stores. Taken together, the photo and the real tearoom have enough clues so that in my minds eye I am transported, dressed in the finery of the time, having tea with friends.
Describing this pattern, Cumming noted that the aim is to organize everything by stories: . . . the story of the Scots POWs who painted icons on sacks. . . . of the local optician inspired by his color-blindness charts to make paintings that look amazingly like Signac's. . . . of Rembrandt's man in glinting armor. And having drawn you in through narrative, they keep you hooked with odd life-art juxtapositionsa velvet-covered Venetian helmet among the Carpaccios, a real butterfly among the ornamental ones in the Mackintosh rooms, a razor-bill next to a silver scimitar.
A similarly enthusiastic review in Scotland on Sunday (the Scotsman newspaper) described the potential difficulty in handling politically sensitive items.
How, for example, without causing potential offense do you exhibit a copy of the Koran taken by a Scottish officer from a battlefield during the second Afghan war of 1879? O'Neill's ingenious answer has been to ask a member of Glasgow's Muslim community to comment upon the piece. His words and image are exhibited alongside the beautifully worked holy book. A similar treatment has been accorded a display on the Indian Mutiny, although the comments are a little more fiery. Such arresting visual explanations are typical of the enlightened thinking behind these eclectic displays ADDIN EN.CITE Gale20061146114623Gale, IainWelcome to the future of museumsScotsmen Scotland on SundayLateKelvingrove200630th April 2006Glasgow http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/review.cfm?id=64387200610 Feb 200706 July 2006(Gale 2006).
In its reinstallation, the museum first did visitor research, then created displays that target various visitor groups: families, under-fives, teenagers, non-experts, and school groups. The labels and interpretive panels, films, audio and interactive activities are adjusted to best serve a specific target group. Exhibit areas can change during the year, since many visitors return to the museum often. The museum claims that it is first in the U.K. to arrange information in this way, throughout the building.
And Im not alone in singing its praises. Iain Gale, writing in Scotland on Sunday, went all out for the museum:
Personally, despite my slight reservations, I am inclined to stick my neck out and say that not only will the new Kelvingrove prove even more popular than its predecessor, but that, unorthodox, innovative and ever so slightly irreverent as it is, it might just emerge as a model for the future of all museums ADDIN EN.CITE Gale20061146114623Gale, IainWelcome to the future of museumsScotsmen Scotland on SundayLateKelvingrove200630th April 2006Glasgow http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/review.cfm?id=64387200610 Feb 200706 July 2006(2006).
So reroute your anticipated travel, go to Kelvingrove, sit in the caf, and wander about, hearing people discussing art history, indigenous and colonial objects, natural history stuffed specimens and contemporary cultural issues. See the multicultural evidence of our world arranged in unexpected displays and view the broadly diverse audience busily exploring enthusiastically and amicably. Become convinced that great treasures, lateral thinking, poetry, gentle humor and difficult political questions can all reside comfortably in the same museum. Kelvingrove is a brainy, charming, inclusive, thought-provoking museum full of collections of note and odd bits warmly embraced by the people. May we all take this example to heart.
References
Cumming, L. 2006. Heady heights. The Observer. July 9. Accessed Feb. 2007 at HYPERLINK "http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,1815969,00.html" http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,1815969,00.html.
Gail, I. 2006. Welcome to the future of museums. Scotland on Sunday, in The Scotsman. April 30. Accessed Feb. 2007 at HYPERLINK "http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/review.cfm?id=643872006" http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/review.cfm?id=643872006.
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